The Leading Indicators

by Gregg Easterbrook

  “You don’t mean—”

  “No, not that,” he said. “Of course I would not kill myself.” He smiled just a bit. “But the world may do it for me. I have a heart condition. It’s bad. You remember that was what took my father. I’ve known about mine since a few months after we lost our health insurance. So I kept up the life policy.”

  Margo struggled to speak, feeling something beyond panic. She was angry at Tom for not confiding in her, angry at herself for not pressing him about his secret, angry at God for threatening to take Tom away. She had tried to visualize the divine, or to direct a thought toward the Maker, only a few times in her adult life. Now this had happened twice in a single minute.

  “Self-pay, the operation is forty thousand dollars,” Tom began. He wanted her to know he had researched the situation, worked out the practicalities. “The hospital demands half as cash up front, plus my signature on a garnishee agreement that lasts till the balance is paid, including interest and penalties. But if I have a bad enough heart attack and arrive at an emergency room near death, then they operate regardless of ability to pay. The Obama legislation might change this, but not till the year 2014. That may be too late for me.”

  “You can’t mean—” Her mind had raced to the end of a dark corridor of thought.

  “That is exactly what I mean. The only way out is to force myself to have a heart attack. That’s why I keep pushing myself. If my heart stops and I am gasping for air, then they will save me. Not because they care. Because they fear the liability.”

  Margo, a strong and independent woman, began to sob like a frightened child. She could not find any consoling thought, imagine anything positive to say. Margo wanted to be a little girl again, safe in her bed, calling for her mother to bring her a glass of water. She collapsed into Tom’s arms and wept.

  “You don’t have to worry about this,” Tom said.

  Rather than seem frightened or troubled, Tom was resolute. He smiled, showing the calm demeanor of the man who has accepted fate and in so doing, been released from fear.

  In that moment, Tom appeared again to Margo as he had when she first saw him on the street in Chicago—a handsome, lean young man of unlimited promise, a catch any girl would want. In that moment Tom knew again the engaging voice and smooth confidence of his youth. He was granted a moment of showing again all the qualities that made him the love of Margo’s life, as if they were starting fresh, not approaching the end.

  “It’s all laid out, one way or the other,” Tom said. “I am likely to have a heart attack. If I do, and the ambulance comes, they’ll fix me and we will be together for a long time. If the ambulance doesn’t come, then you and the girls are set for life financially. It’s all laid out. I vowed to take care of you, and I will.”

  Margo was limp, sobbing. Tom knew this was the moment to broach with her the hardest part.

  “I’ve been through every scenario. If chest pains start I can’t go right to the hospital. That way they could stabilize me and turn me out. I’ve got to wait until it’s a full heart attack—so they operate.” He said these things confidently and brightly, as if describing a big promotion he’d just won or a luxury vacation in the planning.

  Normally Margo would understand instantly where Tom was going, but she was sobbing and could not think. He realized he had to spell this out, and so continued: “If we’re together when the moment comes, you must promise not to call 911 right away. I’ve got to arrive in bad shape. That way, either I get the operation free and am fine, or it’s too late and you receive the money. If you call 911 immediately and they stabilize me, the nightmare just starts all over.”

  Tom paused. “Promise me if I start showing the signs of heart failure, you will wait five minutes before calling 911.” He said this as plainly as if he were saying, “Promise me you’ll be at the restaurant at eight.”

  “No! No! No!”

  “No!” was the only word Margo could choke out. She pounded on his chest, source of this sudden horror, crying No, no, no, no.

  Tom was calm, having reconciled himself to what would come. “This could end with me fine,” he said in his voice of youthful potential. “If it ends with me gone, the girls’ future will be secured. As they grow, the girls will know their father acted in their best interest. They will love me and honor my memory.”

  Margo was a marionette with the strings severed. She couldn’t control her limbs or make her mouth move properly. She pressed against him, trembling, saying over and over again—No, no, no.

