The Pursuit of Happiness (2001)

by Douglas Kennedy

  Seven hundred and forty-nine thousand, six hundred and twelve dollars. It made no sense. No sense at all.

  ‘Kate?’

  I snapped back to the here and now. Mr Tougas was reaching over to his desk and retrieving a box of Kleenex. He put it on the coffee table, gesturing towards it. That’s when I realized that my face was wet. I pulled a tissue from the box. I dabbed my eyes. I muttered, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No need to be,’ Mr Tougas said. ‘I’m sure it’s all a bit of a shock.’

  ‘I don’t deserve it.’

  He allowed himself a small laugh. ‘Sure you do, Kate. You and Ethan. It’ll make things a lot easier.’

  ‘And Charlie?’ I said.

  ‘What about Charlie?’

  ‘I was just wondering: what’s his share in all this?’

  ‘His share? As I explained earlier, he has no share. Your mother cut him out of the will. Didn’t she tell you … ?’

  ‘Oh, she told me that Charlie was not going to be inheriting anything. But she also said that there was virtually nothing in her estate.’

  ‘I guess she wanted to surprise you.’

  ‘She succeeded.’

  ‘Anyway, your mother was very specific about the fact that the trust was yours, and yours alone.’

  ‘Poor Charlie,’ I said.

  Mr Tougas shrugged. ‘You reap what you sow.’

  ‘I guess that’s true,’ I said and stood up. ‘Is there anything else we need to discuss today?’

  ‘Well, there are still a couple of small points about the probate. But if you’d rather wait until next week …’

  ‘Yes, I would like to wait. I need time to …’

  ‘You don’t have to explain,’ he said. ‘Give me a call whenever.’

  I headed out to the street. I turned right and started walking north. I walked slowly, oblivious to my fellow pedestrians, to the traffic, to the din of the city. As if on auto-pilot, I made a reflexive right on 74th Street. I let myself back into my apartment, and began to act on the temporary escape plan I had been hatching in my head all the way uptown.

  Picking up the phone I called Avis, and arranged to pick up a car that afternoon at their East 64th Street depot. Then I booked a room for that night at a hotel in Sarasota Springs. Powering up Ethan’s computer, I sent an e-mail to Matt:

  Ethan and I are going to be out-of-town until late Monday night. You can reach me on my cellphone at all times.

  I paused for a moment, then quickly typed:

  Once again, thank you for your kindness during the last awful week. It was much appreciated.

  Then I wrote my name and hit the Send button.

  At three that afternoon, I was standing outside the Allan-Stevenson School on East 78th Street. As Ethan emerged through the front door, he was a little bemused to see me standing there … with two small duffel bags parked by my feet.

  ‘We’re not going to the dinosaurs?’ he asked, sounding disappointed.

  ‘I have a better idea. A more fun idea.’

  ‘What kind of fun?’

  ‘Want to run away for the weekend?’

  His eyes flickered with excitement. ‘You bet.’

  I handed him an envelope, addressed to his home room teacher, Mr Mitchell.

  ‘Run on inside with this - it’s a note to Mr Mitchell, telling him we’re going to be far away from school until Tuesday.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘Real far.’

  ‘Wow.’

  He grabbed the note and dashed back inside the school building, handing it to the receptionist at the front desk. An hour later, we were driving up the East Side Drive, heading west on the Cross Bronx Expressway, hitting the 287, crossing the Hudson just south of Tarrytown, then joining the 87 towards the depths of upstate New York.

  ‘Where’s Canada, Mommy?’ Ethan asked me after I revealed our final destination.

  ‘Canada’s up above us.’

  ‘Above us, like the North Pole where Santa lives?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But we won’t see Santa?’

  ‘No. We’ll see … uh, Canadians.’

  ‘Oh,’ Ethan said, sounding rightfully bemused.

  Why had I chosen Canada as a run-away destination? No real reason - except that it was the first place that came into my head when I suddenly decided to get out of Dodge with Ethan. Also, it was the first time I had crossed the border since 1976 - when I ran off for a pseudo-romantic weekend in Quebec City with a then-boyfriend named Brad Bingham (well, he did go to Amherst). If I remember correctly, Brad was the deputy editor of the Amherst literary magazine, and was something of a Thomas Pynchon fanatic who harbored dreams about running off to Mexico and writing some big abstract novel. In college, we all entertain such quixotic fantasies about a future-without-responsibilities. Until we are shoved into the workaday world, and we accept our destiny, and conform to the social norm. Last I heard, Brad was a big-deal attorney in Chicago. There was a picture of him in the Times when he represented some sleaze-ball multi-national corporation in an anti-trust case that was being argued in front of the Supreme Court. He’d put on thirty pounds and lost most of his hair and looked so depressingly middle-aged. Like the rest of us.

