WHAT IS THE INTERNET?
One week before my wedding day, upon returning to my hotel room with a tube of borrowed toothpaste, I find a small bird waiting inside the area called the antechamber and know within moments it is my grandmother. I recognize the glittering, hematite eyes, the expression of cunning disapproval. The odor of a gym at close of day encircles her.
What is the Internet? the bird says, does not say.
Her head is the color of warning: sharp curve, yield-yellow. The eyes on either side of the Cro-Magnon crown are lined the way hers were in shoddy cornflower pencil as if to say, Really look, here. Her hair, that had throughout her life hurled silvery messages skyward, has been replaced by orderly, navy stripes that emanate down her pate like ripples in silk. Under the beak where her unpronounced chin would have been, four regal feathers pose, each marked by an ebony dot. She hovers inches above the sofa’s back, chastened and restless by her new form.
The toothpaste lands with a dull thud on the carpet. I’m silent when stunned. No getting me to talk.
What is the Internet? my grandmother the bird insists, speaking as if we are in the middle of a conversation, which, in a way, we are.
She had called to ask this question ten years before. At the time I considered explaining the technological phenomenon, but she was so old. What would be the point, I reasoned, of telling her about the show priming to begin after her exit? There have been many times in my life when, encountering an opportunity to do good, for reasons of shyness or shock, an unwillingness to leave a safe perch has made me balk. I told my grandmother the Internet was solely for engineers and that its effect on society would be nominal.
The following day she climbed a ladder poised against her house, meaning to hammer a warped shingle. Something like a phone call—we were never certain—summoned her. She misremembered the ladder, fell from the roof, and lay unconscious until a neighbor found her. For a month we attempted to will her out of a coma with the music of Lawrence Welk. She preferred to stay asleep.
After she was gone, every room was a nothing room.
I don’t regret letting others rush forward to care for strangers in need. I don’t regret calling my brother a little shit on his wedding day. However, lying to my grandmother about the Internet placed a painful pebble at the bottom of my stomach that would not go away.
Now, my second chance claws the rim of a water glass in present, Internet-rich day, as alive as the rest of us, trying to sip through her beak and failing.
“It turned out to be more influential than I led you to believe,” I say.
No shit.
Tasked with explaining it, I realize how little I know about the Internet. “It began as numbers on a screen.” I make a blurping sound to signify dial-up and explain that it grew from a device only a few people had, to Wi-Fi, which I think is in the air? I gesture to indicate: exploding. Network names showcase a defining feature of the user. Biscottiworshipper. Sadoboegirl. “People use it to promote themselves like brands.” This is deep and rich information. My cheeks heat, I’m proud of myself. I extrapolate: “Because everyone is famous, no one is.” I deepen, reverse: “Which is, like everything else, a good and bad thing.” I say, “Link, blog, router, spam.”
Even as a bird my grandmother’s dubiousness is unmistakable. The cocked avian focus, doubting me. When she was alive, she preferred staying in her slippers all day and the term “shove it up your ass” to anything, maybe even to my grandfather who over time became a scudding, booted shadow in the house’s secondary rooms. In the garage, winding a clock. In the spare bedroom, repairing an outlet. Shove the clock. Shove the outlet. If my grandmother ever regretted slicing into another’s feelings like fondant, she never admitted it. Any room containing her was merry. This was a big deal for me, since most of my childhood felt panicked and serious. She’d listen and move her eyebrows in a way that corrected my perspective. With a gaze, she could lift me older.
Offended on behalf of the product I’ve just begun to understand, I sell. “There’s almost no living being you can’t connect with.”
At “no living being” I think of her, legs tucked into her plumage, “sitting” above the cushions. How does it feel to be connected to every living thing?
“Sad,” I admit, and she says, Sad?
“When you can see anyone at any hour, it collapses perspective and time. Add to that the isolation and distance from which most people observe, and the Internet gives the impression that one person is simultaneously having a party, turning fifty, scuba diving, baking with a great aunt.”
Sounds like a giant panic attack.
“That’s not technology’s fault,” I say. “The Internet is indifferent. It’s the people who ruin it, posting only highlights, like every night is Saturday night. But most of life is Wednesday afternoon, and no one thinks that’s meaningful. They omit loneliness and tedium. The people who do post honestly are considered whiners.”
The bird huffs, nods. No one should bother anyone else with their problems. This had been a phrase she used in life and one of the fueling philosophies of our family. What a waste of time.
“It is, but there are beautiful aspects to it.” I press a few buttons on my phone to conjure a picture.
Goodie, she says. A wall.
“The Great Wall of China,” I correct her. “Everyone can visit faraway places. Kind of. It’s a grand leveler in terms of class.”
If you can afford a phone, I guess.
I change the screen option and a grid of photographs appears. “People have their own page on their preferred platform.” I scroll so she can see:
A frosted cake. Dog on a forest path. Woman smiling over macaroni. Page of a book. Pulled taffy. Boy mussed from a nap. Lit pool. Selfie of a woman balancing a cat on either shoulder. A dog eats Cheez-Its off pink linoleum. A sign: DO NOT SHELVE ITEMS IN AISLE THREE WITHOUT ASKING JOANNA. Bunting in a desert town. Aproned gelato server hovering over delicate, pastel vats.
“A good way to connect with what are called ‘friends,’” I say. “Not regular friends, usually it’s like the guy who plays softball with your coworker.”
Who wants to be more connected? the bird says, does not say. Everyone is friends now?
“I think people dislike other people at the ratio they did before you—”
We’re not going to get very far if you can’t say died.
“It’s called virtual.” I frown. “I’m not describing this correctly.”
You’re describing it fine.
“How would you know?” I say at the same time as she says, But how would I know?
* * *
I’ve come a week early to this inn on the shaft of Long Island to prepare for the transition from woman to wife, to do what the groom calls “decompress” because “of late” I’ve become a bit of a “nightmare.” To break apart if necessary, but to do so properly, amid slatted pool chairs and conference coffee. I’m thirty-six, ethnically ambiguous, and hold an intense job I do not like, biographer of people with traumatic brain injury. I present their lives in court, using storyboards and dioramas. Everyone is thrilled I’m getting married. No one can believe I’ve found such a sweet man. Everyone adores the treats sold in this town that are hybrids of bagels and flatbread. Flagels.