Chapter 2
CHAPTER
OUT THE LARGE window over the kitchen sink, San Francisco Bay sparkles and cars stream across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Our house is on a steep street in Pacific Heights.
The exterior white, the style Victorian.
Bruce’s father was a gardener for homes like ours, his mother a housekeeper for the place two doors down, and I grew up with Mama J.
This house is meaningful for both of us.
When we purchased the home ten years ago, it was run-down but still an enormous stretch, the mortgage massive.
Bruce believed that if we created the illusion of the life we wanted, our dreams would come true.
And he was right. We restored the place ourselves using how-to books checked out from the library and home improvement videos, scrimped and saved to renovate, bought secondhand furniture.
Now everything in our home is custom—velvet upholstery, Turkish carpets, artwork picked for its future value, all chosen by an interior designer.
Sometimes it feels like I’ve been plopped down in someone else’s life.
Occasionally, I still have nightmares that my family, our house, was a beautiful dream and that I really live alone in a roach-infested apartment with peeling ceilings, clanking pipes, and a cracked tub with rust stains that look like dried blood.
Banishing that thought, I make another cup of coffee, finish Bruce’s cold omelet, then open my computer and click on LivLoud.
It’s a social media site with endless free creative filters and super easy video options that have made it popular with both middle-aged women and teenagers.
Teens employ the disappearing DMs to get into all sorts of trouble.
I pull up a photo of this morning’s breakfast. The sun streams onto our maple table, glances off a blue hydrangea centerpiece I cut from outside the front door early this morning, the omelet, sprinkled with home-grown chives, and a cut crystal glass of orange juice.
Steam from Bruce’s cappuccino spirals upward.
Beneath the photo I type: Another perfect breakfast with the family!
Try lightly browning the butter when you make an omelet to add a caramelized flavor.
#breakfasttip. I click the green button and hear the satisfying bell chime.
Val has posted a new shot. It’s a black-and-white of her daughter Emi’s blond hair in a perfect French braid. My best friend was once primarily a stylist. I leave a star on Val’s post and a private DM: #jealous. Val knows that Circe thinks I’m totally uncool these days.
My phone rings. It’s Magnolia High School. “Hello?”
“Hey Penn, it’s Lindy from the school office. We have another computer problem I can’t solve. Could you stop by?”
“Sure thing. I’ll swing over before lunch.”
“I’m not sure what we’d do without you. Thanks a million!”
Her palpable relief makes me smile. School networks have private personal information on students, staff, and teachers, including their Social Security numbers.
There was a hacking incident last year, and ever since I set up a firewall to protect Magnolia’s confidential data from malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks, Lindy thinks I can solve any IT problem. It’s nice to feel productive.
I return to LivLoud. Kiki, my other best friend, has posted a photo of Charlotte, also fourteen, in her winter-white cheerleading uniform. My phone rings again; the tone is a fox giggling. Kiki picked it herself.
“Hey there! I was just thinking about you. That picture of Charlotte is gorgeous.”
“Too gorgeous?” Kiki asks.
Her daughter filled out this past year, and she worries that Char will now attract boys like bees to flowers. “It’s fine, promise.” We’re like Rachel and Monica on the Friends reruns I still watch. We talk each other off the ledges.
“I also have two boys, Penn. I know how they think.” She sighs dramatically. “What are you up to?”
“Right now, I’m going through Circe’s posts.”
“You are such a better mom than me,” she laments. “I can’t stay current with it all.”
“It makes me feel like a stalker,” I admit.
Even though Circe knows I occasionally check her feed.
Social media can be a cesspool—there’s bullying and predators.
I scroll on as Kiki rattles off her morning plans—SoulCycle and acupuncture.
Circe’s most current posts include selfies with Emi and Charlotte.
The three went to the same Montessori school pre-K and have been friends ever since.
I notice a new guy—tall, brown hair, lacrosse jersey, a cocky smile that hits like a wrong note.
Beneath his photo is #topscorer #winnerwinner.
I click on the boy’s face and the name Wess Morehead appears.
“Have you heard of a kid named Wess?” I ask.
Kiki giggles, sounding like her ringtone. “Char is seeing Wess, but they’re not official yet.”
I don’t ask what it takes to be considered official.
Our daughter hasn’t brought up dating. I’m relieved that she’s a late bloomer.
Dr. Beth, a psychologist podcaster I sometimes listen to, says that kids shouldn’t date one-on-one until they’re eighteen.
That’s over-the-top, but I do want Circe to enjoy childhood for as long as possible.
“We still on for lunch?” Kiki asks.
Her voice is higher pitched than usual, but getting three kids off to school is mayhem. “I’ll be there.”
I continue scrolling as she shares the new word Char taught her—karmaquences.
“It means if you do something good, you’ll attract good things,” Kiki explains.
