Happy All the Time

by Laurie Colwin

  “We are on the verges of our lives,” he said despondently, banking the empty can off the wall and into a wastepaper basket.

  “Now what is that supposed to mean?” said Guido.

  “We’re prime,” said Vincent. “We’re in the prime of life. Do you still feel like a child? I do. Why is my life so useless? Why am I suffering over some complicated girl who only likes me under pressure? I should be involved in concrete, long-lasting things. Jesus, if Betty Helen can get married and be normal, why can’t I?”

  “Go talk to the headmaster,” said Guido.

  “That’s just it,” said Vincent. “I keep waiting around for someone to tell me to shape up, but no one does. I keep thinking that when I’m older, I’ll get a grip on all this. One morning, I’ll wake up and and be a grownup.”

  “No, you won’t,” said Guido. “You’ll just wake up and feel tireder than usual and then you’ll find that you’ve run out of patience with a lot of things you thought were normal. Or you’ll get lucky.”

  “Like you,” said Vincent. “You’re lucky. Look at how lucky you are. Where did I go wrong?”

  “I think you ought to haul that Misty Berkowitz over here,” said Guido. “I’d very much like to see what is turning you into such a bore.”

  Getting Misty to Guido’s office was not as easy as it appeared. She was too smart not to know that she was being put on display. Furthermore, if she hated rich people, the sight of a private foundation was bound to drive her into a revolutionary frenzy.

  Misty had gotten drunk at the bar, whereupon Vincent had dragged her off and given her dinner, during which she had recovered. He walked her to her door, where she kissed him on the cheek. Now, however, things were back to normal. Normal meant that Vincent bounced into her office with a big smile on his face to be met by the expressionless Misty, who looked him up and down and said, “God, what a jerk you are.” This in no way put Vincent off. He felt her tone was less snappish and more affectionate.

  One day he bounced into her office and asked her to go to the movies, explaining that he would have to stop at Guido’s on the way. Misty had by this time heard quite a lot about Guido and she had been waiting for this summons. She knew Vincent had no intention of going to the movies. She found it endearing that he had so little sense of strategy, so she accepted.

  These quixotic acceptances of Misty’s left Vincent a little dizzy. He did not know quite what to make of them, or her. Other girls sized you up quickly and then went to bed with you. The rest of the time you spent together was spent arranging where to meet and figuring out a way to fill up time. Then you filled up time by going out to dinner, but these events led up to some point. Then, of course, you got sick of each other and that was that. With Misty, nothing seemed to add up to anything. She did not turn him away. She did not, on the other hand, invite him to get closer. She refused to see him on the weekends. This was also difficult to figure out. She did not seem the sort to have a weekend lover and then spend part of her week in the company of another man, but what else could it be? Vincent had decided that straightforward bumbling was not the worst thing in the world in her case, so he asked her. She flew into a rage.

  “What do you think I am anyway? Is that what you think girls are like? Well, I am not a girl. I do not have weekend lovers. I do not go out on what you doubtless call dates. Why don’t you go find yourself one of those publicity girls who plays squash and goes to the theater since you so obviously speak their language. What an insult.”

  “What’s so insulting about having a lover?” Vincent had asked.

  “You must have known some very dim bulbs, Vincent. You must have hung around with some real out-to-lunch types. Is that what you think is normal behavior? You think girls go out to dinner with men and have lovers on the side? What is it with you guys?”

  Of course, Vincent did think it was normal behavior to go out to dinner with him and have a lover or a husband on the side. But this conversation filled him with hope. Clearly he was in the running if she thought having dinner with him and a lover on the side amounted to a conflict of interest.

  Betty Helen Carnhoops met them at the door. She buzzed Guido.

  “Your friends are here,” she said.

  Vincent walked in, leading Misty by the elbow. He introduced her to Guido. There was a strange, evil gleam in Misty’s eyes. Vincent’s face was shining. “Isn’t this a nice office?” he said.

  Misty muttered something under her breath. Then she turned to Guido.

  “Vincent says you put out a magazine in addition to spreading the wealth,” she said. Guido handed her a new issue of Runnymeade.

  “I’ve seen this one,” said Misty. She shuffled the pages like a deck of cards.

  “You have?” said Vincent. “I didn’t know you read it.”

  “My dentist has it,” said Misty. “Can I put my feet up, or would that tarnish these gleaming surfaces?” Vincent found a wicker stool upon which Misty rested her feet. She wore small, expensive green shoes.

