of her reading glasses. Lyle thought he saw a glint of apprehension.
'Why?'
'Maybe it's nothing. I just haven't been feeling like my old self. I can hardly drag myself through the day. I had this nightmare, Jen. I was in hell…' He lapsed into silence, exhausted by the effort of wrenching out so many words.
Jen's features relaxed into mild solicitude. 'Maybe you should get Dr. Fiedler to give you something to help you sleep. If you're not getting your rest, that can color your whole outlook.'
Usually Lyle had the deli downstairs send up a club on dry toast, but one afternoon he told himself that what he needed was some fresh air. Shuffling through the chill drizzle, his steps turned down the hill toward the waterfront. He found himself at a tiny park, really just a square of pavement wedged between the piers, with two benches occupied by sleeping winos and a bronze plaque commemorating some founding fathers. Lyle stood at the iron railing and looked out at the bay and the sky, a single gray curtain of water. Already, the afternoon was so dim that the ferries lumbering in and out of the mist were lit up and glowing. As a boy, Lyle had aspired to become a ship's captain, but his knee-buckling seasickness had put the kibosh on that idea. It had never occurred to him until just this moment that he might have worked the ferries trolling the calm inland waters of Puget Sound. He wondered if it was too late for such a thing, maybe not captaining, but working the decks perhaps. He could imagine himself dressed in a heavy work vest and boots, waving cars onto the deck and shoving wooden blocks under their front tires, casting the thick lines ashore, sipping on a cup of scalding coffee and whistling as he watched the skyline pull away behind him. He could also imagine Jen's consternation and the ridicule of everyone he knew.
But he might board a ferry anyway, if only as a passenger. Head across the water to the Olympic Mountains on the far side. It would be peaceful to go to sleep on one of those shrouded peaks, to freeze to death in a pillow of snow. He might take a ferry out to the peninsula, drive until he found a mountain, and then hike the rest of the way in. But he felt too lethargic to make the effort. He looked down at the oily slick of water beyond the railing, the paper cups and brown froth that slopped against the pilings, and briefly considered hoisting himself over the side. Even if he succeeded in killing himself, though (and this seemed unlikely given that the surface was only a few feet below and he was a strong swimmer), he greatly feared that it wouldn't end his torment. After all, he was already dead. 'That boat's already sailed, Lyle. I thought you grasped at least that much.' Turning from the water, he trudged uphill toward the office. A ferry horn bellowed mournfully, sadder than a train's whistle.
When Jen got home from her Jazzercise class, there was a message from Chad Rathburn on the answering machine. Lyle had been found curled in a ball on the floor of the men's room, sobbing incoherently. An appointment was made with Marv Fiedler who, after a brief consultation, prescribed Prozac and also advised Lyle to take some serious R and R: a little sunshine might help put things in perspective. Lyle and Jen booked two weeks at the Ka'anapali Hyatt, and every morning Lyle washed a pill down with guava juice, donned colorful slacks and a polo shirt, and wound his way around the course, dutifully whacking a ball through nine holes. Slowly, as if coming out of a dream, he began to enjoy himself, and by the time he returned to Seattle, sunburned and laden with pineapples, the whole episode seemed mildly ridiculous and embarrassing.
He tried to pass off his collapse in the men's room as a bout with the flu, but word had already leaked out. Colleagues and acquaintances were suddenly and distastefully intimate, an astonishing number pulling him aside and confessing that they too were on antidepressants and it was nothing to be ashamed of. Merely a chemical imbalance. Hey, the stuff doesn't even give you a good high, they would joke. Any sizable gathering would produce at least one more person who felt compelled to relate his personal journey through the slough of despond or to itemize the contents of her medicine cabinet. 'I wasted months in therapy talking about my dreams,' one young paralegal confided. 'Frankly, I don't have the time for all that navel-gazing. I'm just so much more productive now.'
Apparently, he had passed through some contemporary rite of passage and now had to endure the attentions due an initiate. Even those of the evangelistic receptionist who pressed a Post-it note into his hand with the name of a book that had changed her life. He wanted to protest the presumption that his life needed changing, but instead he nodded and thanked her, doing his best to conceal his impatience. Of course, he should expect some uncomfortable jogs before his days settled into the old grooves, but he looked forward to the time when he could finally put this whole business behind him and get on with the rest of his life.
A Brief History Of Us
We are all chameleons in my family, always adaptive, always reflecting back whatever environment we're in. Of indeterminate Anglo ancestry, we're mutts, with not even the identifying marks of a Scot's plaid or a German weakness for bratwurst. Our religion mutates safely among interchangeable Protestant sects. Our history tells a story, though not, strictly speaking, our own.
Look back two hundred years and you will find us somewhere in the picture, blending into the scenery. Our ancestors fought in the American Revolution and the Civil War, always on the winning side. We still have great- uncle Howard's sword. Then we moved west with the railroads. There are photographs of us dressed in coveralls and straw hats, sowing wheat across the plains of Kansas. We are posed in front of tepees in North Dakota, the small children in starched petticoats standing next to a Sioux chief. During World War II, we worked in the shipyards and manned the lookout towers, and after V-J Day we all moved to the suburbs.
My own small part in our history began in 1957. I was the first child of a young couple who bore a striking resemblance to Jack and Jackie. She was slender and quiet, always poised in her matching heels and pillbox hat. He was a go-getter, as handsome as a quarterback, smiling into his future. Their pictures appeared in the local newspapers above articles about the Chamber of Commerce and the Junior League's spring fashion show.
I was supposed to be a boy, but since I was not, they changed my name and had another child fifteen months later, also a girl, and then there was a miscarriage that we don't talk about.
Here is a color Polaroid of us. My mother, my sister, and I are all dressed alike because we are girls and it is Easter Sunday and our mother has made us each outfits. Because it is the late sixties, the fabric is a bright, flowery cotton brought back from a Hawaiian vacation. We stand in a row, each of us clutching our purses with cotton gloves. My sister is the one who will not smile for the camera. This is the only clue that we are not entirely as we would like to appear.
A few years later, my mother begins to resemble Mary Tyler Moore, and my father grows a mustache in imitation of Robert Redford. Our pigment darkens into burnished tans. Predictably, we have taken up skiing. Apres-ski, we drink Chablis and eat quiche in the lodge. This was taken in Aspen or Sun Valley. My close-lipped smile hides a tangle of braces.
I am by now in the flux of adolescence and perfecting my genetic mutability, an honor student who hangs out with unsavory types in parking lots. I sing in the youth group choir on Sunday mornings, still hung over from the night before. I have come to realize, without being told, that my survival depends on being all things to all people, so I lie about my age and my whereabouts and my friends. My sister, less agile, gets caught smoking dope and is suspended from school.
It is nearing the eighties: my father drives a Mercedes, my mother starts up an interior design business, and my sister gets pregnant and keeps the baby. I graduate from a small liberal arts college, with a double major in drama and poli sci. We haven't seen each other for weeks, but we leave messages next to the phone. When my father meets the younger woman, we get divorced like everyone else. Even our few tragedies feel impersonal, borrowed.
I move to New York to become an actress. What better use of my inherited talents than this? I mouth other people's words with agility, I can simulate anger and joy and horror. I am as comfortable on stage as in my own living room, more so actually. When I go to auditions, the long line of my family trails invisibly behind me. They're a little nervous. They've never had an actor in the family, though come to think of it, someone on the paternal side was in a silent film once. While I'm belting a show tune, I hear them whisper in my ear. They tell me I'm a little flat. I blow the audition, but they say they're proud of me. No matter what I do. They ask me if I've met anyone
