40. The Big Scary Unknown

“People don’t want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.” —Chuck Palahniuk

Like an exclamation point punctuating her confusion, the letter from Paula’s mother was in the mailbox when Jen arrived home from dropping Becky and Marie at the airport. She ripped open the envelope as she walked into the house.

“Thanks for taking such good care of the lake house,” the letter read, the scrawled handwriting filling a page of notepad paper that had the words “Deacon-Sanders Educational Publishing Company,” printed across the top. “We’ll be returning for the summer at the beginning of May.”

May, Jen thought. That’s less than three months. It didn’t seem like enough time to make a decision. She read the letter again, silently, leaning against the inside of the front door, her purse at her feet where she had dropped it, her hands growing cold even in her winter gloves.

How do they know I took good care of the house, anyway, she asked herself, surveying the living room in front of her, which was as messy as it had been before she cleaned up for Becky’s visit.

She tidied up the clutter as she walked through the house, carrying a dirty coffee cup, its rim stained with Becky’s tawny lipstick, from the living room to the kitchen, making a little pile of the assorted baby items—a sticky bib, a pacifier—that hadn’t made it back into Becky’s suitcase.

She was going to miss them horribly, she realized, as she placed Marie’s possessions into a kitchen drawer. And more, she felt guilty that she would not be around to help Becky with Olivia, after Becky had helped her with every part of her life, putting Jen’s career and finances and publicity and personal issues before her own for so many years. It was time to return the favor, Jen decided. Wherever she was going to live, it was going to be with Becky.

Becky had sounded serious about wanting to move to Michigan. It sounded like the perfect solution, one requiring almost no decisive action on Jen’s part. But Jen didn’t know if she could stomach the responsibility of having her friend move across the country, to a place where she had no friends or family besides Jen, just to be closer to her. Sure, Becky had liked North Middleton, but she was romanticizing it as a nowhere-place, a clean slate upon which to sketch out a new life, just as Jen herself once had. Would Becky still want to live here once it was no longer a blank, when it was filled in with all the meanings and problems and annoyances of any other town? And what would they do for work— get jobs at the college, or a grocery store? Live off of Jen’s savings forever? With Becky’s cleverness at investing, it just might work, but never working again seemed too decadent for Jen to seriously consider.

And then there was the other solution: Jen could move back to Los Angeles. In a sense, that would be even easier than having Becky move to Michigan. Jen already had a house and a bunch of friends and a career waiting for her in LA. And what did she have in North Middleton? A taekwondo school where she worked out a little, trained a woman she didn’t trust, and learned to play chess. Leaving should be easy.

And it might be; she wasn’t sure yet. Nor was she sure if she would be able to handle the heady rush of Los Angeles after such a long spell of sobriety. She did not think the words “Bradley’s baby”—but an image flashed briefly in her head. That’s what I need to find out today, she thought, picking up her purse and heading right back out the door that she had just entered through fifteen minutes ago.

She hadn’t been back in the drug store since that day long ago when she bought her pregnancy test and stack of celebrity magazines. Her new market had everything she needed—food, medicine, ice packs and ace bandages—plus they didn’t carry magazines at all. It was perfect, usually. But today she went to the drugstore instead, and when she saw the wall of magazines out of the corner of her eye, she headed straight towards them.

She had envisioned herself flipping around to find what she was looking for, but there was no need; it was right there on at least half of the displayed covers. “Bradley trades parties for Pampers,” said one, below a picture of Jen’s ex-husband, a scrubby beard unevenly covering his cheeks, a cherubic blond baby in his arms, smiling up at him. Another showed Bradley looking goofy and cross-eyes, his girlfriend scowling at him as she held the baby out of his reach: “Will parenthood drive them apart?” the caption asked.

There was even one with a tiny picture of Jen under a gigantic one of Bradley and his family: “Jen’s friends say she is crushed: ‘I wanted to have his baby!” cries reclusive star.”

Jen was startled, not by these words but by the photograph that accompanied them. Of course she looked distressed in it, her brow rumpled into a prize-winning grimace that must have funded some photographer’s mortgage payments for a year. But it was an old photo, one from before her divorce, her hair still long and stylishly cut, her cheeks soft and rosy from well-placed makeup.

She knew the face well, and was already quite aware that she was barely recognizable now as that same person. No one turned to stare at her on the streets of North Middleton anymore. She knew that many of the residents were simply accustomed to sharing their town with a former celebrity. But increasingly, she felt convinced that the people she passed did not recognize her at all. When she caught glimpses of reflection during the day, her puffy jacket and practical haircut made her look more like a graduate student than an actress.

But what really surprised her about her image was how old she looked in a photograph that must have been taken at least three years ago. She carried the magazine to the little mirror by the sunglasses stand; and yes, there it was. She had gotten younger. The face of the woman in the photograph was gaunt, skeletal, the skin stretched tensely across the bones like leather tanning in the sun. In the mirror, her current face was dewy with health, her skin seeming to emit light like a maiden in a Renaissance painting. The wrinkles around her eyes had faded into smoothness and her cheeks were full and soft like a teenager’s.

She had planned to buy a few of the magazines, but she didn’t need to. She had come here to find out if she could return to L.A., and she was still not sure, but not for the reason she had anticipated. Bradley, his girlfriend, the baby—Jen would be fine with them. But the rest of it, she was not so sure about.

That evening, mechanically holding pads up for Olivia to kick, Jen felt like she was already gone. She watched the men in the beginner’s class throwing clumsy roundhouse kicks in the air, and realized she didn’t recognize any of them. I used to know the face of everyone at the academy, she thought. Back when Shane was still here. Now an entire generation of new students had arrived, and she hadn’t even noticed.

“You’re doing a good job training Olivia,” said Master Park that night after their second game of chess, as she lifted her bag to go home.

“Thanks,” said Jen, trying to accept the compliment blankly, but she couldn’t: she could feel her eyebrows rise just about a quarter of an inch in surprise. She could not remember Master Park ever having complimented her on anything before, other than her mild humiliation of Nicolai Snail. Certainly he had never said anything positive concerning taekwondo—or anything negative either, she realized. While he could talk endlessly about chess, he had probably said no more than fifty total words to her, in the entire time she had trained at his school, about the sport he purported to be teaching her.

“She’ll be ready to start sparring soon,” said Master Park. “Once she gets a little better, she’ll be a good training partner for you.”

“Great,” said Jen. She stood in the doorway of the back living room, her backpack slung over her shoulder, waiting in case he planned to say more. He was not speaking, but his open gaze suggested that he had left some thought unfinished.

Just as she began to shift her weight to turn around and leave, he spoke again. “I think you’re ready to be an assistant teacher,” he said. “If you want to.”

Jen sucked in a breath between her teeth.

“Don’t give me an answer yet,” he said, raising a hand as though to block her words from reaching him. “I want you to think about it.”

Think about it, Jen repeated to herself as she nodded in silence and left the room. Too many things to think about already, thoughts overflowing like a stack of books or groceries, and just one more would make her drop them all.

The lake house seemed abandoned when Jen got home. Even with the light on, her bedroom looked dark and bleak. She had forgotten how dark it was outside the windows, how dark the entire house was, standing in the shadows of the forest, a mile from the nearest residence or street light.

She decided to sleep in Paula’s old room instead, the one Becky and Marie had been occupying. The sheets in the bed had a lingering baby smell, and Jen imagined that Marie was snuggling next to her as she tried to fall asleep. It was less lonely in this room, but something was wrong with the bed. Jen lay on her left side, moved her arm in front of her and then in back, switched to her right side, turned onto her back. It felt like there was lump, something poking up through the mattress just under her left shoulder blade. The mattress is just uneven, she told herself, trying to ignore the hard spot.

Once twenty minutes had passed on the digital clock, she decided to investigate. She stood up in the dark, lifted the mattress with one hand, and slid the other one over the wooden bed frame. She couldn’t feel anything except the smooth, solid wood. See, nothing there, she said to herself. But just to be sure, she knelt and reached her hand in further, all the way to her shoulder, and hit something hard and flat. When she pulled it out, she could feel the soft, worn pages of a notebook.

She turned on the light and sat down on the bed. It was a red notebook, the kind a student would use in school. She opened it, half expecting to see math equations and English notes, but of course there would be no reason to hide something like that. Instead, she saw pages and pages of short, scribbled paragraphs, each one prefaced with the day and month when it had been written, though not the year.

I shouldn’t read it, Jen thought, closing the notebook and lying back down on the bed which was now uniformly hard and unyielding instead of unevenly so. She held the book against her chest, the light still on, staring at the dark blankness of the window. Then she propped the bed’s two pillows against each other to raise her head up, opened the journal to a page near the beginning, and began to read.

January 8
I’m sick of everybody at my school. I’m sick of everybody in Toledo. Everyone is talking about college all the time. They think it’s going to be so much better at Ohio State. Maybe it will be, for them. Everything will be the same. Everything will be normal. I hate normal! I hate how they don’t know anything about art or music or culture. I hate all their normal plans, how they want to major in business or become a dentist. Please don’t let me get stuck here!

March 22
I am so excited to move to California! Mom didn’t want to let me go without being enrolled in school, but the schools there are too expensive unless you have state residency, so I’m going to work for a year until I get it. By then maybe I’ll have a good job and be doing some cool stuff and I won’t have to go to college at all.

I feel like I can’t wait one more day. Everything is open and creative there, and you can do anything you want. You could be an artist, or be in a band, or be a dancer, or be in a movie. No one expects you to get a boring job or get married and have a boring family. Everyone is cool and no one cares if you’re weird. It will be the perfect place, heaven on earth.

