I Wish You Happy: A Novel

by Kerry Anne King

  I think of all the ways I’ve failed her. All of the times she lashed out at me.

  All I need to do is say the words, I tell myself. How hard is that? Nobody said I have to feel them.

  And so I begin.

  May you be happy.

  May you be free of physical pain and suffering.

  May you be healthy and strong.

  As I recite the words they come alive, and I feel the knots that bind me so tightly to Kat begin to loosen. A sadness wells up in me, a loss, but there is nothing bitter in it. The tears that track down my cheeks feel clean, like rain washing away the dust after a windstorm.

  In my mind I see Kat healthy and strong, hand in hand with Tom. She smiles at me, and I find myself smiling back, guilt and anger slipping away. I see her turn to Tom, leaning on his shoulder, and the two of them walk away from me into an obscuring mist.

  Which leaves me alone with myself.

  My relationship with Leila Elizabeth Blackwell Chatworth a.k.a. Rae is the most complicated and treacherous of all. If I’m not focused on saving somebody else, then what is there? Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want? If I were a cartoon character I would have big, empty bubbles hanging over my head where the words are supposed to go that answer these questions.

  The words of the meditation are waiting, and I go back, finally, to repeat all of those wishes for myself, for crazy misfit Rae, for the Rae in Tana’s picture, the laughing girl with the mysterious orb hanging unseen above her head.

  May I be safe and protected.

  May I be happy.

  May I be able to live in this world happily, peacefully, joyfully, with ease.

  Nothing transcendental happens. There is no sudden shift or epiphany. But I catch again that glimpse of a reality in which I have a purpose and a reason for being. Where I matter as much as Kat, or Mason, or Cole.

  And this time the moment doesn’t slip away from me.

  When I’m through I feel quiet and almost reverent, as if the meditation should end with an amen and the tolling of church bells.

  I also want to do something, to make a change, to keep myself from slipping back into the old patterns.

  The easiest place to start is with right here where I live. I want a place like Tana’s, a place that makes me feel reverent and joyful and invigorated. Maybe it will take me awhile to get there, but there’s no reason I can’t start now.

  Taking action turns out to be a huge relief. I’ve got a box of giant trash bags left over from last fall’s leaf raking. Holding the serenity of Tana’s uncluttered space in my mind’s eye like the Holy Grail, I whirl through my house getting rid of anything I don’t need. Old clothes I haven’t worn in a year, knickknacks, outdated kitten formula, all manner of miscellaneous gadgets that once seemed cool enough to alter the course of history but have not been touched in years.

  At the center of this whirlwind sits my bloodstained couch, the elephant in the room. It’s old-fashioned and heavy, a relic of the days when furniture was made with real wood and meant to last. When I brought it home, I bribed a couple of neighbor kids with pizza to help me drag it in.

  Now, I don’t know how I’m going to get it out.

  Shoving the ruined cushions into trash bags is relatively easy, but the couch itself wants to be a permanent fixture. I can’t drag it. But if I get behind it, bend my knees, and shove with my backside, I find I can budge it a few inches.

  It takes an hour to move it as far as the door, and then I’m forced to admit that all the stubbornness built into my genetic code is not going to let me move that sucker outside without assistance, and even if I do get it out there, I can’t leave it sitting on the lawn. My landlord will throw a conniption fit.

  So I straighten my shirt, unstick my hair from my sweaty face, and open the door to go on a quest for male muscle, only to find it standing on the doorstep.

  Cole’s arm is raised, ready to knock.

  “Damn. Do you have precognitive ability or did you hear me drive in?”

  I’m not in any shape to deflect either the intensity of his focus or the expression in his eyes, so I blurt out the first words that form in my addled brain.

  “You said you would call.”

  God. Nice opener, Rae.

  “Your phone has been ringing busy all morning.”

  And a nice evasion on his part. He releases me from his gaze, and I manage to get a normal breath. His eyes widen as he takes in the wreckage behind me.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  I can only imagine how it looks through his eyes. The naked couch right in front of the door. Trash bags randomly scattered around the room, some trailing contents out of their gaping maws.

