The Pursuit of Happiness (2001)

by Douglas Kennedy

  After downing the second shot, I put away the bottle - and left the apartment. I forced myself to eat lunch at a local coffee shop, then decided to lose myself in a double feature at my neighborhood fleapit, the Beacon. The B-movie part of the program was some forgettable war picture with Cornell Wilde and Ward Bond. But the main feature - Adam’s Rib with Hepburn and Tracey - was a complete delight: smart, sassy, and urbane (not to mention set in the world of magazines - which amused me no end). Not only do movie stars get the best lines, they also land themselves in on-screen romantic conundrums that are inevitably resolved … or which end with wonderful tragic gravitas. For the rest of us mere mortals, things never turn out so clearcut. It’s always a state of ongoing mess.

  I returned home around six. As soon as I walked through the door, the phone began to ring. I answered it.

  ‘Hello there,’ he said.

  Immediately, my heart skipped a beat.

  ‘Are you still on the line, Sara?’ Jack asked.

  ‘Yes. I’m still here.’

  ‘So your number’s not unlisted after all.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Not that I blame you for telling me it was.’

  ‘Jack - I really don’t want to talk to you.’

  ‘I know why. And I deserve that. But if I could just …’

  ‘What? Explain?’

  ‘Yes - I’d like to try to explain.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear your excuses.’

  ‘Sara …’

  ‘No. No excuses. No explanations. No justifications.’

  ‘I’m sorry. You don’t know how sorry …’

  ‘Congratulations. You deserve to be sorry. Sorry for deceiving me. For deceiving her. She was part of your life when you met me, wasn’t she?’

  Silence.

  ‘Well, wasn’t she?’

  ‘These things are never simple.’

  ‘Oh, please …’

  ‘When I met you, I didn’t …’

  ‘Jack, like I said, I don’t want to know. So just go away. We have nothing to say to each other anymore.’

  ‘Yes, we do …’he said with vehemence. ‘Because for the last four years

  ‘I’m putting the phone down now …’

  ‘… for the last four years I have thought about you every hour of every day.’

  Long silence.

  ‘Why are you telling me this now?’ I finally asked.

  ‘Because it’s the truth.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. And yes, yes … I know I should have written … Should have answered all those amazing letters you sent me. But …’

  ‘I really don’t want to hear any more of this, Jack.’

  ‘Please meet me.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Look, I’m on Broadway and Eighty-Third Street. I could be at your place in five minutes.’

  ‘How the hell do you know where I live?’

  ‘The phone book.’

  ‘And let me guess what you told your wife … that you were going out for a pack of cigarettes and a little fresh air. Right?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Surprise, surprise. More lies.’

  ‘At least let me buy you a cup of coffee. Or a drink …’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Sara, please … give me a chance.’

  ‘I did. Remember?’

  I put down the phone. Instantly it rang again. I lifted the receiver.

  ‘Just ten minutes of your time,’ Jack said. ‘That’s all I ask.’

  ‘I gave you eight months of my time … and what did you do with it?’

  ‘I made a terrible mistake.’

  ‘Finally - a hint of self-knowledge. I’m not interested. Just go away, and never call me again.’

  I hung up, then took the phone off the hook.

  I fought the temptation of another bracing shot of Scotch. A few minutes later, my intercom rang. Oh Jesus, he was here. I went into the kitchen and lifted the intercom’s earpiece, then shouted:

  ‘I told you, I never want to see you again.’

  ‘There’s a coffee shop on the corner,’ Jack said, his voice cracking on the bad line. ‘I’ll wait there for you.’

  ‘Don’t waste your time,’ I said. ‘I’m not coming.’

  Then I hung up.

  For the next half-an-hour I tried to do things. I dealt with a day’s worth of dirty dishes in the sink. I made myself a cup of coffee. I brought it over to my desk. I sat down and attempted to proofread the four columns I had written during the blizzard. Finally, I got up, grabbed my coat and headed out.

