The Sad Truth About Happiness

by Anne Giardini

  As I passed by the telephone on my way out of the small kitchen, I noticed the business card I had dropped on the counter along with my empty water bottle the day before.

  ANGUS SINGER

  Executive Director

  THE TANTON FOUNDATION

  It was still early. I reached for the telephone and dialed.

  “This is Maggie Selgrin,” I said when Angus picked up the phone. “We’ve met a couple of times up at the coffee shop at Grouse Mountain.”

  “Of course. It’s good to hear from you, Maggie.”

  “I’m planning to go up again next week, and Luba, my friend, is going to be away at a conference. Are you still interested in going up with me?”

  “Yes, I’d love to. In fact, that would be great. Shall I pick you up?”

  “We could meet in the parking lot at the base of the trail. How’s seven-thirty?”

  “Sounds perfect. I’ll see you there then. I hope you’ll have time for a coffee once we get to the top. I’ll be on my own. No Mike, I promise.”

  “That would be fine. I hope I won’t slow you down too much. I never time myself against the clock. Too depressing.”

  “We’ll take it at any pace you like. I’m glad you called.”

  I set down the receiver and heard in the same instant the low click as the soap dispenser in the dishwasher sprung open, releasing the blue-green granules of powdered soap into the surging water.

  Study

  Angus had recently turned forty and emerged from a marriage that had lasted eighteen years—“Seventeen of them very good,” he said. Angus turned out to be unlike Mike in all of the important ways. He frequently stopped talking long enough for me to get entire sentences in, in fact showed every sign of being interested in what I had to say. After the climb, which I managed with Angus’s encouragement to complete without stopping, we sat over coffee for the rest of the morning, and then soup and sandwiches until midafternoon. We talked about our work—Angus was the director of a private charitable foundation—our families, places we had been or wanted to go, goals, ideas, the kinds of things people talk about when they are getting to know each other with the possible object of the future exchange of emotional warmth, physical contact, and commitments of various natures and durations. We talked of matters that would have been of no interest to anyone else, but seemed anything but trivial to us as we sat at that small table over cups and plates, surrounded by the music of clattering dishes, rattling cutlery, and the noise and laughter of strangers. I liked him.

  I had gone through many phases in my romantic life, so many that I no longer thought of myself as a romantic, notwithstanding Lucy’s view of me, but as practical about the kinds of feelings that are usually, in a dissembling way, said to reside in the heart instead of the mind.

  When I was a teenager, I was under the sway of what I think of now as an orienteering metaphor of love, adapted from my days as a Girl Guide, when we would be taken in groups into the woods or fields, given a sheet of directions, and required to locate and record various coordinates with the ultimate goal of finding the single spot that had been designated the object of the quest. The instructions were given by reference to points on the compass, to degrees west, north, east, and south, and to meters and arm’s breadths and paces. Even slight errors in interpreting the directions, especially those made early on, became exaggerated with each turn, so that you could easily end up a long way from the appointed goal, entirely disoriented, uncertain of where and how you went so terribly wrong. I was never very good at this exercise, so I learned to rely on cues that we were supposed to ignore, such as footprints left behind by the organizers or the more obvious landmarks—the largest Douglas fir or greenest patch of salal—that I thought were likely to have been used as reference points. In this manner, fudging a little, but seldom obviously, I often ended not far from the goal, but seldom squarely on it either.

  At sixteen I was seized with a concern that my path in life might run askew in this same way, that I might make one minor miscalculation, the smallest, most innocent misstep, with the result that I and my one true love might be walking in parallel tracks, keeping pace step-by-step but a block apart or just across the street. Our paths could never converge and we would never meet, even though the distance between us was no greater than a puff of breath, a hand-span, the thickness of our skin.

