And Yet They Were Happy

by Helen Phillips

  One thing we cannot forget, even years later, is the skin of that creature. It was a warm dark golden color, thick and smooth, durable as plastic—skin capable of remembering the seasons, skin that could bear February and August simultaneously. That body was not forgetful. Those eyes absorbed in minute detail each of our scared, amazed faces. Guiltily, we wonder why we won, and why we have covered the entire globe with our discontent.

  failure #6

  Once upon a time, there was a can of cheap beer on a small round plastic table on a porch by a lake in Maine. (Mosquitoes swarmed in the orange beam cast by the single porch light on the red and gold can of beer. It was a hot moonless night in August. Someone was saying something, an old man educating a boy or an old woman chiding an old man. There were no banjos. They had all gone home, and the harmonicas too. It was just the can of cheap beer in the orange mosquito light on the table on the porch in the summer in Maine. One half of the can was illuminated. The other half was shadowed. The label was gold and ornate with red cursive lettering. The can itself was red. Seven mosquito bites swelled on an arm. The lake made dark sounds. Later, the beer can was tossed down a dark stairway into a basement bin; it hovered briefly, gleaming in a slim slab of orange light from the light bulb on the porch, before dropping and hitting many other cans.)

  Decades later, whenever he hears the word “nostalgia,” this is what he sees: a can of cheap beer in orange light. Was it one night, or many that blur into one?

  In the new millennium, they add a wing to the museum: The Hall of Nostalgia. This exhibition is immediately popular. There are life-size dioramas of beautiful farm-girls milking cows—press a button to hear the sound of fresh milk hitting a tin pail—and young men on ladders in an orchard, throwing fruit down into baskets, one gleaming apple suspended permanently in midair. Every corner he turns he halfexpects to see a small, dark diorama: a single orange light bulb, a plastic table, a can of beer.

  On an afternoon in August in a bed in a city, an inconsolable woman cries quietly. He tells her the most comforting story in the world: Once upon a time, there was a can of cheap beer.

  failure #7

  In the American Museum of Natural History, in the year 20—, we come upon the Hall of the North American Environment, but between ourselves we call it the Hall of Nostalgia for Things We Have Never Seen. There are, for instance, dioramas the size of shoeboxes; each portrays one of the four seasons, but none of these scenes is familiar. When was autumn a mule pulling a cart through orange leaves down a dirt road alongside a stone wall past fields yellow with wheat under branches dragged downward by apples beneath a pure blue sky, the cart itself loaded with wicker baskets of apples? Oh darling diorama-maker. Don’t you know we’ve never tasted freshly picked apples? When was winter a frozen lake, a group of children with ice skates, a farmhouse releasing smoke into a white sky, heaps of snow tenderly covering the barn and the hills? Was spring ever really this green, I ask you, you diorama-maker, you who painted this optimistic lavender sky, you who conceive of slender white birches, you who still believe in daffodils and in the grass? And wouldn’t everyone have died of joy at the height of this summer you’ve brought us? Oh yes we can hear the crickets, my dear diorama-making friend, we can smell the hot smell of skin warmed by the sun, we can smell the dark smell of algae in a pond encrusted with lily pads, we can, we can, we can feel the long marks left by the extravagant grass on our bare legs. Radiant dragonflies, mating, skim the dark water. Raspberries on the bush ripen before our eyes. Oh oh.

  You should not have brought all this to mind.

  Because now, you see, aching, we leave the Hall of the North American Environment. We become aware, once again, of the air-conditioning chilling our blood. Unlike the good farmer and the good farmer’s wife, we do not stay near each other for warmth. No; we pass through the great synthetic doors and into the searing steel city without touching.

  the far-flung families

  far-flung family #1

  Long ago, my father built a covered wagon. He filled it with practical things, such as guns and ammunition and a bellows, and with less practical things, such as rose-seeds and a rocking chair. My mother climbed into this wagon beside him. They headed due west.

  At night, they dreamed of New England, of green fields and huge trees and stone walls and white houses with black shutters and the rum cake made by my mother’s mother and that hot heavy green smell the air takes on in summertime. During the day, they passed brown expanses of land, snarls of barbed wire, and, occasionally, a mud house. They ate snakes. Their noses ran with dust and blood. My mother became pregnant and began to ache.

  After several hundred years, my parents arrived at the Rocky Mountains. My father built a house. My mother planted rose-seeds. Their parents started to seem unreal to them, the disembodied recipients and senders of infrequent letters. The dry noise of aspen leaves was the first sound I ever heard. My sisters and I grew up without shoes, hardening our dusty feet, always somewhat thirsty. So effortless was our happiness that it was years before we understood the difference between happiness and sadness.

