Computer

Laurie
Computer
Starbucks, February 10, 2009

The right arrow key on my new Sony Vaio doesn’t advance. Otherwise, it’s a beaut with its matte black case and brilliant screen, dense with pixels. At Fry’s Electronics, Richards says it is ten times faster than the sluggish ThinkPad I’ve been using. It’s a present from him, and we float through payout because no one is buying anything in Phoenix. The great, black-box stadia of stuff are echoing ghost towns.

I leave Richard to set it up. We’ve already had a row about how, whenever he sits at my computer, I jump around, fearing he’ll change a setting. He’s experimental with machines, and they sense his power. He’s the computer whisperer. Me, I’m a set-me-up-exactly-as-I-like-it-and-don’t-teach-me-anything girl. The computer is me—like when your mother is cold and she says, “Put on a sweater.”

Richard thinks AOL uncool but kindly installs a couple of versions that pretend to be upgrades but screw things up until we get one that works. Word 2007 looks unfamiliar, and I wake up asking, “What has happened to ‘select all’?” And, “How to you set line spacing?”

But soon the machine is ready and I begin working on a document, and the right arrow key is really sticking. Richard is working in the bedroom. I knock and go in. He looks up. “What?”

“The right arrow key doesn’t work.”

He sighs and rises. If he were telling this story, he would say I need things to be exactly so as a show of power and entitlement. He loathes shows of power and entitlement. He sits at my computer, and I give him a wide berth. He presses the right arrow key hard, tap, tap, like a mallet. “It works.”

“But I don’t type that way.”

He tries to lift up the key pad, but it won’t pry off. He presses it down again, firmly. He resets the speed of the keys, but nothing helps.

“What can I do?”

He shrugs. “I mostly use the space bar and the mouse. How often do hit the right arrow key?” He thinks I should get used to it, but I am thinking: I’m going to work on this computer for four or five years, many hours a day, and I will hit that key hundreds of times a day, and it will never work.

“I use that key a lot.”

He throws up his hands, and his eyes get dark. In his family, you don’t complain and you are never supposed to return something to a store. You suck it up and make the best of your situation, and you do not make others meet your needs, especially store clerks because, as Richard has pointed out many times, English clerks don’t believe in providing service. They despise being seen in that role and are contemptuous of anyone who reminds them of it. “Okay. Let’s put it in back the box and return it,” he shouts. “You don’t have to have a new computer. I’m not going to set up another one.”

“But shouldn’t it work?”

“Call Fry’s. They will send it to Sony, and it won’t arrive back here before you go to New York.”

I call Fry’s and a nice young man named Chris says, “Bring it back right away, and we’ll give you a new one.”

Richard calms down immediately. It’s the damnest thing. Thwe problem is off his hands, and he gets an idea. “Ask if they’ll swap out the hard drives.” Chris says he can do it but there may be a fee. Now we’re in my field of expertise. I say, politely but firmly, “I don’t think there should be a charge. I’ve had it less than a week.” Chris says I can speak to a manager, but by the time we arrive he’s already taken care of it. On the ride over, Richard is smiling and relaxed, and I say I will buy him the Grateful Dead CD he’s been wanting. Chris exchanges the hard drives, and I test the keys, and they all work, and we are out the door in twenty minutes, and all I can think is that living with my preferences and restlessness about Arizona—and thinking he has to fix everything—is making Richard’s head explode.