Happy All the Time (10 page)

“I don't want to be polite,” said Guido. “Is Vincent worth it, or are you just stringing him along?”

“What a repulsive idea,” said Misty. “Of course I'm not stringing him along. What do you know? Maybe I love him.”

“Do you?”

“Don't be silly,” said Misty.

When Vincent appeared, he looked shy, boyish, and overwrought, and he tripped on the door ledge.

Guido was intensely domestic. Like French women who can tell if a bottle of Cognac has been opened in the next room, Guido could tell what was happening at home as soon as he put his key in the lock. As he stood in the foyer, he knew something was wrong.

In the bedroom he found Holly packing a large suitcase. Her clothes were piled in neat stacks on the bed. She looked up as Guido walked in.

“Are we going somewhere?” Guido said.

“No,” said Holly. “I am.” She frowned and began to count a stack of shirts. She had shirts in every pastel and color of stripe, made for her by a Chinese tailor who gave her a break on the price.

“Have I forgotten something?” said Guido.

“This is very spur of the moment. I'm going to France.”

“I see,” said Guido. He was cold with fury.

“You don't see,” said Holly. “These decisions come to me very quickly and when they do, I know I'm right.”

“Has it occurred to you, since you are married to me, to talk first and act second?”

“Yes, it has,” said Holly. “Life has been very perfect lately. It's so perfect I find it a little frightening. I almost can't see it. I think we need an artificial break. I think we need to be apart just for a little bit. I'm afraid that if one of us doesn't do this, we will wake up one morning covered with emotional cobwebs and taking each other for granted.”

Guido's face turned very dark. It was not often that he displayed his Italian temper. He thought of it as a tame lion that got out of hand from time to time. Now it was beginning to prance and roar.

“I could divorce you for this,” said Guido.

Holly sat on the edge of the bed. The night-table lamps were on, and the bedroom looked like a bedroom in a consoling children's story: rich, warm, and glowing.

“What you mean,” said Guido, “is that you are starting to take me for granted.”

“You didn't kiss me goodbye this morning,” said Holly.

“You were asleep,” said Guido.

“I was awake enough to know that you didn't kiss me.”

“And you're going away to punish me for not kissing you?”

“Guido,” said Holly, “we have a better marriage than most people. We like each other more. We are better friends. We have more fun. We have nicer dinners. But I think we are getting very used to it. Life is simply going on and on. I want to do something daring for us. I also need a little space for myself. I think some deprivation will do us a world of good.”

“There isn't any stopping you, is there?” said Guido.

“No,” said Holly. “Listen, darling, I know you think I'm being willful. You think I make decisions out of the sky and spring them on you. Well, I do, but not very often. I went away before we got married for a good reason. Most of the time we simply dovetail. I think that's dangerous as a steady diet and I know I'm right.”

“I'd like to strangle you,” said Guido.

“You're being unreasonable.”

“Unreasonable!” shouted Guido. “You're the one who's leaving me.”

“I am not
leaving
you,” said Holly. “I am going to France for a little while. We are getting very smug and used to each other and I will not have us taking each other for granted. My instinct tells me that this is right. It isn't for me alone. It's for us.”

“It's for you,” Guido said.

“You don't want to understand this,” said Holly. “You want to feel as if you're being badly treated. But you aren't. I feel that our love is very secure—at rock bottom, I mean. I believe in security but not in the matter of love from day to day. I
want
to miss you and I want you to miss me. If you believe in me, let me go. It's only for a little while.”

Guido sat on the chaise. Holly slid off the edge of the bed and onto Guido's lap. His anger did not get in the way of her irresistibility. She smelled of jasmine and her thick, dark eyelashes brushed his cheeks.

“Trust me,” said Holly. “This is good for us.”

By the next afternoon she was gone.

Guido spent the first day of her departure in his office staring out the window. As the days went by, he stared more and more. In the afternoons he became increasingly weary. Often he put his head down on the blotter and took a short, miserable nap. He found himself talking to himself in the mirror.