  But, hey, he introduced me to Quebec City, and he was pretty gracious when, a week or so later, I decided that we should just be pals. Thanks to him, I was now heading north to Canada with my son.

  ‘Does Daddy know where we’re going?’ Ethan asked.

  ‘I sent him a message.’

  ‘He was going to bring me to a hockey game on Saturday.’

  Oh God, I’d forgotten he’d mentioned this nighttime outing to me weeks ago (as the Saturday in question fell out of the usual two weekends a month which Ethan spent with his father). I reached over to the dashboard, and grabbed my cellphone.

  ‘I could have you up for kidnapping,’ Matt said after I reached him at the office. His tone, thankfully, was ironic. Mine was instantly sheepish.

  ‘It was a last-minute idea,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry. We can turn right around again if …’

  ‘That’s okay. I think Quebec City sounds great. You will have him back in time for school on Tuesday?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘And you told the school he’d be out on Monday?’

  ‘Of course. I’m not that irresponsible.’

  ‘No one’s saying you’re irresponsible, Kate.’

  ‘That’s your implication …’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘Fine, fine, fine. Look, I’m sorry if I screwed up your hockey game plans.’

  ‘That’s not the point …’

  ‘Then what is the point, Matt?’

  ‘You can never stop, can you?’

  ‘I’m not trying to start anything.’

  ‘All right, all right, you win. Happy now?’

  ‘I’m not trying to win anything, Matt.’

  ‘This conversation’s closed.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, now appalled by the senseless stupidity of this exchange. Would I never get anything right? After a moment’s silence, I asked, ‘Do you want to speak to Ethan?’

  ‘Please.’

  I handed the phone to my son.

  ‘Your dad,’ I said.

  I listened in while Ethan spoke to Matt. He sounded a little tentative, a little shy - and certainly cowed by the argument he’d just overheard. I felt a horrible stab of guilt, and wondered if he’d end up hating us for fracturing his life; for squandering his stability at a premature age.

  ‘Yeah, Dad … yeah, I’d like that … the circus would be great … Yeah, I’ll be a good boy for Mommy … yeah, bye …’

  He handed me the phone. We didn’t speak for a long time. Finally he said, ‘I’m hungry.’

  We stopped at a McDonald’s outside of New Paltz. Ethan sat quietly, eating his Chicken McNuggets and french fries, fingering the cheap plastic toy that accompanied his kiddie meal. I sipped a styrofoam cup of rancid coffee, looking at him anx
iously, wishing I could somehow make everything fine for him … and knowing that that was impossible.

  I touched his face.

  ‘Ethan, darling …’

  He suddenly jerked his head away, and started to cry.

  ‘I want you to live with Daddy,’ he said between sobs.

  Oh God …

  I reached out for him, but he pulled away, his sobs escalating.

  ‘I want my mommy and daddy to live together.’

  His voice was now piercing - heartbreakingly so. An elderly couple at a nearby table glared at me as if I was the personification of everything that was wrong with contemporary womanhood. Ethan suddenly threw himself against me. I gathered him up in my arms, and rocked him until he calmed down.

  When we finally got back on the road, Ethan promptly fell asleep. I stared ahead at the dark highway, trying to maintain my concentration, trying not to fall apart behind the wheel, my eyes clouding up, a low fog rolling in over the road, my headlights trying to pierce its cotton candy veil. I felt as if I was driving into a vacuum. A void to match my own.

  When we reached the hotel I had booked in Sarasota Springs, Ethan was still conked out. So I carried him up to the room, got him into his pajamas, and tucked him into one of the room’s two double beds. Then I sat in a bath for an hour, staring blankly at the ceiling.

  Eventually I dragged myself out of the tub and ordered a Caesar salad and a half-bottle of red wine from room service. I picked at the romaine lettuce. I downed the Bordeaux. I attempted to read an Anne Tyler novel I’d thrown into my bag - but the words swam in front of me. I put down the book and stared out the window at cascading snow. As hard as I tried, my mind couldn’t let go of one repetitive thought: I have fucked it all up.

