My American Unhappiness (14 page)

September 22, 2008

Dear Friend of the Humanities:

It's been an eventful summer here at the office of the Great Midwestern Humanities Initiative (GMHI). A number of our grant recipients completed long-term projects over the summer and held free public events all across the region. I hope you had a chance to attend some of them, from the Alley Stage Rural Play Festival in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, to the Backwoods Politics Symposium in Escanaba, Michigan, from the Reimagining the Rust Belt Conference in Cleveland, to the Catholic Worker Farmer Harvest Celebration in Story County, Iowa.

This year, the GMHI has also been the subject of a rather intensive federal audit, and while such processes do add a significant amount of stress and paperwork to our lives at the office, they are the cornerstone of the transparency and accountability that life in the twenty-first century demands. As we near our ten-year anniversary, we look forward to sharing
the results of the audit with you in our "Decade One" report, which we will publish in 2010, a document of impressive length and content edited and compiled by our longtime administrative assistant, Lara Callahan, who has just been promoted to the position of Associate Director. It's a well-deserved nod of appreciation to Lara's lengthy, cheerful, and excellent service to the cause of the public humanities in the American Midwest.

Meanwhile, responses to our signature project,
An Inventory of American Unhappiness,
continue to pour in from across the nation, creating an impressive bolus of candid information regarding our collective American psyche, so bruised by a political system nearly destroyed in eight short years, as well as a slipshod economy. We hope to publish our first in-depth analysis of the
Inventory
sometime next year, if funding permits. And planning is under way for our first-ever "Midwestern Unhappiness Festival" in the fall of 2009, which will replace the long-running Wisconsin Book Festival as our signature event next year.

On a much more personal note, my mother, Violet Pappas, has been immersed in a battle with stage IV lung cancer. Thus, I was not as deeply engaged in the work of the GMHI this summer as I otherwise would have been, and if I've been difficult to reach, or conspicuously absent from our special events, this is the reason. It is no wonder that in moments of deep family tragedy, our intellectual and professional pursuits seem like dross.

Still, autumn with its sad, purple afternoons, brief and fleeting, finds me back at this desk, happy to have meaningful work in a time of sadness. I'm writing this letter in the hope that you will see how the humanities—our understanding and exploration of our own role in the human narrative—challenge and sustain us in times of trial and woe. Please help us continue
to do our work, so that citizens across the Midwest may live rich and textured lives while the Lord grants them time.

Godspeed,

Zeke Pappas

GMHI Executive Director

Lead Scholar,
An Inventory of American Unhappiness

"You can't send this," Lara says upon reading my letter.

"I most certainly can," I say. "It's an honest assessment of where we are as an organization and of where I am as its leader."

"Zeke, it's way too personal," she says. "It's beautiful at times. I was even moved by it, Zeke. It was poetic, eloquent. But I am your friend, a trusted colleague. I am not a donor or potential donor. In some parts it's a bit, well, depressing. At best. Unsettling, at its worst."

"Lara," I say, "it is absolutely appropriate for you, in your new role as associate director, to offer well-considered and well-crafted opinions about my choices as the executive director. However, I reserve the right to both respectfully disagree and to make all final decisions. And my decision has been made, and this is going to be our fall fundraising letter."

"Can we take out the 'Lord' line? Or change the word
Godspeed
to
sincerely?
" Can we at least do that, Zeke?"

"No. Absolutely not. A number of the humanists in the Midwest are rather devout. It will be refreshing to them to see a liberal academic invoking the Lord."

"But you're not religious," she says.

"Exactly!" I say.

Lara looks at me for a long time. Since I have been back in the office she seems to regard me with pity and panic. Apparently, the auditors have been hounding her for information during the summer while I was on personal leave. (We have a generous family leave policy at the organization, and I availed myself of it to care for the twins, and my mother, and to attend meetings with oncologists and surgeons and lawyers and such.) Lara is a little uncertain, I can see, thinking that perhaps I am not ready to be back at work. But that is precisely why I promoted her to associate director. She deserves to be compensated for the graceful and intelligent way she handled my long absence this summer. But I am back at work now, and I must be the leader.

"At least change a few things," Lara says.

