My American Unhappiness (30 page)

This morning, the first Sunday morning post-election, I wake at four, and soon I am on the road to Chicago. This is something I do every fall, in the days of leaves and grayness. I go to the art museum there, and I find the small boxes made by the American artist Joseph Cornell, and I stare at them. This year, perhaps more than any other, I feel a kinship with Cornell, a man who seemed also destined for loneliness, devoting his life to collecting the unhappy scraps left behind by others and trying to distill them and make sense of them. In these boxes, in the small miracles of collecting and assembling, I see such love, such a profound desire to understand the world and its people, to preserve forgotten magic, and I know, from my research into Cornell's life (see GMHI grant #04-222-988:
The Miracle of Found Objects: Joseph Cornell and the Assembled Language of Loneliness),
that, ultimately, he failed. He did not understand the world and its people. He did not find an adequate expression of his love. I stare at the Cornell boxes each fall until, I swear, I can hear voices rising from them, and then, each fall, there's me, a weeping man in a gray Filson Mackinaw cruiser heading for the exits.

Most of these late autumn trips to Chicago and the museum are tinged, from the outset, with a sort of melancholy. I usually take these trips when the very last of the leaves still cling to the trees, when winter is threatening to arrive with haste and indifference. I have been to Chicago many times in the late autumn and have found, always, something dour and forlorn about the vast and crowded metropolis as it inches toward winter. But today, when I am there, the very air in the city feels changed, as if it's been washed clean, the crispness of November as vital and bracing as any I ever remember. In my coat pocket is a small box. In that small box, my grandmother's engagement ring, one of the few things that my mother was able to leave me in her will.

Could it be possible that my entire subject matter, the very thing I have been chronicling for the last decade, has been lifted from the nation? Is it possible, I think, crossing Michigan Avenue at Monroe, on my way to the Art Institute? I look over at the edge of Grant Park, where just a few nights ago a multicultural, multi-aged throng of people waved American flags and danced in the streets. It was as if a long, long war had suddenly ended, and whatever jaded melancholy, whatever essential unhappiness we had shared, was lifted.

We were a nation that was living beyond its means, living inauthentic lives that we knew we could not sustain. We could no longer buy what we bought, use the oil that we used, plunder and destroy the countries we despised. We were exhausted. All of that dominance, all of that slickness and promise and debt, was absolutely exhausting.

Today, the city feels giddy. Not in the sort of way one might traditionally describe giddiness. Rather, we look as if we have emerged from one long, disastrous party. Hung-over, dehydrated, with bloodshot eyes and inexplicably profound headaches. It's as though a leader has emerged, carrying buckets of Gatorade and aspirin, to lead us back to sobriety. It's as if we have trashed our own luxury mansions, and a man has emerged who will clean up our mess, sell off the burden of too much real estate, and help us live a life that finally means something.

Perhaps I am overstating things. But what is undeniable is that on the streets, people are happy and beaming and friendly in a way I have never felt before. As I cross the street, I thank the yellow-vested crossing guard, an African American woman, standing out in the cold to direct traffic, and she looks at me and says, "Well, you're welcome! Have a great day!" And then, as I walk, a man stops me and says, "Excuse me, sir?" and I instinctively brace myself for the inevitable panhandle, but instead he says, in a voice marked by a hint of Haitian accent, "Excuse me, sir, but you forgot to turn the heat on today!" And then we both guffaw, as if it is the funniest joke we've ever shared with anybody. We clasp each other's arms. It was absolutely astounding! If I were a pundit, and paid to say such things, if anybody would listen to me, I would remark that American Unhappiness seemed to begin on September 11, 2001, and ended on November 4, 2008. It was as if we needed to have a great reminder of our deepest ideals, to understand that we truly were the most free and diverse and, yes, generous and remarkable civic experiment in the world. I am not sure if this is true. But today it seems true.

But now, this damp and gray Sunday morning in Chicago, the coldest morning of the season, all of that seems false: we, the legions of the unhappy, overeducated, skeptical, cynical, jaded, rootless, oppressed, drifting, navel-gazing, overly reflective, and underrepresented are suddenly a community,
organized.

