4. Imaginary people
Happy had a bit of a thing about college. The idea of it, the institution. The actual campuses she liked—in general she liked a compound, people and buildings assembled for a common purpose: manufacturing, governing, incarcerating. Organized activity inspired her, the efforts of artificial families like corporations or armies. No, the thing she didn’t like about college was college itself, its mission of moral and professional development through intellectual stimulation. It was not a thing from which she herself had greatly benefited, for one thing, except insofar as she met Jims there. (That purpose—a gathering of the young and attractive for drinking, sex and possibly marriage—was one she actually approved of.) She did not like the concept of bestowing upon the young the secrets of art, literature, and science; she believed that the young ought, as Happy had done, to figure these things out for themselves. She did not like professors, or indeed experts on anything whatsoever, especially history—these were the people who wrote her letters complaining about the “mistakes” her books were supposedly filled with. (Ladies, gentlemen, let me direct your attention to the spine, where the word fiction is clearly printed!) She didn’t like sports teams or people who liked sports teams, and she didn’t like school spirit, and she didn’t like cheerleaders or jocks, or druggies or frat boys, or geeks. Equinox College, at least, lacked most of that list, but it was chock full of another of her great dislikes: women.
This, perhaps, is why Happy remained at home over the weekend, making and taking phone calls, ordering contracts drawn up, rubbing her mental hands together and keeping her shades drawn: the women were returning to town. They arrived on planes and on buses and in the back of their parents’ cars. They set foot on campus, greeted one another with hugs and kisses and yelps of excitement. They wore sweat pants and tee shirts, flip flops and sneaks. They kept their hair in ponytails and left their pierced navels exposed. (The prim proto-matrons in the black-and-white photos that lined every hallway on campus would have been appalled.) And among them, arriving alone in the van from the Syracuse airport, was a girl named Janet Ping.
She was twenty years old, small-breasted and narrow-hipped; her dress, a sleeveless flower-print rayon frock that hung straight down from her shoulders to her knees, accentuated her height—she was around five-eight—and the angularity of her body, as did her straight black curtain of hair. But her eyes, mouth, and indeed her entire face, were round and childish, so much so that at a casual glance Janet gave the impression of robustness, even plumpness. She was all too aware of this disorienting contrast, which she believed made people treat her weirdly, and generally she tried to soften it by slumping and slouching, even though she suspected that this made it worse. In addition, she was the product of a white, redheaded mother and a Chinese father. The result were facial features both freckled and Asian, a combination that led people to make relentless inquiries about her ethnic makeup, possibly the last thing she was interested in talking about, when she was interested in talking at all.
Nevertheless, she hugged and kissed along with everyone else—her hometown friends no longer interested her, and she had spent her summer pining away for some kind of companionship other than that of her mother, with her academic journals and floppy dresses, or her father, with his taxidermy and knitting and comically inscrutable Chinesiness. At last she was here, and she was as close as she ever got to feeling open and generous and happy to be in anyone’s company. By six-thirty (it was Sunday) she had unpacked her stuff from the cardboard box she’d brought on the plane, and folded it into her drawers. She breathed in the summer-stale air, cracked open the big window. Another year at home. Her friends were waiting outside the double doors of their dorm: Sara, Ty, April and Rain. She met them in the dappled sunlight of the quad, and arm in arm they headed for the cafeteria.
Janet’s friends weren’t just regular girls: they had styles. Sara was a goth, Ty a femme, and Rain a hippie. April dressed like a construction worker. The point eluded Janet—they spent all this time and effort making themselves be these imaginary people? What was that all about? They were, however, funny. Ty had a thing for Rain, but Rain was hetero. She majored in folklore. Sara had a boyfriend in Nestor. Not a college guy, a record store clerk. Sara’s dress was black and intentionally ripped in several places. Ty wore slacks and white frilly tops and red lipstick. She was like a secretary slash seductress. Rain wore jeans and peasant blouses, or, in the winter, big, fluffy, badly knitted sweaters.
