Brock Clarke - The Happiest People in the World

“I feel like a bird pecking at something.”

“I was going to guess that,” she said. She poured him a Saranac and handed it to him over the bar.

“Is it smoky in here?” he asked. It wasn’t really a question. It was smoky in there, and Ellen was one of the people who had made it that way. I thought you weren’t going to smoke anymore, was what he wanted to say next. Instead he asked, “Where’s Kurt?”

“Out with his cronies.” Kurt was their fourteen-year-old son. They were certain he was getting himself into some big trouble even though they had no hard evidence that he actually was getting himself into some big trouble. In any case, his grades were fine.

“Is everything OK?” they sometimes asked him.

“My grades are fine,” he always replied.

“So, what are you doing here, Big Red?” Ellen asked. Because she knew Matty didn’t like to come to the bar, especially on weekend nights, and she knew he didn’t like it when she called him Big Red, which she did, not because he had red hair or because he was big, but because that was Cornell’s sports teams’ nickname — the Cornell Big Red — and Cornell was his alma mater, and Matty did like to wear his Big Red baseball hat, even to the bar, even on a weekend night, when there would be lots of drunk people with whom he’d gone to high school who’d be reminded, by the hat, that he went to Cornell and that they didn’t go to Cornell, or anywhere else for that matter — all of this was in her opinion — and by his wearing his Cornell hat, Matty ran the risk of seeming like a superior jerk to these people, or of actually being a superior jerk, also in her opinion. And Ellen also knew he didn’t like it when she expressed this opinion, whether directly, or indirectly by calling him Big Red.

Was this normal, he wondered, to be married to a woman who did all these things you didn’t like? Did it make it better or worse that she knew you disliked them and did them anyway? Did it make it better or worse that you probably deserved it? Was it possible to still be in love with such a person? Was it possible for that person to still be in love with you? Am I really going to do this? he thought again, still.

“Whoa!” someone in the bar said. That was the lightning. A second later, there was the sound of someone falling and then glass breaking, and that was the thunder. Matty didn’t even have to turn around.

“So there’s your guidance counselor,” Ellen said.

“So there used to be my guidance counselor,” Matty said. Ellen raised one eyebrow, the way she did, and left it raised as she reached over, took off his hat, tucked it under the bar, and then disappeared into the kitchen to get a broom. Meanwhile, Matty rubbed his matted hair, then turned and walked over to talk to Sheilah. She was still on the ground. Her hair was wet now. Either someone had dumped a drink on her head and then she’d fallen, or she’d dumped a drink on her own head as she fell. In either case, someone had put another full glass of something in her hand. It looked like one of those vicious dark-colored drinks constructed of many different, competing kinds of liquor. Sheilah looked at Matty, or at least in his direction: she was looking either at him or at the stuffed moose head on the wall behind him. Whatever she was looking at, or thought she was looking at, her expression was vague and seemed only to be able to communicate something that would never be reassuring, something like, Hey, it’s all good. In fact, this was what Sheilah often told the students who came to her with their problems: “Hey, it’s all good.” And when they said, “Really?” she usually shrugged and said, “Sure. Why not?”

No one would wonder why Matty had fired her. The only thing they would wonder was why it had taken him so long.

It turned out Sheilah’s brother, Ronald, wasn’t in the Dominican Republic at all. He’d just gone to see a movie down in Utica.

“Did you ever go to a movie and then realize halfway through that you’ve seen it already?” Ronald said.

“You really weren’t in the DR?”

“And I didn’t even like the movie the first time I saw it,” Ronald said. “That’s the part I don’t get.”

“Why did I think you were in the DR?” Sheilah said.

“No offense,” Ronald said, “but only stupid people say things like ‘the DR.’ ”

“Oh really, ” Sheilah said. It was Saturday, late morning. They were walking on the towpath, which used to run alongside the Watertown-Barneveld Canal. Now there was no more canal, and the towpath had been repurposed to be a surface on which people who don’t really like to exercise could walk and call it exercise. Repurposed was an ugly word. So were towpath and canal . Especially since everything around them was so beautiful. Lovely, steep hills and deep ravines and creeks rushing over mossy boulders, and many different kinds of conifer — some runtish and scrappy, some tall and senatorial. There was even a bald eagle soaring overhead. Sheilah didn’t know much about birds, but there was no mistaking its regal white head. A bald eagle! It was incredible that an animal really could come back from the verge of extinction. Life! Rebirth! Majesty! But all Sheilah could think was, Repurposed, towpath, canal, the world is so full of such ugly fucking words. God, she was hungover. “And what do the smart people say?” she wanted to know.

“They say, ‘the Dominican Republic.’ ”

“You might be right,” she admitted. Ronald was three years older than Sheilah. A couple of years before, he’d gotten his left hand kind of injured at the sawmill and somehow had parlayed that into a lifetime supply of workmen’s comp, and all of that — his advanced age, his somewhat gnarled hand, his sinecure — made him seem wise to her in ways he hadn’t when they were children. Truth was, she had no idea why she’d started saying “the DR.” Possibly she’d heard one of the kids at school call it that.

“I got fired,” she said.

“No offense,” he said, “but I’m sure you deserved it.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you sounded hammered.”

“When?”

“On your phone message,” he said.

“I didn’t eat dinner beforehand,” she said. “That was my main problem.”

Ronald nodded. “I’m guessing your Bossman didn’t enjoy being called Bossman by his screaming-drunk guidance counselor.”

“But it’s not like that’s the first time that’s happened.”

“Well, yeah,” Ronald said.

But it wasn’t like it was the first time she’d gotten drunk at the Lumber Lodge and run into the principal, her boss, and said something inappropriate to him. It had happened many times; it was almost as though it had to happen, as though it was meant to happen. After all, there were only two bars in Broomeville, and the other bar was where the younger Broomevillians went, and no doubt if she went there, she’d run into some of her former students, and if they were as drunk as she, they’d no doubt remind Sheilah that, as their guidance counselor, she’d given them neither guidance nor counsel, and in drunken response she’d say something inane, something she’d probably said to them already, something like, “Hey, it’s all good,” which was perhaps the most idiotic expression on the planet, more idiotic even than “the DR,” and she’d hate herself for saying it, ever, not to mention many, many times, and hating herself, she’d get even drunker and maybe do something even more self-hate-worthy, like end up trying to have sex with one of these people, one of her former students whom she had not successfully guided, had not adequately counseled, and either this person would refuse, laughing, or accept, laughing, and in either case, the next morning she would wake up even sadder and lonelier and more full of the hungover death wish than normal. No, it was better to go to the Lumber Lodge and make a fool of herself in the company of people her own age, which was forty-seven, which she knew was ancient in bar years and felt older even than that. And since Principal Klock’s wife owned the Lodge, it was inevitable that Sheilah would see him there on occasion and make a fool of herself in his presence and end up insulting him in the bargain. It was fate, pretty much. She’d accepted that, and Principal Klock seemed to have accepted it, too. He’d never even given her a talking-to, never even given her a warning, in the eleven years of her employment, before he fired her, right there in the bar. That was the weird thing. And you know what else was weird? The look on his face after he’d pulled Sheilah to her feet and hauled her over and sat her down at the table under the moose head and delivered the bad news. It looked like he was going to cry; it looked like he hated himself. She recognized the look, because it was so often her own. His mouth said, “You’ve left me no choice,” but his face and eyes said, I can’t believe I’m really doing this.