The Pursuit of Happiness (2001)

by Douglas Kennedy

  ‘No, it’s not,’ I shouted. ‘He killed himself.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Jack said.

  ‘He drank two bottles of Canadian Club, knowing full well his ulcer couldn’t handle it. I warned him. The doctors warned him. He seemed so good yesterday on the train in from the Island. He really didn’t worry me at all. But I obviously misread …’

  I broke off and started to sob again. Jack put his arms around me and rocked me. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ Jack said.

  Joey coughed nervously. ‘There’s something else I’ve gotta tell you, Miss Smythe. Something Phil told me. Around three yesterday afternoon, your brother had a visitor. A guy in a suit, carrying a briefcase. He flashed some ID at Phil and said he was a federal process server. He asked Phil to phone your brother and summon him to the lobby - but not say who was here. So Phil did as ordered. Your brother came into the lobby, and the process server stuck a document into his hand and said something official like, “You are hereby served notice that blah, blah, blah.” Phil couldn’t hear it all. But he did say that your brother looked pretty stunned by what the guy was saying.’

  ‘What happened after Eric was served the papers?’ I asked.

  ‘The suit left, and your brother headed back to his room. Around ninety minutes later, the delivery guy from the liquor store showed up.’

  ‘Eric definitely didn’t go out at any time?’

  ‘Not according to Phil.’

  ‘Then the papers must still be upstairs. Let’s go.’

  Joey looked hesitant. ‘It’s still a real mess, Miss Smythe. Maybe you should wait

  ‘I can handle it,’ I said, standing up.

  ‘This is not a good idea,’ Jack said.

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ I said, and walked out of the bar. Joey and Jack followed behind me. Joey stopped by the front desk and got a key for Apartment 512 from the wall of letter boxes behind the counter. We took the elevator up to the fifth floor. We walked to a scuffed door marked 512. Joey paused before inserting the key. ‘Are you sure you want to go in there, Miss Smythe?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Let me go in,’ Jack said.

  ‘No. I want to see it.’

  Joey shrugged and sprung the lock. The door drifted open. I stepped inside. I sucked in my breath. I had expected a stained bloody carpet. I wasn’t prepared for the protracted dimensions of that stain. The blood was still wet and glistening. It covered the phone and dappled the furniture. There was the bloody outline of a hand on two of the walls, and on a table near to where Eric fell. The whole horrible sequence of my brother’s final minutes suddenly came together in my head. He’d been sitting on the broken-down sofa, drinking. An empty bottle of Canadian Club was on the floor by the cheap little television. The second bottle - drained, except for a finger or two of liquid - stood on the low wood-laminated coffee table. There was a blood-splattered glass on the sofa. Eric must have started hemorrhaging while finishing the final bottle. Frightened, he covered his mouth with his hand (the reason for all the bloody hand prints). Then he staggered to the phone, and called Joey. But he was too incoherent from the Canadian Club (and from the shock of bleeding) to say anything. He dropped the phone. He fell towards the folding card table that served as his desk. He leaned against it for support. He collapsed to the floor. And died immediately. Or, at least, that’s what I desperately hoped. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of Eric in extended pain.

  I couldn’t stare at the stain for long. My eyes moved towards the card table. An official-looking document was wedged under an ashtray. It too was speckled with blood. I pulled it out. I stared at it. It was a notice from the Internal Revenue Service, informing Eric that he was to be subjected to an audit - and that, based on the income information they had received from the National Broadcasting Company, they were now demanding an immediate payment of $43,545 to cover three years of back tax. The letter also stated that, if he wanted to contest this demand, he would have thirty days to present the proper certified accounts to his local IRS office, in order to appeal the specified sum. However, were he to ignore this deadline for appeal, and/or fail to pay the specified sum, he would be subject to criminal prosecution, imprisonment and confiscation of his property.

  Forty-three thousand five hundred and forty-five dollars. No wonder he ordered in those two bottles of Canadian Club. If only he’d phoned me. I would have rented a car and driven him to Canada. Or I could have given him enough money to fly to Mexico and survive for a couple of months. But he panicked and succumbed to fear. Or maybe he just couldn’t face the thought of another trial after the HUAC trial - followed by imprisonment, bankruptcy, and years thereafter of trying to chip away at that debt.

  The letter shook in my hand. Jack was immediately at my side, steadying me. ‘The bastards,’ I said. ‘The bastards.’

  He took the paper from me and scanned it. ‘God,’ he said. ‘How could they have done that?’