“Ooh,” Rain said, as they walked, “frozen yogurt!”
“I’ll get fat,” Ty said.
Sara, who was quite fat, said, “Get as fat as you want.”
“I’m saying I don’t want to be fat.”
“Like there’s something wrong with fat.”
“Please, bitches!” April huffed. Janet cringed. April was from Los Angeles, where it was cool to pretend you were working-class white. Being from Wisconsin, Janet knew the real thing: they pinched her ass at the Denny’s she used to work at and left tiny little tips. April, on the other hand, was rather sweet, in spite of the work boots and flannel shirts—at least she was sweet to Janet. April was Janet’s sort-of girlfriend. The two exchanged glances simultaneously wary and curious, puzzling out whether or not anything of last semester’s romance (if you could call it that) remained.
“But if it’s chocolate,” Rain said, “forget it.”
“What’s wrong with chocolate?” asked Sara, indignant.
“Nothing, it’s just the chocolate they have is no good. It tastes like a tire. I like the strawberry.”
Ty said, “I hate to disappoint you, Earth girl, but that strawberry flavor comes from chemicals synthesized in a factory in New Jersey.”
“No! There are seeds in it!”
“Those are fake.”
The cafeteria, a cavernously elegant half-basement, lay underneath Crim Hall, the college’s main building. They lined up, loaded on, found a mostly empty table. They tucked away their pasta and salad and chicken patties and steamed broccoli and garlic bread. Janet tried not to watch her friends eat. She tried not to watch herself, either, but the only thing worse than watching herself eat would be walking back to her dorm with spaghetti sauce all over her dress. They chatted through the smacking and slurping and licking of their lips.
Janet did not understand other people. She didn’t know how they went through life, being who they were. They all seemed so odd, with their strange bodies and voices, the expressions on their faces that she would never herself think to make. The way they called attention to themselves, the things they chose to do, or desired. Looking around the table, Janet saw aliens, freaks—creatures as different from one another as a dog and a tree. She didn’t exclude herself. The difference was that she seemed to be the only one who noticed.
Of course, noticing this got in the way of noticing other things, such as the conversation: following it, participating in it. She always seemed to be waking up in the middle of something. Just now, April was saying, “So I hear she’s gonna buy Dave’s bar.”
“So?” Sara asked.
“She’s gonna get rid of the beer! She’s gonna put up wallpaper and it’s gonna be some fuckin’ tea house! Do you believe that shit?”
“Who is?” asked Janet, because Dave’s bar was her favorite place in Equinox, not that there were many places in Equinox to choose from. Dave was her friend. He was a local. He never asked for ID.
“The rich bitch,” Sara spat. A hunk of black mascara had fallen into her eye and she was madly trying to blink it loose.
“What rich bitch?”
April said, “The doll bitch.”
“Duh,” said Ty, “where’ve you been all summer?”
“Wisconsin,” said Janet.
“Honey,” April said, in a perfect approximation of a forty-seven-year-old high-proletarian husband, “This rich doll lady bought the big house on the lake and the market and now she’s going around town buying up everything else.”
&nb
sp; Ty said, “She bought the hardware store.”
“And the hair place. As if I care,” Sara said. She had dislodged the mascara chunk but had smeared her eyeshadow in the process, creating a sort of vapor trail across her cheek.
Janet spoke up. “Would somebody tell me what rich doll lady?”
“Happy Girls,” said Ty. “Happy something.”
“Masters,” said April.
“Master bater,” said Sara.
“God,” said Rain, “this is so corporate.”
But Janet had checked out of the conversation again: there was only so much information she could handle at one time, and she had just reached her limit. At some point, when the trays had been cleared, and the frozen yogurt had been scooped into plastic bowls, April moved herself over to Janet’s side and quietly, unobtrusively, weaved her pale stubby fingers into Janet’s long, narrow ones. Janet let her do it, insofar as she had noticed it happening at all, for her mind was on something else: her hero, her icon, the lifelong object of her lustful imagination: Happy Masters.
