Happy All the Time

by Laurie Colwin

  “I should?” said Vincent. “In what way?”

  “I am the scourge of God.”

  Vincent sat still, listening to his heart beat. Misty was smiling again. Her smile revealed to him that his behavior was far from random. He was in love.

  “I just felt bad,” he said. “About yesterday.”

  “In order to feel bad,” said Misty, “you should have kissed me a lot more.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Misty Berkowitz’s given name was Amelia Elizabeth. She had been named for her great-grandmother and her grandmother, but her cousin Michael’s mispronunciation had stuck with her. Misty was stoical about her names. She had ceased to cringe at either Misty or Amelia. She felt that all girls should be called Mary and since she was not she would have to endure, although she took a grim, ironic pleasure in the fact that there was nothing misty in her character.

  She had come back from two years at l’École des Hautes Études with a strong command of the French language, a trunkload of books, a green suede coat, and a broken heart. This broken heart had been inflicted upon her by an embassy brat by the name of John Bride, who ran an American cinema on the Left Bank. There he showed grade B cowboy movies and police thrillers. During one of her bouts of homesickness, Misty had broken her vow not to see films in English while in France. One bitter winter day, she went to Le Cinéma Américain to watch a movie called Rush Street Episode, which was set in Chicago. There was no one else in the movie house. She sat through the movie weeping. At the end, she realized that there was someone sitting next to her. That someone was John Bride.

  Misty had had two love affairs. Neither had been satisfactory and they had left her with the notion that she was not generally attractive: that only weird, intense men would ever fall in love with her. John Bride was the sort of man who never did. He was neither weird nor intense. He was the sort of man you see walking down the street with a fashion model on his arm. He was tall and cool and had the lean sort of mouth more experienced women know marks a deep sensualist who doesn’t kiss much. He was the sort of man who knew his way around women. He was very skilled. He gave Misty a handkerchief and said: “You’re an American girl from Chicago, I bet. No one else would come out on a day like this to watch this crummy film and cry too.”

  Misty was young enough to be stunned. She felt instantly understood. She took the handkerchief and wiped her eyes.

  “How about a cup of real American coffee?” said John Bride. He took her through the freezing wind to an American bar and restaurant for coffee and hamburgers, where he smiled coolly as she revealed herself to him. He knew what questions to ask and he probably knew what answers he would get. Had Misty been older, she might have known the mechanics of this form of heartless approach, but she did not. She had never met a womanizer before. The next day he came to fetch her and took her to the Cluny Museum and out to dinner. Several dinners followed. One night he took her out for a drink, in the course of which she realized that her knees were shaking.

  John Bride said: “I can feel you trembling under the table. Do you think you ought to come home with me?”

  It occurred to Misty that an adventure was exactly what she needed. Her social life in Paris was composed of long serious talks with young economists and linguistics students and tame, expensive dinners with American boys who were working for six months at Société Générate. John Bride seemed able to x-ray into her desires. She went home with him. At the time, she could not quite distinguish between love, lust, confusion, and longing. That mixture looked briefly like the real thing. As a result, their alliance did not amount to much. It simply turned Misty around. It gave her a taste of what she now knew she was too old for: that high-flown emotional deprivation that is the earmark of hopeless romantic love.

  Women did not leave John Bride; he left them. He felt he left them better off—after all, they had had the experience of him. He was not haveable, he explained. He was not interested in relationships. He was after experience.

  Misty had always known that her appeal was not general. The general run of man did not want someone as quirky as she was. She had always run with a precocious set who had spent their afternoons at the Museum of Science and Industry as children and at the symphony as teenagers. The boys who fell in love with her at college engaged her in lengthy conversations about Marxism, Freudian notation, and The New Philosophy. John Bride was symbolic of normal man, which meant that he was handsome and at ease with women. He did not engage Misty in long conversations about anything. He kissed her in alleyways. He took her dancing. He told her he found her beautiful, and the most intelligent person in the world is a fool for this sort of information. John Bride stood for all the men Misty felt were out of her range. Suddenly, one of them was by her side, but only briefly.

