I did my fieldwork in India and then returned to New York to write my dissertation, before settling into my first teaching job in Queens. In the meantime, Eva had graduated and was working for various foundations in New York that collected money from billionaires and used it to fight diseases and promote democracy around the world. She swiftly climbed up. When we moved back to California, she got a job before I did, at a well-funded NGO called Rapid Responders International. Earthquake in Haiti? Rapid Responders was there within hours with food, water, and supplies, while the UN and other nations, with their various bureaucracies, were still figuring things out. Cholera outbreak in Somalia? Doctors were there treating patients before the story appeared below the fold of the New York Times. As the years passed, Eva coordinated bigger and bigger operations from the safety of California. She loved the job, and she was really efficient at managing large-scale, complex logistics. The hours were flexible when things were calm in the world, but she could easily be in the office for fourteen-hour days during hurricane season.
She didn’t seem to mind, though the social requirements of the job did bother her. There were plenty of rich people in town ready to throw events to raise money for Rapid Responders. It was a sexy organization to support. For a while, I’d accompanied her to some of these. But I stopped going after one, at a stunning oceanfront estate, where men in tailored jackets and women wearing thousand-dollar garden dresses listened to a doctor talk about the problems of syphilis in sub-Saharan Africa. Sure, by the end of the night some money had flowed from those who didn’t need it to those who desperately did. I just couldn’t stomach the idea of dressing up and drinking specialty cocktails to help the poor.
But I watched from the sidelines. Eva always forwarded me emails about the various fundraisers going on around town, for her organization and for others. The affluent, I discovered, like to role-play while they give away their money. Arabian Nights, A Night in the Hamptons, The Roaring Twenties. My favorite? Bollywood Dreams—a gala at which the guests were encouraged to wear their best Indian costumes, and there were designations for the amount of money the attendees gave, from highest to lowest: Queen Victoria, Viceroy, Governor, Maharaja. The lowest category? Sahib. Donate a thousand dollars, and for a night you could wear linen and feel like a midlevel colonial functionary. The rich truly don’t give a fuck.
“Let’s hope things are mellow,” I said, giving Eva a kiss on the cheek and heading toward the door. “Here and in the world.”
“I’ll pick up the kids this afternoon,” Eva said, turning to their sandwiches.
I lingered at the edge of the kitchen. “I had a little disagreement with the committee last night,” I said. Though I wanted to tell her, I also didn’t want to relive the moment. Every time I’d replayed it in my mind, I felt a full-body cringe. “I’m sure you’ll see Leslie or Suzanne at drop-off this morning. Please don’t listen to them. I’ll explain later.”
“Oh, no,” she said, with concern in her voice. “What happened?” But then she added, matter-of-factly, “What did you say?”
“Why do you assume I said something?” I hated that I had become so predictable.
Eva cocked her head slightly. She didn’t need to remind me of my habit of saying things that I shouldn’t. “Can you just tell me what happened?”
“It’s not that big of a deal. But I have to go get some stuff done before class. I’ll call you later.”
Before Eva could object, Arun walked into the kitchen, wearing a pair of tight red underwear. His body was still burnt brown from the summer, his long hair lighter from days in the sun and water. Our little California-bred Mowgli.
“Going to work?” he asked.
“Yep. Wanna come and teach my classes?”
His face disappeared into Eva’s belly. Sometimes I think both boys longed to be back in there.
“I’ll see you tonight,” I said, winking at Eva.
For a moment, as I drove away, I felt the sanctity of the early morning again, the coolness and the possibility of a day that had not yet been misspent. I might have liked the life of a monk—or at least the part where they woke up early, prayed, and then maintained uncluttered minds for the rest of the day.
I drove through our neighborhood and then got on the freeway. Much of my twenty-minute commute went along the Pacific Ocean. The first sight of water, running onto a strip of beach where we often went on the weekends to swim and tide-pool, grabbed hold of me every morning. It was so beautiful, now and at dusk when the deep orange of the setting sun blanketed the water. Every day the splendor stunned me anew, then left me feeling empty. Sadness at the heart of unrelenting beauty? There has to be a German word for that.
There were some solid five-foot waves out there, and several wet-suited bodies. I envied the seeming simplicity of surfing: arriving on the shore, putting on a thick layer of protection, pushing out against the waves, and gliding on the sea, over and over again until you hit the point of exhaustion. Every surfer I knew seemed cleansed from the water and the salt.
I’d tried it once myself, while I was courting Eva; her father had taken me out to give it a go. He’d lent me one of his wet suits.
“This should fit fine,” he’d said.
I was excited to see myself in it and started putting it on, but it was so tight I could barely move my leg. Eva’s father had come to take a look, and in the kindest tone said, “I think you put your leg where the arm’s supposed to go.”
That was that with surfing.
I’d had this feeling so many times in my life: the sense that I didn’t know how to manage a situation that everyone around me seemed to inhabit so effortlessly. Even in the ocean, this frothy source of all life, I never felt truly comfortable. It was too vast, threatening, and unpredictable. Whenever we went to the beach, Eva was the one who took the boys out. She had grown up swimming in the ocean and knew the contours of the waves as they came in, how to challenge some and respect others.
Turning away from the water, I switched on the radio and quickly changed stations. I landed on the classic rock station: Springsteen and his hungry heart. I’ve always loved Bruce’s handsome brooding, how addicted he is to attention, how he shies away from it all the same. But even as he gives voice to my inner wants and fears, I’ve always sensed that I’m not the kind of outsider he’s singing for. And yet I listen, over and over again. Bruce and then Tom Petty, followed by Neil Young—who always manages to make me nostalgic for a life I’ve never had—got me to my exit.
The university where I teach also overlooks the ocean. At first, I’d been disappointed with the clean lines of the campus’s form-follows-function architecture, the buildings a bunch of mismatched matchboxes. But eventually I realized their genius. The natural beauty of the ocean was so stunning, ornate buildings would have gotten in the way. Of course Oxford is spectacular and impressive; it’s in the middle of dreary, rainy England.
Since it was so early, I got a parking spot right next to the six-story building that housed my office. Nearly every time I walked from my car to the building, I was thankful to work in such a beautiful place, and yet felt an ache of sorrow, leaning toward resignation, about how my career had stalled. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I arrived very early, well before the department secretary, did all my class prep, taught my three classes through the day, and did my best to avoid my colleagues. I had learned that having a very small footprint was my key to survival. But that had not always been the case. When I finished graduate school and went off to my first job, I’d felt so ascendant, confident that there would always be a correlation between hard work and success. All these years later, I’d realized that luck, good fortune, and the ability to translate hard work into usable currency can be just as, if not more, significant in professional advancement. And somewhere along the way, I’d struck out.