  “I have steeled myself,” Tom said. “If I am given the chance to choose, I will choose to do right by you and our daughters.”

  She continued to sob, unable to construct words. All her life, Margo had charged directly toward problems. This turn of events terrified her so deeply she simply went limp.

  Tom held her, stroked her hair and looked on her with deep longing. After a while, Tom carried Margo to the master bed and lay with her, embracing. Though it was early, she fell into shattered sleep. Tom thought if she could rest awhile, when the girls got home, they would take her mind off things. He covered Margo with a blanket and kissed her forehead, whispering into her ear his love for her.

  Then Tom slipped off the bed and went down to the kitchen, looking for the dinner he’d missed. He opened a beer, made a sandwich and had taken the first bite when he knew a strange sensation, as if he could feel the inside of his body. Maybe carrying his wife to the bedroom had not been history’s greatest idea.

  The sensation passed. Tom felt normal again, and thought he might go out for a walk. The area around the building was set up for cars, not for walking: even so, getting some air is always good. When Tom tried to stand to go outside, he needed to brace himself against the kitchen table.

  The pain got worse a lot faster than Tom expected. He put the phone into his hand but did not dial. Tom knew he had to be strong and not cry out, since Margo would dial 911 immediately if she woke.

  The pain became awful. Tom thought, Why does it have to happen now, when I haven’t said good-bye to the girls? Then he thought, I can take this. I have to take this. They’ll understand. They’ll know this was my duty. They’ll be back in a beautiful house and I will be able to see them.

  Tom wondered how long was long enough before dialing 911. His breath was sporadic—had he already waited long enough? He decided to wait ten more seconds before dialing 911, and began to count aloud, “One-thousand one, one-thousand two, one-thousand three, one-thousand four…” He heard a voice calling his name, as if from far away. The voice was pleasant, reassuring. Someone was calling to him.

  Chapter 10

  October 2010

  Dow Jones Index returns to the level of 2001.

  Nobel Prize in Economics awarded for analysis of “frictional unemployment.”

  Google speeds searches to half a second, promising this will save one day of a typical person’s life.

  The new place was splendid, though lacking the quirky character of the house she and Tom lost to foreclosure. Recently built homes tend to feel as if designed by machines. Many are branded with model names—the Windsor, the Craftsman Manor, the Apex Grande, the Shana Vista. Customers seeking a new home are supposed to ask for branded models, saying to builders, “I want a Foxwoods Supreme.” If you liked the Foxwoods Supreme look in the front but the Napa Sunset layout in the back, a computer could generate that from software. Having the computer customize your house was said by the sales office to give it a human touch.

  The bells and whistles on the new place, Margo had to admit, were entertaining. When someone left a bathroom, the lights turned themselves off; if someone stepped in, the lights turned themselves on. The dishwasher was hidden in the kitchen island, the toaster and coffeemaker recessed behind a panel. The furnaces monitored their filters. When a filter needed to be changed, the furnace-control chip used the Internet to order a replacement, which arrived from Amazon in two days.

  The countertops were “engineered quartz”�
��even more expensive than Roman granite. Seeming to hang without support on a wall, the very thin HD LCD TV could be pulled out, swiveled, then pushed back flush when not in use. All wireless equipment was inside a disguised closet so as not to be unsightly, and there was space for expansion—for electronic devices not yet invented. The master bedroom, with a clear view of the eastern sky, had a broad window with an optical screen that would descend on servos, so those in the California-king-sized master bed could watch the sunrise without their eyes being dazzled. To close the deal, the builder threw in a grand piano for the living room, a touch Margo had always wanted in a home.

  The girls viewed the technology of the new house as the order of things—of course the furnace talks to the Internet.