“I'm not going to be undone by you, or anyone like you,” he said. His mirror reflected back Holly. On good days he made plans for their future. On bad days he felt severed from all human contact.

Meanwhile, he had to put up with Vincent, who had become increasingly more agitated in his pursuit of love.

“It's cresting,” he said. “Misty invited me for dinner. Do you know, I've never seen the inside of her apartment before?”

“Good for you,” said Guido bitterly. He was a little sick of love in its infant stages.

“Betty Helen seems to be helping you out a lot,” said Vincent brightly, hoping this change of conversation would engage Guido. It did not.

“I mean, with Holly gone and all, she's a real symbol of dependency. Misty says it says a lot about you that you hired her.”

“I will not have Betty Helen made into a symbol of my mental state,” snapped Guido. “And I do not wish to hear the ravings of your psychoanalytical girlfriend on this subject.”

“I'm sorry, Guido. I was just trying to cheer you up. But Misty says some very interesting things about things.”

“I don't want to hear another interesting thing said by a woman,” said Guido. “They're all far too interesting.”

“Betty Helen must look pretty good to you,” Vincent said.

“Vincent,” said Guido in a voice of sinister calm. “Get out of here. You have turned into a chimpanzee. Stop gibbering and go back to work, if you
can
work.”

“I'm sorry, Guido,” said Vincent. “I'm not too good about knowing how to react. I feel awful about Holly. I just don't know what to do. Maybe I should take you out and we should get drunk.”

“That sounds fine,” said Guido. “As long as you don't say anything.”

When Vincent left, Guido canceled all his afternoon appointments and gave Betty Helen the afternoon off. She peered at him, puzzled.

“I don't understand,” she said.

“I'm declaring a holiday,” said Guido. “And giving us both the afternoon off.”

Betty Helen peered at him again.

“This is probably a more casual office than perhaps you're used to,” said Guido. “Go shopping. Go to the zoo. Go to the movies. Entertain yourself. Tomorrow will be business as usual.”

Betty Helen stood before him with her hands on her hips. Her glasses glittered at him. It was impossible to imagine that face smiling.

“Business will not be as usual tomorrow,” said Betty Helen. “There is not one usual thing about this place. I'm not complaining. I find it very interesting. It just isn't usual. I hope you don't mind me saying this. I like working in an unusual atmosphere. I find it very stimulating. However, I am a very organized person. I have not typed all my letters and if I left work early, I would have nothing planned to do. I like to do what I plan to do. So, if you don't mind, I'll stay here and finish those letters. Now, I would like to say something to you which I hope you won't mind. I am a teetotaler myself, but if I were you, I would go home and make myself a drink. You look terrible.”

Guido had never heard Betty Helen say more than a sentence or two. Now she had given him what was almost a lecture. And did he look so awful that it was visible even to Betty Helen? He peered back at her. Behind her glasses was yet another person he did not understand.

Guido did not entertain himself. He had no interest in zoos, shopping, or museums. The thought of going home upset him. Instead he went walking with the collar of his coat turned up. He bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked as he walked. Then he sat on a bench by the river and let the cold wind make his eyes tear.

Holly had him by the short hairs. She might know if the pictures on the wall were just a fraction crooked, but she was Genghis Khan in emotional matters. Was she one of those orderly people who wanted some form of disorder from time to time? Whatever she was, she certainly knew what she was doing. Guido might sit in his office every day and long for her, but not as ferociously as he did now. Maybe he had taken his marriage for granted after all. This infuriated him. How could he be angry with Holly for going away if she had been right to go away? The smooth surface of Guido's life now looked more risky, more uneven. Tranquillity was not a given of life—that was Holly's message. Guido tossed the pack of cigarettes into the river and pulled a cigar out of his pocket. Fairness of judgment certainly got in the way of temperament. Had he been able to work himself up to a real fury, he might have gone out and had one of those brief not unjolly affairs. He could have prowled around the Frick Collection looking for an adventuresome girl. Without that capability, he was condemned to living in that Holly-less apartment, forced to confront the light, sweet smell of her part of the closet, to grit his teeth over a lonely dinner, and write his Foundation report at the empty dining room table. He would see a few movies he had no desire to see. He would get drunk with Vincent and listen to him babble about his unpleasant girlfriend. There was no one he wanted to have an affair with but Holly. Each day brought him a postcard from her—a gorgeous postcard of some gorgeous place. Today's had been from a castle in Normandy. It read: “Am thinking all the time. Won't write a letter as would rather talk. Instructive to miss you.”

