The World as We Know It (2 page)

Looking back, I find the media’s influence on the American lifestyle hilarious and absurd. Maria had the cat eating gourmet cat food at five dollars a can. That ball of fur never voiced any objection to the crunchy stuff, but the television had convinced my wife that her four-legged baby deserved better. Every time I used the Ultra Plush, lotion-treated toilet paper, I couldn’t help but think of myself as “soft ass.” She even bought pink rose-scented trash bags. That was where I drew the line. Trash is not supposed to smell like roses. It’s unnatural, and it didn’t make me like the trash any better. It just made me hate flowers.

Moving in with a member of the opposite sex is like moving in with a creature of another species. You have to learn their habits, make adjustments, adapt to their irritating little idiosyncrasies. Like with a dog.

I was trying to break this down to Gabe, who had not yet been graced with the magic of love, while he was over one Sunday watching a football game. I heard Maria scream from the kitchen, “Are you calling me a bitch?” I guess it was a poor analogy.

“Of course not, my love!” I replied.

“Don’t suck up to me!”

“You’re my favorite girl.”

“I’d better be your only girl,” she said. “There can be no contenders.”

Despite the inevitable differences that befall any married couple, I loved Maria the way Arcite loved Emily. The
way Romeo loved Juliet. The way Gatsby loved Daisy. I would have given anything for her, including my own life. By the time we were married, my business was well established, and it was looking like the next major milestone in our life would be children, though neither of us was in a hurry to get there. I’m quite glad there were no accidents, because I don’t know how we would have made it through what happened had we been responsible for the welfare of anyone other than ourselves, let alone a helpless, vulnerable child. I’m also glad to know that when we are ready, they will be brought into the world as it is now, and not as it was then. The transition was an arduous one.

It was some time in midautumn and some years after we got married when it started. The exact dates and sequence of events are of little importance now, but this is what I remember. It was a cool Monday morning. As she did every day, Maria packed my lunch, graced it with a little love note, and handed it to me, kissing me good-bye before I walked out the door. A heavy fog formed a quiet and eerie ambience as I pulled out of the three-car garage and headed to work. Nothing about my drive on that Monday was particularly unusual, other than the sort of sick feeling in my gut that I couldn’t explain. The typical banter of my favorite radio morning show was replaced only by the sounds of the road. The air was still. Something felt amiss.

After parking my shiny new wheels of German luxury in front of my office, I remember stepping out and glancing back at the car momentarily, justifying its expense to
myself. I have to project an image of success, I thought. This is how success is gauged. I turned and walked in the door, hanging my overcoat on the rack in the chic wood-trimmed lobby and simultaneously greeting my receptionist, whose face I had not yet noticed.

“Good morning, Debbi.”

I heard her gasp, startled, as if she hadn’t seen me come in.

“Morning, Joe,” she replied in an uncharacteristically nervous tone. I turned around and looked at her ghostly white face; she was staring at her desk in a trance. The phone was already ringing in my office down the hall.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“You haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“About what happened last night.”

“I was at a buddy’s farm all weekend. We got back late.”

“You don’t check your e-mail?”

“I didn’t have service. My cell is still off.”

“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since I got here half an hour ago.”

“OK, why don’t you answer it, Debbi?”

“I don’t know how to take these calls.”

“Why, who is it?”

“Everyone. You know the Chinese manufacturing bubble you’ve been talking about? I think it burst.”

“That bubble’s been seeping for a while,” I said as my stomach dropped. The bureaucratic powers above me had been pushing a new alternative energy fund that was
heavily weighted in China. Too heavily, in my opinion. I had expressed my concerns to Arthur, our regional vice president of business development, but they had been ignored. “Your job is sales and account management, not analysis,” he had said, talking over the desk fan that ran constantly because his high lactose diet, combined with an unstable digestive atmosphere, resulted in uncontrollable and foul flatulence. Nonetheless, I was “strongly encouraged” to include the fund in my clients’ portfolios whenever possible. It wasn’t that I was opposed to alternative energy, of course. I was as green as anyone, but the color was, to me, more representative of the money to be made in that emerging industry. What made me nervous were the questionable manufacturing methods that certain companies had a tendency to employ.

