My American Unhappiness (31 page)

I see her at the top of the steps, scanning for me.

When we lock eyes, I lift up a hand, expressionless. Minn lifts up her mittened hand too, and she takes my coat and drapes it gently on the handrail at the entrance. Then she turns and walks away, using the side staircase opposite me. I watch her for a long time, staring at the hem of her coat just above her knees, just for the sad thrill of it.

What makes me so unhappy?

People walking away, dressed in winter clothes, the sky the same gray as their coats, the branches of the trees around them, black-gray and skinned. And in my heart of hearts, I know that the tree Minn loves best will be bare by morning. Already, a gown of gold gathers at its feet.

I
T IS NO SMALL
thing to be lonely or depressed. It is no small thing to feel complete confusion over the path that you would like to take. I do understand that, but I must say that my project has become very unappealing to me. Suddenly, the hundreds and hundreds of interviews I had done in an attempt to distill the nation's precise condition of discontent seem, well, trivial. Whiny, actually. The whole project seems to hinge upon my ability to make the subjects of my interviews whine, and, if I was lucky, a select few might weep. It seems to have gone stale while I was away from it, as many good projects do if you take a long recess from the work you have been doing so diligently for years. But no, this is more than mere staleness; this is more than the rustiness of my mental parts. This is a disturbing and awkward realization that I no longer care about the daily struggles of my fellow human beings. It's not that I do not understand, or even honor, the plight of humans, particularly in the middle third of their lives, trying to find their place in the vast and mind-blowing social order we have constructed in the millennia since we evolved from monkeys. The world is still disturbing, even with George W. Bush brushed off and sent packing into a dark history; many of my subjects face woes that are equally disturbing, or even more disturbing, in the era of Obama. I just no longer care.

In fact, I no longer care about anything really, save April and May.

I have just arrived, in fact, at my nieces' new home in Livonia, Michigan, a bland and nondescript suburb of Detroit that I once heard featured on National Public Radio as the least diverse, most segregated place in America. It seemed to epitomize, for me, the state of not caring. And as I made my way out of Madison this morning, I realized that perhaps I no longer wanted to live there among all that earnestness and intellectual idealism. Perhaps I wanted to live in Livonia, a few blocks from my nieces, the children of my dead and distant brother. Could that be all I wanted from this life? To be near my family? To be a stone's throw from the people I love, the few remaining? I considered this as I drove across the flatness of Illinois, past Rockford and Elgin, across the congested and gray Skyway, through the burning tire haze of Gary and the blighted midsize and rusted-out cities of western Michigan—Benton Harbor, Battle Creek, Jackson, where almost nothing of value is left. It is late December and gray piles of snow edge everything. The pavement is wet, the sun is occasionally obscured by thick, smoky clouds, and the air is chilled with a constant and deep dampness.

Livonia, where I now sit, idling in my Honda, is still today. Nobody is home at the home of Harmony and Malcolm, as I have arrived ninety minutes earlier than anticipated. I imagine that Malcolm is at work, and that Harmony and the girls are out shopping, perhaps picking up some of their Uncle Zeke's favorite snack foods and his preferred spirits. I know that April and May are excited for my visit. I imagine, and hold out some hope, that Harmony is too. Our meeting at my mother's memorial service was remarkably warm and cordial, as if she had slipped back into her regular life, Malcolm at her side, and I had slipped back into the life I had five years ago: a lonely bachelor who worked too much. But now I essentially have no work, and while the initial reality was depressing to me, it suddenly occurs to me that I could, too, live in Livonia, Michigan, a stone's throw from the twins. I could see them almost every day, attend their games and recitals and birthday parties, and this realization, so seemingly revolutionary to me, infuses me with energy. I decide to drive around for a while, to take in Livonia, where, perhaps, just perhaps, as it turns out, I might settle for good.

My impressions: There is no striving for anything in Livonia—justice, diversity, excellence, or intellectual prowess. It is a place content with its own safety and cleanliness, though it is mere minutes away from some of the most profound urban poverty in the Western world. I know that some of the men from Livonia must have gone off to war like my brother did, but it is not something often spoken of, certainly not with any sense of regret or despair. You do not see many bumper stickers in Livonia. Bumper stickers are always a good indication of the earnestness and striving of a place. And as I said, I am done with striving. It is as useless as everything under the sun, as it has been written.

