The Pursuit of Happiness (2001)

by Douglas Kennedy

  I didn’t sleep that night. At some point I got out of bed, I got dressed. I left the apartment and sat for two hours in an all-night coffee shop on Broadway and 76th Street. Dawn arrived. I stood up. I paid my bill. I walked over to Riverside Park. I walked down to the river. I sat on a bench. I stared out at the Hudson. I kept willing myself to break down - to have that big cathartic moment. But all I could do was look out blankly at the water and wonder whether I had, in my own way, killed him.

  I finally returned to the apartment. The clock in the kitchen read nine fifteen a.m. The phone rang. This time I answered it. It was Joel Eberts.

  ‘Thank God,’ he said, after I picked up. ‘I called all day yesterday. You had me worried.’

  ‘No need,’ I said.

  ‘You sound tired.’

  ‘I had a bad night.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said. ‘After I saw the announcement in the Times yesterday, I wondered …’

  ‘I’m handling it,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Do you have any idea about the cause of death?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He didn’t try to make contact since you were back in the city?’

  ‘No, never,’ I lied, unable to talk about anything right now.

  ‘That was probably for the best.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘You sure you’re okay, Sara?’

  ‘It’s just a shock, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, if you’re not okay, I just want you to know that I’m here. Call me anytime.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And whatever you do … don’t feel guilty. It was all a long time ago.’

  But I did blame myself. Totally.

  Sheer exhaustion forced me into bed at seven that evening. I woke just after five. It was still dark outside - but I had slept deeply, so I felt curiously rested. I knew that the funeral would begin in just over four hours. I dreaded going. I had no choice but to go.

  Now, sitting in the rear of the church, I kept my head lowered as the words of the Mass reverberated around my ears.

  Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona eis requiem.

  Lamb of God, thou takest away the sins of the world, grant them rest.

  Or, even more piercing:

  Lacrimosa dies illa, qua resurget ex favilla judicandus homo reus; huic ergo parce, Deus.

  On this day full of tears, when from the ashes arises guilty man, to be judged: Oh Lord, have mercy upon him.

  I pressed my fingers hard against my eyes. I had judged him. And yes, I had finally forgiven him. Far too late.

  Kate started to cry again. Only this time she could not be consoled. After a few minutes, she was wailing. I had been keeping my head bowed - but I raised it just as Meg was coming up the aisle. She had obviously decided to relieve Dorothy of the baby, as she had her niece in her arms, and was heading for the door. She saw me and froze - her face initially registering shock. Then it hardened into something approaching pure cold contempt. I quickly lowered my head again. I wanted to flee - but I knew she would be outside with the baby. I sat there for ten minutes, feeling total shame. The Mass forged on - the priest asking us again to pray for the soul of ‘a good husband, a good father, a fine responsible man’. As he fell silent for a moment, I heard footsteps. I stole a quick glance, and saw Meg already halfway down the central aisle, carrying a now-subdued Kate back towards the front row. Immediately, I ducked out of the pew and moved quickly through the front door, down the steps, and into the first cab I could hail.

  ‘Where you going?’ the driver asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Just drive.’

  He headed down Broadway. At 42nd Street, I left the cab and ducked into the first movie house I could find. I sat through a double-feature. Then I moved on to the next movie house, and sat through another double-feature. Then I walked to the Automat and drank a cup of coffee. While there, I reached a decision that had been formulating in my brain during all those hours of non-stop movies. I finished the coffee. I checked my watch. It was just after seven p.m. I went back out on to 42nd Street and hailed a cab going east. At First Avenue, I asked the taxi to pull up in front of an apartment complex called Tudor City. There was a doorman on duty. He was busy with a delivery of groceries. I told him I was here to see Margaret Malone. He looked me over and decided I didn’t appear sinister.

  ‘Is she expecting you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Apartment Seven E. Go right on up.’

  I took the elevator to the seventh floor. I marched straight down the corridor to Apartment E. Before I lost my nerve, I rang the bell. After a moment, the door opened. Meg was standing there, still dressed in the black suit she had worn to the funeral. She looked drained, exhausted. A lit cigarette was in her left hand. She flinched when she saw me. Her lips tightened.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ she said.

  ‘Meg, can I … ?’

  ‘No. You can’t. Now get lost.’

  ‘If you’d just hear me out …’

  ‘You mean, the way you heard my brother out? Go fuck yourself.’