“You haven’t talked to anyone this morning? Turned on the TV?”

“No.”

“Joe, when the Chinese markets opened last night… it was bad. Really bad. Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong. And it’s only getting worse.”

I bolted to my office and turned on the television. I flipped through channels—CSPAN, CNN, CNBC, FOX—it was everywhere.

“CHINESE MARKETS STILL TANKING.”

“ASIAN AND EUROPEAN STOCK MARKETS FOLLOWING CHINA.”

“GLOBAL ECONOMY HEADED FOR ANOTHER RECESSION?”

More like depression, I thought. I had seen it coming ten miles away. We relied so heavily on the Chinese that I wondered how we would ever recover after a crash like the one I feared had just begun. The mutual dependence of massive economies like the United States and China had become dangerously great. The upside of such a system was that all parties had an equal interest in cooperation and healthy competition. The downside was that when the first domino toppled, the others followed. I looked at the Swiss-made automatic watch on my wrist. US markets had not yet opened, but when they did, they were sure to mirror what was happening on the other side of the world.

Of course, responsibility for the crash rested on all of our shoulders. China was just where it had begun, perhaps simply because their geographic location ensures that they are the first to greet each new day. Like a compression bomb or a bad romantic relationship, when pressure gets too great, it has to be released at some point, and the greater the pressure, the louder the bang. We’re left wondering where the damage will end. The distance from rock bottom is always measured based on some point in the past, because there’s no way to predict the consequences of crashing through what has been perceived as the lowest point in history.

The phone was still ringing. I picked up the receiver and held it to my ear, speechless.

“Joe?”

“Maria, thank God,” I sighed, snapping from my bewildered trance.

“Joe, what’s going on? I just turned on the television.”

“Just relax, the market’s like a roller coaster,” I said reassuringly, more for my own benefit. “It’s just adjusting.”

“But they’re saying…”

“Don’t pay attention to the headlines. You know how the media is. Good news doesn’t sell. The more they scare people, the bigger their ratings. It will be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. It’s always fine, right? Trust me. Now, I have to try to take some of these calls before Wall Street opens in half an hour. I’m going to spend all day reassuring a few hundred other people who are trusting me with the security of their retirement, so I really have to go. I’ll see you tonight, OK?”

“OK. I love you.”

“I love you.”

As expected, US markets followed everyone else. The rest of the week went pretty much the same way. I suffered a five-day barrage of frantic screaming from terrified clients as the lines on the charts continued to plummet. By the weekend, it seemed to be leveling out, but that did little to ease the fears of the public. Everyone whose livelihood was dependent on a job or an IRA was nervous, and that was the vast majority of us. Our spirits stayed high around the house, but everywhere we went, the mood was somber.

That Friday night, we went to dinner, as we usually did, to a local pub within walking distance of our house. When we stepped in the door, the place was unusually quiet.
Clientele was light. Even our normally peppy waitress was clearly anxiety stricken. Paul called later and suggested that, after the exhausting week it had been, we needed to get out of town again. I protested, insisting that I had to work through the weekend to see what I could do to mitigate the damage.

“There’s nothing you can do, Joe,” he said. “Just relax. Let it go.”

As hard as that was to hear, he was right.

The next morning, we loaded up Paul’s truck, and the four of us headed back out to his farm a few hours southwest of the city, where we had spent the previous weekend. We had visited three or four times over the last few months, and the more time I spent there, the more doubtful I became of the practicality of our “normal” life. He had a few hundred acres of fields and forest, and the colors on the trees were just beginning to change. When we got off the highway, a gravel road wound through the woods and led to a small two-room log cabin with a well in the front yard. The thick wooden walls showed their age. Behind the cabin ran a stream that cut through the woods and the adjacent farm fields, and hidden off to the side was an outhouse as old as the cabin itself.

