The first thing that happened was we started getting our mail delivered to their house. Mostly bills, any important info sent along by the bank. It was easier to do our taxes, we reasoned, if our mailing address was a more permanent place.<\/p>\n
But then we found ourselves in the wide-open space between contracts\u2014the unsteady freelance work that barely kept our heads afloat. Moving into my parents\u2019 basement seemed like the responsible thing to do. We packed up our little black truck, filled a U-Haul with the rest of our furniture and junk. We put all our books in cardboard boxes, which we unpacked, then stacked one on top of the other, hidden away on a plywood basement shelf. We put the rest of it\u2014the velvet couch and the popcorn machine and all the other seasons\u2019 clothing\u2014in the separated garage or the back corner of my parents\u2019 walk-in closet.<\/p>\n
We liked it for a little while. The cable and home-cooked dinners made it easy to get comfortable, like a perfectly warm bath in a big clean white tub. The squeaky bed frame just meant waiting for everyone to be out so that we could have sex. Which, admittedly, turned out not to be all that often.<\/p>\n
And it was an adjustment, it\u2019s true, quitting smoking. And having to sneak our empty vodka bottles out in the bottom of the bathroom trash. The vodka inevitably led to hushed fighting\u2014hurling insults at each other in strained whispers, embarrassed by the way our voices carried up through the kitchen floor. Fucking was replaced with shared snacking\u2014chip bags propped on horizontal chests, cookie crumbs accumulating in the tangle of the unwashed guest bed sheets. Snacking didn\u2019t make the bed squeak.<\/p>\n
One day you drove back to the city and stayed there\u2014you said that we needed some space. And then the we became a me.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t lived at home in years, and spending time with my parents was like getting to know them as people for the very first time. All of us were adults\u2014that loose classification that applies to most of a life.<\/p>\n
Dad was an important man in business. He had a direct gaze, a good fake laugh, and a willingness to pretend he knew someone when he couldn\u2019t remember their name. He was always getting asked to speak at dinners, where he addressed other business people on topics like \u201cWhat are motivational myths?\u201d or \u201cHow to boost coffee break morale\u201d\u2014meaning he was out of the house an average of two to three nights a week.<\/p>\n
The night after one such speaking engagement, he sat at the kitchen table eating prosciutto pasta with my mom and me. I asked him what he\u2019d talked about the evening before, when it was just my mom and me with lasagna.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe unmeasurables that need to be measured,\u201d he said as he reached for the Costco-sized parmesan cheese. \u201cI asked everyone to raise their hand if they\u2019d ridden in a driverless car. Two or three of them had, most of them said they were willing. But there was always a human in the driver\u2019s seat. Just sitting there, not driving. They were there to put the passengers more at ease.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEmotional intelligence is very important,\u201d my mom said like she thought she agreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I asked if anyone would ride in a plane piloted only by AI. No one raised a hand. And I asked who would let themselves be treated by a machine learning doctor. Again, no one would. People base their lives on emotional, irrational, and illogical decisions.\u201d He pretended to slam the table with his fist.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople want a good bedside manner,\u201d said my mom. \u201cWhen my sister thought she had cancer she changed doctors three times before she found one that she liked. The fourth one warmed his stethoscope in his hands before he put it on her ribs. It made her believe him when he told her everything was going to be okay.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them in order to better succeed in business we need to find a way to quantify the unmeasurable irrationalities that are controlling our employees\u2019 lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you do that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
He was silent while he chewed and then swallowed. \u201cThat\u2019s what research and development teams are for.\u201d<\/p>\n
