The Pursuit of Happiness (2001)

by Douglas Kennedy

  I shouldn’t have been there. I should have been home, fast asleep. And I’ve often wondered: had I not turned around at that very moment, would we have missed each other completely?

  Fate is such an accidental thing, isn’t it?

  Two

  THE FRONT DOOR suddenly flew open. Ten more folk tumbled into the apartment. They were all very loud, very boisterous, and very well lubricated. The room was now so crowded it was impossible to move. I still couldn’t see my brother - and was beginning to get a little cross about being talked into coming to this absurd party. I loved Eric’s friends, but not en masse. Eric knew this - and often teased me about being anti-social.

  ‘I’m not anti-social,’ I’d retort. ‘I’m just anti-crowds.’

  Especially - I could have added - crowds in tiny apartments. My brother, on the other hand, adored mob scenes, and being part of a pack. He always had tons of friends. A quiet night at home was never pondered. He had to be meeting pals at bars, or finding a party to crash, or hitting jazz joints, or (at the very worst) squandering the evening in one of those all-night movie houses that lined 42nd Street - and showed triple features for twenty-five cents. Since his return from South America, his talent for gregariousness had reached new heights - to the point where I was beginning to wonder if he was ever finding time to sleep. He’d also reluctantly changed his appearance to get that job as a gag writer for Joe E. Brown. He’d trimmed his hair and stopped dressing like Trotsky - because he knew he wouldn’t be hired unless he conformed to the buttoned-down sartorial norm that was demanded back then.

  ‘I bet Father’s rolling with laughter in his grave,’ he said to me late one evening, ‘knowing that his redder-than-Red son now buys his clothes at Brooks Brothers.’

  ‘Clothes mean nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Stop trying to sweeten the pill. They mean everything. Everyone who knows me understands what these clothes mean: I’ve failed.’

  ‘You’re not a failure.’

  ‘Anyone who starts off thinking he’s the next Bertolt Brecht - but finally ends up churning out jokes for a quiz show - is allowed to call himself a failure.’

  ‘You’ll write another great play,’ I said.

  He smiled sadly.

  ‘S - I’ve never written a great play. You know that. I’ve never even written a good play. And you know that too.’

  Yes, I did know that - though I would never have said so. Just as I also knew that Eric’s increasingly manic social life was a form of anaesthetic. It deadened the ache of disappointment. I knew he was blocked. And I also knew what was causing the block: a total collapse of confidence in his talent. But Eric refused to let me sympathize with him - always changing the subject whenever I brought it up. I finally took the hint and dropped the matter completely - ruing the fact that I couldn’t get him to talk about his obvious distress, and feeling rather helpless as I watched him obsessively fill every waking moment with a binge of diversions … of which this party was yet another syndrome.

  As the noise level in his living room reached the level of uproar, I quickly decided to make an exit if I didn’t see my brother in the next sixty seconds.

  Then I felt a hand lightly touch my shoulder, and heard a male voice in my ear.

  ‘You look like someone who’s looking for an escape hatch.’

  I spun around. It was the fellow in the Army uniform. He was standing inches away from me, a glass of something in one hand, a bottle of beer in the other. Up close, he looked even more damn Irish. It was something about the ruddiness of his skin, the squareness of his jaw, the touch of mischief in his eyes, the fallen angel face which hinted at both innocence and experience. He was a less pugnacious version of Jimmy Cagney. Had he been an actor, he would have been perfect casting as the sort of idealistic young neighborhood priest who gave Cagney last rites after some rival gangster peppered him with lead.

  ‘Did you hear me the first time?’ he shouted over the roar of the party. ‘You look like someone who’s looking for an escape hatch.’

  ‘Yes, I did hear you. And yes, you’re very perceptive,’ I said.

  ‘And you’re blushing.’

  I suddenly felt my cheeks redden a little more. ‘It must be the heat in here.’

  ‘Or the fact that I am the most handsome guy you’ve ever seen.’

  I looked at him with care, and noted that he was raising his eyebrows playfully.

  ‘You’re handsome, all right … but not drop-dead handsome.’

  He studied me admiringly for a moment, then said, ‘Nice counterpunch. Didn’t I see you fight Max Schelling at the Garden?’

