Starting from Happy

by Patricia Marx

  438.

  “Whistleblower,” said the twenty-seven-week-old.

  439.

  Could there have been a specimen more precocious? If only there were an Infant Olympics.

  440.

  One day Wally and Imogene watched in wonderment as LinLin grabbed a fresh diaper and, after a certain amount of writhing on the floor, successfully changed herself. Wally clapped heartily, snatched the baby up, and tossed her into the air friskily. “Immy, please,” Wally said, the baby in his arms, “you’ve got to let me take her to the lab and put some electrodes on her. She’s too good not to study.”

  441.

  Imogene came home from work that night and before she could take off her coat, she announced to Wally that she wanted to throw in the towel, or rather, the undies. “Listen to this,” she said, removing a newspaper clip from her pocket and reading. “A Mrs. DeeDee Doe was found in her home gym Thursday, dangling by the strap of her Feather-ware brassiere.”

  “It happens,” said Wally, trying to be reassuring.

  Imogene continued reading. “According to an anonymous lawyer, the estate plans to sue, charging the tragedy was the garment’s fault.” Imogene sighed. “It was from our Last Dance line. Why wasn’t she wearing a sports bra?”

  “On the bright side,” said Wally, facetiously patting his midriff, “it’s another reason not to exercise.” He plopped into an armchair.

  442.

  The next day, there was a page-three story. They called it the Isadora Duncan bra.

  443.

  All news is not good news.

  444.

  The defense cited the safety record of underwear throughout history. The case was settled out of court. Featherware agreed that all products would henceforth come with a warning label.

  445.

  In the marketplace, there are sellers and buyers, and Imo-gene said she was tired of being a seller. Did she want to be a buyer? Not really.

  446.

  The cost of private education in New York City has been well documented.* There is no need to rehash it in these pages. Needless to say, Wally and Imogene decided to move to the suburbs—there to await their midlife crises, they said.

  447.

  Wally and Imogene took out a mortgage to buy a house they didn’t want. Inherited money would have come in handy. “Why is it,” Imogene said, “that only poor people die?”

  448.

  449.

  Not too long after the Gilfeather-Yez family was ensconced in their new house, Harriet stopped by with gifts for the children as well as a stack of business checks for Imogene to sign and a shopping bag of food because there is no food to speak of in the suburbs. Imogene had not seen Harriet for a while. Imogene could not remember the last time she had laid eyes on anyone who was not a relative, a UPS deliveryman, a medical professional, or an animated TV character. Imogene did her utmost to talk to Harriet in grown-up words, slipping up most egregiously after Imogene spilled a cup of coffee and exclaimed, “Whoops—I mean, fuck.”

  While the children and dog napped, Imogene showed Harriet every nook and cranny of the house. “This used to be the laundry room,” Imogene said, “but does anyone really want to do laundry downstairs? So we were going to turn it into a kind of pantry, and then I thought, ‘Pantry?’ Why not knock down a wall—there was a wall here—and create a playroom by stealing some footage from the boiler room?”

  450.

  Harriet nodded.

  451.

  “You sure you don’t want anything else to eat, Harr?” said Imogene.

  “Actually,” said Harriet, “do you think if I leave now, I could make the five fifty-eight?”

  “Don’t you want to see the crawl space?” said Imogene, opening the door to the basement. Harriet looked at her watch. “When Wally comes home,” said Imogene, “he can drive you to the station.”

  “It’s just that I told Lawrence—” said Harriet, not finishing the sentence.

  452.

  Imogene had no choice. She offered Harriet a share of the business—first 15 percent, and then when it looked as if she could still make the five fifty-eight, 25 percent. “Thanks for sharing,” Harriet said with a hint of wryness.

  453.

  Harriet stayed for dinner. It was just the two of them at the table because Wally was not yet home from work, and the children were not mature enough for the dining room. Later, after Imogene put Bounce and LinLin to bed, Harriet made her escape. “You are so lucky,” Harriet said to her new business partner as Imogene opened the front door.

  454.

  Whoever sees Imogene cry? Even Patty hasn’t. Imogene was weeping up a storm when Wally returned home from work. She had been done in by Bounce’s Big Boy Racing Car bed. The footboard grille had come off, and then one of the hubcap-and-wheel assemblies. While Bounce was having a tantrum, Imogene did what she could to repair the wreck, but then the chassis lay collapsed on the floor like a capsized boat. LinLin had a go at putting the bed back together, but a baby can do only so much, even if she’s LinLin.

  There would be no rest today.

