Happy All the Time (20 page)

“It's Holly, isn't it?” said Misty.

Guido stood up and began to pace. He looked haggard.

“I want to have a baby,” he said. “I want any old kind of baby. I want a kid I can teach to swim and take to the park and make up stories for. I want to take my kid to French restaurants on Saturdays and put wine in its water and put things to taste on its plate. I want to stay up all night when it gets sick and go to its piano recitals. I never knew how much I wanted to be a father before.”

Misty asked, “What does Holly want?”

“I have no idea,” said Guido. “She dropped this on me a few days ago. I didn't know she wanted a baby. I don't even know if she wants a baby now. She never said a thing about it. Now she's presented it to me as a fait accompli and she's involved in the details. For example, she wrote to a cabinetmaker in Maine about getting a crib made. I saw the letter. She's been making sketches of the back bedroom so we can turn it into a nursery.”

“I'm afraid I don't see the problem,” said Misty.

“I don't know how she feels,” said Guido. “You don't know her. She's like a business person. She said: ‘Guido, we're having a baby,' and that was that. I wanted to go out and tell everyone in the world, buy a box of cigars, fill the house with roses. You can't do that when you don't know whether your wife is glad or sad. She just makes plans. She hasn't said another word about it. She drops this meteor at my feet; it makes a big hole and she just sweeps it up, makes it level, and goes on.”

He sat down and slumped in his chair, setting the coffee cup down a little too violently on its saucer. He pulled a cheroot out of his pocket and lit it. His hazel eyes looked liquid and troubled.

“Guido,” said Misty. “Maybe you need to know too much.”

“Vincent knows too much,” said Guido. “It's not hard to tell how you feel. I'm living with a walled fortress.”

“Vincent is living with a partially ruined walled fortress that is trying to get up the wherewithal for repairs,” said Misty.

“I think she's going to leave me again,” said Guido.

“What makes you think that?”

“I know her,” said Guido. “It's time for her to retreat.”

“Well, let her,” said Misty. “From what I understand, she didn't leave you the first time. She just went away for a few weeks.”

“That's leaving.”

“Jesus, Guido. I thought I was marrying into an intelligent family. You are not married to
Woman
. You are married to one specific woman. That one specific woman behaves in one specific way. She needs to be by herself every once in a while. What difference does it make? Unless you don't trust her.”

“It's not that I don't trust her. It's just that I don't understand and she can't explain.”

“You don't understand because Holly isn't you,” said Misty. “If
you
went off, it would be for some specific reason having to do with you and Holly. You can't believe that she can go off and not have
your
reasons. Well, she isn't you. She has reasons of her own. As long as she loves you and she doesn't stay away for very long, why don't you leave her be? Having a baby is a big deal. Maybe she needs a little time to get used to it.”

“This is a very disconcerting conversation,” said Guido.

“You asked for it,” said Misty.

“Don't tell Vincent for a bit, will you?” said Guido. “I'll tell him—but not until I get this thing straightened out.”

“You and your friend Vincent are hopeless,” said Misty. “There isn't anything to straighten out. Ask her if she's glad she's having a baby and then let her go.”

“But what about me?” said Guido. “What about my right to fatherly joy? How about my feelings?”

“You'll get your big chance,” said Misty. “Just wait till you have your baby in your arms and it drools all over your suit.”

Holly
was
going off, and she was going off to get used to the idea of having a baby. Misty had been entirely right, and so had Guido in his choice of the word “retreat.” Holly was going to a monastery. She had found an order of Anglican nuns and she was making a retreat.

“You don't have one ounce of religious feeling,” said Guido.

“I may not have religious feelings, but I like a religious atmosphere,” Holly said. “Besides, the thought of being pregnant makes me feel medieval. It's a contemplative order and I need silence. And furthermore, I have an impulse to be around a lot of women.”

“Really?” said Guido fiercely. “And how did you find out about these saintly women?”

“It's a famous place. I've always wanted to go. There's a retreat mistress, and there will be other women making retreats too.”