  “It’s not exactly what I was going for.”

  “No? I thought maybe I’d missed something in decorating trends.” His lips turn up in a grin, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. His hands are in his pockets, his posture casual, but there’s enough tension radiating from him to make my fingers twitch.

  Generally, I’m polite about what I pick up from people. If they don’t want to talk about it, I leave it alone. Today, God help me, not so much.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  A lie and a deflection. All in one breath, he tumbles off the pedestal where I’ve placed him, right into the center of my heart. I give him a full-on smile.

  “No worries. You don’t have to talk about it. Help me with this couch instead.”

  “What exactly are we doing with the couch?”

  “Removing it from the scene of the crime.”

  He assesses the room beyond me as if debating whether there really was a crime, and then he grins at me, a real one this time, his eyes lighting with amusement. “Where is it going?”

  “I hadn’t gotten that far yet. My goal was out of the house.”

  “Well, since I happen to have a pickup truck, maybe we could push the boundaries. It doesn’t look like a Goodwill special.”

  “Dump, for sure.”

  “Let’s do it. Does the rest of this go, too?”

  Make a decision, Rae. No going back from this point. “The rest of it goes, too. Some to the dump, some to Goodwill.”

  He nods. “I’m yours to command. Let’s get the couch first.”

  With him on one end and me on the other, we manage to force the monstrosity through the doorway and up into the bed of his truck. After that, the rest is easy. Bags for the dump in the back, bags for Goodwill in the cab.

  “Good thing it’s Saturday,” Cole says as he shifts the truck into gear.

  “Because we’re not working?” I hazard, contemplating the expanse of bench seat that stretches between him and me. He has guarded with care the space boundaries between us, not so much as grazing my arm with his while passing me in the doorway.

  “Well, yes, otherwise neither of us would be here. But also because the dump is open. Which it wouldn’t be tomorrow.”

  I am ignorant of the dump and its ways, relying on the garbage truck to come and pick up my trash every Wednesday morning. While we were busy and working together it was easy to pretend there’s not a rift between us, but now a silence grows, ominous and difficult. Cole’s fingers tap out a rhythm on the steering wheel. I sit on my own hands to keep them from some similar betrayal of my own unease.

  My imagination takes me down a thousand different rabbit holes, trying to guess what’s on his mind.

  “Shall I play twenty questions?” I stare straight ahead, not looking at him. If this is about Katya, I don’t want to see the judgment cross his face, the reminder that he thinks I’m broken and in need of fixing.

  “What?” He sounds startled, as if I’ve called him back from his own random thought trail in a neighboring galaxy.

  “This thing. Whatever is on your mind. I said you didn’t have to tell me, but I think you really do.”

  His fingers pick up the tempo on his steering wheel drum solo. He catches himself and stills them. “
That empath thing is a bit inconvenient.” His tone is light, to soften his words.

  “I dub thee king of the understatement. Sorry. Can’t turn it off.”

  My heart sinks. This is going to be a good-bye conversation. One last good deed from the magnanimous hero, helping me dispose of the aftermath of war, and then he’ll be out of my life.

  He gives me the side eye. “Don’t look so woebegone. It’s not that I don’t want to talk; it’s that I’ve been trying to figure out how to say it.”

  “I’m a big fan of just spit it out.”

  “I’ve noticed.” He laughs, but it’s dry and brief. “I’m much more comfortable with getting other people to spill their emotions. Not so much with my own. Part of that whole hero complex thing you happened to notice.”

  A lump wells up in my throat. Here we go. “I shouldn’t have said that,” I manage to choke out. “I wish I hadn’t.”

  “Why?” He glances over at me, his gaze holding for as long as safety allows before going back to the road. He sounds genuinely surprised. “It’s not like it isn’t true. You put your finger right on the problem, in that slightly freaky way you have.”

