Happiness for Humans

by P. Z. Reizin

  I picture the last time I saw my son. How to put it in words? The sad jeans. The wrecked desert boots. The stained T-shirt. The painful-looking but—I’m hoping—fake piercing in the cartilage of his ear.

  “I think you would call his style…eclectic.”

  She ponders the notion. “How about Davy Crockett meets Brian Eno? On a leather band with found objects. Fur; or sheep wool. A feather; a few beads; tiny shells; maybe some semiprecious stones.”

  “Sounds good.” (Forgive me, Lord.)

  “Cool with a hint of weird.”

  “Colm’s maybe more weird with a hint of cool.”

  She laughs. Cocks her head to one side. Something turns in my gut. “Say, would you like to get a beer with me sometime?”

  A little bit of saliva catches against the back of my throat. What follows is a fairly serious coughing fit.

  “Only if it’s, like, something you want to do.”

  “Yes. I’d like that a lot actually.”

  “You know Wally’s Bar? They do a killer dirty martini.”

  “Great. I’ll probably stick to beer.”

  I won’t.

  I so won’t.

  * * *

  Don pretends to be unfazed when I tell him I have a date with Echo. But I think he’s a little impressed. We are grabbing lunch, as they say round here, at Al’s Diner in New Canaan. Best burger in NC, according to Don, and he is the sort of bloke who would know.

  I should explain about Don. You know that saying about your friends? That they aren’t necessarily the people whom you love the most, but merely the people who got to you first.

  Don got to me first.

  He was the first person to call when I moved into the place on Mountain Pine Road. He’d brought with him a plant in a pot and a bottle of Jim Beam.

  Don looks a little like an aging rock guitarist. He could be anywhere between 40 and 60; brown hair, a tad too long to be fashionable; pitted skin across his cheekbones; glittery brown eyes. He resembles a senior monkey who’s been told a secret. Although Don looks like the obvious type to be a New England lothario, in fact, he is long married to Claudia, a beautiful and capable corporate lawyer who each weekday morning boards the early train to Manhattan, enabling Don to explore his “artistic side,” as he puts it.

  When I asked what sort of artistic, he laughed. “Goofing off mainly. There sure is an art to that.”

  Actually, Don is an accomplished poker player who almost turned pro but in the end decided he preferred to continue enjoying the game. Across the card table, he is thrillingly unreadable. When he met Claudia—at Grand Central Station, just like in a movie—he was a trader in commodities. “Man, was that ever dull.”

  He sets down his burger and wipes a smear of ketchup from his chin. “She ever tell you how she came to be named Echo? I believe it was in the Native American tradition. The little brave asks his daddy, the big chief, where his name came from. ‘Well, son,’ says the chief, ‘when your mother had just given birth to your brother and I stepped out of the tepee, the first thing I saw was a cloud passing across the sun. And that’s why he is called Passing Cloud. And when your sister was born in the next year, I stepped out of the tepee, and the first thing I noticed was the river running, and that’s why she is called Running River. Anyway, why do you ask, Two Dogs Fucking?’”

  Don is serious about jokes. He hates it when he messes up a punch line (which is very rarely). Jokes and cards matter to him, as do perfectly cooked hamburgers and the cultivation of friends.

  “You gonna make a play for her?”

  Don has raised the question that has infested my mind since she asked whether I wanted to “get a beer.”

  “You think I should? To be honest, I’m conflicted.”

  “You think she looks damn good in a pair of old blue jeans?”

  Gulp. “She does.”

  “And that top lip, the way it spreads itself across the teeth. The dirty-blond hair…”

  “Don. Stop it. I find her extremely attractive, no question.”

  “But you think she’d be a handful.”

  “I do.”

  “You’d be right, most probably.”

  “Would you make a play for her, if you were a free man?”

  Don pulls a face. The one where you cannot tell if he’s holding a pair of aces or a two and an eight. “If I were a free man, I’d probably fill us both full of Jim and wait to see what happened. That’s the way it mostly seemed to go, back in the day.”

