The Pursuit Of Happiness Read online

  'It's not that obvious, is it?' I said, sitting down.

  'Oh no . . . not at all. Your eyes are only redder than your lipstick, and you have that post-coital glow . . .'

  'Shhh,' I hissed. 'People might hear you . . .'

  'They don't need to hear me. One look at you, and they'd know in a minute. You've got it bad, haven't you?'

  'Yes. I do.'

  'And where, pray tell, is your uniformed Don Giovanni now?'

  'On a troop ship, bound for Europe.'

  'Oh, wonderful. So not only do we have love, we also have instant heartache. Perfect. Just perfect. Waiter! A bottle of something sparkling, please. We need urgent lubrication.'

  Then he looked at me and said, 'Okay. I'm all ears. Tell me everything.'

  Fool that I am, I did – and worked my way through nearly two bottles of wine in the process. I always told Eric everything. He was the person I was closest to in the world. He knew me better than anybody. Which is why I dreaded telling him about the night with jack. Because I knew Eric had my best interests at heart. Which meant that I also knew how he'd interpret this story. Which, in turn, was one of the reasons I was drinking far too quickly and far too much.

  'You really want my opinion?' Eric asked me when I finished.

  'Of course I do,' I said.

  'My completely honest opinion.'

  That's when he told me I was an idiot. I drank a little more wine, and toasted Thanksgiving, and made that ludicrous comment about being deliriously happy.

  'Yes, delirium is the operative word here,' Eric said.

  'I know this all sounds mad. And I also know you think I'm acting like an adolescent . . .'

  'This sort of thing makes everyone revert to being fifteen years old. Which makes it both wonderful and dangerous. Wonderful because . . . well, let's face it, there is nothing more blissfully confusing than really falling for someone.'

  I decided to venture into tricky territory. 'Have you known that confusion?'

  He reached for his cigarettes and matches. 'Yes. I have.'

  'Often?'

  'Hardly,' he said, lighting up. 'Just once or twice. And though, at first, it's exhilarating, the big danger is the hope that there might be a life beyond this initial intoxication. That's when you can really do yourself some damage.'

  'Did you get hurt?'

  'If, during the course of your life, you've fallen hard for someone, then you've undoubtedly been hurt.'

  'Does it always work that way?'

  He began to tap the table with his right index finger – a sure sign that he was feeling nervous.

  'In my experience, yes – it does work that way.'

  Then he looked up at me with an expression on his face which basically said, don't ask me anymore. So, yet again, that section of his life was ruled off-limits to me.

  'I just don't want to see you get injured,' he said. 'Especially, as . . . uh . . . I presume it was the first time . . .'

  I quickly nodded my head, then added, 'But say you felt so certain about this

  'Excuse me for sounding pedantic, but certainty is an empirical concept. And empiricism, as you well know, isn't rooted in theory . . . but wholly in fact. For example, there is certainty that the sun will rise in the East and set in the West. Just as there is certainty that liquid will freeze below thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, and that if you throw yourself out a high window, you will land on the ground. But there's no certainty that you will be killed from that fall. Probability, yes. Certainty? Who's to know? It's the same with love . . .'

  'You're saying, love's like throwing yourself out a window?'

  'Come to think of it, that's not a bad analogy. Especially when it's a coup de foudre. You're having a relatively normal day, romance is about the last thing on your mind, you show up somewhere you didn't expect to be, there's this person on the other side of the room, and . . . splat.'

  'Splat? What a charming word.'

  'Well, that's always the end result of a free-fall. The initial plunge is totally intoxicating. But then, inevitably, you go splat. Otherwise known as: coming back down to earth.'

  'But say . . . just say . . . that this was truly meant to be?'

  'Once again, we're entering the realm of the non-empirical. You want to believe that this man is the love of your life – and that you were fated to meet. But all belief is theoretical. It's not grounded in fact, let alone logic. There's no empirical proof that this Jack Malone guy is the preordained man destined for you. Only the hope that he is. And in purely theoretical terms, hope is an even shakier concept than belief.'

  I was about to reach for the wine bottle, but thought better of it.

  'You really are a pedant, aren't you?' I said.

  'When necessary. I am also your brother who loves you. Which is why I am counseling caution here.'

  'You didn't like Jack.'

  'That's not really the issue, S . . .'

  'But had you liked him, you might not be so sceptical.'

  'I met him for . . . what? . . . five minutes. We had an unfortunate exchange. End of story.'

  'When you get to know him . . .'

  'When?

  'He'll be back on September first.'

  'Oh my God, listen to you . . .'