  “And if I hadn’t pointed it out, would you have called? Would we be this awkward with each other? That’s why I shouldn’t have said it.”

  He doesn’t rush into explanations about why he didn’t call. No excuses. No comforting lies. Finally, he shakes his head. “You pointed out what I already knew but hadn’t found the words for. When you offered . . . when I said there were too many strings . . . that’s what I meant. My hero complex. My need to rush in and rescue the damsel in distress.”

  I let this sink in, trying to see myself through his eyes and not liking the picture that emerges. Tears fill my eyes, and I focus on the road, trying not to blink in case that makes them fall. It takes a minute before I can trust my voice again.

  “I don’t need rescuing.”

  “Clearly.”

  “If that’s sarcasm I hear, let me tell you—”

  “It’s not sarcasm. Damn it.” I’m not sure whether the damn it is a natural part of this conversation, or because we’ve reached the dump and there is a line of five vehicles in front of us.

  “Shouldn’t your super feeling senses make this conversation easier instead of harder?”

  “Ha. If that was the case, I’d wear a spangly unitard with a capital E on it. And a cape. A cape would be fun, don’t you think?”

  “Now who’s being sarcastic?”

  “That would be me. Look. The whole empath thing isn’t fun for me, Cole. It’s not a party trick. I can’t turn it on and off at will, and so far it’s torpedoed every real relationship I’ve tried to engage in. All I’m picking up from you is tension and unhappiness and anger. I assume it’s directed at me.”

  “At you? God no.” A vehicle behind us honks, and I see through a blur of tears that the line has moved up, but we haven’t. Cole moves up behind the truck in front of us and its haphazard load of squashed cardboard boxes, an old mattress fastened on top with tie-down straps.

  “Oh hell,” he says. “I really like you, Rae.”

  “And this is a problem?”

  “Yes. This is a problem.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s not you. It’s me.”

  “God, Cole. You can do better than that. That brush-off was invented by a hairy guy in a skin loincloth carrying a club.”

  “It’s not a brush-off.” The truck ahead of us pulls through the gate and stops on the scales, leaving us directly behind a traffic signal, waiting for the green light.

  “Okay. So it’s not me and it’s not you; it’s both of us. You’re a hero, and you think I’m a damsel in distress. Or a hobbit, maybe, and you’re Aragorn the mighty warrior . . .”

  “It was a hobbit who saved Middle-earth, if you care to recall. All right. Truth. When you got all tangled up with Katya, I thought maybe you had a tendency toward codependency, and I didn’t want to . . . shit. I’m going to have to tell you.”

  “Light’s not going to get any greener,” I tell him.

  “What? Oh right.” He drives the truck forward onto the scale. A disembodied voice, tinny through a speaker, advises us that we’ll have to drive around to the pit to dispose of furniture. Cole navigates the dirt road in silence.

  “I’m not codependent in general,” I tell him. “Only with Kat.” Is this true or an evasion? It feels like truth. But maybe that’s what my full-on switch is all about. Like I’m an alcoholic and just fell off the wagon, only my addiction is rescuing people instead of booze.

  A muscle jumps in Cole’s cheek. “You asked before why I do what I do—locking people up. And I didn’t tell you.”

  I have this horrible feeling he’s going to tell me now, and that it’s going to be a thing I don’t want to know. I cling to my image of him as healthy, balanced, untroubled by the usual baggage. Up until today his energy has felt blissfully clear and uncluttered.

  “I changed my mind,” I blurt out. “Don’t tell me.”

  “What?”

  “I just realized I like you as Hero, and you’re about to shatter your image.”

  “You’re a little freaky,” he says. “I’ve mentioned that, right? How did you know?”

  “This has nothing to do with being an empath.” I sigh. “Now you have to tell me, though.”

  If there was any more tension in his voice, it would snap like an elastic band. “This thing happened in college. First year. First serious girlfriend.”

  “No high school sweetheart?”

  He shakes his head. “A couple of crushes. And a five-day special when I was fourteen. No, Ashley was my first real love.”