  The snow had stopped by the time I snapped awake. Morning dawned clear and cold - a promising day. I felt rested. Ethan seemed brighter, and excited about the trip north. He devoured a stack of pancakes. He asked all sorts of questions about the journey ahead. He wanted to know if we’d see bears in Canada. Or moose. Or wolves.

  ‘Maybe a wolf, if we’re lucky,’ I said.

  ‘But I want to see a bear too.’

  ‘I’ll see if that can be arranged.’

  It took nearly seven hours to reach Quebec City - but Ethan seemed to enjoy the ride. Especially as I had thrown a Game Boy into his bag - and was relieved to discover that he could play it in a moving car without getting sick. He read books. We chatted about a wide variety of topics (whether Godzilla really was a good monster who’d simply lost his way in life; which Power Ranger Ethan planned to emulate when he grew up). He loved crossing the border - and charmed the woman customs inspector at Canada Douanes by asking her where we could buy a wolf. He was fascinated by all the road signs in French. We bypassed Montreal and took Highway 40 north. It followed the St Lawrence - and Ethan was riveted by the sight of a major river that had become a solid chunk of ice. Night was falling. It was another two hours to Quebec City. Ethan slipped off to sleep, but woke when we pulled into the driveway of the Chateau Frontenac. The cold air jolted him awake immediately. Our room was poky, but it had a fantastic view over the city. Ethan stared out at the fairytale lights of Vieux Quebec.

  ‘I want to go downstairs,’ Ethan said.

  We threw our coats back on, and went out. A light snow was falling. The faux gas lamps of Old Quebec cast the cobbled streets in a spectral glow. The city’s gingerbread architecture looked edible. Ethan held my hand, and was wide-eyed. Seeing his unalloyed pleasure lifted me for the first time in weeks.

  ‘I want to live here,’ Ethan said.

  I laughed. ‘But you’d have to learn French.’

  ‘I can learn French. And you and Daddy can learn French.’

  I tried to fight off a wave of sadness. ‘Let’s go back to the room, Ethan. It’s cold.’

  Back upstairs, we ordered room service. After Ethan finished off le hot dog pommes frites (and I picked at a truly bland coq au vin), Ethan said, ‘Next time we go away, Daddy will come with us.’

  ‘Ethan, darling …’

  ‘And then we can all go to DisneyWorld at Easter.’

  ‘You and I are going to DisneyWorld, Ethan,’ I said.

  ‘And Daddy will come too.’

  I took a deep, steadying breath. I reached for Ethan’s hand.

  ‘Ethan, you know that Daddy now lives with Blair …’

  ‘But he’ll live with you again.’

  ‘No, Ethan, he won’t be living with me again.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Daddy and I have both told you this before.’

  ‘But it’s not fair …’

  ‘You’re right. It’s not fair But it’s what’s happened. We can’t live together.’

  ‘You can …’

  ‘No, Ethan, we can’t. We never will again. I know it’s sad, but it doesn’t mean …’

  I didn’t get to finish that sentence, as Ethan went running into the bathroom, slamming the door after him. Then I heard him sobbing. I opened the door. He was sitting on the top of the toilet seat, his face in his hands.

  ‘Go away,’ he said.

  ‘Ethan, let me try to explain …’

  ‘Go away!’

  I decided not to push the issue, so I returned to the bedroom, turned on the television, and aimlessly channel-surfed. My stomach was in chaos. I didn’t know what to do or say to make the situation better. After two minutes I tiptoed back to the bathroom door and listened. His crying had subsided. I heard him lift up the toilet seat and pee. I heard him flush the john, then run some water. I heard him walking towards the door, so I dashed back to the armchair by the television. Ethan came out of the bathroom, his head bowed. He walked over to his bed and climbed in under the covers. I turned around to him and asked, ‘Would you like to watch some cartoons?’

  He nodded, so I flipped around stations until I found Cartoon Network. Only, of course, it was dubbed into French.

  ‘Want me to change it?’

  ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s funny.’

  So we sat watching Tom and Jerry a la francaise. Ethan remained lying on his side, huddled under the covers. After around five minutes he said, ‘I want a cuddle.’