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stained-glass skylight: 138 Lincoln Place, in the historic district of Park Slope, named for streets that descend gently from the long, lush meadow and ball fields of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Both his own and Carole’s school loans long behind them, Will is paying down the mortgage, each month chipping away at the principal, reduced now from the $475, 000 they borrowed to $280, 000. They’ve lived on Lincoln Place for thirteen years, long enough that the rent for the upstairs apartment at last covers the monthly mortgage, a fact that thrills him, allowing him to tear open statements purely for the pleasure of seeing that his last assault on the principal has been recorded, even if it’s no more than a few hundred dollars. It’s nothing he could have anticipated, but their mortgage bill has become the single piece of mail to which he always looks forward. Each time he checks the principal, he translates his most recent subtraction from what they owe into its material equivalent: a pocket door, one of the original chandeliers, the parlor’s crown molding. Checks made out to him by his patients are welcome, but oddly, they don’t inspire the same feeling of accomplishment. Brick by brick, he is making himself and his wife the owners of these four soaring and dignified stories faced with a milk-and-coffee-colored stone that no longer exists in nature, brownstone having been quarried into extinction many years before he was born.
    But Will didn’t—couldn’t—articulate any of what he knows about himself, his essential self, in a five-hundred-word essay. Not any more than did the alumni who submitted their brief, sanitized promos, admitting none of the missteps or misfortunes or unfulfilled longings that might have added texture to their whitewashed autobiographies. No one wrote in to say he’d lusted after his neighbor’s wife, and then married her. Or that he’d suffered all his life from gender dysmorphia and was now a woman, no longer Joe but Joanne. Or that, in the wake of her daughter’s diagnosis of schizophrenia, she’d fallen into a profound depression that was cured only when she walked out, left her family, abandoned them because, after all, how much was a person expected to endure?
    Will scans each page of the reunion book and flips to the next, skimming over advanced degrees and promotions; residencies and relocations; awards and more awards; marriages and births; travel to Turkey, to Tuscany, to Majorca, to Machu Picchu, the Galápagos; marathons, triathlons, thrills of victory, agonies of defeat; PTA committees and car-pool purgatories, these last not so much complaints as advertisements disguised as complaints:
Look at our
children; are they not the ultimate wealth and accomplishment?
    Many of the photographs are reproduced from holiday greeting cards, families carefully arranged around sparkling trees, hair combed, eyes bright. Without conscious intent Will finds himself lingering on the faces of those few who admit a family misfortune, looking for evidence of losses on which they don’t dwell but make curious asides, rather like sneezing: quick, helpless convulsions that interrupt a text or are bulleted absurdly within the résumé format. These references are abbreviated and in every case weirdly upbeat, their authors clearly having determined to present a hard-won silver lining rather than the lowering black clouds of fate: “Lost my brother to cancer in 1993, and learned a lot about how strong I am!” “Our daughter Kyla, 12, has cystic fibrosis and she is Awesome!!! She is doing Great!!!” “Two brain surgeries, 1999 and 2001—if anyone out there is suffering unexplained neurological symptoms or has been diagnosed with NMH, e-mail me! I love to share!” After each of these plucky announcements, followed by at least one exclamation point (a few decorated with little happy-face icons, as well), the