  ‘Would you be talking about the Bronx Botanical Gardens?’

  ‘Your name wouldn’t happen to be Dorothy Parker, would it?’

  ‘Flattery will get you nowhere, soldier.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to try getting you drunk,’ he said, pushing a bottle into my empty hand. ‘Have a beer,’ he said.

  ‘I already have a beer,’ I said, raising the bottle of Schlitz in my other hand.

  ‘A two-fisted drinker. I like that. You also wouldn’t happen to be Irish, would you?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Surprise, surprise. I was certain you were an O’Sullivan from Limerick … and not some horsey Kate Hepburn type …’

  ‘I don’t ride horses,’ I said, interrupting him.

  ‘But you’re still a WASP, right?’

  I scowled at him.

  ‘That’s a WASP smile, right?’

  I tried not to laugh. I failed.

  ‘Hey! She has a sense of humor. I thought that didn’t come with the WASP package.’

  ‘There are always exceptions to the rule.’

  ‘Delighted to hear it. So … are we getting out of here?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said you were looking for a way out of here. I’m offering you one. With me.’

  ‘But why should I go with you?’

  ‘Because you find me funny, charming, absorbing, alluring, appealing …’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Liar. Anyway, here’s another reason why you should leave with me. Because we’ve clicked.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Says me. And says you.’

  ‘I’ve said nothing.’

  I heard myself saying, ‘I don’t even know you.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  Of course it didn’t. Because I was already smitten. But I certainly wasn’t going to let on just how smitten I was.

  ‘A name might help,’ I said.

  ‘Jack Malone. Or Sergeant Jack Malone, if you want to get official about it.’

  ‘And where are you from, Sergeant?’

  ‘A paradise, a Valhalla, a place where White Anglo-Saxon Protestants fear to tread …’

  ‘Known as?’

  ‘Brooklyn. Flatbush, to be exact.’

  ‘I don’t know Flatbush.’

  ‘See! My point exactly. When it comes to WASPs, Brooklyn has always been a no-go zone.’

  ‘Well, I have been to Brooklyn Heights.’

  ‘But have you been to the Depths?’

  ‘Is that where you’re bringing me tonight?’

  His face brightened.

  ‘Game, set, match already?’

  ‘I never concede that easily. Especially when the opponent in question has forgotten to ask me my name.’

  ‘Whoops!’

  ‘So go on - pop the question.’

  ‘Vat ist your name?’ he asked in a mock German accent.

  I told him. He pursed his lips.

  ‘That’s Smythe with a y and an e?’

  ‘I am impressed.’

  ‘Oh, we’re taught how to spell in Brooklyn. Smythe …’

  He rolled the name around on his tongue, pronouncing it again in an arch English accent.

  ‘Smythe … I bet you anything that, once upon a time, it was good old plain Smith. But then one of your hoity-toity New England forebears decided it was f
ar too common, so he changed it to Smythe …’

  ‘How do you know I’m from New England?’

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding. And if I was a betting man, I’d put a ten-spot on the fact that you probably spell Sara without an h.’

  ‘And you’d win the bet.’

  ‘I told you I was a sharp cookie. Sara. Very pretty … if you like New England Puritans.’

  I heard Eric’s voice behind me.

  ‘You mean, like me?’

  ‘And who the hell are you?’ Jack asked, sounding a little annoyed at having our banter interrupted.

  ‘I’m her puritanical brother,’ Eric said, putting his arm around my shoulder. ‘More to the point: who the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m Ulysses S. Grant.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Eric said.

  ‘Does it matter who I am?’

  ‘I just don’t remember inviting you to this party, that’s all,’ Eric said, all smiles.

  ‘This is your place?’ Jack asked pleasantly, without a hint of embarrassment.

  ‘Excellent deduction, Dr Watson,’ Eric said. ‘Mind telling me how you ended up here?’

  ‘A guy I met at the USO club near Times Square told me he had this friend who had a friend who had another friend who knew of this bash on Sullivan Street. But listen, I don’t want to make any trouble, so I’ll leave now, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Why should you leave?’ I said so quickly that Eric gave me a questioning, wry smile.