Perhaps I am overstating things. Perhaps things are not that good. And perhaps I should tell you the real reason I am here. Several days ago, I received, along with the rest of Minn's contact list, this e-mail:

To: Friends & Family List
From: Minn Koltes
Re: New Contact Information
Date: November 1, 2008

Hi all! I've been sent to an "underperforming" Starbucks store in downtown Chicago to try and turn the place around. Hey, it's a living! Come and see me in Chicago!

Yes We Can!

XOXO, Minn

In the signature area of her e-mail there was a list of new contact information, and I dropped Minn an e-mail, told her I'd be at the art museum less than ten days from now, on November 9, and I would like to see her again, briefly. Could she come? And she e-mailed me back this response:
Sure, 10 a.m. I will see you then.—M.

At ten o'clock, Minn is standing in front of the museum, right under one of the two lions that flank the entrance. These are not the aristocratic, vigilant lions of the New York Public Library—rather, these are two dark lions that seem to me to be in mid-jump, about to destroy their prey. Brawling, working-class lions. Underneath one of these, Minn looks so tiny, an effect punctuated by her heavy winter jacket, the knitted gray cap she wears, and a pair of large black mittens. She looks so small. I have never seen her dressed in her winter clothes. The sky is so gray it seems to be made of stone. My grandmother's ring is in my pocket.

We hug. Minn looks at me, with something like pity, and says, "It's good to see you."

I want to say something dazzling and poetic—maybe I should say, "It's shattering to see you."

But I can just barely manage to say the words "You too." She points across the park to a large maple. "When I first saw you walking toward me, you were right under my favorite tree. That's my favorite tree in the whole city. I liked seeing you under it."

I just smile. It strikes me as an exceedingly kind thing to say.

"I wondered where you went; you disappeared," I say.

"I know. That was shitty of me, but after we spent that night together, which I don't regret, I swear I don't, I kind of freaked out," she says.

"Of course," I say.

"But it was good," she continues. "It shook things up in a way they needed to be shaken. I've thought about you a lot. Really."

I smile at her and can't think of anything to say to that.

We go inside and get our tickets. I insist on buying and then we check our coats and we stand in the main entrance.

"What would you like to see first?" I ask.

"Didn't you tell me that you wanted to see the Joseph Cornell boxes?"

"Yes," I say.

"Let's start there. I have to be somewhere, later," she says.

"Of course."

The Cornell boxes used to be in a gallery and there were at least a dozen of them on display during my last visit, but today, I cannot find them, and so I finally stop at an information desk and I am told that there are only three Cornells on display right now—due to renovations—and they are down in the Touch Gallery, the kids' gallery.

"That's disappointing," Minn says to me as we walk to the staircase.

"Nonsense," I say. "Three will suffice. Besides, it's an excuse to get to see you. That's reward enough."

She says nothing.

"So how do you like it here?"

"I love it. I'm so happy here. I was at Grant Park on Tuesday. It was incredible, Zeke."

"Was it? I'm sure it was. I watched on television," I say. "I thought of you. I actually prayed for a glimpse of you."

"Oh, Zeke. Knock it off."

Walking down the stairs, I am seized by the desire to take her hand.

I take her hand. She does hold it for a minute, and then she lets go.

"Zeke," she says, "I'm seeing somebody."

"I know. You have a fiancé in Africa."

"I broke up with him, Zeke. You helped me realize that I had to do it."

"Well, isn't that good? You can hold my hand then!"

"No," she said. "There's somebody new."

"What? Already? You just got here."

"I work with him. His name is Allen. We actually got together on election night."

"Allen!" I say, as if the common name shocks me.

I picture her, Minn, in the post-election haze, dancing in the street with another man. Kissing him under a streetlamp. I don't blame them. I don't begrudge anybody such passion. I would have found somebody to kiss that night too.

"What do you mean when you say you
got together?
"

"Zeke, you know what I mean."

"Well, that's fairly new. Couldn't you just tell him the love of your life has come back for you? That he has an engagement ring in his pocket?"