June 4
Been in L.A. three days now. It’s amazing! I’m sharing this apartment in Silverlake, and everyone is so cool and creative. I got a job in a restaurant already, but I think I want to be a singer. I’m going to start going to shows and listening to music, and try to meet some people.

August 16
My band played our first show last night! Well, they’ve played before a lot with their old singer, but this is their first show after she quit and I joined. I think I am falling in love with the guitar player, Tad. We’ve been talking a lot and hanging out after practice, which is really late at night, but nothing has happened between us yet. He writes all the songs and is kind of the manager of the band. He is totally devoted to living an artistic life. He doesn’t even have a day job. He just does small parts in movies and artsy films and he can pay his bills from that. He doesn’t even have to work most days, because one acting job pays enough for him to live on for almost a month. He’s going to help me get started doing that, too, because I am so tired of waitressing, especially since I’ve been working six days a week and then going to band rehearsal every night. He said I’d just need to lose some weight—like maybe fifteen pounds—and then I could totally get enough roles to live on.

November 3
I’m so tired. So so tired. Still waitressing in the day, now five days a week, and on the other ones I go to auditions, and band practice every night or else shows. I got one little part on a commercial where I didn’t say anything but just stood in the background looking excited about this cheese spread. But Tad was right that all the girls are skinnier than me. We’ve been sleeping together, and he’s not exactly my boyfriend, but we spend a lot of time together and he’s been giving me some good advice, like to dye my hair blonde, even though neither of us like blonde hair, but because it’s good for getting roles. I’ve already lost ten pounds, but I’m not quite thin enough. It’s a little hard to lose weight when you work in a restaurant, but what I do is eat my one free meal, which is usually something pretty heavy like pasta, and then don’t eat anything else all day. Luckily no one in the band ever seems to eat anything, so I’m not tempted during practice. Sometimes we do some coke or speed which makes me not want to eat anything even the next day, but I don’t want to get into a habit of that, plus it’s expensive.

January 14
I think we’re going to get signed by this big record label! Tad has been talking with the representative guy, and he came to three of our practices so far. They were talking about making videos, and Tad told the guy that I am going to lose ten more pounds, which made me kind of mad, but the record guy nodded his head like it was a good idea. By Ohio standards, I’d be pretty thin already, but here they want you to have no body fat at all because it looks better in photos or videos. I don’t agree with it and Tad says he doesn’t either, but that it’s just part of working, and the work is what is most important to us.

May 12
In some big hospital. I guess I took too many pills. Something happened during a show, I was on stage and my brain didn’t feel like it was working right and I couldn’t remember the words to the song and then right after the show ended I passed out. I called Tad but he won’t come and see me. He’s really mad that I ruined the show. It’s at least partly his fault because he’s the one who gave me the pills. They were working really well, as long as I kept them balanced. My appetite was really down and I had a lot of energy for work and practice, but if I took too many I would get really anxious and my heart would beat really fast and I’d think I was having a heart attack. Now my head just hurts a lot and I feel so tired, more tired than that time I did two straight weeks of waitressing with no day off and band practice every night. It feels like it takes all my energy just to move my arm. I don’t know how I would ever stand up—right now they have a thing for me to pee into on the bed. I am all along here and everything is horrible, the most horrible place I have ever been.

May 28
Mom came to get me and now I’m with them at the lake house in Michigan. It’s even worse than Toledo here. Worse than the hospital in Los Angeles. This is Hell, and the worst part is that it’s my own fault that I’m here, and I have nobody to blame but myself.

Jen looked up. She hadn’t meant to read this much, just to glance at a few pages. The parts about Los Angeles had drawn her in, though. She remembered the feelings the journal was describing as though she had written it—the excitement of being young in L.A., the endless possibility, the fun of not knowing anybody and starting life anew, friends falling into your life effortlessly, as only happens when you’re twenty.

She remembered these later events in the journal, too. The dieting, the auditions, the fifty girls waiting in the hall, at least fifteen who were prettier than you. The men who claimed to lament the “unrealistic beauty standard,” even as they reminded you that it was a necessary evil. The men who didn’t even bother.

She knew she shouldn’t be reading it, but she couldn’t stop here, in this horrifying spot. She had to keep going until it got better. She hoped it would be soon, or she would have to skip ahead, because she didn’t think she could stand many more entries like the last few.

June 10
I hate Michigan so much. There is absolutely nothing to do here. I’ve been feeling a little better, and I want to go out, but there is no place to listen to music here except this one coffee shop where hippies sing folksongs and all the other hippies get stoned and sing along or dance around like elves. I went a couple of times anyway, but they kept making fun of my bleached hair, which I’m trying to grow out but that makes it worse because you can see the roots so it really looks fake. There are a couple little bars I can get into with my fake ID. One is all old rednecks and the other one is preppy college students.

I hate them all.

July 11
I am going back to LA next week. Mom thinks it’s too soon, but I can’t stand it here any longer. She’ll be going back to Toledo in September, but I don’t think I can wait that long, plus I don’t really want to be there, either. I want to be someplace where I can find out who I am supposed to be, where there are lots of options, where nobody knows me and I can discover whatever my destiny is. I’m nervous. But I don’t know what else to do.

August 4
LA is not so scary as I thought. I met up with some girls from this other band we used to play with. I wanted to see if they’d let me join their band, but they said I had to learn to play an instrument first. It’s their rule: all women, and everyone has to play at least one instrument, but all of them play two or three, and they all take turns singing. They said that women are usually just the singers in a band because men want them to stand in front and look sexy but not actually write any of the music. I think I’m going to learn to play guitar, because their guitar player might be moving away to college.

September 16
I started doing yoga. I didn’t think I’d like it because I thought it was for hippies, but actually I like it a lot. The people in the class are normal and weird and nice, and a few of them are hippies and even they’re nice. Yoga makes me feel really good and strong after I do it, like I can take care of myself and do anything I want.

November 21
I started working at the yoga studio. They needed someone at the front desk, so I’m doing that. I get to go to all their classes for free, plus they pay me a little so I only have to work at the restaurant a few days a week. They have training courses to become a yoga teacher, and I totally want to do it. They said you have to have studied yoga for at least a year, but they said maybe they could make an exception and let me start after six months since I’m taking so many classes, plus I read all the yoga books at work when there’s not a lot to do.

I am still working on learning guitar, and I’m getting a lot better, but I don’t think I’ll be good enough to be in a band for a while. But I am trying to write some songs. I wrote a few I like already. I played them for the girls in the band, and they liked them a lot. They said if I write a few more and practice them really well, I could open up for them sometime, which would be so exciting.

April 8
Everything is going great in L.A., so much better than the first time I moved here. I feel really creative with all the songs I’m learning, and my guitar playing is getting pretty good. I love all the yoga I’m doing, and I think I have found what I want to do as my job. I don’t know why I ever thought I wanted to be an actress.

There’s a girl I like a lot in my yoga teacher training, and she wants to be an actress. I asked her how she can stand going to auditions with all those starving, pretty girls there. She told me that she doesn’t audition for those types of roles. Which is funny, because she could—she’s skinny and naturally blond, except dark blond, and she has freckles, but you can cover those up with makeup, and it would be easy to get her hair highlighted. But she told me that she only applies for roles with descriptions like “smart girl” or “athletic girl” or “quirky girl.” That way, she doesn’t have to be any particular way, or just like everybody else.

She told me, “The most important thing is to always be honest about who you are. Never pretend to be something you’re not. Then you never have to apologize to anyone for not really being what you were pretending to be, because they knew all along, and they had the choice to take you or leave you.”

In North Middleton and Toledo, there were only a few different things you could be: a student, a redneck, a hippy, a suburban middle-American type. In Los Angeles, you can be anything you can imagine. It’s nice, but it’s dangerous, because you can get caught up in pretending to be something, and the act becomes more important than anything else. I guess the trick is to do what that girl said, and always be who you really are, no matter what. The only problem is figuring out who that is, exactly, which part is the act and which part is really you.

Still, I’d pick freedom of choice, even if some of the choices are dangerous, over safe but limited choices any day.

Jen closed the journal. “See,” she said aloud to herself. “Everything turned out okay.” She hugged the book to her chest and rolled onto her side, feeling less lonely with it in the bed next to her. “Everything will turn out okay,” she said.

When she woke up the next morning with the light still on and lines on her face from sleeping with her head on the red notebook, she did not put on her exercise close, make her toast and tea, or begin her morning exercises. Instead she drove straight to the taekwondo academy, where she knew Master Park would be finishing up the seven o’clock before-work class.

She walked in just in time to pass the last few motivated office employees as they hustled out of the school so they could shower and dress for work.

Master Park was sitting behind the front desk, staring down at a student waver-of-liability form.

“Hello,” he said, not looking up at her.

“Hi,” she said. And then, not wanting to lose her nerve, she said, “I’m moving back to Los Angeles.”

Master Park raised his head to meet her gaze. His face was as blank and unmoved as ever, just has Jen had expected. But through his oddly stylish glasses, she could see lines near the corners of his eyes deepen just a little. She had never really thought of him as old, but at this moment, he looked as elderly as her grandfather had in the months between her grandmother’s death and his own.

“I knew you’d say that,” he said.

Chapter 41

39. Some Forgotten Corner

“We live on an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” —Carl Sagan

“Do you see somebody?”

“Where?” Becky asked. They were standing in the backyard, shivering in their winter coats. Although the temperature had risen considerably since last week, Jen had warned Becky that it would still be too cold to stand around outside.

