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industry and competence over tea parties and deathbeds.
    At home, in the magazine basket by the couch, is
Yoga Journal,
a publication that continues to resurface from under the others because both of them thumb through it, Carole as a disciple, Will as a bystander at once fascinated and incredulous. “A Vedanta Paradigm for Transforming Negative Emotions,” the most recent cover promises. Will has reread this article several times, attempting to translate phrases like “the classical citta-vitri-eroding yogic approach” into psychoanalytic terms. But he gets tripped up by discussion of topics like “heart energy” or “the consciousness that has no content” and ends up casting it away in irritation.
    He did attempt to recap the last twenty-five years for the reunion book, but he couldn’t leave out the drowning, nor could he tell it. What was the previous sentence? What was the one that followed? Will began a letter over and over again, getting no farther than a paragraph before he deleted it from his computer file. According to an online survey, to which 37 percent of the class of 1979 responded, 41 percent of the 37 percent are more spiritual compared with when they graduated, 9 percent less spiritual, 50 percent about the same. Forty-seven percent of them have achieved about what they expected to achieve, 28 percent have exceeded their life expectations, 20 percent are a little disappointed in themselves, and the remaining (unaccounted-for) 5 percent are, he guesses, either apathetic or in despair. Sixty-four percent of them are on their first marriages, 19 percent have remarried, and while the autobiographical dispatches indicate that a few alumni have lost a spouse or a child, no statistical breakdown of tragedies is included in the survey. Nine percent have earned a Ph.D. Forty-one percent choose relaxing vacations, 18 percent cultural, and 25 percent adventurous; 3 percent don’t vacation at all. Eighty-two percent claim reading as a favorite pastime, 31 percent “creating,” whatever that means.
    Perhaps it means gardening or knitting or drawing or, like Sally Henderson, building the world’s largest freestanding structure made from discarded plastic bleach containers. Will looks carefully at the picture of Sally standing next to the door of her bleach-bottle tower. Her smile is more rictus than evidence of pride, baring her teeth against a looming threat. Haven’t studies of evolution demonstrated that a smile is the pallid descendant of primate rage? A warning of aggression? Will flips quickly through the book, trying to see smiles separate from faces. Are any of these people happy, really? And if they are, how can one tell?
    11:57 by the digital clock on the television set. He’s missed the ecumenical Sunday service, and if he doesn’t hurry, he’ll miss brunch in the big tent, as well.
    What was it that Luke had seen? he wonders, head bent under the shower’s needling spray—the white and shining and exalted Luke of Will’s dream. Was it a thing worse than grief, something degenerate and disgraceful, that a child can’t allow his father?
    The boy in the dream: Will knows he’s no more real than a wish, or a fear. And yet, he might ask himself, of what else are we composed?

4
    â€œSo why didn’t you stay the whole weekend?” Carole asks him when he comes to bed. “I thought you were looking forward to this thing.” The way she says the word
thing
betrays her feelings about reunions, that they are all, without exception, events to be avoided whenever possible.
    â€œI was going to stay. I’d made plans to meet up with a couple of guys, maybe even play some racquetball after the picnic. But, I don’t know, after the main attraction, the cocktails and dinner thing on Saturday . . .” Will trails off. He should tell her about running into Elizabeth. Instead, he finds himself talking about Mitch.