"Lara," I say, "you are a warm and empathetic person, and you were moved by the letter, and I hope there are other warm and empathetic people out there on the mailing list who are also moved."

"Do you think that perhaps your intelligence has been crippled by grief?" she asks. "Could your understanding of human behavior be permanently altered by the tragedies your family has experienced?"

"Lara," I say, "I expect these to be sent to the printer and then to bulk mail, and that they will reach all twenty-five thousand, six hundred members on our mailing list. I want the reply envelopes to be green. I want to use recycled paper and soy-based ink. And those are, frankly, the only details you should worry about. I wrote the most honest letter I could write. I can do nothing else."

"You do know, Zeke, that this is a sinking ship. We'll be broke by Christmas. Have you been reading the newspapers? Do you know what is happening to the stock market?"

"I am a fundraiser, Lara, and well aware of the crisis plaguing our investment sector. I will raise the funds we need when we need them. Now, if you'll excuse me," I say, standing up and sliding on my brown twill blazer, "I'm going out for coffee."

This fall, my almost-sister-in-law, Harmony, has come from Michigan to help with the twins and to care for my mother so that I could return to work. Harmony is a real estate agent in Michigan, and there is no real estate to sell in Michigan right now. Or rather, there are no buyers and hence no sales. There is a glut of unwanted houses with upside-down mortgages on the market. So Harmony has some free time on her hands, and she arrived at the end of August, bringing with her a new and vibrant energy that my grief-stricken and tired household so desperately needed. She took April and May shopping for school supplies and new clothes. She took them to the zoo and the Wisconsin Dells and the science museum in Chicago, and then, when they went back to school, Harmony assumed the role of primary caregiver and housekeeper, and I returned to my office full-time.

A few days after she arrived in Wisconsin, Harmony and I met with my mother's lawyer, Phil Crawford, whom my mother met while working at the Old Country Buffet. Phil was a widower and lunched at the buffet each afternoon, which was across the street from his modest office suite, and he developed a friendship with my mother. I had my suspicions that their relationship might have included more than mere cordial friendship, but I did not ask, and I was grateful for Phil's compassionate guidance and his willingness to come over to the house for meetings. By the end of this summer, an outing as simple as a routine appointment at the University hospital, thirty minutes in duration, would be enough to send my mother to bed for two or three days. The exhaustion that came with staying alive inside a rebelling and failing body was taking its toll on her.

It was a simple estate, Phil Crawford assured us that afternoon at the backyard picnic table. My mother was sleeping, and Harmony had just gotten back from a run. I had just finished putting dinner in the oven, and so Phil and I and Harmony sat in the yard, while April and May played in a new playhouse I had bought them at Home Depot. It was a dazzling bright afternoon, and even with the humming static of the baby monitor (which we had placed in my mother's room in order to keep tabs on her needs), I could hear a stunning cacophony of birds in the scrappy box elder trees above us. I remember how lovely the day was, how lovely Harmony looked, perspiring in the sun, a glass of sweating iced tea resting on her stomach. I remember how happy the girls sounded inside their new playhouse, their laughter echoing off the plastic walls. I remember all of this because the news I was about to receive from Phil Crawford was so dark and unhappy in contrast to all the joy and beauty around me: all of my mother's possessions, the ones she had in her permanent residence (my house), were given to me. I could do with them whatever I wished. My mother's few financial assets—a savings account of four thousand thirteen dollars, a retirement account, a modest life insurance payout, et cetera—would be put toward her debts (she still had roughly fourteen thousand dollars in credit card debt) and then into a trust fund for the girls to be divided equally between them on their eighteenth birthdays. And finally, custody of April and May would go to Harmony and her husband, Malcolm, though I would be guaranteed liberal visitation rights and had the right to two weeks with the girls each summer, at my home or at a vacation destination of my choice.

Harmony began to cry at this news. She and Malcolm had been trying to have children for several years, and she did love her nieces. I didn't doubt that. It's just that, well, I have been a constant in the girls' lives for some time.

Didn't that count for something? I asked.

Phil Crawford supposed I could challenge the will in court, but he doubted that my mother's wishes would be overturned.

"Zeke," Harmony said, "Malcolm and I will be absolutely certain that you get to spend a great deal of time with your nieces. You can count on that!"

