Douglas Kennedy - The Pursuit of Happiness

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Manhattan, Thanksgiving eve, 1945. The war is over, and Eric Smythe's party was in full swing. All his clever Greenwich Village friends were there. So too was his sister Sara, an independent, outspoken young woman, starting to make her way in the big city. And then in walked Jack Malone, a U.S. Army journalist just back from a defeated Germany, a man whose world view was vastly different than that of Eric and his friends. This chance meeting between Sara and Jack and the choices they both made in the wake of it would eventually have profound consequences, both for themselves and for those closest to them for decades afterwards. Set amidst the dynamic optimism of postwar New York and the subsequent nightmare of the McCarthy era, "The Pursuit of Happiness" is a great, tragic love story; a tale of divided loyalties, decisive moral choices and the random workings of destiny.

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He glanced up. His eyes met mine. He attempted a smile, but he couldn't bring it off. I tried to smile back - but I could see that he registered my alarm at his condition. Instantly, he slid out of the booth and got to his feet. Standing up, the severity of his weight loss was even more disturbing. He reached for me with both hands, then thought better of it, and proffered his right one. I took it. It felt thin, emaciated. His eyes were locked on me. I found it difficult to meet his gaze.

'Hi', he said.

'Hi'.

'You look wonderful'.

I didn't supply the normal refrain - 'You do too' - because it was impossible to do so. Instead, I looked down into the baby carriage. Kate was asleep - a pretty, chubby baby in a snowsuit, covered by a thick plaid blanket. I reached into the carriage. I stroked one of her hands. Instinctively, it opened. Her tiny finger closed around my pinky. I stood there, trying to hold everything in check.

'She's beautiful', I said.

He stood by my side and looked down with me.

'Yes', he said, 'she is that'.

'Dorothy and you must be very pleased'.

He nodded, then motioned for me to take a seat. I gently disengaged my pinky from her hand. I slid into the booth. He sat down opposite me. He ordered more coffee. His hands curved around his cup again. We said nothing for a while. He finally spoke, his eyes focused on the table.

'This is... I was always wondering... I... I'm glad to see you, Sara'.

I didn't know what to say. So I stayed quiet.

'I don't blame you for hating me', he said.

'I don't hate you'.

'You did'.

'Maybe. For a while. But... hate is a hard thing to sustain. Grief isn't. Grief is something that can stay with you for a very long time'.

'I know', he said. 'There have been periods over the last four years when I thought: will it ever get bearable?'

'Did it?'

'No. Never. I missed you every hour of every day'.

'I see'.

'And your grief for Eric. Did it ever... ?

'Dissipate? No. But I learned to live with it. Just as I learned to live with my grief for you'.

He looked up at me again.

'You grieved for me? he asked.

'Of course', I said. 'Endlessly'.

He stared at me with wounded bemusement.

'But... you refused to talk to me'.

'Yes. I did'.

'And you never read my letters?'

'That's right, they were never opened'.

'Then how can you say...'

'That I missed you all the time? Because I did. Because I loved you. More than anyone'.

He put his head in his hands. 'Then why the hell didn't you let me make contact, Sara?'

'Because... I couldn't. The grief was too big. I loved you so damn much that, when you betrayed Eric and me... when Eric died... I couldn't face you. What had happened was just too terrible. What made it even more terrible was... the fact that I understood why you had to do what you did. How you'd been put in an appalling situation; a situation in which it would have been easy to panic, to make a very wrong call. But that still... still... didn't lessen the repercussions of your choice. Because it took away the two people I valued most'.

The coffee arrived. He continued looking down at the table. He said, 'Do you know how often I've replayed that scene in my head?'

'What scene?' I asked.

'The scene where the two Feds were interviewing me in a conference room at Steele and Sherwood. The company's lawyer was with me. The interview had gone on all morning. I kept ducking and diving the question of the Communists I knew. For three hours, I stuck to my guns - and just named the people who had already named me. Finally, the Feds got frustrated - and asked to see the company lawyer in private. They must have been gone around twenty minutes. He came back alone. And said, "Jack: if you don't give them another name, you're going to be called in front of the Committee as a hostile witness. And your career at Steele and Sherwood will be finished."

'All I had to do was say no. That's all that was required. All right, I might have lost my job, but... I would have found a way of putting bread on the table. But they had me in a corner. And those Feds - they were so good at sniffing out your weaknesses. Jesus, did they play on mine. They knew all about us, of course - and they kept dropping hints about how, if I didn't cooperate, not only would I be fired from Steele and Sherwood, but word would probably get around about my complicated domestic arrangements. Not only would I be branded a pinko sympathizer, but Mr Flexible Morality. I remember exactly what one of the Feds told me: "Pal, if you were running two households in Paris, no one would give a shit. But in America, we operate according to a slightly harsher moral code: get found out, get fucked over. You'll be lucky to end up shining shoes somewhere."

'That's when I gave them Eric's name. As soon as it was out of my mouth, I knew I had killed everything. It was just a matter of time before you found out. And when Dorothy found out, she told me I was beneath contempt'.

'But didn't she understand that you did it for her and Charlie?'

'Oh, she got that all right. But she still saw it as another of my betrayals. She kicked me out for a while after that. Told me that she'd give me the divorce I'd always wanted... that I'd now be free to be with you...'

It took me a moment or two to speak.

'I didn't know', I said.

'If only you'd read my letters... if only you'd let me contact you... I kept thinking: this is the shittiest irony imaginable. And it's my own fault...'

He broke off, reached into his overcoat pocket, and fumbled around until he found a cigarette. He screwed it into a corner of his mouth. He picked up a book of matches off the table. He lit his cigarette with shaking hands. The light of the match cast his face in a gaunt glow. He looked so shrunken, so denuded, so defeated by everything. I saw myself throwing out his box of letters. Letters which he must have spent hours writing. As I spent hours writing him throughout the winter of '46... when I simply couldn't believe the wonderfully delirious love I felt for him. For four years, his letters sat gathering dust in Joel's office. Four years. I let them sit there. And then, on the day I returned to New York, I simply tossed them away - as a final act of reprisal. Why didn't I read them when he first sent them? Why did I have this need to punish him? A punishment which would now haunt me. Because I would always wonder: had I read those letters in the months after Eric's death, might I have understood? Might I have found a way of forgiving him? Might we have discovered a way back to each other?

'What happened after Dorothy threw you out?'

'I spent around six months on a fold-out couch in Meg's apartment'.

Meg. Her letter to me in the winter of '53:

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.

But, oh no, I couldn't be seen to weaken from my position. I had self-righteousness on my side. He had to be permanently condemned. He'd made his bed (as I so caustically wrote back to Meg). Now he could lie in it. Alone.

'Eventually, Meg engaged in some delicate diplomacy with Dorothy', Jack said. 'At heart, my wife has always been a complete pragmatist. And the reason she took me back was an utterly pragmatic one: living alone with a small child was difficult. "As far as I'm concerned," she told me, "you're a second pair of hands, nothing more. Except, of course, to Charlie. He needs a father. It might as well be you'."

'And you still went back after she said that?' I asked.

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