“And if you’re bad?” I ask.
“Karma will kick your butt.”
“I like it!”
Hal Crosby’s wife, Heather, has posted on her LivLoud feed a photo of a shiny black Range Rover with a yellow bow on the hood.
Underneath it she’s written: Who knew another trip around the sun would bring this baby!
#besthusbandever. I swipe right to a shot of Heather’s tall, handsome sons and Hal, who is short and bald, around a birthday cake.
Below the picture I add #youdeserveitall!
Kiki asks, “Weekend plans?”
I stretch arms over my head, yawn despite two cups of coffee. “Let’s see … Bruce and Circe are going skiing with Hal and the boys at their house in Tahoe.”
“You’re not going with them?” Kiki sounds worried.
“I like them to have father-daughter adventures.” And I never learned to ski well. Kiki doesn’t say anything, and the silence feels freighted. Why am I so on edge? “Anyway, I plan to be a slug, read a Stephen King novel.”
“It’s impossible for you to be a slug, and no one would ever guess that you’re a horror fan.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re you. Former Girl Scout leader, PTA member, computer whiz, and consummate corporate wife.”
Perception is reality. “Stephen King’s stories aren’t just about horror. They shine a light on the human condition.”
“Okay smarty-pants,” Kiki says with a chuckle. “See you in a few hours?”
“Yup.” I hang up, then open a flagged folder on my desktop for the project that I resurrected in earnest six months ago.
Once it sank in that Circe is now a full-fledged teenager with a busy schedule that rarely includes me, unless she needs a ride.
Bruce works all day and has more and more late meetings, so I’ve been left with way too much time on my hands.
I pull up the computer program begun the first year of my PhD program.
The idea was to create a different kind of lie detector that, instead of recording pulse, blood pressure, and perspiration, used word choices, cadence, enunciation, and rate of speech to detect lies.
I interviewed and recorded thousands of people reading declarative statements that could be true or false, like “I have never urinated in a public swimming pool,” or “I once stole a candy bar,” then had them truthfully answer those questions on a corresponding form with the goal of creating a computer program that could determine with 99.
9 percent certainty—nothing is 100 percent but death—if they were lying.
Why tackle lying? Dr. Edmunds, my PhD Applied Language Sciences doctoral adviser, had asked when I first proposed my thesis project.
I’m not high.
I’ll be home in an hour.
We won’t have to live back on the street.
He’s a good guy.
Just one hit.
You can stay in this school.
He loves little kids.
I’ll keep you safe …
By my teens, I’d learned all of Mama J’s tells. But experience had also shown me that the world was full of liars. I wanted a way to weed them out. But instead of the truth—the irony didn’t escape me—I told Dr. Edmunds that a new kind of lie detector could have fascinating, real-world applications.
Penn, you have a hunger to learn that’s rare, Dr. Edmunds said. He leaned back in his leather office chair, a pipe clenched between back molars. You can achieve greatness.
I blushed from my head to my toes, unused to compliments, especially from this professor, but also because Luc, his teaching assistant, was in the doctoral meeting.
Anytime Luc was near, my stomach filled with butterflies, despite having a boyfriend.
Part of that was Luc’s intellect, the other part, his intense eyes … and dimples.
But there is a danger to the program you’re proposing, Dr. Edmunds continued.
To quote Marvin Minsky, the 1970s computer scientist, “Once the computers get control, we might never get it back.” He paused for emphasis.
We would survive at their sufferance. If we’re lucky, they might decide to keep us as pets.
I laughed. My computer program will just identify lies.
He took a puff of his pipe. What if that program developed a mind of its own?
In the 1950s, Luc said, Alan Turing proposed a test to see if a human evaluator could tell the difference between a conversation with a human and one with a machine. But far as I know, no computer has passed it.
A resigned look settled on Dr. Edmund’s face. Yet. But when one does, how will you know what to believe?
There was a knock on the closed door. Come in, Luc called.
Bruce stepped into the wood-paneled office. He knew I had a meeting with my thesis adviser; we’d agreed I’d call him when it was finished.
Ready to go? Bruce said.
Could you give us a few more minutes? Luc asked. We’re finishing up a discussion about the future of artificial intelligence.
Bruce chuckled. That fad? It’ll be great for playing checkers, maybe chess. He shifted the leather briefcase he always carried to his business school classes. It’s Larry, right?
Luc smiled. Luc.
I blushed again. They’d met several times. Bruce had taken an instant dislike to my TA.
Sorry, but we have lunch reservations, Bruce said.
Dr. Edmunds set down his pipe. Then let’s wrap this up.
Bruce held out his hand and I took it.
Turns out, we didn’t have a reservation anywhere, but Bruce had made us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We had a romantic lunch on the university’s lawn. It only bothered me a little that he’d been able to lie so easily.