“I want to see the lake,” Becky said. “I’ll feel stupid if I spend two weeks at a lake house and don’t even visit the lake once.”

Jen pointed out that Becky had already seen the lake during the summer, and on this trip through the window, but Becky wanted to walk right up to it. They were standing at its edge now, right where the frozen ground turned sludgy with melted ice.

“He’s way on the other side,” Jen said, pointing. “On the balcony of the green house.”

The melting ice of the lake had cast a gray haze over everything, and Jen wasn’t sure if the distant figure was there. She thought she might be able to see his face, so stoic and unmoving, as though he were deep in meditation—or was that just a leaf? It seemed implausible that he would be outside on days as cold as this, sitting stoically on his balcony, staring out over the icy water. He might be a statue, she thought, and not a person at all. After all, though she could barely see him, he always seemed so still, his gaze so steady. But her intuition told her that this was not the case, that the figure was not only alive, but watching her specifically, not in a scary way, but with a kind of benevolent interest in her daily activities.

“I don’t see anyone,” Becky said.

“Look,” Jen said, tracing the figure’s outline with her finger. “See, his head is there, under that tree branch.” She could see him now, coming into focus, the straight back, the serene face staring right back at her from across the water.

“Maybe,” said Becky. “Yeah, I think that might be somebody.”

“Don’t lie to me,” said Jen. “It’s okay if you can’t see him.” She turned to face her friend and realized she was shivering again, her arms wrapped tightly around her body, her jaw clenched to keep her teeth from chattering.

“Do you want to go back inside?” Jen asked. The cold wasn’t bothering her at all. I must have toughened up over the winter, she thought, remembering how the wind had felt like it was blowing straight through her skin when the temperatures had first started falling in October.

“No, I really want to see him,” Becky said, though Jen could hear her teeth knocking together now as she spoke. “Where did you say he is?”

“There,” said Jen, pointing again. “But maybe he’s not there today.” Suddenly, she remembered Marie, who was sleeping in her carrier just inside, in the kitchen. Becky had said it would be okay to leave her for a few minutes, but it had been at least ten by now.

“The baby,” said Jen.

“Oh, right,” said Becky, her tone suggesting that she knew she had forgotten something important. She stared for a moment longer before turning back towards the house. As she reached the back door, she turned to look one last time at the lake. “I really want to see him,” she said again. “The man across the lake. Is he good luck or something?”

“I don’t know,” said Jen, pulling the door open for Becky so she would not have to unclench her arms from her waist. She tried to explain what she thought about the man, what he meant to her, but she couldn’t come up with words to describe her fascination. “I don’t know what he is,” she said.

Inside, Jen heated up water for tea while Becky nursed Marie. It had only been two weeks, and already they had established a comfortable little routine together, like a family. On the days that Becky didn’t follow her to taekwondo, Jen loved coming home to the sounds of Becky cooking in the kitchen. “Hold Marie,” she would say, and Jen would sit on a blanket on the floor near the heating vent, Marie cuddled against her chest like a puppy, watching Becky chop vegetables and pour steaming pasta into a strainer. This house will be strange without a family, Jen thought.

Before dawn tomorrow, Jen would drive them to the airport. By the time the sun rose in the rear view mirror of Jen’s car, Becky and Marie would be on an airplane and Jen would be returning to North Middleton alone.

Becky hadn’t mentioned her offer to move to Michigan explicitly during the rest of her trip, but she had begun to treat Cone and North Middleton as her new home. She had been taking an ongoing verbal inventory of items Jen would need if she moved out of the lake house: “And you don’t have any blankets or sheets,” she would say, or, “You’ll need some dishes.” When they ran out to Jen’s regular small market for groceries, Jen noticed her sizing up the produce section, checking to see if the slim winter offerings, kale and hothouse tomatoes and imported cantaloupe, were organic. “Let’s look at the vitamin section,” she had said, even though she was not buying any vitamins. Yesterday had been Becky’s last day at the taekwondo school—Jen was skipping training today so they could spend the entire day together—and when she left, she had hugged both Rob and Olivia warmly: “I’ll see you soon,” she had said.

“I don’t want to go back,” Becky said, blowing absent-mindedly on her steaming cup of tea. She was staring out the window at the lake, as though still hoping to see the figure on the other side, though Jen was pretty sure that it would be impossible from this distance.

“You used to love LA,” Jen said. “Remember when you first moved out there? That was the happiest I had ever seen you. You’d come home every day saying, ‘Everyone here does yoga!’ or ‘Everyone here is a movie star!’”

“Young love,” said Becky. “I’m tired of it now. I just want to be a grown-up. I want to live in a grown-up place.”

She took a short, cautious sip of her tea, wrapping her both hands tightly around the hot surface of the cup for warmth.

“You’ll think about it, won’t you?” she said. “That’s all you have to do right now, think about it.”

Jen nodded. But truthfully, thinking about it was exactly what Jen didn’t want to do. She wished she could fast-forward through all the thinking and just find out what happens, like reading the last page of a novel first. Though she couldn’t imagine leaving here, she also couldn’t imagine the moment when she would make a decision to stay. The only other place she had ever decided to move to was Los Angeles, and that was to work in television and then movies, and if she wanted to keep working, she couldn't leave. But now, she could live anywhere she wanted. Anywhere. How does it happen, Jen wondered, that someone chooses a place to live, a place no different than any other place, and decides that this particular anyplace is home?

“I’ll figure something out soon,” said Jen.

She waited for Becky to respond, but Marie had started her hunger-dance, stretching her arms and legs as far from her body as she could, her fists clenched, toes curled into her tiny feet, and her face looking like she was crying, though she hadn’t made a noise yet.

“Time to eat,” Becky said, picking Marie up to nurse her. Jen didn’t even notice anymore. Several times, Jen had thought that people in the store or the coffee shop had been gawking at her, before remembering that they were simply surprised to see Becky feeding her baby in public.

“Speaking of LA,” Becky said, once Marie was comfortably situated, “I thought I should tell you. I saw Bradley.”

“Oh,” said Jen. “Bradley. I forgot about him.” It was the truth, she realized. She didn’t watch TV, had no access to the internet, and it had been months since she had seen the cover of a tabloid. She felt reluctant to allow him back into her consciousness now, but it seemed rude not to ask about him.

“How is he?” she asked.

“He seems good,” said Becky. Good, thought Jen. I’m glad he seems good. She wondered if she had completed her socially-mandated duty to ask polite questions. But Becky was still looking at her expectantly, waiting for more. I could just change the subject, Jen thought. But she didn’t want to be rude or make Becky feel bad for mentioning her ex-husband. One more question, she thought, and that will be enough.

“Where did you see him?” she asked.

“At a yoga class for parents with babies.”

Jen couldn’t help it; she sucked in breath through her teeth.

“Oh,” Becky said, slapping her hand across her mouth, then dropping it to her chin. “Crap.”

“It’s okay,” said Jen.

“You didn’t know?” Becky asked.

“No, but that’s all right,” Jen said. She realized that she felt worse about making Becky feel bad than about Bradley having a child with his new girlfriend.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to spring it on you,” Becky said. “I feel horrible.” Jen watched as she tried to reach out, maybe to touch Jen’s arm, but couldn’t figure out how to balance Marie with one hand while keeping her in position to nurse.

“It’s okay,” said Jen. “I had heard a rumor.”

“So you really didn’t know they had a baby?” Becky asked, now sounding impressed instead of guilty. “That’s incredible.”

“It’s been everywhere?” Jen asked.

“Everywhere,” said Becky. “It’s like you can’t get away from it.”

Jen thought back to what it was like living in Los Angeles, surrounded by tabloids and televisions and billboards and gossip. She remembered, even before her own name was well-known, how she would know everything about all the big movie stars, every relationship, every break-up, every triumphant and tragic and embarrassing event. She would call them by first name, just like the tabloids did—Jen’s heartbreak, Jen’s new fling—as though they were her closest friends instead of people she had never met. Yes, if Bradley had a baby, everyone would know, she realized. If Bradley’s girlfriend had a baby, she corrected herself.

“So they’re still together?” Jen asked, now asking questions out of true curiosity rather than politeness.

“Yeah, so far,” said Becky. “At least the magazines haven’t said anything about them breaking up. We only talked for a few minutes, but he didn’t say much about her, so maybe that’s good.”

Jen knew what Becky meant, but in fact, she didn’t agree that it was good. In fact, she realized, she didn’t care whether or not Bradley was happy. She couldn’t quite say that she wanted him to be happy, because really, she didn’t want anything for him; she had no feeling about him at all. She tried making herself be happy for him, but it was like trying to be happy for King Arthur or Napoleon. She couldn’t get any real sense of who Bradley was, or what his life was about.

She knew that it used to be her life, too—the film sets, the photographers, the nice clothes and fancy restaurants and exclusive clubs—but looking back, it seemed to belong to some other person. She couldn’t imagine a life like that now, being followed everywhere, everyone knowing every detail of your personal life. If that can make him happy, she thought, then I’m glad. But the main happiness she felt was for herself, that she had escaped it, that she was not ever going to allow her life to become someone else’s entertainment again.

“That reminds me,” said Jen. “I have news for you. I can’t believe I haven’t told you this already.” She had been meaning to surprise Becky with her gossip early in the trip, but each day she kept remembering only after Becky had gone to bed. I can’t believe she almost left without me telling her, Jen thought.

“Guess who I almost saw?”

“I don’t know,” said Becky. “What do you mean, almost saw?”

“Well, Master Park took me to the Snail Plant to play chess, and I ended up replacing another player who was supposed to be there, and it was—you are not going to believe this—Vanto Hatch.”

