The Red Book
Authors: Deborah Copaken Kogan
“
The Big Chill
for the Facebook generation.”
—Adam Gopnik, author of
Paris to the Moon
“Striking, funny, sad, and true-to-life,
The Red Book
sweeps us into the intersecting lives of characters who all started their adult lives in the same place, but upon whom time works both its magic and its entropy. Deborah Copaken Kogan is a deeply feeling writer, and this novel is a joy to read.”
—Dani Shapiro, author of
Devotion
“I gobbled up
The Red Book
in two days, ignoring my work, my family, my life, so immersed was I in the lives of the people Deborah Copaken Kogan has so masterfully brought to life. Kogan’s eye is at once wry and empathetic, and the book is a delight.”
—Ayelet Waldman, author of
Red Hook Road
“
The Red Book
, which is filled with Deborah Copaken Kogan’s smart take on everything from friendship to sex to child raising to getting over the past—or not—makes for old-school compulsive reading.”
—Meg Wolitzer, author of
The Uncoupling
Epigraph
It’s very difficult to keep the line between
the past and the present.
You know what I mean? It’s awfully difficult.
—Little Edie Beale,
Grey Gardens
Contents
Every five years, after graduating from Harvard, its alumni are asked to account for the previous half decade of their lives by filling out a form with basic biographical information (name, address, e-mail, job, spouse, kids) and composing a few descriptive summary paragraphs—three to five are suggested—for inclusion in a bound, crimson-colored anniversary report known, for lack of a better or actual title, as the red book. Many graduates write in, others do not, but whether one completes the assignment or not, at a minimum every name and address of the living are published, some prefaced only by “
Last Known Address
” for those classmates who’ve managed to elude the grasp of Harvard’s mainframe: a feat, considering how diligently the shepherds in the Alumni Affairs and Development office work to keep track of their flocks.
The deadline for these entries is the last quarter of the year prior to one’s reunion, so the class of 1989, who returned for their twentieth reunion in 2009, would have composed their red book entries in the fall of 2008. The books then land with a prereunion thud at the doorsteps of every graduate, whether they write in or not, whether they pay the suggested sixty-dollar donation to offset printing costs or not, whether they’re impatiently waiting for it or not.
No data exists concerning the percentage of red books that are cracked open the minute their recipients arrive home from work, the playground, an adulterous tryst, what have you, but the author will go out on a limb here and guess one hundred.
A
DDISON
C
ORNWALL
H
UNT.
Home Address:
85–101 North 3rd Street, #4, Brooklyn, NY 11211 (718-427-0909).
Occupation:
Artist.
E-mail:
[email protected].
Spouse/Partner:
Gunner Griswold (B.A., Yale ’88; M.F.A., University of Iowa ’92).
Spouse/Partner Occupation:
Writer.
Children:
Charlotte Trilby, 1995; William Houghton, 1997; John Thatcher, 1998.
Okay, so here I am, just like back in college, writing this thing with only forty minutes left to go before the deadline.
Plus ça change
. (She pauses briefly, for inspiration, to hunt down the Fifteenth Anniversary Report, which is wedged between all the other red books and her freshman facebook—the very facebook, she’s been trying to explain to her offspring, which was the original model for their beloved virtual one, but they look at her as if she’s crazy, something she’s not so sure they’re incorrect to assume these days, except of course in this instance.)
So. Where were we? Right. My life these past five years. And can I just say that when I accepted Harvard’s invitation to join the class of ’89, I don’t remember agreeing that every five years,
for the rest of my life
, I’d be forced to complete another writing assignment. There’s a reason I nearly failed freshman expos, people!
Just saying.
Ack! I got sucked into rereading the Fifteenth Report. You guys are fascinating. A tribute to your alma mater. I can’t even understand half of the things you’re doing, but I’m glad you’re out there doing it. Someone has to figure out the secrets of the universe, and better you than me, and I guess this is where I should probably take a moment to formally apologize to the TA I called (Joe? John? Josh?) in a panic at 3
A.M.
before the Science A final, but the funny thing is, it’s been over two decades since that call, and I still don’t understand dark matter or quarks, though you did a valiant job trying to explain them. Okay, twenty minutes left. Come on, Addison, you can do this.
Okay, so, I guess the biggest change since my last entry is that I’ve finally entered the modern age: I have an actual Web site of my work (
http://www.addisonhunt.com
), I’ve hung out a shingle on etsy.com (
http://www.etsy.com/shop/AddisonHunt?ref=seller_info
), and I’ve been taking classes in QuarkXPress—finally! A quark I understand!—and PhotoShop to stay on top of the latest digital technologies. Still painting as always, but my process has evolved from a kind of neo abstract feminist expressionism into a photo realistic rendering of the mundane. That’s artist-speak for “I used to throw paint on a canvas and use the palms of my hand to smear it here and there as a visual representation of unconscious female desires. Now I make intricate drawings of my hairbrush.”
Wish I could drone on longer, but there are Christmas cards to send out, and I have to help Houghton build the Parthenon for social studies by tomorrow, and Thatcher needs to be picked up from guitar, and Trilby’s boarding school applications are due in two days. As you might expect, I’m a little behind.