  ‘How? How?’ I said, sounding unhinged. ‘It’s easy. Had Eric cooperated and named names, this demand never would have been served on him. But if you don’t play ball with those shits, they’ll do everything possible to destroy you. Everything.’

  I started to cry again. I buried my head in Jack’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so damn sorry …’

  I felt another hand on my shoulder. It was Joey. ‘Let’s get you guys out of here,’ he said softly. ‘You don’t want to look at this no more.’

  We somehow made it to the elevator and back to the bar. Joey left us the whiskey and a couple of glasses. Jack poured us two shots. I was descending into deeper shock - to the point where my hands were starting to shake. The whiskey helped. For the eighth time that night, I pulled myself together. Jack was slumped in an armchair, staring ahead. I reached for his hand.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Just overwhelmed. And guilty that …’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Guilty that I never really got on with Eric.’

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘I should’ve tried harder. I should’ve …’

  He broke off, on the verge of sobbing. People always surprise you at the strangest moments. Here was Jack - who never really liked my brother - in tears over his death. That’s the thing about a genuine tragedy. It reminds everyone that all the arguments we have with each other are ultimately pointless. Death silences the quarrel - and we’re suddenly left with the realization that our dispute with the other person had a built-in obsolescence; that, like everything we do, it was of the moment. And that moment - that sliver of time we call life - counts for nothing. Yet we still have the arguments, the quarrels, the rancor, the anguish, the jealousy, the resentment … the splenetic underside which shadows everyone’s existence. We live this way - even though we know it will all end; that, somehow, everything is doomed. Maybe that’s the real point of anger - it’s the way we rage against our complete insignificance. Anger gives consequence to that which is fundamentally inconsequential. Anger makes us believe we’re not going to die.

  We drank some more whiskey. It had its beneficial effects. We said nothing for a while. We just sat in that empty bar as it gradually became flooded with morning light. Eventually I spoke.

  ‘I have to tell Ronnie.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jack said. ‘I was thinking that. Do you want me to handle it?’

  ‘No. He has to hear it from me.’

  I asked Joey to go upstairs and root around Eric’s papers, to find Ronnie’s touring schedule. He discovered it on the same table where I found the IRS demand. Ronnie was playing in Houston that night. I waited until noon to call him - by which time I was back in my apartment, and had already begun to make arrangements for the funeral in a few days’ time. Ronnie was groggy when he answered the phone. He seemed surprised to hear from me, and instantly worried.

  ‘You sound bad,’ he said. />
  ‘I am bad, Ronnie.’

  ‘It’s Eric, isn’t it?’ he asked in a hushed voice.

  And that’s when I told him. I tried to keep it as simple as possible - because I knew I’d start falling apart again if I got into too much detail. There was a long silence when I finished.

  ‘Ronnie … you okay?’ I finally asked.

  Another silence.

  ‘Why didn’t he call me?’ he asked, his voice barely audible. ‘Or you?’

  ‘I don’t know. Or maybe I do know, and I don’t want to say …’

  ‘He loved you more than …’

  ‘Please, Ronnie. Stop. I can’t deal with …’

  ‘Okay, okay.’

  Another silence.

  ‘You still there?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh Jesus, Sara …’

  He started crying. Suddenly, the phone went dead. Half-an-hour later, he called back. He sounded shaky, but under control.

  ‘Sorry I hung up,’ he said. ‘I just couldn’t …’

  ‘No need to explain,’ I said. ‘You better now?’

  ‘No,’ he said, sounding flat. ‘I’ll never get over this.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know.’

  ‘I really did love him.’

  ‘And he you, Ronnie.’

  I could hear him swallowing hard, trying not to cry. Why is it that we always try to be brave at moments when bravery is futile?

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Ronnie said. ‘I can’t make sense of this.’

  ‘Then don’t. The funeral’s the day after tomorrow. Can you make it?’

  ‘No way. Basie’s a strict operator. He’d let you off work if it was your mother who died. But flying back to New York for a friend’s funeral? No way. And people might start asking questions about the type of friend Eric was.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I will worry about it. I want to be there. I should be there.’

  ‘Call me when you’re back in the city. Call me anytime.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You take care.’

  ‘You too. Sara?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What am I going to do?’

  I knew what I was going to do. After I put down the phone, I careened into the bedroom, collapsed across the bed, and let go. I must have cried for a solid hour. Jack tried to comfort me, but I screamed at him to go away. I needed to do this - to weep my heart out; to surrender to the sheer terribleness of what had happened.