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa<\/span>***<\/p>\n Winter came and the basement was unheated, so I moved upstairs to my high school bedroom. I was too tired from applying for jobs to change out the old decorations: the cross country photos and jazz band participation ribbons, the Build-a-Bear Workshop panda that asked me to homecoming in the voice of my high school ex-boyfriend when I pressed on his paw.<\/p>\n I got healthy from the organic food my mom bought and lost a lot of weight really fast. I couldn\u2019t afford new clothes, so I started wearing my old Hollister and Abercrombie things\u2014graphic tees and lace-trimmed leggings under short and distressed denim skirts.<\/p>\n You had taken our truck, so if I wanted to go out, I had to wait to get a ride from my parents. There was nowhere to go except the outdoor mall one town over\u2014a strip mall with an identity crisis that called itself a \u201cpedestrian-friendly shopping destination.\u201d I followed the swirling stream of high school students to Bath and Body Works and American Eagle, to Noodles & Company for Wisconsin Mac & Cheese, and Cold Stone Creamery for manhandled marble slab dessert. When my dad drove me, he\u2019d slip me a twenty as I moved across the leather seat to get out. \u201cTry not to spend it too fast.\u201d<\/p>\n I spent it immediately on plumping lip gloss, racking up Sephora points in exchange for free foundation samples that didn\u2019t match. I went back to lining the waterline of my eyelids with Urban Decay 24\/7 eye pencil in Legend, even though it still made me look like a raccoon.<\/p>\n I started getting listless, killing time walking laps in TJ Maxx. I spent a week trawling Ebay for an OPI nail polish shade released in the fall of 2011. Uh-Oh Roll Down the Window swatched as a murky olive green, and my juvenile sense of humor couldn\u2019t get enough of the name. My mom thought I needed some structure and signed me up to be a leader with my old Girl Scout troop.<\/p>\n Troop 437 still met in St. Anne\u2019s basement on Thursdays, and the troop leader, Mrs. Farber, was the same degree of decrepit as I remembered from my youth. My old uniform sort of fit\u2014like a glove if it was the leather\/mesh fingerless kind\u2014the skirt ending a somewhat slutty distance from the sharp edges of my knees.<\/p>\n Our main objective was still cookies, albeit with the addition of a gluten-free line. The girl who won first place set up a Facebook page for her cookie empire. Apparently she was a twelve-year-old influencer of some kind, driving traffic and tripling engagements in a coordinated campaign spanning all her social media accounts and using the hashtag #CookieBlessed.<\/p>\n I sold some Thin Mints to my parents and\u2014in the course of a single day\u2014I finished off the rest. My mind didn\u2019t get the memo that my stomach was full.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \u201cWhen are you moving out?\u201d you\u2019d text me at least once a day. Which was pointless because I didn\u2019t have an answer, and the one that I gave you was always the same.<\/p>\n You didn\u2019t like the idea of long distance, but I convinced you to give it a try.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no distance in long distance relationships anymore,\u201d I said over FaceTime. \u201cSee?\u201d I tilted my bowl of popcorn towards the camera on my phone. \u201cBefore you just would have heard crunching without any context.\u201d<\/p>\n There was good old-fashioned texting, as well as Gchat, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram DMs. There was FaceTime, Skype, and Snapchat. And there was always the option of virtual sex. You ordered me one of those vibrators that can be controlled remotely with a Bluetooth-connected app. It arrived two days later on my parents\u2019 front step.<\/p>\n The app for the vibrator connected to the front-facing camera on my phone. But seeing a close-up of my face\u2014along with a video stream of your face searching earnestly for a reaction from mine\u2014was like masturbating in close proximity to a one-way mirror. I felt disconnected from my own body, not to mention yours. I hid the vibrator under my mattress, told you it fried in the shower, and we never spoke of it again.<\/p>\n Being hyper-connected through technology made it impossible to really connect. I had a hard time figuring out what I was feeling, much less updating you on those feelings every hour of the day. I started sending a steady stream of Dave Chappelle gifs in lieu of actual texts. Technology didn\u2019t add context, it took all the affect away.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re losing me,\u201d you texted me. But how could you be lost when I saw you right there in the Find My Friends app on my phone? \u201cWhen are you moving out?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIdk, hopefully soon,\u201d I responded. Which made it sound as though I didn\u2019t have a say.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n One day I got back from a Girl Scout trip and found my mom in the home office, tax-looking papers before her, her graying hair pulled up into a nubby little bun.<\/p>\n The weekend had been stressful. One girl was allergic to hornets and demanded I destroy a wasp nest that was completely out of the way of her tent. Mrs. Farber had gotten wasted sitting at the campfire after the girls were in bed, offering me sips from her Navajo-print flask in between stories about her misadventures on SilverSingle.com. My arms were covered in stings that by that time were itching like crazy, and my stomach still felt sick from a surplus of the almond flour graham-style crackers in the compulsory s\u2019mores.