It was a sunny day and slightly warm for that time of year, but there was a pleasant, cool breeze. With the windows down, I actually slept awhile in the back seat with my head resting on Maria’s shoulder. That was probably the longest uninterrupted sleep I’d had since Monday. The ride down had been relatively devoid of conversation, but
we all perked up pretty quickly once we arrived around noon. After unpacking, Paul and I headed to the water for some trout fishing, a hobby new to me but one that I was becoming increasingly fond of. Maria and Sarah stuck around the cabin, disinterested in what they deemed to be “guy stuff.”

I popped open a beer from the cooler we had brought with us, slipped it into the koozie hanging around my neck, and headed into the stream. As soon as I felt the cold water run across the toes of my waders, I forgot all about the turbulence of the previous week. I cast my fly into the water, basking silently in the beautiful serenity of the wilderness around me.

“I could live out here,” Paul said after a short while.

“That thought crosses my mind every time we visit.”

The birds chirping in the trees, the water rushing through the rocks, and the gentle breeze in the leaves all seemed to be teasing us. It was as if they were inquiring as to why we didn’t join them permanently as we so desired.

“Well, when the world goes to hell, this is where I’ll be,” he continued. “You’re welcome to join me.”

I laughed.

“You and Maria both. You know my great grandfather lived in that cabin? He built it himself.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. If he could do it, what’s stopping me?”

“Your wife, for one,” I said.

“Right, well, there isn’t a mall around here, but she’ll get used to it.”

“She will? You’re already planning?”

“You saw what happened this week. I don’t quite share your faith in the modern economy. I don’t understand how everything got so complicated. Look around you. Food, water, shelter. Family. Absolute freedom and self-sufficiency. This is what it’s all about. Every level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can be better satisfied out here. What else do we need?”

“A reason,” I answered. He looked at me, confused. “You know that’ll never happen, don’t you?” I continued. “We’re too accustomed to our luxuries. Central heat and air conditioning is nice. Indoor plumbing. Electricity. You’ll never leave the city without a very compelling reason.”

“We’ll see,” he said.

We both took a sip of our beers and let the conversation float away down the stream.

It was nearing dusk when we returned to the cabin with our catch. We built a fire in the old iron wood-burning stove, fileted the fish, and cooked up dinner while Maria and Sarah set out candles to keep us in light as the sun fell behind the Ozark hills. While Paul and I were fishing, they had been in the garden gathering herbs and vegetables that we sliced up and sautéed to complete the meal. A pitcher of clear well-drawn water graced the table, coupled with a fresh-born amber ale that Paul had been brewing for the previous weeks, all ingredients grown on site. No pesticides, no genetic modification, and no preservatives anywhere. Such
high-quality naturally grown produce could scarcely be found in stores.

After dinner, we reclined awhile, bantering into the night by candlelight. The events of the previous week never made their way back into our conversation. Honestly, I don’t think they even crossed our minds.

We all slept well that night. I awoke first on Sunday morning to the dawn breaking through the windows, and Maria and I were still tangled warmly together. Even in her sleep, she had a beautiful, carefree smile on her face. She was so sweet—so pure. That moment was the first time I remember truly understanding what an extraordinary gift she was to me; a gift for which I would never bear the capacity to give the thanks deserved. When she opened her eyes to meet my gaze, her smile only grew. She felt safe in my arms.

“Good morning,” she sighed with a sleepy, labored blink.

“You were smiling in your sleep.”

“Was I? Maybe I was having a nice dream.”

“About me?”

“Probably.”

The two of us headed out to the stream to bathe, where we were met by Paul and Sarah once they had risen. The cold water was exhilarating. Then we got the stove going again for a hearty bacon-and-eggs breakfast. At that time, Paul and Sarah’s “farm” was more of a loose interpretation of the word. Because nobody made their permanent residence there, livestock was out of the question, so meal
selection was relatively limited. If we wanted variety, some items had to be brought with us. As much as I enjoyed the detachment from modernity, I was glad to have brought the bacon. Had it been a choice between murdering a pig and going hungry, I would have chosen the latter. The prospect of slaughtering anything didn’t appeal to me. Perhaps years of that lotion-treated toilet paper had made their mark. At the same time, though, my dependence on that connection left me with a veiled sense of isolation and helplessness.