  This notion passed and was replaced, for a stretch of time, by a certainty that chemistry was the key, that I would know when I had met the person I was destined to love most because my blood and bones and senses would be moved by the synchronous beat of our swelling hearts and the complete and perfect perfume concocted by the intermingling of our sweet, unique, magnetic pheromones. The electrons of our bodies would throb to the same jazzy tempo, like syncopated drumbeats. Our bodies would search out and seize on each other’s unique, unmistakable scent, like a bee captivated by the sweet lure of lavender. Each of us would suddenly and inexorably become ensnared by the other, engulfed in a fog of promiscuous hormones rising like steam from the surface of our skin toward the ready and willing receptors of The Other.

  After that, I came to believe that love was simply the name we give to the practical problem of finding a mate who will be the most suitable partner, selected from a range of people having not terribly different qualifications, bearing in mind availability, age, education, background, references, appearance, health, wealth, stability, sexual orientation, some level of reciprocated interest, and reproductive ability. It was at about this time that a woman I knew but not well—fortyish, single, in the bitter throes of a nasty breakup—said to me, leaning across a friend’s dinner table and highlighting her words with an extended index finger, that she would never, ever date again for love. “Show me the portfolio,” she said. “If he’s got a house, some money, maybe a child or two from his first marriage to prove that he’s not gay and he’s not shooting duds, that’s enough for me.”

  Now I wasn’t sure what I believed, but I thought that love might just possibly have more to do with the mind than with fate or chemistry or an idiosyncratic list of minimum expectations. The hard part would be to avoid being distracted by the more obvious and elemental charms of a possible candidate—physical attraction, the way someone fills out his jeans or T-shirt, his honey-and-yeast odor, the resemblance of his voice to gravel trickled onto a wooden board, his taste in wine or movies or music, the way his eyes crinkle along the sides when he smiles, like bird tracks in the sand, the luscious, grainy texture of his skin—while drilling down to his essence. How he views the world. The shape and trajectory of his life. The measure of his essential goodness. Whether he is happy.

  I got home from having spent the greater part of the day with Angus with barely enough time to shower and dress. I regretted having made a commitment to go to the lecture that evening with Leo. I was exhausted and craving a simple supper followed by about twelve hours in bed. But since there was no acceptable way to put Leo off, I met him as scheduled at the appointed time. We went for dinner at a Greek restaurant on West 10th, and then drove together to the university. The lecture that night was entitled “Portrayals of Women in the Classics,” and was given, as it happened, by the professor who had taught me “Introduction to the Canon” when I was in my first year of university—a course that I had found about as abrasive, overstuffed, outdated, and slippery as an old-fashioned horsehair couch. Dr. Blossom had since achieved fame—or infamy, depending on your point of view—after publishing a book, Elegy for the Dead White Male.

  The lecture struck me as the most condescending kind of sop thrown to the “fair sex” (a term he actually used at least a half-dozen times). Dr. Blossom had mined his beloved classics for energetic or bright or courageous or otherwise admirable women whom he trotted forth in the course of his talk as proof that women were, “contrary to popular opinion” (a phrase he also used, and each time he spoke it, the nostrils of his large pink nose pinched together momentarily, then flared grandly), fairly, no, even nob
ly treated in the great literature of the past. Only a few of the women he referred to, such as Fanny in Mansfield Park, and Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, could in my view be credited with having any sort of sound, independent mind. The rest were secondary to the plot or lacked a moral scheme, or demonstrated a deficit of principled logic, or suffered from a fundamental lack of intelligence, such as being hopelessly romantic or whimsically, if charmingly, inconsistent in reason or in passion.

  We stopped for coffee on the way home and I tried to bring Leo up to date on the controversy.

  “The central question is this: Were the classics virtually all written by men because genius is a country exclusively populated by men, or have works by women been excluded because our common understanding of what makes a classic comprises only what men write?”

  “Sounds like one of those chicken-and-egg arguments. Can it ever be resolved one way or the other?”

  “Some people think that the only solution is to scrap the old list altogether and start over from scratch. Others argue that only minor tweaking is needed. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle, but tending more to one side or the other.”

  “It’s the same in law, you know,” Leo told me. He leaned across the table and fingered my cup, which was not yet empty, in a way that I found alarmingly intimate. I sat back in my chair and crossed my arms.

