Starting from Happy

by Patricia Marx

  508.

  509.

  The Homework Years.

  510.

  It was a time of uncertainty, bloodshed, strife, brother against sister, mother against father, uneaten spinach, fractions.

  511.

  “Mom, do you like my collar this way …” Bounce stood still so his witness could behold, and then when he felt enough beholding had taken place, he said, “Or this way?”

  512.

  To the beholder, the collar was the same. To the boy in love with the girl who did not know his name, it had been slightly but meaningfully angled.

  513.

  “Uh, the second way, Bouncy,” said Imogene, who was preoccupied trying to think of the word that was like ethnic cleansing but not exactly.

  514.

  “You sure?” said Bounce, turning to look at himself in the mirror. “You don’t think my hair makes me look like a horse, do you? I want to look like that president person, Andrew Jackson.”

  515.

  “Genocide!”

  516.

  At the Sepkowitz dinner party, Imogene sat next to a psychoanalyst who told her that becoming a parent was an enriching experience.

  “Richer with what exactly?” asked Imogene.

  The doctor did not or perhaps would not reply. He intently pushed his food into neat little nontouching piles. Anyway, the answer wasn’t money.

  What about Imogene’s other dining companion? The man was an engineer at the Department of Transportation, where he mapped traffic patterns on bridges. He was on sabbatical, he told Imogene, so that he could volunteer at the local high school, reorganizing their trophy case.

  Imogene contemplated the activity at the other end of the table. The guests were laughing and yakking down there, listening raptly and listening mirthfully. “Look at them,” Imogene thought, “exchanging blithe repartée, flirting gamesomely, forging friendships, making business deals, divulging insider information, confiding sublime tidbits of gossip, spilling the beans, telling all, recounting stories that would knock your socks off.” Why was it, Imogene wondered, that the really great stuff always happened at the other end of the table?

  517.

  Why was it that it was always a French dinner party over there?

  518.

  Wally was sitting in the nucleus of merriment. To his side sat a former rock-and-roll star and model who had just been appointed Minister of Culture of an African country. On Wally’s other side was Jesus Christ.

  519.

  Next to Imogene, the psychoanalyst was quarantining carrots and making pariahs of his potatoes Diane.

  520.

  Wouldn’t you know it? At the next Sepkowitz dinner party, Imogene was seated next to a man who manufactured parts for machines that made manufacturing parts. He had seemed depressed, Imogene told Wally post-party. Wally thought the man looked undepressed.

  Imogene shook her head. “Anyone who buys a summer house in Nebraska is depressed,” she said.

  “Nebraska, the crimes-against-humanity place?” said Wally.

  “Uh-hunh,” said Imogene.

  “Interesting,” said Wally.

  521.

  Life tries hard to bring us down, but it faced a dogged athlete when it fucked with Wally.

  522.

  That night, at what promised to be the apex of the act, Imo-gene yawned. Wally did not notice. According to magazines one reads in line at the supermarket, these things happen all the time.

  523.

  Later, while Wally slept, Imogene calculated the number of miles she had racked up carpooling the children. Had she driven in a straight line, and had her car been an amphibious vehicle, she figured that she’d have crossed the Pyrenees by now.

  524.

  Patty has never been to the Pyrenees, but she has been to Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. Also to hell and back.*

  525.

  (Quarter-size hail changing to half-dollar size fell over all of northern South Dakota, leaving dozens without power. Southern North Dakota was so glad it gloated.)

  526.

  Missy Winkelman called Imogene to say she knew it was short notice but she was canceling Thanksgiving. If the phone had rung just a few minutes later, Imogene’s parsnip puree and shaved Brussels sprout casserole would have been soundly wrapped in foil, and the Gilfeather-Yez family would have been on their way to the Winkelmans’.

  “Looks like we’ll just have to stay home and watch the game, right, Dad?” said Bounce when he heard the news.

  “You know, it’s against the law to call off a national holiday,” said LinLin when she heard the news.

  “Why do you always have to be so anti-illegal?” said Bounce, taking off his jacket and throwing it at his sister.

  “Mom,” said LinLin.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” said Imogene.

  527.

  Talk about your understatements!

  528.

  When the kids were upstairs, Imogene whispered, “Howie’s having an affair with a twenty-four-year-old dance therapist.”

  Wally ruminated on the news. Finally, he said: “I think I know which one.”

  “It’s a shame for Missy,” said Imogene, “but if we’re forced to pick sides, let’s go with Howie. He has a lawn mower.”

  529.

  Howie? Who’s Howie? Patty knows a Hal, Howard, Hubert, and Bob, but no Howie. Truth be told, Imogene’s yet to meet Howie, and if I know Patty, probaby won’t.