* * *
Happy herself, meanwhile, was busy calling her crew into action. The market was nearly gutted already, and plans for the hair salon lay scattered all over the massive mahogany dining room table that she had commandeered as a control center. She was thinking of going for a Japanese theme: vased willow branches, miniature rock gardens, little burbling fountains. Lots of black, and lots of white. Skinny women in robes doing nails. They didn’t need to be Japanese, an obligatory Korean would do, but they would have to bow when you left. Plinky-plink music would cascade down from overhead speakers (the ones in her bathroom had given her the idea: theme music would be part of every renovation). The hardware store, on the other hand, didn’t need much—a bit of cleaning, that was certain, and maybe some old-fashioned tools—tools tools—hanging on the bare white walls. What sort of music there? Bluegrass. Note to self, Get some bluegrass!
Who would work at these places? College girls, that’s who. Distasteful as she found them, they were here, a genuine local commodity. They were bored, they wanted money, and she had some. Tomorrow she would make arrangements. Better introduce herself to whomever was in charge, at any rate, because they would be doing business together for many days to come. Until then, though, there were other people to deal with, two in particular. Now where had she put her phone?
“Crap!” said her husband, bending down to rub his ankle, for Happy had kicked it inadvertently on her way to the kitchen. That’s where the phone was: on the little shelf next to the Subzero.
“Sorry!” she shouted.
He slumped deeper into the stuffed leather chair he had occupied, sulking, for the past day and a half. Just like Jims: showing up unannounced, expecting gratitude and delight, acting all wounded when it turned out she had other things to do. He’d swept in like a conquering general and in 36 hours had devolved into a four-year-old. “Perhaps I’m the one who should be apologizing,” he shouted back, “for putting myself in the path of your foot.”
“You’re the one,” she muttered, scrolling through her contact list, “who insisted on coming here now, when I’m just getting rolling. You ought to have known better.”
“C’mon, Hap.” He spread his arms. “As if I can predict when we’ll have a week without getting sued.”
“Then I suppose we’ll agree to disagree.” She found the number, dialed it, and sank into a kitchen chair. When a voice came wearily onto the line, she said, “Where are you?”
“Testy, testy, testy!” chuckled the voice.
“Yes,” she sighed, “I am. Now would you answer the question, please?”
“Well,” the voice replied, “the fact is, we have no fucking idea, dear.” The voice was reedy, male, its accent New-Yorkified Newcastle, and seemed to enunciate the obscenity with particular relish. It also had a hollow, staticky quality as well, suggesting that it was being transmitted through a speakerphone in a moving car. This was good: it meant that they had landed in Syracuse and were on their way to Equinox.
A second voice piped up, “That is not strictly true.” This voice, a woman’s, was shrill, and stridently midwestern.
The voices belonged to Silas and Sheila Klam. When Happy had met them years ago, one was an architect, the other an interior designer. But since then, the distinction had blurred, and the Klams had become a generalized unit of aesthetic expression. In fact, with their black clothes, sharp noses, and identical twiglike bodies, they would be virtually interchangeable, if not for the fact that neither did anything at all without the other. Maybe Silas was a little funnier. Sheila, perhaps, was smarter. Presumably he had a dick and she had tits, not that you could tell by looking. Happy found them both creepy. But they were very, very good. They could read her mind. She said, “Fine then. Where are you?”
“A farm,” Sheila said, impatient, “two grain silos, there’s a field full of scrap metal junk with a sign reading NOT FOR SALE.”
“All right,” Happy said, “you just left Unionville. Keep coming. In about two minutes you’ll see the sign. I’ll wait.”
While she waited, Jims got up, came into the kitchen, and rummaged in the fridge. He grunted, stood straight, closed the door, and looked around the room, chagrined. Beer? he mouthed.
Go buy some, she mouthed back.
Where?
Her only answer was to shake her head and point to the phone. “You should be here now. Do you see the sign?”
