The Optimist

by Sophie Kipner

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  The Lion

  The Organist

  The Gardener

  The Date

  The Waiter

  The Boss Man

  The Rastafarian

  The Breast Man

  The Dancer

  The Ju-jitsu Master

  The Pretender

  The Blind Man

  The Passenger

  The Bartender

  The Librarian

  Acknowledgements

  Supporters

  Copyright

  Visual artist and author Sophie Kipner grew up in Topanga, CA. A graduate of the University of Southern California, she writes and illustrates her own stories, which have appeared in Kugelmass: A Journal of Literary Humor, Amy Ephron’s One for the Table, FORTH Magazine and The Big Jewel, and her artwork, most recently her series of blind contour portraits, DONTLIFTUPDONTLOOKDOWN, has been shown and sold internationally. She lives in Los Angeles, and The Optimist is her first novel.

  www.sophiekipner.com

  @sophiekipner

  For my brother Harry, my goddaughters Annabel, Oona and

  Milla, and for James, wherever you may be

  With special thanks to Lene Bausager,

  Daniel Shellard and Xander Soren

  Dear Reader,

  The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound. Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers’ edition and distribute a regular edition and e-book wherever books are sold, in shops and online.

  This new way of publishing is actually a very old idea (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). We’re just using the internet to build each writer a network of patrons. Here, at the back of this book, you’ll find the names of all the people who made it happen.

  Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too – half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.

  If you’re not yet a subscriber, we hope that you’ll want to join our publishing revolution and have your name listed in one of our books in the future. To get you started, here is a £5 discount on your first pledge. Just visit unbound.com, make your pledge and type mrwrong in the promo code box when you check out.

  Thank you for your support,

  Dan, Justin and John

  Founders, Unbound

  PROLOGUE

  The Guest

  Harrison Ford called me once and said, ‘Make a reservation for two and put it under the name Jonesy.’ I didn’t understand the occasion but when Harry wanted to do something, I’d learned not to ask questions. I said, ‘No problem. See you soon.’

  In room 24, I sat for an hour in a dark suite directly in the path of one strong beam of sunlight that forced its way through a hole in the curtains. When Harry came in, instead of noticing the way my milky flesh tones and flashes of strawberry-blonde hair weaved in and out of the single strand of natural light, the way my green eyes shone as if a light bulb were behind them, he asked me who I was, and, ‘Why are you sitting there?’

  I told him I thought it would be sexy, unusual, charming. He told me to put my clothes back on. ‘What do you think this is,’ he said. ‘A farm?’

  Flushed and confused, I hastily threw my blouse over my corset and returned to the front desk from where I had come.

  The phone rang again. ‘Good afternoon,’ I said. ‘Hotel Bel-Air, how may I help you?’

  *

  I lost that job shortly after I got it, but I don’t allow myself to sit in regret. What a waste of time that would be! I could spend my life thinking that if I had only shaved my legs or worn a kimono instead of that crazy expensive lingerie, maybe things would have worked out differently, but what good would that do? Harry and I just weren’t meant to be in love, and that’s okay because I have faith in my ability to bounce back. I was in my early twenties; we all make mistakes when we’re young. But I was resilient. Things break, and then they heal. Although, I guess that’s not always true because one time I broke my elbow in a trapeze accident and I haven’t been able to Chaturanga ever since.

  Anyway, Harry was just one story. There have been many.

  The Lion

  I’m not going to lie; I was always a bit of a horny kid, climbing onto anything rigid, or even slightly unrelenting, around me. For the longest time, I thought my heart was located between my legs because it beat and pulsed so much. My mother would have to physically rip me off couch corners and away from ­Jacuzzi jets when guests came around for dinner.

  My mother’s always been quite wild and whimsical, but after my dad decided our house was too small for him – when I was about six and my sister nine – she formed a panicked edge. Instead of admitting that I was a free spirit like her, she would self-consciously laugh it off, pretending she didn’t get it. ‘I don’t know where she comes from!’ she would say to a slew of new friends, new suitors, with chronically wine-stained teeth as she’d pry me off the furniture in some desperate attempt to appear more maternally conservative than she actually was. She was constantly shifting, you see, erratic, wearing different masks in case it made a difference (it never did). Inevitably, we’d fall down together, our bottoms bouncing across the floor like gently skipping pebbles across a placid lake. In front of a room full of loosened jaws, she’d get up swiftly, like it was nothing but some dust on her shoulder, fluff her black bob, give me a wink, and return to the party, seemingly unscathed.

  And that party side of her – that was my favorite. That was when she was most alive. When she was on, she was on full blast. Hot or cold, never lukewarm. She told jokes everyone laughed at and could hold any room with a story. You should hear some of her stories. If she were around someone whom she thought might be able to change her life, her laughing would become increasingly robust. It would tear through walls, that laugh, and she’d use it to cleverly string together awkward silences. This was just one of many ways she knew how to fill gaps. I’d watch her mingle and work the room, throwing herself over eligible men. ‘Twilda, baby,’ they’d say as she’d corral them with her wit and charisma, her irrefutable charm. But this chameleonic flip-flopping was normal. This was Los Angeles.

