I Don't Have a Happy Place

by Kim Korson

  Neither Punchy nor Donna were in their usual spots. Neither was Gloria, the red shopping cart pusher and teeny grandmother of the returning convict (a distant third option on the list). Oh! The Mayor! (Change him to third choice and move Gloria down one on the list.) Where was he? You couldn’t miss him—about five foot five, a rounder, more avuncular Frank Sinatra. There was a brief period when we first moved in where I was convinced he hated me, so I went on a three-month campaign, complimenting his dog and inquiring about the neighborhood’s history to win his affection and, once in his good graces, would hide in my vestibule to avoid the rehash of his trips to the new Costco. I would have sold my pancreas to have him stop by now.

  There were, of course, the last resorts: my direct next-door neighbor, Frank the Racist, who looked like Santa with a tucked-in golf shirt. He used to like us before we left our trash can out and it accidentally blew into his yard, knocking over the woven lawn chair he sat in to make sure no one dinged his Pontiac Bonneville. He was not home either.

  And then there was that guy directly across the street, Dominic Jr., who barked unnerving threats and profanities from his window. Once a week the SWAT team would come, all puffed up in full regalia, and cart him off to the slammer for a few days, just to cool down. “Troubled in the head,” Donna would say, clucking her tongue. “His poor mother.”

  Where the hell were all those players? On any given day, it took forty-five minutes to get down the street. Now it was the Upper East Side at three a.m. I had some good action for these people, stoop fodder for months to come. I was actually doing them a favor. Where was the Mayor? What about that little mobster beagle, didn’t he need to go out by now? Donna? Gloria? That hot-dogging SWAT team? I would have even settled for Dominic Jr. But the neighbors failed me.

  I paced the sidewalk but worried that was considered exercise. I sat down, waiting for the affable UPS man. I’d forgotten about him. He was so delightful that you just wanted to bake him a pie. And his arrival was guaranteed, because the nut job at the top of the block, the one with the corner lot, had a bit of a QVC problem. Her lawn was overrun with American flag pinwheels and light-up angels and tin butterflies and glass balls, all punctuated by a large ceramic gnome in a bathing suit and sunglasses, holding a surfboard, with a sign that read, IT’S FIVE O’CLOCK SOMEWHERE. As a super last resort, I’d wait for the ornery mailman.

  And then I saw him turn onto the block. His name I couldn’t tell you because he was the only guy on the street who didn’t speak. He was tall and undernourished, with a gazelle-like grace that suggested he might have once been a mime. I could guarantee there wasn’t a speck of dust under his fainting couch. For sure there was a cat. He had kempt brown hair and an amiable face and it wouldn’t have surprised me in the least if I turned on the news to learn the authorities had uncovered eighty-three severed body parts stuffed behind the veal stock and rainbow sherbet in his freezer. I could already see Donna on the local news, shaking her head and noting how quiet he was and what a shock this was to their neighborhood that was once so pleasant before the blacks and the Jews brought the AIDS, and now this.

  No matter—these were desperate times and I needed a hand, so I put all thoughts of his freezer out of my mind. Plus, if he did cut me up for parts, think how bad Buzz would feel for hanging up on me.

  “Excuse me,” I said, hustling down the stairs, holding my back. “Hi! Hey! Excuse me?”

  He stopped halfway down the block, squinting in my direction. I hurried to meet him, affecting a waddle in an attempt to appear drenched in pregnancy.

  “Oh my god,” I said, out of breath. “This is kind of mortifying, but I’m pregnant and there is a squirrel in my house. It just scratched its way through the screen with its gross little claws and is now in my kitchen eating limes.”

  He scrunched his eyebrows together and just stood there.

  “My husband is at work and I kind of feel like a fifties housewife, needing a man’s help and all that. Between you and me, I have a little rodent problem, like jump-on-the-table kind of problem. Do you have a ton of mice in your place, too? It’s all the construction. Our landlord told us to get a cat. Anyway, I’m kind of freaking out and I never do stuff like this, but I was wondering if there was any way you could help me get the thing out of my house?”

