The Candy House

by Jennifer Egan

Why did people have to pretend to be what they already were?

At the six-month mark, they will have a 32 percent chance of taking a more permanent step such as marriage, so I am tracking the days carefully—in part because a permanent step in the relationship between M and Marc will prompt my immediate death. I have no data to back this up, but I’m certain of it.

Mysteries that are destroyed by measurement were never truly mysterious; only our ignorance made them seem so. They are like whodunits after you know who did it. Does anyone reread a murder mystery? Whereas the cosmos has been mysterious to humans since long before we knew anything about astronomy or space—and, now that we do, is only more so.

She touches her face, feeling the warmth of her skin against her fingertips. She goes to her window and opens it. Blue sky. Brisk San Francisco wind. A sense of the ocean, although it’s nowhere in sight. The satisfaction of one good long breath. She inhales again, even more deeply, and thinks, I am lucky.

Hindsight creates an illusion that your life has led you inevitably to the present moment.

“Jesus Christ, Jules, we’re talking about a fucking fence,” Stephanie says, raising her voice for the first time. “The Middle East is imploding, you’ve got refugees trying to raise their kids under plastic tarps with no running water—I mean, there are conflicts over space in the world that actually matter, but our suburban split rail is not on the list.” I listen to Stephanie Salazar and I worship her.

The secret to a happy ending, Mom used to tell us, is knowing when to walk away.

One horror of motherhood lies in the moments when she can see both the exquisiteness of her child and his utter inconsequence to others.

The hit was a fluke, a random eruption of power that Ames alone knew he possessed.

But there’s a false bottom under this happy ending, a hollowness around the words. Can you hear it?

But knowing everything is too much like knowing nothing; without a story, it’s all just information.