  For the past year Caroline and Megan had their own rooms again, a status address again, a great school again—one of Newsweek’s top-rated public schools. Caroline, a junior, had already made friends in one of the positive-influence peer groups, was on varsity field hockey, got cast as Bloody Mary in South Pacific, was taking the Advanced Placement course in government studies. Megan, a freshman, was on the JV basketball team, a fledgling reporter for the school newspaper and in honors in her core courses. She was tracking toward Advanced Placement as a junior, maybe even an AP course as a sophomore. The girls had changed in manifold ways from the period when they seemed headed for juvenile delinquency. Money does not buy happiness, but sure can fix problems.

  The sign at the entrance to the development, a sign lighted and bordered with gold-painted filigree, read SUMMIT HAVEN WOODS. The sign felt to Margo as if it glowed with approval when owners of houses in the development returned home.

  By the sign were saplings that had been planted during construction of the development. There were no “woods” anywhere in sight, just the saplings and ornamental shrubs. Old neighborhoods draw their character partly from trees: in modern high-efficiency construction, land first is leveled, then houses built, then trees replanted. Doing it that way speeds construction and lowers cost, though results in impressive new homes that appear planted in a fallow field.

  By the time saplings were grown into mature trees, the girls would be adults with children of their own, and that would be the sign to leave this place. Then this house would be sold, and the next family to move in would observe the old, full trees and think of Summit Haven Woods as a long-established neighborhood in an arboretum. The spirits of those here first would have dissipated from the place and would mean nothing to those who came next.

  Already Margo could see herself twenty years in the future, gazing wistfully on the mature trees and reminiscing about her daughters’ youth. She knew she had but to snap her fingers and “Pomp and Circumstance” would be playing at their college graduations. She’d snap her fingers again and see an old woman, asking the mirror, “So soon?”

  Margo and Lillian were having wine in the living room, near the piano. Margo was in the early stages of lessons, determined to learn to play.

  Initially Margo thought she shouldn’t try piano with the girls around because their boyfriends would hear her practice errors over the cell phones. Nothing embarrasses teens more than parents attempting to act young, and learning instruments is supposed to be done during one’s school years.

  Then Caroline explained to her mother that teens rarely speak on the phone, only text. When cell devices became common, companies that sold them assumed people would yak, yak, yak: pricing focused on the minutes, with texting as a throw-in. Teens and college kids rapidly realized texting is more efficient than talking. No need for salutations and chitchat, no awkward pauses or questions about tone, just the info. Plus every text was like receiving a letter, if a very succinct, coded letter of low import. Everyone likes to open the mailbox and find letters.

  The women had been conversing about events in France, where, the previous day, nearly a million people rioted over a government plan to raise the national retirement threshold to the shocking age of sixty-two. France is easy to make fun of. But the French take six weeks’ paid vacation annually, produce more GDP per capita than the Japanese while spending far less time on the job and live longer than Americans. Is their approach to social organization really so off-base?

  The conversation shifted to a faculty event Lillian had attended: “So then I caused this huge flap at the dinner for the department heads. I accidentally insulted a leading postmodernist.”

  “How?”

  “I called one of his theories ‘true.’”

  Margo felt pleased that she stayed in enough touch with the intellectual world that she got the joke. At least Lillian had not accused an academic of a really serious offense, like believing in something. Margo felt equally good that she had her own reference to the subject.

  “The other day I ate in this chic place downtown that bills itself a ‘postmodern restaurant,’” she said. “Expensive, snobby, strange dishes. ‘Postmodern’ was the right word. None of the food could be said with assurance to taste either good or bad.”

  “Was it the kind of place where they grill cotton candy with heritage kale and free-range bison?”

  “Yes.”

  Lillian said, “Oh, I love restaurants like that! They certainly keep one from overeating. At the height of the Asian-French fusion fad, I thought every possible combination of ingredients had already been used by celebrity chefs. Now I realize that was close-the-patent-office thinking. There will never be an end to ridiculous dishes, so long as people are willing to pay too much.”