  I am not a street accoster, nor do I touch strangers, but I found myself placing a hand on his back and scooting him toward my house. He was skeletal, probably bruised easy, and I could feel his body tense up and leaden. I pushed harder, he dug his pristine gray New Balance into the sidewalk.

  “The thing is,” he said, as I tried to maneuver him past his stoop as if everything behind us was in flames, “I’m scared of squirrels, too.”

  Here, I did what anybody else would have done. I pretended not to hear him.

  We stood together inside the parlor-level foyer, the entrance atop the stoop. I gave him an intricate lay of the land, revealing how best to serpentine his way through the house to capture our infiltrator. He looked around for a weapon, considering either a broom or the oversized golf umbrella my upstairs neighbor probably swiped from a hotel. He settled on the broom, giving him more of an air of old-ladyness than he already brought with him.

  “Now, where is it, again?” he asked, and I could tell he was stalling. He was starting to get on my nerves.

  I mapped it out one last time as we huddled together in the vestibule. He held the broom, I my sagging belly. Good grief, I thought, let’s go, already. . . .

  “Um, I’m Mitchell,” he said.

  “I’m Kim.”

  With the broom positioned like a fire hose in his delicate hands, Mitchell pranced down the stairs. I certainly hoped he was more menacing when chopping up bodies.

  “There it is!” he whispered, looking up at me from the bottom step.

  I shot mental poisonous darts at him. And then, propelled by what I’d pegged as fear mixed with a growing mutual hostility, Mitchell charged the squirrel. He sashayed along the softwood floor and I could have sworn I heard him making a buzzy sound. Shortly after takeoff, Mitchell lost his footing, causing the unwieldy broom to knock a glass of seltzer off the coffee table. The room was on mute, save for the hiss of dribbling soda water.

  It remains unclear if it was the shattering noise or Mitchell’s timid shoo or just a fluke, but the varmint looked our way, sighed, and then waltzed out from whence he came. New York critters are so laissez-faire. They don’t even scurry. They just break in, take whatever they please, and leave when they are goddamn ready. Just like that, it was over. If we’re being honest, I was kind of disappointed. I was hoping for just a little bit more of a duel. Mind you, this meant Mitchell could finally go home.

  “Thank you,” I said, but he was already gone. Mitchell glided home eyes-to-shoes, avoiding the neighbors, who were now, all of a sudden, securely back in their usual places. I’d see Mitchell sporadically in the years to come but our exchanges were relegated to the block walker’s head nod. We never spoke of the Great Squirrel Incident of 2004. Returning to the scene of the crime, I picked up the lime with a paper towel and threw it in the trash, then secured the window, vowing to never open it again. Crisis averted, I returned to my regularly scheduled programming already in progress: The Cosby Show (the one where Theo and Cockroach scheme to pass a test on Macbeth without reading the play).

  • • •

  There is something delightful about forced bed rest. It was early May, but my hair was already starting to frizz and the locals were beginning their discussions of when to install the window units. If I weren’t on lockdown, I’d have felt pressure to have one of those early-warm-day celebrations, complete with Frisbees and grilled meats and people. Being urged to take to the bed was a box with ribbon and a bow, especially after the break-in.

  The results of the amnio were scheduled to come in somewhere between five and seven business days. Sure, it would feel li
ke eons, but, on the bright side, it would afford me some socially acceptable crazy time. It is not uncommon to be anxious when waiting for test results, and I loved scanty pockets of time when it was appropriate to be mental. I told myself to relish this moment. And I did. For seven minutes.

  At the eight-minute mark, I replayed our first trip as expec­tant parents to the ob-gyn. I was deep into an article about soft cheese dangers while Buzz sat rooted in a chair, averting his eyes, as if the ladies in the waiting room were already naked from the waist down. It was still early in the game and the doctor had decided not to do an ultrasound until I had two more weeks under my belt, but she wanted to sit down and have a conversation regardless.