  530.

  Wally and Imogene were in the basement, arguing about the boiler, when Bounce appeared on the stairs. He wanted to talk about something, he said, and it couldn’t wait. “I hope you know that we would love you just as much if you were gay,” Wally said, adding, “maybe even more.” Bounce rolled his eyes.

  “Let’s not go overboard,” thought Imogene.

  531.

  “From now on,” Bounce said, “my name is Irving.”

  (The Irving phase was short-lived, but not as short-lived as the Floyd phase. By the end of the week, Wallace Gilbert Gilfeather-Yez, Jr., was Bounce once again, and will remain so for the remainder of the book.)

  532.

  Being in a relationship, Imogene had come to see, meant figuring out new ways to phrase “I told you so.”

  533.

  Wally’s co-worker poked his head into the lab. “Someone is here to see you, and it’s urgent,” he said. Wally threw a pellet onto some cedar shavings.

  “I take it you’re up on the Frazier findings in this month’s Aging Cell?” Wally heard someone say. He didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. Gwen always knew a tad more than Wally, sometimes even a tad and a half.

  Wally regarded Gwen. Could this be the same woman he had shared so many dual museum memberships with? How many years, Wally tried to remember, had it been since Gwen had left him for Leonard?

  Is that what Gwen had done? Is that how it happened?

  534.

  Patty must be on record somewhere saying there is never any way of knowing who was the jilter, who the jiltee.

  535.

  No matter. Wally beheld Gwen with fondness, sympathy, nostalgia, sadness, goodwill.

  536.

  Plus lust.

  537.

  Wally liked her blouse.

  538.

  “How’s Tran?” Wally said.

  539.

  “Trench,” said Gwen. “He was suspended from middle school for embezzlement.”

  “Kids,” said Wally, because what else could anyone say?

  540.

  Not the correct response: “They grow up so fast, don’t they? One minute, you’re changing a diaper, the next you’re posting bail for moping with intent to loiter.”

  541.

  “I’m here for a reason,” said Gwen. Wally sensed doom. Reasons were rarely reasons, Wally thought. Gwen reached into her tote bag and brought out a cookie tin. She wasn’t planning to poison him with Norwegian butter cookies, was she? She took the lid off the cookies, revea
ling a pasty white sandy powder.

  “Holy shit!” said Wally, doing the blinking version of a double take.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” said Gwen. “It’s Stuffy. He never came out of hibernation.” She grabbed a beaker off a shelf. “How about I put your half of the cremains in this?” Gwen said, visibly unencumbered by any of the stages of grief, with the possible exception of anger and greed. “Your half of the vet bill’s in the mail,” Gwen said as she poured. Wally no longer esteemed the blouse.

  542.

  He still had respect for her tits, though.

  543.

  Home from work, Wally kissed Imogene hello and squeezed her shirt. “On the radio just now they said couples who make each other laugh and don’t fight live longer,” Wally said.

  544.

  Imogene pondered the news. “Not worth it,” she said.

  545.

  Patty has taken to bed.

  546.

  She’s up. Whew! That was a close call.

  547.

  An e-mail whose subject line was “High Priority” awaited Wally when he arrived at work. Wally had higher priorities. He stopped by the cafeteria for a chocolate chip muffin, tried to figure out, with a colleague, who was also getting a muffin, how long it would take them to build a dam across the creek near the lab, did the crossword puzzle, asked around to see if anyone had a mint, stared at the chipmunks, cracked his knuckles, touched his toes, and took a nap. He was woken up by a memo, sung to him with vibrato by his lab mate, who had an upcoming audition at the amateur opera troupe in Guttesdumberg, Tennessee. The memo was from the senior scientist at Weenix, directing the development team, of which Wally was a member, to commence clinical trials straightaway on the company’s antinausea drug, code-named Ephron.

  Do actual work at his job? You must be kidding.

  548.

  Maybe, thought Wally, it was time to bid adieu to nausea and find another calling. He cooked last meals for the lab subjects whose lives were to end the next day. Cooked? More like took wrappers off the Snickers bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

  549.

  Wally’s options: Study petrography. Become a compass-smith.* Found an origami museum made out of spelt paper. Open a newsstand that carries only magazines from the week before. Visit every state in alphabetical order. Lose the paunch. Learn how to levitate. Take Bounce and Lin-Lin on a trip they’ll never forget. Clone Stuffy. Figure out a way to get in touch with Beenish Asif. Cure eczema. Go to the dentist. Don’t go to the dentist.

  Wally was becoming increasingly chipper about what lay ahead until what lay ahead was really lying there.

  550.

  Wally remained at Weenix. Whatever the drawbacks, he, no longer a kid, had to be realistic: the muffins in the cafeteria were first-rate and he had a parking space.