"When did my mother write this will?" I asked.

"Earlier in the year," Phil Crawford said. "When she first began to feel ill."

"I know it must be hard to accept that she picked me, Zeke. But I assure you those girls will have everything they could ever need or want. I assure you that you will be a huge part of their life, and that you will..."

Phil Crawford held up his hands. "Wait," he said. "It's a little more complicated than it sounds."

"I hope so," I said.

"Excuse me?" Harmony said.

"There is a caveat, Zeke," the lawyer said. "The will stipulates that if you are married at the time of your mother's death, or engaged to be married with plans to legally wed within one hundred twenty days of her death, you will be the legal guardian of April and May."

"That's in there?" Harmony asked.

"Yes," Phil Crawford said, "it is. It's not all that uncommon for people to add situational criteria to their estate plans. It's done all the time to prepare them for eventualities and whatnot. Your mother, Zeke, worried she might be unconscious or otherwise unable to change the will if your domestic situation changed before she died."

"So if he gets married, I get nothing?" Harmony asked.

"You'll be a huge part of their life, Harmony," I said. "I would grant you the same visitation rights and relationship that you would grant me."

"I'm not sure how much time your mother has," Phil Crawford said. "But Zeke, you're not even dating anybody, isn't that right? That's what your mother told me, just a few weeks ago."

"If he gets married," Harmony continued, "by Christmas, say, then he is the legal guardian?"

"Yes. That's right," Phil Crawford said. "If Violet is still alive when he gets married."

Both Harmony and Phil looked at me.

"Is there anybody?" Harmony asked. "You're not even dating anybody, am I right?"

"I have a few prospects," I said. "Actually, there is somebody I plan to propose to, as soon as possible. My mother's illness, of course, sort of delayed things."

"What if it's a sham marriage?" Harmony asked. "Then what?"

"The will specifies a legal marriage," Phil Crawford said, "which must last for at least three years or custody rights will revert back to you, Harmony. Or at least you could contest them in a court of law. I suppose you could request that Zeke and his new bride sign an affidavit of sorts, affirming that they have a real marriage and that they plan to be married for a long time. I can add that language, if Violet agrees to it, to prevent a sham sort of situation."

Harmony sighed.

"He's a drunk!" she said. "He can't raise the girls alone!"

"A drunk?" I said.

"Zeke, here's what your mother told me," Phil Crawford said. "She worries about you raising the children alone. She thinks you are too introverted, too involved in your own intellectual pursuits to really raise a family, and, frankly, she also worries about your drinking, which she says is getting a bit, well, enthusiastic."

I sit there in stunned silence for a moment, staring at my hands. And then I look up at the lawyer, who, after a minute of no reaction, finally purses his lips, nods his head, and says, "I'm afraid that sums it up, Zeke. Your mother thought a woman, a good woman who loved children, would help you. You'd change."

"I see," I said.

"Zeke," Harmony said, "it's not in question whether or not you love these girls, or, frankly, whether or not they love you. They do. It's simply a matter of providing them some stability in a life that's been full of overwhelming sadness and chaos."

Harmony reaches over the table and squeezes my hand.

"Of course," I said. "Sure."

I asked Harmony to keep an eye on the roast in the oven that afternoon and went to the bookshop, beginning to weep in the middle of the new nonfiction display. Mack took me out back to the loading dock and made me a gin and tonic.

But that evening, despite the tension of the custody rights hanging in the air above us, Harmony and I were civil. We made dinner for the girls together—macaroni and cheese and pot roast—and then I sat in the bathroom with April and May while they took a bath. They sort of liked an audience in there, though I knew they would soon outgrow that preference. Still, it was the one time of the day when they seemed to open up to me, to ask me honest questions or offer me honest expressions of feeling. We often talked about Grandma in there, about the fact that this cancer was something she might not get better from. It was in the bath where they heard me tell stories of their late father and mother. Frankly, I had made up many of the stories, especially some heroic stories about Cougar, but if there is anything I have learned in my years as a public humanities scholar, it is that narratives, fiction or non, have a remarkable capacity to simulate feelings of actual relationships. The more stories we hear about the people who have passed away before us, the more we believe we are still in relationships with them. They seem less ghostly, a real and tangible presence.