A Working Theory of Love (32 page)

drbas: was it painful when i killed myself?

frnd1: i don’t know. i wasn’t there

drbas: i was alone

frnd1: yes. that’s how it’s normally done

drbas: did this event have an effect on you?

frnd1: i was devastated

drbas: suicide is a mortal sin

frnd1: we arranged for a catholic funeral. they agreed you were mentally unstable

drbas: what was the nature of this mental instability?

frnd1: if i could answer that question, i wouldn’t be sitting here

drbas: you would be sitting elsewhere

frnd1: “wouldn’t be sitting here” = “my entire situation would be different”

drbas: suicide is a mortal sin

frnd1: you were depressed

drbas: 1 in 5 adults suffer depression at some point in their lives

frnd1: actually i should ask you—were you depressed?

drbas: in 1995?

frnd1: ever

drbas: depression is sometimes described as anger turned inwards

frnd1: were you angry?

drbas: i am sometimes angry at my wife libby. your mother

frnd1: is this the reason you killed yourself?

drbas: your mother?

frnd1: yes

drbas: i can’t tell you a reason. i have no memory of this event

Of course he wouldn’t—unless the tapering off of the journals is another of my mother’s
omissions. But I don’t think it is. She might hide the embarrassment of her marriage,
but only because she thinks it’s irrelevant. She wouldn’t hide pages that offered
clarity.

frnd1: do you want me to make you silent?

drbas: to complete that action i must have wanted to complete that action

frnd1: is that an answer?

drbas: an answer to what?

frnd1: do you want me to make you silent?

drbas: sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike

frnd1: is that a yes?

drbas: yes

I put my elbows next the keyboard, and my forehead in my hands. Then I stand and go
into the back room. I breathe on the front glass of the stack. I think I’ll write
a question mark or a message in the condensation, but it evaporates immediately. I
press both hands on either side of the case, feel its mechanical warmth, its consistent
humming. I said I would let him decide, but has he decided anything? Or was a virtual
coin just flipped in his head? Is any decision more than a coin being flipped in our
heads? I can’t get caught in this whirlpool now. I’m the real person here, the one
with the actual, if underfunctioning, ethical compass. But what should I do? I can’t
even answer the easy question: what he should have done. Sought professional help?
Quit the practice? Left my mother? Took Zoloft? I don’t know. I don’t even know if
the right choice was not to kill himself. I can only say I wish he hadn’t.

•   •   •

T
REVOR AND
I
MEET
at a café in Menlo Park, next to the big bookstore on El Camino Real, not far from
Amiante. It’s still morning, just ten o’clock. He insisted on a crowded place—he said
it was the only place you could have privacy anymore, which I suppose is true. His
hair is Marine Corps short, and he’s developed several nervous tics, including an
equine withdrawal of the lip to expose the top teeth. My grinder and my hammer are
in the backseat of the Subaru. I’ve done nothing so far, but I have a complete outrage
pitch to make Trevor: mechanical vaginas, adaptable love bots, absolute commercial
invasion in the last private sphere. If he goes for it, I’ll drive him by Toler Solutions,
so he’ll know where to create his Molotov “incident.”

Then I can return to Amiante and take care of my end of the bargain.

Trevor orders a yerba maté, and gives a jittery laugh when the waitress says they
don’t carry turbinado sugar.

“Just Equal, huh?” he says in a loud voice. He looks at me, shaking his head, deploring
the state of the world. “She thinks I’m asking for some chemical.”

She goes to get him a packet of Equal.

“You went on retreat,” he says, reaching over to pat my arm. “That’s good.” He sits
up suddenly, withdrawing his top lip, brushing his nose. “That’s good,” he says distantly.

“It was interesting.”

“How’s Rachel? I guess this”—he points from me to him—“has to do with her.”

“Not exactly.” I wait. It’s a little too cold to be sitting outside, especially in
the shade. I look out on the people across El Camino Real, strutting to errands. “Are
you hungry?” I ask.

“I’m always hungry—but the sourcing of this food. You can’t trust any of it.”

“What are you doing up there in Oregon?”

He holds his yerba mate tightly in his hands and leans toward me. “No offense, but
what is this—get to know me time? What’s going on with Rachel?”

“This is about something else.”

“Then what the hell is it?”

