Starting from Happy

by Patricia Marx

  She was thankful that nobody was there to catch the sight of her in her excruciatingly comfortable sweatpants as she ate steamed broccoli from a big plastic tub.

  10.

  Imogene considered how great it was she’d never run anyone over.

  11.

  She thought, “My, my, I am happy!”

  12.

  One fine day, Imogene frantically watched as her laptop slid into a public toilet owing to the demise of its carrying case’s tragically frayed shoulder strap. Afterward, the computer would no longer boot up, and when it struggled to come to life, Imogene could make out the puk-a-yuk puk-a-yuk of a distant outboard motorboat. Or perhaps the ghost of plumbing past. Yet Imogene had faith that experts could fix everything.

  She called the technical support hotline, two dollars and fifty cents a half-minute, including the time it takes the expert to check the serial number and validate the warranty. Thirteen dollars into the conversation: “May I ask you a personal question?” said the female expert on the other end of the technical support hotline. Imogene prepared herself to state her mother’s maiden name.

  “Are you on medication?” the expert said.

  13.

  It was times like these that Imogene wished she had had children, because surely by now one of them would be eleven and therefore old enough to fix her computer. Ron de Jean might possibly have been of help, but he was in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, at an antibedwetting convention.

  It was times like these that Imogene wished someone would tell her what to do or, better yet, do it for her.

  It was times like these that Imogene could have had a stiff drink, popped a pill, joined a cult, sweetened the pot, paid someone off, double-crossed her family (if it would have made a difference), found religion, made a deal with the devil, moved to a faraway place, stayed under the covers, cried a river, crumpled into a teeny ball, thrown a tantrum, had a stroke, hollered and hollered and hollered and hollered some more.

  14.

  But Imogene wasn’t the type.

  15.

  Wally Yez’s business card, which Imogene had recently found in a pocketbook she hadn’t carried since God-knows-when, said “An Answer for Everything.” Wally Yez? Didn’t ring a bell. Still, she thought, it was worth a try. Wasn’t everything?

  Imogene hoped Wally Yez wasn’t the chiropractor she’d sat next to at the Sepkowitzes’ party—the guy who believed the secrets of the universe were contained in the alignment of the spine and also creamed corn.

  16.

  When the phone rang, Wally had been crimping the origami paper he needed to put the finishing touches on the bony tail and massive knob plate of an ankylosaurid dinosaur. “I remember you” was what Wally said when Imogene telephoned. “You’re the girl who practically proposed to me in the apple pie line.”

  Imogene started to wonder:

  Could this guy be a crack? But, as anyone who has ever needed a favor knows, you make allowances.

  17.

  “Can I be blunt?” Wally Yez said over the telephone to Imogene Gilfeather. No further words were needed to convey to Imogene that the prognosis regarding her computer and possibly everything else was not propitious.

  “Mind if we skip the part of the conversation in which you tell me in stern tones that I should have backed up my files?” said Imogene. “And certainly let’s not waste time reflecting upon the lesson I learned the hard way.”

  “I understand,” said Wally, going straight to the part of the conversation in which he asked, “Are you still with Don le Juan?”

  “Ron de Jean?” said Imogene. “Not really. He’s sort of with someone.” By someone, Imogene meant his wife. By sort of, Imogene meant sort of.

  Wally asked Imogene if she would like to accompany him this weekend to a hootenanny upstate.

  “Weekend?! Hootenanny?! Upstate?!” thought Imogene, and each of those was only one of the reasons she declined.

  “What’s wrong with dinner in the city?” Imogene said.

  “Dinner in the city it is,” Wally said. “Pick a night.”

  “Come to think of it,” Imogene said, “I’m not sure it will work. I’m kind of busy with my trunk show and my friend from Brussels will be in town and I’m getting my carpets cleaned and that reminds me, my driver’s license is about to expire and, oh, no, I think I meant to make an appointment to see about getting my grandmother’s wing chair reupholstered.”

  What Imogene did not say was that she felt her status quo was sufficiently rich and full. Currently and for the foreseeable future, she had no slots open for Romance.

  18.

  “What about another night?” said Wally.

  19.

  Let us now talk about Wally and Gwen. How long were they together? Long enough to put 136,023 miles on one automobile and 47,987 on another. Long enough to acquire a long-haired dachshund puppy who grew up and gave birth to a litter of long-haired dachshund puppies. Long enough to buy a house in the suburbs together. Long enough to agree it is silly to celebrate one more Valentine’s Day when they could put the money they’d have spent into a fund set aside to remodel the kitchen. Long enough to fire two contractors. Long enough for the third contractor to misunderstand Gwen and chop down Wally’s favorite tree on Arbor Day. Long enough for Gwen to have heard all of Wally’s best stories and not hesitate to interrupt him when she felt she could tell one in a more entertaining way than he could. Long enough for Wally to marvel at how he had never tired of Gwen’s anecdote about the 1955 penny and the milkshake. Long enough for both of them to say some fairly beastly things about each other’s family. Long enough for Wally to give up short-sleeved shirts because of Gwen’s conviction that only butchers wear short-sleeved shirts. Long enough for Gwen to wear her dental night guard to bed. Long enough for Gwen to reach the conclusion that a king-size bed wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Long enough for Wally to agree it wouldn’t. Long enough for Wally and Gwen to hold dual memberships to museums in three states, the District of Columbia, and the Netherlands, but not long enough for them to view any art or artifacts. Long enough to fill a Dumpster with their stuff after they sold the house in the suburbs. Long enough for their dachshund to have a hip replacement and die.

