Hourglass

by Dani Shapiro

  —

  Alaska. At the end of a week of teaching—this time on a refurbished crabbing vessel off the coast of Homer—M., Jacob, and I were about to head back home. The trip had been full of adventure: whale-watching, seals, otters, and the bears that we knew were all around us.

  But a severe storm had blown in, and the bay between the island and the mainland was turbulent, the sky a deep gray crisscrossed by jagged flashes of lightning. A harsh wind howled. The water taxi bobbed violently at the dock as the three of us staggered against the heavy rain, dragging our luggage along the uneven planks.

  I turned to the owner of the lodge.

  “You’ve taken the water taxi in storms this bad, right?”

  She squinted over the bay.

  “Nope. Not this bad.”

  We loaded our suitcases into the water taxi’s small interior cabin. A few other passengers were on board, local residents on their way to the mainland. One man was wearing hunting gear. His beagle cowered in a corner. The side of the boat banged against the dock. The captain looked tense. I wasn’t at all sure we should be making this trip. But reconsidering wasn’t a possibility. As soon as we were on board, we were under way.

  The trip was havoc. The waves were eight feet high in the middle of the bay. We were airborne once, twice, slamming back down into the water so hard it seemed the boat might splinter. The porthole near Jacob’s seat fogged up, and when the captain asked him to wipe it clear, an out-of-control leisure boat was bearing down on us. It seemed a distinct possibility that we all might perish. My family drowning in a storm off the coast of Alaska was not something I had ever considered. Later—once safely on the other side—our fellow passengers told us that in all their years of making that trip they had never experienced anything like it.

  It’s a good story now. A good storm-at-sea story. Jacob likes to tell it. But when I think of that harrowing hour, it isn’t the wild ride that stays with me so much as the moment we pulled away from the island. A group of my students had come to see us off, and they were huddled in bright yellow slickers, waving madly. Jacob and I found seats in the cabin and braced ourselves for the ride. I pinned one of my legs over his to hold him down as we edged away from the dock. Through the porthole I could see M. standing on the boat’s bow, lashed by rain. He held on to nothing. He pointed his camera at the dock, the wild crashing waves, finding beauty in the bright huddle.

  —

  After the Virtual Dementia Tour the assembled group of one hundred or so executives sits in plush seats in a well-appointed theater on the campus of the pharmaceutical company to hear the results of the experiment in empathy. Those of us who participated have been observed and evaluated. The researcher who speaks is careful not to divulge the identities of the subjects but goes through the data that have been collected.

  Quite a number of us became frustrated or angry. A few, like me, gave up. But there is one man the researcher focuses on. This man broke the rules. He insisted that the list of tasks be repeated until he was sure he had heard them all.

  This man took care of task after task, until he arrived at the last item on his list: put batteries in flashlight and turn flashlight on. He found the flashlight and the batteries, managed after several attempts to insert them. But the flashlight didn’t work. The batteries were in the wrong way. So he had to start all over again. He unscrewed the flashlight and the batteries fell to the floor. He got down on his knees and rummaged until he found them. Then he held them in his gloved hands—but he couldn’t see or feel which way they should go. So he took a battery and put it on his tongue. He licked the battery. Then he replaced them in the flashlight and stumbled to his feet. He switched the flashlight on—my husband—and raised his fists in victory.

  —

  Already my mind is a kaleidoscope. Years vanish. Months collapse. Time is like a tall building made of playing cards. It seems orderly until a strong gust of wind comes along and blows the whole thing skyward. Imagine it: an entire deck of cards soaring like a flock of birds. A song comes on the radio and now I am nursing my baby to sleep, his sweet little body heavy in my arms. I am at a crowded party near Gramercy Park, looking into his father’s eyes for the first time. I am burying my own father. My mother. I am a girl watching her mother at her vanity table. I am holding M.’s hand at Jacob’s college graduation. I am playing with my grandchildren in a house on a mountain. The phone rings. The doorbell. I understand something terrible with a thud in my heart. The plane, the car, the train, the bomb. The test results are ominous. I am wheeling M. down a corridor. We are playing golf in Arizona. We are homeless. We are living in Covent Garden, where we often attend the theater. Pick a card. Any card.