“Oh,” said Becky. She looked down at Marie, determined that she had finished nursing, and straightened her shirt out, now balancing the baby more easily with one hand.

“Isn’t that crazy?” said Jen. “He comes here about once a month to play chess. There’s a good chance I’ll play against him some day if I go back there. I wonder if he’ll remember me. Probably not—I mean, I’m just some girl he sort of dated in middle school, right? ”

“I quit Groundbreakers,” Becky said.

“What?” Jen asked. “Wait. Why?”

Becky picked up her tea, now cool enough that she could take a large gulp of it while she considered how to answer. Marie was falling asleep again after her meal; Becky lifted her gently into the carrier, which sat in the middle of the kitchen table as though it were a serving platter and Marie was the main course.

“Do you remember that book Paula gave me, The Deliberate Family?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” said Jen, thinking back to her trip to Los Angeles. “It was all about using chess strategy to raise your kids, right? I guess that makes a little more sense to me now—at least we know where Vanto Hatch is getting his chess strategy from.” She laughed, pleased to have made this connection.

“That book is horrible,” Becky said.

“I thought you liked it,” Jen said, remembering how delighted Becky had been to receive an advance copy of the Groundbreaker’s guide to parenting.

“How could I like it?” Becky asked. “That book all about how to terrorize your children into doing what you want them to, treating them like your enemy. It calls them your ‘opponent.’”

Becky paused and took a long breath, and then another long sip of her tea. When she spoke again, she was more composed.

“I guess I was kind of excited about it at first,” Becky admitted. “Before Marie was born. I mean, it’s kind of an interesting idea in theory, to run your family like a war or something, but once you actually have a family…” Becky paused and looked at Marie, sleeping in her carrier.

“It’s kind of sick,” Jen said, finishing her sentence.

“It is,” said Becky, holding Marie’s tiny foot and using it to rock her gently in the carrier. “But you know, it wasn’t just the parenting strategies. Everything in Groundbreakers was starting to get that way.”

“What way?” Jen asked. She had a pretty strong guess what Becky meant, but she wanted to hear how she would put it into words. It was something dark that Becky was alluding to, something that had been bothering Jen as well, and Jen was still struggling with how to understand it.

“The idea that every part of life is a battle,” Becky said, her lack of hesitation suggesting that she was having no difficulty describing the thing Jen was thinking of. “This you-versus-the-world mentality. It just seems really egotistical and selfish.”

Yes, that was it, Jen thought. That’s what The New Aggressive Male was all about. The ideas had troubled her, and yet they had seemed so logical the way the book had presented them, so difficult to argue against.

She thought of what Fred Fawls would say in response to Becky. “But isn’t our job as individuals to advocate for ourselves? I mean, obviously there are other people in our lives who we take care of, like our families. But aren’t there lots of people who are our adversaries?”

“That’s one way to think about it,” said Becky, wrinkling her eyebrows at Jen like she was trying to see her better. “Did they teach you that in taekwondo or something?”

“Sort of,” said Jen. “Maybe.”

“It’s very male,” said Becky. “The whole having-to-be-better-than-everyone-else thing. It was starting to infuse all the parts of Groundbreakers. My coach started to talking to me about making game plans instead of blueprints, like it was football or something. He said I needed a plan for Marie to help her get ahead in life, to give her a competitive advantage. It was just making me tired.”

Before now, Jen had never appreciated the positivity of the building metaphor; it had always annoyed her with its phony blue-collaredness. At least building was—she grimaced at the pun even though she had not said it aloud—constructive.

“It’s good you left,” said Jen, grabbing Marie’s other foot, the one that Becky wasn’t holding. It felt warm and solid in her hand, and after a moment, she could feel the pulsing rhythm of Marie’s blood being pumped through her tiny veins. It’s traveling up her leg, and into her heart, and back down into her other foot, under Becky’s hand, Jen thought.

“I’m never going to be in a group like that again,” Becky said. “I’m never going to let somebody tell me what to think.”

Jen nodded. She wondered if she was herself currently in a group like that, and if so, how she had let it happen, and whether she needed to get out.

Chapter 40

38. The Center of One's Own History

“Exile in a real place, a place of few bodies and many stones, is just an extension (a packaging) of the other exile, the state of being separated from whatever is left of the center of one’s own history.” —Don DeLillo

Becky called the lake house the day after the baby was born. “She’s called Marie,” Becky said, her voice tired and happy through the background buzzing of the unreliable phone line. “After Marie Curie.”

“Marie Curie?” Jen repeated, trying to remember what she knew about this famous name. “She died a tragic death of radiation poisoning, right?”

“She was a chemist and a physicist,” Becky said. “She won two Nobel Prizes.”

“Oh, right,” said Jen. “And why did you name the baby after her?”

Becky’s exasperated sigh filled Jen’s ear with a burst of crackly static.

“I want her to be a scientist,” Becky said. “Not an actress, not a celebrity, not anything stupid. No offense,” she added. “I want her to do something important.”

“Do you want me to fly out there?” Jen asked, jumping up from the couch to prove her willingness to leave on a moment’s notice. The truth was, she really didn’t want to. Her last trip to Los Angeles had been exhausting for her on both ends, first re-orienting herself to the frantic socialness of Hollywood, then returning to her solitary life in Michigan, far more solitary now that Shane was gone. That had been two months earlier, and Jen had just finally gotten back into a comfortable routine: training around noon, teaching Olivia in the evening, training some more, playing chess with Master Park late at night.

She did not want to leave and disrupt everything again, but she was prepared to. Paula had reminded Jen almost every day of her last visit that she would need to come again once the baby arrived. “You’re her best friend,” Paula had said, pulling Jen aside at the baby shower, out at breakfast, making dinner in Jen’s kitchen. “It is your job to be here.” Jen had nodded in resignation, trying not to think about the prospect of flying back here all over again.

“Actually,” Becky said on the phone line, “I was hoping we could come visit you.”

“Really?” This seemed too convenient to be true; Jen felt a pang of guilt for the pleasure that was mixed in with her surprise. “But it’s freezing here. And do you want to travel with a little baby?”

“I really need to get out of Los Angeles,” Becky said. “The doctor told me we can fly in a few weeks.”

As she hung up the phone, Jen surveyed the living room. The center of the room was empty, revealing a large, flattened section of carpet where the heavy coffee table had been before Jen had moved it against the wall to make room for stretching and taekwondo forms. The couch, Jen’s favorite reading spot, had a stack of books covering one of its three cushions and blankets strewn over the other two. There was a television in the corner of the room that Jen had forgotten was there, its screen attracting a thick coat of dust. Taped to the walls across from the couch were the old collages she had made using the most embarrassing passages from tabloid articles about her. She remembered how mortified she had been to read, “Jen’s lackluster performances over the last five years have caused film critics to speculate that she may be developing a serious drug habit.” Now the line had the comfortable familiarity of a worn old paperback, and she smiled happily as she read it.

This all is going to have to go, she thought, surveying the evidence of seven months of solipsism. Someone is coming. She felt a flood of excitement and relief wash over her. She began to clean the room right then, even though Becky wouldn’t be coming for three more weeks. As she folded the blankets and arranged the books on the shelf, she sang out loud, as loud as she could, songs that she remembered from when she was a teenager, songs that she and Becky used to sing along with on the radio after school. Once everything was put away, she began to focus on dirt and dust, removing the books that she had just put onto the shelves, wiping each shelf with warm water until it was smooth and clean, then drying it and replacing the books. She could not remember ever having enjoyed cleaning quite so much. When she was done, the living room still looked Spartan, with its functional furniture and drab carpet, but it was tidy.

The drive to the Detroit airport took an extra hour in each direction along the slippery roads, still slick from the morning’s light snowfall although it was late afternoon. For once, Jen was happy to be driving Paula’s mother’s heavy four-wheel-drive vehicle, especially once she had Marie in the back, secured tightly into a baby seat that Becky had brought, along with an entire extra suitcase filled with other baby-related items. Both mother and baby were bundled in thick coats to shield them against the winter chill, which had made an aggressive return after the brief January thaw. Jen noticed Becky’s teeth chattering as they started the drive back towards North Middleton, and she turned the heat up as high as it would go.

“I’m sorry it’s so cold,” said Jen, as she, Becky, and Marie sat bundled in blankets on the bed in the second bedroom, where Becky would sleep. Marie was asleep already, lying on Becky’s stomach, her easy tranquility reminding Jen more of Chase than of Becky. “The weather was beautiful when I first got back here after the baby shower. I could almost exercise outside.”

“I don’t care about the cold,” said Becky defiantly, even as she pulled her blanket a little further over herself and her sleeping baby. “I am so sick of LA. I’d rather be anywhere else but there. Even Michigan.”

Jen wasn’t sure what it meant that she wanted to jump to Michigan’s defense rather than Los Angeles’s. She had the urge to point out all the positive qualities of North Middleton—its small, quirky businesses like the food co-op, the tea house, and the juice bar, the friendly people who all seemed to know each other, the beautiful forests and lakes, including the ones visible from this very room. But she knew these features would be a hard sell in light of the bitter cold that was seeping through the poorly-insulated window, making it difficult to enjoy anything but what they were doing right now, huddling together under the blankets on the corner of the bed closest to the heater.

“What do you want to do tomorrow?” Jen asked. “It will be too cold to walk around much, but we could go check out a yoga class at this school I’ve heard about.” In anticipation of Becky’s visit, Jen had dropped into Olivia’s yoga school and gotten the schedule of classes. “I’m sure they’d let you bring Marie into the class.”

