Hypothermia

morning we noticed that Gula hadn’t come home to sleep in our bed for a few nights. I went down to the basement and found her—the epitome of feline vanity—stretched out, feverish and dusty, under an air-conditioning duct. We took her to the vet. It turned out that she’d eaten a poisonous root that had destroyed her liver—she had only a few hours left to live. We carried her back home. There we made her a comfortable bed of towels and old scraps of flannel, and we let her die in peace.

DIARY OF A QUIET DAY

    9:00 A . M . Before my son was born I used to spend whole days at the beach, as though I were already retired. Not that I ever went out to dance clubs or sipped cocktails from coconut shells, nor was I ever one of those adrenaline junkies who risk their necks parasailing. Instead I’d sit, just planted in the sand, reading a book. It runs in my family. When we were kids, my parents frequently took us to spend weekends at the beach. These were only weekend trips, so we made sure to enjoy every moment to the fullest extent. We’d arrive late on Friday evening. Then, on Saturday morning, we’d eat breakfast in shifts so that we could secure a palapa facing the sea, right at the edge of the surf, where we would all settle in for the day: my parents imperiously enthroned in the shade, and the nine of us children—brazenly lazy, almost obscenely identical—stretched out reading in a row of beach chairs like a flank of cavalry.
    Ever since my son was born, however, a day on vacation is more like a feverish trance: from six A . M . to eight each morning we’re in the swimming pool; then it’s time for breakfast and off to the beach. There we tumble in the waves, dig holes, build sandcastles, make seaweed wigs, and poke around for crabs to torture. I end up with sand encrusted on parts of my body I didn’t even know existed. Around noon we retreat to the house’s air-conditioned embrace. We eat lunch, then I put my son down for his nap. In the afternoon, while Cathy is looking after him, I settle down—as in days gone by—to read a paperback edition of The Odyssey . Perhaps being a father now helps me to see that all the tension in Homer’s epic comes from the friction between the hyperkinetic Odysseus and the placidly dim-witted Telemachus, a good-for-nothing son who neither defends his mother from the pretenders who accost her, nor sets sail in search of his father.
    Today is different. We’re staying at an enormous house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a strip of sandbars and islands which begins at Cape Henry, just a few miles from Norfolk, and stretches south more than three hundred miles, beyond Cape Fear and Wilmington—a haven for pirates, once upon a time. We—my wife, our little boy, a pair of grandmothers, two dogs, and a cat—opened up the house last Sunday and we’ll close it next week. It’s now Wednesday, maybe Thursday. The day before yesterday the rest of my wife’s family arrived. Because they live far inland, up in the hills, they hate—possibly without realizing it—the sea and everything to do with it. One day at the beach was enough to convince them that there’s no sport in tormenting crabs—they walk backward, after all—and spur them to organize a few outings in the car, with seat belts properly buckled and the air-conditioning high enough to blow-dry their hair. Through gritted teeth, my wife angrily gave in to her family obligations—the inexorable summons of her bloodline—so she and our son are heading out with them for the day. I’m staying here to get some work done.
    As I helped to pack the Diet Cokes and the party-size bags of Tostitos as big as TV sets, I was seized by the dizzying prospect of spending an entire day of perhaps immoral peace and quiet: in the gringo universe, where having children is more a self-indulgent whim than a real decision, one quickly learns that if your kids aren’t driving you crazy, it’s because they’re driving someone else crazy, somebody without kids of their own.
    10:30 A . M . From the spacious third-floor balcony you can see the ocean. Between our place and the beach is another row of houses similar to this one. People around here christen their homes as they do their yachts. Each one has its own sign emblazoned with some quasi-nautical name: Circe , Ogygia , Poseidon . The breeze is not especially refreshing and I feel sorry for my relatives driving around out there. By now they must have reached the town of