The Candy House

by Jennifer Egan

At home, everyone seemed happy, as I reminded myself daily by checking Trudy’s Facebook—later, her Instagram feed. She was a genius at capturing offhand moments and making them look iconic.

Only his folks altered with the years, their hair going silver, Robert Sr., a high school football coach, ultimately on oxygen for emphysema, both of them seeming to shrink on the couch cushions in a way that made the crystal and porcelain artifacts look bigger each year.

whose much older boyfriends had white stripes on their ring fingers.

Nothing is free! Only children expect otherwise, even as myths and fairy tales warn us: Rumpelstiltskin, King Midas, Hansel and Gretel. Never trust a candy house! It was only a matter of time before someone made them pay for what they thought they were getting for free.

In fact, my favorite fantasy involves returning to Venice Beach on a Sunday, something I haven’t done in many years. I imagine threading my way among Rollerbladers and dancers and grifters and stoned teens, past acres of sunbathers shielding their eyes to study their screens while invisible entities study them in return.

As they’re mulling over the safety of swimming, Tim Breezely suddenly strips off his clothes and dives from a log, buck-naked. The smash of cold stops his breathing; he has a brief blackout sensation of death. But when he surfaces, howling, what’s died is his gloom—he’s left it on the river bottom. Freedom! Joy!

The need for personal glory is like cigarette addiction: a habit that feels life-sustaining even as it kills you.