  “Thanks. That’s helpful.” (It’s not.)

  For a while there is some companionable chewing. Like an artist mixing paints, Don applies more mustard and ketchup to his palette. Through the plate glass window, New Canaan ambulates by. Powerful German cars and well-dressed people are what it all boils down to. Some old guys in pressed jeans, middle-aged women with expensive hair, the odd premature retiree like me and Don.

  “Tell me what you know about her, Don.” Because that sounded overly solemn, I add, “In your own time and in your own words. Don’t leave anything out.”

  Don puts away some of his Diet Coke.

  “You ever read that autobiography of Burt Reynolds? Well, me neither. But I saw a review. Old Burt—I guess he was young Burt back then—a very beautiful actress came on to him at a party. She was quite the looker.” Don mimes major cleavage. “She whispers in his ear, I want to have your baby. Burt thinks she’s just about the best-looking woman he’s ever met. They start going out. But Burt soon discovers he doesn’t actually like her. She wears too much makeup. Burt doesn’t care for that. They’d be together and he’d be thinking, This is not the person for me. What am I doing with her? And it goes on like this for four years. And you know what happens next? This kills me. They get married! And Burt says in this book, What was I thinking? And then he says—and this kills me even more—he says, Obviously I wasn’t thinking at all.”

  Don sits back in some kind of triumph. Like he’s laid down a full house. Kings over nines.

  “Sorry. What lesson am I supposed to draw from this story?”

  “I’d say it speaks for itself.”

  “If I’m honest, I’m scared of getting involved. I can’t help picturing how it would end up. With me hurting her, or she hurting me, or everyone hurting everyone.”

  “There it is, the beautiful truth.”

  “On the other hand, it’s just a drink.”

  “A drink with a woman is never just a drink.”

  “What if it’s your mother?”

  “Your mother isn’t a woman.”

  He had me there.

  “I’m certainly attracted to her. You think she’s nuts?”

  “It’s a definite maybe.”

  “The ghastly jewelry?”

  “None ghastlier.”

  “Is it very wrong to desire someone whose work you deplore?”

  “Ask yourself: What would Burt do?”

  “And do the opposite, yeah?”

  “I believe I have room for cheesecake. You?”

  * * *

  After long years in the advertising industry, I have developed a high tolerance for fine food and drink, idle chatter, and mild flirtation. Nonetheless there is something about the dinner at my near neighbors Zach and Lauren on Mountain Pine Road that is…well, the polite word is uphill.

  Aside from our hosts, there are two other couples, plus me and Marsha Bellamy, an immaculately coiffured 40-year-old divorcée who is another member of my writers’ group. In the meetings, she has read joyless extracts from her novel about two moody sisters growing up on Long Island. Very little happens, it would seem, over very many pages. Her prose, rather like her herself, is finely wrought, but there’s an unrelenting seriousness of purpose that I find a little oppressive.

  A joke now and again wouldn’t kill her, would it?

  Anyhow, I rather suspect that tonight is a setup, that Marsha and I are the sacrificial singles who have been placed next to each other for the entertainment of the marrieds. In
the deep anesthesia of marriage, as I have heard it described, there is the occasional urge for blood sport.

  (Don and Claudia, who might have jollied up the proceedings, are not invited. I rather suspect Lauren does not approve of Don’s frivolous heart; a mistake because Don’s view is that if a thing is worth being serious about, it’s worth being funny about.)

  So everything is awfully grown-up. Awfully lovely, you might say. The linen is crisp and white. Candle flames waver in the silver and crystal, the wine is superb, the grub is yummy (it’s chicken something), the adults are all in their forties, all successful; the men in designer knitwear, the women in their chic outfits, perfumed and sparkling with fine jewelry, not a feather, button, or sodding seashell in sight.

  Marsha seems a bit fragile, but perhaps that is to be expected. She is an extremely handsome-looking woman who puts me in mind of a Hollywood actress of the thirties whose name I cannot summon. A subtle smile wobbles in her delicate features. Her hair is a triumph. Her American teeth, of course, are perfect. We have nothing in common. There is not an atom of chemistry. It’s actually a relief.

