Douglas Kennedy - The Pursuit of Happiness

Oh, God...

This time, I received a dozen pink carnations. And, of course, a card:

Please forgive me. Please call me.

Love, Jack

I put the flowers in water. I tore up the card. I prayed that my letter would arrive at his office this morning, and that he would get the message and leave me be.

But, at eight the following morning... buzz.

'Handleman's Flowers'.

'What's it today?' I asked the delivery guy.

'A dozen lilies'.

'Take them back'.

'Sorry, lady', he said, thrusting them into my hand. 'A delivery is a delivery'.

I found my third (and last) vase. I arranged the flowers. I opened the card.

I am taking the fork in the road.

And I still love you.

Jack

Damn him. Damn him. Damn him. I grabbed my coat and stormed off in the direction of Broadway - to a Western Union office on 72nd Street. Once there, I went over to the main counter and picked up a telegram form and a much-chewed pencil. I wrote:

No more flowers. No more platitudes. I do not love you.

Stay out of my life. Never see me again.

Sara

I walked over to a hatch in the wall, and handed the form to a clerk. He read the message back to me in a deadpan voice, saying Stop every time I had indicated a period. When he was finished, he asked me if I wanted the regular or fast rate.

'As fast as possible'.

The charge was a dollar-fifteen. The telegram would be delivered to Jack at his office within two hours. As I reached into my purse to pay for the telegram, my hand began to shake. On the way home, I stopped in a luncheonette and stared down into a black cup of coffee, trying to convince myself that I had done the right thing. My life - I told myself - was finally going well. I was enjoying professional success. I was materially comfortable. I had gotten through the marital breakup as cleanly as could be expected. All right, the knowledge that I would never have children continued to haunt me... but it always would be there, no matter who I was with. And it would most certainly be there if I was involved with a married man. Especially one who already had a child of his own.

All right, all right, I still loved him. But love cannot succeed without a pragmatic foundation. And there was nothing pragmatic about Jack's situation. It would only lead us - me - to grief.

So, yes, I had done the right thing in sending that telegram. Hadn't I?

I was out for the rest of the day. When I got home that night, I opened the door and felt an acute stab of disappointment when there wasn't a telegram from Jack waiting for me. I slept until nearly noon the next morning. Waking up with a jolt, I immediately went downstairs to see if the mail yielded anything from Mr Malone. It didn't. The thought struck me: no flowers today. Maybe I was so asleep I didn't hear the intercom...

I made a call to Handleman's Flowers.

'Sorry, Miss Smythe', Mr Handleman said, 'today wasn't your lucky day'.

Nor was the next day. Or the day after. Or the day after that.

A week went by without a word from Jack. Stay out of my life. Never see me again. Oh God, he'd taken me at my word.

Again and again, I told myself I had made a wise, sensible decision. Again and again, I longed for him.

And then, nine days after I sent that telegram, a letter finally arrived. It was short. It read:

Sara:

This is the second hardest letter I've ever written in my life. But unlike the first letter, I will mail this one.

I will respect your wishes. You won't hear from me again. But know this: you will always be with me - because I will never get you out of my head. And because you are the love of my life.

I didn't tear this letter up. Perhaps because I was too stunned at the time. Later that morning, I took a taxi to Penn Station and boarded the train to Chicago - where some local ladies' club had invited me to give a lunchtime talk to their members, and were paying me two hundred dollars, plus all my expenses, for an hour's work. I was supposed to have been away for four nights. Instead, I arrived in Chicago in time for the city's worst blizzard in thirty years. As I quickly discovered, a Chicago blizzard made the equivalent Manhattan climatic event look like a mild sprinkling of flurries. Chicago didn't simply come to a standstill - it became petrified. The mercury dipped to ten below zero. The wind off Lake Michigan sliced you like a scalpel. The snow kept falling. My talk was canceled. My train back east was canceled. Venturing outside was impossible. For eight days I was incarcerated within the Hotel Ambassador on North Michigan Avenue, passing the time by punching out a few more 'Real Life' columns on my Remington, and reading cheap mysteries. Thinking: this isn't the American Midwest. This is a bad Russian novel.

Every hour of every day, I kept trying to convince myself that sending that telegram to Jack was the correct decision. He'd fractured my heart once before. I was right not to let him do it again. Or, at least, that's the justification I kept repeating over and over, in an attempt to stop myself from thinking I had made the worst mistake of my life.

Eventually, the trains started running again. Getting a reservation back to New York was a nightmare. After forty-eight hours, the concierge at the Hotel Ambassador finally managed to wangle me a seat, but no berth. So I sat up all night in the bar car, drinking black coffee, trying to read the latest J.P. Marquand novel (and getting rather fed up with the alleged spiritual crisis suffered by his starchy Boston banker hero), nodding off, and waking up with a stiff neck to sunrise over beautiful Newark, New Jersey.

It was cold, but clear in Manhattan. I deposited myself in a taxi, and slept all the way up Broadway. There was a pile of mail on the mat outside my apartment door. I shuffled through it. Nothing with Jack's telltale scrawl. He was really taking me at my word. I went inside. I checked my ice box and cupboards, and noticed that, yet again, I was low on stocks. I picked up the phone, called Gristedes, and gave them a big order. Because it was still early in the morning, they said they would send a delivery boy around with the groceries in under an hour.

So I unpacked, then had a bath. As I was drying myself off, the intercom rang. I threw on a bathrobe, wrapped my hair in a towel, dashed into the kitchen, picked up the receiver, and said, 'Be there in a sec'.

I went out into the hallway. I opened the front door. Jack was standing there. My heart missed about four beats. He smiled one of his anxious smiles.

'Hello', he said.

'Hello', I said, sounding toneless.

'I got you out of the bath'.

'Yes. You did'.

'I'm sorry. I'll come back later'.

'No', I said. 'Come in now'.

I led him into my apartment. As soon as he closed the door behind him, I turned to face him. Less than a second later, we were in each other's arms. The kiss went on for a very long time. When it ended, he said my name. I silenced the possibility of any further talk by putting my hand behind his head, and kissing him again. It was a deep, long kiss. There was no need for words. I just wanted to hold him. And not let go.

Three

LATER THAT MORNING, I turned to Jack and said, 'I want you to grant me one small wish'.

'I'll try'.

'Let me have you to myself all day'.

'Done deal', he said, slipping out of my bed and walking naked into the kitchen. I heard him dial the phone, and make low muted conversation for a few minutes. Finally he returned to the bedroom, clutching two bottles of beer.

'I'm now officially out-of-town on business until Friday at five p.m.', he said. 'That's three days, two nights. Tell me what you want to do, where you want to go...'

'I want to go nowhere. I just want to stay here with you'.

'Fine by me', he said, crawling back into bed and kissing me deeply. 'Three days in bed with you sounds like the best idea imaginable. Especially as it also gives us the license to drink Schlitz at ten in the morning'.