The Lay of the Land Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t mention it.
    And yet there’s much about America that baffles him still, in spite of fifteen years’ residence and patient study. As a Buddhist, he fails to understand the place of religion in our political doings. He has never been to California or even to Chicago or Ohio, and so lacks the natives’ intrinsic appreciation of history as a function of landmass. And even though he’s a real estate salesman, he doesn’t finally see why Americans move so much, and isn’t interested in my answer: because they can. However, during the time he’s been here, he’s taken a new name, bought a house, cast three presidential ballots and made some money. He’s also memorized the complete
New Jersey Historical Atlas
and can tell you where the spring-loaded window and the paper clip were invented—Millrun and Englewood; where the first manure spreader was field-trialed—in Moretown; and which American city was the first nuclear-free zone—Hoboken. Such readout, he believes, makes him persuasive to home buyers. And in this, he’s like many of our citizens, including the ones who go back to the Pilgrims: He’s armed himself with just enough information, even if it’s wrong, to make him believe that what he wants he deserves, that bafflement is a form of curiosity and that these two together form an inner strength that should let him pick all the low-hanging fruit. And who’s to say he’s wrong? He may already be as assimilated as he’ll ever need to be.
             
    M ore interesting landscape for the citizen scientist now passes my window. A Benjamin Moore paint “test farm,” with holiday browsers strolling the grassy aisles, pointing to this or that pastel or maroon tile as if they were for sale. More significant signage: SUCCESS IS ADDICTIVE (a bank); HEALTHY MATE DATING SERVICE; DOLLAR UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE FOR HIGHER EARNING . Then the cement-bunker Ocean County Library, where holiday offerings are advertised out front—a poetry reading on Wednesday, a CPR workshop on Thanksgiving Day, two Philadelphia Phillies players driving over Saturday for an inspirational seminar about infidelity, “the Achilles’ heel of big-league sports.”
    “I just don’t understand it,” Mike says again, because I haven’t answered him the first time he said it. His pointed chin is still elevated, as if he’s seeing out the bottom of his expensive yellow glasses. He looks at me, inclining his head toward his shoulder. He’s wearing a silver imitation Rolex as thick as a car bumper and looks—behind the wheel—like a pint-sized mafioso on his way to a golf outing. He is a strange vision to be seen from other Suburbans.
    “You don’t understand ‘Tight butts make me nuts’?” I say. “That’s pretty basic.”
    “I don’t understand suicide survivors.” He keeps careful eyes on the Parkway entrance, a hundred yards ahead of us.
    “It just wouldn’t work as well if it said ‘Welcome Suicide Failures,’” I say. The names Charles Boyer, Socrates, Meriwether Lewis and Virginia Woolf tour my mind. Exemplary suicide success stories.
    “Natural death is very dignified,” he says. This is the kind of “spiritual” conversation he likes, in which he can further prove his superiority over me. “Avoiding death invites suffering and fear. We shouldn’t mock.”
    “They’re not avoiding it and they’re not mocking it,” I say. “They like getting together in a multipurpose room and having some snacks. Haven’t you ever thought about suicide? I thought about it last week.”
    “Would you attend a suicide survivors meeting?” Mike roams his tongue around the interior of his plump cheek.
    “I might if I had time on my hands. I could make up a good story. That’s all they want. It’s like AA. It’s all a process.”
    Mike’s bespectacled face assumes a brows-down ancient look. He doesn’t officially approve of self-determination, which he considers to be non-virtuous action and basically pointless.