  551.

  “I’d like to say that this is the result of a trauma,” said the doctor, shaking his head as he looked over Wally’s X-rays. Wally had come to the doctor to get a flu shot.

  “But I’m not going to lie to you, Wally,” the doctor continued. He cleared his throat, and recommended that Wally see another doctor.

  552.

  Imogene slipped on the ice outside the supermarket. Though she did not suffer an injury or even feel pain, Imogene turned sad and sentimental. She wondered if this would be the last time she would ever fall without breaking something. Meanwhile, Bounce sprained his ankle trying to fracture someone’s ankle, and LinLin won the spelling bee on account of the word cartilage.

  553.

  552 was the osteo-chaplette of the Gilfeather-Yez family.

  554.

  Did anything go well for Wally and Imogene in these years? Were there moments of happiness? Sure there were, but is that the kind of book you want to read?

  555.

  On the other hand, Fernanda Kimball’s Kiki Loses a Tooth but Gains a Best Friend is on Patty’s bedside table.

  556.

  Wally tried the carrot and Imogene tried the stick, but neither got anywhere. Bounce refused to come out of his room and say hello to their dinner guests, and that was that. These days, Bounce hardly ever came out of his room, or so it seemed to his parents, who failed to realize how good they had it. LinLin, of course, always captured the hearts and minds of dinner guests. She played a tuba sonata she’d composed, and chatted enthusiastically about Renaissance poetry, German board games, botanical printmaking, and competitive duck-herding.

  557.

  “Bounce is studying,” Imogene would finally say to her guests. “It’s mortifying,” she would have to say to Wally later when they were cleaning up.

  “Oh, Im, let ’im be,” said Wally, idly gazing.

  “Do you think he’ll become a felon?” said Imogene.

  “I can think of worse things,” said Wally.

  558.

  Imogene froze. Worse?

  559.

  Imogene was reluctant to leave Bounce alone in the house for the weekend, especially since he said he’d given them his word that he was going to spend the whole time writing his report on the economic future of Paraguay and maybe even compare it to Uruguay if his parents would just stay out of his hair for just one day more. “Don’t you trust me?” were Bounce’s parting words to Imogene and Wally before they pulled out of the driveway with LinLin.

  It was a question that answered itself.

  560.

  Imogene and Wally were taking LinLin to tuba and euphonium camp in Ohio.

  561.

  At the police station, Bounce said, “It wasn’t my fault.” The list of wrongdoers was long, and Bounce had only gotten up to implicating Steve Stringfield when an officer whisked him away to Mug Shots and Fingerprints.

  562.

  “Don’t you think we should punish him?” said Imogene.

  563.

  “How can anyone punish a kid who has a lawyer?” said Wally.

  564.

  What crime had Bounce committed or, as his defense contends, not committed? He and his posse, fueled by booze and foodstuffs from the Gilfeather-Yez pantry, had outlined a twenty-foot picture in the snow on the lawn of Leftie’s Funeral Home. The image is too lewd to represent in this book, but Patty offers this substitute:

  565.

  Poor Imogene had broken out in hives. Her condition had an etiology that stemmed from an allergy she’d developed to wearing clothes made before 1986, even madras. The ’60s go-go dress went bye-bye. As did the op art hot pants, the spandex jump suit, and the floral print granny dress. All donated to charity.

  566.

  It was an international tragedy.

  567.

  On the ride home from the precinct, Imogene closed her eyes. They passed the house with the crazy shrubbery and the intersection where everyone had the right of way. “Wal,” she said, opening her eyes when they reached the spot where Davey Weiner maimed his father in the elbow with a BB gun, “Bounce is going to have a mark on his permanent record.”

  “It’s okay, Im,” said Wally, reassuringly putting his non-steering hand on hers. “We all do.” Wally had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Do you know anyone who can alter a permanent record?” said Imogene.

  Wally did, but unfortunately, Sergeant Timothy, Elsie’s brother, was on some kind of nutty scruples kick.

  568.

  To lull herself to sleep, Imogene lay in bed, counting her divorced friends. She was up to twenty-seven, but then she deducted one because, technically, Harriet was only angry at the asshole.

  Imogene was trying to get to number forty-four when Wally slipped into the bedroom, home late again for the umpteenth time in whenever. He kicked off his shoes and leaned over to kiss Imogene on the forehead. Imogene did not stir. She was considering whether she would ever leave Wally.

  569.

  At least once a day that fall, Imogene or Wally would ask Bounce, in the most deferential way, if he’d filled out his college applications yet. Bounce’s reply always
went something along the lines of “If they don’t want me for who I am inside, then give me one good reason I should go to their shithole college.”