  “Would you like some seltzer?” Guido asked.

  “I’d love some coffee,” Misty said. “If you have any.”

  “I can ask Betty Helen to make some.”

  “Oh, don’t,” Misty said. “Please. I’ll just have a glass of water if there’s no coffee. I don’t want secretaries making me things to drink.”

  “I’ll get you some,” said Vincent. “There’s a delicatessen around the corner.” He raced out of the office.

  Misty and Guido faced each other silently. There were a great many things Guido wanted to say, but it seemed against the laws of friendship and privacy to do so.

  “It’s very nice to meet you,” he began. “I’ve been hearing a great deal about you.”

  There was no answer. Guido looked at her. She was staring impassively at her shoe.

  “Vincent often speaks of you,” said Guido.

  “You already said that,” said Misty.

  “I suppose I did,” said Guido. “I’m afraid I’m not finding it easy to talk to you.”

  “Jesus,” said Misty. “Your pal shleps me over here and puts me on display like Lady Astor’s horse and I’m not easy to talk to. I ask you.”

  “You are difficult to talk to,” said Guido.

  “Only for the first ten seconds,” said Misty. “Besides, this is a setup so that I can be surveyed. Well, do you want to have some polite chitchat, or do you want to get right down to cases?”

  “I’m far too polite,” said Guido.

  “Well, I’m not,” said Misty. “You look like someone with something to say.”

  “All right,” said Guido. “Vincent is my oldest friend. He’s very fond of you. I don’t want his heart broken by a hostile teenager.”

  “Oh, brother,” said Misty. “Is that what he says I am?”

  “No, but it’s what you sound like when Vincent describes all the ways in which you aren’t fond of him.”

  “You boys,” said Misty. Then she smiled. Her smile relieved Guido and he took the opportunity to size her up. Unlike Vincent’s other entanglements, who were large, country, Protestant, and looked vacant, Misty was rather small, urban, and Jewish. And she looked smart.

  She sat back in her chair, lit a cigarette, and twirled her shoe around on the tip of her toe.

  “I am not hostile and I am not a teenager,” said Misty. “And I was not put on this earth to break hearts. Take it from me, I don’t hang around with people I don’t like. I am actually a very upstanding young woman but it takes the average citizen years to find out.”

  “Vincent isn’t the average citizen,” said Guido.

  “I’ll say he isn’t,” said Misty. “Well, am I flunking inspection?”

  “No,” said Guido. “You passed.”

  “I did?” Misty said. “What was my highest mark?”

  “You scored very well in being easier to talk to than I thought.”

  At this point Vincent appeared with the coffee, which was leaking through its paper bag
. He handed it to Misty. He looked positively wiped out by love.

  CHAPTER 4

  Betty Helen Carnhoops was like a reef of calm in a bad storm. She functioned as smoothly as a hospital kitchen and she had the quiet, militant presence of a nurse. Her letters were miracles of perfection: she justified each line like a Vari-type machine. Her telephone voice was brisk and without any tone at all. She almost never spoke to Guido except in the line of work and her only topics of conversation were the weather, the office cleaning staff, and Guido’s appointment calendar. She got everyone’s name right. Within two weeks she knew where everything was. Although she had no opinions on the subject of art and literature, she was a demon proofreader. It seemed to Guido that she had been sent to him by a benevolent Creator, although he sometimes felt that Betty Helen looked upon him and the Foundation as if she were ministering to minds diseased. The fact that she was a mountain of stability made him truly grateful. He felt that in hiring Betty Helen, he had put away childish things forever. Another Guido—a younger Guido—might have hired Jane Motherwell.

  As Vincent had predicted, one quirk had sprouted under the fluorescent lights. Betty Helen announced everyone in the same way. She buzzed Guido and said: “Your friends are here.” In this way she announced trustees, delivery boys from the delicatessen, tax lawyers, twelve-tone composers, and telephone repairmen. Guido barely noticed. Vincent, on the other hand, picked right up on it.

  “Can’t you see that Betty Helen has no idea what goes on here?” he said. “She’s either evil or lobotomized. Why did she just tell you that Western Union messenger was your friend?”

  “It’s hard for a normal person to tell who’s an artist and who isn’t these days,” Guido said. “It’s the new casualness. Holly says it’s making slobs of us all. Betty Helen has the right attitude. Now, for example, the other day, a guy selling office equipment came in dressed like a bank president. Then the guy from the bank came in dressed like a college professor. Then Cyril Serber came in. He’s the poet and classicist but he works out with weights. He came up on his way from the gym and Betty Helen probably thought he was from the delicatessen. So you see, it’s easy to be confused. She’s a nice, ordinary person.”