  'He promised he'd be back. He swore . . .'

  'S, have you lost all reason? Or judgment? From what you've told me, this guy sounds like a total fantasist . . . and something of an operator to boot. A classic Irish combination.'

  'That's not fair . . .'

  'Hear me out. He's on shore leave, right? He crashes my party. He meets you – probably the best educated, most elegant woman he's ever encountered. He turns on the blarney, the mick charm. Before you can say "hokum", he's telling you you're the girl of his dreams: The one I knew was meant for me. But, all the time, he knows that he can say these things without commitment – because, come nine a.m. this morning, he's out of here. And sweetheart, unless I've got this all wrong, you're not going to be hearing from him again.'

  I said nothing for a very long time. I just stared down at the table. Eric tried to adopt a more comforting tone.

  'At worst, chalk the whole thing up to experience. In some ways, him vanishing out of your life now is probably the best outcome. Because he will always be "that boy" with whom you had one wildly romantic evening. So the shine will never go off him. Whereas if you married the guy, you'd probably discover that he likes to cut his toenails in bed, or gargles too loudly, or clears his throat through his nostrils

  'Splat. You've brought me back down to earth.'

  'What else is a brother to do? Anyway, I bet you anything that after you get a really good night's sleep, a little perspective will sneak up on you.'

  But it didn't. Oh yes, I did sleep wonderfully that night. Nearly ten hours. But when I woke late the next morning, I was instantly consumed by thoughts of Jack. He took up residence in my mind within seconds of my eyes blinking open . . . and then refused to go away. I sat up in bed, and replayed frame by frame – our entire night together. I had total recall to the point where I could perfectly conjure up his voice, the contours of his face, his touch. Though I tried to heed my brother's advice – telling myself over and over that this was nothing more than a fanciful brief encounter – my arguments didn't sway me.

  Or, to put it another way, I could see all the reasons why I should be sceptical and dubious about Jack Malone. The problem was: I didn't want to accept any of them.

  That was the most unsettling aspect of all this – the way I refused to accede to logic, reason, good old New England common sense. I was like an attorney trying to contest a case she really didn't believe in. Whenever I thought I might just be on the verge of rational judgment, Jack would come flooding back into my mind again . . . and I'd be lost.

  Was this, verily, love? In its most pure, undistilled form? I couldn't attach any other meaning to what I was feeling – except that it was as all-consuming, debilitating, and dizzying as a serious bout of flu.
r />   The only problem was: unlike the flu, the fever wasn't breaking. If anything, it got worse with every passing day.

  Jack Malone would not leave me be. The ache I felt for him was huge.

  On the Sunday morning of Thanksgiving weekend, Eric phoned me at home. It was the first time we'd spoken since lunch at Luchows.

  'Oh, hi there,' I said flatly.

  'Oh dear . . .'

  'Oh dear what?' I said, sounding cross.

  'Oh dear, you don't sound pleased to hear from me.'

  'I am pleased to hear from you.'

  'Yes – and your exuberance is noted. I was just calling to see if the Gods of Balance and Proportion had landed on your shoulder?'

  'No. They haven't. Anything else?'

  'I detect a certain brusqueness to your tone. Want me to come over?'

  'No!'

  'Fine.'

  Then I suddenly heard myself saying, 'Yes. Come over. Now.'

  'It's that bad, is it?'

  I swallowed hard. 'Yes – it's that bad.'

  It got worse. My sleep began to fracture. Every night – somewhere between the hours of two and four – I'd snap awake. I'd stare up at the ceiling, feeling empty and full of the most overpowering sense of longing. There was nothing reasonable or clearheaded about this need I had for Jack Malone. It was just always there. Omnipresent. Irrational. Absurd.

  I'd finally surrender to my insomnia, and get out of bed, and go to my desk and write Jack. I wrote him every day. Usually I'd restrict myself to a postcard – but I might spend up to an hour drafting and redrafting a five-line epistle on a legal pad.

  I kept carbons of every letter I wrote Jack. Sometimes I would dig out the manila file in which I kept the copies, and read through this ever-expanding volume of lovesick missives. Whenever I closed the file, I'd always find myself thinking: this is preposterous.

  After a few weeks, it became even more preposterous. Because I'd yet to receive one letter from Jack.

  Initially, I tried to rationalize away the absence of news from my beloved. I would work out schedules in my head, figuring: it must have taken him nearly five days to reach Europe by ship, another couple of days to make his way to wherever he was being stationed in Germany, and then at least two weeks for his first letter to cross back the Atlantic to me (this was, after all, well before the days of Air Mail). Factor in the strain put on the postal system during Christmas – and the fact that there were still hundreds of thousands of GIs stationed around the globe . . . and it was suddenly clear why I hadn't heard from him by Christmas.