Misty had told Vincent to come to dinner at eight. That gave him three hours in which to be nervous and to rid himself of the last remnants of the hangover he had gotten on Guido's behalf. He scribbled Guido a note on office stationery. “Sorry to have wrecked your liver,” it read. He went home, changed his shirt, watched the evening news, read the paper, and paced around his apartment. Two blocks from Misty's apartment he realized he was fifteen minutes early. This led him around the corner where he found an open florist's shop.

“Give me something that looks like the things they hang on prize-winning horses,” he said.

The florist, a stooped old Greek, gave him an expressionless stare.

“Death, birth, or you got a girl?” he said.

“Girl,” said Vincent.

“Yeah,” said the florist. “How much you wanna spend?”

“Lots,” said Vincent.

The florist disappeared into a back room after looking at Vincent in a way that made it clear he dealt regularly with emotionally turbulent men who knew nothing about flowers. Vincent himself knew very little. About all he knew was that his Aunt Lila had once bred a hybrid rose and named it after her cleaning woman, Mrs. Iris Domato. The florist returned with a huge bouquet of tea roses, snapdragons, and stock.

“Usually you wanna spend this much, you have a fight with your wife,” said the florist. “You have a fight with your wife?”

“Girlfriend,” said Vincent.

“Flowers help sometimes,” said the florist. “And sometimes they don't.”

Vincent was almost sure Misty did not like flowers, but he wanted to bring her something huge and showy. A gesture of affection and hostility was just the sort of thing she might appreciate.

It was Friday night. Walking down Misty's street, Vincent thought he heard a violin. It was followed by an oboe and a flute. For a moment, Vincent thought he was hallucinating. As he walked, the music got closer. He passed a brownstone with open parlor windows. A girl with a violin in her hand looked out into the street. Behind her, Vincent could see a group of musicians tuning up. A plaque on the brownstone read: The New York Little Symphony Society. The girl in the window smiled at Vincent. She pointed to his flowers and smiled again. Then she picked up her violin and began to play the opening bars of the Kreutzer Sonata.

Vincent smiled and waved at her. He felt moved and foolish. How many other men were walking around the streets wearing fresh shirts and carrying huge bouquets of flowers? He sighed. Love put you under a yoke, the same yoke all lovers walk under like oxen. Love, he reflected, was not at all like science. It seemed unfair to him that there was nowhere one might research except to go to the thing itself. These thoughts brought him to Misty's door. He rang the bell and waited for her to ring back and let him in.

Misty's apartment was rather like her office, except that there was slightly more to see. She was neither tidy nor untidy. She was simply casual. She claimed not to be sentimental about possessions, and Vincent could see that this was true. She had an old blue couch, a blue chair, and a three-legged stool. In her bedroom was a plain bed with a blue and white spread and an oak desk. Most of the walls were taken up by bookshelves. The only decorative objects were a glass photograph of two stiff-looking people, a platter embossed with an ear of corn, and a little glass vase.

“These are for you,” said Vincent, handing her the bouquet. She took them without a word.

“Do you have anything to put them in?” he said.

“Probably not,” she said. They walked into her kitchen, where on the top of a shelf Misty was too short to reach without a chair was the small glass vase's taller brother, covered with dust.

“That's an awful lot of flowers,” Misty said. “Now what am I supposed to do with them?”

“It is common practice to put them in water and then place them attractively on a surface,” said Vincent.