  Long enough for Patty to be glad she’s not Wally and Gwen.

  A=Wally and Gwen.

  B=Longest amount of time, in eons, a sinner in Limbo has waited to enter Heaven.

  C=Shortest time, in epochs, a customer calling AT&T has been put on hold.

  D=Number of incidents last year when a human being was mistaken for a penguin.

  E=Hours it takes to pan-roast a fully grown penguin.

  F=Time, in years, it takes for raw meat in freezer to sprout florets.

  G=Days Austin Gillespie stayed home from first grade because he said his stomach hurt from global warming.

  H=Dollars, in trillions, of rewards promised in e-mails supposedly originating in Nigeria.

  I=Annual requests on death row for steak, fries, and a side of Pileggi.

  J=Percentage of Norwegians who deliberately give lost foreigners incorrect directions.

  K=Percentage of movie characters who cough in first act and die in third act.

  L=Number of times the words verily and beget are used erroneously in the Bible.

  M=Time, in weeks, it took Patty to draw this graph.

  20.

  At the point that Wally asked Imogene to the hootenanny, Hurricane Gwen and Typhoon Wally had made landfall in the rec room, also known as the basement.

  21.

  “Let me get this straight,” said Elsie Evangelista, “she turns the hootenanny down and a few days later, you ask her to a magic show?”

  “The lumbosacral region. There! Rub there,” said Wally.

  “She must think you’re twelve,” said Elsie.

  “Trust me,” said Wally. “Women cannot resist Wally Yez.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Elsie.

  “Haven’t I always had a girlfriend?” said Wally. �
��I’ve always had a girlfriend since I was fourteen, if you count Candy Kling letting me touch her bosoms in the cloakroom with the Hornig sisters as witnesses.” Wally let his head drop into Elsie’s hands.

  “Weren’t you going to take a breather from the fairer sex?” said Elsie. “Isn’t that what you said after you and Gwen split up?”

  “I am taking a breather,” said Wally. “I told you: Imo-gene said no.”

  “Lean your head toward me a little more,” said Elsie.

  “But she’ll say yes eventually,” said Wally. “Probably Thursday, if history can tell us anything.”

  “Further toward me,” said Elsie.

  “Are you aware,” Wally said, “that I’ve been with you longer than I’ve been with any other woman?”

  (Elsie Evangelista is Wally Yez’s hairdresser. They go way back.)

  22.

  When Wally telephoned to invite Imogene to the Origami Conference in Bridgeport, Imogene was in the middle of designing a piece of stretchy fabric for the prototype of the teddy she wanted to include in the spring collection whose theme was Ancient Egypt.

  “What’s wrong with a movie?” Imogene said as she scribbled a sacred ibis onto a Chinese take-out menu.

  “Too passive,” Wally said as he typed Imogene Gilfeather’s phone number into his address book.

  “If you do not like passive,” Imogene said, erasing the ibis’s beak, “then you will not like me.”

  23.

  She and Wally settled on a plan to go to a museum and dinner, but not for three weeks because Imogene said she could be free no sooner.

  (That’s what she said. Patty’s seen Imogene’s calendar, however, and wants to know: since when does “get super to change lightbulb” constitute being busy?)

  “Have you ever been to Larry’s French Restaurant?” Wally said. “They have escargots. I know Larry so we could get a good table and some decent gastropods.”

  “Wherever,” said Imogene and then she said goodbye. Wally wrote “Date #1” into a tiny square on his pocket diary.

  Imogene returned to Egypt. Truth be told, she did like escargots.

  24.

  Gwen had quit the lab where she and Wally had worked since they’d met, and would soon be moving down the hall to the insect behavior lab. “But not because of you,” she told him the day they got together in the park to decide the fate of their lawn furniture.

  “Unlimited number of experimental subjects: all mine to mutilate!” Gwen said. “How could anyone pass up an opportunity like that?” she said.

  Wally saw her point. Since their postdoctoral years, he and Gwen had been conducting physiological experiments on animals, including one in which they’d forced cats to listen to Ernest Borgnine’s dramatic reading of Pilgrim’s Progress until their subjects were in no condition to live. Cat lovers were not pleased with this research, and cat lovers, it turned out, have a lot of power to impede shipments of cats (not to mention their influence on what is sold at the cash registers in most bookstores).

  “You can have the furniture,” Wally said.

  “Why don’t you take it?” said Gwen. “I don’t have a house.”

  “Neither do I,” said Wally. The house they each didn’t have was, of course, the same house, their having sold it the other day to a man who planned to start a family as soon as he could find a woman to start one with.

  “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” said Gwen.

  “Should we sit down?” said Wally as he sat down on a bench.

