Happy and You Know It

by Laura Hankin

  Amara was trying to calm a fussing Charlie. She’d been pretty cranky herself during Dr. Clark’s visit. Whitney didn’t blame her for being skeptical. Packaging “wellness” was a white-hot consumer trend, and even for a former publicist like Whitney, it was sometimes hard to separate out the valuable products from the ones expressly designed to prey on the vulnerabilities of young women—or young moms. Perhaps TrueMommy was nothing but a glorified Tupperware party, the latest thing housewives did to pass the time. And Dr. Clark’s promise to feature them in an ad campaign was probably a baited hook designed to get them to sign up for more vitamins. But the science seemed convincing enough—even skeptical Gwen had admitted it!—and Whitney was certain she had experienced a much-needed, all-natural burst of energy since she started taking the bespoke vitamins, in their exquisite suede box. Besides, it was fun—something she and her friends could do together rather than something about which she had to feel ashamed. Take that, Xanax!

  If you could afford it, sometimes you could let yourself be taken in a little bit to get some peace of mind. And now, she thought with a thrilling glow, she could afford it.

  “Hey, what’s up with you?” Whitney asked, giving Amara a gentle nudge. She tried not to have favorites in playgroup, but still, Amara was the one she wanted to sit next to, the one she’d trusted with things she didn’t tell the rest of the women.

  “I didn’t get to weigh in on Claire,” Amara said through her teeth as she smiled for another photo.

  “Oh, sorry!” Whitney said. “I guess you were still in the bathroom. She’ll be great, though.”

  “I think we could do better.”

  “But you said she had a beautiful voice,” Whitney said, angling her face up for the camera so that there was no chance Gwen would catch a hint of double chin. Claire would be a much better musician for them than Joey had been. With his boundless confidence and shameless flirting, Joey had introduced a new competitive element to playgroup. Without meaning to, they’d all started jockeying for his attention, little resentments building when Joey spent the whole playgroup teasing Meredith or complimenting Amara, the only one of them who didn’t seem to blush under his focus. Whitney was amazed by how stupid they all became, like preteen girls at a school dance. She had been quietly thrilled when Ellie told them about the bachelorette party incident so they’d had an excuse to go back to being the grown-ups they actually were.

  Yes, Claire would be better, with her coppery hair and her slightly skittish manner. She seemed sweet. Whitney wanted to pet her, to protect her.

  (Later, Whitney would realize how blind she’d been. Claire would change things between the playgroup women more than Joey ever could have.)

  “I liked her a lot,” she said. “And everyone else was in favor.”

  “Well, you still should have asked me,” Amara said.

  “Okay, someone’s got a bug up her butt today,” Whitney said, and immediately felt guilty for snapping.

  “Yup,” Amara said, stone-faced. “There’s a large praying mantis burrowing its way into my ass.”

  They looked at each other for a moment, then burst into laughter, right as Gwen took a final picture.

  When everyone else left and Whitney looked through the pictures later, that was the magic one. They all glowed, Whitney and Amara especially. “#Wellness and wine with my favorite mamas at playgroup is the best #selfcare,” Whitney typed quickly, adding in a few more hashtags and posting the photo and caption online. Then she gathered Hope up in her arms and settled with her on the couch. Hope was toddling about, but she still couldn’t walk more than a few feet without flopping back down, and Whitney was grateful for that. “Not yet, rug rat,” Whitney said, rubbing her nose against her baby’s cheek, and Hope let out a contented sigh, relaxing against her mother’s chest. Soon she fell asleep. Whitney didn’t. Whitney had been having a hard time sleeping lately.

  She could put Hope into her crib and close the door for some private time, but no, the baby was too sweet to move. So she rested her head back on one of the throw pillows and looked up at the ceiling, then out the windows. “Hellooo,” she whispered, her voice arcing up toward the light fixture above. Not even in her wildest dreams had she imagined that she’d live in all this space.

  * * *

  —

  When Whitney was a little girl, she had hated her house. It was the smallest one on the block, and in between the deep red brick of the Kellys’ on one side and the gray stone of the Silvermans’ on the other, the beige siding of the McNabs’ looked hopelessly plain.

