I Don't Have a Happy Place

by Kim Korson

  We were clearing the table when the front door finally blew open. And there, in the doorway, stood a sweating, staggering man—as hammered as I’d hoped. Ignoring all of us busy in the kitchen, he stomped up the stairs, work boots tracking bits of dirt and gravel through the house. We continued to clear, careful to not make too much noise. There was stomping above our heads, then a current of pee hitting water but no flush. It didn’t take long for a loud thump to follow, signaling Mr. Tremblay’s fall into bed. His snoring began, exaggerated and cartoonish, so ridiculous it sounded like he was faking. The family dried dishes and put leftovers in the fridge, keeping hushed so as not to wake the bear. I imagined it would take a lot more than clinking forks or the suction of the fridge door to disturb the beast, but they were better schooled in the drunk-man arts, so I followed suit.

  Nathalie’s sister, Beatrice, was tasked with table wiping, and we were excused since I was the guest. If we timed it right, Nathalie told me, her mother would make herself a cup of chamomile tea and spend the next thirty minutes listening to Beatrice’s piano practice as Dave, the brother, went outside, claiming to join a street hockey game but really hiding behind the car smoking KOOLs. The sounds of “Für Elise” plinked up the stairs, competing with the drunken snoring. Panic and dread sizzled through me at the thought of potentially getting killed. Man, I thought, now, this is livin’.

  “Okay,” Nathalie said. “I’ll go in and take the money. You be the lookout.”

  “No fair,” I said. “I want to steal.”

  “Uh, it’s my father who’s the drunk.”

  “So?”

  “So I get to steal the money.”

  “No fair.”

  “It is too fair,” she said. “At least I asked you to do it with me.”

  “You always get to do this stuff,” I said, teetering on the cliff of a fit.

  “If he wakes up and sees you, he might kill you.”

  “You said he wouldn’t wake up.”

  “He’s not going to wake up.”

  Nathalie’s argument was weak but, after thinking about it, I remembered I was, too. For sure I would have barfed or fainted but I felt I should at least try to get a horse in the race. If being friends with Nathalie Tremblay had taught me anything, it was that you had to fight a lot.

  I took my post in her doorway, which provided a clear view of both the top of the stairs and her parents’ room. We wished each other good luck and off she went, creeping into the drunk’s bunker. My insides became ferrets and I could barely stand still. I wondered if I might pee. When Nathalie got to the jeans, she turned to face me and we stuffed fists in our mouths to stifle the war cries inching up our throats. Nathalie composed herself by taking exaggerated breaths and shaking out her hands, stuff to make me laugh and prolong my anxiety that he could open his eyes and grab her neck, or mine. This stake-raising business was terrifying. I’d never felt giddier. Nathalie nodded and winked, then reached into the back pocket and pulled out a roll of fifties. She sprinted to her room and I shut the door behind her, and together we laughed like maniacs while counting our haul.

  “I swear he’ll never notice,” said Nathalie. “He brings this much home every day.”

  Later that night, as I fussed on the floor, trying to not feel trapped by the sleeping bag I was sausaged into, I thought of how my father would call me into his room every Thursday before Mork & Mindy and hand me three dollars, which I’d stick in my own pockets and then spend on grape Bubble Yum. This money was different, dirty and hard earned.

  The first thing we bought with our dollars was a small metal box apiece, complete with teeny keyholes and locks. Mine was red and Nathalie’s was black. She gave me some string and we both wore our keys around our necks, under our sweatshirts. Then we went downtown to Phantasmagoria Records and bought Zenyatta Mondatta by the Police. I knew I’d have to hide it between my Bobby Vinton records in case my parents saw.

  Nathalie started pilfering money, almost nightly, without me. I was sulky not to be part of things anymore even though she still often shared, keeping my lockbox full with the sneezing powder and sparklers and Silly Putty we paid for, and the Kissing Sticks Nathalie stole for us from the drugstore. It was great to have all that stuff, but things were getting crazy at home and she often wanted to come to my place instead. Once there, she’d say I was lucky that my parents wore Calvin Kleins and she didn’t mind that the windows couldn’t open.