  I should mention here that I had a little thing for my ob. During my first appointment, a year earlier, we’d gotten into a profound debate during a breast exam about Duncan Hines cake mix versus Betty Crocker. When I learned we were on the same side of the controversy (Duncan Hines makes the better cake hands-down; Crocker takes it for frosting), I left knowing I was her favorite patient and that she most probably did a little two-step when she saw my name on the day’s schedule. Had we met in grade school, I knew we’d have had matching knee socks. In gym, she’d have been next to me, laughing as our gym teacher stretched out before the Presidential Fitness Awards while his private parts spilled out of his Adidas. We would have made crank calls, stayed home together watching The Love Boat when we weren’t invited to Kenny Weinstein’s basement party. Sure, we’d have lost touch when she went to med school at Columbia but, regardless, we’d have been tight.

  At one appointment she even hinted at having lunch together, but I panicked and coughed a lot. A few weeks later, I sent her a handwritten note, telling her I’d love to have lunch sometime, but it was never mentioned again. The reality was she poked at my cervix and I sent in the insurance claims. We were star-crossed lovers. It just wasn’t meant to be.

  “Goodstein!” Buzz shouted, like they were on the football field. I’d warned him to behave himself in the office and not make too many jokes. I stressed that it was a serious appointment, but really I just didn’t want her to like him better.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked me from her swivel chair.

  “A little nauseous,” Buzz said, rubbing his stomach. “And grumpy.”

  Goodstein laughed. I kicked him under the desk.

  “Okay, so we’ll do an ultrasound in a couple of weeks,” she said. “But for now, I’m just going to ask you some routine questions.”

  I unraveled my pack of Wint-O-Greens.

  “So, we already have your health history,” she said, looking my way. “What about your dad? Any health issues?”

  “Just some high cholesterol,” I said, swinging my feet back and forth.

  “Mom?”

  “Does negativity count?”

  Breezy laughter all around. This was turning into a pleasant day.

  “And what about their siblings?”

  “What do you mean?” I said, shifting in the chair.

  “Do your parents have brothers or sisters? Your aunts or uncles?”

  I’d been filling out health history forms for years, and never once did they canvass the ancillary branches of the family tree. It was always a bunch of check marks in the No column, The End.

  “Does your father have a sibling?”

  “Yes, a sister,” I said, busying myself with the roll of mints.

  “Any issues?”

  She was starting to bug me. “Physical or mental?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “Is paranoid schizophrenia an issue?”

  The only sound in the office was Goodstein’s scratching pen.

  “Uncles?” she said, head down, all business.

  “One. My mother’s brother.”

  She looked at me. “Anything?”

  “He’s kind of depressed,” I said. Buzz’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Fine. He’s suicidal.”

  “Grandparents?”

  “Heart disease on both sides. Heart attacks and bypasses. High blood pressure and cholesterol. Um, skin cancer, dementia, and Alzheimer’s. I think there is some legal blindness there, too. Depression. Lots of depression. Manic, I think. Or was he bipolar? No, no, it’s manic. My grandfather on my mother’s side takes an antipsychotic. Sometimes. I spent my entire life thinking he was just quiet. Turns out, he was wildly depressed.”

  No one was saying anything, so I added, just for levity, “My other grandfather was kind of a jerk, but he was an orphan so we give him a pass.”

  Goodstein’s pen scurried across the page. She turned to Buzz, who seemed to have sprung some sort of leak, sweat globules dripping from his forehead. She looked at him, signaling that it was his turn. I could tell he didn’t want to go.

  “Well, my father was a paranoid schizophrenic, like her aunt,” he said. “But then he died of pancreatic cancer.”

  He then went on to spew out a list that doubled my own. Calamitous diseases, festering conditions, and plagues. If there was a defect, syndrome, or disorder to be had, we had it. Goodstein needed extra paper.

  “My aunt has terrible panic attacks,” added Buzz.

  “Oh!” I shouted. “We have that, too!”

  We were giddy kids comparing Halloween loot. But the giddiness wore off quickly. As Goodstein transcribed our list of decay and doom, it hit me.