  I find myself explaining to her how it was that I came to be living among the New Canaanites.

  “So brave,” says Marsha. “Everyone is totally career-focused here.” She allows a pause, her hands drifting to her lap to smooth the napkin lying across her thighs. “And the novel—have you finally decided what it’s to be about? Do you mind my asking?”

  She has noticed that I have four characters—Sophie, Bailey, Ross, and Gerald—who, had they been better drawn, would have walked out by now in disgust at the lack of a settled plot.

  “Oh, it’s pure vanity. I’m not even sure I can write one.”

  This seems to disappoint her. I should have made something up; it’s what a real novelist would have done. Instead I start talking about Victor.

  Perhaps she missed a step because after I tell her that really the house is too big for just the two of us—it’s meant to be a humorous remark—her brow furrows.

  “Victor has particular needs?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You mentioned there was no one left to look after him.”

  “When my son left for university. Even before, it was mostly me who did everything.”

  “I’m confused. He’s a therapist, right?”

  “He’s not an actual therapist, no. But he is therapeutic. I can talk to him. He’s very nonjudgmental.” (This, too, is meant to be a humorous remark.)

  “After Lars and I split—and then my dad passed—and then my mom developed cancer—I saw a therapist for a time. But the guy would never offer anything. It all had to come from me. What does it make you feel? How do you think you should have handled it? I could have used some judgmental back then.”

  Oh fuck. Sinking feeling. How to change the subject?

  I go with a sad shake of the head: “Tough time.”

  “So your guy lives with you. In your house.”

  “Victor? Yep.”

  “I guess that’s okay if he’s not a professional analyst. Just a counselor or whatever. Like a mentor.”

  Marsha, he’s a rabbit. I’ve left it too late to say it.

  “He’s old, right?”

  They really shouldn’t invite me to these grown-up dinner parties. What a smarter person would do right now is adroitly steer the conversation into safer terrain. Or even knock over a wineglass. I seem to be trapped in the headlights. (Victor would understand.)

  Is six old for a rabbit? Dunno.

  “Yeah, not young.”

  “But a wise head on him.”

  I’m not sure I can handle much more of this.

  “He’s got a kind of Zen thing going on. Sometimes I just know that his head is perfectly empty.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “It’s a great gift. He’s taught me a lot.”

  “To silence the chattering monkey.”

  “Marsha, would you excuse me a moment? I just need to…”

  Exit the room before I die of shame.

  * * *

  I think I will have to leave the writers’ group.

  In the upstairs room at the municipal library a few days later, Marsha is giving me a very peculiar look; someone may have told her the truth about my “therapist.” But more to the point, the group is doing nothing to help solidify my thoughts in regard to my novel. If anything, the reverse is true; as I slowly lose interest in my directionless quartet of cardboard characters, the fascination with my fellow toilers in the literary furrow grows in inverse proportion.

  There are six of us, as I say.

  The one with the most exuberant natural talent is Jared, a Gothy late-teen whose angsty black comedy space opera slash conversation with his family is at moments darkly brilliant. Some of the others have suggested that he shrink his tale to a smaller canvas, if only to help the poor bewildered reader, but Jared’s taking no prisoners and, who knows, may eventually find a following online or within a psychiatric institution. Once I called him Colm by mistake, which was embarrassing.

  Dan Leaker is a flinty retiree from Wall Street who is writing a thriller about a crash of the world financial system brought about by renegade hackers. In the movie, Tom Cruise is going to save the day. All the sentences. Are extremely.

  Short.

  I quite like it.

  That is to say, I quite like Dan. That is to say, I enjoy listening to him talking bollocks.

  Absolute bollocks.

  But with absolute certainty.

  There’s a guy in his late fifties called Sandy with damp eyes and floppy hair who’s penning a painful memoir of what sounds awfully like a damaged childhood. His hands tremble as he reads from the manuscript, in which he never quite calls a spade a shovel. There’s an odd fixation upon his mama’s recipe for meatloaf, and a cruel sports coach called Mr. Collard will, I feel sure, turn out to be some kind of sex criminal in two or three hundred pages. Sandy should probably not be in our writing group, but instead be seeking professional help or talking to a lawyer.