  ‘Yes,’ Eric said, ‘why should you leave when certain people obviously want you to stay.’

  ‘You sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘Any friend of Sara’s …’

  ‘I really appreciate it.’

  ‘Where were you serving?’

  ‘Germany. And I wasn’t serving exactly. I was reporting.’

  ‘For Stars and Stripes?’ Eric asked, mentioning the official newspaper of the United States Army.

  ‘How did you ever guess?’ Jack Malone asked.

  ‘I think the uniform tipped me off. Whereabouts were you stationed?’

  ‘England for a while. Then, after the Nazi surrender, I was in Munich. Or, at least, what was left of Munich.’

  ‘Did you ever get to the Eastern Front?’

  ‘I write for Stars and Stripes … not the Daily Worker.’

  ‘I’ll have you know that I read the Daily Worker for ten years,’ Eric said, sounding a little too self-important.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Jack said. ‘I used to read the funnies every day as well.’

  ‘I don’t get the connection,’ Eric said.

  ‘We all outgrow the juvenile.’

  ‘The Daily Worker is your idea of juvenilia?’

  ‘Badly written juvenilia … like most propaganda sheets. I mean, if you’re going to write a daily jeremiad on class warfare, at least write it well.’

  ‘A jeremiad,’ Eric said, sounding arch. ‘My, my. We do know some big words, don’t we?’

  ‘Eric …’ I said, glowering at him.

  ‘Have I said something wrong?’ he said, the words slightly slurred. That’s when I realized he was drunk.

  ‘Not wrong,’ Jack said. ‘Just classist. Then again, talking as an illiterate Brooklyn mick …’

  ‘I never said that,’ Eric said.

  ‘No - you simply implied it. But, hey, I’m well used to parvenus making fun of my inelegant vowels.’

  ‘We are hardly parvenus,’ Eric said.

  ‘But you are impressed with my command of French, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘Your accent could use some work.’

  ‘Just like your sense of humor. Of course, speaking as one of your intellectual inferiors from the wrong side of the Manhattan Bridge, I always find it amusing that the biggest snobs in the world also happen to whistle the “Internationale” through their Ivy League teeth. Or maybe you read Pravda in the original Russian, comrade?’

  ‘And I bet you’re one of Father Coughlin’s most devoted admirers.’

  ‘Eric, for God’s sake,’ I said, appalled that he would make such an inflammatory comment - as Father Charles E. Coughlin was an infamous right-wing priest; a precursor of McCarthy who had a weekly radio broadcast, in which he hectored on against communists and all foreigners and anyone who didn’t bow down and kiss the flag. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence hated him. But I was relieved to see that this Jack Malone fellow wasn’t rising to my brother’s bait.

  His voice still calm, he said, ‘Consider yourself fortunate that I’m going to file that one away under banter.’

  I nudged my brother with my elbow. ‘Apologize,’ I said.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Eric spoke.

  ‘That was an inappropriate thing to say. I apologize.’

  Instantly, Jack’s face broke into a mild smile.

  ‘Then we leave friends, right?’ he asked.

  ‘Uh … sure.’

  ‘So … Happy Thanksgiving.’

  Eric reluctantly took Jack’s outstretched hand.

  ‘Yes. Happy Thanksgiving.’

  ‘And sorry for playing the gate-crasher,’ Jack said.

  ‘No need. Make yourself at home.’

  With that, Eric beat a hasty retreat across the room. Jack turned to me.

  ‘I kind of enjoyed that,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’ I said.

  ‘Damn right. I mean, the Army isn’t exactly brimming with erudite types. And it’s been a long time since I’ve been insulted in such a literate way.’

  ‘I really do apologize. He can get awfully grand when he’s had ten too many.’

  ‘Like I said, it was fun. And I now know where you get the hefty left hook. It’s obviously a family specialty.’

  ‘I never knew we came across as heavy hitters.’

  ‘And you’re just being modest. Anyway, Sara-without-an-h-Smythe … it’s time for me to make an exit, as I have to report for duty at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Then let’s go,’ I said.

  ‘But I thought … ?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. After the show I put on with your brother, you wouldn’t want anything more to do with me.’