  There are moments when you think you will cry forever. You never do. Eventually, sheer physical exhaustion forces you to stop, to settle, to becalm yourself amidst all the mad turbulence of bereavement. And so, after an hour (maybe even ninety minutes - I had lost all track of time), I forced myself up from the bed. I took off all my clothes, letting them drop to the floor. I ran a bath. I made it as hot as I could tolerate. Wincing as I slid into it, my body quickly adjusted to its warmth. I took a face cloth. I dunked it in the water. I wrung it out. I draped it across my face. I kept it there for the next hour, as I floated in the hot water and tried to empty my mind of everything. Jack wisely didn’t come in to see how I was. He kept his distance. When I eventually emerged from the bath - covered in a robe, with a towel around my hair - he didn’t try to hug me, nor did he say anything inane like, ‘Feeling better, dear?’ He was smart enough to realize that I shouldn’t be crowded right now.

  Instead, he asked, ‘Hungry?’

  I shook my head. I sat down on the sofa. ‘Come here,’ I said.

  He joined me. I took his face in my hands. I said nothing. I simply looked at him for a very long time. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask what I was thinking. Maybe he knew. You are everything I have now. Everything.

  Eric’s funeral took place two days later. It was held at the Riverside Funeral Home on Amsterdam and 75th Street. Only a dozen people showed up: Jack and Meg, Joel Eberts, a handful of friends from Eric’s theater days, a classmate or two from Columbia. Nobody from NBC made an appearance. Marty Manning did send a wreath, and a note to me, in which he said that Eric wasn’t just a brilliant writer of comedy, but a true mensch … and someone who didn’t deserve the fate that had befallen him:

  ‘We live in strange times,’ Manning wrote, ‘when a man as funny and gentle as your brother is bullied into despair. Everyone on the show loved him. We all wish we could be there Monday to say a proper goodbye - but Monday is our big rehearsal day. And as Eric himself would have said, “The show must go on.” Please know you’re in our thoughts …’

  I knew full well (from Eric) that Monday was just the first readthrough of that week’s script - and that it never really started until around eleven in the morning. Had Manning and Company wanted to, they could have easily made the ten a.m. service at the Riverside. But I understood their reluctance to make an appearance at the funeral. Just as I understood the subtext of the line about Eric being bullied into despair. Like everyone else, Manning and his team were terrified of the same fate befalling them. And I was pretty damn certain that a directive came from Ira Ross and the brass on the forty-third floor that no NBC personnel should attend the funeral, just in case the FBI had decided to post a man at the door to take down the names of anyone who dared to show solidarity with Eric.

  As it turned out, Mr Hoover and his associates reckoned that my dead brother was no longer a threat to national security - so unless they had the Riverside Chapel covertly staked out, I could detect no sign of FBI presence. Instead, the dozen mourners who dared to show their faces sat together in the first two rows as a Unitarian minister made a series of telling comments about Eric’s integrity, his sense of conscience, his courage. The minister’s name was Roger Webb. The funeral home had recommended him when I said that Eric was, in essence, a non-believer (‘Then this Unitarian reverend is the guy for you,’ the funeral director told me). I had expected some bored man-of-the-cloth who would say a few prayers, mutter a couple of platitudes, and be glancing at his watch during the entire service. But Roger Webb was young, earnest and actually nice. He made a point of calling me a day before the funeral and asking a lot of questions about Eric. I suggested that he come over to my apartment to talk things through. He showed up a few hours later - a baby-faced thirty-year-old from Columbus, Ohio. From a few passing comments he made as we sipped a cup of coffee, I sensed that he was good news - and, like most Unitarians, liberal in temperament. So I opened up, telling him exactly what had befallen Eric - and the admirable, but self-destructive choice he made when he refused to name names. I also risked mentioning his involvement with Ronnie.

  He listened in silence. Then he finally said, ‘Your brother sounds like he was a remarkable man. And a total original.’

  I felt my throat tightening. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He was definitely that.’

  ‘We’re actually scared of originality in this country. Of course, we spout on about rugged individualism, and all that John Wayne nonsense. But, at heart, we’re a nation of Babbitts. “Don’t rock the boat, don’t step outside the social norm, don’t question the system, be a team player, a company man.” If you don’t conform, God help you.’

  ‘You sound like Eric.’

  ‘I’m certain your brother would have put it in a smarter, wittier fashion that I just did. I’m a huge fan of The Marty Manning Show.’

  ‘I want you to speak your mind at the service, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘No one can really speak their mind these days - because it may be taken down and used against you. But there are ways of getting the message across.’