“You don’t have to do anything different on my account,” said Becky. “Let’s go to your taekwondo school.”

Jen hesitated to respond. For somebody who had just given birth, Becky looked fit, but maybe not that fit, or maybe it just seemed wrong that someone would squeeze a baby out of her body and throw a roundhouse kick during the same month. “That might be too much for you,” she said, feeling bad for squashing Becky’s enthusiasm.

“Oh, I’m not going to work out,” Becky said. Marie had just woken up and Becky was getting ready to nurse her, pulling her long tunic all the way up and steering the baby’s head towards her breast with a quick, expert gesture. “Me and Marie will just watch, if you think that will be okay.”

“Sure, that will be great,” said Jen, trying not to sound overly pleased at the prospect of missing less training than she had anticipated. She had planned to come in at least a few times during the weeks Becky was visiting to teach Olivia, but hadn’t counted on getting to do her own workouts.

“I go twice a day,” Jen said, wondering if she was pushing her luck.

“Fine,” said Becky. “As long as they’re okay with us nursing in there.”

“I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” said Jen, though truthfully she could not imagine a scenario in which Becky’s exposed breast would fail to cause a scene in a school populated almost exclusively by college-aged men. But watching Marie, who had finally succumbed entirely to sleep and was cuddled against Becky’s chest with her mouth gaping open, Jen couldn’t imagine anyone objecting to anything this tiny new person did.

Luckily, the next day, no one seemed to notice Becky as she sat on the floor in the corner of the room and nursed Marie while Jen led Olivia through her exercises. If any of the boys were troubled, it was impossible to tell; they usually avoided the corner of the room where Jen trained, first with Shane and now with Olivia, and it was quite possible that they were as oblivious to Marie’s presence as their blank facial expressions seemed to indicate as they walked past.

As Olivia practiced her kicks and Becky nursed little baby Marie, Jen was suddenly struck by the strong femininity pervading their section of the room, something that she had never felt in that space before. Thinking back, she could only remember a handful of times when she had trained with Shane and another woman at the same time—and of course, Shane hadn’t even thought of herself as a woman, exactly. Being surrounded by three other females was unprecedented.

“Does your friend want to try?” Olivia asked, as Jen held the pad for her to kick.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jen, looking over at Becky, who had finished nursing and was holding Marie over her shoulder. Jen hadn’t told Becky about Olivia’s past. After the Skipper incident, Jen wasn’t so sure that Becky could forgive even a reformed paparazzo. Jen herself had barely forgiven her; she gave her the best instruction she could, but nothing more, nothing like pleasant conversation or friendly camaraderie or concern about her life in general and how it was going. She often wondered whether it bothered Olivia to take instruction from someone so cold.

“It would be fun to try, if I could do it lightly,” said Becky, sounding like she really meant it and wasn’t just being polite. “But I didn’t bring Marie’s carrier.”

“I could hold her,” Olivia offered.

“I’ll hold her,” Jen said, quickly, surprised by her own sudden possessiveness. She handed the kicking pad to Olivia. “Show her how to do a roundhouse kick,” she said. “It will be good for you to practice teaching it to someone.”

Jen sat down on the floor next to Becky and took the baby from her. This was only the second time that she had held her—the other time was when Becky had introduced them at the airport—and Jen was struck by how incongruous it felt to be bracing for the startling impact of Olivia’s kicks against the pad one moment, and the next to be cuddling such a small, warm creature against her chest. She looked down at Marie, who looked like she was trying but failing to stay awake, her eyelids closing slowly then snapping open again, her bright baby-blue eyes rolling up into her head.

Jen tried to decide if she looked more like Becky or Chase, but she didn’t look like either of them. Or perhaps she looked like both of them, so blended-up that it was impossible to separate them out again, like cream in coffee. She could imagine Marie’s straight little nose being like Becky’s nose—but then again, Chase’s nose was sort of like that, too, just bigger. And her tiny mouth was shapely like Becky’s mouth, which always looked like it had been outlined carefully with lip liner even though Becky rarely even wore makeup, but the fleshy, sensual lower lip reminded Jen of Chase.

Jen looked up and saw Olivia explaining how Becky should kick the pad. “Make sure to pivot your foot,” she said, recreating the familiar directions that she had learned from Jen, and Jen from Shane.

“Like this?” Becky asked, turning her left foot on the ground as she snapped her right foot lightly into the pad that Olivia was holding.

“Yeah, that’s really good,” said Olivia, giving Becky the encouraging smile that she herself had never received from Jen. “Just pivot a tiny bit more, even.”

Now that Jen had gotten comfortable, it felt nice to sit so still, the baby cuddled against her chest like a sleeping cat. Marie’s eyes had closed all the way and her mouth was puckering into little sucking motions. Jen touched her pinky to Marie’s lips, and was shocked by the power of the suction that pulled her finger into the baby’s mouth. Marie sucked happily on the finger for a few moments, but then, with a look of great consternation, even as her eyes were closed, she spat it out. That’s Becky’s face, Jen thought, remembering all the time she had seen that same eyebrow wrinkle when she had similarly disappointed her friend. She shifted Marie’s weight onto her body a little more and leaned back against the wall, watching Olivia do all the work of teaching Becky.

By the end of the hour, Becky’s roundhouse kick was looking pretty decent for a beginner. “She did great, didn’t she?” Olivia said, smiling proudly, as Jen rose from the floor, a tricky maneuver that involved holding Marie with one arm, and carried her over to her mother.

“Yeah, she did,” said Jen.

Becky smiled broadly. “That was fun,” she said. With the arm that was not holding Marie, Becky reached out and squeezed Olivia’s shoulder. “Thanks so much for teaching me.”

“It was my pleasure,” said Olivia, squeezing her arm back. Jen felt puzzled watching them exchange the warm look of new friends, wondering if this meant that she would have to start being nicer to Olivia.

Usually Jen retreated into the back room as soon as Olivia’s lesson was over, but she had already told Master Park that she would not be staying for chess tonight. It turned out to be the right decision; Becky was tired, and the baby was starting to get cranky, making little crying sounds that Jen feared would lead to outright wailing.

Jen held Marie while Becky put her shoes on, and then they switched. Olivia had followed them to the shoe cubbies and was making small talk with Becky: “How long are you here for? How are you liking North Middleton?” And Becky, though tired, seemed happy to answer: “Two weeks…yeah, I love it here…I don’t mind the cold.”

And then, as Jen finished tying her sneakers, she looked up and saw Rob standing right next to Becky. He was leaned over the baby, covering and uncovering his face with one hand in a rudimentary game of peek-a-boo. Becky lifted Marie so he could see her better, clearly enjoying showing her off.

“She’s brand new, isn’t she?” Rob asked, stroking Marie’s forehead softly.

“Not quite four weeks,” said Becky.

Jen was stunned. During the seven months that Jen had trained at Master Park’s, she had not exchanged more than a cursory word with Rob, things like “excuse me” during the multiple times they had almost crashed into each other because they were not making eye contact. But here he was, now, gushing over Becky’s baby. Olivia was standing next to him; together, they formed a little cooing huddle around Marie.

“I’m sorry, I know you probably need to get going,” Rob said. “I just really wanted to come see her. I’m such a sucker for little babies.”

“It’s okay,” said Becky, smiling, clearly charmed by the attention to her offspring. “Do you want to hold her?”

“Oh, no, I don’t want to disturb her,” said Rob, his tone indicating that he hoped she would insist.

“It’s okay,” Becky said, transferring Marie into his arms. “She just took a little nap with Jen.”

Marie began to make the little crying noises again as Rob lifted her to his chest. “There, there,” he said, as he began to bounce up and down lightly with his knees. “It’s okay, everything’s okay.” He looks good with a baby, Jen thought reluctantly, noticing how the icy blue of his eyes seemed gentler and grayer as he smiled down at Marie, his posture softening as he curved his shoulders over her, holding her tight as he bounced.

“My son is six,” he said to Becky, without looking up. “It’s a fun age, but I loved when he was a tiny baby like this.”

“Maybe you should have another one,” said Becky, eyeing his bouncing technique favorably. “You seem like you know what you’re doing.”

“I’d like to,” said Rob, his voice growing quiet as he hugged Marie closer to his chest. His tone implied that the next word should be “but,” although he didn’t say it.

“You have to wait until it’s the right time,” Becky said quickly, squeezing his shoulder like she had just squeezed Olivia’s arm a few minutes ago.

“I know,” he said, his voice sticking in his throat. “That’s right.”

Jen walked over to the door and watched from a distance, wanting to get home and have Becky to herself again, but reluctant to break up this scene, Becky, Olivia and Rob connecting to each other as naturally as Becky, Paula and Chase once had back in Los Angeles. When they finally said their goodbyes, they were acting like old friends, hugging warmly and promising to see each other again during Becky’s trip.

“So what’s the deal with that Rob guy?” Becky asked, as Jen drove down Main Street back towards Cone. She had her sun-visor pulled down even though it was dark, and she was staring into the little makeup mirror on it, watching Marie sleep in her car seat. “He’s the guy from the co-op, right?”

“Yeah,” said Jen, surprised that Becky remembered him from one sighting, so long ago.

“He’s cute,” said Becky. “Why can’t he have a second baby? Does that mean he’s single, or is he still with the mother of his kid?”

Jen thought back to the night that Rob had driven her home, how he had kissed her and then confessed to being in a relationship, how he had cried and made her promise that they would still be friends.