  This affair was intensely painful for a short time. When the pain passed, revelation set in. From John Bride, Misty learned that yearning was a remarkably time-consuming pastime and that it was not especially useful. She learned that a man who was not intense, myopic, afraid of dancing, or unwilling to kiss in public places might find her attractive. She learned that she could flirt, if she wanted to. The most lasting benefit of this affair was that Misty went to a salon on the Right Bank where she was given a perfect haircut. This had been done on John Bride’s behalf.

  But she was confirmed in her view that she was a special case of one sort or another. Only another special case might truly love her and since those were rare, and Misty was not a compromiser, it was clear to her that she would probably float through life alone. The John Brides of this world were not in fact for her.

  Misty’s personality was a deliberate creation. She felt she was not unlike one of those seashells that looks elaborate, but is only the housing for a very soft animal. There was no point—and no fun—in committing the imitative fallacy in matters of self, especially when the self you were housing was moved by scenes of ordinary human kindness. It seemed to her unwise to let the world at large know how easily moved she was, so she kept it to herself. Even John Bride, who behaved like a creature from another planet who had come to earth to see how its creatures might amuse him, was unaware of how deep her feelings were.

  In Paris she felt that her girlhood had ended. She returned to America surer of herself. One good hurt inflicted by an unworthy but perfectly beautiful man is not the worst thing that can happen to a woman of principle. It taught you about your own weaknesses. It taught you about style. It polished off your rough edges.

  Now in New York, she had no intention of falling in love with anyone. She was not and had never been interested in social life as it was commonly conducted. She did not wish to be taken out for dinner or to have a beau. She was interested in ultimates—like passion and honor. The rest seemed tepid and irrelevant to her.

  Vincent Cardworthy, however, was another special case: goofy, harmless, the sort of man who knows as much about the life of the emotions as an infant knows about plasma physics. There was a certain sweetness in the midst of his silliness, and he looked like a man who wanted to be played with. Things probably came easily to him, Misty thought. She saw no reason why she ought to be one of them. That she thought about him, that she found the freckles on his cheekbones, his ruddy face, and his ardent blue eyes compelling was nobody’s business but her own.

  The Board of City Planning had been founded by Hubert McKay, the great urbanist and city planning pioneer. It was to function as a center for thought, work, and action in the matters of cities and their problems. Each year, members of the Board produced books and studies and monographs. Its staff was hired out to the federal government, to state and local governments, to developing nations.

  The present head of the Board was Hubert McKay’s son Denton, a trim, forty-four-year-old specimen who wore English sport jackets and boots. He had woolly brown hair, big, empty, platelike blue eyes that were much admired by the female staff, an office full of fishing rods, potted trees, and pictures of his children. In addition, he had a terrif
ic backhand, useful for conning tennis-playing government officials and civic-minded philanthropists out of large chunks of money for the Board. Denton had hired Misty for the junior staff and set her to work on one of the lower floors. Now, as the youngest member of the senior staff, she was brought up to the eleventh floor, where she caught Denton McKay’s attention. During her first week in her new office, Denton McKay had sauntered in, positioned himself on the corner of her desk, and helped himself to one of her cigarettes. He lit it and exhaled a curl of blue smoke.

  “Who are you, anyway?” he said.

  “My name is—”

  “I know your name. I think I do. Who hired you?”

  “You did,” said Misty.

  “I did? Gee, I don’t remember. What did I hire you for?”

  “I started on the language of politics study and now I’m on the Hispanic change in language project,” Misty said.

  “Right, right,” said McKay. “Which one is that?”

  “It’s the effect of American speech patterns on—”

  “Yes, yes,” said McKay. “Well, how do you like it here? You’re new, aren’t you?”