  I longed to be part of the action back at her house but, if we’re being honest, I knew that all I ever was, all I’d ever be, was a passenger in Nathalie Tremblay’s getaway car. I liked all the souvenirs I got along the way, but what I really wanted was her spunk and mettle. Why was it that everyone else came assembled properly? Even that playground flasher seemed to be doing all right. Confidence certainly didn’t seem to be a problem for that guy. He felt okay enough with himself to spill it out to strangers on the street. Where do you even get that kind of moxie? Why wasn’t I cut out for an existence like that? Life was bullshit sometimes.

  By the end of fifth grade, I was doing so poorly academically they wanted to hold me back a year. I was sent to a bilingual public school for the sixth grade, where for the first time in my life I understood how to spell words and do long division. Eventually, Nathalie moved on to a public high school where she’d wear raccoon eyeliner and French older boys. I heard she even bought some hash from a tenth grader and carved the word fuck on the front door of her house.

  We didn’t see each other as much anymore. I made a few new friends blessed with familial turmoil, but nothing ever as good as what happened at the Tremblays’. Sure, there was divorce and stuff, maybe an abusive uncle, but none of it compared to the charms of a machete-wielding drunk or the enchantment of banditry or those gorgeous sacks of Christian milk.

  Letters to a Low-level Depressive

  • • • • • •

  To Whom It May Concern:

  Robbie Levine wants a hand job. Also, he’d like to be called Robert now, since he is going to be a playwright, possibly also a screenwriter, and wants to be taken seriously. He’d like for me to start taking myself seriously, too. He also wants the hand job request to be taken seriously. Robbie/Robert Levine wants a lot.

  I’m writing to you because Lisa Dorfman’s basement party is coming up and I’m not sure what to do about Robbie’s request, or who to ask about it. My mother whispers the word bathroom when she has to use it, so I imagine that upon hearing my dilemma her head would explode in the restroom and we’d never get the smell of Aussie Mega out of there. I can’t turn to my best friend, Wendy, because last night she ate another whole pack of Ex-Lax and six peanut butter–flavored Ayds—she’s convinced she’s fat—and her mom is so mad she made her stay home from school today. I bet she’s watching General Hospital with a tub of Baskin-Robbins, then making herself barf. If I had to guess, though, I think she’d tell me to definitely do the hand job because I’m lucky to have a boyfriend in the first place, and also that I am not fat. Plus she thinks he looks like Magnum, P.I.

  My brother, Ace, is supposed to be writing college essays, but he’s playing air guitar to AC/DC in his room. If my friends call the house these days, he tells them I can’t come to the phone because I’m dead, so he’s no use. And my father—well, who can ask their father about these matters? Not to mention that when he found out I smoked that More menthol in the park last week, we had to have a sit-down in the den, where he looked uncomfortable and said something about how he’d “tried a couple of marijuanas in my day and good thing I didn’t like them.”

  This leaves Riza, our Filipina live-in housekeeper. But it’s awkward enough she lives in the basement and irons my father’s jeans. So I am turning to you. I wasn’t sure what to call you, so I used the whole to-whom-it-may-concern thing, because we learned it in English class. Please reply as soon as you can. Lisa Dorfman’s party is next week.

 
Yours truly,

  High School Kim

  Dear High School Kim,

  So nice to hear from you! You can just call me Kim, or Middle-Aged Kim; whichever is fine. Let me start this letter by saying there is usually a rule in movies about all things relating to time travel, instructions on how you are free to divulge what happens in the future but no one is allowed to do anything that will change the course of history. I’m not sure if our correspondence constitutes time travel, but if it does, don’t worry about it. You know we don’t pay much mind to rules. And not because we think we’re Fonzie or anything, but more because we are apathetic.

  Just to make sure there was no revisionist history about our inertia, I did some research. After scouring all our high school yearbooks, my memory serves. There wasn’t a poem or art project with our name under it, there was no team involvement of any sort, and for just about every class photo, we were absent. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that our high school was pretty small—with only two hundred and fifty kids in total, sixty in our graduating class—so to not make any showing in the yearbook is next to impossible. It took work to not be represented in any capacity. So, good for us, I guess.

