Happy All the Time (11 page)

The vase was washed and filled with water. The flowers were arranged. Misty looked at them suspiciously.

“What attractive surface?” She looked over to the table in the corner of the living room which was set for two. “They're too big for the table.”

Vincent took the vase out of her hand, carried it into the bedroom, and placed it on a low bookshelf across from her bed.

“When you wake up in the morning, you can think of me.”

“Fat chance,” said Misty.

For dinner Misty gave Vincent pot roast and potato pancakes.

“It's a Jewish Friday night dinner,” she said. Vincent displayed grand appetite, but after dinner any ease that had ever manifested itself between them evaporated. In her apartment—on her turf—Vincent was silent. It was a little awesome to him that she had allowed him this intimacy. He had never thought of a girl's apartment as the setting for any intimacy at all. A girl's apartment was something you crashed into shortly after a first meeting for a nightcap. Then, if the girl had roommates, or a tiny bed, you crashed off to your apartment. Now Vincent felt that he had stumbled into a cloister. He had expected Misty to be lordly and energetic in her own territory, but she was not. She was silent, withdrawn, and edgy. She got up to clear the table, knocked over an empty wineglass, and sat down again.

“This is awful,” she said. “I wonder why I bother. See what you get? You get invited to dinner and it's rotten.”

“You mean the pot roast and potatoes? They were wonderful.”

Misty looked at him sadly. “You're so dumb you don't even know the difference,” she said. “Now you're finally here. That's what you wanted, wasn't it? You're here and neither of us has a thing to say. Now you know.”

“Know what?” Vincent said.

“Now you know where you don't belong. Or maybe I know where you don't belong. Think of how much nicer it would have been for you if one of those girls in the PR department who wears bright green sweaters and pink shirts and who goes to Bermuda in the spring had invited you for dinner. You would have had salmon mousse and a soufflé and a nice long chat about the people in the office and you could have discovered that your cousin went to school with her cousin.”

It took Vincent several seconds to realize that Misty was not being snappish. She was plainly unhappy. She took off her spectacles and rubbed the bridge of her nose. This gesture went straight to his heart. He had never seen her in this condition before and he did not know what to do. So he knelt on one knee beside her and took her hands in his.

“I've had dinners like that,” said Vincent. “But I wanted dinner here.”

“This won't work,” said Misty.

“What won't work?”

“Any ideas you might have had about you and me.”

“What ideas?”

“You don't know what I'm like,” said Misty.

“I have a fair idea,” said Vincent. “You're the scourge of God.”

“Well, there you are,” said Misty, listlessly. “It won't work.”

“I love you,” said Vincent.

“I don't believe you,” said Misty. “I think you find me sociologically interesting. You like the novelty but it'll wear off and then you'll get bored.”

“Look,” said Vincent, “is it so awful having someone love you?”

“Yes,” said Misty.

“Does that mean having someone like me love you?”

“Yes,” said Misty. “I don't get it. I think you think that if you hang around with someone totally unlike anyone else you've ever hung around with, you'll feel all grown up.”

“I see,” said Vincent. “You mean, you don't trust it. Is that a reflection on you or on me?”

“That's interesting,” said Misty. “I don't know.”

“Look,” said Vincent, “I never have been in love, before you. I never said I love you to anyone. This is all new to me, and you're behaving like a prima donna. Supposing you get bored with me? Maybe you like me because
I'm
sociologically interesting to you.”

“I never said I liked you,” Misty said.

“That's more like it,” said Vincent. “But you do like me, don't you?”

“Maybe,” said Misty. “If I do, it's against my better judgment.” She got up to clear the table. Vincent leaped up to help her. She washed the dishes in silence and he dried them in silence, hunting around in her cabinets for the right places to put them. They stood side by side at the sink, which filled Vincent with contentment. This, he thought, is adult life and domesticity. He said as much to Misty.

“What a dope you are,” she said.

