Everything is wonderful. Not really. I’m just speaking for myself. Of course, everything is wonderful for me all the time, technically and also in the context of historical and prehistorical physical and social conditions, but sometimes that’s just not enough. What I am trying to say is, we had a long vacation, and I am happy. I am even happy that we went to Slava’s Snowshow, that misreviewed, philosophically misguided, mildly abusive, lazy, overpriced load of hokum, because, circularly enough, I was happy there. I was very bored, and I almost fell asleep a couple of times, and Henry didn’t like the beginning, and turned in the dark to stare at me, and silently transmit this thought into my brain, five or six times, and at the end John cried that balloons weren’t being hit to him, turned snarling on the little girl next to him to seize a balloon from her, then cried pitifully as we left the theater and I led him by the hand through Times Square to the subway, and it looked to other people that we were cruel, uncaring parents, when really we are the kind of parents who spend a small fortune to take our children to see clowns and snow (Boys, I said, boys, we’ve got tickets to Slava’s Snowshow! and they said, What’s that? And I said, Um, there’s clowns! and snow! You’ll love it! and they disagreed and I began to see their point, and to see that I had maybe made a mistake in purchasing the tickets) and are in other ways kind and loving. The night we saw the show, after the children were in bed and David and I were also in bed, the lights out, David said to me, Those were some Russian clowns, and I was happy that we could admit that the clowns had been too Russian, and in fact too much like clowns for our taste.

We were a model of happiness, and I find that happiness—isn’t this strange?—needs models, needs examples, needs memories you can attach it to, so you can find your way back to it, in the event that you and happiness ever drift gently apart.

I’m on hold. The music is very beautiful. There are voices singing, and a saxophone. Now I am talking to someone. I am saying, Hello. I am saying, Can you help me with this? He is saying, Let’s pretend. I am saying, I don’t want to pretend. I want you to help. He is saying, That is exactly what I’m going to pretend I am doing.

I am saying, I regret my previous decision. He is saying, Shhhh, little baby. It’s all right. He is saying, Think of a stream of golden coins falling from my hand into yours. I am saying, That’s how I got into this mess. He is saying, Isn’t the sound of coins falling from my hand into yours soothing? I am saying, uncertainly, There are some things money can’t buy.

I am saying, I am unhappy. He is saying, Of course you are. I am saying, Do you understand what I am saying? He is saying, It is possible to be happy in this universe. I am saying, Not with the phone service I currently have.

He is saying, Have you ever been online? It is a marvelous world where wondrous things can happen. I am saying, I am your responsibility. He is saying, Look over there! I am saying, What? What is it? Our conversation is over. I curse his name.

It’s not that I’m not doing things, I am doing things, I am doing a lot of things, I’m taking trains into the city and ripping my skirt on the arm rest so that my underwear shows and I have to run into a store and buy a new skirt, I’m meeting my youngest sister for dinner and getting schmackled on a bubbly red, I’m walking home from the train station at 11 under a full moon, I’m reading the entire New Yorker in bed in the morning while the men hammer and bang things somewhere else on my house. The house! I’m driving to Stamford to look for wood flooring, I’m agreeing to expensive additional procedures for the renovation, I’m calling the tree man in for a consultation, I’m talking to our contractor about our progress and handing him an enormous check, I am in pursuit of the perfect front door.

I'm reserving a room at a midtown hotel, where I'm planning to meet my husband tonight, I'm holding an appointment for a haircut on Wednesday, before I head to the Open with my father. I’m slowly making my way through Saturday, although it’s overdue, I’m going through the children’s papers for the first day of school, I’m following Gonzales’ resignation, and the arrest of Larry Craig. I'm eating breakfast, and I'm even doing the dishes.

The children are gone, is the dramatic way of saying that they are at their grandparents’, and happy, and that they slept through the night. I had so many things to do in their absence, but I didn’t understand how I would feel, doing them.

For the first several days of any vacation, I think, What’s vacation for? That’s how much fun I am to be with.

But I’m even more fun before vacation starts. Five days, maybe six, if you’re lucky, and sometimes people are very lucky, I know my husband considers himself (he’s said this) the luckiest man on the face of the Earth, before we leave I become, what’s the word? totally anxious about everything that I ever had to do or will have to do until the end of time. What about the children? is a thing I think to myself. They will have school in three weeks. What am I going to pack for Henry’s lunch? How will I ever get the doctor to sign their medical forms? How will I convince her to do this? And money! We might not have enough! David, do we have enough money? He says What? and rolls over. Also: Did I really graduate from law school? I never got my diploma in the mail, it’s true. On the other hand, the school communicated with the Bar and I couldn’t have passed the Bar if I didn’t graduate and I did pass the Bar. And yet those dreams that I have another paper to write are so convincing. Speaking of dreams, and writing, and all that, all that good stuff, Did I spend the last six years writing a shit novel? I hope not! Body hair. I must have it removed. Am I inappropriate with the children? Was Mom tense on the phone with me? What did Dad mean when he said that thing the other day? And what about the laundry and I have to get to the drug store and are we renting car seats? Aha! That’s it! Those things are vacation things. I’m tense about vacation! Relief floods through me, my husband is grasped around the middle and lifted into the air, the children are kissed all over their ears, because they've turned their heads from me. Vacation! Not my whole fucking life. Thank God. Now I can go lie on the sofa and put off packing until the last possible minute.

I’m not leaving tomorrow, by the way, I’ll be here tomorrow, but after that you’ll have to win your own round-robins and threaten your own children and wish you were somewhere else, on your own. You won’t have me to do it for you. You’ll have to make your own half-assed references to other people’s art. Maybe this will be good for you. Maybe this is just the kind of thing you need. I think it is, actually. You’re lazy, and you’re soft.