  “It’s only in our lifetime that we’ve begun to recognize that there have been many serious, systemic biases against women, such as the rules about custody and the division of property. There’s been the same kind of controversy that you’ve described in literature over how to identify the legal biases and reverse them without tipping the balance too far in the other direction. It doesn’t take much for us live white guys to feel threatened, you know, and we are getting nervous about all the encroachments on our turf. All your Professor Blossom is trying to do is help us guys, dead and alive, protect our franchise.”

  My doctor’s receptionist called me that week to schedule a follow-up visit. I was still sleeping only a few hours a night and was looking forward to any insights that he might have on my condition. But he remained completely unconcerned about how much or little I might be sleeping.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you at all, Maggie,” he told me. “You are completely healthy. The tests all came back completely normal. But I have to say that I wasn’t 100 percent happy with that mole on your neck. I think overall we should have it come off. It’s a simple procedure, but to reduce the risk of leaving a scar I have decided to refer you to a plastic surgeon. She should be able to look after it right in her office. You’ll be in and out in half an hour. And it’s virtually painless.”

  A few days later, I was waiting in Dr. Crewe’s office on Oak Street near West Broadway for my one o’clock appointment. A man in a white coat approached me, holding out his hand.

  “Good afternoon. I’m Dr. Charles Addenbrook. I am so sorry that you’ve been kept waiting. Won’t you please come in? My office is here, first door on the right.”

  “Dr. Addenbrook? There may be a mistake. I believe that I was referred to a Dr. Crewe. Dr. Laura Crewe.”

  “Dr. Crewe is my partner. She called a short while ago to let the office know that she’s running late at emergency. There was a rotten car accident this morning coming over Second Narrows Bridge, and she has a few teenagers’ faces to sew back together. They mind so at that age how they come out. Of course, few of us outgrow that. She asked whether I could squeeze you in. You’re fortunate; I finished the last patient in record time. If you would sit up on the table here, we’ll have a quick look. This is it here, I see. Any changes in size? Shape? Itching? Bleeding? Right. Well. I think your family physician is right. This should come off just to be on the safe side. It won’t take more than a few minutes. Hold on, that’s my phone. Please excuse me for one moment. Hello? Already? Yes. Yes. Yes. No. No. Of course not. Not at all. She’s all yours.”

  “I’ve good news for you. Dr. Crewe is just on her way in. She’ll be able to see you after all. She asked if you would wait for her in her office. This is it, the second door on the left. She’ll do a fine job, not to worry. I’ll leave my notes here for her if you could let her know where they are. Right here on the desk. You will remember?”

  I was out of Dr. Crewe’s office within another half-hour and was asked to sit in the reception area for ten minutes so that she could make sure that what she referred to as “a minor amount of bleeding, no more than expected,” had stopped completely before I would be given permission to leave. While I was waiting, Dr. Addenbrook walked by. He stopped in front of me and went down on one knee.

  “You don’t mind if I have a quick look?” He raised one corner of the bandage on my neck and peered closely. “Yes. Nice work. A little redness. I’ll tell Dr. Crewe that I checked on you. You’re free to go.” He rose to his feet.

  I stood as well. “You make it sound as if I’m getting sprung from jail.”

  “No, prisons have a better choice in reading material. Or so I’m told.”

  “Yes, I see from one of your magazines that Princess Diana is dating some guy named Dodi.”

  “Well, we do like to keep our patients up to date.” He hesitated. “Look,” he continued. “Since you’re not technically my patient, I wonder whether you might be free for a late lunch. I was on my way and I haven’t got the knack of eating alone. Or do you have to get back to work? Or home to your family?”

  “I don’t have to get back to work. I booked the afternoon off. And there’s no family. I would be happy to join you.”

