The Pursuit of Happiness (2001)

by Douglas Kennedy

  Until I met Peter Harrison.

  Oh, I was so stupid. Oh, it was all so damn predictable. I was edging towards my mid-thirties. I had just joined a new agency - Harding, Tyrell and Barney. Peter Harrison hired me. He was forty-two. Married. Two kids. Handsome (of course). Smart as hell. For the first month at the office, there was this curious unspoken thing going on between us; a sense that we were both aware of each other’s presence. When we did meet - in the corridors, in the elevator, once at a departmental meeting - we were perfectly pleasant with each other. Yet there was an undercurrent of nervousness to our trivial chat. We became shy around each other. And neither of us was, by any means, the shy type.

  Then he poked his head into my office late one afternoon. He asked me out for a drink. We repaired around the corner to a little bar. As soon as we started talking we couldn’t stop. We talked for two hours - gabbing away like people destined to be gabbing to each other. We connected, spliced, fused. When he eventually threaded his fingers through mine, and said, Let’s get out of here, I had no second thoughts on the matter. By that point, I wanted him so desperately I would have jumped him right there in the bar.

  Only much later that night - lying next to him in bed, telling him just how much I’d fallen for him (and hearing him admit the same to me) - did I raise the one question which I hadn’t wanted to ask earlier. He told me that there wasn’t anything terribly wrong between his wife, Jane, and himself. They’d been together eleven years. They were reasonably compatible. They loved their girls. They had a nice life. But a nice life doesn’t mean a passionate life. That part of the marriage had ebbed away years ago.

  I asked him, ‘Then why not accept its cozy limitations?’

  ‘I had, sort of,’ he said. ‘Until I met you.’

  ‘And now?’

  He pulled me closer. ‘Now I’m not going to let you go.’

  That’s how it started. For the next year, he didn’t let me go. On the contrary, he spent every possible hour he could with me. Which, from my standpoint, was never enough … but which also fueled the intensity of the affair. I actually loathe that word, ‘affair’ - because of its cheap, sordid connotations. This was love. Pure, undiluted love. Love that took place between six and eight p.m., twice a week, at my apartment. And frequently at lunchtime in a midtown hotel, three blocks away from our office. Of course I wanted to see more of him. When he wasn’t with me - especially late at night - I actually pined for him. The longing was insane. Because I knew that I had found the one person on the planet destined for me. Yet I was determined to remained outwardly disciplined about my feelings for Peter. We both knew what a dangerous game we were playing - and how everything could fall apart if we became the hot subject of office gossip … or worst yet, if Jane found out.

  And so, at the office, we remained rather formal with each other. He covered his tracks carefully on the home front - never arousing suspicion by staying out later than expected, keeping at my place the same toiletries he used at home, never letting me dig my nails into his back.

  ‘That’s the first thing I’m going to do on the first night we move in together,’ I said, gently caressing his bare shoulders. It was a December evening, just before Christmas. We were lying in bed, the sheets askew, our bodies still damp.

  ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ he said, kissing me deeply. ‘Because I’ve decided to tell Jane.’

  My adrenalin went into overdrive. ‘You serious?’

  ‘As serious as I’ve ever been.’

  I took his face between my hands. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

  Without hesitation he said, ‘Yes, absolutely.’

  We agreed that he wouldn’t break the news to Jane until after Christmas - which was, after all, just four weeks off. We also agreed that I’d start apartment hunting for us straight away. After wearing out a lot of shoe leather, I actually found us a really cute two-bedroom place with a partial river view on Riverside and 112th. It was a few days before Christmas. I decided to give Peter a big surprise the next night (when, per usual, we were due to meet at my apartment around six) by bringing him to see our future home. He was over an hour late getting to my place. As soon as he walked in, I was scared. Because I could see that something was very wrong. He slumped down into my sofa. I immediately sat down next to him, and took his hand.

  ‘Tell me, darling.’

  He refused to meet my eye. ‘It seems … I’m moving to LA.’

  It took a moment or two to register. ‘LA? You? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon, around five, I got a call at my office. A call from Bob Harding’s secretary, asking if I could pay our company chairman a little visit. Like tout de suite. So up I went to the thirty-second floor, and into the great man’s office. Dan Downey and Bill Maloney from Corporate Affairs were both there. Harding asked me to sit down, and cut straight to the chase. Creighton Anderson - the head of the LA office - just announced that he was off to London to run some big division of Saatchi & Saatchi. Which meant the job of LA boss was now open, and Harding had had his eye on me for some time, and …’

  ‘They offered you the job?’