It was that aggressive male book that made him do it, she remembered. She had just finished reading it herself. She had found it a disturbing read, although she couldn’t find anything in it that she specifically disagreed with. Perhaps that was the problem. Everything it said seemed to describe accurately the actions of some man or another she had known: her father, Bradley, Skipper, Chase, Rob, Master Park. She wondered whether he had given it to her to help her enhance her own aggressiveness or just better understand the mental state of the men around her.

“They’re still together,” said Jen.

“Too bad,” said Becky. “But see, that’s so nice,” she added abruptly, as though continuing an ongoing debate that Jen had not noticed they were having. “A guy who can stay with his wife. No one stays together in LA, especially if they have kids.” She let out a self-deprecating laugh. “Sometimes they were never even together in the first place.”

Jen didn’t bother to correct Becky, either about Rob being married to the mother of his child or about her representation of him as the ideal loyal partner.

“It’s just so great to be out of LA,” said Becky, as Jen turned onto the bumpy road that led to the lake house. “Everyone there seems so superficial, like they’re not real people, like they’re acting all the time.”

While last night Jen had felt like standing up for Michigan, now she wanted to come to the defense of Los Angeles. Becky had friends there, and yoga, and a community. But Jen didn’t feel ready to admit how lonely her life was here, because she was scared that Becky would tell her to move back to Los Angeles, and she wouldn’t be able to make a case for why she wasn’t ready to.

“What about Paula and Chase?” Jen asked.

“They’re both in these relationships, and I never get to spend any time with them alone,” said Becky. “I like Ex, but he’s so strange. Or she. And Eduardo…”

“He really is obnoxious,” said Jen, remembering how he had acted like he owned Becky’s unborn baby just because he happened to be sleeping with the baby’s father.

“I try so hard to like him, for Chase, but I just can’t stand him,” said Becky. “But it’s not just him; everyone is like that in LA. Everyone has all these stupid ideas, all this intrigue, all these silly, meaningless dramas. It must be so refreshing not to have to be around any of that, to be in a place where people just live their lives without projecting all this crap onto them.”

“I guess,” said Jen. They were pulling up to the lake house now, driving up the long bumpy driveway.

“Everyone here seems so normal and nice,” said Becky. Like Rob. Or that woman you train with, Olivia. She’s just a sweet, normal woman who does taekwondo. What does she do for a job?”

“She works at a juice bar,” Jen said. She had stopped the car, and they were sitting in the dark driveway. Jen could see Becky’s face silhouetted in the dim light of the lamp over the garage door. She was still staring into the mirror in front of her, even though Jen doubted that she could see anything in the back seat.

“See, that’s such a nice, normal thing to do,” said Becky. “I wish I had friends like that. It must be so peaceful living here.”

“It is peaceful,” said Jen. “But you know, everyplace has its own problems.”

“If you don’t move back soon, I might just have to move out here with you,” Becky said. “You’re going to have to move in the summer since Paula’s mom will want the lake house back.”

Jen hadn’t thought of this detail, but Becky was right. She would have to make a decision about where she was going to live sometime in the next few months.

“We could get a place together,” said Becky. “I could teach at that yoga school you mentioned, and I’m sure rent is cheap out here.”

“I don’t know,” said Jen. “I don’t know if I want to stay here.”

She tried to imagine living with Becky in North Middleton, in a real rented house that wasn’t just borrowed, that they would fill with their own possessions and decorate according to their own taste, where Becky would cook nutritious meals just like in Los Angeles. It would be a real home, and Jen would really be living in Michigan.

Chapter 39

37. What It Means to Be Civilized

“Due to a misguided idea of what it means to be civilized, the modern male has convinced himself that the spectator is morally superior to the competitor.” —Fred Fawls

Bryce is the type of high-school basketball player who is always called “a team player” and “a hard worker.” He shows up early for every practice. A senior on the varsity team, he always helps his sophomore and junior teammates with their game. He is a solid player, with a reasonably high scoring record, though not as high as some of his teammates. He holds the team record for assists, though, and is considered a “strategic player.” When two of his teammates are recruited by prestigious university teams, he feels sad but not surprised that he has been overlooked; he has never expected to be noticed for his playing.

Before he met his wife, Kevin’s passion was racing motorcycles. His wife feels the sport is too dangerous, reminding him of several local men who have been injured or killed pursuing the sport. There’s a big racing event coming up, which will covered by a cable sports station, and several of Kevin’s friends are competing. As the day of the event approaches, Kevin gets a sickly feeling in his stomach every time he thinks about his friends who are racing. He wishes that he could participate; however, he is so out of practice that he would be unable to race, even if his wife would allow him to.

Joe has worked in human resources at a large bank for seven years and has not had a promotion in five. He does everything that he is supposed to: his work is thorough, he completes his assignments in a timely fashion, he has instigated procedural changes that have maximized efficiency and saved his company thousands of dollars. Yet every time he applies for a higher position, it goes to one of his colleagues. He has become so frustrated that he has considered changing jobs, but he is very close with his immediate supervisor and does not want to abandon him.

In my ten years as a life coach, I have seen countless cases such as these. All of these men are talented and capable, yet their lack of aggression prevents them from achieving the accomplishments they dream of. They don’t believe that they deserve success. They have been gambling against themselves, thinking that everyone else’s needs, goals, and desires are as important as their own.

Maybe you agree with them; you believe that you are no more entitled to success than anyone else. Perhaps this is true. But your job is not to advocate for everyone else. Your job—your birthright as a living being—is to advocate for yourself.

Imagine the president of a country who says, “I want to win the war, but of course, the other country also wants to win, so why should my needs come first?” Imagine the quarterback who says, “My team wants to get to the Superbowl, but the other team wants it more, so I think they should go.” Imagine the antelope who thinks, “This lion is going to eat one of us, so it might as well be me.”

What would we say to this president, this quarterback, this antelope? We would say that they are not doing their jobs! They have neglected to advocate for themselves, and this neglect will lead to their unnecessary downfall.

But their way of thinking is extremely common for many modern men. We are raised to be considerate, to cooperate, to think of other people’s needs as equivalent to our own. And later, we are taught that morality is relative, that good and evil do not exist, that our enemies are simply people with needs and desires, just like us, that all conflicts can be solved through diplomacy.

That all might be true, but it’s not your problem. Your problem—your mission as a living being, your duty, your reason for existing—is to promote your own interest. Once you can agree to this truism, that your purpose for existing is to honor your own self-interest above all other interests and considerations, then I can give you strategies to help you achieve that purpose. But until you are willing to break from the pluralistic ideology of cooperation that you have been indoctrinated into since childhood, you will never be able to activate your full potential as a Fully Actualized Man.

To become Fully Actualized, you must fulfill your role in the Evolutionary Contract. This contract mandates that, for survival of the fittest to work, we must all fight to survive. “But I’m not the fittest,” you might respond. “I am doing my species a favor by removing myself from the gene pool.” You are wrong; that’s not how evolution works. It is not for you to decide whether you are the fittest. Only time and the progression of nature can decide that. What if the first mammal with opposable thumbs had decided that he was a freak, and therefore not fit to pass on his genes? Mankind would have never come into existence, because one individual decided not to fight for his own survival. Whatever you have to offer, you must offer it with pride, unapologetically, knowing that it may be your unique traits that save our species or carry it further into greatness.

Want to Win
As the opening of this chapter suggests, the first step of becoming Fully Actualized is to activate your desire to outperform others. This sounds simple, yet the desire to win has been bred out of many modern men. Instead, we are trained to compromise, to hold back, not to draw attention to our abilities.

When I met Bryce, he had just joined the basketball team at his local community college. He was still a solid player but was overshadowed by other players who were the stars of the team. He often made suggestions for plays they might try in upcoming games, but no one took his ideas seriously.

I asked Bryce what was the difference between himself and the star players on the team.

“Are they more skillful players than you?” I asked him.

“No,” he said, with certainty.

“So why do they get all the attention?” I asked. “What are they doing that you’re not?”

He thought about it for a moment. “They will do anything to win,” Bryce said. “They will play dirty, commit lots of fouls. They try to injure the top players on the other team. They will grab the ball from a weaker player on our own team to make sure we get the shot.”

“Why don’t you do those things?” I asked him.

“Because they’re mean,” said Bryce. “I’m not a mean person.”

“What’s the purpose of playing a game?” I asked.

“It’s for fun,” he said. “There is no purpose.”

“I don’t agree,” I said. “I think the purpose of playing is to win. The fun comes from the knowledge that there will be a winner and a loser, and from the desire to be the winner. Otherwise, games wouldn’t have winners and losers; but almost all of them do.”

I explained to Bryce that a game is not really a game unless you are doing everything possible to try to win. Without that kind of sincere competition, you dishonor the game, your teammates, your opponents, and, most importantly, yourself.

Bryce took my advice and began to focus more persistently on winning. He noticed that this change of perspective immediately affected his level of play. Before, his attention during a game had been on team dynamics; he would always look to see who was open and in position for a shot, making sure to pass to players who hadn’t had a chance to score yet or who weren’t getting much action. He would be careful not to foul the other team’s players. Now, he put all of those concerns aside and focused on scoring points. He did whatever it took to get himself into a position where he could score, even if it meant elbowing past one of his opponents. If he was not in the position to score, he would pass to the strongest teammate who was open.

Because of his increased contribution, Bryce’s team began to win more games and move up in their conference rankings. His coaches began to take interest in him, and the local newspaper profiled him as a “local athlete to watch.” When he was ready to transfer to a four-year school, he was accepted onto a prestigious team that one of his high school teammates was already playing for.

“Your game has really come up,” the classmate told him.