  “Tell me the truth,” I said. “Did anyone else do this bad on the test? Are we the worst?”

  “It’s not a test,” she said, eyes still on the form.

  If she were any friend at all, the correct answer would have been No way! Of course not! You should see the Messermans! And if I were indeed her favorite patient, she would have broken that dumb doctor oath and shared the horror stories of others, just to make me feel better. Judging from Buzz’s droopy shoulders, I knew he’d be good for at least three cheeseburgers and a donut the moment we stepped out of the building.

  “Did we make a lemon?” I asked.

  “Oh, stop,” Goodstein said, pushing her chair back and standing up. “I’m sure it’s all going to be fine.”

  Pffft. What did she know, anyway? Of course we’d made a lemon. I was a lemon. Buzz was a lemon. We came from a long line of lemons, a whole fucking sack of lemons.

  • • •

  The F train was empty save for the lady at the end of the car wearing a fur coat and mittens even though it was May. She was asleep, or dead, gripping onto the handle of a Food Emporium shopping cart chock-full of stuffed animals and a hubcap. I saw the future.

  “Two paranoid schizophrenics and a manic-depressive,” I said. “You think anyone else had that on their list?”

  “I’m sure we’re not the only ones,” Buzz said, getting up and swinging his messenger bag around to his back.

  “Suicidal genes and pancreatic cancer,” I said. “What could go wrong?”

  He kissed the top of my head and told me not to waste the rest of the day obsessing. Or Googling. “It’s all going to be fine. Just like Goodstein said.” When one person in the relationship is going nuts, the other has to assume a position of sanity, but, really, I don’t know which of us Buzz was trying to convince.

  I wanted to ask him if he’d been actually listening to Goodstein, because she didn’t say it was all going to be fine; what she said was “I’m sure it’s all going to be fine,” which, to the untrained ear, might sound like she was saying it was all going to be fine, but what she really was doing there was coming up with some sort of vague company line, a brush-off, to appear like she thought it would be fine just so we would get out of her office. Clearly, anyone who knew anything about anything would understand that nothing about any of this would be fine.

  I walked down my street, kicking pebbles, head down Mitchell-­style, which was code for Leave me alone, I’m baking a crazy baby. Once on
my couch, I visited with the Cosbys, where Vanessa was having a party. With boys. I was almost positive that there was no mental illness in Clair’s lineage. For them, it was all choreographed dance numbers and flashy sweaters. (Until Theo got caught with a joint. But it wasn’t his. I swear.) The Junior Mint kicked me; she probably already had ADD.

  Yes, she was a she. We opened the kraft paper envelope when we got home from the amnio but before the squirrel break-in. Buzz insisted on being the opener, which meant he would make me guess. I hated guessing. Men love this game. I am forever being forced to guess the bill at a restaurant or how many points someone scored in a game I didn’t even see. My whole life is a jar of jelly beans at the county fair.

  “I don’t want to guess. I’m tired,” I said.

  “Come on. Just guess. It will be fun.”

  (NOTE: It is never fun when people promise you it will be fun.)

  “Come on,” he said, trying to tempt me by waving the envelope just out of my reach.

  “Can I not guess this one? Can I just see the envelope, please?”

  Buzz changed his wording. “What do you think it is?”

  Did he think I was a turnip truck casualty? This was just regular old guessing dressed in a funny hat and glasses. Regardless, I didn’t even have to guess because I’d had enough dreams about the baby to know its sex, and the oversized book insisted that I believe those dreams. I just wanted confirmation.

  “Just give me the fucking envelope.”

  “You’re no fun,” he said. “What happened to you?”

  I should note Buzz asks me this question weekly. And it’s not because I used to be fun and now I’m not. I am not now, nor was I ever, fun. Whenever I don’t do exactly what he wants me to, he questions what has happened to me. This is some version of a rhetorical question, because we both know that nothing has happened to me, that this is my setting, but sometimes Buzz insists I must have been different when we were dating.