  It was a two-minute walk from my building to Gitlitz’s Delicatessen. He was sitting in a booth near the door. A cup of coffee was in front of him, as well as an ashtray with four stubbed-out butts. As I walked in, he was lighting up another Lucky Strike. He jumped to his feet, an anxious smile on his face.

  ‘I was starting to give up hope …’ he said.

  ‘Give up hope,’ I said, sliding into the booth. ‘Because ten minutes from now, I’m walking out of here.’

  ‘It is so wonderful to see you,’ he said, sitting back down opposite me. ‘You don’t know how wonderful …’

  I cut him off.

  ‘I could use a cup of coffee,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ he said, motioning to the waitress. ‘And what do you want to eat?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I have no appetite.’

  He reached for my hand. I pulled it away.

  ‘You look so damn beautiful, Sara.’

  I glanced at my watch. ‘Nine minutes, fifteen seconds. Your time’s running out, Jack.’

  ‘You really hate me, don’t you?’

  I dodged that one by glancing back at my watch. ‘Eight minutes, forty-five seconds.’

  ‘I made a very bad call.’

  ‘Words is cheap … as they say in Brooklyn.’

  He winced, then took a deep drag on his cigarette. The waitress arrived with my coffee.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘What I did was inexcusable.’

  ‘All you had to do was answer one of my letters. You got them all, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, all of them. They were fantastic, extraordinary. So extraordinary I’ve kept them all.’

  ‘I’m touched. Next thing you’re going to tell me is you showed them all to … what was her name again?’

  ‘Dorothy.’

  ‘Ah yes, Dorothy. Very Wizard of Oz. Let me guess: you met her in Kansas with her little dog Toto …’

  I shut myself up. ‘I think I should leave,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t. Sara, I am so damn sorry …’

  ‘I must have written you … what?’

  ‘Thirty-two letters, forty-four postcards,’ he said.

  I looked at him carefully.

  ‘That’s a very precise inventory.’

  ‘I prized each and every one of them.’

  ‘Oh, please. Lies I can just about handle. But schmaltzy lies …’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘She was pregnant, Sara. I didn’t know that when I met you.’

  ‘But you obviously knew her, some way or another, when you met me. Otherwise she couldn’t have become pregnant by you. Or have I got that wrong too?’

  He sighed heavily, exhaling a lungful of smoke.

  ‘I met her in August forty-five. Stars and Stripes had just transferred me back to England after that assignment in Germany. I was doing a three-month stint at their main European bureau, which happened to be located at Allied HQ just outside of London. Dorothy was working at HQ as a typist. She’d just graduated from college - and had volunteered her services to the military. “I had this romantic idea of wanting to do my bit for the war effort,” she later told me. “I saw myself as some Hemingway heroine, working in a field hospital.” Instead, the Army
made her a secretary in London. One day, during a coffee break in the canteen, we got talking. She was bored in the typing pool. I was bored rewriting other journalists all day. We started seeing each other after work. We started sharing a bed. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t passion. It was just … something to do. A way of passing the time in the Ho-Hum capital of England. Sure, we liked each other. But we both knew that this was just one of those passing flings, with no future beyond our stint in England.

  ‘A couple of months later, at the start of November, I was told I was going to cover the start of postwar reconstruction in Germany … but could first take some leave in the States. When I broke the news to her that I was departing, she was a little sad … but also realistic. It had been pleasant. We liked each other. And I thought she was really swank. Hell, I was a Catholic mick from Brooklyn, whereas she was this classy Episcopalian from Mount Kisco. I went to Erasmus High. She went to Rosemary Hall and Smith. She was way out of my league. She knew this too - though she was too damn nice to ever say that to me. Part of me was flattered that she’d even deigned to spend time with me. But stuff like this happens during wartime. She’s there, you’re there … so, why not?

  ‘Anyway, I sailed from England on November tenth, never expecting to see Dorothy again. Two weeks later, I met you. And …’

  He broke off, stubbing out his cigarette. Then he fished out another Lucky Strike and lit it up.

  ‘And what?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘I knew.’

  Silence.