A lot of men are like Bryce—they consider themselves to be nice people, and they believe that they are doing the world a favor by not competing at their highest level. But it is not a favor to dumb down your abilities; it is an insult. What Bryce discovered is that people respect a competitor—no one more so than those who have to compete against him.

If you think that it is not in your nature to compete because you are a nice, cooperative person who does not want to dominate others, consider how you behave in traffic. When you are in a rush and somebody cuts in front of you, driving slowly, you do you sympathize and cooperate with his incompetence? Do you slow down as well so that the person doesn’t feel bad that they made a mistake? Do you say to yourself, “I won’t acknowledge his poor driving. He probably just isn’t a very experienced driver. I don’t want him to get discouraged and stop driving altogether!” No, you do not. You change lanes and speed past the person, possibly shooting him a dirty look as you do so. In a situation where you know you want to win—to get to your destination on time—your goal is your singular focus, and you have no tolerance for those who stand between you and your objectives.

When the stakes matter to you, you are willing to make winning your only priority. The issue is not that you can’t want to win—it’s that you choose not to want to win. You choose to give life your best capabilities when it really matters to you. Why shouldn’t all your pursuits matter that much to you, enough to make you want to work your hardest and do your best?

Stop Worrying about Others
The second step in becoming a Fully Actualized Man is to put your own needs above the needs of others. Yes, it is a nice thing to help other people, when they need our help, and when giving help does not undermine our own desires and objectives. But your own interests must always be your first priority. Otherwise you will not be fulfilling your part of the Evolutionary Contract.

My experience working with Kevin demonstrates this principle:

I asked Kevin what was stopping him from achieving his dream of racing motorcycles again. He told me that his wife did not want him to race. I asked him why this mattered; why should he have to do what she wanted? What about what he wanted? He said that he didn’t want to make her upset. I asked him what would happen if she got upset.

“She would leave me,” he said.

“How do you know that?” I asked him.

“She told me. She said, ‘I’m not going to hang around waiting for you to get yourself killed on that motorcycle.”

I asked him, “Why would you stay in a relationship with someone who uses emotional blackmail to keep you from doing things that are important to you?”

Kevin thought about this question for quite a while. He did not have an answer for me that day. When I saw him again, several months had passed. Kevin told me excitedly that he had begun to train for motorcycle races.

“What did your wife say about it?” I asked him.

“She left me,” he said.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“But you were right,” he told me. “It’s much better to be single and be able to do what I want.”

Kevin went on to tell me how much his life had improved since his wife had left. He was free to do whatever was necessary to pursue his passions.

“I don’t need to worry about making anybody happy,” he said. “I can stay out at the track all weekend, and I don’t need to come home for meals or anything. Sometimes I sleep at my friend’s place closer to the track and don’t go to my apartment for days on end.”

Kevin’s only regret was that he missed his two young children, now that they weren’t living with him.

“They’ll appreciate your decision when they’re older,” I told him. “Kids want their parents to be happy.”

When you stop worrying about others, you may lose friends, or anger your family and loved ones. But if their “love” was contingent on you doing things that benefited them, was it really love at all? To become Fully Actualized, you must never lose sight of your own goals and objectives, even if they are challenging or upsetting to those around you.

Be Arrogant
You know that guy who gets under your skin every time you’re forced to interact with him? He thinks he’s better than everybody. He has many strengths, and he lords his abilities over those around him. He is unsympathetic towards other people’s individual difficulties and problems; he expects everyone else to rise to the level of his unreasonable standards.

You need to become that guy. You need to have confidence in your own abilities and not worry about seeming conceited. Why should you minimize your own talents and achievements just to make lesser people feel better about themselves? If you are the best in a particular area, if you are an expert, you should not hesitate to let those around you know it. Opportunities to use your expertise will not come to you unless people recognize that you are an expert.

Joe came to me bitter and frustrated about the poor treatment he received at his job.

“I do all the work around there,” he said. “But it’s like no one notices. I have been turned down for at least seven promotions, which went to people who were less experienced and less qualified.”

“Why don’t you quit?” I asked him. “You could get another job.”

“I know,” said Joe. In fact, Joe knew somebody at a rival company who had offered him a position.

“Why don’t you take it?” I asked.

“I don’t want to upset my supervisor,” Joe said. “It’s not his fault that I haven’t been promoted. Also, I think I would have the same problems at the rival company.”

“Do you like James Bond movies?” I asked Joe.

He looked surprised. “Yes, I do,” he said.

“Okay,” I told him. “Think about what James Bond would do in your position.”

“James Bond would never work in human resources,” Joe said.

I told Joe that this was a mental exercise, an imagination game. “Imagine that James Bond feels he is not being treated well by the Secret Intelligence Service. What would he do?”

“I guess he wouldn’t stand for it,” said Joe.

“So what actions would he take?” I asked.

“He would quit,” Joe said.

“Would he get a job at another intelligence service?” I asked.

“No,” said Joe. “He would work for himself, so he could never be screwed over by his bosses again.”

“I think you know what you need to do,” I told Joe.

Joe decided not to quit right away. Instead, he began doing research and making some connections. After a year, he was able to found his own transnational company which handled human resources remotely, from India. His company helped many banks save hundreds of thousands of dollars by moving their human resource departments to India. In a few years, both his old company and the rival company that had offered him a job outsourced their human resource departments to his company. Joe’s supervisor was laid off, along with the rest of Joe’s former department, but Joe was able to offer him a position at his company in India.

Joe had all the knowledge and skills to run his own company, yet he was unwilling to capitalize on these advantages. He allowed himself to be treated as less than his true worth, all because he didn’t want to hurt his supervisor’s feelings. Once he was willing to insist on the respect he deserved, he gained the power and prestige he had dreamed of.

When you meet a man who annoys you by being too self-confident, too full of himself, too obnoxiously self-promoting, ask yourself: why am I bothered by his confidence? Is it because I know that he is better than me or because I know that I am better than him? If the former is true, you have no reason to be annoyed at him; it is your own inferiority that should annoy you. And if the latter is true, it is your duty to prove your superiority so this man will better understand his place in the world.

Act the Part
Reading about these steps to becoming a Fully Actualized Man, you may feel overwhelmed. Perhaps you are thinking, “I would like to be like those men you describe—but that’s just not me.” That’s a common reaction. It is not easy to undo years of cultural conditioning. It is a grueling task to change everything about how you view the world and your place in it. But the rewards of this change are great: being truly engaged, truly alive, not a spectator but a competitor.

Studies have shown that pretending to be happy—the mere act of smiling, even—raises people’s actual feelings of happiness. The same is true for acting confident, dominant, or arrogant. You do not need to feel aggressive to be aggressive. Think of the most aggresive person you know, and use him as a model for your behaviors. You may have noticed that I often encourage men to find role models to help them imagine how a Fully Realized Man would act. Eventually, of course, you must learn to be your own man and not follow anyone’s example too closely. But we all learn our life philosophies from those we look up to; that’s why it is crucial to choose your role models wisely. In time, with practice, you will find it easy, even natural, to assert your innate aggressive nature without the need for outside inspiration.

In closing this chapter, I’ll tell you a secret: one of these men that I described in this chapter was me. Hell, all of these men were me, just as all of us are these men at certain points in our lives. But one of these men was really me. And I talked to myself, at that time, as a coach would talk to a player, or as a ranking officer would advise a soldier, or a father would offer guidance to his son. And I told myself: you can make your dreams come true.

What I discovered, once I was able to take my own advice, was that there was nothing in the world that I could not do. I did not need to sit on the sidelines, cheering appreciatively as other people did amazing, brave, risky, rewarding things that I secretly longed to do myself. I did not need to be a spectator. I could get in there. I could be a competitor. So can you. The world is full of opportunities. You just need the conviction to take them.

Chapter 38

36. The Great Myths

“It was the men who got involved in spinning most of the great myths. The women were too busy; they had too damn much to do to sit around thinking about stories.” —Joseph Campbell

“You can take that off,” said Nicolai Snail, pointing at Jen’s chest. Jen liked his accent, but it took her a second to figure out what he had said; the final word sounded like “ov.”

“What?” Jen asked, confused.

“The smock,” said Nicolai Snail.

Jen looked down and saw that she was still wearing the bright yellow crossing-guard vest that marked her as a visitor to the Snail Plant. She had completely forgotten about it. She looked across the giant table at Master Park to see if he was still wearing his, but all she saw was the plain white shirt he had been wearing when they first entered the plant. She couldn’t remember when he had taken the vest off—he had definitely put it on at the entrance, but she didn’t remember seeing it after that.

“Oh, right,” she said. She pulled the vest over her head, folded it into a neat square, and then placed it under her seat.

“Sorry about all that,” said Nicolai Snail, waving his hand first in the direction of the vest, then at the heavily secured door. “We’ve had scares, terrorism, you know. I’m sure it all seems a bit unnecessary to you.”

“Oh, no,” said Jen, embarrassed by Nicolai Snail’s accusing tone.

“It is unnecessary,” Master Park interrupted. “One little problem seven years ago and you make this whole place like a prison.”

“Little problem?” said Nicolai Snail. He turned to face Jen, opening his eyes wide for emphasis. “Our rival company planted a bomb in my office.”

“It didn’t go off,” said Master Park.

“Do you hear this?” Nicolai Snail asked. He looked first at the back of the man he had just beaten at chess, who was still facing the window and did not turn around. Then he looked at Jen, who kept her face studiously blank, since she did not want to be seen as siding with this stranger over her teacher. “It didn’t go off? It didn’t go off because my security guards found it and diffused it. Otherwise, I would have been killed!”