  With that, she slammed the door. I put a hand against the wall for support, until I stopped shaking. After a moment, the door opened again. Meg suddenly looked crushed, heartbroken. I took a step towards her. She buried her head in my shoulder. She wept loudly. I put my arms around her - and finally cried too.

  When we both calmed down, she brought me into her living room and motioned me towards an armchair. The apartment was a small one-bedroom efficiency - indifferently furnished, crammed with books and periodicals and overflowing ashtrays. Meg disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of Scotch and two glasses.

  ‘Medicine,’ she said, pouring out two shots. She handed me a glass, collapsed into an armchair opposite mine, and lit a fresh cigarette. After two deep drags, she finally spoke.

  ‘I really never wanted to see you again.’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ I said.

  ‘But I also understood you. If it had been Jack, instead of Eric, I would have been merciless.’

  ‘I was too merciless.’

  Another deep drag on her cigarette. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You were. But … he told me you forgave him.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘Yeah. Around a week before he died. He knew he was going for over a year.’

  ‘A year?’

  ‘At least. Leukemia is pretty damn remorseless. Once you’ve got it, you know the jig is up.’

  ‘Leukemia?’ I said, sounding shocked. ‘But he had no history …’

  ‘Yeah - it just came out of nowhere. Like most catastrophes.’

  ‘So Jack wasn’t in Boston on business?’

  ‘No - he was at Mass General Hospital, under the care of some big-cheese blood specialist - one of the best in the country. He was trying some last-ditch treatment to save him. But as the doc told me around a week before Jack went, he was beyond treatment.’

  ‘At least Steele and Sherwood was picking up the bill.’

  ‘Are you kidding me? Steele and Sherwood didn’t pay a penny of his medical costs.’

  ‘But he told me he was going back to work for them … that they had him on sick leave.’

  ‘That’s because he didn’t want to tell you the truth.’

  ‘What truth?’

  ‘They fired him two years ago.’

  I reached for the whiskey glass and took a long drink.

  ‘But he was one of their star executives,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Meg said. ‘ Was. Until he fell apart after …’

  She hesitated a minute.

  ‘All right: I’ll give it to you straight, Sara. After Eric died and you refused to deal with him, Jack had something of a breakdown. He stopped sleeping, he lost a lot of weight, he started showing up for meetings looking unshaven and sloppy. Once or twice - he actually broke down in front of clients. To their credit, Steele and Sherwood were pretty understanding. After around eight months of this kind of
wayward behavior, they put him on sick leave, and actually dispatched him to a psychiatrist at the company’s expense. Everyone thought he was getting better. But we were wrong.’

  ‘Was that when you wrote me in Paris?’

  ‘Yes. That is when I wrote you.’

  One letter. One short, generous letter was all that was asked of me. And I couldn’t bring myself even to do that. Pride is the most blinding and self-indulgent of all emotions.

  ‘Anyway,’ Meg said, ‘during his few weeks back at work, everyone thought that he was returning to his old self. But he couldn’t pull it off. He started missing meetings, and seemed unable to close any deal. They put up with him for another six months, then finally called him in one day and asked him to clear his desk. Again, they were decent with him: six months’ severance pay, and health care benefits for a year. But he was now completely unemployable - especially as he sank back into a depression after they laid him off. At least Kate’s birth picked him up a bit - but right after she came along, he started looking very anemic, and the lymph nodes in his neck began to bulge. I kept telling him that he shouldn’t worry - that his body was reacting to all the stress he’d been under. But personally, I feared the worst. So did Jack. And when the diagnosis finally came …’

  She broke off and reached for the Scotch bottle. Both our glasses were topped up.

  ‘I have to tell you,’ she said, ‘that Dorothy was amazing through most of this. Given that she really couldn’t stand my brother - that the whole marriage was a massive mistake, and she truly loathed everything about his life with you - she still stuck by him. Right to the end.’

  ‘He told me that she threw him out after he testified in Washington.’

  ‘Yes - she was pretty appalled at him for cooperating with the Committee … especially when she found out how it triggered your brother’s death. Worst yet, she couldn’t stomach seeing him so broken by the fact that he’d lost you. Not that I could blame her. But eventually - after a lot of talking from me - she let him come home. Because, deep down, I think she hated being on her own. Not that she would have anything to do with him in a “marital” way again - except for one drunken night, which is how Kate appeared on the scene.’

  ‘He did mention that.’