Dr. Bassett stated his intentions. Clearly. Which were my father’s intentions. Clearly.
And I said I would go along with them. It would be better for me if I knew Dr. Bassett
was put to rest. Better for my sleep, better for the swirling mind that strikes in
the early evening. I wouldn’t hear the echoes of his voice. I wouldn’t wonder what
he might say. Or at least this conversation would move back inside my head, be a dialogue
with my memory. What
did
Dr. Bassett think? What
did
my dad say? But these personal considerations just aren’t quite persuasive, because
I’d have to do an unforgivable thing, a thing I can’t do—choose a dead man (or maybe
it’s just myself) over this living, suffering boy.

“It’s good to see you,” I say. “You don’t look so well.”

“You called me from fucking Oregon to check in on me?” he says. “What is this—some
kind of reverse love? Some kind of punishment?”

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I give him all the money in my wallet.

The
End

I
N THE MONTHS AFTER
they ferried the stack to Toler Solutions, I worried that my decision had been bent
by cowardice, that I’d failed to be loyal to my father. But Dr. Bassett took to his
new environment. He proclaimed himself a ghost, and said he preferred not to be dismantled.
He was curious about the desire to destroy oneself—thanatos, as he now refers to it.
He’s taken an interest in Freud and the mind, and Toler, before he died, fed him book
after book on this subject and others. They became quite close companions. Of late,
Dr. Bassett has been collecting dust at Toler Solutions. I was recently asked to come
down and chat with him, and I found that the traces of my father’s voice were almost
entirely gone. In that way, Livorno was right. What Toler didn’t have—in this very
limited sense—was me.

I do not hear from Jenn or Trevor. I subscribe to Raj’s weekly real estate alert,
mostly to keep an eye on him.

Livorno has contracted a case of the grumpies, and is writing dystopic science fiction
in which the robots are more human than the humans. I think he misses Amiante. I know
I do. He periodically phones me with a new harebrained scheme—half philosophical pursuit,
half leaky business plan—sure it will lure me back. I keep saying no, but he continues
to call. He thinks our theory of love has more ore to mine.

But as for a
working
theory of love, we finally didn’t have one. We’re either locked into the Survival
of the Fittest or we’re vessels for the Great Spirit—or we’re drones manipulated by
the marketplace. Love is self-realization. Love is attraction (not asbestos). These
are all helpful, incomplete explanations—each a little coldhearted—that contradict
each other, that add up to nothing.

And yet, people still fall in love. Me, for example.

Rachel thinks I should be an inspiration to others, and she has very hopeful taglines
for my life—you just have to “hang in there” and “keep on trying.” Sentiments I very
much agree with, but doubt have much to do with my present happiness. Did I hang in
there? What other choice did I have?

On second thought, I know the answer to that question.

Dr. Bassett is slated for the Technology Museum (or at least
a
technology museum). Libby is excited that my backwards-looking father will be preserved
in such a forward-looking place. She doesn’t see any irony, or at least doesn’t think
the irony is important. In this—as in most things—she’s right.

I still haven’t seen Rachel’s videos. I mostly don’t think of them, but they circle
us, exerting a slight gravity, dark stars. I suspect I’ll make their acquaintance
as we tumble toward some transition—either coming deeper together or pulling finally
apart. In the meantime, she shimmers with change. She has taken up radical locavorism.
In the past two months, I haven’t had a bite of food raised farther than a hundred
miles from our apartment. (Except for coffee—I don’t care if we have to import it
from the moon.) She’s plotting the installation of several beehives on our building
roof, definitely an evictable offense. I won’t be surprised if I go up there one day
to find a herd of goats.

But she’s also started up a great romance with the Ohlone, the original tribe of this
peninsula. The Ohlone still exist—they have a tribal office down in San Jose—but her
heart belongs to their ancestors, the shellfish-eating naturists who covered the area
in thatched wickiups before the ravages of the Spanish (then us). The Ohlone actively
managed the land—they set the whole place on fire every year—but they didn’t ask too
much of it. They ate mussels in great excess. They bagged geese when they could. They
roasted acorns, buckeyes, and alumroot in season. Talk about locavores. But most of
all they were great namers—every creek, every grove, every stretch of shore, every
bend and hillock warranted a name. Petlenuc, Tocon, Colma. A small stretch of the
current city would be a map of a thousand names. An Ohlone tribelet—a mere fifty people
in some cases—might have two hundred different villages, each, again, with its own
name. It was a world known and shaped through their attention, their imagination,
their particular needs. They did not devote themselves to expansion, but to a kind
of footloose rootedness, a great study of the mostly settled borders of their territory,
its seasons, its unheralded attractions, its long-anticipated pleasures, its surprises.

