Excerpt from The Blizzard Party by Jack Livings, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

After he disappeared, I told the counselor that I'd often wished he would die in a plane crash. She said I'd felt abandoned. She said I was angry at him for traveling. I said that a plane crash was cheaper than a divorce. Ha. You're essentially a solitary person, she said, and I said, Yes, that's true. She said, Do you feel guilty now for wishing that he would die in that manner? No, I said. It was just a fantasy, I said, an escape fantasy, and I knew that much even then. Okay, the counselor said. That's probably what I would have told you. It's a normal fantasy. You know, parents sometimes wish their children would be abducted. Well-adjusted, normal, decent people. Fleeting thoughts, the counselor said, but worth examining. I can imagine, I said. Sometimes, she said, as a reaction to overwhelming life events—the unpredictable nature of love, for instance—our psyches create scenarios that allow us to relieve the pressure. Sometimes that's all we need, a stress valve. If you sometimes feel relief that he's gone, that's normal. It's fine to feel that way. As valid as any other emotion. Do you ever feel that way?

Relieved? I said.

Yes, relieved, she said.

My counselor was named Lana and she was terrible.

* * *

Surely he's easier to love retrospectively. Would we have stayed married if he hadn't disappeared? Doesn't matter. Do I still love him only because he's gone? Doesn't matter. Is his existence within me a form of love? Doesn't matter. I'm well trained in the analysis of markets, art, literature, and I'm capable of accurately extracting motivations, intentions, and presuppositions from a wide range of people, and none of that matters, either. It's all mechanics, gears and grease; the only thing that matters is the feeling itself. The how of feelings—even the why of them—is a distraction, a game for college kids reading Descartes, something for a neuroscientist to build a career on.

The ability to experience an emotion without labeling it—that's what I'm talking about. I know it's not cool to say this, but Vik is a living, breathing thing within my every feeling and my every action, and while I recognize that (as I have been told by a number of counselors) I do not have to allow loss to define me, I believe the righteous path is one of memorialization. Of course, I have some experience serving as a vessel for memories of the dead, and perhaps that has influenced my feelings on the matter. Perhaps I've chosen the comfort of the familiar.

How did it all start? Me, six years old, at a party, asleep on the Vornados' guest bed, the coverlet imprinting my cheek and arm with arpeggios of pointillist nonsense, the TV accompanying my heavy, magnetic sleep, my brain dreamlessly emitting spindle waves, delta waves, my consciousness a receptive void. Vik deposited the old lawyer Albert Caldwell into that same room. After Vik left, Albert lay down next to me. He took my hand and he bestowed on me the archive of his life. I had within me a new landscape, both unusual and instantly familiar, as though I'd been on a dark trail all along, following his bootheels. I had become a file cabinet for Albert's history.

So it would seem that Albert carved himself a snug little slot in my head. I have his memories, but the fog blurring his final year obscures his intentions. I can only speculate. Maybe he meant only to hold my hand, to establish a human connection as his final act on earth. Albert was a difficult man, short-tempered, intolerant, made wicked by the erosion of his reason. Yet it's possible he meant me no harm. Albert, being Albert, would point out that intentionality is the only means of judging his actions.

For as long as I can remember, Albert has been with me. I know things about his family that even his children do not know. His life with Sydney. His life before Sydney. The smell of Langdell Hall, the sound of law students' fingers on the pages of those old books. The terrible power his father held over him. The pervasive calm of standing among horses on the farm where he grew up. The infant faces of his children. I have questioned his surviving children, and I have known the answers before they've spoken.

Excerpted from The Blizzard Party by Jack Livings. Copyright © 2021 by Jack Livings. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.