  A side note: You know how high school in Montreal lasts for five years, from grade seven through eleven? Be prepared to have to explain that one for the rest of your life when you move to the States, because it doesn’t work that way here. Also, they say “eighth grade,” not “grade eight.” (Yes! You are going to college, in the States, where you will remain for good after you graduate. I know, right? Feel free to pay even less attention in science. You won’t be using it in your daily life and it doesn’t matter.)

  All this aside, yes, I am happy to give you guidance on hand jobs. Or anything else that might come up for you. I don’t get out much and I love giving advice. Remember how we dreamed of writing an advice column for Seventeen? (That never happens.) Anyway, here we go. . . .

  Robbie Levine, first love, thirteen years old. That guy’s intense, huh? Not even five feet and already calls you “darling” as if he drinks Cognac and teaches the classics. And the way he had his whole life planned out? So focused, such an overachiever. I wonder if we believed some of that might rub off on us, perhaps during all that dry humping to Jackson Browne at his house.

  Don’t you love that house? Nestled in the cul-de-sac, all that laughing inside, so vibrant, the endless amount of siblings? Are you still wearing that silver ID bracelet? The one he got for his bar mitzvah but gave to you when you started going out? It was so heavy. Such a reminder that you had a pulse, that you were connected to something. First love is intoxicating. At once private but fully out there for everyone to see, even your teachers. It was everything.

  Have you sneaked to the second-floor bathroom, the single one with the lock, to make out yet? What about all the letters, have you guys started writing those? I still have a box downstairs filled with all the high-school letters—mostly from friends, but there are still some of those letters from Robbie. Your first love letters written in his neat, loopy cursive on his monogrammed notecards saying things like how you were the most special girl he’d ever known and how it would be a long time before he met anyone as unique as you and that his love for you has grown an “awesome extent.”

  And guess what? I found one that says, and I quote, “I deeply respect you for sticking by your standards.” I’m guessing that’s the hand job part.

  Wow, look at me, waxing poetic instead of answering your question. The kids will be home from school momentarily, so I should probably end this. I’m assuming by the time you get my reply, you’ll have already given the hand job right there in Lisa Dorfman’s backyard while the rest of the kids slow-dance to REO Speedwagon. After, he’ll give you a box of yellow stationery that he had engraved with both your names on it: ROBERT & KIM. But, on the off chance this gets to you before it all goes down, I say go for it. It’s so not a big deal. Plus it will be one of the first times in high school that you actually accomplish something.

  Yours truly,

  Me

  P.S.: Act surprised about the stationery.

  Dear Middle-Aged Kim,

  I got your letter just after Lisa Dorfman’s. Thanks for the reply, I guess. Do you think, next time, if I ask you a question, you could just give me the advice and not tell me all the stuff that happens in the future? Maybe some people want to know, but I don’t. I think it’s kind of depressing.

  Thanks,

  Kim

  Dear H.S. Kim,

  Depressing? You don’t know the half of it. Wait until the end of the school year, after the hand job and the stationery and all those letters claiming he’ll never love anyone like he loves you. Cut to—your mother signs you up for theater camp and Robbie/Robert decides he’d like to go, too. You sit on the bus together and just before you get there he says, “Hey, I’ve been thinking. Let’s stay going out this summer but let’s not tell anyone.” And you say, “Um, okay.”

  Um, okay! How’s that for depressing? So you guys settle into camp—well, he settles into camp. He’s all well adjusted and confident, so he instantly gets whisked away by some famous kid who is about to leave to star in a movie, but not before he introduces Robbie to all the players. They pal away arm in arm, and you, shy and sad and wet-dog pathetic, stand alone with your duffel. He gets cast as Danny Zuko in Grease and proceeds to make out with twenty-two girls (yes, you keep count). You play an old lady, an aging performer in some geriatric home for geezery actors in this Noel Coward snoozer that no one wants to come see because it’s not a musical. We’re not even good in it.

  You know what else we’re not good at, right? Exactly. Camp. We suck at camp. We’re all lonely and awkward and we have no confidence, so making friends is a real bitch.

  As luck would have it, though, some of the more attractive campers take pity on us because Robbie/Robert is a man-about-camp and we’re—well, we’re us. They try to boost us up, nudge us to meet other guys, which, ironically, we do. And then, you know who resurfaces? You guessed it. Robbie/Robert now loves you again, so you break up with the other guy, who actually gets kind of mad and throws a chair at you during rehearsal.

