Douglas Kennedy: The Pursuit of Happiness

'Mommy!'

Ethan was squeezing my hand. 'Mommy! I want to go home!'

I snapped back to Queens. And the sight of my mother's coffin. I said, 'Let's first say goodbye to Grandma'.

I led Ethan forward, sensing that all eyes were on us. We approached the shiny teak coffin. Ethan knocked on it with his small fist.

'Hello, Grandma. Goodbye, Grandma'.

I bit hard on my lip. My eyes filled up. I glanced at my father's grave. This is it. This is it. An orphan at last.

I felt a steadying hand on my shoulder. I turned around. It was Matt. I shrugged him off. And suddenly knew: it's me and Ethan, and no one else.

The minister gave me another of his telling glances. All right, all right, I'll move it along.

I put my hand on the coffin. It felt cold, like a refrigerator. I pulled my hand away. So much for grand final gestures. I bit my lip yet again, and forced myself to stay controlled. I reached for my son. I led him towards the waiting car.

Matt was waiting by the door. He spoke quietly.

'Katie, I just wanted to...'

'I don't want to know'.

'All I was going to say...'

'Do you speak English?'

'Would you please listen...'

I started grabbing the car door. 'No, I will not listen to you...'

Ethan tugged my sleeve. 'Daddy said he'd take me to the IMAX movie. Can I go, Mommy?'

It was then that I realized just how shipwrecked I was.

'We have a party...' I heard myself saying.

'Ethan will have a better time at the movies, don't you think?' Matt said.

Yeah, he would. I put my face in my hands. And felt more tired than I had ever felt in my life.

'Please can I go, Mommy?'

I looked up at Matt. 'What time will you have him home?'

'I was thinking he might like to spend the night with us'.

I could see that he instantly regretted the use of that last pronoun. Matt continued talking.

'I'll get him to school in the morning. And he can stay the next couple of nights if you need...'

'Fine', I said, cutting him off. Then I crouched down and hugged my son. And heard myself saying, 'Are you my friend, Ethan?'

He looked at me shyly, then gave me a fast kiss on the cheek. I wanted to take that as an affirmative answer, but knew I'd be brooding about his lack of a definite response for the rest of the day... and night. And simultaneously wondering why the hell I'd asked that dumb question in the first place.

Matt was about to touch my arm, but then thought better of it.

'Take care', he said, leading Ethan off.

Then I felt another hand on my shoulder. I brushed it off, as if it was a fly, saying to whoever was behind me, 'I really can't take any more sympathy'.

'Then don't take it'.

I covered my face with my hand. 'Sorry, Meg'.

'Say three Hail Marys, and get into the car'.

I did as ordered. Meg climbed in after me.

'Where's Ethan?' she asked.

'Spending the rest of the day with his dad'.

'Good', she said. 'I can smoke'.

While reaching into her pocket book for her Merits, she knocked on the glass partition with one hand. The driver hit a button and it slowly lowered.

'We're outta here, fella', Meg said, lighting up. She heaved a huge sigh of gratification as she inhaled.

'Must you?' I asked.

'Yeah, I must'.

'It'll kill you'.

'I never knew that'.

The limo pulled out on to the main cemetery drive. Meg took my hand, locking her thin, varicose fingers with mine.

'You hanging in there, sweetheart?' she asked.

'I have been better, Meg'.

'A couple more hours, this entire fucking business'll be over. And then...'

'I can fall apart'.

Meg shrugged. And held my hand tighter.

'Where's Charlie?' I asked.

'Taking the subway back into town'.

'Why the hell is he doing that?'

'It's his idea of penance'.

'Watching him break down like that, I actually felt sorry for him. If he'd just picked up the phone towards the end, he could have straightened out so much with Mom'.

'No', Meg said. 'He wouldn't have straightened anything out'.

As the limo approached the gates, I caught sight of that woman again. She was walking steadily towards the cemetery entrance, moving with fluent ease for someone her age. Meg saw her as well.

'Do you know her?' I asked.

Her answer was a couldn't-care-less shrug.

'She was at Mom's grave', I said. 'And hung around during most of the prayers'.

Another shrug from Meg.

I said, 'Probably some kook who gets her giggles loitering in cemeteries'.

She looked up as we drove by, then lowered her eyes quickly.

The limo pulled out into the main road, and turned left in the direction of Manhattan. I fell back into the seat, spent. For a moment there was silence. Then Meg poked me with her elbow.

'So', she said, 'where's my twenty bucks?'

Two

AFTER THE CEMETERY, fifteen of the twenty graveside mourners returned to my mother's place. It was quite a squeeze - as Mom had spent the last twenty-six years of her life in a small one-bedroom apartment on 84th Street and West End Avenue (and even on those truly rare occasions when she entertained, I can't remember more than four people in her home at any given time).

I had never liked the apartment. It was cramped. It was badly laid out. Its southwest position on the fourth floor meant that it overlooked a back alleyway, and was rarely in contact with the sun. The living room was eleven feet by eleven, there was a bedroom of equal size, there was a small en-suite bathroom, there was a ten-by-eight kitchen with elderly appliances and scuffed linoleum. Everything about the apartment seemed old, tired, in desperate need of updating. Three years ago, I'd managed to convince Mom to get the place repainted - but, like so many old West Side apartments, this new coat of emulsion and gloss simply added another cheap veneer to plaster work and moldings that were already an inch thick with decades-worth of bad paint. The carpets were getting threadbare. The furniture was in need of recovering. What few so-called luxury items she owned (a television, an air-conditioner, an all-in-one stereo unit of indeterminate Korean origin) were all technologically backward. Over the past few years, whenever I had a bit of spare cash (which, it has to be said, wasn't very often), I'd offer to update her TV or buy her a microwave. But she always refused.

'You have better things to be spending your money on', she'd always say.

'You're my mom', I'd retort.

'Spend it on Ethan, spend it on yourself. I'm fine with what I've got'.

'That air-conditioner is asthmatic. You're going to boil in July'.

'I have an electric fan'.

'Mom, I'm just trying to help'.

'I know that, dear. But I am just fine'. She'd give the last two words such pointed, tetchy emphasis that I knew it was useless to pursue the issue. This topic of conversation was closed.

She was always denying herself everything. She hated the idea of turning into a burden. And - being a genteel, yet fiercely self-respecting WASP - she loathed the notion of being a suitable case for charity. Because, to her, it implied personal failure; a collapse of character.

I turned around from where I was standing in the living room, and caught sight of a cluster of framed family photos on an end table next to the sofa. I walked over and picked up a snapshot I knew all too well. It was of my father in his Army uniform. It was taken by my mother at the base in England where they met in 1945. It had been her one overseas adventure - the only time in her life that she ever left America. Having volunteered for the Red Cross after college, she'd ended up as a typist, working at an outpost of Allied Command HQ in suburban London. That's where she encountered the dashing Jack Malone, cooling his Brooklyn heels after covering the Allied liberation of Germany for Stars and Stripes - the US Army newspaper. They had a fling - of which Charlie was the byproduct. And they suddenly found their destiny spliced together.