  Crammed in a small, busy house, my sister, Brenda, and I grew up under my mother’s loosely focused eye in Topanga, a treehouse kind of town nestled in the Santa Monica mountains where names like Ocean and Summer are not cool; they’re ordinary. I always saw my mother as this colorfully dressed woman who, after one too many burns, wore an ill-­fitting black cloak over her outfit, subduing her. You see, after my dad left, she never stopped moving and that franticness – paired with her staple glass of red wine – made her especially slippery. You knew underneath she was still a modern-art painting, a unicorn, but you didn’t know when it would show, so you’d wait as she buoyed between hope and depression. Maybe that was her way of teaching me how to keep a man on his toes.

  Contingent upon the crowd, she would vacillate between being sexually free-spirited and neurotically concerned about upholding appearances. On one hand, she’d be too aware of herself, and on the other, she’d encourage us to be expressive and open and comfortable with our bodies, not caring what anyone else thought. Unfortunately, my sister was reserved and I took it too far (I loved being naked
and would take my clothes off everywhere I went: supermarkets, toy stores, zoos, even the monasteries we went to when my mother thought she was a Buddhist). So depending on her mood, her reaction to our polar-opposite behavior either impressed or infuriated her. But either way, she never told me to stop. I guess we’re all like that. We’re all a bit fickle.

  Sure, she was messy, but messy was interesting. At the end of the night, when everyone had left, she’d wake me up and lead me to the empty living room, light an American Spirit cigarette and start swaying to Nina Simone and Sam Cooke.

  ‘Why’d everyone leave?’ I’d ask, but the wine tipping out of her glass would usually distract me as she waved it through the air. She’d move silently through the room, and I’d copy her from a few steps behind. I spent many nights like this, following her trail of moonlit smoke and dancing in her wake.

  ‘Everyone’s just so goddamn boring!’ she’d always say when no one stayed.

  ‘Not me, though, right?’ I’d ask, just to be sure, hips swaying, finding a groove.

  ‘You could never be boring,’ she’d say sweetly. ‘You’re my baby.’ The red wine would always leave a little mark on either side of her mouth, like miniature horns. I loved them so much that I even missed them when they disappeared. Thankfully, she’d never be without them for too long.

  My mother became fanatical about Dorothy Parker just before my eleventh birthday and would read her to us in bed. The queen of emotional shrewdness and intelligence had eventually found my mother; the words seducing her with their shared distrust and adoration of love. They soon became her bible. Dorothy’s poems took the place of Goodnight, Moon and I’d often go to bed confused. Most kids got The Tale of Peter Rabbit but I was sent to sleep with lines that would stick to my insides like gum, the most glutinous being: ‘Be the one to love the less.’ Talk about a goodnight story. So, like we were told of gum, Dorothy’s wisdom through my mother’s voice would grow inside me into a tree. Leaves would fall but the roots would dig deeper, grasping firmly.

  That line, about loving the less, it burnt a hole in me every time she said it because I knew she didn’t mean it. It couldn’t possibly be sound advice because love is when both people love the more, and I was going to find a man who loved me just as much as I loved him. Our love would be mind-blowing. We’d have to take breaks walking down the street because we’d be so overwhelmed by the amount of love we would have for each other. Our hearts would ache not from loss but because they’d be stretched to their limit in order to hold the limitless expanse that was our love. We’d think there could be no more room inside us left to store it, that we might just burst, but we wouldn’t because we’re human and we’d adapt. The choice to believe in love is a necessary pre-condition to being able to love. I knew it existed; it’s just that my mother had forgotten, and I had to prove her wrong because proving her wrong would be the only way she could be happy again.

  So, I did what most children who were trying to save their parents would do: I crawled under the table during dinner parties – back when I was small and undetectable – and played footsie with the guests. It was sort of a matchmaking, Robin Hood kind of expedition, I guess, since my motives were altruistic. I’d spin my forearm around their feet to mimic my mother’s foot, just to get the ball rolling. I’d pull back; watch as their toes pushed forward to return the gesture. From there it would usually take off on its own, the back and forth of twirling, searching feet, and it would instill in me a sense of pride and accomplishment because my mother would always think the man had made the first move. Men would, at times, need the encouragement to initiate and that’s all I was doing. I was just a catalyst, giving my mother a chance to feel adored again.

  It worked in momentary bursts but it didn’t have any holding power, and so it was often just the three of us. A house of estrogen. A unit. Before turning off the lights at night, Mom would turn around in one sharp, quick move and ask us, ‘And what is our mantra, girls?’

  ‘The cure for boredom is curiosity,’ we’d say together in splendid harmony, those pious words of Dorothy Parker, ‘but there is no cure for curiosity.’ I loved this quote because I’m naturally inquisitive, but when I’d turn to Brenda, she’d just roll her eyes. She didn’t get it. In fact, she still doesn’t, which is why I nanny her five-year-old daughter, Mary. I have to make sure she believes in magic before my sister’s sensibilities get in the way. I’m hoping Mary’s temperament is malleable, but one can never be sure.