  As teenagers, we began to wonder about New England. Our parents had told us tales of pure white houses on lawns so green our imaginations couldn’t imagine them. Eventually, a train ticket was bought. On the train, I dreamed of the Rocky Mountains, of aspen leaves and shallow streams containing flecks of fool’s gold and sunsets that made your eyes throb. Upon my arrival, I noticed a hot heavy smell, a green smell, and my face felt moister than ever before. I was taken out to tea, and given a cucumber sandwich, and a tiny rum cake, and I drank from a china cup painted with roses. I sipped tea from a distant continent; and suddenly my parents started to seem unreal to me, the disembodied recipients and senders of infrequent emails.

  far-flung family #2

  The king’s daughter goes to live in a faraway city with the clever yet dirty craftsman who (unbelievably!) completed the challenges necessary to win her hand. There, she learns coarse language and forgets how to write perfect script. Her letters are messy and joyful. She wants her father to visit. He’s a wonderful king. He used to yank trees out of the ground and lay them on their sides, exposing a hundred years’ worth of roots, in order to teach her important botanical facts. She already knows what they will do when he comes. ...

  She leads the king over the huge bridge with the double archways. The city glows strangely. They go deep into Chinatown and eat unrecognizable foods. They wander up avenues. The king sees many people. The air smells of exhaustion, car exhaust, women’s perfumes, roasting nuts, warm sewers. She’s ashamed that it doesn’t smell clean here. She buys him hot cashews. She buys him water. She gives money to any street performer—a violinist, a tangoing couple, a blue clown—that causes any reaction in his face. She wishes to guard him from hunger, thirst, danger, discomfort, boredom, dog shit, to direct his gaze always and only toward beautiful things. They go to the library where the ceiling is painted to resemble blue skies and to the train station where the ceiling is painted to resemble night skies. The whole day they crane their necks upward. This is no forest stroll, eyes cast downward to spot caterpillars and poison ivy and intricate root systems. She worries about him, checks his eyebrows for signs of dismay, holds his arm. When evening comes, she takes him back to her small home in a taxicab. She makes stew. She makes herbal tea. She arranges a bed for him on the floor, piling on too many blankets. She speaks in a tranquil voice to mitigate the sound of sirens.

  But the king never comes. He stalks through his forest, ripping trees out of the ground, crushing columbines, scaring magpies and scaring deer.

  far-flung family #3

  A very famous man is being paid a large sum of money to make a speech to an enormous crowd. Already they are clapping for him. It is almost time for him to stride out onto the stage, and adjust the microphone, and talk, and gesture toward a screen where important messages will be projected.

  Yet this man, standing behind the curtain, suddenly wants not
hing more than to be in a small bathroom. The image of this bathroom floods his mind. It is not a bathroom he has ever seen before. It is quite small, only a narrow sink beside a toilet and a single window, no bathtub or shower. It is infused with clean blue light. The floor is tiled black and white. The walls are white. The toilet is white. The lid of the toilet is down. The sink has two knobs, H and C.

  He does not need to urinate or defecate, nor does he feel the urge to vomit. The desire for the bathroom is not a practical one. It is just that he wants to be there, in that quiet clean blue light, near to the white walls, the white toilet, the white sink. He adds flourishes: a round bar of almond soap, a rack containing one thin white towel, the greenery of a lilac bush on the other side of the window.

  Still they are clapping for him. The time has come for him to stride out onto the stage; the time has come, and it has passed, and he has not stridden out onto the stage. The people backstage are getting worried; because he is so famous, they keep their voices calm; they ask him if he wouldn’t mind please going out now, because it is time.

  In the small bathroom you cannot hear anything except the occasional dripping of the faucet. If you examine the sink, you will find a green streak beneath the H knob, which is the knob that drips. This green streak is a mysterious color; an indescribable smear.

  far-flung family #4

  Some stupid drunk girls get kicked out of a nightclub. They wobble down the alleyway beside the black and filthy canal. One of the girls, upon seeing the black water, suddenly starts feeling a feeling she doesn’t know the word for (nostalgia). Hey, she says, when I was like a little girl I like thought I was a mermaid. Two girls begin vomiting behind a dumpster. Can you like even believe that? she says. The golden charm bracelet of the nearest vomiting girl falls off her wrist and into her vomit and she starts crying. I like totally believed my real parents were a mermaid and like a merman, and someday they’d come and like take me away, she says. The other girls vomit or try to find their cell phones or wonder stupidly where they can hail a cab. I thought my mermaid parents would like get into the house through the bathtub drain so I would like sit on the edge of the bathtub and wait for them. She hoists herself dangerously onto the concrete embankment of the canal. Just like this, she says, I’d like sit on the bathtub just like this. I was like positive they’d come and give me back my mermaid tail and finally I could go and live in the ocean and be like happy. The girls are done vomiting and the one girl has forgotten about her golden charm bracelet and another girl has found her cell phone and a girl who is slightly less drunk than the others says they can’t hail a cab here since it’s like an alleyway so the stupid drunk girls start wobbling toward an actual street, but they are too drunk to remember that girl who like thinks she’s a mermaid. She’s left there, on the concrete embankment beside the canal, and she starts getting happy, thinking of how cool and beautiful the ocean will feel; eagerly she awaits the single strong blue arm that will rise up out of the black canal just before dawn.

  far-flung family #5

  Picturing dirty canals and infinite traffic jams and boulevards blowing with garbage and dangerous curses spray-painted on inaccessible walls, my parents still refuse to visit New York City, so I am forced to lie. Painstakingly, I write my childhood address on an envelope, attempting to imitate the babyish bubbliness that once characterized my handwriting, hiding all traces of the strong, dark, harsh script I’ve developed since I left.