  “I’ve been here almost a year,” said Misty.

  “Right. Well, when you get used to it, come and tell me what you think of it. I like input from the staff.”

  Four weeks later he was back. He took a cigarette and said: “Now, let’s see. You’re working on the transport project, right?”

  “Wrong,” said Misty.

  “Okay, let’s see. The waterfront improvement.”

  “Wrong again.”

  “One more try. That mini study on upper-middle-class attitudes toward mass transit?”

  “No,” said Misty.

  “No?” said McKay. “What, then?”

  “The Hispanic language project,” said Misty.

  “Right. Right. Well, how do you like it here? You’ve been here a couple of weeks, right?”

  “No,” said Misty.

  “Yes, you have,” said McKay. He smiled abstractly and then left.

  It hadn’t taken Misty long to figure out that the office was Denton McKay’s roulette wheel. You never knew where he would land. He wandered down the halls and popped into the first office that took his fancy although he was never certain whose office it was. He was also full of plans. One day he sat on Misty’s desk, looked at her with little recognition, took a cigarette, and said: “I’ve just been down to Washington. Big conference on job rotation. Great idea. What do you think? I think we ought to get the publicity people more involved in the actual work of the Board. Get them into planning meetings. Teach them to do computer programs and stuff like that. Get the research people down to the PR floor, so the entire staff understands everything that’s going on. I think the mail boys ought to come too. I think they ought to know what they’re mailing. Whaddaya think?”

  Misty was silent.

  “I’m a big fan of job rotation. Get the receptionists in on it too. Isn’t that a good idea?”

  Misty said: “I think it’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Or close to it.”

  “Oh,” said McKay. “Gee.” He seemed crestfallen. He took another cigarette, which he stuck behind his ear, and left. Misty was sure he still did not know her name. When he saw her in the halls, he absentmindedly called her “chicken”—the endearment he called his children and colleagues he could not identify.

  Denton McKay liked plans and he liked to change plans. He called meetings of the staff, which were then canceled. He sent around a memo asking each staff member to state the project he or she was working on, but this effort at refining operations was then rescinded. Most of his time appeared to be spent bumming cigarettes from people whose annual income was about a fifth of his own. This offered him some minimal contact with his staff.

  His deputy was Roy Borden, a pale man who wore pale pink glasses and kept in his office photographs of the golden retrievers bred by his wife. A great deal of hearty laughter between Roy Borden and Denton McKay covered an essential hatred. This enmity was hard on the staff. Roy Borden issued an edict and Denton McKay quashed it. Projects approved by Borden were held up for McKay’s signature. Most of the staff paid little attention unless these things got in the way of their work, at which point they were forced to go to McKay, a move Roy Borden noted and resented. Those staff members who were politically oriented divided themselves into the Borden Camp or the McKay Camp. Misty, who sat in her office and worked, belonged to neither. In fact, she was unaware that they existed until the week that Board members later referred to as “the siege.”

  Doors were slammed. Hurried meetings were called. Heads of departments sat in the conference room drinking cold coffee and waiting for either Denton McKay or Roy Borden to show up. Walking through the office was like stepping through a mine field, but no one knew the cause of the tension.

  One morning Misty made a foray down the hall to find out what was going on. The only person she could think of to ask was Maria Teresa Warner, whose title was “coordinator.” All business dealing with Board projects passed through her hands. She and Misty had never had a real conversation, but they had chatted in the halls. The measure of each had been taken by the other and although neither had moved to institute a friendship, some sort of tacit mutual approval had been established.

  Misty appeared at Maria Teresa’s door. Maria Teresa was on the telephone. She had a cap of dark brown hair, wide brown eyes, and when she smiled she revealed a gap between her front teeth, of which Misty was very envious. Her voice was low and modulated. It was impossible to eavesdrop when she was on the telephone; the modulation turned into a murmur. She looked up and waved Misty in. Then she hung up.

