Problems with People by David Guterson

Author:David Guterson [Guterson, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-385-35149-2
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

She forgot about Hamish. Or thought about him with a less intense regret. Her husband came home. No exercise, he said, while in Los Altos, except for twenty minutes in a hotel gym. He went for a bike ride, she for a walk. Walking engaged something neuronal, she thought, because while she was doing it her regret increased again. But only temporarily. She and her husband did their weekly face-time with their daughter in Bolivia, he stiffly, she with bemusement. They both felt she didn’t know what she was doing. They talked about her while putting dinner together. The two girls were different, though both were filled with social purpose. The older more deliberate, the younger more rash. The older calmer, the younger more passionate. And the older more likely to get married and have children. The younger might end up so dedicated to her work that she would never return from … was it “the developing world”? Her husband had no problem with the phrase, but herself, she’d never liked it.

She checked e-mail. DMW. For years they’d passed this code back and forth—she, Les Gross, Dane Snow, John Herringer, Gail North—and now Sarah Holger, new to the department: DMW, Department Meeting Wednesday, meaning drinks after work on short notice. Usually just a glass of wine somewhere, often in the living room of someone’s home, but sometimes in a restaurant or a wine bar. Every December, on the Wednesday before Winter Break, the Social Studies Department tippled together festively, and every June, on the last Wednesday of the school year, it celebrated with wine. Then there were the DMWs when, without an excuse, some of them drank too much, including her, because she didn’t want to seem superior to her colleagues. For that reason, she sometimes drank three or four Wednesday glasses of wine, even though they gave her a headache.

Les Gross drove. They convened—a first—at Sarah Holger’s loft. She found out, there, that Sarah was twenty-seven. They met Sarah’s dog. They were offered a choice of playlists, which led to a discussion of iTunes Radio, and then a demonstration of iTunes Radio, everyone choosing, together—by consensus—urban humming stereo. Sarah served kale chips in an acacia-wood bowl and, because people were curious, Jell-O shots. They were undrinkable—again by consensus—but Sarah had wine on hand as well. Something in all of this made her decide to go for it. There were amalgamating factors: Sarah had a magnum left over from the holiday season that, once opened, needed to be emptied; Les Gross was driving; she’d taken a longer walk than usual the day before; for the moment—however ephemeral—she was less behind than she usually felt; and finally, she hadn’t yet shown the new kid—Sarah—this side of herself. “Sure,” she said, whenever Sarah poised the magnum. “Why not?”

Near-universal kudos for Sarah’s part of town—gentrified without losing all of its rough edges, fun without feeling like a theme park for whites—followed by Sarah’s mirthful scoffing about it: after all, every three minutes a

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