  But then the New Year arrived. And there was still no word from Jack . . . even though I continued to write him every day.

  I waited. No response. January ebbed into February. I became obsessed with the daily delivery of mail to my apartment building. It would arrive in a bundle around ten thirty. It took the superintendent around two hours to sort through it all, and place it outside each apartment door. I began to devise my work schedule at Life so I could get home by twelve thirty and collect my mail, then race back to the subway and return to my office by one fifteen (the end of my lunch hour). For two weeks I rigorously stuck to this routine, hoping against hope that, this day, the long-awaited letter from Jack would finally arrive.

  But I kept returning to the office empty-handed. And feeling a little more bereft with each passing day. Especially as my sleeplessness was beginning to escalate.

  One afternoon Leland McGuire stuck his head into the tiny cubicle where I worked.

  'I am about to give you the plum assignment of the week,' he said.

  'Oh, really,' I said, sounding a little distracted.

  'What do you think about John Garfield?'

  'Wonderful actor. Easy on the eye. Somewhat to the left politically . . .'

  'Yes, well, regarding that last aspect, we'll want to play down the political stuff completely. I don't think Mr Luce would appreciate reading about Garfield's socialist ideologies in the pages of his magazine. Garfield's a hunk. Women like him. So I want you to play up his "brawny, but sensitive" side . . .'

  'Sorry, Leland – I'm not following you here. Am I going to be writing something about John Garfield?'

  'Not only are you going to be writing about Garfield – you're going to be interviewing him. He's in town, and he's agreed to give us an hour of his time. So be there at eleven thirty to watch an hour of the filming, then you'll get a chance to talk with him around twelve thirty.'

  I suddenly felt a stab of panic. 'I can't do twelve thirty tomorrow.'

  'Pardon?'

  'I'm sorry, but I just can't do twelve thirty tomorrow.'

  'You already have plans?'

  I heard myself say, 'I'm expecting a letter . . .' God, how I instantly regretted uttering that sentence. Leland looked at me incredulously.

  'You're expecting a letter? I don't quite understand what that has to do with meeting John Garfield at twelve thirty?'

  'Nothing, Mr McGuire. Nothing. I'll be happy to do the interview.'

  He regarded me warily.

  'Are you sure about that, Sara?'

  'Absolutely, sir.'

  'Right then,' he said. 'I'll ask Garfield's press agent to call you after lunch, and give you a briefing. Unless, of course, you're busy after lunch, expecting a letter . . .'

  I met his stare. 'I'll look forward to his call, sir.'

  As soon as Leland left my cubicle, I careened down to the ladies' room, locked myself in a cubicle, and sobbed like a fool. Then I checked my watch. Twelve ten. I bolted out of the Ladies', out of the Time and Life building, then over to the subway. With several changes of train – and a quick dash from Sheridan Square – I made it to my apartment by twelve forty. There was no mail outside my door. Instantly I dashed down the stairs to the basement, and banged on the door of the superintendent's apartment. His name was Mr Kocsis – a tiny Hungarian in his fifties (he couldn't have been more than 4'11"), who always made a point of being surly . . . except around the holiday season, when he was expecting his annual Christmas tip. But this was mid-February, so he wasn't putting on the charm.

  'What you want, Miss Smythe?' he said in brittle English after opening his door.

  'My mail, Mr Kocsis.'

  'You get no mail today.'

  I suddenly felt jittery. 'That can't be true,' I said.

  'Is true, is true.'

  'Are you absolutely certain?'

  'You say I lie?'

  'There has to be a letter. There has to be . . .'

  'If I tell you "no letter", it's "no letter". Hokay?'

  He slammed the door on me. I made it back upstairs to my apartment, collapsed across the bed, and lay there staring at the ceiling . . . for what only seemed like a couple of minutes. After a while, I glanced at the clock by my bed. Two forty-eight. Oh God, oh God, I thought. I am cracking up.

  I leapt off the bed, ran out of the apartment, and into the first available cab. I made it to the Time and Life building just after three fifteen. When I reached my cubicle, there were four pink 'While You Were Out' slips on my typewriter. The first three were all messages from a 'Mr Tommy Glick – press agent for John Garfield'. The times of the messages were one thirty, two, and two thirty. The final message – logged in at two fifty – was from Leland: 'Come to my office as soon as you're back.'