Having Everything

by John L'Heureux

  Having Everything

  ALSO BY JOHN L’HEUREUX:

  Quick as Dandelions

  Rubrics for a Revolution

  Picnic in Babylon

  One Eye and a Measuring Rod

  No Place for Hiding

  Tight White Collar

  The Clang Birds

  Family Affairs

  Jessica Fayer

  Desires

  A Woman Run Mad

  Comedians

  An Honorable Profession

  The Shrine at Altamira

  The Handmaid of Desire

  Having

  Everything

  A NOVEL

  John L’Heureux

  Copyright © 1999 by John L’Heureux

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, to events, or to locales is entirely coincidental.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  The author wishes to thank Donald Finkel for permission to reprint a section of his poem “Three for Robert Rauschenberg,” from A Joyful Noise, © 1966, by Donald Finkel, published by Atheneum.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  L’Heureux, John.

  Having everything : a novel / John L’Heureux.

  p. cm.

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4679-4

  I. Title.

  PS3562.H4H38 1999

  813′.54—dc21 99-28837

  DESIGN BY LAURA HAMMOND HOUGH

  Grove Press

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  for

  Susan and Marsh McCall

  “There must be more to life than having everything.”

  M. Sendak

  Having Everything

  ONE

  1

  Philip Tate was forty-five and he had everything—a distinguished career, a still-beautiful wife, two healthy kids in top schools—and now he had the Goldman Chair. Furthermore he was a good man, essentially.

  He was thinking these things, a comfy self-evaluation appropriate to the moment, as that old fool Aspergarter rose to offer his toast. “Philip Tate and his lovely wife Maggie,” Aspergarter said, and then blah blah blah, who cares, on and on. Philip looked around the room at his handsome friends in their designer clothes, at the mahogany table and the lead crystal and the heavy sterling, at the deep red walls with the perfectly lit matching Klees, and suddenly he wanted out of here and out of these people’s company and out of this straitjacket life that was suffocating him and made him want to rip off his clothes and scream “No” and “No.” He smiled instead and tuned into the toast once again. Aspergarter was still droning on—Philip’s career as physician, as endocrinologist, as psychiatric voyager blah and blah—but finally, when nobody could stand another second of it, he ground to a halt: “To Philip Tate,” he said, “long life, good health, our eternal esteem. Please raise your glass with me to the new Tyler P. Goldman Chair of Psychiatry.”

  They all raised their glasses and drank.

  Philip stood up. He thanked Aspergarter and this splendid group, his friends, colleagues, their spouses, and said that he was speechless—as he often was—but this time he would follow his best instincts and say nothing. “Except thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  And so it was over. A truly dreadful evening. Then goodbyes and thanks and more good-byes and at last they were in their car, driving home.

  It was a beautiful June night, cool after a long sunny day, the kind of night that made people remark how lucky they were to live in Boston—in Cambridge, actually—the spring, the fall. But then there were the goddam winters, the ghastly summers … well, forget it.

  They drove in silence, thinking.

  Philip was thinking about the dinner party. From any reasonable point of view, it had been a great success. His friends had been there, some enemies but mostly friends, and they had all been happy for him, or at least most of them had been happy and the rest had pretended, and Maggie had been good, very good in fact, so he too should be happy, shouldn’t he? He should be triumphant. But he wasn’t.

  He smiled at Maggie.

  “What?” she said.

  “I’m feeling happy,” he said. “I’m feeling triumphant.”

  She looked at him and then at the road that lay ahead of them and said, “You can’t complain about me tonight. I was very good.”

  “I’m feeling happy, I told you. Jesus.”

  He turned back to the road and after a while she put her hand on his knee, conciliatory.

  “You know I love you,” he said, but it didn’t come out right. It sounded practiced. It sounded as if he was just saying what he had to say. Well, fuck a duck, he had tried to be nice.

  They drove on in silence.

  A few minutes later they turned down Brattle Street and then a quick left and they were home. Philip said, “Here we are,” and glanced over at Maggie. She smiled, looking straight ahead.

  “It was nice, Philip,” she said. “You should be proud.”

  She got out of the car and headed straight for the house.

  In the kitchen she drank a glass of water and took two aspirins. Philip watched her.

  “What?” she said.

  “Thank you for tonight,” he said.

  She looked at him, a question.

  “That’s all I mean,” he said, “just thank you.”

  “I’m all right,” she said.

  “I know, I know,” he said.

  He kissed her lightly on the lips and looked into her eyes. She looked away and her eyes wandered to the kitchen cabinet where they kept the breakfast cereal and the liquor.

  “Do you want a drink?” he asked. “Let’s have a drink.”

  “If I want one, I’ll take one. I don’t have to ask your permission.”

  “I’m gonna have one. Let me make you one.”

  “Haven’t you been toasted enough tonight? You and your goddam Goldman Chair?” She turned and left him.

  Philip poured himself a scotch. He could hear the bathwater pounding upstairs. She’d be having her secret drink now, he supposed, or taking her pills, or maybe both. She denied it, of course, but what could you do? There was no shorter route to a fight than asking her if she was okay. What is that supposed to mean? she’d say. Or she’d simply turn on that frozen silence she specialized in. There was no dealing with it. And he had no idea when it had begun, or why, or how serious it was.

  He sat at the kitchen table and leafed through an old New Yorker. He could remember laughing at these cartoons but he couldn’t remember why. Someday he should make a study of why people laughed. He knew all about Mounier and the mechanistic theory and the cruelty theory and the inappropriate response theory, but he wondered why they really laughed. He had a suspicion that laughter was just another manifestation of despair.

  He heard the bathwater being let out. She might come down now and make peace before going to bed. If only he could get through to her. He was a psychiatrist, after all, but that never see
med to make any difference around the house. She was a beautiful woman, very smart, and famous for her wit and charm but above all for her warmth. What on earth had happened to them? He heard her on the stairs and then suddenly she stood in the doorway, her blond hair loose about her shoulders, her face white, and her green eyes glittering with drink. He smiled, nervous.

  She kissed him, hard, and he stood up and held her in his arms. He tasted the toothpaste and the gin beneath it and he pressed her body against his own. She was shaking.

  “What is it?” he said. “Tell me.” He caressed her hair. “I love you, Maggie. You know that.”

  “Poor Philip,” she whispered. They were quiet for a long moment and he deliberately said nothing because perhaps now she might tell him what had come between them, and so he waited. They had everything, their kids and their lives and their health, and they were good-looking, with enough money, and they loved one another—didn’t they?—and yet they were wrecking it, somehow, in spite of themselves. He waited some more, but she said nothing. “Maggie?” he asked finally, but she only patted his back—it was all over—and gave him a little kiss on the cheek. “You poor thing,” she said. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.” She collapsed against him for a moment and then, in a distant voice, said, “I’ll probably sleep late tomorrow, Philip, I’m awfully tired.”

  He held her away from him and looked into her eyes. They were empty. She was half asleep already. Pills and booze no doubt.

  “Good night, love,” he said.

  She yawned. “Nighty-night,” she said, as if she were talking to a baby. She went upstairs to bed, saying, “Nighty-nighty-night.”

  Philip poured himself another scotch. He got out the ice cubes and deliberately made a racket with the metal tray. Why not? There’d be no waking her now. She’d be dead until the morning.

  He stood at the sink and looked at his reflection in the dark window. “Here’s to your Chair,” he said, lifting his glass. He drank. “And to your lovely wife and kids.” He drank again. “And here’s to happy memories.” For a good half the evening they had discussed recovered memory and poor old Gaspard. What could be nicer, really, than contemplating somebody else’s disaster as you downed lamb and polenta and a perfect cabernet? Oh, fuck them all, he hated parties.

  The official party—the one at the President’s house—had been held a week earlier. The Trustees had been there, and all the big money-givers, and the widow of Tyler P. Goldman himself. There had been endless speeches. Maggie drank a little too much and got surly and made snide comments during the final toast. It was a nightmare.

  He poured another drink and went into the tiny family room and flopped on the couch.

  This evening’s party had been given by Aspergarter, the retiring Dean of the Medical School, as an informal get-together for a group of Philip’s close friends. Nice of him to do it. He wasn’t obliged to give a party, after all; it was a gesture. Aspergarter had even consulted him about the guest list. The Big A understood how it was: Philip was getting a Chair, and all the heady prestige that went with it, and most of his friends would be jealous, not glad. If he were in trouble, it would be different. You could always find people who would commiserate, and mean it, and maybe even loan you money, but ask them to rejoice? Philip had chosen four couples—the Treanors, the Fioris, the McGuinns, the Stubbses—and the grande dame of psychiatrists, Leona Spitzer. He hadn’t included the Kizers, the new people from Duke, but they sort of included themselves, showing up after the meal just as Philip and Maggie were on their way out.

  There was a duo. The Kizers. Hal and Dixie. Hal was new to the Medical School and, like Philip, a specialist in depression. Hal seemed to think that meant they had a lot in common, but they had nothing in common. Hal was loud and abrasive. He was sarcastic. There was something wrong with him, something competitive, something sexual maybe. Philip hadn’t yet figured it out. Hal always looked—how?—as if he were about to touch his crotch or, worse, touch yours. Philip smiled, recognizing he had hit on something. Scotch could be wonderfully clarifying. Hal was a lecher, nothing very mysterious about that. The wife, though, was something else. Those tight lips, the smirk lingering at the corner of her wide mouth, the tense hands. A sex problem? Insecurity certainly, but what else? Was she simply crazy as a loon? Something. Better not even to think about them.

  Philip shrugged deeper into the sofa and stared up at the ceiling. He was forty-five and he had a beautiful wife and two kids and a distinguished career and now he had the Goldman Chair too. He had done everything right. He was a good doctor. He really was. He was sympathetic and he listened and he was tough when he had to be. He believed that life was short and mean and often cruel and that you should do everything you can to make life better for other people. You should give yourself. You should help. You should create good in a rotten world by—he had read a lot of Sartre in college—by doing one good thing, and then another, and then another. He had done this. He had always chosen the best over the second-best, no matter how hard the choice.

  And he had good kids. They were great kids. Emma was at Berkeley, a sophomore, and Cole had just finished first-year medicine at Hopkins. Cole was brainier and more studious. He didn’t have Emma’s sense of humor. But they were great kids, both of them. Cole was more like his mother.

  He thought about when he himself was a kid. The housebreaker of Brookline, Mass.

  Tonight at dinner they had talked about recovered memory because of old Gaspard’s situation. Gaspard was a former Dean of the Medical School who was being sued by his thirty-five-year-old daughter for molesting her when she was in grammar school. She had recovered the lost memory during psychotherapy, she claimed—therapy that Gaspard had paid for—and she brought charges against him that she intended to pursue in court. Everybody at the table had an opinion about recovered memory, and a story to illustrate it, but only Roberto Fiori claimed to have had such an experience himself. On his wedding night, he said, he had approached the bed where Isabella lay waiting for him, her hair spread out against the pillow, and a shaft of moonlight had fallen across the bed …

  “A shaft of moonlight?” Beecher Stubbs asked, and Calvin Stubbs said, “What about all this hair spread out on the pillow?” and then Leona Spitzer said, “Come on, Roberto, it sounds more like True Romance than recovered memory,” and that was where Philip had stopped listening. He had his own secret memory.

  In high school, on a bet, he had broken into a neighbor’s house.

  A bunch of guys had been shooting the shit one day after gym class, talking about last year’s senior class president, who had been arrested for breaking and entering. Ralphie was saying that he must have been shit-stupid not to know he’d get caught and everybody agreed except Philip. “You don’t have to get caught,” Philip said, “you only have to use your head.” And within a couple minutes he had bet each of them ten bucks he could break into a house and not get caught. He’d bring back proof, he said. Two nights later he let himself into Ralphie’s house—he knew they kept the spare key under the pot of hydrangeas—and stole his autographed baseball. The next day when they were all gathered around their lockers, Philip said, “Hey, shithead, is this your ball?” and, as the others watched, he turned the ball over in his hands, studying it, and then passed it around the group. The ball was signed by Mickey Mantle and everybody knew it was Ralphie’s. “Yours?” Philip said. “Or should I just keep it?” Ralphie paid up at once and, reluctantly, so did the others.

  That was the end of it, or so everybody thought. Days passed, and then a week passed, and each night Philip lay awake thinking of that moment when he had paused at the back door of Ralphie’s house, listening to the silence, waiting for something to happen.

  He had inserted the key, waited a moment, turned it, and then slowly, slowly pushed the door inward. It creaked just a little and he paused, his heart banging and an empty feeling in his head, but the silence had continued and he stepped inside and eased the door shut behind him. He stood for
a moment in the familiar kitchen, his eyes adjusting to the dark. The refrigerator suddenly began to hum and he stepped back quickly, knocking into an empty six-pack of Coke that somebody had shoved behind the door. The bottles rattled loudly in the still house. For a long time he stood motionless, listening, but there was no other sound. He laughed softly. He felt giddy because of what he was about to do.

  He walked through the kitchen and down the hall to the staircase. He stopped and listened again. The house was very dark and it smelled faintly of soap. He had never noticed that before. He put one foot on the bottom step. It creaked, as he knew it would, but he put his full weight on it and then stopped. Nothing. He took the next step, and the next, and in a couple seconds he was up the stairs, feeling his way along the wall to Ralphie’s room. The wallpaper was pebbly here, with lots of tiny bumps. He stopped outside the open door. He could hear snoring from the big bedroom at the end of the hall and from Ralphie’s room he heard a thin asthmatic wheeze. He stepped inside. He could barely make out Ralphie’s face on the pillow, his mouth open, his head thrown back. He walked to the foot of the bed and stared at him. He was tempted to say “Boo!” or make ghost sounds or just keep staring into Ralphie’s face until he woke up and hollered. He liked the idea of scaring the shit out of him. Somewhere in the neighborhood a dog barked once and then stopped. Downstairs the refrigerator stopped humming. You could hear everything, anything. He looked around the room and in a crack of light from the window he saw Ralphie’s desk and on it the baseball signed by Mickey Mantle. The ball would be perfect.

  In another second he had taken the ball and was in the corridor on his way to the stairs. There was a cough from the big bedroom and then a different kind of silence. He heard rustling noises and the creak of bedsprings and then heavy feet on the hardwood floor. Still he stood there, motionless, waiting to be discovered. Then he heard loud peeing from the master bathroom and, grateful, he descended the stairs quickly, lightly, and under the sound of the flushing toilet he let himself out the kitchen door, testing afterward to see that it was locked. He put the key under the pot of hydrangeas. And he was home, as he thought, free.