  “Ordinary,” said Vincent. “That woman is a mutant.”

  For the first time since Guido had taken over from Uncle Giancarlo, the office hummed efficiently. There were no ghastly surprises, no temper tantrums, no unexplained absences, lost messages, or free-floating hostility. In this atmosphere, Guido learned how much he loved his job. With a sane person to help you, you could plan intelligently. You could expand. Life worked.

  He stared out the window less and less. When he did, the trees in Central Park looked like trees in a pointillist painting. He was now involved in the concrete, long-lasting things Vincent brooded about.

  Life with Holly assumed the same lovely shape. She was taking a course in floral painting, and when he came home at night he found enormous eighteenth-century Dutch flower arrangements on the hall table. She was also involved in Japanese cooking, and the dinners she gave Guido were arranged like landscapes. After dinner, they repaired to opposite ends of the couch, where, with legs entwined under a plaid rug, they read in front of a fire. Life was sweet and rich, like Imperial Tokay.

  On Wednesdays, Vincent turned up for his lunch of shrimp bisque out of a can.

  “So Betty Helen’s still here,” he said. “Really, Guido, she gives me the creeps. Can’t you get someone a little less efficient?”

  “For God’s sake,” said Guido. “Leave me alone with my Betty Helen. Life is finally working right and you’re trying to screw it up.”

  “I’m not,” said Vincent. “I simply feel, like Uncle Giancarlo, that an office like this, devoted as it is to art, should have someone a little more painterly working in it.”

  “I don’t want any of those beautiful flash girls running around here being illiterate, having emotional problems, and ruining my life,” said Guido. “Go play with your friend Misty if you’re so interested in that sort of thing.”

  “Misty isn’t illiterate,” said Vincent. “And she isn’t beautiful.”

  “She’s interesting looking,” said Guido. “That’s always a bad sign.”

  “Besides,” said Vincent. “She isn’t ruining your life. She’s ruining mine.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic.”

  “Guido,” said Vincent, “you have no idea what it’s like to be weighed on the heavenly scales and found wanting. There are times when I think everything I do offends her. Not only what I do—what I am, or whatever she thinks I am. She says if there’s a revolution, I’ll be useless. She says I am interested in applying Band-Aids to incurable wounds.”

  “If there’s a revolution, that girl will have to give up her expensive green shoes. Believe me, your Misty is hardly what I’d call one of the masses.”

  “I just wish you could find someone a little more like her to work here,” said Vincent. “To make life a little more interesting.”

  “My life is interesting enough, thank you. Someone like her would make my life one solid round of hell.”

  “Well, brace yourself. She’s out in the field today and I asked her to meet me here.”

  Guido was looking forward to another encounter with Misty. He was not sure what to make of her. She was extraordinary, he thought, but he wondered what an extraordinary girl would do to Vincent.

  Misty arrived early wearing her green coat and her, little green shoes. She put her feet up on the wicker stool and drank a bottle of seltzer.

  “So, how are things with Vincent and the hostile teenager?” she said. She seemed extremely cheerful.

  “Since you ask,” said Guido, “the hostile teenager appears to be giving Vincent a hard time.”

  “Poor old Vincent,” said Misty.

  “She’s not entirely nice to him,” said Guido.

  “Aw, come on, Guido,” said Misty. “Why should I be nice to him? He has an easy life. From what I gather, girls drop out of trees and fall into his lap. Part of my function is to give him a hard time. It makes him feel alive.”

  “That’s a very serious thing to say about someone,” said Guido.

  “He’ll get over it,” said Misty. “Vincent thinks love is when you go to bed with a dog breeder. He thinks there is one way to behave and if he behaves that way everything will work out. If I were a person who behaved in the one way you’re supposed to behave, you and I would be talking about the weather, wouldn’t we? The thing about Vincent is that he isn’t quite sure how to be personal. Maybe all his other girlfriends were the same girl. But I’m not the same girl.”

  “How difficult you are,” said Guido.

  “Yes, I am,” said Misty, grinning. “But I’m worth it.”

  “Do you think Vincent is worth it?” said Guido.

  “Let’s go back to being polite,” said Misty. “Vincent has told me a lot about you.”

  “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.”