I Don't Have a Happy Place

by Kim Korson

  “Well,” he said, “what am I going to do with it?”

  “Just keep it!”

  “For what?”

  No one had an answer for him, so we milled around the room looking for bargains. My mother stormed off into the tiny galley kitchen, helmet about to blast off. My father followed. Buzz excused himself, something about needing air. Ace went to the bookshelf to look busy. He flipped through hardcovers with library stickers affixed to the spines, fingers squeaking along their thick plastic jackets. Who would return them? He picked up a Stephen King, and dollar bills fell to the floor. He looked at me and I looked for my mother, who was, thank God, in the kitchen, huffing about crumbs. There were shopping bags in corners that we were supposed to fill, removing all traces of Grandma Pearlie as we left. Some of the bags contained wads of cash. I went to the den to see if there was any candy, noticing that their double bed with rose-colored chenille spread no longer lived in the room any more than Grandma Pearlie did. Had he stopped sleeping? I went back to the living room.

  “Daddy,” my mother said, walking back into the sale, “you need to have someone clean in here.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a pigsty.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Daddy, it’s terrible in there.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’s disgusting.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, shooing her away. “You can eat off the floor.”

  “There are crumbs all over the floor!”

  “I can take care of myself!” he said, slamming a fist on the dining table. A muffin tin went flying.

  My mother sucked in her breath, her stomach disappearing into the folds of her black slacks.

  “I don’t need a goddamn girl in here to clean,” he said under his breath.

  “Why don’t you just sit down?” my mother said, annoyed.

  Grandpa Solly started pacing. Around the dining room table. Behind the chair, up and down the hallway to his bedroom, going on about the bastards. Grandpa Solly. The silent man who held the crook of my grandma’s elbow when she walked down a flight of stairs. Who placed pink carnations in a vase by her bed the day she came home from cataract surgery. Who sat quietly by her side as she watched TV, jangling that change instead of making conversation. Grandpa Solly was losing his marbles in front of us. They spilled out of his head, along the carpet, under the lawn chairs, behind the remaining upholstered chair.

  • • •

  I sat on the fuzzy pink toilet seat lid, knees together, feet apart. The Oil of Olay was there, just waiting for her. It was the only room left intact. Her tortoiseshell paddle brush was still on the hand mirror, next to his comb. There were silver strands tangled in the bristles.

  I thought about my own death often, wondering what could be festering inside my body, giant tumors plotting to bully the rest of my organs into a slow and painful demise. It had been a hobby of mine since early childhood. I’d spent so many hours planning the ways one could die that I never even considered what actually happens when you do. Does it hurt? Do you know it’s happening? Are you presented with answers right before you go, like a parting gift? I wondered if Grandma Pearlie had secret information right now, tucked away in that box. Pretty clever to lock up all those answers and bury you deep in the ground so they don’t get out. Seal them up in a sandwich bag.

  When I was at the funeral home, a young mortician asked me if I would be speaking at the ceremony, a few words about the dearly departed. I told him I was not much for audience participation. He smiled, probably used to all kinds in his line of work and skilled at dealing with all forms of deflection.

  “You know,” he said, “there are many ways to voice your thoughts, other ways to say goodbye. Sometimes people write notes to the departed. We can put those notes in the casket for you.”

  “Ew,” I said.

  “Ew?”

  “I mean . . .” I laughed, biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted salty blood.

  “Would you like a pen?”

  I told him I always carried a special pen but would be thrilled for some casket-worthy stationery. I sat in the bathroom stall for half an hour, trying to come up with something Grandma Pearlie would be fine with for all of eternity. I wondered if I should open with a joke, but figured she already had to live in that crate, so the least I could do was be respectful.

  Dear Grandma Pearlie,

  I will always think of you when I have egg salad or Turtles, and if I have a daughter, I promise to name her after you. I love you.