  ‘It was immediate and instantaneous,’ he said. ‘A complete jolt. But I knew.’

  I stared down into my coffee cup. I said nothing. He reached again for my hand. I kept it flat on the table. His fingers touched mine. I felt myself shudder. I wanted to pull my hand away again. I didn’t move it. When he spoke again, his voice was a near-whisper:

  ‘Everything I said to you that night, I meant. Everything, Sara.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear this.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  Now I pulled my hand away. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘You knew, Sara.’

  ‘Yes, of course I fucking knew,’ I hissed. ‘Thirty-two letters, forty-four postcards … and you ask me if I knew. I didn’t simply miss you. I longed for you. I didn’t want to, but I did. And when you didn’t respond …’

  He reached inside his overcoat and pulled out two envelopes. He placed them in front of me.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘Two letters I wrote you, but never sent.’

  I stared down at them. The envelopes were embossed with the US Army seal. They both looked worn and a little aged.

  ‘The first letter was written on the ship back to Germany,’ he said. ‘I was planning to mail this to you as soon as we docked in Hamburg. But when I arrived there, a letter was waiting for me from Dorothy, telling me she was pregnant. I immediately requested a weekend leave, and took the boat-train to London. On the way there, I made up my mind to tell her that, much as I liked her, I couldn’t marry her. Because …’ another deep drag of his cigarette ‘… because I wasn’t in love with her. And because I had met you. But when I got to England, she …’

  ‘What? Fell into your arms? Cried? Said that she was so afraid you were going to abandon her? Then told you she loved you?’

  ‘Yeah - all of the above. She also said her family would disown her if she had the child on her own. Having since met them, I know she was telling the truth. Don’t blame her …’

  ‘Why the hell would I blame her? Had I been in her position, I would have done exactly the same thing.’

  ‘I felt I had no choice. The old Jesuit teaching kicked in: you are accountable for your actions … you cannot escape the sins of the flesh … all that enlightened Catholic guilt stuff compelled me to tell her that, yes, I would marry her.’

  ‘That was very responsible of you.’

  ‘She’s a decent woman. We don’t have major problems. We get along. It’s … amiable, I guess.’

  I made no comment. After a moment, he touched one of the envelopes and said, ‘I wrote the second letter to you on my way back to Hamburg. In it, I explained …’

  ‘I really don’t want to know your explanations,’ I said, pushing both letters back towards him.

  ‘At least take them home and read them …’

  ‘What’s the point? What happened happened … and over four years ago. We had a night together. I thought it might be the start of something. I was wrong. C’est la vie. End of story. I’m not angry at you for “doing your duty” and marrying Dorothy. It’s just … you could have saved me a lot of grief and heartache had you just come clean with me, and told me what was going on.’

  ‘I wanted to. That’s what the second letter was about. I wrote it on the boat-train back to Hamburg. But when I arrived there, and found three of your letters waiting for me, I panicked. I didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘So you decided that the best approach was to do nothing. To refuse to answer my letters. To keep me dangling. Or maybe you just hoped I’d finally get the message and vanish?’

  He stared down into his coffee cup, and fell silent. Eventually I spoke. ‘Ego te absolvo… is that what you want me to say? Shame I could have dealt with. Guilt I could have dealt with. The truth I could have dealt with. But you chose silence. After swearing love to me - which is a huge thing to swear to anybody - you couldn’t face up to the simple ethical problem of coming clean with me.’

  ‘I didn’t want to hurt you …’

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ - don’t feed me that dumb cliche,’ I said, a wave of anger hitting me. ‘You hurt me more by keeping me in the dark. And then when you deigned to send a postcard to me, what was your message? “I’m sorry.” After eight months and all those letters, that’s all you could say. How I despised you when that card arrived on my doormat.’

  ‘Sometimes we do things we don’t even understand ourselves.’

  He stubbed out the cigarette. He was about to light up another one, but thought better of it. He looked disconcerted and sad - as if he didn’t know what to do next.

  ‘I really should go,’ I said.

  I started to stand up, but he took my hand.