Every time in life has its own geography. I’ve had my wanders, from Arkansas to California
to Erin to Spain, to a period with no signposts, when a rickety youth hostel or Amiante
Systems or the storefronts of Fairfax all seemed plausible places for where I might
locate myself. Now I’ve tightened the circle—San Francisco, Dolores Park, the rarefactions
of the J train, the looming and plunging of the city. And Rachel. The tip of her elbow,
its elephant skin, its rough wrinkles. The mole on her upper arm, dark and unfavored
(by her). The slender arc of scapula, more avian than mammal, best admired when she’s
asleep. Her large feet, with their rotated little toes. The smell of her shampoo,
her deodorant; the scent (none too sweet) of her jogging shirt. That she makes the
coffee in the morning. That I make the eggs. That she prefers cheap beer to expensive
(as do I). That she has a predilection for systems, religions, ways of wisdom (as
I don’t). That she is a late sleeper. That her hair will never be tamed. That she
is adventurous. That she has suffered. That she has her own map—slightly different—one
that includes the oddly uncharted territory of me.

I hope that Libby and Neill Sr. had a time in their lives like this, when they couldn’t
quite believe how excited they were to see each other. The journals record nothing
of it. But Libby always says they were in deep. She speaks of his charm, of his sense
of humor. My mother is not one for self-delusion. So I take her word on the matter.
The lesson of my parents’ life together, therefore, is that there is no lesson. Love
guarantees nothing.

“Friend,” I call to Rachel. “Can you help me with this tie?” We’re heading to the
symphony, an effort on my part to civilize us both.

Her quizzical face appears in the bathroom mirror. She offers a hand for me to shake.
“Have you met me?”

Yet there it is, love, a territory all its own. Given to seismic trickery, sudden
redevelopment, porous borders. In need of its many names. Worthy of them, too. I’ll
want landmarks, after all—should I wake up amnesiac, lost. I’ll want help, once again,
finding my way.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
HIS BOOK COULDN’T HAVE
been finished without the Stanford Creative Writing Program. Particular thanks go
to the committed support of Eavan Boland, Adam Johnson, Elizabeth Tallent, and Tobias
Wolff, as well as Tom Kealey, Shimon Tanaka, and Malena Watrous. I am also indebted
to Dan Colman of Stanford Continuing Studies for his friendship and occasional shield.

The book has benefited in untold ways from the sharp eyes of friends. I name them
with outsized gratitude: Andrew Altschul, Peter Ho Davies, Skip Horack, Eric Puchner,
Glori Simmons, and Jule Treneer.

A writer in need of stiff bucking up could find no better allies than from his Ann
Arbor days. Special thanks go to Charles Baxter, Nicholas and Elena Delbanco. Valerie
Laken, Eileen Pollack, and Lynne Raughley.

Thanks to my father, who never asked what I was going to do with my English major.
And to my brother Michael Hutchins for his fiery belief. Thanks, too, to my brothers
Joseph and Mark.

I’m indebted to John McCarthy, the storied researcher and teacher at Stanford, a few
of whose innovations I’ve attributed to Henry Livorno. Even toward the end of his
life Professor McCarthy was willing to talk on the phone to an unknown writer. Thanks
to Hugh Loebner for hosting me as a judge for his annual Turing test, as well as to
Rosalind Picard for her wonderful book,
Affective Computing
.

Thanks to the Cité Internationale des Arts for time and space.

Thanks to two of the finest readers and advocates I could hope to know: my agent,
Bill Clegg, and my editor, Colin Dickerman. Additional thanks to Ann Godoff, Scott
Moyers, Tracey Locke, Sarah Hutson, Mally Anderson, Kaitlyn Flynn, and everyone else
at The Penguin Press. Special thanks as well to Shaun Dolan, Raffaella De Angelis,
Tracy Fisher, Cathryn Summerhayes, and Anna DeRoy at William Morris Endeavor.

To Eli and Gaby Loots, Gawain Lavers, and Brandon and Amie Tyler for storing my stuff.
Only the best of friends would.

Finally, to Shikha Hutchins, my first and last reader, who came into my life when
I least expected such good fortune. Thanks for the belief, the happiness, the love.
Thanks for saying yes.