  I added my signature at the bottom, like I was giving her an autograph. It was the first time I’d said I loved any one of my family members. I folded the paper as many times as the letterhead would allow, placing it in the firm hand of the Jewish ­mortician.

  • • •

  Once back safe in Manhattan, I thought about that letter constantly. Should I have taken more time with it or asked Grandma Pearlie questions about herself or pulled the old wish you were here bit, pretending like everything was fine? I hoped she read it. I hope she saw it all. The people who came to pay their respects, the speech Ace gave. But not Grandpa Solly going off the deep end.

  Word came from home that Grandpa Solly had started spending his days outside the apartment, walking the streets from morning until night, still looking like a bum. “What am I supposed to do,” he’d say to my mother, “stare at these four blank walls all day?” My mother would call him on the hour, waiting for him to answer, to let her know he was fine and not hit by a bus, but when he finally answered she only knew how to express her concern by snapping at him and using that tone she usually reserved for waiters.

  He was giving her a run for her money. Gifting A&P shopping bags of cash to various tenants in the building, sitting in the waiting room of a family friend’s law office all day, shoplifting from the mall. All this behavior seemed so out of character for the grandfather I knew. And then one day, my mother called to tell me who was pregnant and who else had died and maybe I wanted to send a card.

  “How’s Grandpa Solly?” I said, changing the subject.

  “Uch, I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. “It’s getting worse. He’s off his meds again.”

  “His what?”

  “His pills. He decided he didn’t want to take them and flushed them all down the toilet at our house. He was smoking in that bathroom again, if you can believe that.”

  “What pills?”

  “Oh, please, Kim, you know about those,” she said, now aggravated. “The antipsychotics.”

  The what? Turns out Grandpa Solly wasn’t quiet my entire life because he was, well, quiet. He was mute because he was depressed. Manically, maniacally, psychotically so, and taking some heavy medication to boot, or at least when he felt like it. Wasn’t this a nugget I should have been privy to? What else didn’t I know? Had my father once been a woman?

  On soap operas, when people found out this kind of hidden information, they were told that it had been kept secret for their own protection. Is that why no one had ever said a word to me about sex or puberty or money or mental illness or reality or the fact that my great-aunt Rita and -uncle Moishe lived together for their entire adult lives in the same apartment and were not indeed married but instead brother and sister? Seems I was shielded from quite a list, sequestered in a suburban Jewish witness-protection program.

  My family was riddled with mental illness—schizophrenia, suicidal tendencies, garden-variety depression—and now I had a new one to add: some version of mania, although my mother resisted giving it a title, or much validity, as if he’d made it all up as an excuse to stay home from school. Was it really for my protection, like Guiding Light had led me to believe? Or was it that if my mother looked at her father closely, officially diagnosed with the big daddy of depression, she would have to stay out of Superman’s phone booth and loo
k at herself, at me? I finally understood that it was just easier to hide in the bathroom, making herself up and talking about the weather.

  “I have to go,” I said, avoiding the deeper questions about my grandfather’s illness, resigned to just researching the symptoms on my own, like I usually did.

  As I waited for my mother to have the last word on the phone call, I decoded that I’d been terrified of returning home to bury my favorite relative, to see my family, because I might actually be faced with an unfiltered, raw moment. Something real. The funeral, the Box, Grandpa Solly—they were ice water to the face but we were expert at taking cover. Out of habit and reflex, I wanted to blame my mother for not showing me something personal and authentic that day, but it finally registered: She just didn’t have the chops. The coated face and phlegmy noises were gadgetry to help her survive it. It was hair-raising to venture out, so she stayed tucked in. It was what I was used to, how we were trained to handle our family business. And although I insisted that I wished it were different, I think I preferred it that way. We stayed quiet on the phone for a moment.

  And then, “I miss my mommy,” she said, behind that signature baby voice.

  I’d like to say I stepped up and gave her what she needed. That I thawed, even just one degree, but I remained my ­thirteen-year-old self, deciding that if she couldn’t give me that one real moment, I couldn’t either. She was the mirror. And I said goodbye.