  A little shiver of jealousy runs up my spine. “Where is she now?”

  “Dead. She killed herself.”

  “Oh, Cole. How horrible.” All of my protective instincts dive into the emotion pool at once. I reach out to touch his arm, the muscles hard and unyielding as stone. He doesn’t look at me, or acknowledge my touch, and I let my hand fall to the seat between us.

  “See?” he says, pulling the truck to a stop. “I tell you, and everything is different between us. Just like that.”

  I feel like the two of us are teetering on the edge of a precipice, and that my words are going to either steady us there or send our relationship plunging to its death on sharp rocks below. Silence, my old standby, is not an option.

  Still, neither of us speaks. A warm breeze carries the pungent smell of decomposing trash in through the half-open windows. The buzzing of flies and the distant sound of heavy machinery fill the air.

  “It’s not a bad different,” I say, carefully. “Better than half an hour ago when I thought you were mad.”

  Our world steadies as Cole draws a breath and lets it out in an audible whoosh. “Aren’t you now feeling an overpowering need to fix me?”

  I assess my emotional reaction, all of the feelings and the random jumble of thoughts. “I think I want to splint you.”

  He sputters at that. “You what?”

  “You’re not broken, exactly. Walking wounded, maybe, but everybody is.”

  “Splinting? Can’t say I’ve heard that expression before.”

  “Sorry. Rae speak. When the body sustains an injury—not a break, but maybe a pull or a tear or a sprain—it tries to protect itself. The muscles all around the injured spot tighten up to shore up the weak area.”

  “Which works but maybe causes problems somewhere else. I think I see where you’re going.”

  “Your girlfriend killing herself—you splint around that. And that leads to compensating. Like being a crisis worker. My guess is that it wasn’t your fault.”

  “I should have stopped her. There were signs.”

  All the thoughts and feelings that poured through me when I ran over Katya, when I came home to find her bleeding out on my couch, come trooping back. My chest is so full of love and sympathy and sadness it’s hard to breathe.

  “How old were you?”


  “Nineteen.”

  “Just a baby.”

  “Grown man, thank you very much. I was irritated with her for being a downer. I went to a party. She didn’t come. I should have known.”

  “Because I’m sure by then you had all the signs of suicide memorized and integrated and at your fingertips.”

  “The signs were pretty obvious. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  I’ve got nothing, no wishes I can pull out of my pocket to make any of this okay. We sit there, breathing in the disgusting stench of the pit, staring out at a vista of discarded refuse. I pick through the responses to his words, emotions, thoughts, trying to find a path forward.

  Finally, I revert to fact gathering as the safest bet. “Were you always going to be a psych major?”

  “Nope. Premed. Switched my major, and here I am.”

  “Doing lifelong penance.”

  “Never thought of it like that.” He shoos a fly off the steering wheel, and it comes over to visit me.

  I redirect the fly toward the open window, but it doesn’t get the message and starts bumping up against the windshield, buzzing loudly.

  “Are you allowed to be happy?”

  “Allowed? Are there happiness police now?” He smiles, evading, but I’ve been well trained by my sessions with Bernie, and I wait him out.

  Two more flies come in, and we now have a small fly gang. The breeze dies down, leaving the air heavy and hot. Sweat soaks the roots of my hair. The cloying stench of trash makes it hard to breathe.

  Cole reaches out and delicately moves a strand of hair that is glued to my cheek, tucking it back behind my ear, and letting his hand rest on the side of my head. His eyes hold mine, burning, intense. Maybe he’ll pull me over closer. Maybe he’ll kiss me.

  Another fly comes to join its buddies, making crazy circles around my head.

  Cole’s hand slides away, and his gaze falls to the seat. “I don’t know. I’d like to think so.” His lips curve up into a bare ghost of a smile. “Let’s get rid of the trash, shall we?”

  Getting the couch out of the truck is a far sight easier than getting it in. We give it a good shove at the edge of the pit, and it rolls once, before getting stuck with its bottom up, looking forlorn and unloved.