  My dears: I assure you you’ve got it all wrong. In the harbor near Wall Street (where the water is not covered with oily rainbows), there are many pretty little houses on stilts. Yes, sweet little houses painted turquoise, red, canary yellow. Perhaps you’ve never heard of them? Well, it’s a recent phenomenon, and maybe such news doesn’t travel 1,800 miles, but I swear they exist! Darling families live in these stilt-houses. They hang ferns and violets from the porches, and call out merrily to the people on shore. Their children dream of crawling through the arteries of whales as through playground tunnels. When you come, we’ll go and wave at them. The sun will glimmer across the greenish water. We’ll be happy. We’ll walk up Manhattan, which isn’t entirely paved over. Roundabout Chelsea, the streets give way to dirt roads. It’s positively wild there! Vines and magnolias arch overhead, sieving the orange sunlight. There are yellow frogs and red turtles. Noisy creeks run beneath wooden bridges. Artists live hidden among the blackberry bushes in wooden shacks with geraniums planted in the kitchen floor and hand-sewn quilts for doors. We’ll stroll along, laughing and joking. If you slip off a footbridge, I’ll pull you up out of the dark rich muck and the poison ivy. It’ll be so fun. We’ll sit on a log, examining toadstools. Please visit. I’ll make it pleasant for you. I swear I’ll take you to nice places. Still Yours—Helen.

  I have one stamp. Appropriately, it depicts an orchid. I take the letter down the block (through blowing garbage, past resplendent graffiti, beneath oily fumes) to the mailbox.

  far-flung family #6

  Yet again I find myself obliged to defend myself. I didn’t realize what would happen! I swear that when I put my old clothes out on the sidewalk it was a soft, sweet morning. I was desperate to have them claimed by strangers and enter other homes where they could become more fully themselves.

  When the wind rose I was on the telephone, telling him things such as “Sometimes I’m like a screaming woman in a locked room” and “Sometimes I’m like a woman wearing a muzzle.” Hanging up, I observed huge trees swaying as though they were saplings. It was then that I remembered my clothes. Rushing outside into swirling yellow pollen, I sneezed nine times and my eyes took on a yellow hue. I saw what I’d feared: twisted, floppy, yellow with pollen, my clothes lay in the street, shipwrecked sailors clinging to an inhospitable shore. They looked familiar, of course, but also strange, like an ex you haven’t seen in half a decade. Perhaps that’s why I left them—yes, I’ll admit it, I left them strewn there in the street. Who knew what would become of them? Nobody would want them now, that was certain; yet I did not reclaim them.

  Forgive me.

  My mother, stricken suddenly with the urge to contact each of her children, called from across the continent. A knot in her stomach, she claimed, convinced her that something awful had happened. This, from the woman who taught me to say things such as “Sometimes I’m like a screaming woman.” I assured her that nothing awful had happened. Hanging up, I was filled with regret; I should have told her the truth. But the truth comes in several forms, and none seems quite appropriate: (a) “This morning I thought my arm was stretched across his body, but in fact it was lying numbly asleep upon my own torso,” (b) “It’s tremendously windy here; the treetops soon may fall,” (c) “All my old clothes are sprawled out there in the middle of the street.”

  far-flung family #7

  Thank God we’re going digital, because the thought of all the printed photographs in the world lying in albums and piled in drawers is quite vexing to me! How many thousands of photographs of the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall, the Taj Mahal, does this world need? I drown in the knowledge of so many photographs being taken every day. I envision them in albums that will be looked at a handful of times until the end of time. Meanwhile, the world gets heavier and heavier with the weight of redundant photographs. But it’s not tourist sights alone. Photographs of mother and child just after birth, baby’s first steps, first day of school, birthdays, graduations; billions of brides and grooms with strained grins.

  Dear humankind, why do you need to capture it all from every angle? It’s always the same, always! The mother’s tired smile, the graduate’s hopeful face, etc. You’d save yourself so much trouble by acknowledging that what happens to you happens to everyone; for any event you wish to commemorate there are already too many photographs.

  “Stop, Paul! Please stop!” my mother said as each family trip wore on and my father kept taking photographs. A photograph of me in the hotel room, my face puffy and stupid with sleep. A pho
tograph of stray dogs down an alleyway. A photograph of my mother saying “Stop, Paul! Please STOP! When will we ever look at these.”

  Once I discovered a box of photographs on a shelf in my parents’ closet. Why hadn’t these made it into the albums through which I occasionally glanced? Then I saw that in each of the photographs, my older sister looked normal. She looked like a normal, normal baby! Her eyes focused on the lens. She wasn’t wringing her hands. Her chin wasn’t shiny with saliva. Her spine didn’t yet curve and cramp her. She wore smocked dresses, hand-wash only. She beamed in my mother’s lap, clung to my father’s chest. The camera—the precious, deceitful camera—had witnessed it.

  far-flung family #8