It wasn’t three weeks before an email popped up in her inbox from Wendy Harmon, a literary agent at one of the top agencies in New York, who said her mother had forwarded her the now-viral video. She wanted to know if Charlotte had ever considered writing a book, which of course she had. There isn’t a college professor on Earth who hasn’t.
What Charlotte never banked on was becoming a guru. The book (or, The Book, as she’d come to think of it) chronicled her attempt, according to the jacket copy, as a “frazzled wife and mother, to apply cutting-edge ‘positive psychology’ research to better her own life.” Not that she really felt that she needed to better her own life at the time, but Wendy and the editors at the publishing house who bought her manuscript thought that the secret sauce for the book’s success would be a personal approach. So she rewrote the draft she had initially submitted—essentially a regurgitation of the class she taught—with more anecdotes from her own life. This was much harder than she anticipated, the irony of course being, as she said to Jason, that writing a book about her personal quest for more happiness was actually making her a little bit miserable. (Also, she hated that the book cover called her “frazzled,” which made her feel like Cathy from the comics. Had any of her male colleagues ever been described as “frazzled”?)
Whatever, she told herself. She chose (naturally) to focus on the positive. It was an instant hit. She sold a zillion books, and the royalties were enough to knock out the IVF debt and finally complete the kitchen renovation they’d spent years saving for. And what was inside the book was mostly true. She wrote that she wasn’t depressed, and there wasn’t anything exactly wrong, but she wanted, as she stated in the introduction, “a deeper sense of satisfaction that she was living life to the fullest.” She promised her readers less stress, less fretting, that they wouldn’t end each day feeling they were crawling across a finish line. Life is more than a series of chores and tasks to be completed, she wrote. And while it’s totally unrealistic to expect to roll through each day in a state of bliss, aren’t we at least entitled to rest our heads on our pillows most nights feeling solidly content?
Sometimes, late at night, she thinks back on that final sentence from the introduction, the words returning to her like angry pinpricks, and she wonders what her life would be like had she never written them. Because the truth is, most nights now, when she pulls her covers up to her chin and turns off her light, she doesn’t feel as happy as she ought to be. Or as she once was, before all of this madness with the book began. If she’s downright honest about it, becoming a happiness guru has made her as unhappy as she’s ever been.
She picks up her phone and types a hashtag into the search field, one that she coined just after the book came out: #happyhighfive, the practice of identifying five things that you’re grateful for each day. She scrolls through the entries. @Betsy423 has posted a photo of her green smoothie. @CaliJenna is grateful for last night’s Pacific Coast sunset (and rightfully so, Charlotte thinks, examining the postcard-perfect view of the ocean beyond the woman’s infinity pool). She looks down again at her journal and sighs, then she turns her attention back to her phone, tapping the icon on its screen that will take her back to her profile. Her picture of the bunny family has now racked up 8,482 likes.
Just over an hour later, she and Jason are eating breakfast at the kitchen counter, shuffling sections of the newspaper back and forth, when she takes a bite of her avocado toast, picks up the Saturday real estate insert, and notices the date on the top of the page.
“It’s April Fools’ Day,” she says, shifting on the stool.
Deeply involved in the opinion page, he doesn’t answer. He runs a hand over his head, scratches the back of his neck. He buzzed his hair short last year, when his bald spot became too noticeable to ignore any longer.
“Hey,” she says, waving a hand in front of his face.
“What?” He looks weary, his mouth turned down at the corners.
“It’s April Fools’ Day,” she says again, more pointedly this time. Nine hours of sleep and he’s still tired?
“Oh,” he says, barely glancing up.
“That’s it?”
He shrugs and wiggles the side of his fork into his fried egg. “It’s not like it’s Christmas.”
“No.” She sighs. “It’s not.”
“What?” He looks up at her, defensive.
“Nothing. I just wish we’d remembered to pull a prank on Birdie. But it’s no big deal.”
“Huh?”
“A prank. Remember? Like we usually do? Was it last year that we froze her bowl of cereal the night before, with the spoon inside?”
He cracks a smile. “A classic. I can’t believe she fell for it again.”
“We could still do something.” She turns and looks at the clock on the microwave. “She’ll be home from Hannah’s soon, but we have enough time.”
He nods his chin toward the sink. “We could tape down the handle of the sink sprayer thing.”
“She knows that one.” He goes back to reading. “We should have done something,” she mutters to herself, looking around the room. Food coloring, she thinks, opening a cabinet. What could I do with food coloring?
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Jason shake his head, furrowing his eyebrows as he lifts the newspaper and flips the page, snapping it into the air to straighten it. She once found the habit endearing; it reminded her of her dad, whom Jason had never met. Now the snapping drives her crazy, along with the loud way that he chews, the way he can’t eat an egg without dousing it in sriracha and getting half of it on his freckled face, and the fact that he hangs on to pit-stained ratty T-shirts that are older than their marriage. She glances at the one he’s wearing today, from the Cherry Blossom 10K in 1998.
She picks up her phone and sees that her friend Stephanie has texted, saying she’ll drop off Birdie on the way to her daughter Hannah’s soccer game. They’d met back when the girls were infants and in the same playgroup, and fortunately for the adults, who’d become fast friends, the girls had remained inseparable long past the point of the two women forcing them together with side-by-side dates in their jogging strollers, group Kindermusik classes, and joint memberships in the same Girl Scout troop. Now, they’re nearly through their freshman year of high school, and despite Birdie having her first boyfriend—a fact that Charlotte, in particular, isn’t thrilled about (wasn’t it too soon?)—the girls still seem to be as close as ever.
She starts to go to her Pinterest app to look for an April Fools’ idea but opens Instagram instead. Birdie isn’t allowed to use social media yet, though according to her, she is the “last living person in Arlington” without it. (Actually, just last week, she told Charlotte that not letting her get on Snapchat is as old-fashioned as if she made her wear “those pads with belts from the 1950s.”) Charlotte gets it. A lot of Birdie’s friends have had Instagram accounts since fourth or fifth grade, and over the years, Birdie’s tried every argument under the sun: Hannah’s mom lets her have an account (“Every family makes their own decisions,” Charlotte tells her), Charlotte has an account (“Only because I need it for work,” she says), following her cousins’ and aunt’s and uncles’ accounts would help them stay in better touch (“You’re welcome to call them anytime,” she says). The conversations always end the same way: Charlotte starting in with “The research shows—” and Birdie interrupting her, lamenting, “I know, I know! Why do I have to be a psychology professor’s kid?” Charlotte knows that her standing firm makes Birdie a Luddite among her friends, but she doesn’t care. The research does show, and Charlotte’s read enough about teenage girls and social media to stand firm. The skyrocketing anxiety, depression, and suicide rates are more than enough evidence for her. On several occasions, Stephanie has justified Hannah’s Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok accounts by saying that her daughter’s posts provide a window into her life unlike anything their own parents had when they were growing up, and while Charlotte isn’t convinced, she has no problem using Birdie’s friends’ accounts, most of which are public, for her own intel. She makes a point not to actually like or comment on anything they post; that would be over the top, like one of those parents from her own childhood who tried too hard to befriend the kids, singing along to Guns N’ Roses in the car and offering to buy them wine coolers, and because none of Birdie’s friends have ever mentioned the fact that she follows them, it feels anonymous somehow even if it’s not.