“Well,” Silas said immediately, “that sign will have to go.”
“Not your style at all,” said Sheila, and off they went on one of their aesthetic debates, the kind that Happy paid them for.
“Just the village name on green reflective metal. That shan’t do.”
“Wood, we’ll have painted wood.”
“Gilt. Script. Population whatever. Got to have population.”
“A light blue, the village name in navy.”
“Not navy, green, dark green.”
“Yes, green.”
Happy said, “See the gas station on your right? The kiosk is an ice cream stand.”
“Have you bought it yet?” asked Silas.
“Not yet.”
“Hideous,” said Sheila. “I’m thinking carriage-house style, bricks, gaslamps? Antique firehouse doors, hinged, painted red.”
“We could keep the kiosk,” Silas said.
“With alterations.”
“Of course. Oh, nice orchard.”
“Perfect,” said Sheila.
“Almost,” said Silas.
“Yes, not quite,” said Sheila.
“We need uniformity.”
“But not symmetry.”
“A ragged uniformity.”
“An uneven evenness.”
“Exactly. Have you bought the orchard?”
“Not yet,” Happy said. “That’s the college on your left. And on the right is the Inn.”
A silence. In Happy’s ear the rental car hummed to a stop. There was no point in asking their opinion. They would issue it when they were finished thinking. She waited, her extremities first tingling, then trembling. She stood, shook out her hands and feet. She was very, very glad the Klams had arrived. When the Klams were around, things were decided, actions were taken. “The Inn…” Silas drawled.
Happy cracked her knuckles.
Sheila sneezed.
Jims sat on the marble counter, looked at his watch, stared at Happy. She gave him the finger.
Sheila said, “Teardown?”
Silas said, “Teardown.”
Happy said, “My thinking exactly.”
“Do you own the Inn?” Silas said.
“Not yet.”
“Buy it,” said Sheila. “Buy it and let’s get started.”
5. An almost perfect contentment
The sun rose on Wednesday morning, the last day of August. The bell tolled eight. Equinox College was now in session.
The college librarian was pressed against the cement wall of the H
ayao Shinohara Memorial Library, smoking and reading a paperback book. Above her hung an eave that protected her book and cigarette from the rain; below her lay a bed of round white landscaping stones, which massaged her feet through the soles of her pumps. This was at the rear of the library, in a small and windowless architectural no-man’s-land, a sort of wedge where two wings of the building awkwardly met, and where nobody ever went except for the college librarian. Looking out of her notch, she could see only a vertical strip of forest; when she emerged she would be able to see a parking lot on her left and a dormitory on her right. But for now, just trees: trees ahead, cement behind; water above and stones below. She liked the sound of that, so she snatched a pencil from behind her ear and jotted it in the margin of her book. The librarian’s name was Ruth Spinks. She wrote everything down. She was also the town historian, and author of the monthly town newsletter, and had discovered, to her great surprise, past the midpoint of an only intermittently satisfying and mostly solitary life, that she had achieved, apparently by accident, an almost perfect contentment. At this moment, she was content, and in a few minutes, when she went back to work, she would again be content, and later, when she went home, to the cottage she owned on Main Street, she would still be content. This is not to say that she was happy; Ruth did not regard happiness as something worth striving for. Happiness was a compromise. Happiness was denial. But contentment—contentment despite the unflinching observation of the world around you—this was possible. Aristotle had said that you had to be an animal or a God to live alone, but Friedrich Nietzsche had added a third case. You could be both, he said: a philosopher.
The book she read now was, in fact, by Friedrich Nietzsche. It was about Wagner. Nietzsche believed that Wagner’s art was sick, a viewpoint that Ruth Spinks shared. She did not like opera in general, but Wagner in particular disgusted her. She read:
…the convulsive nature of his emotion, his over-excited sensibility, his taste for sharper and sharper spices, the instability which he disguised as principles…all this taken together represents a syndrome that admits of no dubiety: Wagner est une névrose.
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