  He nodded. I took his hand. ‘But this is wonderful, darling. This is, in a way, what we wanted. A clean break. A way to establish our own life. And, of course, if there’s a conflict about you hiring me to work in the LA office, no problem. It’s a big market, LA, I’ll find something. I can do LA …’

  He interrupted this manic, scared rant. ‘Katie, please …’

  His voice was barely a whisper. He finally turned toward me. His face was drawn, his eyes red. I suddenly felt ill.

  ‘You told her first, didn’t you?’ I said.

  He turned away from me again. ‘I had to. She is my wife.’

  ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘Bob Harding said that I had to give him a decision by the end of today - and that he knew I’d need to talk things over with Jane first …’

  ‘You were about to leave Jane, remember? So why didn’t you talk first to the person with whom you were planning to start a new life? Me.’

  He just shrugged sadly and said, ‘You’re right.’

  ‘So what exactly did you tell her?’

  ‘I told her about the offer, and how I felt this would be a great career move …’

  ‘You said nothing about us?’

  ‘I was about to … but she started to cry. Started saying how she didn’t want to lose me, how she knew we’d been growing apart, but was terrified of even talking about it. Because …’

  He broke off. Peter - my confident, secure, dauntless, always articulate man - was suddenly tongue-tied and sheepish.

  ‘Because what?’ I asked.

  ‘Because -‘ he swallowed hard, ‘ - she thought there might be someone else in my life.’

  ‘So what did you say?’

  He turned away - as if he couldn’t bear to look at me.

  ‘Peter, you have to tell me what you said.’

  He stood up and walked to the window, staring out into the black December night.

  ‘I assured her … that there was no one else but her.’

  It took a moment or two for this to register.

  ‘You didn’t say that,’ I said, my voice hushed. ‘Tell me you didn’t say that.’

  He kept looking out the window, his back to me. ‘I’m sorry, Katie. I’m so damn sorry.’

  ‘Sorry’s not good enough. Sorry is an empty word.’

  ‘I am in love with you …’

  That’s when I stormed off into the bathroom, slammed the door, bolted it, then sank down to the floor, crying wildly. Peter pounded on the door, begging me to let him in. But my anger, my grief, were so volcanic that I blanked him out.

  Eventually the banging stopped. Eventually I regained a modicum of control. I forced myself back on to my feet, unbolted the door, and staggered back to the sofa. Peter had gone. I sat on the edge of the sofa, feeling as if I had just been in a major car crash - that same weird, e
xtra-worldly shock, during which you find yourself wondering: did that just happen?

  Operating on auto-pilot, I remembered putting on my coat, grabbing my keys, and leaving.

  The next thing I knew, I was in a cab, heading southbound. I didn’t remember much of the ride. But when we arrived at 42nd and First Avenue - pulling up in front of a large elderly apartment complex called Tudor City - it took me a moment or two to recall why I was here, and who I was planning to visit.

  I got out of the cab, I walked into the lobby. When the elevator reached the seventh floor, I marched down the corridor and pressed the bell by a door marked 7E. Meg opened it, dressed in a faded light blue terrycloth robe, the usual cigarette plugged into the side of her mouth.

  ‘So, to what do I owe this surprise … ?’ she said.

  But then she got a proper look at me, and turned white. I walked forward, and laid my head against her shoulder. She put her arms around me.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart …’ she said softly. ‘Don’t tell me he was married?’

  I came inside. I burst into tears again. She fed me Scotch. I recounted the entire stupid saga. I spent the night on her sofa. The next morning I couldn’t face the office, so I asked Meg to call up work and tell them I was out sick. She disappeared into her bedroom to use the phone.

  When she emerged, she said, ‘You’ll probably call me a meddlesome old broad after I tell you this … but you’ll be pleased to hear that you’re not expected in the office again until the second of January.’

  ‘What the hell did you do, Meg?’

  ‘I spoke to your boss …’

  ‘You called Peter?’

  ‘Yeah, I did.’

  ‘Oh Jesus Christ, Meg …’

  ‘Hear me out. I called him and simply explained that you were a little under the weather today. Then he said that, “under the circumstances”, you should not worry about coming in until January second. So there you go - eleven days off. Not bad, eh?’

