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afflicted’s life story veers without transition back into the mundane.
    This is what Will has come to understand as his problem: transition, an obstacle on the page as in reality, because he insists on it, and there are unbridgeable divides in a life. Things don’t add up; they don’t segue; they follow chronologically, one upon another, without obeying the more important logic of meaning and sense and, well, acceptability.
    â€œNot this year,” he said to Carole when she asked about their Christmas card the November after Luke had drowned. For the ten previous years they’d sent out a photo greeting, not without a guilty, sheepish irony (at least they’d hoped irony was the evident subtext) because both he and Carole understood and intended to acknowledge that such cards were inherently obnoxious, even if, to them, irresistible. So they hadn’t dressed their best or used a perfect vacation shot but instead posed in their everyday clothes, each wearing a goofy Santa hat, Carole with little if any makeup, the kids’ hair un-brushed, Will looking effortfully (and thus less than completely successfully) candid. And they trusted that this casual, studiedly haphazard quality would be taken as an apology for the cards’ inherent bragging—
Please forgive us our pride, the pleasure we take in our two
perfect offspring. Overlook, won’t you, the vulgarity of our publishing their
inestimable worth. Our living golden calves—how beautiful they are! Our
sacred objects! You must understand that we cannot help ourselves. We can’t
not exult.
Will shudders with the recognition, feels the flesh crawl on his neck. How foolish to flash a target at the jealous gods—to not merely disregard but show off the chink in their armor.
Aim here!
Here where we presume our divinity and yet are most mortal!
    â€œNo,” Will said to Carole. “Not this year.”
    â€œWhy?” she asked.
    â€œWhy!”
    â€œYes, why?” Carole set her coffee cup on the table and looked at him in that unnerving way she has, her eyes wide with what appeared to be genuine curiosity.
    â€œBecause . . . because . . .” He remembers spluttering in outrage, in the face of her calm. “Because one of us is missing! One of us who was in last year’s card is gone!”
    â€œDead,” she clarified.
    â€œDead. Yes. Yes. Dead.”
    Carole nodded. “Well, everyone knows that. All our friends, they know about Luke. And we could maybe acknowledge him with a, I don’t know, something on the—”
    â€œLike what! R.I.P? His initials? His dates? Like a gravestone? A little gravestone in the mail! Happy holidays, and in case you forgot, our son drowned last summer! But don’t let that bother you—go ahead and have a wonderful new year!”
    â€œNo, that’s not—”
    â€œI’m not going to do it.”
    â€œYou aren’t letting me talk. I think we should. For Samantha.”
    â€œWhy for Sam? It’s not as if it’s good for her. It’s sad for Sam.”
    â€œIt’s sadder if we don’t.”
    So he caved. He tried to arrange his features into an acceptable expression, an expression of what he couldn’t say. He’s never looked at the photograph Carole picked and had reproduced above their greeting. Two hundred copies.
Peace on Earth,
they probably said, as in years past. Even now he can’t figure out what kind of artifact that particular photo greeting might be, or the level— depth?—of its bad taste. Or maybe it wasn’t in bad taste. Maybe it was just what Carole claimed it was: an impossible response to an impossible situation. Apparently she doesn’t get stuck there, at Impossibility, the way he does. There is no conceivable transition, so she doesn’t insist on it. She’s pragmatic in that impressive, fearsome, and always surprising way that women are, the way they preside with equal