  455.

  There would be much talk of nap schedules.

  456.

  “This is not how I expected it,” Imogene whimpered.

  457.

  Wally knew what she meant.

  458.

  It hadn’t turned out the way Wally imagined either. Wally had trusted that they would have figured out deep solar power, that money wouldn’t matter, and that peanut butter cookies would taste as good as they looked on the box. Aside from that, Wally was jubilant beyond his most optimistic dreams. The world had delivered and then some. This view was something he was keeping to himself right now. Instead, he quickly and quietly reassembled the bed. “Immy, you did all the work,” said Wally, putting his hand on Imogene’s head. “I just stepped in and added the finishing touch.”

  (That night, the moon was low and full, and emanating from the orb, a faint lunar bow could be seen, a rare occurrence, for sure.)

  459.

  Imogene had read studies about what happens to children whose mothers work full-time. The prognosis was dire. Depression, drugs, suicide, astigmatism, embezzlement, assassination, bankruptcy, alien abduction, asbestosis, ingrown nails, phantom limbs, ingrown toenails on phantom limbs, lice, moths, split ends, scrofula. Bounce, she figured, was iffy enough already. Lately, the child had been going off to the houses of playmates and bringing home their toilet plungers.

  460.

  You could call it stealing.

  461.

  Bounce called it getting even.

  462.

  Imogene knew “rationally” that she could not “have” everything, but just as “rationally,” she did not see why not. She called Harriet and asked for her desk back. Not asked. Demanded. It was Imogene’s desk.

  463.

  Ah, the grown-up world of baby dolls, teddies, and boy shorts. Not to mention latex shapewear.

  464.

  There were still the weekends.

  465.

  One Saturday morning, circa dawn, Imogene stubbed her toe on a plastic brontosaurus that should have been elsewhere. “Do you think it’s broken?” she said, limping over to Wally, who’d just finished reading aloud a book about big trucks and little trucks. She meant her toe, not the toy, which was indestructible, having already been run over by a big car and a little car and put through the wash. “Even if it is,” Wally said, “there’s nothing medical science can do about it.”

  466.

  Imogene flopped onto the floor, a lamentation on the limitation of medical science for which Wally was partly responsible.

  467.

  “Do you remember when we were above this?” said Imo-gene.

  468.

  “I remember when you thought we were,” Wally said.

  469.

  “Actually,” Wally said, “I remember when we thought we were.”

  470.

  But that’s not what h
e meant.

  471.

  The Gilfeather-Yez family was no stranger to the ER. There had been tree house disasters, dives down laundry chutes, so-called accidents with spoons, and unfortunate outcomes of a game called Dead Girl. Last week, it was Bounce’s turn. He’d been taken by his parents to the hospital, screaming that he’d finessed one of LinLin’s princess beads into his nose, ever to remain there, it seemed. “You will feel a slight discomfort, and then it will be over,” said the doctor, who had a light on his head. Did he say this to Bounce or to Wally and Imogene? In either case, after the doctor removed the bead, Bounce screamed that the bead in question had been yellow.

  472.

  Not blue.

  473.

  The next day, LinLin, for her part, suffered an occupational injury while serving as the target for her brother’s target practice. That was a sort of coup de grace.

  474.

  A lady from Social Services visited the house.

  475.

  “We can explain,” said Imogene.

  476.

  The lady didn’t seem to hear, for she was on her way to the basement, presumably looking for the nunchuck.

  477.

  “Do you have electric toothbrushes on the premises?” the Social Services lady asked.

  478.

  Was this a trick question?

  479.

  Wally said yes.

  480.

  Imogene said no.

  481.

  A report was filed.

  482.

  A man from Social Services called Wally to tell him that he and his wife had been put on probation. “Probation?” said Wally.

  483.

  The next morning, Bounce, perhaps sensing a power shift, firmly stated he would not eat his Count Chocula unless he could have Clamato in the bowl.

  484.

  Imogene thought twice before she told her son to shut up and eat.

  485.

  The urgency with which Imogene begged Wally, and not just once, to take out a life insurance policy made Wally question whether she knew something about his health that he did not. Or was she planning to do him in? Eight million dollars is a lot of money. Indeed, when Wally’s flight to Dallas–Fort Worth touched down safely, he felt a twinge of disappointment.

  486.

  Besides, ultimately, who’s a survivor?

  (There were areas of patchy fog along the coast, with visibility of only a few feet. Fortunately, nobody wanted to see farther.)

  487.