Master Park did seem affected by Nicolai Snail’s hysteria; he was calm and placid in his crisp white shirt. “You overreacted,” he said. “Remember, ‘An unnecessary display of power is an invitation to be attacked.’”

“What’s that, a taekwondo saying?” Nicolai Snail asked.

“No, Fred Fawls,” said Master Park. “It’s from The New Aggressive Male.”

“Ah, yes,” said Nicolai Snail. “I should have recognized it. Well, I’m sure this Fred Fawls fellow—whoever he might be—never had to diffuse a bomb in his office.”

He leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms over his head, and yawned, giving up his fight. Jen looked past him at the middle-aged man in the torn t-shirt, who was still staring obstinately out the window. For all his agitation about enemy attacks, Nicolai Snail didn’t seemed bothered by the dark brooding of the opponent who was right here in the room with him. He leaned back in his chair and tightened his ponytail, a distracted look in his eye.

“So,” he said to Jen after a moment. “Are you playing today?”

“She’s playing,” said Master Park, his authoritative tone suggesting that he was worried Jen would want to back out.

“Good, then we will have our fourth after all,” said Nicolai Snail, smiling.

“Where’s the guru?” Master Park asked. He was running his hand back and forth over the thickly polished surface of the table.

“He couldn’t come to town at the last minute,” said Nicolai Snail. “He had something to do in Los Angeles.”

He turned to Jen. “Vanto Hatch,” he said. “Have you heard of him? He usually visits us every other Wednesday. He is supposed to be here playing today. Quite the busy man.”

Jen opened her eyes wide, but when she spoke, she kept her voice calm. “Yeah, I’ve heard of him,” she said, trying to sound like this new development was not completely surprising and confusing. She knew that Vanto Hatch was an old friend of Nicolai Snail’s—but he was flying into Michigan twice a month to play chess?

“What is it this time?” Master Park asked. “Groundbreakers emergency? Someone has lost their foundation? Someone has holes in their blueprint?”

And Master Park knows him, Jen thought? Why hadn't he ever said anything about him, or about Groundbreakers?

“He had to accept an award,” said Nicolai Snail. “Greatest accomplishment for a self-help author or something like that.”

In reaction to this piece of news, the brooding man finally turned from the window to face the interior of the room, crossing his arms and pressing the back of his dirty-looking t-shirt against the delicately tinted glass.

“He’s too busy being a rock star to bother with us,” said the man, his voice sounding as cranky as his demeanor.

“Jen,” said Nicolai Snail, “this is Oggy Osterberg. The artist.”

Jen remembered his name. He was the sculptor whose work had been on display in front of the visitors’ center when she had gone there with Rob. Rob had told her that he was a student of Master Park’s, but she didn’t realize that he was still in town; she had never seen him at the school.

Oggy gave her a cursory look and nod. “Yes,” he said, turning his gaze immediately away from her and towards Master Park. “I’ll take the killer. She can have the tycoon,” he said.

Jen wasn’t sure what to make of this statement, until she saw Master Park rise from his chair and move to the one across from Oggy Osterberg. She felt a faint tremor of fear as she realized she was going to have to play chess against one of these intimidating men, and that Master Park would not be on hand to help her. She had never played against anyone but him.

“Okay,” Nicolai Snail said to Jen, smiling warmly. “Then it’s us.” He pulled his chair to the side, so that he faced Jen, and slid the unused chess board between them.

He held out two fists for her to choose what color she would play. She pointed towards his right fist, and he unclenched it to reveal a black pawn cupped in the palm of his large, flat hand.

Jen gasped aloud.

“What’s wrong?” Nicolai Snail asked.

She didn’t want to tell him, but out of the dozens of games she had played against Master Park, she could count on one hand the times that she had chosen black. Her habit of choosing white had become so regular that, in the past few weeks, they had bypassed the choosing process altogether and simply assumed that she would play white. Since white always had the first move, Jen didn’t know any of the strategy for going second.

“Nothing,” she said. “Black is great.”

“How long have you been playing?” Nicolai Snail asked, as he turned the board to face the black pieces towards Jen.

“Not very long,” she said. “A couple months.”

“Park’s been teaching you?”

“Yeah,” said Jen. “And I’ve been reading some books.”

“By Thomas Fo?” Nicolai Snail asked.

“Yes,” said Jen, her surprise evident in her voice. Of course it made sense that Master Park’s chess friends would know his favorite chess author, but she hadn’t expected it. She tended to think of Thomas Fo as her author, not Master Park’s, since she had first discovered his books about Zen on Paula’s mother’s bookshelf.

“Thomas Fo is the best,” said Nicolai Snail, projecting his voice towards the board where Master Park and Oggy Osterberg were already deep into their own game. “We are all very fond of his work around here.”

Jen saw Master Park’s lips curl into the slightest hint of an acknowledging smile. Oggy Osterberg’s scowl remained unaltered as he stared down at the board.

Nicolai Snail’s opening moves were conventional, but it still unnerved Jen to be on the defensive, accustomed as she was to going first. She hated the feeling of responding to his moves, rather than being the one to set the direction of the game. Stop being so passive, she told herself, trying to break from his agenda. But each of his moves demanded its own response from her, and she could not figure out how to set up her own strategy.

After her seventh move, Nicolai Snail looked up from the board. “I’ve been trying to get Park to bring you in here for months,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “He told me you were too busy. But I am guessing he never even invited you. So tell me, am I correct?”

Jen froze, unsure of what to say. Her first inclination was to answer honestly, that she had indeed never been invited until now. Her second thought was to lie, to defend Master Park and prove Nicolai Snail wrong. She could tell him that she had been invited, and had indeed been too busy with her training.

She looked across the table at Nicolai Snail. His well-kept hair and tasteful sweater spoke of confidence and power. But Jen saw something more in his eyes, something less self-assured. And then, suddenly, she could read it as clearly as if it were a sentence written across the top of his groomed eyebrows: he wanted something from her. She wasn’t sure whether it was something business related, or political, or romantic, or sexual, or something far less tangible than any of those—something as simple as her approval—but there was definitely something he was after.

And she saw that whatever he wanted was distracting him, and he was not really thinking about the game in front of him. And she resolved, in a quick moment of decisiveness that she hoped would make Master Park proud if he could witness her thoughts, that she was going to win.

She remembered the words from The New Aggressive Male:

Don’t defer. Don’t be rude, nor polite; be unconcerned.

And she decided to answer his question with another question.

“Why did you want him to invite me?” she asked.

He shrank a little bit, as though a bright light had flashed in his eyes, and she knew for certain that she had him. “That should be obvious,” he said, reaching down to move his knight into an attacking position.

“No,” she said, sliding her bishop up to defend her pawn.

He stared at the board for a moment, then advanced his own bishop.

“Well,” he said. “This is the room where all the most important and interesting people in North Middleton come to meet.”

Jen looked silently down at the board. She was going to let him derail his own train of thought. Don’t be rude or polite, she thought. Don’t say anything. Don’t defer.

Nicolai Snail allowed the silence to hang between them for a moment, until it seemed he could not bear it any longer. “You don’t consider yourself to one of the most important and interesting people in North Middleton?” he said.

“I live in Cone,” she replied.

“You know what I mean,” he said, his agitation showing in the abrupt way he slapped his pawn down on its new space.

She picked up her knight, which she had not yet moved at all, and placed it in front of her row of pawns.

“I suppose you think I’m vain,” said Nicolai Snail, his voice sounding authentically sullen now. “It’s fine. You can think that.”

Jen didn’t say anything. She looked at the board. Nicolai Snail looked down at the board, too.

“Shit,” he said. Her knight was threatening both his knight and his bishop; he was going to have to lose one, and it was early in the game to be down a piece. She saw him bite down hard on his lip as he considered the unpalatable range of possible moves ahead of him. This is sort of fun, Jen thought.

“Nice work,” said Master Park an hour later, as they returned down the hall towards the parking garage, holding their yellow vests under their arms.

“You saw my game?” Jen asked. She had beat Nicolai Snail, using the same sequence Master Park had used on her at least ten times to put him in checkmate. She had only had the one game; after he lost to both Nicolai Snail and Master Park, Oggy Osterberg had pronounced himself too tired to play any further, declaring, “I’m going to take a nap for a few days,” before slamming the heavy door behind him.

“I saw you turn Nicolai into a stammering idiot,” said Master Park. Jen didn’t respond, but inside, she felt like she had just been nominated for an Oscar.

After they dropped their vests at the front desk—“You’re supposed to wear it, Park,” the security guard had growled—and returned to the car, Master Park turned to Jen as he pulled out of the parking lot.

“You should have been playing black more,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault I always draw white,” Jen said.

“Actually, it is,” said Master Park. “I’ve been fixing it so you always draw white.”

Jen was so surprised that she couldn’t speak for a moment. She stared blankly at the looming pink walls of the Snail Plant as they passed by her window.

“Why?” she asked, finally.

“You need to learn to be more aggressive,” he said. “I thought it would be good for you to have the first move.”

“How did you get me to always pick white?” she asked.

“Sleight of hand,” he said. “I learned it from one of my students.”

She tried to remember if she had ever seen him do anything unusual with his hand or his sleeve before he extended his fists, but nothing came to mind. “Do you do that when you play those guys?” she asked, wondering how Oggy Osterberg would respond to such subterfuge.

“I can’t,” he said. “They know the trick. I think Nicolai used it on you. He likes to go first.”

Figures, Jen thought, wrapping her arms across her face to block the glare of the setting sun.

Chapter 37