  Day sixteen. Left Cap-Ferrat at the crack of dawn. Long layover in London. We took off from Heathrow. D. was feeling nervous at the end of this glorious honeymoon—so when, shortly after take-off, the captain announced that we were turning around due to an unspecified problem but first had to circle over the ocean to dump twenty tons of fuel before landing—and then, on our approach, when the plane was struck by lightning—D. had a bit of a meltdown. We got off the plane—M. was a prince—and got ourselves booked on a flight the next morning. We spent the very last night of our honeymoon eating Big Macs and making love in an airport hotel.

  Day seventeen.

  Married.

  Home.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dani Shapiro is the best-selling author of the memoirs Still Writing, Devotion, and Slow Motion, and five novels, including Black & White and Family History. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, One Story, ELLE, Vogue, The New York Times Book Review, the op-ed pages of The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, and has been broadcast on This American Life. Shapiro was Oprah Winfrey’s guest on Super Soul Sunday. She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia, NYU, The New School, and Wesleyan University; she is cofounder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. Shapiro lives with her family in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

  An Alfred A. Knopf Reading Guide

  Hourglass by Dani Shapiro

  The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Hourglass by Dani Shapiro, an enlightened and searching meditation on the nature of marriage, the passage of time, and life’s inexplicable turns that emerge in a brilliant kaleidoscope as the author takes inventory of her life.

  Discussion Questions

  1. Shapiro describes the process of decluttering her life and house at the outset of the memoir. How does this listing and parsing of ordinary household objects allow readers to enter her world and relate it to their own?

  2. When reading her old journals from her honeymoon, Shapiro acknowledges the oddness of her writing about herself in the third person. What does this suggest about how she thought of herself as a young woman, and how she thinks of herself now, in midlife?

  3. What does the memoir suggest about the nature of hindsight? Does Shapiro speculate about how she’d make different choices if she already knew the outcomes, and how did reading about this make you think about your own choices?

  4. Although Shapiro takes comfort in her older (and mostly analog) ways of recording experience and communication, she is a creature of modern technology as well, and brings it into her narrative. What does the juxtaposition of older and newer ways of making memories say about our human impulse to connect? What are we gaining or losing in the shift from privately writing in journals to posting on social media?

  5. What’s particularly shocking for the family about the incorrect online “fact” that she and M. are divorced? Do public “truths” like this have a way of tend to have an impact on reality?

  6. The woodpecker and coy-wolves pose literal conflicts—fear and disturbances to the couple’s daily lives—but more figurative ones as well. What does Shapiro internalize about these animals, and how do her observations of them help her glean more in the process of re
viewing her past?

  7. What are some of the more haunting memories of the couple’s life together? How do the gradually revealed details about her son reflect the pain of those particular times? And how do those painful times serve to strengthen the couple’s bond?

  8. Does M. appear in the memoir as an individual, separate from Shapiro’s interactions and past with him? How does his character in the book reflect the ultimate subjectivity of any narrative, and the dependence on a person’s point of view? Discuss the parts of his life and job that stood out to you as most formative in Shapiro’s understanding of her husband.

  9. The couple are both writers. What do you think Shapiro is conveying about two artists who make a life together? What are the benefits and the challenges? Each of them has multiple projects and assignments in drama/TV that require them at times to adopt personas. Does that performative aspect of art seep into their lives and into these pages?

  10. Discuss Shapiro’s tonal equanimity in describing major life events. What about her profession as a writer allows her to arrive at a voice that is more densely poetic than confessional?

  11. How did Shapiro’s process influence your own understanding of your past? Have you ever undergone an exercise like the one in this book—of cleaning house in an attempt to clear your mind? Are there things in your past that you’ve consciously or unconsciously hidden away in “closets,” and how do you go about unearthing them?

  Suggested Reading

  Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

  Andre Dubus III, Townie

  Dennis O’Driscoll, Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney

  Dani Shapiro, Still Writing

  Peter Matthiessen, In Paradise

  Grace Paley, Just As I Thought

  Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

  Patti Smith, M Train

  Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

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