  We walked to Pensieri, a small Italian restaurant on West Broadway near Willow, where the owner obviously knew Dr. Addenbrook—he asked me to call him Charles—from many past visits. Within a minute of our being seated at one of the tables, a waiter set before us bowls of ear-shaped pasta in garlic-scented chicken broth, crisp rolls, and a salad made of endive and escarole that the waiter dressed at the table in olive oil the color of moss, coarse salt, and wine vinegar. While we ate, Charles told me how he had come to elect plastic surgery as his specialty.

  “I worked, by chance, with Dr. Schiffmann, a highly successful plastic surgeon in Toronto when I was an intern. He was supremely confident—one might say egotistical—but he was very, very able. He made a large and positive difference in the lives of his patients. Particularly facial surgery. Think of it, going through life with a disfigured face, whether from birth or as a result of an accident. The face is what we present to the world. It’s what people see and interpret first, before anything else. If you’ve a horrific face, you are fairly guaranteed to have a horrific life, unless you are very, very lucky. You’ve obviously never had to worry. You have the face of a Madonna.”

  “Oh, no,” I protested. I raised my hands to my cheeks, which felt cooler than I expected, and fuller. My new, smooth, sleepless face. It felt under my hands like a still bowl of milk or a golden round of cheese.

  “Schiffmann once actually said to me, ‘I fix the mistakes that God makes.’ ” Charles imitated the grave, self-important tone of an older man. “In anyone else, you would think that unbearable hubris. But he is in fact amazingly good. He takes on work that other doctors have tried and failed at, or won’t even consider. I have more modest aims myself. I help God along. No more than that. I’m an assistant, an apprentice.”

  “Do you have far to go?” Charles asked when we finished our meal and he had paid the bill, waving my money away. “I’ll run you back if you like. I have a new toy, a convertible, which I love to have an opportunity to take for a spin. My next appointment isn’t until four. If you’re not in a rush, we can drive along the water and I’ll show you my boat. Another one of my hobbies. I have several, as I hope you’ll find out.”

  Family Room

  I was now seeing three men, none of whom I had known for more than a few weeks. Angus Singer. Leo Crane. And now Charles Addenbrook, whom Rebecca liked to refer to as “God’s little helper”—I had made the mistake of des
cribing to her the conversation I had with Charles at our first lunch.

  Leo put in long hours at the law firm, where he worked as an associate advancing aboriginal land claims. We met for dinner or went for a lecture or to a play on Saturday nights. Once or twice, on a Sunday morning, when the weather cooperated, we went for walks along the seawall.

  Angus spent time with his two teenaged boys on the weekends, but we got together once or twice during the week to go to a movie or a play. We also hiked together early Saturday mornings while his sons slept in. Luba had abandoned our Grouse hikes. She was in the thick of a new relationship and she preferred to linger in bed on Saturday mornings with her new love.

  In addition to his plastic surgery practice, Charles worked a couple of shifts each week at the emergency department of St. Matthew’s. He would drop into my office at the end of the workday and take me down to the marina where he kept his sailboat, Neptune III. We would go for a short sail in the inlet—the sun set after a scant hour and it was too cold to stay out any longer—then, after we had tied up again in the slip, Charles would bring out cheese and bread and salads and wine from a small fridge in the scaled-down galley. We would eat inside the cabin, under the soft light of a gas lamp that swayed above our heads. The lamp cast shadows that bounced on the cabin walls as the waves sloshed gently against the boat, loosely tied on its mooring.

  The boat was only one of Charles’s many passions. Another was houses—he owned six altogether.

  On our third time out together he took me on a tour of the one he lived in, in West Vancouver, an echoing glass-and-concrete structure on Marine Drive, strung along a cliff overlooking the inlet, all right angles, alternating textures, rough and smooth, and stark shades of deep shadow and brilliant light. The view from his living room window took my breath away, but the house did not have any sense of home about it. The rooms were echoing, nearly empty—some had only a single piece of furniture in them. There was a sloping leather Eames chair and four giant speakers in the living room, and the bedroom had only a bed: Everything else—closets, dressers, lamps, reading materials—was concealed behind sliding panels of birds-eye maple. Even the bathtub was angular and uninviting, with no curves to rest against. “I never use it anyway,” Charles explained.