  Obviously, R/R goes back to conquering the rest of the girls, leaving you to roam the halls of the derelict, creepy hotel the camp is housed in, alone. No guy will come near you now for fear of upsetting Danny Zuko because he’s the greatest. God, you love him.

  I can’t remember much else from that summer, except I think you end up stealing someone’s jean jacket, possibly someone on kitchen staff. And then, to top it all off, when you get home, we get a perm.

  All the best,

  Me

  Dear Kim,

  Oh my god! And then what happens? Do we break up for good? Please tell me! I can’t do my homework until I know. Please write me back as soon as you get this.

  Oh my god,

  Me

  Dear You,

  You might as well sit on that leather chair you like so much in the den. Not only because what I am about to tell you will be hard to hear but also because your mother is about to hire a decorator and all that squishy worn-in leather furniture is about to undergo some serious lacquering. In a matter of months the whole house is going to be all glass bricks and black shiny everything. Even that toilet downstairs, the one in the guest bathroom by the front door, is going to be replaced with a black toilet, which, I will warn you now, is very daunting to use. Things are about to get uncomfortable for you, literally and figuratively. You might want to get a pack of those powdered donuts from the bread drawer. And some Doritos from the chip cabinet. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but . . .

  Yes, you break up. By the beginning of grade 9, you’re officially kaput. When the decorator redoes your room, you pick a black water bed, in which you will spend many hours floating on the lukewarm mattress, weeping to the sounds of Sérgio Mendes sweari
ng he’s “Never Gonna Let You Go.” Wendy will stay on the phone with you all the way up until Knots Landing comes on, and even then she’ll remain on the line as Abby Ewing threatens Valene. Wendy will try her best to make you feel better, mostly by reminding you how lucky you are not to be fat.

  In years to come, you and Wendy will take a Jewish teen tour to Israel, where Wendy will subsist on Diet Coke and, literally, one carrot a day. She will lose an entire person in weight and become so thin she looks like a profile. When you get off the plane, her mother will burst into tears at the terminal and blame you for what has happened. But until that time, Wendy will be of sound enough mind to be a good friend.

  Meanwhile, life moves on, but you will not yet be over Robert Levine. What you are over, though, along with mostly everyone else in your grade, is the whole preppy thing. Everyone will get Flock of Seagulls haircuts, pierce their clothes with safety pins, and discuss Nietzsche at their lockers. You will embrace this trend by embracing Robert Levine’s stepbrother, whose nature is darker and jeans pegged, with whom you will remain obsessed for a total of five months. This gets you back onto the cul-de-sac. The making out now happens in the basement where you spend good after-school hours watching Koyaanisqatsi and being very avant-garde. You’ll pretend you understand Philip Glass’s music and the themes of life being out of balance, but in reality the whole thing makes you feel kinda dumb. And really nauseous.

  When the stepbrother dumps you, you will take to the water bed again and shortly thereafter resume your Robbie/Robert obsession. You will keep your perm over your eye and get through the days as best you can, but you will not find meaning in anything except television, mostly The Love Boat and Mama’s Family. You will start watching St. Elsewhere, convincing yourself you have the featured disease. In the afternoons, you will stare at Chuck Woolery on Love Connection and wonder where it all went wrong. You will crank call Robbie/Robert, hanging up as soon as you hear his perfect voice. You will watch Dirty Dancing on VHS at Wendy’s, rewinding and rewatching as much as she wants, just so she’ll listen to you cry. You’ll hatch schemes to make him fall in love with you again. Since Wendy has more classes with him that year, you beg her to report all the things she’s seen him do or eat during the day, what shorts he’s wearing, and which girls he’s potentially making out with in your special second-floor bathroom. You call this part “the news” and you’ll tack on a special section at the end wherein you tell each other all the bad things you’ve heard other people saying about each of you. You will spend most of ninth and tenth grade like this (especially the first nine weeks of tenth grade when you are home in bed with mono). You will try to grow out your perm. You will debate getting bangs or wisps, gathering the ends of your hair and placing them over your forehead to see which would look better.