  Lemons & Limes

  • • • • • •

  I was supposed to be resting. If I didn’t lift anything over ten pounds, avoided exercise, strenuous activity, sex, and air travel for the next twenty-four hours, they assured me nothing would happen.

  “But let’s just say I did something,” I said. “Like by accident. What could happen?”

  As I began listing potential calamities, Buzz gently shoved me out the door while giving instructions to my doctor. “Don’t feed the bears,” he said. “Please!”

  They all shared a big laugh, including the technician. It’s true, they were right—amniocentesis was hilarious.

  Buzz was itching to get home. Not to make sure I was in the proper state of repose, but to open the small kraft paper envelope he held in his hand.

  “You get them to write down the sex of the baby and put the results in an envelope. Then you can open it at home and not in the hospital, so it’s not all clinical and stuff. It’s genius!” was how he sold it to me. “Where are the envelopes?”

  He was hopped up about this latest harebrained scheme, which meant he’d suggest it to every pregnant lady waddling through town, and he’d be so persuasive that I guarantee they’d all follow suit. Buzz is a snow-to-the-Eskimos type; sometimes his enthusiasm is infectious, like pox.

  I spent the days leading up to the amnio researching potentially disastrous outcomes for lengthy needles jabbed into amniotic sac while he busied himself looking for office supplies. But, as spooked as I was about the procedure, I was even more anxious about showing up with the wrong kind of envelope for the occasion. I have absolutely no time for plain white security envelopes or a chewed-up pen from the bank. Plus, I wanted my ob-gyn to think I had good taste in stationery.

  With the procedure now behind me, and the husband off to work, it was time to get on with the prescribed twenty-four hours of idleness. I was now free to indulge in my favorite pastime: watching reruns of The Cosby Show. The fetus (aka the Junior Mint) was resting comfortably, blanketed in beans and rice and cheese and those cheap, fat corn-syrup jelly beans from CVS (two packs for a buck), but I was in distress. I’m sure Rudy’s fish, Lamont, was an excellent pet, but his funeral was not the sole reason for my aggravation. Finding an agreeable position was challenging and, according to that damn oversized book you were supposed to read, any way I chose to arrange myself would do irreparable damage to the five-month-old fetus, which now had genitals and was the size of a banana. After much flailing, I settled on my back, which the oversized book frowned upon, so I smoothed the throw blanket and kicked the book onto the floor. That’s when I heard it.

  It wasn’t exactly a crash. Nor would I classify it as a boom or a slam or a smash or a thump. I think it was somewhere between a clatter and a clink, but a very menacing clatter and clink. Gripping the remote, I made a quick mental list of probable causes:

  1. Serial killer

  2. Rapist

  3. Murderer

  4. Cat burglar

  I knew, gauging by the prickles of sweat piercing my scalp, that it wasn’t just a potted plant losing a battle with the May breeze. Something was downstairs. I’d seen enough ADT commercials to know that intruders don’t enjoy company, so I turned up the volume on the television and threw a few more books onto the floor, hoping that, like most of the symptoms I was usually plagued with, it would just go away.

  We had been renting a duplex apartment in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, for two years. It was in a handsome four-story brownstone—complete with thriving front garden labored over by a previous tenant—on an extra-wide tree-lined street, with parking right out front. The whole thing seemed very delightful, but apparently it was just on the border of no-goodnik territory. When we signed the lease, our curmudgeonly landlord grumbled, “Well, don’t get too excited about the area. It’s not perfect or anything. It’s still pretty rough around the edges.”

  The bottom two floors were ours. We had our own entrance on what the Realtors referred to as the “garden level” but the locals called “the basement,” and we occupied that as well as the entire parlor level above. The stoop was shared with our upstairs neighbors and, in an emergency situation, we could escape through two giant doors that served as a wall in the Junior Mint’s room, which opened into the parlor hall. The floors were oaky, the ceilings covered in original tin. I loved the place. But on my day of supposed rest I began to take umbrage with it. My sole job was to stay still and make sure the Junior Mint’s house didn’t spring a leak. And now I was forced to be some sort of hero and deal with an interloper downstairs.