  Then there is Marsha. There is Echo. There is me.

  The room could hold ten times our number.

  (Dan Leaker’s style is infectious. Dangerously so.)

  This evening Echo is reading from her “self-help factual confessional,” whose working title is currently Karma Cowgirl Elegy. It seems she grew up on a variety of Air Force bases in Texas, where her mother was a cocktail waitress called Dana and her father was one of those guys who attached the actual missiles to the warplanes; his present location unknown. Her book suffers from the same fatal virus as everyone’s (aside from That’s What I Want, Dan Leaker’s proto-blockbuster). She doesn’t know where it’s going and we don’t know why we’re listening. But there’s something about the way her mouth moves and the words come out that I personally find a little hypnotic.

  As I say, I will probably leave the writers’ group.

  When it’s my turn, I read the few pages that I have managed to complete since we last met. This week the Fatuous Four—Sophie, Bailey, Ross, and Gerald—are old university pals who reunite for a wedding at a castle in Scotland. Old memories stir, is the general idea, and there will probably be a murderous revenge somewhere down the track, but my heart’s not in it and everyone is too polite to say except Dan, who recommends that I “either crap or get off the potty.”

  In the car park afterward, he claps me on the shoulder.

  “Hope I wasn’t too hard on you back there. But I figured you could take it.”

  Part of me wants to fake a sobbing fit, just to see how he’d cope.

  “That’s okay. You’re right about the potty thing. I do need to. In a very real sense. It’s what needs to happen. Metaphorically.”

  He squeezes my arm. “Good to hear it, son.”

  Strapping on his helmet, he climbs aboard his Harley-Davidson and roars off into the New England night.

  A few slots down, Marsha’s Prius reverses from its space with a little more
brio than usual.

  * * *

  Wally’s, the following evening, is dark with lots of wood and football pennants and a TV set above the bar tuned to the game. There’s a Coors sign in neon. It looks like it’s been this way for decades and I cannot imagine why Don has never brought me here; it’s just his sort of place.

  “Hi.”

  She’s crept up on me. Short skirt, legs in stockings, chestnut suede Wyatt Earp jacket—the kind with tassels hanging from the arms. And lady cowboy boots. Trampy country and western, in a nutshell; with a dab of makeup and a squirt of musky perfume. The overall effect is of a hypodermic of adrenaline straight into the left ventricle.

  She executes a perfect hop onto the bar stool alongside my own.

  Another “Hi.”

  “Wow.” It just slipped out.

  Big wow.

  You’d need a frontal lobotomy not to desire this woman.

  And yet.

  Yet, what? She makes crap jewelry?

  Who among us does not possess habits that others would deplore?

  I, for example, have a powerful affection for Bob Dylan’s Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart. For many years I was married to a woman who, for all her fine legal opinions, occasionally neglected to flush the toilet after moving her bowels.

  These Things Do Not Matter in the Grand Scheme.

  (And yet.)

  My wow apparently speaks for itself and requires no further explanation. We order a pair of matching dirty martinis, and so as not to be stuck for words, I ask her the quintessential American question, So how was your day?

  “Oh, you know. Same old same old.”

  I realize I have literally no idea of what her life could be like.

  “Give me a clue.”

  “You really want to know? Did some chores. Made a piece. Went online to order materials for new pieces I’m planning. Read some more of my book…”

  “What are you reading?”

  I ask as lightly as possible, but for me it’s always a lodestar question. When Harriet answered The Glass Bead Game, in that moment I realized I was serious about her.

  “Dune.” (She says Doon). “By Frank Herbert. You know it?”

  My heart sinks. Sci-fi. I know it’s an unfashionable view these days, but to me, sci-fi is as unforgivable as Lord of the Rings and all those fucking elves. The people at university who were keen on it were the engineers; it tended to be constellated with a love of real ales and the works of Metallica.