I Don't Have a Happy Place

by Kim Korson

  We got into Buzz’s bed-in-a-bag sheets, the factory seconds set his mother had gotten him at an outlet center. He might have made fun of my clothing choices, but I found his attempt at an adult’s room high-rolling comedy. The dry-mounted Picasso’s Flowers and Van Gogh’s Starry Night to let the ladies know he dug fine art and was sensitive but not gay. The oversized Michael Jordan Wings poster above his bed, just because he was “the greatest athlete who ever lived.” Every piece had been selected to get a reaction from an overnight guest. The black milk crate housed a digital clock radio he’d pilfered from his childhood home (Awwww, they’d think, he’s nostalgic), a CD player with a Tuck & Patti disc all queued up (Wow, he really is romantic), and a candle for mood lighting (This guy cares about details).

  We got into his bed, organizing ourselves in a platonic tangle.

  “Do people really fall for this?” I asked, staring at the posters.

  He closed his eyes, settling in for our two-hour nap. “Every time.”

  • • •

  When Buzz kissed me, with his Tiny Tim face all crunched into mine, I didn’t pull one of those movie moves where after a few seconds I realize what is happening and push him away and tell him he had the wrong idea, mister. I mean, he did have the wrong idea—a weird, mortifying, awkward-beyond-belief idea—but the work was tedious and it was February and he did have the better apartment, which was also all the way across town from mine, and so it just seemed more convenient to stay where I was.

  The compiling work lasted a few more days, but our mutual unemployment and general ennui kept us together for random afternoons and a handful of nights over the next few months. Out of sheer languor, we’d become the dog-eared pages of a squirreled-away copy of Judy Blume’s Forever. There was no way I could share the news with friends that I was now part of the group who lay under Michael Jordan’s arms and fell asleep to the musical stylings of Tuck & Patti. I told myself that it was fine—hilarious, even, which was usually how I chose sweaters, not men. I made a mental note to quit this new hobby in another month when I was slated to move in.

  I moved in and the extracurricular activities didn’t stop and so we were forced to have words. We covered the casual nature of our dalliance, how our friendship came first, and, of course, how we should and would be seeing other people. I assured him I was fine and totally seeing other people. Plenty of other people. He started staying out later and later, sometimes not returning home at all. I knew his new schedule because I stayed in my room for a month listening to Paula Cole and crying to Mitzi, who tried to help me even though our friendship was also in the midst of fizzling out because she, too, was seeing other people.

  One Tuesday evening, Buzz and I headed to our local supermarket. The Associated was two blocks away and smelled like rat pee, but it was closer than Fairway, which required one of those red wheelie granny carts to bring home the seltzer and bulk rice, and our wheel had recently fallen off. We were standing by the freezer case when Buzz yanked me down to the ground.

  “What are we doing?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I watched Buzz crane his neck but still try to hide in plain sight. I stood up and noticed a cute Semitic faux bohemian with long, dark, wavy hair and a patchwork suede coat straight out of Rent, who was picking change out of her shiny, hot pink Kate Spade wallet. This was every girl Buzz dated at summer camp. Buzz begged me to crouch down again, which I did, wondering when I’d turned into Lucy Ricardo. I’d like to say I marched out of there, head high and all that, leaving Buzz to deal with the Jewess at the checkout, but I leaned against the freezer until she left, paid for Buzz’s three bottles of seltzer, and carried them home in silence.

  It was grim in the apartment over the next few weeks. But it was rent controlled and people in New York City lived under all kinds of weird circumstances to keep their housing. I knew of at least two couples in the midst of divorces, still living together in a classic six.