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d I asked, nudging a box full of tapes with my hiking-socked toe.<\/p>\n \u201cThose are all the home videos your dad wanted me to start trying to convert,\u201d she said, not glancing up from the desk.<\/p>\n \u201cOh yeah, the magnetic media crisis is coming. I heard them talking about it on NPR. Anything not converted to digital by 2028 will be rendered obsolete.\u201d<\/p>\n At one point on the segment the woman\u2019s voice had grown fast and excited, prophesying the vast destruction of university archives and museum collections. We were on the brink of cultural destruction, she had gleefully foretold.<\/p>\n My mom put down her pen and gave me more of her attention. \u201cAnd what exactly am I supposed to convert it to? My new computer doesn\u2019t even have a CD-ROM drive. I would just have to turn around in a few years and convert it all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe cloud I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n I moved the top layer of tapes\u2014with unhelpful labels like Family Trip and Birthday\u2014to reveal the messy stack all labeled Christmas in a jumble underneath.<\/p>\n My mom let out a sigh, a low sustained whistle that sounded like the noise in a cartoon when something\u2019s falling down a well. \u201cWhat does that even mean? All our family memories floating up in the clouds? What happens if the internet breaks?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not sure that would make a difference. I think they\u2019re still physically stored on a server in a warehouse in the middle of a desert somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I told your dad I\u2019d get to it. But I didn\u2019t tell him when.\u201d<\/p>\n She had a point. We could keep preserving and updating. But memories, like technology, have a shelf life. A general \u201cbest by\u201d date. They didn\u2019t really mean much past then.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n A certain proportion of scouting alumni were simultaneously reaching old age, so the higher ups at Girl Scouts of America HQ came out with a new kind of patch. Tired of pre-pubescents talking back, smirking pointedly at the coffee-stained free space on my faded green vest, I decided to go for this one. I should probably try and get something achieved.<\/p>\n The Caregiver Patch had rigorous requirements. You had to spend x number of hours reading to someone over 60, as well as x number of hours listening to whatever they wanted to say. My parents made the cut off, so I moved down the hall into their bedroom, unrolling my American Girl sleeping bag across the couch that faced their bed.<\/p>\n My dad was usually at work, and my mom made an effort to pretend I wasn\u2019t sitting at home by ignoring me for most of the day. We filled my hours log at nighttime, before we succumbed to sleep in our respective sleeping bag and California-king bed. We\u2019d alternate: a night spent with me reading, a night of me listening to them.<\/p>\n \u201cMy sister got some of those Tesla charging boxes installed up at their cabin the other day,\u201d said my mom on one of the listening nights. \u201cHere\u2019s a picture she sent me.\u201d She passed me her phone.<\/p>\n The photo on her screen was so realistic it moved, a live photo animating itself as I swiped forward then back. A blue-jeaned ankle caught fleeing before the frame settled into stillness\u2014a very clean garage, with shiny grey paint on the floor and slip-free speckles of darker grey paint over that. Two boxy-looking boxes, unassuming and white.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat? I\u2019ve been on the waitlist for months,\u201d said my dad, \u201cjust trying to give them my hard-earned cash. The technology is there, they just don\u2019t want everyone to have it.\u201d It was unclear, exactly, who he was referring to as \u201cthey.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe said it\u2019s already had an effect on their electrical bill. It took her awhile to convince Bill they should do it, but she finally made him see what a huge impact it\u2019s going to have.\u201d<\/p>\n We all went quiet then, the three of us thinking our separate thoughts in the warm womb-like darkness of the room. It was unclear to me what exactly the impact had been, or whether the electrical bill had gone up or decreased. It made sense to me that it would have gone up, in which case I wondered if Bill was mad? Or maybe my aunt was talking about the impact on the environment.<\/p>\n I scrolled through two more pictures of Powerwalls: one with my aunt standing in front of the boxes, smiling, and my uncle\u2014a Republican\u2014grimacing like he always did in a terrified-seeming way. I swiped again and there was a picture of my mom.<\/p>\n She must have taken it herself. The angle was consistent with a front-facing camera. She wasn\u2019t posed like she was trying to take a selfie, though. Her eyes were focused on something off to the side, and her hand was halfway to her face. When I held my finger down\u2014making the image, for a brief moment, come alive\u2014her long fingers fluttered up to her earlobe and back. She seemed worried, like she\u2019d seen what Uncle Bill had, and it had also made her scared.