Holly was lying on the sofa wrapped in a plaid rug. A tea tray was on the floor next to her with its flowered cup and saucer, pot, and jug of milk. A little glass plate held the remains of toast with honey and butter.

Holly made you think of painting, of composition, Guido thought. You could not look at her and not think of her elements: the flush on her cheek, her thick, silky hair, the contrast between her wrist and the cuff of her shirt. She looked warm, but not lazy: Holly knew how to clear the deck for action. She would find maternity clothes that looked just like her usual clothes. She would find perfect clothes for the baby. She would invent a diet for expectant mothers and fathers and when the baby came, she would invent a diet for it too. Guido had always found the sight of beautiful women with reading glasses or babies very moving. Soon he would come home to the sight of his beautiful wife and baby. If all had been equal, Guido would have been swooning with joy.

Next to the couch was a pile of books: a copy of
The Rule of St. Benedict, Diets for Mothers
, and a white-jacketed book entitled
Prenatal Serenity
. Holly worked fast, but she kept his joy in check. He wanted to fall on his knees and sing for gladness, but Holly was talking about her retreat.

“I can't think of a healthier place to be,” she said. “They have lots of land, so the air is very clean. They grow all their own food. They have a farm, a vegetable garden, and a dairy. They make their own butter and cheese. They have a guest house for people like me. And it'll be good for the baby too. Dr. Margot Justis-Vorander in this book on prenatal serenity says that it is crucial for babies to spend the first weeks of their incipient life in real tranquillity. That's something very few people realize. The mother ought to be as serene as possible.”

“What about the father?” said Guido.

“I have to work on impulse,” said Holly. “Pregnancy seems to have its own instincts. I must have some real silence. It's good for the baby. Besides, you don't have to lug this baby around—I do. I have to get used to it and think about it. It's just a few weeks.”

“How many is a few?” said Guido.

“The retreat is ten days but you can stay longer.”

“You mean,
you
can stay longer,” said Guido.

“Don't be ferocious, darling,” said Holly. “After all, having a baby is serious business.”

Serious business meant that Holly would not be back in ten days. It meant that she would come back when she felt like it. Guido was a brooder, not a sulker, but now he felt his options had been taken away from him. He sat down and sulked. Life was unfair to those who were just, he thought. No matter how maddening Holly was, he was forced by temperament to see her side—or what he thought her side might be if she had ever bothered to really explain herself. The fact was: she was having the baby and Guido was only a witness. Was his desire to keep her by his side the terrible possessiveness of an onlooker? Maybe he was jealous. Maybe all men were. Perhaps his present anger at Holly was really anger at his position: he had been present only at the conception. Now the mystery began and it was Holly's own.

Perhaps he did need to know too much. Perhaps he needed everything spelled out in big block letters. Holly was not an explainer. She was a contented accepter. How could life be so graceful and confusing at the same time?

“Don't look so stricken,” said Holly. “Come curl up with me. A little love in the afternoon is probably very good for our incipient wonder child.”

“I thought it had to have perfect serenity,” said Guido.

“That simply means not being fraught,” said Holly. “Not being caught up in the unnecessary tensions of modern life.”

Guido stood up. He thought for a fleeting instant of how smug he had been to Vincent during Vincent's early courtship of Misty. Vincent had said, in desperation, “Sometimes I think it's love and sometimes I think it's sickness.”

This seemed the heart of the matter to Guido. As Holly slid her arms around him, he was not sure which was which.

CHAPTER 8

Holly went off to her retreat early one morning, carrying a plain black grip and wearing what she felt were appropriate clothes for an outsider at a monastery: black skirt, white shirt, gray sweater, and gray stockings. She had taken the diamonds out of her ears and wore tiny seed pearls. In her handbag she carried a copy of
The Rule of St. Benedict
, a bottle of vitamin pills, and Dr. Justis-Vorander's book on prenatal serenity. Watching her dress, Guido knew she would be the most chic of all possible retreatants.

