J. Lennon - Pieces for the Left Hand - Stories

Immediately my father-in-law set out to get a copy of this file, and after much wrangling and red tape, acquired it through the Freedom of Information Act. It contains dozens of black-and-white surveillance photos of him and Ace, a few of my wife’s mother and several of long-forgotten houseguests; there are also hundreds of pages of descriptions of their mundane domestic activities, and the addresses and telephone numbers of all their old friends. The file and uniform are my father-in-law’s favorite conversation pieces, and he proudly brings them out whenever he has visitors.

Our friend recently left his job as system operator for a local Internet service provider. Since he was known as a computer expert, and loved his work, we were surprised to learn he had quit, and so one evening had him over for dinner to find out what had happened.

He told us this story: late one night he was awakened by an alarm he had rigged on his own computer, to alert him of problems with the ISP’s servers. His computer told him that the system was refusing subscribers, so he dressed and went in to the office to see what was the matter. There he discovered that the system had crashed. He worked all night and well into the next day to alleviate the problem, which proved to have originated with a software bug.

Exhausted from the hours of effort, he brought the system back on line, only to find that something terrible had happened: the e-mail that had been stored in subscribers’ accounts over the past twenty hours had somehow been erased. Retracing his steps, our friend found that the mistake this time had been his own; he had inadvertently cleared all stored mail when he reset the network.

Since he knew that customers depended heavily on their e-mail, he decided to send a message to all subscribers, alerting them that twenty hours of mail had been lost, and apologizing for the inconvenience. But when his employer caught wind of this plan, she stopped him. Mistakes like this happen, she reasoned; nobody would even notice, and those who did would resolve the problem on their own. Sending a message admitting the error would cause more harm than good.

Our friend was tired and upset, and wearily came around to his boss’s way of thinking. But that night, unable to sleep, he put together a search program that would, over the next week, examine — for certain key words and phrases indicating jealousy, anger, remorse, or accusation resulting from the loss of important messages — every e-mail that passed through the network. This was strictly illegal, but a negative result would put our friend’s mind at ease, and he figured nobody would ever know.

About that, he was correct. But the results of the search were far from negative. Dozens of e-correspondents, he discovered, had suffered catastrophic fallout from the lost messages, including the break-up of romances and friendships, the termination of jobs and, in one case, ill health resulting from missing medical advice. Mortified, our friend began an intensive campaign of reconciliation, sending anonymous flowers and gifts and apologizing profusely under assumed names. But it was all to no avail. The damage had been done and could not be reversed.

After dinner, our friend burst into tears. He told us that he had some money saved up, but jobs were at a premium in our area and he had little hope of holding out long enough to find one he was qualified for. We suggested that he apply for system operator jobs in other towns, but our friend ruefully refused. There should be no system operators, he said. What single mailman served so many thousands, or delivered in such volume? Such responsibility, he believed, should be shared by many, for any compassionate person would crack under its strain. He begged us to cancel our own Internet subscription and return to written correspondence and actual, as opposed to virtual, commerce. Our need would drive our system operator mad.

I am embarrassed to admit that our Internet and e-mail usage has not changed. We still see our friend, but he remains unemployed.

Thanks to an investment that he described as purely unpremeditated, the result of an overheard conversation in a fast food restaurant, a man we knew struck it rich on the stock market, and then, years later, on the very eve of the market’s collapse, sold everything, an act he insisted was impulsive, and due to no particular knowledge on his part. Soon after making these fortuitous decisions, the now-rich man got married and moved into a beautiful new house. His life, by all accounts, was one of ease and satisfaction.

Rumors spread, however, that this happiness was short-lived. When we saw the man on the street, he explained. His wife had found another man, he told us. In addition, his dog had died, his favorite sports team had fallen upon hard times, and the political situation filled him with despair.

Wasn’t it true, we asked him, that the real cause of his unhappiness was that he felt trapped by his affluence, which he knew, deep down, that he didn’t really deserve?

Oh, no, he explained — if it weren’t for his wealth, he would probably be even more unhappy.

But didn’t he have to admit that, ultimately, his money had done nothing to enhance his life, and had created unrealistic expectations for his future happiness?

Not at all, he said — his money had greatly improved his lot, and he went to sleep every night thanking his lucky stars it had come his way.

Though we parted that day on excellent terms, we have not attempted to contact the man since. It would be difficult to socialize with someone too stubborn to admit that money isn’t everything.

When my wife was pregnant with each of our children, I imagined clearly their future appearance and demeanor. It was young men that I imagined, but my wife gave birth to daughters. Today, when I see my grown daughters, I often have the strong but incorrect impression that I have someone I would like them to meet, and realize that it is the imaginary men I thought they might become to whom I want to introduce them, and with whom I believe they would really hit it off.

When I was two, I wandered away. My mother was washing dishes in the kitchen and watching me through the window, and in the glare of the setting sun mistook a bucket upturned on a mound in the sandbox for my body, hunched over in concentration. When the telephone rang and the police said they had me, my mother laughed and told them I was home, playing in the sandbox. She had to go out into the yard herself before she would believe them.

No harm had come to me, and apparently I didn’t cry. But the pedestrian mall where the police found me was a dozen blocks from our house, and by my mother’s reckoning I could not have been gone more than ten minutes. I was able to walk, of course, but not so quickly nor with such purpose and determination. So how did I get there?

In the car on the way home, my mother asked me that very question, and I am said to have answered, Somebody. I would not elaborate and giggled when pressed. This does not sound like me, of course, but what do I know? My imagination, my sense of humor, my willingness to reveal myself: these things could not have been then exactly as they are today, and I have no reason to doubt my mother’s memory.

The point of this story used to be the mystery of my kidnapper. Now, however, I see it another way. Until I disappeared, my mother had either accompanied me at all times, or left me with my father, or a neighbor or babysitter, someone who could account for the time with me she’d missed; she could know what I’d done and seen and said, and where I’d been. But she could not know the make of the car I was conveyed in that day, nor the shape of the person who’d taken me, nor the names of the people who passed me and wondered whose child I was and what I was doing alone. My life had diverged completely from hers for the first time.