C
LOVER
P
ACE
L
OVE.
Home Address:
102 East 91st Street, New York, NY 10128 (212-546-7394).
Occupation and Office Address:
Managing Director, Lehman Brothers, 1897 Broadway, 41st floor, New York, NY 10014.
Additional Home Address:
4 Lily Pond Lane, East Hampton, NY.
E-mail:
[email protected].
Graduate Degrees:
M.B.A., Harvard ’98.
Spouse/Partner:
Daniel McDougal (B.A., Boston College ’95; J.D., Yale ’98).
Spouse/Partner Occupation:
Attorney, Legal Aid Society.
I wish I had something more interesting to report other than that, aside from a brief detour at the B-school midcareer, I’ve been with the same company, Lehman Brothers, since the week after graduation. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have jumped around a bit more, but one of the reasons I’ve stayed with Lehman for so long is that I actually love both my workplace and my job. I find the challenges of managing both people and equity fascinating, and though I’m proud to be one of only a handful of female leaders in our company, it’s still shocking to me that we’re not better represented in positions of power on Wall Street.
I was named managing director of my group in July 2004. I lead a large and vibrant team focusing on mortgage-backed securities, our most profitable department in fiscal year ’07.
On the love-life side of the equation, I finally found my soul mate, Danny McDougal, after I allowed my former roommates to create a profile for me on Match.com. They called it an “intervention,” which they staged during the annual July Fourth weekend we spent together at my house. Addison took the photo, Jane wrote the text, and Mia tried to use her Meisner techniques to coax me out of what she called my “robotically corporate” communication skills. (Apparently asking a man on the third date whether he’s willing to change an equal number of diapers as his wife is a Dating Don’t; luckily Danny found both my honesty and the two-page, single-spaced document mapping out a future of equitably shared domestic responsibilities I presented to him on our ninth date slightly weird but charming enough to stay the course.)
Danny and I closed the deal, so to speak, six months later and found our dream house, an 1897 brownstone in Carnegie Hill, which we gutted and renovated over the course of the next year. If I’d better understood the various stresses of renovating a property while simultaneously living in it, I might not have insisted we do it during our first year of marriage, but when you get hitched at the ripe old age of thirty-nine, there’s no time, as they say, like the present.
Meanwhile no children yet, but they are definitely high up on our list of goals for FY09, and we hope, with any luck, to bring a couple of them to our twenty-fifth!
M
IA
M
ANDELBAUM
Z
ANE.
Home Address:
45 San Remo Lane, Los Angeles, CA 90049 (310-589-0923).
Additional Home Address:
17 rue des Ecoles, Antibes, France.
E-mail:
[email protected].
Spouse/Partner:
Jonathan Zane (B.A., University of Maryland ’70; M.F.A., UCLA ’74).
Spouse/Partner Occupation:
Film director.
Children:
Max Benjamin, 1992; Eli Samuel, 1994; Joshua Aaron, 1998; Zoe Claire, 2008.
As I sit here typing this, the newest member of the Zane Train—our tiny caboose, Zoe—has finally fallen asleep in her BabyBjörn, the only place she seems to want to engage in this kind of activity. Those of you familiar with the medieval torture device that is the Björn will understand what this means: I’ve had a baby glued to my middle-aged torso, without reprieve, every day since her birth. In fact, I think I must have been single-handedly responsible for the recent spike in Johnson & Johnson stock, as I’ve decimated the entire West Coast supply of Motrin to deal with the inevitable backache. Good practice, I suppose, for all the aches and pains we’ll all be feeling soon enough. (Have twenty years actually gone by so fast? I walk around assuming I’m still twenty-two, then I catch a glimpse of myself in a store window or a bathroom mirror and am suddenly and brutally shocked back into reality. Who’s that scary chick with the streaks of gray in her hair and the deep lines around her mouth? Oh, right. That’s me.)
It’s been, well, interesting, to say the least, to run around the country visiting colleges with my eldest while breast-feeding an infant. I’ve been so physically and mentally addled, in fact, that the other day Eli, my second, walked into the kitchen in search of a snack—oh my God, those boys can eat!—and I said, “Since when did you grow facial hair?” and he said, “Um, like a year ago, Mom? Duh.”
Okay, so here’s the part where I’m supposed to tell you about the total awesomeness of my career, followed by a rattling off of my awards and accolades, but the only award I have sitting framed on my mantel is a “#1 Mom” plaque my eldest, Max, made out of macaroni and clay for Mother’s Day circa 1996. Max was born soon after I got married, which was soon after I graduated, which was probably too soon, but there you have it. Max was followed closely by Eli, who was followed four years later by Josh, and though I was still going out on auditions from time to time, suddenly I had three young boys and little time, energy, or desire to keep banging my head against that wall. Plus, the kind of work I was able to land as an actress—a Tums commercial here, a public service announcement there—never felt as fulfilling or stimulating as spending an afternoon on the floor with my children. I know that sounds like an excuse, and on some level I’m sure it is, but it’s also as true a statement as any: What I’d planned as a short maternity leave turned into seventeen years. And while they might not have been the most mentally challenging or professionally rewarding years of my life, spiritually they were rich and full. So rich and so full that when my husband asked me what I wanted for my fortieth birthday, I joked, “Another baby.” But then the more I thought about it, the less it felt like a joke. Hence, Zoe Claire, now stirring in her baby carrier, rooting around for some lunch.