  My quest for personal happiness and that of bringing it to others persisted in myriad ways. A case in point was when I was in my mid teens and I wanted to be a phone-sex operator but my voice was never husky enough. I’d have to just practice on strangers. I’d pick up the phone, dial random numbers and wait for it to ring. And each time it did, it gave me a thrill. Would he be an old, lonely man? Would he be my seventh-grade history teacher, Mr. Hockley? The main problem was that my voice would always come out differently from how I’d anticipated, like everything else in my life. The sound I’d hear in my head was dry and raspy, like I’d been incessantly smoking cigarettes through the night at a full moon party, screaming my head off. But when I’d open my mouth, trying to muster that richly seductive tone, I’d cough. ‘Do you have something stuck in your throat?’ people would ask me, not realizing it was a PHONE SEX CALL, and, ‘Do you need some water?’

  I would have thought that sounding like I had something stuck in my throat was a phone sex asset, but something was lost in translation. It was probably a blessing in disguise that they didn’t understand the nature of the call since most of the receivers were stay-at-home moms. That could have become really dicey. It’s true what they say: the dots always connect in retrospect.

  I’ve had an enviable amount of relationships, all of which would be considered lucky, largely erotic and fantastic by anyone’s standards. Some were brief but all were profound, and the good news is that I don’t have baggage from them because I just move forward. Some things stick, of course, but that’s natural. I might have filled pockets, but phew, no bags.

  One of my favorite mentors was a pizza deliveryman I grew up around named Rainbow Dan. He was a bit ominous, spouting truths he’d learned in past lives. We never had an affair because my mother beat me to it, but I couldn’t blame her. He was a steal.

  ‘He reminds me of one of my first boyfriends,’ my mother said as her cigarette smoke played with the shape of her face. She was trying to relax on her new brown deluxe sofa but couldn’t quite find the right angle. Channeling Goldilocks, she moved from seat to seat.

  Milk from across the street was over that day. His name was Milken, but everyone called him Milk. He’d always been across the street, for the most part, for as long as I could remember. He was usually hanging around me, annoying me with his limpness, his awkwardness. He never knew where to put his hands.

  We were about eleven, and Milk had been sent to detention after yelling at a girl who was making fun of me. I also was in trouble because, according to Mrs. Wells, I had in­­stigated it. When we got home, Milk sank in the corner while I explained to my mother why. For a moment, my shoulders had slouched like Milk in that seat. She said round shoulders were for victims, and that I wasn’t a girl with round shoulders. We weren’t victims, but every once in a while something would throw us.

  ‘They called me stupid,’ I started, ‘because I said Captain Cook found the Cook Islands.’

  ‘How is that stupid?’ she said. ‘He did.’

  ‘They said I was thinking of Captain Hook, from the movie. Then they all started laughing because I thought he was real.’

  This happened a lot in class because I’d often mix up my words. I figured it was because my brain was moving too fast; they thought I was just dumb. My teacher believed I never knew what I was talking about and the students would follow suit, a classic behavior of sheep. Apparently my teacher had never heard of Captain Cook, and therefore assumed I had jumbled my words again, the room quickly erupting in laught
er.

  ‘Well,’ my mother said, turning to me. ‘Are you going to let some mean, little, misinformed kids make you feel dumb?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where’s your backbone?’ she added. ‘You’re Irish!’ She started banging on her chest like Tarzan and stamping her feet in rhythm. It was coming to that time of night, and Rainbow Dan had just given her a pick-me-up.

  ‘We smoke, we drink, we fuck, we dance!’ she yelled, coaxing Milk and me to repeat.

  ‘We smoke!’ we screamed. ‘We drink! We fuck! We dance!’

  When Milk came to the word fuck he’d stop and just mouth it. He could never say it out loud.

  ‘Milk,’ I said. ‘I know you think you’re helping but you’re too little to stand up for me. You’ll just get hurt.’

  Milk’s bones hung from their sockets; his feet so big he could barely lift them, which rendered his walk quite clumsy. I’m pretty sure his balls hadn’t dropped, either. It wasn’t his fault, though; I was used to men. I was used to men like Rainbow Dan.

  ‘Is he your boyfriend?’ Milk asked my mom, referring to the man with technicolor pants.

  ‘Oh God, you know I hate to be put in boxes, Milky boy,’ she said, dancing away at the thought of him.

  ‘Rainbow Dan’s just kinda lame,’ Milk interjected. ‘He smells like patchouli oil.’ I rolled my eyes. He was so young, so clueless. He had no idea that if a man smelled like the Earth it meant he was manly.

  ‘Oh, you’re just jealous,’ I said. I looked over to my mother for confirmation but she was looking the other way. It was hard to get her attention.

  ‘Dan’s like the wind,’ she added. ‘You can just ride him and he’ll take you somewhere.’

  You couldn’t tell it was only 4:00 in the afternoon because the trees around our house cast blankets of shadows that left us in a perennial state of darkness, save of course for the random laser of light that would pass through the branches. One of them blazed across my mother’s face, illuminating the gold in her hazel eyes. They shimmered there on the couch, just like she did – a bright light whose white had yellowed and grayed, stained from years of trying to shine too brightly.