  “What’s going on around here?” said Misty.

  “Don’t shout,” said Maria Teresa. “Sit down and respond in a soft voice.”

  “Okay,” said Misty. “What’s going on around here?”

  “Classic power struggle,” said Maria Teresa. “Roy is leaning all over Denton. Denton’s wigging out. Of course, he isn’t normally what you’d call plugged in. It’s so stupid and complicated I can’t even remember what the issue is. Oh, what difference does it make? This office is run on pure whim.”

  “What does Roy want?”

  “Roy wants Denton’s job, is what it looks like.”

  “Don’t you have to have Denton’s father to have Denton’s job?”

  “Not the way Roy sees it,” said Maria Teresa.

  “How come Denton doesn’t fire Roy?”

  “Denton hired him,” said Maria Teresa. “No one else wanted him to but he insisted.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Misty. “I thought the heads of departments were supposed to be advisers.”

  “What planet do you live on?” said Maria Teresa. “Denton runs this show. He likes to make sure everyone knows it. He likes it that no one ever feels secure around here—or maybe you haven’t noticed. All the junior staff sit around shivering. He once told me he thought security was a deterrent to creative work. Then he went off to some seminar in Wisconsin and came back saying that creative work flourished under secure conditions. Can you imagine? And him grubbing cigarettes right and left. Since I don’t smoke, he steals my Times and drinks my coffee. And as for Roy, Roy is a monster.”

  “He is?”

  “Of course he is. He’s been here for two years and all he’s done is rip people off. Like Betty Miller—she was here before you. She did all the work on that pilot project on making the local schools independent corporations and he got all the credit for it.”

  “Do you hate it here?” Misty said.

  “Do I have an independent income? Did my grandfather invent something useful like air or thumbtacks? Do I like food and shelter, if you get my drift?”

  “I get it,” said Misty.

  “Oh, well. You know what Eugene V. Debs says: Class war, not imperialist war. I just sit here, boring from within.”

  Vincent was oblivious to office politics. There was no
reason for him to pay attention. He worked in a rarefied atmosphere, being one of the truly creative types Denton loved and feared. Since the publication of a paper on thrift now considered a classic in its field, Vincent had become a star of sorts. As such, he was left alone and the worst he had to put up with was smarminess from Roy Borden and oversolicitousness from Denton McKay.

  The office gossip Vincent picked up he usually forgot, but now it was clear to him that something evil was afoot. He was called into meetings that were hastily canceled, or if actually held had a purpose obscure to the participants. He received contradictory memos. He heard muttered conversations in the men’s room. For the first time in his tenure, closed doors abounded at the Board.

  Misty was not a special case. She sat in the office trying to work, but the uneasiness in the office bothered her. One noon, she was punching at her calculator dispiritedly when Maria Teresa Warner appeared.

  “You’d better lay low,” she said. “You’re in the line of fire.”

  “Me?” said Misty. “What did I do?”

  “Nothing. You’re only a pawn in the game, as it were. Denton told Roy three weeks ago to fire some nonessential people. Roy wouldn’t do it. Then Denton decided that no one could be let go, so Roy has decided to act, and you’re on the list.”

  “But why me?” said Misty. “What did I do?”

  “You don’t understand,” said Maria Teresa. “This has nothing to do with anything. Denton hired you. Roy is trying to fire three people Denton hired and you’re one of them.”

  “But I haven’t done anything.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Roy has decided to make an issue of this so Denton has decided to feed him a couple of Christians, in a manner of speaking. What’s a few Christians to a lion?”

  “I don’t get it,” said Misty.

  “I can’t understand why you can’t understand. It’s just prep school in the adult world. They’re sniping at one another. Denton has more money than Roy and he belongs to better clubs. That drives Roy crazy. I think Roy is one of those boys boys like Denton used to dump on in prep school and now Roy is trying to get his revenge. Get it?”