"Zeke," she says.

"I'm kidding! I'm kidding," I say. "There's the Touch Gallery."

There are three Joseph Cornell boxes on display: one is a box made into the whitewashed exterior of a French hotel, and outside the hotel a giant green parrot perches on a swing. The other is an owl, gazing intently out at the viewer, from a knotted and deep, dark tree trunk. Then there is the final one, a soap bubble set, adorned with two soapstone pipes, a collection of odd seashells, and four small apéritif glasses. These tiny glasses are what get me.

I don't know how long we stand in front of these three boxes, but I can feel Minn's energy shifting, like she's ready to move on. "They are so remarkable," she says.

"It's this one," I say, pointing at the soap bubble set.

"Those glasses are just waiting for a celebration, for the glow of warm conversation, to be held up in the firelight of human intimacy, to hold the elixir of a great feast. What's desolate about them is that they are abandoned. That's what Cornell's work is about, to me, really, about our abandonment of joy, about our reckless inability to hold on to anything meaningful. This is an attempt to find meaning—no, to find magic—in our collective dross, in the castoff and the forgotten."

"I don't know about Cornell's life so much," Minn says. "Come on, let's go look at the special exhibit."

I follow Minn to an adjoining gallery, which features a special show on Paris and the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Most of the pieces are photographs and small drawings or paintings that somehow relate to Paris. I cannot focus on any of them. I try to look at them, but I can't. Minn is looking at a series of distorted nudes, and instead of looking at them with her, I look at her, the profile fixed in concentration. The din of the museum at the day's opening grows louder as a school group of some sort—maybe college freshmen—wanders into the gallery. Minn's lips are open, barely parted, and so I kiss them, and for a moment, she kisses me back, I'm sure of it, and then a small bite of my lower lip and then she says, "No."

I wander to another wall. I randomly choose a picture to stare at, waiting for my heart rate to decelerate. It's a photograph by André Kertész, entitled
Paris, A Gentleman.
In the image you can see only the back of the gentleman, who is dressed in a black overcoat and black hat and black trousers, or at least it appears that way in the black-and-white print. He is holding an umbrella, which he clasps with both hands behind his back. He is an old man, slightly stooped, and he is observing the city move about him. It's obvious to the observer that he has stopped to rest, but to me, he looks as if he is suddenly paralyzed by a sense of loneliness. One looks at him and can tell from the slump of his shoulders, the odd and reflective tilt of his white head, that he is lonely and that he has been alone for a long time now.

I feel Minn come up alongside me.

"Are you crying?" she says.

"Hardly," I say, but it comes out very loud and high-pitched, because I try and say it mid-sob.

"Zeke," she whispers, "you are."

"Nonsense!" I say, my shoulders heaving a bit now.

"Zeke, what is wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Zeke, what is wrong with you?"

"Marry me?" I say.

"I don't believe this," she says.

Exit Zeke.

Outside, my damp eyes feel cold; the winds of November are coming off the lake with a new bitterness. I put my hands to my cheeks and try to dry them. I go and look at one of the lions and put my hand on its foot and stand there for a moment, shivering.

I see a cab approaching and I go to the curb.

I hail it and it stops. Inside the cab, I sit in the back seat, put my hands in my lap.

"Well?" the driver says, a thick Indian accent. "Where to?"

"Pardon?" I say.

"Where do you want to go?" he says.

"I'm sorry. I don't know," I say.

"You don't know?"

"No," I say. "I have no idea."

"You just want to drive around?"

"No, no. Not that."

"What do you want then?" he asks.

"'The
reducto absurdum
of all human experience,'" I say to him.

"Get out of my cab then!" he bellows.

"William Faulkner," I say. "William Faulkner!"

"Get out," he says. His bellowing continues.

I do as he asks. I get out of his cab, just as Minn comes out of the museum.

She comes out with my coat and stands at the top of the steps. She is dressed for winter again, and the sight of it is too much. It's probably the most heartache I have felt in a long, long time, seeing her hair tucked behind her ears like that, her knit cap pulled down.