My American Unhappiness Read online

  "You said you didn't drink," she says.

  "These hardly seem to be the sort of questions an executive director should have to answer after a long lunch. I was meeting with some potential donors, if you must know, and then I was checking my e-mail, and there was a great deal of e-mail that needed my attention."

  "How did the lunch go?"

  "Fine."

  "Are you sure you were not crying?"

  "I do not recall, Lara," I say. "I was in my office all morning, engaged in my work, and that is an emotional trance for me. I do not remember what the trance led to, but usually there is some sort of spiritual epiphany or emotional catharsis of some magnitude. While you were away from your desk, in the powder room or whatnot, I went out, laptop in hand, for a bite to eat. A working lunch."

  "You should eat something else. You seem unsteady. I've got half a sub from Fraboni's in the mini-fridge."

  "That's kind of you, but I am quite satiated at present."

  "Okay, Zeke."

  I have been trying to speak less formally of late, particularly with Lara. As I navigate the superior-subordinate relationship we share, I have a tendency to speak in long sentences and say things like "quite satiated" and "at present" instead of "full" and "right now." It's as if I haven't quite mastered the easy social interaction that coworkers should have after so many years.

  "Did you get that solicitation letter written this morning?" Lara says. "Because if you want to get that mailed out—and we could use some cash infusions right now—I need the text today. Remember, I'm off next week. Your last letter brought in just enough to get through the summer. Maybe you can get us through the fall as well."

  "Right," I say. "Sure. I'll get to it this afternoon."

  "E-mail it to me when you're done and I'll merge it and print the envelopes."

  "I may prefer to dictate it, if you don't mind."

  "You're the boss," she says. "Whatever."

  "If it's unpleasant for you..." I say.

  "It's neither pleasant nor unpleasant," she says, now gone back to the keyboard. "It is simply my job."

  "You know I don't care for that attitude," I say. "I want you to like the work. But I prefer to dictate."

  "I love it. I love my job. I've been here eight years, haven't I?"

  "You sound unconvincing."

  "Do I?" she says, and she offers me a smile—a small one.

  I retreat to my office and close the door. Although I consider myself a student of human relationships, I admit that Lara is someone I can't figure out: Was what we just had flirtatious and witty banter? Or was it a tense exchange rife with latent aggression? It's not out of the realm of possibility that Lara might be attracted to me. I am a fairly good-looking man and I know it helps me get through life. I am of medium height, broad-shouldered. I have the blue eyes from my mother's Irish side coupled with black hair and skin one would describe as olive-toned, thanks to my father's Greek genes. Three years ago, I even did a brief bit of modeling for a local ad agency—a serendipitous encounter at the natural foods co-op turned into a decent part-time job. For a few months, my face was on a billboard over the Beltline Highway, smiling deliriously over the great service I received at a bank. Outside Milwaukee, above the interstate, I stood with a beautiful family, and my smile assured commuters that All-state was on their side. I drove by that billboard only a handful of times, as it was sixty miles east of Madison, but each time, that picture of me, standing next to that blond, big-eyed wife, those two beaming children, filled me with woe. I still remember how my billboard wife—Ingrid was her real name—smelled, how her hair gave off the vague scent of dandelion stems.

  More about Lara: Many days, I confess, I have an urge to kiss her, and once, five years ago, at the National Humanities Conference in Omaha, we almost did kiss in the arcade room of the hotel lobby. We were both fairly intoxicated, having spent most of the evening at the hotel bar with our comrades from the Deep South Humanities Project and the Big Sky Humanities Coalition, and we had retreated to the arcade, alone. We were playing Mortal Kombat II, and she shoved me once, in real life, after my ninja destroyed her buxom, knife-wielding avatar and I shoved her back, playfully, and then she grabbed my hand, and we were there, a few inches from each other, and almost, almost!

  This afternoon, weary and restless, bolstered by my three Bloody Marys, I go back out to Lara's desk and I bring up that night in Omaha, and, admittedly, it is the sort of "Do you remember that time?" kind of question you hope rekindles a spark that seems so long gone and dormant.

  "I don't remember it," she says. "I don't think that's what happened, Zeke."