  ‘It’s especially not bad for him - as it gives him a real easy out. He doesn’t have to see me before he vanishes to LA.’

  ‘Do you really want to see him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The defence rests.’

  I hung my head.

  ‘This is going to take time,’ Meg said. ‘A lot of time. Longer than you think.’

  I knew that. Just as I knew that I was heading into the longest Christmas of my life. The grief hit me in waves. Sometimes dumb, obvious things - like seeing a couple kiss on the street - would trigger it. Or I might be riding uptown on the subway (in reasonably cheerful form after happily squandering an afternoon at the Museum of Modern Art, or engaging in some retail therapy at Bloomingdale’s) - and then, out of nowhere, I’d feel as if I was falling into this deep abyss. I stopped sleeping. I lost a lot of weight. Every time I castigated myself for over-reacting, I quickly fell apart again.

  What disturbed me most was the fact that I swore, vowed, pledged never to lose myself to a man - and was always less than sympathetic (if not downright contemptuous) of friends and acquaintances who turned a break-up into an epic tragedy; a Manhattan Tristan and Isolde.

  But now there were moments when I wondered how I would get through the day. And I felt like such a stupid cliche. Especially when - in the middle of a Sunday brunch at a local restaurant with my mother - I suddenly burst into tears. I retreated to the Ladies’ until I got the Joan Crawford melodramatics under control. When I returned to the table, I noticed that Mom had ordered coffee for us.

  ‘That was very worrying, Katherine,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I’ve been having a bad week, that’s all. Don’t ship me off to Bellevue yet.’

  ‘It’s a man, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  I sat up, blew on my coffee, and eventually nodded.

  ‘It must have been serious if it’s causing you this much upset.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  She bowed her head - and I could see how deeply I had just hurt her. Who was it who once said that mothers will break arms and legs to remain needed?

  ‘I wish you could confide in me, Kate.’

  ‘I wish I could too.’

  ‘I don’t understand why …’

  ‘It’s just how things between us have turned out.’

  ‘You sadden me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She reached over and gave my hand a quick squeeze. There was so much I wanted to say just then - how I could never penetrate her protective coating of gentility; how I’d never been able to confide in her because I always felt that she sat in judgment on me; how I did love her … but there was just so much baggage between us. Yes, it was one of those moments (much beloved of Hollywood) when mother and daughter could have reached out to each other over the divide, and after shedding some mutual tears, reconciled. But life doesn’t work that way, does it? We always seem to balk, hesitate, flinch at these big moments. Maybe because, in family life, we all build protective shields around ourselves. As the years evaporate, these defences solidify. They become hard for others to penetrate; even harder for us to tear down. Because they turn into the way in which we protect ourselves - and those closest to us - from assorted truths.

  I spent the rest of my week-off in movie theaters and museums. On January second I returned to work. Everyone at the office was very solicitous about my ‘terrible flu’ - and did I hear about Peter Harrison’s transfer to LA? I kept to myself, I did my work, I went home, I laid low. The outbursts of grief lessened; the sense of loss didn’t.

  In mid-February, one of my copywriting colleagues, Cindy, suggested lunch in a little Italian place near the office. We spent most of the meal talking through a campaign we were still fine-tuning. As coffee arrived, Cindy said, ‘Well, I guess you heard the big gossip from the LA office.’

  ‘What big gossip?’

  ‘Peter Harrison just left his wife and kids for some account executive. Amanda Cole, I think her name was

  The news detonated in front of me like a stun grenade. For several moments I really didn’t know where I was. I must have looked shell-shocked, because Cindy took my hand and said, ‘Are you all right, Kate?’

  I withdrew my hand angrily and said, ‘Of course I’m okay. Why are you asking?’

  ‘No reason,’ she said nervously. Turning away, she scanned the restaurant, made eye contact with the waiter, and motioned for the check. I stared down at my coffee.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you?’ I asked.

  She poured Sweet-and-Low into her coffee, then stirred it. Many times.

  ‘Please answer the question,’ I said.

  Her spoon stopped its manic agitation.

  ‘Honey,’ she said, ‘everybody knew.’

  I wrote three letters to Peter - in which I called him assorted names, and accused him of upending my life. I sent none of them. I stopped myself (on several occasions) when the urge to ring him at four a.m. was overpowering. In the end I scribbled a postcard. It contained a three-word message: