Happiness Sold Separately

by Lolly Winston

  These are good carbs, she’s about to comment as she digs her hand into the popcorn. Who cares? The pieces are warm and salty against her lips. She takes another mouthful as Barry leads her to two seats in the middle of an empty row. He uses a napkin to wipe off her seat. Once she’s settled, he hands her a hot dog. She hasn’t eaten a hot dog in years. The beer goes straight to her head and the sun warms her face. The bright yellow mustard tastes like summer.

  Barry pats her knee. “You, my love, have the most beautiful legs on the planet.”

  Gina’s wraparound skirt falls open, and she reaches to close it. She smiles at Barry and dabs mustard off his chin with her napkin. Has she ever been in a relationship where she and a man loved each other equally? How are you supposed to know? That must be a safe, happy feeling. Those would be healthy low stakes. Although maybe the stakes would be higher, since something could happen to your one true love. Or maybe that feeling of security would lead you to take each other for granted, as Ted and his wife seemed to. Gina crushes her hot dog wrapper in her fist. Why must everything circle back to Ted? She takes a long drink of her beer, trying to push him out of her mind.

  “Here we go!” Barry jumps up as the horses explode out of the gates. Gina stands beside him. He curls an arm around her waist, pulling him toward her. He smells like something newly bought at a department store—like cologne and cotton sizing. “Give ’em hell, Harry!” he cheers.

  “Attagirl, Athena!” Gina yells. Even when they do things she never imagined she would enjoy, she always has fun with Barry. If Ted was her heroin, Barry is her methadone. Does that mean she’s using Barry as a crutch? She takes another long drink of beer while it’s still cold. She should quit analyzing everything. Barry’s the one who always calls her. For all she knows, he has other girlfriends. The best part is she doesn’t care. Imagine! A sensation that’s almost like self-confidence.

  After betting on two more races, winning ninety dollars, and eating snow cones that melt and drip off their wrists, they finally leave the racetrack, climbing back into Barry’s Jaguar.

  “Am I the handsomest motherfucker you’ve ever dated?” Barry laughs and checks his hair in the rearview mirror, readjusting a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

  “Don’t swear.” Gina giggles. She’s not a prude, but she doesn’t like foul language, which always seems born out of anger. “Of course,” she teases. “The toothpick does it for me.” Barry doesn’t mind when she pokes fun at him. While he can be gruff and stern—she’s heard him chide his employees on the phone—he doesn’t take himself too seriously.

  “A toothpick’s better than a cigar.” He speeds up and pulls out of the parking lot. “It’s been a year, you know. I went from cigarettes to cigars to toothpicks. Gimme another year and I’ll be off these things, too. Okay, gorgeous?”

  At a red light, Gina leans over and pulls the toothpick from Barry’s mouth, then traces his lower lip with her tongue.

  “Mmmmm.” He kisses her, his large lips covering hers. Gina closes her eyes, willing the chemistry to blossom. She always closes her eyes when she and Barry kiss or make love. When Shane made love to her she would touch and admire his long black hair, which was a startling contrast with his pale skin. Shane always closed his eyes, sighing deeply and telling her he loved her, then falling into the same soulful concentration he had while playing his bass onstage. But when Ted made love to Gina, he would look into her eyes and hold her gaze, something no one else had ever done. As the light turns green, Gina shifts away from Barry, cracking her window to get some air.

  Gina is surprised when the doorbell rings at ten thirty that night. Maybe Barry’s come back for something he left behind. She peers through the peephole to see Shane swaying on the porch. She opens the door in time to watch a taxi back out of the driveway.

  “Baby.” Shane’s hair is damp at the ends from the shower, making two dark spots on the shoulders of his blue plaid flannel shirt. Under the flannel, he’s wearing his typical white T-shirt and black jeans.

  Gina crosses her arms over her chest, feeling like a flimsy barricade.

  “Are we together or are we broken up or what are we?” Shane’s voice is too loud.

  “You fell off the wagon?”

  “Bad day.” He dips his head. “What are we?” Shane is always having a bad day.

  “Friends, Shane. We’re friends. As long as you’re not drinking, we’re friends. If you’re drinking, we’re not even friends.”

  “Well, maybe if we were more than friends, like we used to be, like we’re supposed to be, I wouldn’t be drinking.” He spits a little as he speaks.

  Right, I ruined everything. Gina can’t reason with him when he’s drunk. “I’ll make you a cup of coffee.” One cup of coffee, half an hour of talking, max, then she’ll call him a taxi. She heads for the kitchen.

  Shane sits slumped at the table as Gina programs the coffeemaker and puts out low-fat milk and sugar. She takes wheat bread, cheese, and turkey from the refrigerator, and fixes him a sandwich.

  “You could make anyplace feel like home,” Shane says. “You could make a fucking cold hole in the ground feel like home. You are home.” This romantic intensity captivated Gina when she first started dating Shane. But now his darkness is more ugly than intriguing. There are purplish circles under his eyes, and he smells like whiskey and cigarettes. He reminds her of the bar after last call—when the bright lights are turned on to reveal the bleak dirtiness of the place.

  Toby appears in the doorway. When he sees Shane, he rolls his eyes, stomps his bare foot on the floor, and turns to leave.

  “Hey, slugger,” Shane calls after him.

  Toby grunts and slams his bedroom door.

  “And he’s not even a teenager yet,” Shane says with disgust.

  “That’s right.” Gina puts down a place mat and sets the sandwich before him. “He’s just a kid, Shane. He’s a kid, and he has every right to be upset when people show up drunk at our house at ten o’clock at night.”

  Shane looks at her with surprise. For once she’s not trying to cheer him up or see things from his point of view. She is not negotiating. Not tonight.

  “What happened to AA?”

  “I had a setback.” Shane sips the coffee, hiccups, sputters, and dribbles brown spots on his shirt. Nice. She used to be so attracted to him! She remembers the time, soon after they started dating, when he braided her hair into two perfect braids. It was after they made love. “I did it every morning for my little sister,” he explained, concentrating on weaving three sections of Gina’s hair. “But I won’t tie your shoes. You gotta do that yourself.” That’s when Gina fell in love with him, as he sat behind her with his legs curled around hers, finishing the braids, then tickling her cheeks with the ends, his chest warm against her back, his voice rumbling up through her spine as though he were a part of her.

  She sits across the table from him. “You should have called your sponsor tonight,” she tells him. “You have to want to get better, Shane. You have to make it a serious goal.”

  “You’re my goal.” He reaches for Gina’s hand. She pulls it away. “Babe,” he says softly, sadly. He throws down his sandwich and it falls apart. Gina gets up and stands at the sink, her back to him. “If you want to see me, you have to quit drinking. You can’t have everything.” She reaches for the phone. “I’ll call you a taxi.”

  “Not yet, in a minute. Wait.”

  She can hear that his mouth is full. She turns to see him gobbling the sandwich in big bites. “This is good!” He looks up at her, nodding maniacally and swallowing. Then he pauses in her gaze. “Let’s talk. Just for a minute.” He takes a gulp of the coffee. He’s stalling for time. No different than a ten-year-old who wants fifteen more minutes of TV. She’s tired of constantly bargaining with people. Bargaining with her son to get him to stop playing that stupid Game Boy. Bargaining with her clients to get them to do five more reps, just five more! Bargaining with Shane to go to AA. At one point, she thought sh
e could marry him if he’d just quit being two people.

  “You been dating?” Shane asks.

  “Yes.” She sighs, immediately regretting getting into this conversation.

  “Who? Barry?”

  Gina nods.

  “He’s a fucking concert promoter, Gina!” Shane stands, his fists hanging at his sides. “The worst whore scum of the earth.” Spit flies from his mouth.

  “Game over.” Gina reaches for the refrigerator magnet with the taxi telephone number. Shane lunges toward her. She steps to one side and he pounds his fist on the freezer door. Then he turns to face the table as though looking for something. He picks up the sugar bowl and hurls it smashing against the wall.

  “That’s nice.” Gina doesn’t have the energy to be angry with him anymore. “It’s late and you’re drunk. I’m calling you a cab. We can have lunch tomorrow. Come to the club and I’ll buy you lunch and we can sit outside. It’s supposed to be beautiful.” She has no intention of seeing Shane tomorrow. She won’t be at the club. But this is all she can think of to get him to calm down and leave.

  “The club,” Shane sneers. “The fucking yuppie fitness club. If those people had lives they wouldn’t need to work out on machines. Constantly running toward the TV on the treadmill. Jesus. If they were real people, like farmers, life would give them exercise.”

  “That would solve the world’s problems,” Gina says, surprising herself with the quickness of her reply. “If everyone was a farmer.” As she taps in the number of the taxi, Shane’s fist flails at her, knocking the phone onto the floor. It shoots across the Pergo, batteries spilling out.

  “Okay! You want me to go, I’m going.” Shane charges past Gina and out of the kitchen. Gina scrambles to collect the pieces of the phone, pressing them back together. She hits REDIAL and heads up the stairs after Shane.

  “Charley’s Taxi,” the dispatcher says. Gina tells the woman she needs a cab immediately, wondering if maybe she should have called the police instead. She follows Shane into her room. He bounces up and across the bed, then climbs up onto her desk by the window, knocking over her photos of Toby and her mother. Before she can reach him, he pops out the window screen and disappears onto the roof.

  “Shane!” Gina tosses the phone onto the bed and climbs up onto the desk, kneeling on the window ledge. “Shane, get back in here,” she tries to whisper, mortified that the neighbors might hear.

  “No. You want me to go home? I’m going home. I’m going aaaaaallllll the way home!” He scrambles across the roof, hovering just at the edge of Gina’s sight. She sticks one leg through the window, about to climb out. Then she realizes he could easily take both of them down. She pulls herself back in, kneeling on all fours on the desk with just her head out the window. She turns on the desk lamp. The light from the bulb makes it harder to see outside, so she snaps it back off.

  “All the way home,” Shane repeats, shouting now. Laughing and shouting and standing on the roof with his arms extended as though he’s riding a surfboard.

  “Hey, jackass!” Gina hears Toby shout from his bedroom window below. “What are you doing on our roof?”

  “I’m gonna jump, slugger.”

  “Go for it!” Toby hollers, his voice hoarse from postnasal drip and hormones.

  “Shane.” Gina tries to sound more empathetic. “C’mon in, baby. C’mon in now.” She extends a hand toward him.

  “Are you trying to kill yourself?” Toby shouts, disdain and disbelief in his voice.

  “Bingo, slugger.”

  “That’s a joke. You won’t die. You’ll just break your legs. Or maybe your back.” Toby is a connoisseur of such information, having memorized most of the THOUSAND GRUESOME AND GORY FACTS! in his Macabre Miscellany book. “Loser,” he adds. “Then you won’t be able to drive or walk. What a loser!” Toby breaks into laughter, cracking himself up at this thought.

  “Toby!” Gina calls out, still trying to whisper.

  “You’re right. I am a loser,” Shane says loudly. “Shitty band. Installing skylights,” he mumbles to himself.

  Just then Gina sees the shadowy figures of her neighbors, the Jensens—an elderly couple who walk their golden retriever every night.

  “Gina? Dear? You okay up there?”

  “She’s fine!” Shane shouts.

  “We’re okay,” Gina tells them.

  “Toby, son?” Mr. Jensen calls out. “Get down from there now.”

  Gina dials 911, whispers her address into the phone.

  “I’m down here,” Toby calls from his window. “That’s Shane!” he adds with excitement. “He’s gonna jump! Go ahead, loser, jump!”

  Gina hears the sound of six weeks of kids being mean to Toby in her son’s voice. She hears the school bully and the father who doesn’t want his son living with him.

  “Shane?” Mrs. Jensen asks. “Are you a friend of Gina’s?”

  “Not anymore,” Shane says. “She doesn’t want me.”

  “Well, let’s get down off the roof now,” Mr. Jensen says.

  Gina is horrified. Great: She’s the pathetic single-mother drama-queen neighbor with the lunatic drunk on her roof.

  “I am a loser,” Shane repeats, bending precariously over the edge of the roof to talk to Toby. “You’re a smart kid.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Toby says.

  “Shane!” Gina shouts this time. He turns toward her, takes a few teetering steps back up the roof in her direction. A shingle shoots out from under his feet, making a loud splat in the driveway. “You think there aren’t days when I don’t want to jump out this window?” Gina lowers her voice, hoping the Jensens can’t hear her.

  “What?” Shane asks.

  “You think I don’t want to jump off a ten-story building some nights?”

  Shane sits down.

  Gina swallows. While her voice is somehow steady, her legs wobble, and her stomach burns. “But I can’t. Because I have a son and I love him and I have to take care of him. And you can’t because you have your music.”

  “My music is shit.”

  The Jensens back out of the street onto the sidewalk. “The police,” Gina hears Mrs. Jensen say.

  “No, it’s not shit. You’re talented and the world needs your music. People need music.” God, she is so tired of trying to inspire people.

  “I need you. I love you.”

  “Come back inside. And we’ll talk.” The overhead light in her bedroom flashes on. She ducks back into the room.

  Toby stands in the doorway. “Nice boyfriend.”

  Gina squints at him. “Honey, he’s not—I’m sorry. Turn out the light. I can’t see.”

  Toby flips off the light, lingering in the doorway.

  “Don’t leave me,” Shane begs.

  “Shane, everything’s going to be all right. I promise. Please, come inside.” Gina leans her head out the window. Shane hovers at the roof’s edge again.

  Just then yellow and red lights streak the night sky. A fire truck rumbles around the corner. Gina wonders why there’s no siren. Maybe to avoid startling the jumper. She sighs with relief, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opens them, she sees Shane leap from the roof. It is an odd image, because first he goes up, taking a leap that carries him above the line of the roof, as though he’s trying to fly. For an instant, like the camera flash for a picture, his flannel shirt forms a cape-like triangle around his skinny body, and his arms are extended like a snow angel’s. Then he’s gone. There is no sound, and then there are three sounds: Mrs. Jensen’s scream, the crackle of shrubbery, and the loud thump of Shane’s body hitting the ground. What, though? Grass? Bushes? Concrete? Gina sits on the edge of her bed, stunned.

  “Mom?” Toby says. The mean school-bully voice is gone. He’s scowling, but his lip quivers. “Do you think he’s dead?”

  By the time Gina steps off the porch onto her front lawn, the paramedics have put Shane onto a stretcher. He moans incomprehensibly. Gina hovers close to the house, not wanting him to see her. The
night air is cool and moist. Toby peeks out from behind the front door. The Jensens bow their heads and hurry up the street with their dog.

  A policeman interviews Gina. She tells him everything about this evening, and Shane’s drinking problem and angry flare-ups. Because Shane was violent and threatening, the policeman asks if Gina wants him to call a victim advocate from the local shelter.

  “A . . . what?” She is not a battered woman. She hates that Shane has made the police and the neighbors think that she’s a battered woman. “He hasn’t hurt me,” she tells the officer. Why did she ever fall in love with someone at a bar?

  “I understand.” The officer nods knowingly. “But he’s violent and an alcoholic and you may want to file a restraining order at some point. Perhaps later.” He hands Gina a brochure. “There’s a number here you can call. You don’t need a lawyer. You just go down to the family court and fill out some information on any incidents that have occurred. You’ll get a temporary order that day. Then you and the gentleman will be called to court for a formal hearing on the matter. The judge will likely issue a permanent order, making it illegal for the gentleman to come within a hundred yards of you or your son or your property.”

  “Thank you.” Gina takes the brochure. Gentleman. What a joke.

  “It’s my job.”

  Gina bristles at the look of pity in the policeman’s eyes. Maybe she’s being paranoid. Maybe it’s just kindness. She nods and tells herself to smile.

  After the police leave, Toby and Gina sit at the kitchen table. Gina pours out the coffee and fixes Toby chocolate milk. “You want to play your Game Boy?”

  Toby shakes his head.

  “Watch the Disney Channel?”

  Toby sighs, disgusted. “That’s for babies.”