  "What do you think would have happened," I say, "if we'd kissed?"

  "Regret," she says. She is straightening her desk, ending the workday. "Wearying, gut-wrenching regret."

  "Really?" I say.

  "We were different then," she says. "My husband was cheating on me, my marriage was failing. And you, well, you weren't so weird. You were more vulnerable then, a young widower, not the bon vivant you are today!"

  It's true, she struck me as enormously sad on that trip, a woman whose life was falling apart, a woman saying farewell to a future she'd imagined, and had good reason to imagine, too. This is when a woman is at her most beautiful, I think, when she is at her saddest. Show me a sad woman, and I will fall in love.

  Lara laughs then, turning what could become a poignant moment into a joke. "Anyway, we should never bring that up again. Okay?"

  "Weird?" I say, but she is on her way to shut down the copier. "I have not gotten weird."

  She turns back toward me and sighs.

  "We both have, Zeke. We both have gotten weird and middle-aged."

  "We are neither weird nor middle-aged, Lara!"

  "Well, maybe you're not. But I am," Lara says. "Anyway, I've got to get home and you've got two girls waiting for you in the conference room."

  "Oh, no! I forgot!" I say. "Have they been here long?"

  "No. Your mother dropped them off about forty minutes ago. I wasn't sure if you were in any condition to care for them, so I said you were on a conference call."

  "Lara!"

  "Zeke, you got drunk at lunch!"

  "Please, please, Lara," I say. "Why hurl such accusations?"

  "They're little angels anyway," she says. "I don't mind. They're doing an art project."

  Lara smiles at me with a warmth that seems genuine. I'm not sure what to do in response to that.

  Perhaps my mother is right in calling Lara a prospect. I don't mind that she has two children from a previous marriage; in fact, I prefer it: a ready-made family longing to welcome me into its bosom, and ready to welcome my family into theirs! I can imagine adding some fiscal advantages to the family with my solid annual income of seventy-nine thousand dollars, and also, I think, they'd welcome my good sense of humor. I would play any sort of board games the children liked to play, and I would see beauty in all of their creations. I'd be at every soccer game and dance recital; I'd hang their pictures on the fridge. I'd involve myself in their imaginative games, playing house or school or spaceship.

  "Is it four o'clock already?" I say, poking my head into the conference room where April and May are coloring on the whiteboard with an array of erasable markers.

  They turn to me and smile.

  "We're drawing a whole city," April says.

  "I'm drawing the shopping mall," May says.

  "Wow," I say. "Impressive. I'd live there."

  I watch them work a little while longer.

  "What's that?" I ask April.

  "The wastewater treatment plant."

  "Wow. How do you know about that?"

  "I want to be an urban planner when I grow up," April says.

  "How do you even know what that means?" I ask.

  "It's part of our social studies unit," May says.

  "How old are you again?" I ask, feigning a dramatic incredulity.

  "Seven," they both say, giggling.

  "Don
't seven-year-olds like to do kids' stuff? Or is it all about urban planning now?"

  "We like kids' stuff," May says.

  "Yeah, Uncle Zeke," April says. "We love kids' stuff too. We just like learning."

  "Let's go get some mac-and-cheese?" I say. "Then some ice cream? And let's learn absolutely nothing?"

  The girls whoop with glee, dropping their markers and running to the front door. As we exit, I notice Lara looking at us and smiling, and, for what it's worth, I give her a jaunty wink.

  ***

  I take the girls to State Street, to the Noodles restaurant, a high-end fast-food place that has all the forced charm of an urban bistro with none of the shabby ambience. They both love the macaroni-and-cheese entrée here, as do I, a warm mush of yellow cheese, butter, and noodles, a fat-and-carbohydrate orgy that always hits my system like a drug. Everything is clean and well shined at Noodles, even at this hour, the height of the dinner rush. The ceiling seems impossibly far away, fashionably exposing ductwork painted taupe and gray. I place our orders at the counter, including a beer for myself, and then I get each of the girls a gigantic glass of orange Hi-C with ice, against all my good judgment, and find us a booth in the corner. Before I had a relationship with these nieces of mine, I never understood the immense pride and satisfaction that can come from simply being able to purchase a meal for children. My feeling as a provider to two dependent souls sustains me in dark times when, in truth, I'm not sure anything else could.

