The Leisure Seeker: A Novel by Michael Zadoorian

it’s not just a quaint amusement to them. This is probably what their life looks like, too.
    When our kids were growing up, their idea of hell was to watch slides. When Cindy was a teenager, she couldn’t run from the living room fast enough when we’d drag out the projector. Kevin wasn’t much better. I’d make them watch for ten or fifteen minutes, then they’d get so fidgety that I’d let them go off so John and I could watch in peace. But in the past few years, both kids have come around. They like watching slides now and so do their children. I think they’ve realized that this is their history. It’s the history of all of us.
    Up on the screen it is a different day on that same summer weekend, a barbecue with everyone outside playing catch, children doing somersaults for the camera, everyone loading up on hot dogs, hamburgers, mustard potato salad, three-bean salad, and ambrosia salad. The other cottages behind the people in the slides look bland and generic, like theatrical backdrops meant only to fill the eye. During a horseshoe match, I am far in the background again, looking no cheerier than before, yet John kept including me in his shots. I don’t know why. Then I remember something. I remember John waving at mefrom behind the camera that day, trying to cheer me up. It was shortly after my third miscarriage, the baby I had carried for so long, then so suddenly lost. Crushed, I had given up on having a second child at that point. A weekend party was the last place I wanted to be, but John and my sister Lena thought it would be good for me.
    Even though I know the ending to this story and it’s a happy one—I changed doctors, and a year and a half later I gave birth to Kevin—it still wounds me to see that pained young woman up there trapped in her horrible present. I stop clicking forward and continue to stare at my blurry, background self. I am barely recognizable as I start to dissolve. I don’t proceed to the next slide. The oldsters wave good-bye to us and head back down the road, probably thinking that I’m nuts. They may be right. We’ve barely watched a tray and a half of slides, but I think we’re done for the night.

Five
    KANSAS
    After passing the Route 66 Flea Market, the Route 66 Drive-in, the Route 66 Salvage Yard, another Route 66 Diner, and the Route 66 Bookstore, we enter Kansas. I’ll say this: there may only be twelve miles of Route 66 in Kansas, but they are very well marked. Not only are there “Historic 66” signs everywhere, but the 66 insignia is also painted on the road practically every ten feet. They don’t miss a trick.
    Yet the joy of crossing a state line is short-lived. John and I soon find ourselves in “Hell’s Half Acre,” a dire, barren landscape of coarse scrub, welts of dried muck, and random piles of crushed rock. My guidebook says this stretch of land was permanently damaged and depleted by years and years of strip mining. I don’t like this place one bit. It makes me think of smiling, cruel-faced men cutting into the earth, ripping everything out, all the while telling you something good will come of it, but leaving only scar tissue.
    I feel for that earth. After a lifetime’s worth of appendectomies, episiotomies, cesareans, hysterectomies, lumpectomies, hip replacements, knee replacements, endarterectomies, and catheterizations, the landscape of my body is its own Hell’s Half Acre. (More like a whole acre in my case.) A topographical map of stitches, scars, staple marks, and the sundry etchings of medical procedure. So this time, when the doctors were, for once, loath to slash me open, you can see why I was glad. You can see why I had to take off with my husband and hit the road. Sooner or later, enough is enough.
    Here’s how it works: doctors like to save people, but when you’re talking about someone who’s eighty years old, what the hell is there left to save? What fun is it to cut them open? They’ll do it if you really want, yet they’re