Truth in Advertising Page 0,127
adjustments in perspective.
If you are one of the lucky ones who know what they want to do for a living—who’ve always known and who love it—God bless you. If you are a doctor, a priest, a boat builder, a teacher, a firefighter—a person with a calling—consider yourself fortunate. And if you are like me, someone who simply found themselves doing a job they never imagined doing, I’m not sure what to say.
Except this. I will live and I will die and when I do there might be a few lines in the newspaper about the job I did and the children I made, about the wife I left behind and how long we were married. Perhaps some will cry and there will be a get-together at my home after my dead body is placed in the cold ground. Sandwiches will be eaten and coffee drunk and conversation will be had about me and hopefully what a decent guy I was but also about lawn care and insurance and movies and children and the weather and sports teams and politics and whether or not there’s more chicken salad. Later, people will go home with a renewed intensity and appreciation of their world, of how precious and fleeting it all is. They’ll hold their children a little longer, the kids not sure what’s going on with mom or dad as they try to squirm away to watch TV. A husband and wife will make love in the night as a result of the closeness of death. And then, in the morning, there will be lunches to make and dentist appointments to keep, meetings to attend, ideas to share with clients, leaves to rake, dry cleaning to drop off. The car needs a tune-up.
So there is life. The quiet routine of every day. I read the newspaper, take the subway, go to a meeting. I get a haircut, have dinner with friends, help a woman with a baby carriage up the subway stairs. I get frustrated at a coworker, annoyed by humidity, depressed at the sight of people eating alone. I try to be human. It rains. I go to bed wondering how another day, another week, another year has passed so quickly. It scares me. It makes me want to do better.
We make dinner during these long, cold, dead-of-winter nights. We listen to music and talk and Phoebe teaches me how to cook. We watch movies on my computer. We read in bed. Spring is coming.
Long after Phoebe is asleep I watch the snow fall outside the window, listen to the wind, the rattle of the old glass panes, her hip a touch away. In that moment I think, This is my life. This, here and now. This is as close as I am ever going to get to that elusive thing called happiness. How could I ask for more?
• • •
Life is best viewed from a distance. The long lens. This has been my guiding principle. If you step back and watch, well, it’s just easier. Because if you don’t, if instead you pull others close—if you need them—you will never want to let go.
Eddie called to say he was in New York for work. He was taking a flight back that evening, but did I have time for a coffee? We met at a Starbucks in midtown, sat for a time, made small talk. I told him about the shoot, about Keita. He listened but didn’t say much.
He started to put his coat on and stopped. He said, “I’m getting a divorce.”
“Jesus. Eddie. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. She met someone.”
I didn’t know what to say.
He said, “You know what my biggest fear in life has always been? The thing I’ve tried so hard to avoid?”
I waited for the answer, but I knew what it was.
Eddie said, “Being like him.”
“You’re not him,” I said. “You’re not even close.”
“Really? I’m leaving my wife, my kids hate me, and I’m angry.”
The old anger was gone, a spent shell. He seemed lost and wounded.
“Ever see Apollo 13?” he asked.
“The movie?”
“No. The Broadway musical. Yeah, the movie.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it.”
“Well, it’s like that,” he said.
“What’s like that?”
“Life.” He looked at me as if I should understand.
He said, “They’re coming back through space. At the end. Trying to get home. They have these coordinates and if they don’t get them just right, if they’re off by even a little bit, it’s magnified huge and they slip off the curvature of the earth and shoot out into space, lost.”
He