As soon as she was gone, he hurried to his office where life no longer held any surprises. Betty Helen had come back, and Stanley had decided to stay on to help out. To Guido's amazement, Stanley and Betty Helen got on like a house afire. Stanley performed the services of errand boy, second typist, and proposal and manuscript reader. During the occasional afternoon lull, he liked to read the proposals to Guido, whose name he had shortened to “Guid.”

“Okay,” said Stanley. “Get this. This one says: ‘Space and time are configurative modalities bound by their infinite essences. Shape alludes to happenstance within the context of essential boundlessness, hence the concept of accident. The artist works within invisible limitations which impinge on perception, energy, and their combination called work, which is not to be confused with “the work.”' Guess what this one is, Guid.”

“That,” said Guido, “is a proposal from a sculptor who wants to arrange a series of paving stones on a lawn.”

“Close but no cigar,” said Stanley. “It's from a potter who wants to duplicate ‘accidental forms in nature.'”

“What does he say an accidental form in nature is?”

“Well, this guy says, for example: ‘random events held together by formless ties making form out of unique structure.'”

“That means something like a puddle,” said Guido.

“Yeah?” said Stanley. “This is really weird. It's a whole 'nother language.”

“When I was your age,” said Guido, “I used to read those things for my Uncle Giancarlo. That's why I'm so fluent. Of course, people weren't writing that way in large numbers so we got the usual family saga novel proposals, and poetic cycles about Cincinnati, and murals for schools. You know, sculptors who used chisels and poets who used words. When Uncle Giancarlo got a proposal like your accidental form in nature one, he used to take a red grease pencil and write across it:
IF YOU CAN
'
T WRITE A COHERENT PROPOSAL, YOU CAN'T HAVE A GRANT
. And then he'd send it back.”

“And then what would happen?”

“Well, you'd either never hear from them again or they would have to rewrite it and face the fact that what they wanted to do was make a giant nail out of Styrofoam, and Uncle Giancarlo would write
NO NO NO
in red grease pencil and send it back. Then the fellow would get a grant from someone else. Uncle Giancarlo wanted to keep the Foundation on the conservative side. His motto was: no one ever said ‘my five-year-old child can do better than that' about Raphael or Matisse.”

“This is the basis for a new parlor game,” said Stanley. “Like, I make one of these up and you have to guess what it is. Okay. What does this mean: socioromantic stress entangled with the dailiness of human experience meld to produce an exit from repressive structures in an attempt to redefine parameters.”

“That means: you're having trouble with your girlfriend and you want the afternoon off.”

Stanley was awestruck. “That's amazing,” he said.

“Just a job,” said Guido.

“Not a job,” said Stanley. “A force/completion modality expressed structurally in terms of repeated action.”

“Get lost,” said Guido.

Stanley's version of taking the afternoon off was to have a long lunch with Vincent, who was now established in his affections as a full cousin. Stanley was in need of guidance and no one had ever given it to him. His brother Muggs's only advice to him had been “Never mix drugs.” And since Muggs lived in California as well as having been judged useless by Stanley, Vincent was an admirable older brother substitute.

“I've got this problem,” he said to Vincent.

“You're too young to have problems,” said Vincent.

“Well, I do. Just because I'm young is no reason not to take me seriously. I'm in what they call a lying situation. I mean, I lie to Sybel because she thinks I love her all the time, but, in fact, half the time I'm with her I think about Misty's friend Maria Teresa.”

“Maria Teresa thinks you're a bug. She's too old for you,” said Vincent.

“It's not
her
, man. Per se, I mean. It's the thought of her, see. I mean, Sybel is good for me. The food she eats has a lot of resistance. It makes you healthy. She makes me do these yoga exercises in the morning and then we meditate. I mean, she meditates. I just check out her feet and stuff, and don't pay any attention. Basically, I concentrate on Maria T. I make up love letters in Latin and stuff. I don't know. Sometimes, I think it's because I'd like to eat ice cream once in a while without guilt, or maybe I don't really have the right feelings about Sybel. I mean, I feel I ought to be honest with her.”