  ‘Well, what he probably didn’t mention was that his severance pay was all spent after six months. Then Kate arrived, then the leukemia was diagnosed - but by that time, his health insurance had run out. So the last year of his life was a complete financial disaster. He had a little stock - but he had to sell all that to pay his doctor’s bills. It really got bad for a while. So bad that I’ve been paying their rent for the last three months. And - between the Mass General Hospital tab and the funeral - Dorothy’s looking at about eight thousand dollars’ worth of debt … not to mention the little problem of now raising two kids on her own.’

  I took another needed sip of whiskey.

  ‘I feel this is all my fault,’ I said.

  ‘That’s dumb - and you know it.’

  ‘But I should have written him that letter you wanted me to write.’

  ‘Yes - you should have done that. But would it have stopped him from falling apart again? Who the hell knows? He still blamed himself for Eric. And as for his illness … Sara, despite what some dimestore romantic novelists might like to think, a broken heart has never caused leukemia. Jack collided with his genetic fate. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘But if I had forgiven him years ago …’

  ‘Now is it you who wants absolution?’

  ‘I was wrong.’

  ‘I’ll agree with that. But so was Jack. And yeah - for a while I really loathed you for not helping him when he needed you.’

  ‘Not now?’

  She crushed out her cigarette, and instantly lit up another. ‘I’ve lost my brother, my only sibling. Just like you’ve lost yours. So hate’s rather pointless under the circumstances, isn’t it? Anyway, you meeting him a couple of weeks ago meant a lot to him.’

  ‘If only he’d told me exactly how sick he was.’

  ‘What good would that have done? Anyway, he was right not to tell you. Just as I also know that, in all those letters he wrote to you, he never once mentioned his breakdown, or getting fired. He had his dignity, Jack. More to the point, he felt he’d burdened you enough - and that he didn’t want to make you feel guilty. All he kept telling me - over and over again - was how much he missed you, and how sorry he was.’

  ‘I never read the letters.’

  ‘You could now.’

  ‘I threw them out.’

  Meg shrugged.

  ‘He loved you, Sara. You should have seen his face whenever he talked about you. It was goddamn incandescent. I’d never seen anything like it. Didn’t understand it, to be honest - because I’d never felt that way about anyone. All right, he could be something of a fuck-up, my brother. He made some terrible calls. He didn’t know how to face up to big decisions. He had an awful habit of losing his nerve. And God, how he hated himself for failing you twice. And for failing Eric. Just as he also hated himself for failing Dorothy and the kids. But I also know that, at heart, he was just stumbling through like the rest of us. Trying his best. It may not have amounted to much. But, at least, he truly loved you. Without condition. And how often in life does that ever happen?’

  I knew the answer to that question - but I didn’t articulate it. Because I just couldn’t.

  ‘Would you do something for me?’ I finally asked.

  ‘I doubt it. But, go on - try me.’

  ‘I want you to ask Dorothy to meet me.’

  ‘Forget it. I may not hate you anymore. She does. She always has. And now … now the lady’s got enough problems to handle without trying to forgive you. Which - I promise you - she never will.’

  ‘I don’t want her forgiveness. I just want to …’

  ‘I don’t care what you want to do. There is absolutely no way that my sister-in-law will ever agree to meet you.’

  ‘Hear me out,’ I said.

  Meg did just that. And sat quietly for a moment or so after I finished talking with her.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  A few days later, she called me at home.

  ‘I’ve spoken with Dorothy. It took some work - but she’s agreed to see you. I didn’t explain much to her. In fact, I kept it all very vague - except to say that I thought it was important you met. Believe me, she was very reluctant. But I brought her around - telling her that you had a crucial matter you needed to discuss with her. Don’t expect this to be pleasant, Sara. She feels you’re responsible for many of her problems.’

  ‘She’s right. I am.’

  ‘There’s a coffee shop on the corner of Amsterdam and Eighty-Sixth. Can you make tomorrow at four? I’ve arranged to leave work early, so I can stay with Charlie and Kate while she meets you.’

  I agreed. The next afternoon, I got to the coffee shop just before four. I found a booth at the back. I ordered tea, and found myself stirring it constantly as I waited for Dorothy to arrive. She showed up ten minutes late. She was dressed in a simple tweed skirt and a Peck and Peck blouse. She looked very tired - the dark moons under her eyes accentuated by the way her hair was pulled back in a tightly woven bun. She sat down opposite me. She did not exchange a greeting. She simply said, ‘You wanted to see me.’