  I am not a graceful person by nature, but I did my best impersonation of someone stealthy, imagining I was stepping over those red laser things, the ones you always see in spy capers. But even with my catlike swiftness there is nothing quiet about a hundred-year-old brownstone staircase. I stopped halfway down and peeked. Everything seemed in its place. Dining room was clear of prowlers. All rapists were home, safely tucked into their beds.

  Puh-link.

  I froze. The kitchen. It was coming from inside the kitchen. Practically hanging off the banister, I craned my neck as far as it would go, and then I saw it. I saw it I saw it I saw it. Darting back upstairs, I shut the door behind me. There I did a little jig of panic. New plan. I grabbed the phone and used the Junior Mint’s giant doors as a means of egress. Once outside, I dialed Buzz.

  “Everything okay?” was how he answered.

  “No!” I said, cupping my hand over the mouthpiece.

  “What’s wrong?” He sounded worried. One in 1,600 women may suffer a miscarriage as a result of amniocentesis. “What happened?”

  “There. Is. A. Squirrel. In. The. House.”

  Silence. Sigh. “A what?”

  “Squirrel! There is a squirrel in the house! In the kitchen! He somehow managed to break in, gnawed his way through the screen. He is on the counter right now eating limes!”

  “There’s a squirrel in the house!” he shouted to someone in the office. There was raucous laughter like it was the goddamn Christmas party.

  “It’s not funny!” I said, my bare feet sticking to the warm concrete steps. “And don’t tell people!”

  “Sweetie, I’m in a meeting. I gotta go.”

  “Go?”

  At the time, Buzz was working for a late-night comedy-show host. I could now hear him in the background doing squirrel material.

  “Well, why did you even answer the phone, then?” I sa
id, like I was nine.

  “Because I thought there was actually something wrong.”

  “There is something wrong!”

  “I’m sorry there is a squirrel.” I could hear his dumb smile. “But I really have to go.”

  And, just like that, he hung up.

  Uch. Now I needed another new plan.

  When you read about hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis, there are often accompanying stories about the wonderful spirit and efforts put forth by the victims’ neighbors. When we lived on the Upper West Side in a fifth-floor walk-up, my neighbor in 2B once pulled a gun on me and my dog because we were in his way. I decided then and there that I should probably leave my neighbors alone. But this street felt different. Although most of the neighborhood was beginning to fill up with ironic mustaches, our street clung to its old world–ness. Our block was a beef stew of old mingling with new, traditional rump roast with just a drip of truffle oil. There were always so many brownstone dwellers out and about, chatty and nosy fixtures standing in front of their short iron gates, wanting to complain about parking or tell how things used to be before I moved in.

  “Marone, it was somethin’,” said a visiting grandson. He was returning from a little stint in jail and was visiting his grandma (Gloria, at number 28 just up the block). He even offered to show me his gun, which he said he kept buried in her backyard. “Street hockey. Gangs. We had it all.”

  “Man, it was the best,” said the cousin who’d picked him up from the clink. “That was before the blacks and the Jews brought in the AIDS . . .”

  Yes, it was time to enlist the neighbors. I couldn’t miss. The street was lousy with them. The natural first choice was . . .

  Punchy: Squat and dense, with a white band of Friar Tuck hair semicircling the back of his head, he was a ruffian from another era. Pretty high up the ladder, we were told. The entrance to his house was covered in a bulletproof cage and he was forever pacing the street, talking on the phone while walking his beagle, whose likeness was tattooed on his left hamstring. “Let’s just say,” said Donna, the crusty retired gym teacher from up the block (my strong second choice), “you don’t gotta worry about your car being stolen on his block, if you get my drift.”