  “I’m pregnant,” said Gwen, who had remained standing.

  “Is that possible?” said Wally. “I mean it’s absolutely wonderful, but you know what I mean.” Wally stood up. If he were going to be a father, it behooved him, he felt, to be as tall as he could be.

  Gwen sat down.

  “It’s not only possible,” said Gwen, “it’s doubly possible.” Gwen saw the confusion or something else in Wally’s eyes. “I sort of was having a thing with Leonard,” she said.

  “Leonard in the lab?” said Wally.

  25.

  Wally asked himself how he could have spent so many years with a girl like this and why he would not have been unhappy to spend some more years with her had she not dumped him. Or had he dumped her, he wondered. If he does not know, how can we?

  26.

  Gwen was pregnant and then she was not. In both cases, it was never clear how it had happened.

  27.

  Imogene was young and then she was old. She could not tell you how this had happened, but she had a needling feeling that it might have been her fault. Should she have been using night cream all these years? Eaten more salmon? Been a lifelong devotee of yoga? No, thought Imogene, nobody could blame her for not doing yoga. They hadn’t invented yoga when she was a spring chicken, had they? What about those flax pills that her friend Joie Finkelstein swears by? No, they wouldn’t have preserved her: has anybody taken a good look at Joie Finkelstein lately? Perhaps if she had listened to the radio more often, tuned into the young people’s stations—would a little bit of youth have worn off on her? Imogene felt rueful that she had not been more conscientious about sleep and she worried she shouldn’t have been so worried all the time.

  Was it possible Imogene had received a letter when she was in her twenties, asking her to check a box if she wanted to stay young? Just like me, thought Imogene, to forget to open a letter like that.

  Most of the time, Imogene did not feel old. Her bones felt the way she remembered them always feeling, if one can remember such a thing. She did not wear dirndls or velour tunics or baggy pants with elastic waistbands (except at night). No. She wore halter tops on occasion and had a streak in her hair. Girls half her age could not walk in her shoes, the heels were that high (and no orthotics). Only now and then did she look in the mirror and feel an urgent need to squint.

  How old was Imogene? She was thirty-seven. In no time, she was all too well aware, she would surpass the New York State speed limit.

  28.

  The night of Date #1 was also the night of the First Annual International Silhouette Lingerie Awards, the so-called Nobels of Underwear. Imogene was a finalist in three categories: Best Glamour Nightwear (for her Hepburn Shortie), Best Technical Innovation (for her six-way stretch polyester), and Best Bralette (for her Skim-P).

  When Imogene remembered that she’d forgotten about the awards, she telephoned Wally.

  “And now for the tip of the day—” Wally’s phone machine said. “Don’t postpone the joy.”

  Imogene had been calling to do just that.

  29.

  Wally was at the lab feeding salty licorice to a cat when Imogene phoned. Imogene was fitting a D+ cover girl when Wally called back.

  “D plus,” Wally said. “Tell her that if she needs a tutor …” Wally had been making a joke and Imogene knew that Wally was making a joke, but Imogene had no time in her life, she believed, for men who made jokes. Nor did she have time for men who bantered, postured, preened, equivocated, explained, chewed the fat, played devil’s advocate, watched football, cooked their famous lasagna, explored their feelings, asked her lots of questions, or had too much time.

  “Should we come up with another plan?” Imogene said, for Imogene did have time for men with dimples, purpley eyes, rumpled hair, and endearing overbites (if online photos speak the truth). Moreover, she did have time next week. Plus, she felt rotten for canceling on such short notice. “Would next week work?” said Imogene.

  “Does this Sunday count as next week?” said Wally.

  30.

  The First Annual International Silhouette Lingerie Awards was—there is no other word for it—a bust. During the cocktail hour, a certain model, known for her lengthy torso, was arrested in the ladies room for selling ketamine, an anesthetic used in veterinary and human medicine that can have sportive side effects.

  The ceremony was … well, suffice it to say: first prize for Best T-Shirt Bra went to a Lycra thing designed
by FlexCo that nearly everyone agreed belonged in the Shape-wear category. “It is a travesty!” the VIP next to Imogene said as if he’d been sitting not in the McNally Auditorium at Fordham University but in the Peace Palace at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

  Donald Charm, the buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue, did not show up. Given that Imogene won not so much as an Honorable Mention, she was, in point of fact, relieved.

  31.

  Chaplette 31 is always a difficult chaplette. Let Patty hasten, then, to chaplette 32.

  32.

  Imogene returned home from the First Annual International Silhouette Lingerie Awards and listened to her voice mail as she kicked off the red strappy sandals, which had been—she hated to admit her mother had been right—absolutely more suitable than the brown patent leather peep-toes. Imogene turned on the TV, and then called her assistant, Harriet, with an idea for an ethereal chemise line. Imogene was not listening, therefore, when the news anchorman reported that the Special K hustled by the model in the ladies’ room at the First Annual International Silhouette Lingerie Awards had been traced to a local vestibulospinal reflexes lab. Wally Yez was a researcher in that lab, but there was no mention of him on the news.

  “You think the public is ready for that kind of chemise?” said Harriet on the phone.