It’s what I imagine.
My running in the opposite direction acknowledges, I suppose, an even sadder truth—that we should have left Railton altogether, instead of making this coward’s march a slender four miles out of town. When the wind is right, wisps of dark, ashy film are borne on the breeze like polluted snow all the way from town. And so I run deeper into the green hills and woods, vaguely aware that these extend, more or less unbroken, all the way to Canada, where, beer commercials tell us, everything is pure and clean.
About a mile up the blacktop is the tiny village of Allegheny Wells proper, a community of some twenty houses, roughly the same size as the two Allegheny Estates developments. Here, the houses are smaller, two-bedroom raised ranches mostly, and they are clustered around, at the village’s only intersection, the steepled Presbyterian church, the lights in the belfry of which are coming on just as I lumber into town. Except during services, the church’s front door is always padlocked, probably to guard against the temporary conversions of cold, winded joggers like me. I consider doing a victory lap around the building and heading back. After all, that would be a two-mile run, and I only began jogging again a couple of weeks ago. But for some reason I’m energized by my throbbing nose and my visible breath escaping in white, reassuring bursts, so I decide to turn right at the intersection and jog up the half-mile grade to where my daughter Julie and her husband, Russell, have just this autumn built their house. My wife may believe that I run away from unpleasantness, but in my view there’s unpleasantness on all points of the compass, including this one.
This house of Julie’s is a proscribed topic. When I bring it up, Lily shoots me one of her warning glances and reminds me that we’ve agreed to butt out of our children’s lives. Basically, I agree. I dislike meddling in their affairs, even when it’s obvious as hell that somebodyought to. Still, there wouldn’t have been much margin in pointing out to my daughter Julie that they could not afford this house she and Russell were building.
This simple fact is so manifest that it cannot have escaped even Julie, who has never understood money—how it comes to you, how long it’s likely to last, where it goes, how long it will be before there’s more, what you’ll do until then. More painful than her naivete is the fact that she doesn’t believe herself to
be
naive. Should you make the mistake of asking her why she’s doing something so stupid, she’ll explain it to you. The house, she informed me, would be not just a home but also a tax shelter. “You’re kidding, right?” I asked her, looking for signs that she might be kidding, finding instead evidence of anger. “Tax shelters are for people who make too
much
money,” I explained, “not too little. The fact that you resent paying taxes on your earnings doesn’t necessarily mean you need a shelter.” The effect of such fiscal wisdom on my daughter was so predictable that even I might have predicted it. All along it has been her intention not just to build this house but to build it
anyway
—that is, come hell or high water, in defiance of reality and sense, both of which represent for Julie the odds that will just have to be overcome. Julie likes movies, and I suspect she’s seen one too many of the sort where long odds are defied and faith rewarded. By trying to reason with her, I became part of the already long odds she’d vowed to beat. My daughter likes television, too, and I suspect that her thought process has been corrupted by advertising. Like many Americans, she no longer understands the meaning of simple words. She sees nothing absurd about the assertion “you
deserve
a break today” when it’s applied across the entire spectrum of society. She believes she’s
worth
the extra money she spends on her hair. Several of her friends have big houses. Doesn’t
My running in the opposite direction acknowledges, I suppose, an even sadder truth—that we should have left Railton altogether, instead of making this coward’s march a slender four miles out of town. When the wind is right, wisps of dark, ashy film are borne on the breeze like polluted snow all the way from town. And so I run deeper into the green hills and woods, vaguely aware that these extend, more or less unbroken, all the way to Canada, where, beer commercials tell us, everything is pure and clean.
About a mile up the blacktop is the tiny village of Allegheny Wells proper, a community of some twenty houses, roughly the same size as the two Allegheny Estates developments. Here, the houses are smaller, two-bedroom raised ranches mostly, and they are clustered around, at the village’s only intersection, the steepled Presbyterian church, the lights in the belfry of which are coming on just as I lumber into town. Except during services, the church’s front door is always padlocked, probably to guard against the temporary conversions of cold, winded joggers like me. I consider doing a victory lap around the building and heading back. After all, that would be a two-mile run, and I only began jogging again a couple of weeks ago. But for some reason I’m energized by my throbbing nose and my visible breath escaping in white, reassuring bursts, so I decide to turn right at the intersection and jog up the half-mile grade to where my daughter Julie and her husband, Russell, have just this autumn built their house. My wife may believe that I run away from unpleasantness, but in my view there’s unpleasantness on all points of the compass, including this one.
This house of Julie’s is a proscribed topic. When I bring it up, Lily shoots me one of her warning glances and reminds me that we’ve agreed to butt out of our children’s lives. Basically, I agree. I dislike meddling in their affairs, even when it’s obvious as hell that somebodyought to. Still, there wouldn’t have been much margin in pointing out to my daughter Julie that they could not afford this house she and Russell were building.
This simple fact is so manifest that it cannot have escaped even Julie, who has never understood money—how it comes to you, how long it’s likely to last, where it goes, how long it will be before there’s more, what you’ll do until then. More painful than her naivete is the fact that she doesn’t believe herself to
be
naive. Should you make the mistake of asking her why she’s doing something so stupid, she’ll explain it to you. The house, she informed me, would be not just a home but also a tax shelter. “You’re kidding, right?” I asked her, looking for signs that she might be kidding, finding instead evidence of anger. “Tax shelters are for people who make too
much
money,” I explained, “not too little. The fact that you resent paying taxes on your earnings doesn’t necessarily mean you need a shelter.” The effect of such fiscal wisdom on my daughter was so predictable that even I might have predicted it. All along it has been her intention not just to build this house but to build it
anyway
—that is, come hell or high water, in defiance of reality and sense, both of which represent for Julie the odds that will just have to be overcome. Julie likes movies, and I suspect she’s seen one too many of the sort where long odds are defied and faith rewarded. By trying to reason with her, I became part of the already long odds she’d vowed to beat. My daughter likes television, too, and I suspect that her thought process has been corrupted by advertising. Like many Americans, she no longer understands the meaning of simple words. She sees nothing absurd about the assertion “you
deserve
a break today” when it’s applied across the entire spectrum of society. She believes she’s
worth
the extra money she spends on her hair. Several of her friends have big houses. Doesn’t
Similar Books
