The Nix(129)

Henry must have thought he had it all figured out—a good job, a family, a nice house in the suburbs. It was everything he’d always wanted, and so it was a terrible and maybe even shattering blow when it all fell apart, first when his wife abandoned him, then when his job did too. That would have been in 2003—after more than twenty years working there, when Henry was maybe eighteen months from a comfortable early retirement, close enough that he was already making plans to travel and take up new hobbies—when his company filed for bankruptcy. This even though the company had issued to its employees an “All is well” memo not two days before declaring bankruptcy, this memo saying that rumors of bankruptcy were overblown and to hold on to your stock or even buy more, since it was so undervalued at that moment, which Henry did, though it was later revealed the CEO was at that very moment secretly dumping all his shares. Henry’s retirement was tied up completely in the now worthless company stock, and when the company came out of bankruptcy and issued new stock, they offered it only to the board of directors and big-time Wall Street investors. So Henry was left with nothing. The nest egg he’d spent so long amassing evaporated in a single day.

That day, as the realization settled over him that his retirement would have to be pushed back ten or maybe even fifteen years, Henry had the same bewildered look he’d had the day that Faye disappeared. He had once again been betrayed by the very thing that was supposed to keep him safe.

Now he just seemed cynical and wary. The kind of person who no longer believed in anyone’s promises.

“The average American eats six frozen meals a month,” Henry said. “My job is to get that to seven. That’s what I’m tirelessly working for, sometimes even on weekends.”

“Doesn’t sound like your heart’s really in it.”

“The problem is that nobody in the office takes the long view. They’re all focused on the next quarterly statement, the next earnings report. They haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

“Which is?”

“That whenever we identify some new market niche, all we do, in the long run, is dismantle it. This is like our guiding principle, our original philosophy. In the 1950s, Swanson saw that families ate meals together and wanted to get into that market. So they invented the TV dinner. Which made families realize they didn’t have to eat meals together. Selling the family dinner made the family dinner go extinct. And we’ve been pulverizing the market ever since.”

Samuel’s phone dinged again, another new text message.

“For Christ’s sake,” Henry said. “You young people and your phones. Just look at it.”

“Sorry,” Samuel said as he checked the message. It was from Pwnage. It said: OMG FOUND WOMAN IN PHOTO!!!!

“Sorry, one second,” Samuel said to his father while typing a reply.


what woman? what photo?

photo of ur mom from the 60s!! I found woman in that pic!!

for real??

come to jezebels right now I’ll tell u everything!!!



“It’s like I’m at work trying to have a conversation with one of our interns,” Henry said. “Your head’s in two places at once. Not paying quality attention to anything. I don’t care if that makes me sound old.”

“Sorry, Dad, I gotta run.”

“You can’t sit down for ten minutes without interruption. Always so busy.”

“Thanks for dinner. I’ll call you soon.”

And Samuel raced south to the suburb where Pwnage lived and parked under the purple lights of Jezebels and hurried inside, where he found his Elfscape buddy at the bar, watching TV, a popular food channel show about extreme eating.

“You found the woman in the photo?” Samuel said as he sat down.

“Yes. Her name is Alice, and she lives in Indiana, way out in the boonies.”

He gave Samuel a photograph—pulled from the internet and printed on copy paper: a woman at the beach on a sunny day, smiling at the camera, wearing hiking boots and cargo pants and a big green floppy hat and a T-shirt that said “Happy Camper.”

“This is really her?” Samuel said.

“Definitely. She was sitting behind your mom when that photo was taken at the protest in 1968. She told me herself.”

“Amazing,” Samuel said.

“Best part? She and your mom were neighbors. Like, in the dorm, at school.”

“And she’ll talk to me?”

“I already set it up. She’s expecting you tomorrow.”

Pwnage gave him the printout of a short e-mail correspondence, as well as Alice’s address and a map to her house.

“How did you find her?”

“I had some time on Patch Day. No big whoop.”

He looked again at the TV. “Oh, check it out! Do you really think he’ll be able to eat that whole thing? I vote yes.”

He was talking about the TV show’s host, a man known for his ability to eat ridiculous quantities of food without passing out or vomiting. His name was famously etched onto Hall of Fame plaques in dozens of American restaurants where he overcame some food object: a 72-ounce porterhouse steak, an XXL pizza burger, a burrito weighing more than most newborn babies. His face was puffy in the way of someone who, all over his body, had a quarter-inch of extra muchness.

Right now the host gave colorful commentary as a chef in what appeared to be a greasy-spoon diner prepared hash browns on a large discolored griddle—a potato mound he shaped into a square roughly the size of a chess board. On top of the hash browns the chef piled two handfuls of crumbled sausage, four handfuls of chopped bacon, ground beef, several diced onions, and what appeared to be shredded white cheddar or mozzarella or Monterey Jack cheese, so much cheese that the meats were now obscured totally under a white melty mess. In the upper right-hand corner of the screen it said: 9/11 Remembered.