  • • •

  Two years after the compiling job, Buzz and I were still up to the hijinks. Sometimes I’d call it off, sometimes he would, but eventually we’d end up back together. We rented ‘70s movies and ordered in Chinese and hung our heads in shame together when our racist dog barked at anyone who wasn’t Caucasian. We ate silver-dollar pancakes and bacon at corner diners, where we’d end up on the street in a fight, yelling at each other, often pausing to note Matt Dillon walking across the street, or C. J. Cregg from The West Wing approaching, then carrying on with our shouts. We were a contradiction, and sometimes our differences were a balance, other times a tug-of-war. We were forever calling it off, then returning to our shared apartment, each taking to our bedrooms on opposite sides of the ring, agreeing that this time we should just end it for good. At one point, we decided that I should move out, so I took the dog and relocated to a friend’s apartment down the street, since she spent weekends in the Hamptons.

  Morose, I called my mother, who, when I told her, sighed in my ear and said, “Well, I’m not going to tell your father. It will kill him.”

  Even with our enforced separation, Buzz called me every day to see how the dog was or what I was eating for lunch, and by the end of the weekend I was back under Michael Jordan’s wingspan. A month later we resumed with the pancakes and the outdoor fighting.

  “This is ridiculous,” Buzz said. “Either we break up or go on vacation together.”

  His logic was a pretzel but, somehow, in your twenties, this stuff makes perfect sense. We marched down the block to our local Liberty Travel, where a zaftig woman in a floral sundress assured us she could put us in a lovely property in Naples. Florida. In July. After some gentle prodding, we agreed to a week on Captiva Island, Florida, in a resort called South Seas Plantation, where we saw manatees and rode bikes and ate at restaurants with names like Cap’n Al’s.

  And then, because it was July, Buzz went and got first-, ­second-, and third-degree burned and could barely take to the bed since even the crisp white sheet was too much on the damage he’d done to himself. I watched TV and applied the aloe. The whole trip was comical. And restorative. And repellent. And lovely. And ridiculous.

  We returned home vacation drunk, sobering into business as usual in the weeks to follow. The night before Buzz was to take another trip to Florida, this time with friends, we ate cheap sushi we’d brought in from Teriyaki Boy.

  “I think I love you,” he said, holding a sliver of faded pink ginger.

  I rolled up the paper chopstick sleeve. “Um. I might love you, too.”

  “Should we give this a real try?” he said.

  “Like, now?” I said. “Or when you get back from Florida?”

  “Now.”

  “Okay.”

  And then, like seventh graders, we were officially going out.

  “Why are you moping?” Buzz asked, watching me poke the small lump of wasabi resting on its fake grass.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No. I mean, you know.”

  “I know what?”

  I could hear our neighbor’s Jack Russell terrier running in the hallway. Probably chasing a pigeon. “This is our story?”

  Buzz chewed, mouth open, and stared at me for clarification.

  “From here on in, this will forever be our story.”

  “What are you even talking about?”

  “I mean, we made out because we were bored and then I moved in and you dated people and I cried and then we brought in bad sushi and now we’re a couple.”

  Buzz took a sip of beer. “So?”

  “So, this goes on our permanent record. If we ever get married or have kids, this is what we will have to tell them. This is all we got. It’s not that good a story.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it,” Buzz said, his sleeve dipping into the small tray of teriyaki sauce. “I don’t think I’m the mar
rying kind.”

  I stared out the window, at our view of the brick wall.

  • • •

  Many people ask how they will know when the right person walks into their life. My question was always, How will I know when it’s time to walk out? The question and level of optimism are different, but the answer is the same for both: You’ll just know.

  • • •

  We sit in the open-air restaurant facing the dazzling Mexican beach, and I find myself hostile at the beauty. The beach is just showing off. And then come the stupid birds. They coast and swoop and I think, If I wanted to see goddamn birds I could have stayed in the stairwell of my apartment building. At least the sky is on my side. The weather is turning (signs), and I am grateful for the support.