  "This is gonna be sooooooo good," May croons, as we take our seats in the booth.

  "I'm totally starved," April says, almost shaking with anticipation.

  Just then, I see sitting at the booth opposite, nose in a book— The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits—Minn. A number stands on her table, meaning she's just arrived and is waiting for her food as well. Minn turns to look at us, as April and May begin to talk excitedly about what dishes they would serve if they ran a restaurant—avocados, strawberry jelly, Wheat Thins—and sm iles.

  "Hello, Zeke," she says.

  "Hi, Minn," I say. She's wearing her Starbucks uniform but still looks different, somehow, away from the counter. More fetching, if that's possible. Accessible. I resist an impulse to leap up and embrace her.

  "These are my nieces, April and May," I say. "This is Minn; she works at Starbucks down the street."

  "I want to work at Starbucks someday!" April says.

  "What are you doing here?" May asks. "Don't they have food there?"

  "I'm on my break," Minn says. "I'm in love with the mac-and-cheese, unfortunately for my thighs."

  Her thighs, which I can't help but look at given her comment, look remarkably lean and luscious in her tight black pants, but I don't remark on them. Sometimes I actually do know when to shut up.

  "We love the mac-and-cheese too," April says.

  "I get tomatoes on mine," May says.

  "I hate tomatoes," April says.

  "I'm with you," Minn says. "Never liked 'em."

  May looks crestfallen.

  "But I admire people who can eat 'em. That takes resolve."

  May smiles. April seems confused, but she smiles too.

  "Do you want to join us?" I ask Minn.

  Immediately after asking the question, I feel red with embarrassment. Of course she does not want to join us, to use her thirty minutes of downtime talking with a customer and his two overzealous nieces.

  "I'd love to," she says. She gets her book, her water glass, and her plastic number and slides into the booth next to me. And then she gives me this odd, wide-eyed look, as if she is suppressing a laugh. She raises her eyebrows some and I smile back. Then she turns to April and May and says, "Tell me, are you in school?"

  Our food arrives and we all blow on our steaming bowls, mixing our noodles up until they are cool enough to eat.

  The girls have launched into a long-winded and frenzied description of school—the names of their teachers, the bad kids in the front row, the hot lunch program, the book fair that they had last week, the state capitals, which they recite with blinding speed, alternating one with the other, and then, finally, as they slow down and May says, "Yeah, we like school, pretty much," April cries, "We love it!"

  "I always did, too," Minn says. "All the way through college."

  "What did you major in?" I ask.

  "Anthropology," she says, "with a minor in rural sociology."

  "Ah," I say.

  "Very practical, right?" Minn says. "And now I work at Starbucks."

  "That's so cool!" May says.

  We eat a little more, all of us eating at a fairly frenzied pace. I try to think of something to say, an anecdote of sorts that might also demonstrate my romantic interest in Minn. Something about going to movies alone and a trip I might take to Brussels.

  But before I can speak, Minn wipes her hands and mouth on her napkin, smiles at us, and says, "I'm sorry, I have to go back to work. My breaks are so short."

  "Okay, bye," April and May shout in unison.

  And then Minn looks at me and says, "Hey, Uncle Zeke, you should bring these girls in for hot chocolate or cookies one of these days."

  With that, Minn turns, a bounce in her gait, hands holding a large colorful purse in front of her, and exits Noodles. April and May and I all watch her, absolutely delighted.

  When I get home with the girls that night, we find my mother asleep on the couch.

  I quietly send the girls up to their room and instruct them to get started on their homework.

  Then I sit down at the edge of the couch and gently wake my mother, who sits up suddenly, takes a deep and violent breath, and begins coughing atrociously.

  I get up and bring her some water and she sips it slowly, gradually regaining control of her spastic lungs.

  "Are you okay?" I say.

  "Fine, fine," she says. "I swallowed my gum or something."

  "Okay," I say.

  "Did you have a nice time with the girls?" she asks.

  "We had a great time," I say. "We always do."

  "Did they eat supper?"