  But once a year, Whitney loved where she lived. On December first, her father would go to the shed out back as dusk started to roll in and return with his arms full of lights. He’d set up a ladder and ask Whitney to hold the bottom, and she would stand there like a proper sentinel, making sure he didn’t fall off while he strung and hammered. An hour later, their house would be a glowing galaxy, threaded with little colored stars. The Kellys only put up one string of white lights. The Silvermans were Jewish, so they didn’t put up anything.

  As the years went on, the galaxy expanded. Her mother would roll her eyes, but then her mother rolled her eyes at pretty much everything her father did. Her father, egged on by Whitney’s evident delight, bought a life-sized inflatable Santa who swayed in the wind like he was overcome with Christmas spirit. The next year, a Rudolph joined him. (“How about putting that money toward the weekend in the Poconos you’re always promising me?” Whitney heard her mother hiss at her father one night.) The year Mrs. Hollinger started leading the church choir, her father suddenly got much more interested in religion and added a glowing plastic nativity scene in one corner of the yard. The Virgin Mary’s face was so soft and sweet, like Mrs. Hollinger’s. For a time, Whitney’s regular games of pretending that she was Christine Daaé from The Phantom of the Opera or a beautiful maiden whisked away to a better life by a lovestruck prince gave way to a new hobby, in which Whitney looked at Mary’s expression and then tried to replicate it in the mirror in her room, pretending a scarf-wrapped teddy bear was the Baby Jesus. She’d look down at the bear, her eyelashes fluttering, and try to turn the love from her eyes into something solid that could be felt by the recipient like a warm blanket. She was very pretty in those moments, she could see whenever she snuck a glance back up at the mirror, and she imagined the assembled shepherds and wisemen looking at her and her teddy bear Jesus baby in awe, all of them wanting to protect her, to marry her, to possess her. (She did not yet understand that being a mother generally made a woman less desirable, not more.)

  The year Whitney turned thirteen was a confusing one, in which she became suddenly, achingly aware of everything that was wrong with her. Her boobs were too small, and then they were too big, causing older men to show her a new kind of attention. She was too quiet, except when she was too loud. She was too fat. (She was never too thin.) But when December first rolled around, her father added a motion-activated inflatable snow globe that played a tinkling version of “Holly Jolly Christmas” when people walked by, and things were simple again. She and her father pretended to be ninjas and tried to sneak up the front porch steps without setting off the snow globe, but no matter how slowly they moved, it started vibrating with its merry tune, causing them to abandon their ninja pretense and dance around, shout-singing along.

  A week later, Whitney got a ride home from choir practice with Alicia, who went to the private prep school a ten-minute drive from Whitney’s public junior high. Alicia was the unofficial leader of the alto section, the one who could keep up the difficult harmonies without trying. During snack time, as the other kids wolfed down Doritos, Alicia took out a Ziploc bag of celery sticks and ate them carefully. She always reapplied her pink lip gloss in the bathroom after they’d finished singing, before reentering the world.

  “That’s so gorgeous,” Whitney had said one time when they’d been the only two in the bathroom.

>   “That’s cause it’s not Bonne Bell or some drugstore crap,” Alicia had replied, wiping the excess gloss from the corners of her mouth with a finger. “My mom and I bought it at Lord and Taylor.”

  Whitney desperately coveted Alicia’s friendship.

  Whitney was waiting at the bus stop, stamping her feet on the ground to keep warm, when a Volvo pulled up and Alicia leaned her head out the passenger-side window. When Alicia offered her a ride, Whitney did her best to act casual.

  At the wheel, Alicia’s mom looked sleek and young—but not too young. She wore a long-sleeved casual dress and no earrings. (Whitney’s mother always wore earrings, sparkly ones that made her earlobes droop and her lined face seem duller.) And she chatted about how their family would be vacationing in Aspen over the holidays in a voice free of the Pennsylvania roundness that so squarely marked Whitney and her parents as belonging to this particular corner of the earth. In her head, Whitney practiced repeating what Alicia’s mother said, exactly as she said it, in a voice that could fit anywhere.