  “I’ll give you the name of this place,” Margo said. “It’s very hard to get in. When you phone for a reservation, you get an answering machine that says in a foreign accent, ‘How dare you call us!’”

  “Brilliant marketing.”

  “Tom says he won’t eat anywhere that does not advertise steak and whiskey.”

  “In twenty years, it will be illegal to advertise steak and whiskey. Probably already is in California.”

  The house was too quiet, because the girls had gone to a sleepover: gone together happily, without hysterics or pouting, another recent uptick in their behavior. The new house, with its sense of steady affluence, was the psychotropic they needed.

  In the quiet, Margo heard some mechanism click on and whir. The new home included an extra refrigerator in the garage, for the overflow of suburban living—beer, Gatorade, diet soda. Margo kept a selection of Carvel ice-cream cakes on standby in the garage freezer, in case teens dropped by unexpectedly.

  The extra refrigerator, the builder explained, is a specially engineered garage unit. Because a garage gets cold in winter, the cooling elements in a regular fridge shut down, allowing the contents to warm even as it is cold around the box. Solution? The garage refrigerator has a heated cooling element. When it’s cold, one part of the machine makes heat in order to warm another part that makes cold. Thus a device drawing energy from the burning of fossil fuels keeps things artificially cold when it’s already naturally cold. Isn’t this a great country!

  Margo told Lillian, “Megan removed the stud from her tongue. She went through our photo albums, taking away any picture where you could see it.”

  “Save one to blackmail her with when she’s older.”

  “When we were young, in order to gross out our parents the boys wore long hair and the girls refused to wear dresses,” Margo said. “Today’s kids pierce their eyebrows in order to gross out their parents. Once today’s kids have children, what will be left for their kids to do in order to gross them out?”

  “Perhaps they’ll shave their heads and tattoo things onto their skulls.”

  “Please don’t suggest that around Caroline’s boyfriend,” Margo said quickly.

  With satisfaction, Margo changed to a topic she could not talk about too much: “I’m already thinking ahead to Caroline’s college visits over spring break. Her first choice is Cornell—that’s pretty ambitious, needless to say. But the college counselor thinks she has a chance at a top school. Caroline’s do
ne an admissions-essay draft, about what she learned when her father was a delivery driver and her mom worked at Hooters.”

  Mention of her final waitressing job made Margo chuckle.

  “I’m glad you can laugh about that now,” Lillian said.

  “At least they wanted me! Anyway, the college counselor thinks her essay will be a hit.”

  “Brace yourself about the visits. Spring break is Mercedes gridlock at any top college campus.”

  “I’m the last person to begrudge a mom her driving a child to college in a fancy car,” Margo said. “But half of the people in the Mercedes demographic spend their office hours awarding themselves bonuses while cutting benefits for single parents. Tom says the modern CEO considers a corporate jet for himself more important than a living wage for his workers.”

  Above the fireplace was a magnificent portrait of Tom as a young man: walking along a beach against a stiff wind, squinting off into a sunset. The picture was taken by a friend of Margo’s who was an amateur photographer—taken sufficiently long ago that the camera used was the kind that had film inside.

  The three of them had gone to the beach at the foot of East Division Street to take a photo of Tom and Margo for their engagement announcement. The day wore on, the wind kicked up. After they were finished and preparing to leave, the photographer turned for a “grab” shot of Tom—a picture the subject does not expect to be taken. Margo loved the image, which was not just a good photograph of her husband but a good photograph, period. And she loved that he was staring in contemplation at the same lake she had contemplated as a child.

  “But what can we do about it?” Lillian asked, on the topic of luxury at the top. “Back in the age of the robber baron there were only a few of the disgustingly rich; they were rare and easy to hate. Now there are entire zip codes of people who have more money than they need, and they keep getting better off while the rest of the country stagnates. Those at the top are just playing the angles of the system—who can blame them? Until the system is reformed, they’ll keep raking it in. Anyway, there are far too many of them to hate.”