  It’s possible that Buzz is on a different vacation. He looks relaxed and already suntanned even though we just got out of the car. His personality now cranked up to high, he is euphoric because it is feeding time. He eyes the specials chalkboard. Buzz is a consummate overorderer. There is not an abundance of choice at the restaurant, but the options all feature avocado and fresh salsa, our favorites. It is Christmas morning in those too-close-together hazel eyes. Soon he will ask if I want to share that gross chicken pibil dish we got two years ago that I didn’t care for or insist I try the shredded-pork tacos even though we both know I dislike that kind of pork. The small table will soon be overcrowded and the waiter will have to do some fancy maneuvering to fit the various plates on our table. It will appear that we are dining for twelve. He will ask the waiter so many questions and rearrange the menu offerings to get exactly what he wants. And then he will eat with his mouth open and go on about the chicken and the guacamole and “God, don’t you just love fajitas?” and I will want to stick salty tortilla chips in my eye.

  You’ll just know.

  The food comes, so all the water glasses and sugar packets must be removed to make space. The waiter smiles and pretends to wipe his brow when he has unloaded his tray. After a round of gracias, Buzz places his forearm on the table, leaning in to start the eating. He is focused, an Olympian going for the gold. He makes pleased little noises as he chews. He doesn’t even realize I am sitting across from him with that shoulder blade pain I thought was a tumor but Dr. Shapiro insisted was stress. I have had enough.

  “I just want you to know,” I say, my voice calm and measured, “that I will be here on this vacation. I’ll sit on the beach with you and eat and swim in those sinkhole things. But, when we get home, I will be getting my own apartment.”

  Buzz does not look up. Instead, he dips chips into the homemade salsa. When finished, he reclines in his chair and inspects my face. He leans onto the table and says, “A one-bedroom or a studio?”

  “What?”

  “When you move out,” he says, “will you be getting a one-bedroom or a studio?”

  The tears that were about to spill onto my mango quesadilla dry up. I suddenly feel like spitting. “I don’t know!”

  “Well, would you mind staying close by?” he says, resuming the chip dipping. “So I can still see the dog?”

  In a move I learned from Knots Landing, I push my chair away from the table, with great emphasis on the floor scraping. I want to throw a drink in his face, push all the plates and glasses and silverware to the tiled floor. Alas, it is not Sweeps Week, so I walk out of the restaurant. But I walk really, really fast. Once at the room, I jam the key in the lock and, no matter which direction I jiggle it, the lock won’t give. I long for the credit card swipe key but know deep down I can’t use those properly either, and I wonder why I can’t just open a door like a regular person. I hear Buzz behind me because, much to my daily chagrin, he is a mouth breather. Without turning around, I throw my arm behind me with the key pinched in my fingers, which is code for You open the door, idiot. Buzz unlocks it with ease and I blaze by him and take to the bed. Curled into the fetal position, I start to cry. Grape-sized tears travel in all directions off my face, many ending up in my hair, which has already conspired with the humidity to make me look like Gabe Kaplan.

  Even through my snarfling, I can hear Buzz unpacking his clothes and locking his passport in the safe. I start conjuring all the ways he could possibly die on this trip. Shark attack. Ripped apart by jungle critters. Ceramic iguana from the coffee table to the back of the head. There would be a pool of blood on the pale tile and I could run to the front desk, speaking in the bits of my childhood French, which, I’d later tell in court, was used because I didn’t know Spanish and was in a panic and Canadian. One could get away with a lot more if you were from the Great White North. They would ask what happened to the loud, handsome fellow who made all the jokes and tried to get a discount on the room. I’d whisper how he fell out of bed, which, besides making him dead, would also make him look like a moron.

  “Kim,” Buzz says to my back. “Let’s talk. This is ridiculous.”

  Unpacking is ridiculous. “Leave me alone.”

  “Come on. Don’t be like this.”

  “Go away. I’m serious.”

  He sighs. “Kim, look where we are! Please stop crying.”

  I continue crying.

  “Let’s just talk. Turn around. Look at me.”

  “I don’t want to look at you.”