The dishes were washed, dried, and put away. Misty and Vincent found themselves standing in the living room. The air around them was tense again: the tension of inevitability.

“I wish we weren't quite so standoffish,” Vincent said.

“Is that the polite way of saying you think we should go to bed?”

“Yes,” said Vincent.

“Okay,” said Misty. “Let's go.”

The next morning, Misty woke to the sight of Vincent's flowers and of Vincent himself, who was lying on his side, smiling at her.

“‘O night, O night divine,'” sang Vincent. “That's my Christmas voice,” he added.

Misty considered him, as if she had wakened to find a fish in her bed and was pondering how it had gotten there and what to do with it.

“What time is it?” she growled.

“It's seven-thirty,” said Vincent. “I am now going to make you a cup of coffee and bring it to you in bed. You won't like that at all, will you?”

“Not much,” said Misty.

“You lie,” said Vincent. “I'll bet no one has ever brought you coffee in bed, have they? They think you don't need it. Is that right?”

“Yes,” said Misty.

“Isn't life delightful?” said Vincent. He sprang out of bed, giving Misty a view of his long back. His shoulders were freckled and his hair was rumpled.

“You won't be able to find anything,” Misty said. “You won't know how to make coffee in a drip pot.”

“I am a scientist,” said Vincent. “I will not only find everything, but I will make you a cup of coffee so wonderful that you will froth at the mouth with love for me.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. Misty, it turned out, was the color of an apricot all over. Gently he pushed the hair out of her eyes and kissed her on the forehead.

“It doesn't take a lot to make you boys happy,” said Misty.

“Au contraire,” said Vincent. “It turns out it takes a great deal to make me happy. Now, listen, you can be as sullen as you want. I'll be happy for both of us, but I want you to look deep into my eyes and tell me that you are marginally fond of me.”

Misty looked him in the eyes.

“All right,” she said. “I'm marginally fond of you. And now, if you will kindly heave over your great bulk, I'd like to go and brush my teeth. One scant sugar in the coffee, please.”

Vincent made a wonderful cup of coffee. It was one of his few kitchen skills. That cup of coffee surprised Misty. She leaned back against her pillows and drank it slowly. It was little things that did you in, she thought. She did not mean to lean over and kiss Vincent on the shoulder, but she did. This made her cross, so she gulped down her coffee, threw the covers at Vincent, and stalked off to take a shower.

Under the water, she considered her position. Sex, she knew, was something that could not be lied about. Had she followed her true inclinations, she would not have been in the shower at all. She would have been back in bed with Vincent. There was no hiding true desire, so he probably knew it. This, however, did not mean he had to know anything else. Why, she wondered, was caginess so dear to her? Why did she protect herself so closely?

The water ran pleasantly down her back. There
was
something wonderful about having someone love you. Rapture does not spring up out of nowhere. Misty figured that time was running out. A few more weeks of this and she would be a replica of Vincent, announcing her state of love to strangers on the subway. She turned off the water and wrapped herself in a towel. In the steamy mirror, she confronted herself. Love made fools of everyone. It was man's fate.

Guido sat alone in the park. It was lunchtime. The nippy weather was about to break and turn into something more serious. As he sat, the last of the leaves drifted down to the path. His companions in the park were not bouncy schoolchildren or joggers or dog walkers and their dogs. It was too cold for those young executives who meet on benches for a hot dog and a chat. On the bench across from him sat a dejected person of undetectable gender wearing a dress and a riding hat and sporting a thin mustache. On another bench a surly-looking boy—clearly a truant—was feeding popcorn to the pigeons and reading a hockey magazine. And there was Guido, contemplating the leaves that fell in melancholy swirls.

In his pocket he had a letter from Holly announcing her return. This letter neglected to be specific about the date. It was unclear about everything else as well. She said she was coming back and was dying to talk. She was filled with a sense of the newness of things, she said. This quite amazed Guido. He did not expect his precise wife to use language of this sort, but she did, at least on emotional occasions. What
was
the newness of things? Did that mean she loved him over again, or that she loved someone new and now wanted a divorce?