  Bounce was too old to wet his bed, but nevertheless, nearly every night, he managed to defeat the odds.

  488.

  The boy was taken to a child psychologist who observed Bounce playing with blocks before delivering the verdict.

  489.

  “The kid’s a lazy good-for-nothing, and will never get into a good college.”

  490.

  “Where did we go wrong?” said Imogene on the drive home. “Oh, Wal!” she moaned. “Should we get him a blocks tutor?”

  491.

  “I was thinking that if I had to do it all over again,” Wally said, “I might become a polymer chemist.”

  492.

  LinLin was perfect. She never cried, ate with gusto, went to sleep soon after being put to bed, and took an interest in books, if tearing them up can be called an interest. On her first day of day care, LinLin did not fuss when Imogene said goodbye. The other parents were envious. When Imogene returned home, she telephoned Wally in some distress. “I read that when nothing seems wrong, it’s a sign of something really wrong,” she said.

  493.

  “She’s only in the sixty-second percentile for height,” Wally reassured Imogene.

  494.

  495.

  According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the political philosopher, not the wholesale egg distributor from Indianapolis, unadulterated happiness can be had through contemplation so profound that the contemplator enters into a state where time seems to stand still. Imogene and Wally didn’t need Rousseau to tell them why they weren’t happy.

  (Funtime Factoid: Jean-Jacques Rousseau had five children. He abandoned them to a foundling institution.)

  496.

  Wally and Imogene bickered about who would stay home and who would go to preschool parent orientation, though which was preferable was clear to neither. On the domestic front, you were sure to face disaster. In the Groves of Academe, you, along with three real estate agents, two jewelry designers, one therapist, five stay-at-home moms, one sad widow, and one wholesale purveyor of kosher brisket, would sit at little desks, listening to Miss Scattergood hold forth on which days there will be juice with the cookies (no raisins!) and why we must wash our hands after we go to the toilet.

  “I gotta get out of here,” thought Imogene. “I gotta get out of here,” thought Wally.

  497.

  So yes, there were times that Imogene and Wally thought alike.

  498.

  Oliver, a boy in Bounce’s class, died while doing his homework. The next day, the children in grades one through four were allowed fifteen minutes extra recess time. They were also invited, though not required, to sign the “Deepest Sympathies” poster that Principal Rakoff had hand-made for the occasion.

  499.

  To Oliver’s parents, Bounce wrote, “Maybeee hes not dead! .”

  500.

  Other children LinLin’s age had probably never even heard the word, but LinLin was advanced. She was able to use the word liquidator in a fully formed sentence. “Promise not to laugh at me,” LinLin said to Imogene and Wally one night as they put her to bed, “but I think I might be a liquidator.” The girl sat bolt upright to present her case. No matter how hard she tried, Imogene could not conceal her alarm.

  501.

  Outside LinLin’s room, Imogene whispered to Wally, “Should we take her to a psychiatrist?”

  “Let her be,” said Wally, observing their daughter, who was fast asleep, despite the awkward arrangement of her limbs. Unbeknownst to her parents, LinLin had assiduously trained herself to sleep this way, believing the position to be the one she’d least likely mind being frozen in forever if, God forbid, she were stricken by something gruesome in the middle of the night. “See how happy she looks,” said Wally.

  “But, Wal,” said Imogene.

  “Besides,” said Wally, “how do we know she really isn’t a liquidator?”

  502.

  Sooner or later, thought Imogene, there was bound to be trouble.

  503.

  Imogene waited for something to go wrong, but so far Lin-Lin remained preternaturally okay. She had an abundance of friends, was a favorite of teachers, babysitters, and food deliverymen, and when she was in the first grade, her classmates voted her Most Likely to Succeed in Second Grade. LinLin’s persistent lack of problems irked Imogene no end.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Imogene thought.

  504.

  She was so anxious that one day Imogene paid a visit to Dr. Kleaner. “Can I tell you something?” she said to the doctor. “Never have children.”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Kleaner, nodding.

  “Are some infinities not more infinite than others?” said Imogene.

  Dr. Kleaner prescribed drugs for LinLin and Imogene, and some for himself, too.

  Imogene was almost out the door when Dr. Kleaner said, “Knock, knock.”

  505.

  506.

  To the readers who have felt themselves swept with consternation regarding the brevity of the chaplettes, Patty asks, “Have you checked out life lately?”

  507.

  Life too short? “Not short enough,” thought Wally. Wally was in his lab at Weenix Corp., waiting, for scientific reasons, for yet another chipmunk to digest yet another nut.