Douglas Kennedy - The Pursuit of Happiness

'You haven't aged one damn bit, counselor', I said after giving him a hug. 'What's your secret?'

'Constant litigation. But hey, you look wonderful too'.

'But older'.

'I'd say, "exceedingly elegant"'.

'That's a synonym for "older"'.

We took a taxi uptown to my apartment. As per my instructions, he'd arranged with the janitor to have it repainted when the tenants moved out before Christmas. It still reeked of turpentine and fresh emulsion - but the whitewash of the walls was a cheering antidote to the ashen January morning.

'Only a crazy person decides to return to New York in the thick of winter', Joel said.

'I like murk'.

'You must have been a Russian in a former life'.

'Or maybe I'm just someone who has always responded well to gloom'.

'What a lot of dreck you talk. You're a survivor, kiddo. And a canny one at that. If you don't believe me, check out the pile of bank and investment statements I've left in a folder on your kitchen table. You hardly touched a cent of your capital while you were in France. And the rent from the sublet built up rather nicely. Also: your stockbroker is one sharp operator. He's managed to add about thirty per cent value to both the divorce settlement fund and Eric's insurance payout. So if you don't want to work for the next decade...'

'Work is something I can't do without', I said.

'I concur. But know this - financially speaking, you're damn comfortable'.

'What's in here?' I asked, kicking a cardboard box that was by the couch.

'It's all of the accumulated mail I didn't forward to you over the years. I had it sent up yesterday'.

'But you forwarded me just about everything, except...'

'That's right. His letters'.

'I told you to throw them out'.

'I decided that there was no harm keeping them until your return... just in case you decided you did want to read them, after all'.

'I don't want to read them'.

'Well, your building gets its garbage collected once a day, so you can throw them out whenever you like'.

'Have you ever heard from Jack or his sister again?'

'Nope. Have you?'

I'd never told Joel about my reply to Meg's letter. I wasn't going to now.

'Never', I said.

'He must have taken the hint. Anyway, it's all history now. Just like Joe McCarthy. I tell you, I'm no conventional patriot - but on that day in fifty-four when the Senate censured the bastard, I thought: unlike a lot of other places, this country has the reassuring habit of finally admitting that it got something wrong'.

'It's just too bad they didn't censure him three years earlier'.

'I know. Your brother was a great man'.

'No - he was simply a good man. Too good. Had he been less good, he'd still be alive. That's the hardest thing about coming back to Manhattan - knowing that every time I walk by the Ansonia or the Hampshire House...'

'I'm sure that, even after four years, it still hurts like hell'.

'Losing your brother never gets easier'.

'And losing Jack?'

I shrugged. 'Ancient history'.

He studied my face carefully. I wondered if he saw I was lying.

'Well that's something, I guess', he said.

I changed the subject. Quickly.

'How about letting me buy us lunch at Gitlitz's?' I said. 'I haven't had a pastrami on rye and a celery soda in five years'.

'That's because the French know nothing about food'.

I hoisted the box of Jack's letters. We left the apartment. Once we were outside, I tossed the box into the back of a garbage truck that was emptying cans on West 77th Street. Joel's eyes showed disapproval, but he said nothing. As the jaws of the truck closed around the box, I wondered: why did you do that? But I covered my remorse by linking my arm through Joel's, and saying, 'Let's eat'.

Gitlitz's hadn't changed in the years I had been away. Nor had most of the Upper West Side. I slotted back into Manhattan life with thankful ease. The bumpy readjustment I had been dreading never materialized. I looked up old friends. I went to Broadway shows and Friday matinees at the New York Philharmonic and the occasional evening at the Metropolitan Opera. I became a habitue once again of the Met and the Frick and the 42nd Street branch of the Public Library, and my two local fleapit movie houses: the Beacon and the Loew's 84th Street. And every other week, I punched out a 'Letter from New York' - which was then dispatched, courtesy of Western Union, to the offices of the Paris Herald-Tribune. This bi-monthly column was Mort Goodman's farewell present to me.

'If I can't get you to stay and write for me in Paris, then I better get you writing for me from New York'.

So now I was a foreign correspondent. Only the country I was covering was my own.

'In the four years I was loitering with intent on the rue Cassette (I wrote in a column, datemarked March 20th, 1956), something curious happened to Americans: after all the years of economic depression and wartime rationing, they woke up one morning to discover that they now lived in an affluent society. And for the first time since the Roaring Twenties, they're engaged on a massive spending spree. Only unlike the hedonistic twenties, this oh-so-sensible Eisenhower era is centered around the home - a happy, reasonably affluent God-fearing place, where there are two cars in every garage, a brand new Amana refrigerator in the kitchen, a Philco TV in the living room, a subscription to the Reader's Digest, and where grace is said before every TV dinner. What? You expatriates haven't heard of a TV dinner? Well, just when you thought American cuisine couldn't get more bland...'

That column (written in one of my flippant H.L. Mencken-esque moods) caused my phone to ring off the hook for a few days - as it was picked up by the Paris correspondent of the very conservative San Francisco Chronicle, who used large quotes from it in a piece he wrote about the sort of anti-American rubbish that was being printed in an allegedly respectable paper like the Paris Herald-Tribune. Before I knew it, I was back in Walter Winchell's column:

News Flash: Sara Smythe, one-time yuckster for Saturday Night/Sunday Morning and recent professional American-in-Paris, is back in Gotham City... but not too happily. According to our spies, she's churning out a column featuring a lot of cheap cracks about Our Way of Life for all those bitter expats who choose to live away from these great shores. Memo to Miss Smythe: if you don't like it here, why not try Moscow?

Four years earlier, Winchell's smear would have killed all potential employment prospects in New York. How times had changed - for now, I received a series of calls from editors whom I used to know around town during the late forties and early fifties, asking if I'd like to have lunch and talk things over.

'But, according to Winchell', I told Imogen Woods, my former editor at Saturday/Sunday (now the number two at Harper's), 'I'm still the Emma Goldman of West Seventy-Seventh Street'.

'Honey', Imogen said, digging into her Biltmore Hotel cobb salad, and simultaneously signaling to the waiter for more drinks, 'Walter Winchell is yesterday's chopped liver. In fact, you should be pleased Winchell took another swing at you. Because it's how I found out you were back in New York'.

'I was surprised to get your call', I said carefully.

'I was really glad you agreed to meet me. Because... and I'm being totally honest here... I was ashamed of myself when Saturday/Sunday let you go. I should have stuck up for you. I should have insisted that someone else give you the news. But I was scared. Terrified of losing my lousy little job. And I hated myself for being such a coward. But I still went along with them. And that will always weigh on my conscience'.

'Don't let it'.

'It will. And when I read about your brother's death...'