Holly's announcement of arrival came on the heels of Betty Helen's announcement of departure. Her mother in Skokie was ailing, she explained, and she would have to go and stay with her until she recovered. Then, Betty Helen said, she would certainly be back—but when, she could not quite say. Guido felt that everyone was leaving him or had left him and no one would give him any specifics. Everyone, except, of course, Vincent.

Vincent had dropped by on his way out to a business lunch. From the radiance of his face it was perfectly obvious that his great love had been consummated. Guido had said, “Did you have a nice weekend?” Vincent had actually blushed.

“I spent the weekend with Misty,” he said. Guido did not respond. “I was just checking in,” Vincent said. “To see how you were doing.” With Holly gone, Vincent felt that Guido had been invalided, and he phoned every day to see if he was still alive. A few days a week he dropped by to make sure the voice on the telephone had a body attached to it.

“Betty Helen is leaving,” Guido said.

“That's good news,” said Vincent.

“Not to me,” said Guido. “It's only temporary. Her mother is sick.”

“That's ridiculous,” said Vincent. “She doesn't have a mother. She was cloned off someone's Wellington boot.”

“Life is a little nightmarish,” said Guido. “What is it about me that makes women get vague about their plans? Holly goes off and doesn't say when she's coming back, and now Betty Helen is doing the same thing.”

“It's only a fad,” said Vincent.

“Now I'll have to get a temporary,” said Guido. “That means talking to more actresses who can't type and Hegelians who can't file.”

“You don't look at all well,” said Vincent. “Maybe you should come and have dinner with me and Misty.”

The idea of dinner with Vincent and Misty sounded exactly the thing to Guido, but, he knew, recently consummated love should be left alone as much as possible. He declined. They smiled shyly at each other.

“Holly's coming back,” said Guido.

“I thought she was still hanging you up,” said Vincent.

“She is, but she says she's coming home.”

“Well, that's good news, isn't it?”

“She hasn't bothered to say when,” said Guido.

“I don't understand women,” said Vincent. “Even when they do what you want them to do, they're not understandable. You'd think that after spending a weekend with a girl, you'd have some idea of what she thought and felt and all. But not Misty.”

They exchanged looks of mutual resigned puzzlement. They both felt exhausted, dizzy, and displaced, like dancers after a long ballet.

CHAPTER 5

The former Holly Sturgis had been gone for six weeks, during which she toured France with her mother, bought four pairs of shoes, and read the complete Proust. One day, she called Guido from the airport and said that she was coming home to unpack her clothes and would meet him for dinner.

“I want to see you in public first,” she said. “It's too connubial and old hat in private.”

They met at the Lalique, a small ornate restaurant that they had frequented as newlyweds. It was a very brief meal, since neither had much in the way of appetite. They left their dinners virtually untouched, but knocked back a bottle of white wine.

“This place is littered with memories,” said Holly. They left abruptly, overtipping. In their apartment, the chamber of Guido's recent solitude, Guido felt moved to deliver himself of a lecture about separations in general and theirs in specific, but Holly seduced him with great love and kindness, which shut him up for some time. Then she brought him tea on a tray. He lay in bed, hogging all the pillows and staring with relief at the sight of her full closet as she went to get a nightshirt. Cohabiting with only part of her wardrobe had been more of a strain on him than he had realized.

“I think it would be nice to move,” said Holly. “I think this interlude did us worlds of good and now we should have a new backdrop.”

“I'm not sure what you mean,” Guido said.

“What I mean is that we have made a break with a certain kind of security. Now we are rejoined and it would probably be a good thing to rearrange ourselves altogether. New rooms, new decor. I would like to get
used
to something again. Besides, I never liked the kitchen.”

“What new decor? What kitchen? I'm not entirely sure why you left in the first place. You never said you didn't like the kitchen. You said you did like it.”