  “It’s just down the block,” Whitney said as they turned onto her street.

  “Mom, look!” Alicia said, nudging her and pointing toward Whitney’s house.

  “Uh-oh,” Alicia’s mom said. “Someone on your block goes overboard on the holiday spirit, huh?” She and Alicia exchanged glances, laughing.

  “It’s so trashy,” Alicia said.

  “Honey, don’t say that!” Alicia’s mom said. She paused and then smirked. “‘Gaudy’ would be better.” They laughed again. Whitney managed a weak smile.

  “So which one’s yours, honey?” Alicia’s mom asked.

  Whitney, mute, pointed toward the Silvermans’ gray stone, and Alicia’s mom pulled over.

  “Anytime you need a ride, you just let Alicia know, all right? That bus is”—she shot Alicia a grimace—“not pleasant.”

  “Yeah, and maybe you can come over next week or something!” Alicia said.

  “Thanks,” Whitney said. “That would be awesome.” She got out of the car and stood on the curb as Alicia rolled down her window. “Bye!”

  “Oh,” Alicia’s mom said. “I’ll wait till you get inside. I swear, I dropped off a friend of Alicia’s brother’s once. He went all the way to the front door and waved at me so I drove away, and then that sneaky little sociopath turned right around and went to the park to smoke pot. You remember that, Alicia? The mom was so mad at me! So now I always watch the kids go inside.”

  “Okay,” Whitney said, and turned around, her legs shaking. She pulled her coat tighter and thought quickly. She would tell the Silvermans that she’d forgotten her key and that her parents hadn’t answered the door when she’d knocked. Could she come in and call her parents to see if they were home? Maybe her parents weren’t home yet. Her mom didn’t get back from her job as a dental hygienist until seven, and she never knew what her father’s construction schedule would be. The Silvermans were nice enough. They wouldn’t turn her away. She mounted the first step to their porch, gripping the railing. Four more steps to go.

  And then her own front door opened. “Whitney, I thought that was you!” her father said. “What are you doing over there?” He laughed. “Did you get lost?”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. Perhaps it was possible to temporarily erase oneself from the face of the earth, if only one was desperate enough. Shame spread over her like nausea in the winter cold.

  “Are you okay, chicky?” her father asked. He clomped down their porch stairs and headed her way, and the snow globe began to play as he passed, its cheap music box tune poisoning the air. He held a bowl of cereal in his hand. Suddenly, to the soundtrack of “Holly Jolly Christmas,” in the light of a thousand tacky Christmas bulbs, Whitney saw her father as if for the first time, down to the half a Cheerio stuck in his beard. (All those days he spent at the kitchen table, telling her he was “on vacation” from his construction job—those had never been vacation after all. I should leave your worthless ass, her tired, dumpy mother hissed at him, when she thought Whitney wasn’t around, while her father shot back, Good luck finding another man who will want you.) And she saw herself too, what she would be if she didn’t fight it—a cheap plastic Mary stored in the shed after a month on display.

  “Whitney?” Alicia said, poking her head back out the window.

  “Oh,” her father said. “Is this your friend? Hi!” He walked over to the car. “I’m Whitney’s dad. Thanks for driving her home.”

  Alicia shot Whitney a confused look and then giggled as understanding settled over her. Her mother gave her a quick pinch on the arm and then leaned over her daughter toward the open window. “Our pleasure.” Then she looked at Whitney with something like pity. “Merry Christmas,” she said before throwing the car back into drive.

  Two nights later, Whitney snuck outside at one A.M. with a nail she’d taken from the drawer of her father’s odds and ends in the kitchen. As the Christmas carol jingled, she jammed the nail hard into the side of the snow globe. The material was firmer than she’d expected—less like a balloon and more like a grapefruit rind. She gave the nail a twist. When she pulled it out, air whooshed with it. She stood and watched the snow globe deflate, the folds of the material covering the speaker until only a weak hint of melody remained.

  * * *

  —

  Grant came home an hour later with his usual noise, dropping his briefcase and waking up Hope, who began to mewl, suddenly cranky.

