Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

“You’re incredibly gifted, Sam. But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.”

They were listening to an NPR story about the centenary of the Statue of Liberty, and Sadie was thinking how awful it would be if the Statue of Liberty were an actual woman. How strange it would be to have people inside you. The people would feel like invaders, like a disease, like head lice or cancer. The thought disturbed her, and Sadie was relieved when her mother turned off the radio.

Several hours later, he had finished the reading, which had been about Chinese immigration to America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and how Chinese immigrants had only been allowed to do certain kinds of work, like food or cleaning, and that’s why there were so many Chinese restaurants and Chinese laundries, i.e., systemic racism.

“Promise me, we won’t ever do this again,” Sadie said. “Promise me, that no matter what happens, no matter what dumb thing we supposedly perpetrate on each other, we won’t ever go six years without talking to each other. Promise me you’ll always forgive me, and I promise I’ll always forgive you.” These, of course, are the kinds of vows young people feel comfortable making when they have no idea what life has in store for them.

Yup. Promise not kept.

“If it’s so easy, you try building a fucking storm!” Sadie went into her room and she slammed the door, and then once she was alone, she effortlessly made a storm with her eyes.

We are all living, at most, half of a life, she thought. There was the life that you lived, which consisted of the choices you made. And then, there was the other life, the one that was the things you hadn’t chosen. And sometimes, this other life felt as palpable as the one you were living. Sometimes, it felt as if you might be walking down Brattle Street, and without warning, you could slip into this other life, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole that led to Wonderland. You would end up a different version of yourself, in some other town. But it wouldn’t be strange like Wonderland, not at all. Because you would have expected all along that it could have turned out that way. You would feel relief, because you had always wondered what that other life would have looked like. And there you were.

“You know the best thing about Donkey Kong?” Sadie asked. “That it’s named for the villain? The innovative use of barrels as weapons?” “The necktie,” she said. “It’s brilliant design. Without it, the question of his dick would always be hanging out there.” “Literally.”

Never thought about that, lol

She smiled sleepily at Sam. “I’m not your wife.” “My work wife,” he said. “Don’t deny it.” “Your work wife is Marx,” Sadie said.

He knew what he was experiencing was a basic error in programming, and he wished he could open up his brain and delete the bad code. Unfortunately, the human brain is every bit as closed a system as a Mac.

Watanabe-san bowed deeply to Sadie when they parted. “Thank you, Sadie. Without you and Sam, Marx might have become an actor.”

It isn’t a sadness, but a joy, that we don’t do the same things for the length of our lives.” “Are you saying I get to quit making games?” “No,” Marx said. “You’re stuck. You’re doing this forever.”

“Sam,” Marx said, shaking his head. Marx held up his tumbler of sake. “To Sam! Kanpai!” “To Sam! Kanpai!” Sadie, Midori, and Swan repeated. “Who’s Sam?” Midori said, laughing.

You are American, Japanese, Korean, and by being all of those things, you are not truly any of those things. You consider yourself a citizen of the world.

You have no weapons. You have lived an easy life that has required no defenses of any kind. Your privilege probably makes you reckless.

Video games don’t make people violent, but maybe they falsely give you the idea that you can be a hero.

“And what is love, in the end?” Alabaster said. “Except the irrational desire to put evolutionary competitiveness aside in order to ease someone else’s journey through life?”