  “Turn around.”

  “No.”

  Buzz gets on the bed and tries to physically move me. “Kim. Turn. Around.”

  “Uchhhh. You’re an asshole,” I say as I flip myself over, only to be faced with a small black velvet box, its sparkly contents blinding my puffy eyes.

  “Will you marry me?” Buzz says.

  “Fuck you,” I say.

  “I had a whole thing planned for tomorrow morning but I thought you might have a heart attack. Plus, you broke up with me at lunch.”

  He places the ring on my finger. “You still haven’t answered me, technically.”

  “Are there any tissues in this stupid hotel?” I say.

  I am covered in snot, and my fake sporty shirt that says SHARKS is drenched in self-pity. He kisses me anyway.

  We are engaged.

  “Are you still going to get your own apartment when we get home?”

  Buzz is pleased with himself that I had a nervous breakdown in his honor. I start crying again.

  “Seriously?” he says. “Again with the waterworks?”

  I weep the very last tears I have left in my sockets. “This is our story?”

  • • •

  The next morning, before he even opened his eyes, Buzz said, “You moving out of the hotel room?”

  I had been awake for an hour, clutching my face.

  “What’s with this?” he said, pointing to my cheek.

  A pain in my mouth had started in the night. A paring knife to the gums.

  “Open,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Just open.”

  “Don’t touch it.”

  “I’m not going to touch it.”

  Buzz always swore he wouldn’t touch the sliver of wood in my foot or the weird wrist cyst that sometimes sticks up, but he always did. However, before I could even open my mouth, I suddenly needed to excuse myself and run to the bathroom. Which is where I stayed for the next three days. I didn’t know what was taking revenge on me. I’d brushed my teeth with bottled water, I’d squeezed my face tight in the shower so as not to let a drop in by mistake, I didn’t eat lettuce. Instead of being fetal on the bed, I was prone on the cold tile. And the pain that started that morning was teetering on the edge of unbearable. (Signs.)

  “Should I find a doctor?” Buzz said to me.

  “Here?”

  “Yes, here.”

  “No.”

  Not only was I scared of what kind of doctor we’d find in the middle of the jungle, but I couldn’t admit defeat. Buzz often told me that basketbal
l players play with broken feet and concussions and the flu, whereas I skipped work if I felt sweaty. Plus I’d convinced myself that all the symptoms I’d ever experienced up till now had led me to this moment and I was definitely dying in the bathroom of the various tumors I knew were rotting my insides, along with the lupus and typhoid fever. Why didn’t I take care of these things years ago?

  “You’re a vision,” Buzz said, the next day. My hair was a giant tangle, a Mexican bed Afro. Spanish saltine crumbs were stuck to my legs and arms, and crumpled tissues trailed toward the trash can like ellipses. I was now beyond what a cold compress and glass of iceless ginger ale could fix.

  “Should we just cut our losses and go to Cancun?” Buzz said.

  Even plagued with dysentery and a mysterious life form growing out of my jaw and exiting through my cheek, the word Cancun, especially during spring break, was grim. How could I take Traveler Buzz out of this postcard and plop him at Señor Frog’s with a group of lacrosse bros?

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to ruin the trip.”

  The sun was bright, the sand sugary, the turquoise water Elysian. Buzz stared out the window, then back at me. “I’m going to make some calls.”

  • • •

  Worlds shifted when Buzz made calls. Deals were made, discounts had; companies never even saw it coming. When people saw Buzz in action, they all said the same thing: “Next time I buy a car, I’m bringing you.” There was nothing he wouldn’t ask for. He was the guy who’d asked the CVS clerk if she could do better on a four-pack of Duracells. I apologize for walking into a store. It was spring break in Cancun. Girls were wild, boys were ­pillaging—no way was there a room to be had.

  “We’re leaving in the morning,” Buzz said, returning an hour later. “Three fun-filled nights at the Hilton Cancun.”