That’s not to say I spend every hour taking care of my kids, because until Zoe was born, there were many years when they were in school most of the day. I know I’m lucky to have been given the gift of time with them, so I try to pay it forward, in some way, every day. This past year and a half we’ve been particularly busy hosting fund-raising events at our home to help raise money for the Obama campaign. (G’Obama!) I’m also active in our local chapter of Planned Parenthood and in the soup kitchen committee at our synagogue, B’nai Israel. I’ve been running the Pinehurst School’s annual fund-raising auction ever since our son Max was in kindergarten, and I do outreach in Watts to help locate scholarship students who might not otherwise have heard of the school. Pinehurst has been a great learning environment for our three sons: small classes, one-on-one attention, a focus on the whole child. Zoe seems eager to get started as a student there as well—she often wails when her brothers leave in the morning—but for now, I’m hanging on to her lovely babyhood. Or, rather, her lovely babyhood seems to be hanging on to me. Constantly.
Jonathan, my husband, continues to direct romantic comedies. His latest,
Give and Take
, featuring Hugh Grant and Keira Knightley as former schoolmates caught on different sides of the law, should be hitting the theaters just before we head back for reunion, so definitely go see it if you get a chance!
Life, as they say, has been good to us, and my husband and I feel blessed and fortunate to be where we are. We have our health, four beautiful children, good friends, and a sturdy roof over our heads. A few years ago, we renovated an old stone house in the south of France, where we try to retreat every August, depending on Jonathan’s shooting schedule, so if you’re ever near Antibes during the summer, drop by! We’ll open up a bottle of local wine and watch the sun set over the Mediterranean. That’s a real invitation, so take me up on it. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to spend time with Jane as well, who always makes it down for at least a week with her daughter and her beau, Bruno. And if Jane ever makes an honest man of Bruno, we’ve promised to hold the wedding for them there as well. (Jane? Oh, Janie-pie? Hint hint.)
I look forward to catching up with everyone at reunion.
J
ANE
N
GUYEN
S
TREETER.
Home Address:
11 bis, rue Vieille du Temple, 75004 Paris, France (33 1 42 53 97 58).
Occupation and Office Address:
Reporter, the
Boston Globe
, 11 bis, rue Vieille du Temple, 75004 Paris, France.
E-mail:
[email protected].
Spouse/Partner:
Bruno Saint-Pierre.
Spouse/Partner Occupation:
Editor,
Libération
.
Children:
Sophie Isabelle Duclos, 2002.
I am a card-carrying rationalist. I do not believe in God or higher powers or anyone up there manipulating our puppet strings, but every once in a while I do wonder why some of us are targeted, seemingly more than others, to endure loss. I’m not complaining. In fact I’m grateful for my life every day. It’s just that when I sit down to read these entries every five years—actually, more like
devour
them in a single, all-night, sleepless gulp—what strikes me most profoundly about the nature of our disparate paths is not the infrequent “I lost my spouse” or “My father died last year,” but rather the fortuitous lack of life-altering tragedies in the majority of these entries.
I consider myself relatively happy, emotionally stable, and extremely lucky compared to many of the people I’ve met over my nearly two decades as a reporter, but examined closely, as this book forces those of us masochistic enough to send in these updates to do, my life reads more like a bad soap opera than like the life of a typical Ivy League grad, whatever
typical
means in this context.
As some of you know, I lost both of my parents and all three siblings to war before the age of seven. After making my way to Saigon, I was adopted by Harold Streeter, the army doctor who treated me upon my arrival in the city, and his wife, Claire. Then, a year after my new parents brought me home to their house in Belmont, Harold died of a freak staph infection he contracted at the hospital where he worked.
Then, thank goodness, there was a long lull, about which I’ve already written extensively in these pages, so I’ll just summarize here to refresh our collective memory: After college, I moved to Paris, to work for the
International Herald Tribune
and to live out my Jean Seberg expat fantasies; this led to a freelance gig with the
Christian Science Monitor
, which got me out into the world beyond, where I began to specialize in covering global refugee crises. I met my husband Hervé on the back of a truck in Rwanda. I was asked to take over as the Paris bureau chief for the
Globe
a few years after that, until they shut down the bureau. They kept me on as a staff reporter, however, which basically means I work out of my home office when I’m in town, which suits both the
Globe
and me just fine, at least for now. I gave birth to our beautiful daughter Sophie, whom many of you met at the last reunion, in the summer of ’02. Because of Hervé’s humane French benefits, I never had to worry—as I often read in these pages that many of you do—about going bankrupt paying for Sophie’s medical bills, schooling, or child care. (Although now that Obama just won the presidency, yesterday as I write this, I’m assuming the U.S. will finally get its act together on the health care front.)