  “My girls!” he said. “Busy bees, I see.”

  “Hey, honey!” Whitney said. He was so handsome, her husband. He leaned in to kiss her, and she tried not to flinch. She closed her eyes and rearranged his features into another man’s face. That helped somewhat.

  She pushed herself off the couch to get started on dinner and glanced at her phone to see a larger-than-normal number of notifications. Some account focused on all-natural health had shared the playgroup photo from today, and an influx of new followers was sharing and commenting, her feed a sea of “gorgeous” and “jealous” and “inspiration.”

  She’d worked so hard. She’d gotten a scholarship to Harvard, where she’d become her own Henry Higgins and banished her accent for good. She’d learned the exact right amount of makeup to put on to make it look like she was barely wearing any at all. She’d made herself love the briny taste of oysters as they wiggled down her throat so that no one would know that she was an interloper in this moneyed world. She’d captivated Grant (although his father had insisted they get a prenup). She’d given birth to their child, the most wonderful baby on Earth. She had enough money to slip Claire the Playgroup Musician an extra twenty dollars like it was nothing. (Claire was clearly struggling. Her boots were that kind you get from a cheap stall in midtown, the soles nearly flopping off.)

  Whitney had gotten what she wanted. And she was about to drive a nail into it.

  Chapter 4

  Okay, Claire was getting back on the horse. Operation Reenter the World and Prove All the Assholes Wrong was a go. After a few more ego-boosting playgroup sessions, in which the women fawned over her voice (well, except for Amara scowling at her in the corner), she scheduled an audition with a band that was looking to add a female singer. She didn’t normally spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, but she fussed over herself that morning, switching her part from left to right and then back again. She did lip trills in the shower. The subway car she got on happened to be totally empty, not because of piss or vomit or anything like that, but just through some thrilling confluence of timing, location, and luck. Claire took it as a good omen and walked from pole to pole, belting out “Killing Me Softly,” as the train rattled downtown.

  She got to the studio fifteen minutes early for her appointment time and sat down to wait. A few other girls milled around, staring at a gray door from which muffled bursts of music emanated. They wer
e all younger than her—fresh out of college and trying way too hard (one girl had put on so much eyeliner that she looked like Jack Sparrow). Claire wondered if any of them had her tour experience, if any of them had given their all both to small bars sparsely populated with mean drunks and to crowds of a thousand people enthusiastically clapping along. Had any of them rolled up their sleeves and changed a tire on the side of a Florida highway in the midst of a designated-driver shift one night while the rest of the band had been too high to do anything but stare? Did any of them know that particular magic that happened when you and a bunch of unwashed dudes had been trying and trying to finish a song and then, in one inspired moment, the perfect lyrics fell from your lips? Did any of them know what it was like to have that strange, enchanted life and screw it all up?

  She shook her head, the memories tainted for her now, and glanced down at a stack of magazines on the coffee table next to her chair. Her gaze skidded across New York and landed on the newest issue of Rolling Stone. Goddammit.

  There, on the Rolling Stone cover, under the headline “The Unexpected Conquerors,” stood Marcus and Marlena, entwined in an embrace. The photo was striking, vivid. Marcus wore suspenders, gray pants, and a partially undone white button-up. Marlena, her hair wild, her lips bright red and slightly parted, wore skintight, high-waisted black pants and nothing else. Marcus had his eyes locked on Marlena, but she’d turned her head toward the camera so that she stared straight at Claire, a frank, unabashed look on her face.

  Claire knew that she should leave the magazine, that she should stand up and move to the other side of the room, but a sick, masochistic curiosity overtook her. Would they mention her? Or would they just pretend she had never existed? She opened the magazine, flipped to the cover story, and started to read.

  For years, the members of Vagabond toiled away, not unhappily, in indie rock purgatory. They had fans numbering in the tens of thousands, a record deal with a small label, a handful of sponsorships. Most of the time, they made enough money to pay their rent. They were set for a long, solid career of quietly doing what they loved. And then they found Marlena Rodriguez.