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s this one?\u201d I held the phone up so she could see.<\/p>\n She put on her glasses and leaned forward to peek. \u201cOh, that? That\u2019s nothing.\u201d She snatched the phone away and turned it off, her face and the room disappearing into darkness. \u201cIt must have taken on accident when I was searching for that one-pot pasta recipe on there the other day.\u201d<\/p>\n I heard my dad begin to snore a short while later, a chesty rumble that usually made me calm. I laid there for a long time, listening to my dad and the crickets that had emerged along with spring. But I could still see the corner of my mom\u2019s mouth in my mind, creasing into lines I\u2019d never noticed as her lips in the photo pressed firmly together and turned down into a frown.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I took out books from the library on my dad\u2019s card because I still didn\u2019t have one of my own. My dad showed a penchant for sci-fi, Orson Scott Card and Philip K. Dick. My mom seemed to like more nonfiction, books about the Romanovs and biographies of Marilyn Monroe.<\/p>\n Our library was kind of shitty in that it didn\u2019t actually have very many books. I ended up requesting a lot of things through interlibrary loan. My dad had to forward me the emails saying when the books were ready to be picked up.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything ok?\u201d he wrote at the top of a forwarded message informing him House of Hilton: From Conrad to Paris had arrived at our branch.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything fine,\u201d I wrote back, unsure if that\u2019s how I actually felt. \u201cJust thought we\u2019d try a change of pace.\u201d The reviews I\u2019d read online made it seem like this book could be a nice compromise between science fiction and fact.<\/p>\n To explain why he only dated Paris Hilton\u2019s maternal grandmother for a month, Los Angeles produce king Chet Frangipane said, \u201cIt\u2019s like a piece of food. You want it, but the more you look at it you say, what the fuck do I need this for?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat doesn\u2019t even remotely make sense,\u201d my dad said that night after I read the line out loud. \u201cWho says that about food? Cause, effect. You eat food because if you don\u2019t then you die.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNobody knows why certain foods are their favorite. It\u2019s just who you are. It comes down to a matter of taste,\u201d said my mom.<\/p>\n I thought about a television commercial I\u2019d seen earlier in the day: a beer company bragging about its use of AI. With machine-learning technology, it took only a few minutes for them to detect a new marketable flavor. The last time I went to the Starbucks in the mall they\u2019d played three songs that were currently in my Discover Weekly playlist. Maybe my dad was right. Maybe there was a way for the unmeasurables to be measured. If a computer could map out my feelings, maybe I wasn\u2019t all that complex.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I only had to complete three more hours before I could send for my Caregiver patch. I\u2019d stopped going to Girl Scout meetings, but I enjoyed reading aloud to my parents by then.<\/p>\n I\u2019d saved my dad\u2019s library login on my phone. That way, I could request a new book as the idea arose. It got to the point where he was forwarding me upwards of five new emails a day\u2014an electronic record of my thoughts as they occurred.<\/p>\n \u201cTook you long enough,\u201d he wrote at the top of an email for Make Life Happen: How to Stop Letting Life Happen to You. It reminded me of when I was little, and my parents seemed to know what I was feeling before I figured it out on my own.<\/p>\n A ping. \u201cWhen are you moving out?\u201d read the text.<\/p>\n I scrolled to the top where it said Contact, clicked on your image, and called Home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first thing that happened was we started getting our mail delivered to their house. Mostly bills, any important info sent along by the bank. It was easier to do our taxes, we reasoned, if our mailing address was a more permanent place. But then we found ourselves in the wide-open space between contracts\u2014the unsteady […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2041,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[59],"tags":[20],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-41g","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2041"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15454"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15501,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15454\/revisions\/15501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}QUINN MASON<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"