Douglas Kennedy - The Pursuit of Happiness

What can I say, Sara? Except this: I know how deeply you once loved him. I don't ask for a miraculous reconciliation. All I ask is that, somehow, you find a way to forgive him - and to communicate your forgiveness to him. I think it would mean an enormous amount to him. He is now a deeply unhappy man. He needs your help to find his way back to himself. I hope you can put the tragedy you suffered to one side, and write him.

Yours,

Meg Malone

I was suddenly angry. All the pain I had put away suddenly came roaring back. I rolled a piece of paper into my Remington. I typed:

Dear Meg,

I think it was George Orwell once who wrote that all cliches are true. With that in mind, here's my response to your plea on behalf of your brother:

Jack has made his own bed. He can lie in it. Alone.

Yours

Sara Smythe

I pulled the letter out of the machine. Within a minute I had signed it, folded it, shoved it into an envelope, addressed it to Meg, and affixed the appropriate stamps and air-mail sticker to its front.

Two weeks after I mailed that letter, a telegram arrived for me at the offices of the Herald-Tribune. It contained four words:

Shame on you.

Meg

As soon as I read it, I balled up the telegram and threw it away. If Meg's reply was designed to make me feel awful, it succeeded. So much so that I ended up going out with a new friend from the Herald-Tribune - Isabel van Arnsdale - and drinking too much vin rouge, and telling her the entire damn story. Isabel was the paper's chief sub-editor - a stocky Chicago woman in her late forties. She'd moved over to Paris in '47, right after her third marriage collapsed. She was known to be a consummate journalistic pro, and someone who could put away a bottle of whiskey, yet still seem sober.

'Jesus Christ', she said when I finished telling her the tale of the past year. 'Correction: Jesus-fucking-Christ'.

'Yeah - I could use a spell of boredom', I said, sounding deeply tipsy.

'No - what you could use is a life without encumbrance'.

'There's no such thing'.

'True - but take it from a veteran of three crap marriages: there are ways of insulating yourself against further pain'.

'What's the secret?'

'Don't fall in love'.

'I've only done that once'.

'And, from what you said, it ruined your life'.

'Perhaps. But...'

'Let me guess: when it was right, it was... I dunno... Transcendental? Incomparable? Peerless? Am I getting warm?'

'I just loved him. That's all'.

'And now?'

'Now I wish he'd leave me alone'.

'What you mean is: you wish you could stop thinking about him'.

'Yes. That is what I mean. I still hate him. I still love him'.

'Do you want to forgive him?'

'Yes I do. But I can't'.

'There's your answer, Sara. From where I sit, it's the right answer. Most women would never have had anything to do with him after the way he initially disappeared on you. To then betray you and your brother...'

'You're right, you're right'.

'Your response to his sister's letter was the proper one. It's finished, over, kaput. Don't look back. He's a bad piece of work'.

I nodded.

'Anyway, as you already know, this town is crawling with interesting guys. Not to mention a lot of uninteresting guys who are still baisable, if you catch my drift. Go out, have some more adventures. Believe me, in a couple of months, you'll have gotten over him'.

I wanted to believe that. And to accelerate this distancing process, I continued my series of cavalier flings. No, I didn't turn into a femme fatale, with three guys on the go at once. I was an old-fashioned serial monogamist. I met someone. I took up with them for a little while. I let the thing run its course. When it started getting serious, or tiresome, or simply routine, I'd jump ship. I became an expert at disentangling myself from a relationship with the minimum of fuss. Men were useful for companionship, for occasional acts of tenderness, and for the ephemeral pleasures of sex. Anytime I found someone getting too dependent on me, I'd end it quickly. Anytime a guy started trying to change me - to wonder out loud what on earth I was doing living in a small atelier, and why I favored Colette-style pants suits over more 'feminine' apparel - they'd be politely shown the door. In the four years I resided in Paris, I had three marriage proposals - all of which I turned down. None of the men in question was wildly inappropriate. On the contrary, the first was a successful merchant banker; the second, a lecturer in literature at the Sorbonne; and the third, a would-be novelist, living on Daddy's trust fund. All of them were, in their own way, thoroughly charming and intelligent and emotionally stable. But each of them was on the lookout for a wife. That was a role I wasn't interested in ever playing again.

The years in Paris evaporated far too quickly. On December thirty-first, 1954, I stood on a balcony overlooking the avenue Georges V in the company of Isabel van Arnsdale, and assorted other Herald-Tribune reprobates. As car horns sounded - and a fireworks display illuminated the winter sky - I hoisted my glass towards Isabel and said, 'Here's to my last year in Paris'.

'Stop talking crap', she said.

'It's not crap: it's the truth. By this time next year, I want to be on my way back to the States'.

'But you've got a great life here'.

'Don't I know it'.

'Then why the hell throw it all away?'

'Because I'm not a professional expatriate. Because I miss baseball, and bagels, and Barney Greengrass the Sturgeon King, and Gitlitz's delicatessen, and showers that work, and a grocery store that delivers, and speaking my own language, and...'

'Him?'

'No goddamn way'.

'You promise?'

'When have you last heard me speak about him?'

'Can't remember'.

'There you go'.

'Then when are you going to do something stupid, like fall in love again?'

'Hang on - you told me that the only way to get through life was by never falling in love'.

'Jesus Christ, you really don't think I'd expect anyone to follow that advice?'

But the thing was: I had followed her counsel. Not intentionally. Rather, because, after Jack, no one I met ever triggered that wonderfully strange, deranged, dangerous surge of... what do you call it? Desire? Delirium? Passion? Completeness? Stupidity? Self-delusion?

Now I knew something else: I couldn't be with him, and I couldn't get over him. Time may have numbed the ache - but like any anaesthetic, it didn't heal the wound. I kept waiting for the day when I would wake up and Jack would have finally fled my thoughts. That morning had yet to arrive. An ongoing thought had started to unsettle me: say I never came to terms with this loss? Say it was always there? Say it defined me?

When I articulated this fear to Isabel, she laughed. 'Honey, loss is an essential component of life. In many ways, c'est notre destin. And yes, there are certain things you never really get over. But what's wrong with that?'

'It's so damn painful... that's what's wrong with it'.

'But living is painful... n'est-ce pas?'

'Cut the existential crap, Isabel'.

'I promise you this - the moment you begin to accept that you're not going to get over it... you might just get over it'.

I kept that thought in mind during the next twelve months - when I drifted into a brief fling with a Danish jazz bassist, and wrote my weekly column, and spent long afternoons at the Cinematheque Francaise, and (if the weather was clement) read for an hour each morning on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens, and celebrated my thirty-third birthday by giving notice at the Herald-Tribune, and writing Joel Eberts that the sublet of my apartment should end by December thirty-first, 1955. Because I was coming home.

And on January tenth, 1956, I found myself back at Pier 76 on West 48th Street, stepping off the SS Corinthia. Joel Eberts was there to meet me.