  "Mac-and-cheese," I say. "At Noodles."

  "Good, good. Thanks for doing that."

  "No sweat," I say. "What did the doctor have to say?"

  "He said, 'You're old.'"

  "What else, Mom?"

  "He said we'd take some more tests. More tests. More money for him, more unpleasantness for me."

  "What is wrong?" I ask. "What do they think it is?"

  "I'm sure it's my asthma. They did a scan of my lungs today. I'll know more by the end of the week."

  "They probably suggested you stop smoking," I say.

  "Imagine that," she says. "They did."

  "Will you?"

  "I can try."

  "I hope you will," I say.

  "Tell me about work. What's happening there? Anything from Lara? Did you buy her flowers for her desk today? I think you should buy her flowers."

  "Funny you should bring her up," I say. "She looked beautiful today. But you know who ended up eating dinner with me and the girls?"

  "Who?" my mother asks. I know the twins will tell her about Minn anyway, as soon as they have a chance, so I figure I face fewer questions from my mother if I control the conversation about Minn from the outset.

  "The woman from the coffee shop whom I like," I say. "Minn."

  "Oh, the barista," my mother says.

  "Exactly," I say, pleased that my mother has used the term.

  "I'll have to find out how the girls like her."

  "They seemed to love her," I say.

  "How wonderful!"

  "But don't get your hopes up, Mom. She might be engaged. I'm pretty sure there's an engagement ring on her left hand."

  "Maybe she just likes rings?"

  "Maybe," I say, "maybe. Can I make you some dinner?"

  "No," she says. "Maybe a drink? Can you make us a couple of drinks?"

  "A drink?" I ask. "A real one?"

  "Life's too short," sh
e says.

  I drink a few gin and tonics with my mother that night and then get the girls to bed. Finally, after lying in my bed for an hour or more without falling asleep, I rise and go into my study and, half-drunk, sip tea and return to my work. I often wonder how it would feel to be an insomniac if you did not have some sort of intellectual pursuit to turn to in the wee hours. What if you worked at McDonald's or some warehouse, and you could not work from your home office at two in the morning? Could you just show up at the graveyard shift and say, like so many of my poet and painter and professor friends say when they e-mail me at 3:12 A.M.: "I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd get some work done"? Can you imagine how your colleagues at, say, Dunkin' Donuts might react to that?

  I imagine you could read or watch television, but somehow, to me, insomnia does not seem so bad when the sleeplessness is productive in some way, and, as insomnia has been a continuing battle for me these past few years, I immediately fall back into some of the work I have been doing in the middle of the night, transcribing and analyzing my unhappiness interviews in the late hours. It's amazing to me how often people answer right away. They do not stop to think, or second-guess, or resist when I ask, "Why are you so unhappy?" They just answer.

  Tonight, I scroll through a sampling of these responses on my laptop, in hopes that the collective malaise detailed there might make me feel a little better. My mood has slipped into the top layer of despair, and I need a lift out of it.

  Marvin H., 26, adjunct lecturer in economics, Montgomery, AL:

  I suppose what really has tormented me—no, that's too strong a word—what has challenged my happiness, has been growth. I do not necessarily see growth as a good thing. For instance, when they built a new Cracker Barrel out by the highway—my mom was thrilled, she loves Cracker Barrel, I swear, it's the only reason she takes vacations. I wasn't. I mean who needs another Cracker Barrel, right? Who needs any of the shit they've been building on that edge of town? Seriously, nothing is fueled by need anymore. Everything new they come up with is an extra. They have to spend a lot of money convincing you that they need it. There's a sporting goods store the size of the Pentagon. It's crazy. I don't like it. It used to be, hey, this town needs a dry goods store or a butcher shop, so somebody opened one up and that was that. Now, now, forget about it. Oh, also, I have an old high school friend and he and his wife had a baby at twenty-two. I know, it's young, but they didn't go to college and so, anyway, they had this kid. I saw this kid a lot for the first year of its life—a beautiful, dark-haired, biracial kid. And then I go to graduate school and I get back to Montgomery and the kid is like, four. He's four. He hits, he talks back, his nose runs like a sieve, and he just won't stop growing.