Lionel Shriver - So Much for That

Time is money.B ENJAMIN F RANKLIN ,
Advice to a Young Tradesman , 1748

Shepherd Armstrong Knacker
Merrill Lynch Account Number 934-23F917
December 01, 2004December 31, 2004
Net Portfolio Value: $731,778.56

W hat do you pack for the rest of your life?

On research tripshe and Glynis had never called them vacationsShep had always packed too much, covering for every contingency: rain gear, a sweater on the off chance that the weather in Puerto Escondido was unseasonably cold. In the face of infinite contingencies, his impulse was to take nothing.

There was no rational reason to be creeping these halls stealthily like a thief come to burgle his own homepadding heel to toe on the floorboards, flinching when they creaked. He had double-checked that Glynis was out through early evening (for an appointment it bothered him that she did not say with whom or where). Calling on a weak pretense of asking about dinner plans when their son hadnt eaten a proper meal with his parents for the last year, he had confirmed that Zach was safely installed at a friends overnight. Shep was alone in the house. He neednt keep jumping when the heat came on. He neednt reach tremulously into the top dresser drawer for his boxers as if any time now his wrist would be seized and hed be read the Miranda.

Except that Shep was a burglar, after a fashion. Perhaps the sort that any American household most feared. He had arrived home from work a little earlier than usual in order to steal himself.

The swag bag of his large black Samsonite was unzipped on the bed, lying agape as it had for less drastic departures year after year. So far it contained: one comb.

He forced himself through the paces of collecting a travel shampoo, his shaving kit, even if he was doubtful that in The Afterlife he would continue to shave. But the electric toothbrush presented a quandary. The island had electricity, surely it did, but hed neglected to discover whether their plugs were flat American two-prongs, bulky British three-prongs, or the slender European kind, wide-set and round. He wasnt dead sure either whether the local current was 220 or 110. Sloppy; these were just the sorts of practical details that on earlier research forays theyd been rigorous about jotting down. But then, theyd lately grown less systematic, especially Glynis, whod sometimes slipped on more recent journeys abroad and used the word vacation . A tell, and there had been several.

Resistant at first to the Oral Bs jarring cranial buzz, at length Shep had come to relish the slick of his teeth once the tedium was complete. As with all technological advances, it felt unnatural to go backward, to resume the fitful scrub of splayed nylon on a plastic stick. But what if Glynis went to the bathroom when she came home and noticed that his blue-ringed toothbrush was missing, while hers, with the red ring, still sat on the sink? Best she didnt begin this of all evenings with perplexity or suspicion. He could always take Zachshed never heard the kid use itbut Shep couldnt see swiping his own sons toothbrush. (Shep had paid for the thing, of course, along with pretty much everything here. Yet little or nothing in this house felt like his. That used to bug him but now just made it easier to leave the salad spinner, the StairMaster, and the sofas behind.) Worse, he and Glynis shared the same recharger. He didnt want to leave her with a toothbrush that would last five or six days (he didnt want to leave her at all, but that was another matter), its weakening, terminal shudder providing a soundtrack for his wifes lapse into another of her periodic depressions.

So having unscrewed the wall mount only a turn or two, he tightened it back down. Restoring his own handle reassuringly to the recharger, he scrounged a manual brush from the medicine cabinet. He would have to grow accustomed to technological regression, which in a manner he couldnt quite put his finger on was surely good for the soul. Something about backtracking to a stage of development that you could understand.

He wasnt planning simply to cut and run, to disappear himself from his family absent announcement or explanation. That would be cruel, or crueler. He wasnt presenting her with a total fait accompli either, a wave goodbye at the door. Officially he would confront her with a choice, one for which, in the service of credibility, he had paid through the nose. Odds were that he had purchased nothing but an illusion, but an illusion could be priceless. So hed bought not one ticket, but three. They were nonrefundable. If his instincts were all out of whack and Glynis surprised him, Zach still wouldnt like it. But the boy was fifteen years old, and how was this for developmental regression: for once an American teenager would do what he was told.

A nxious about being caught in the act, in the end he had too much time. Glynis wouldnt be home for another couple of hours, and the Samsonite was replete. Given the confusion over plugs and current, hed thrown in a few manual hand tools and a Swiss Army knife; in the average crisis, you were still better off with a pair of needle-nose Vise-Grips than a BlackBerry. Only a couple of shirts, because he wanted to wear different shirts. Or no shirt. A few bits and pieces that a man with Sheps occupation knew could make the difference between satisfied self-sufficiency and disaster: duct tape; a selection of screws, bolts, and washers; silicon lubricant; plastic sealant; rubber bands ( elastics , for N Hampshire old-timers like his father); and a small roll of binding wire. A flashlight, for power cuts, and a stock of AAs. A novel he should have selected more carefully if he was taking only one. An EnglishSwahili phrasebook, malaria pills, deet. Prescription cortisone cream for persistent eczema on his ankle, a tube that would soon run out.

Obviating any further inclusions, his Merrill Lynch checkbook. He didnt like to think of himself as calculating, but it turned out to be fortunate that hed always kept this account in his name alone. He couldhe would, of course, offer to leave her half; she hadnt earned a dime of it, but they were married, and that was the law. Yet he would have to warn her that even hundreds of thousands of dollars wouldnt last her long in Westchester, and sooner or later shed have to do not her work but someone elses.

Hed had to stuff the Samsonite with newspaper to keep the paltry chattel from rattling in the British Airways hold. He stashed it in his closet, covering it with a bathrobe for good measure. A packed bag on the bedspread would alarm Glynis far more than a missing toothbrush.