The girls live in a modest colonial from the 1960s that is on a shady street with the rather pleasant name of Ladywood. Theirs is the seventh house off the corner of Newburgh Road. Nearby, there is an all-girls Catholic high school with the same name. It is a rather pleasant name, and when I say it, I feel as if I am saying the name of some old English manor featured in a forgotten novel where there is always surface happiness and order and an undercurrent of despair underneath the whole machine.

As I drive among the streets of Livonia, so geared toward the life of family, of stable and easy domesticity, I live a fantasy life of regrets, missed opportunities. I imagine them as if they had taken flight. For instance: Minn and I, in my mind, have an apartment in Paris (we simply
had
to leave the country) and the girls attend the American school near the Sorbonne. Or this: Lara and I own a coffee shop near the harbor in Kenosha, and we live, with my nieces and her daughters, in a huge, seven-bedroom apartment above it. Or perhaps Elizabeth and I live a quiet life in Ithaca, New York, and my first book has been published and has done quite well, and I am a tenured professor at Cornell, quite well respected and the holder of an endowed chair. The kids live with us and we all love Ithaca. We wear such lovely sweaters in the winter, and we ski, and at night, in winter, I drink brandy, expensive brandy. Or perhaps Ms. Coppola and I finally made things work, and we are living in upper Manhattan and the twins spend each summer with us there, ambling through Central Park, each one holding my hand as we make our way to the Guggenheim for lunch or to SoHo for some shoe shopping. Sofia, perhaps, invites over Scarlett Johansson one evening, and Natalie Portman too, and after much wine, it turns out they are very big proponents of the group shower. We shower together in a vast and well-ventilated bathroom!

Of course, it is hard to stop fantasies once they begin, isn't it? There is nothing wrong with the richness of this fantasy life. I am convinced of that: it is always so much more rewarding than reality.

But being wholly realistic, I must say this: I think Livonia will be an appropriate place for me to live. And just as I think this, I see the green warmth of an illuminated Starbucks sign, and I steer my Honda toward the drive-through, pull up to the speaker, and order. I decide, spur of the moment, to order a new sort of drink.

"Welcome to Starbucks," a woman says. "What can I get started for you today?"

"Soy mocha," I say.

"Whip?" she says.

"No," I say.

"No whip?" she says. "Seriously? Come on, live a little."

She laughs at her own coaxing and I laugh too.

"No thanks," I say.

I pull up to the window, my five-dollar bill in hand, and there is the barista, waiting for me at the open window. She is about my age, with lovely fair skin, large blue eyes, and a tangle of blond curls she wears piled up under her Starbucks cap. She takes my money and I motion for her to place the change in the plastic tip container. A strand of her blond hair springs out from under her cap, as if it's been electrified. She laughs and tucks it back under her cap.

"You sure about that whip?" she says, just before she's about to place a lid on my soy mocha. "It's pretty chilly today."

"Whip," I say. "Extra whip."

"Excellent," she says.

"I'm Zeke," I say.

She smiles. "Annie," she says.

As Annie goes to add whip to my beverage, I glance in the rearview mirror for a moment. An impatient, fat-faced man in a Chevy Suburban talks into a wireless headset, the glare of the day reflecting off of his wraparound shades.

"Annie," I say, "I bet the guy behind me ordered up a skinny vanilla latte and a pumpkin scone."

Annie pauses and looks at the computer monitor at her side.

"He did," she says. "Are you together?"

"No. No," I say. "Classic type-A sugar addict. Just a hunch."

It is just then that a cloud shifts and a rusty, weak beam of Detroit sun comes down upon my car. Annie's hair, coming loose from her cap once again, catches the light pouring in through the drive-up window.

"Soy mocha, extra whip," Annie says, handing the beverage to me over the small blacktop chasm between us.

Then, there's the two of us, Annie and I, laughing.

Perhaps I'll just leave you with that.

The events, characters, and situations depicted in this book are purely fictional, and they have no rooting in the various experiences I had while working for the Wisconsin Humanities Council between 2001 and 2009. My time with the state humanities council was an enjoyable and stimulating experience made richer by the dedicated, incredibly hard-working and caring, warm people (particularly Dena Wortzel, Michael Kean, and Esther Mackintosh) who make up the world of the public humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

I wish to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Joen Greenwood (via Shake Rag Alley in Mineral Point, Wisconsin) for incredibly crucial fellowships and support while I was working on this project. I'm also grateful for support from Iowa State University's Center for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. My students and colleagues at Iowa State have all been remarkable and helpful, especially Steve Pett, Charles Kostelnik, Marissa Landrigan, and, of course, Big Bad Ben Percy, whose insane work ethic keeps me on task and whose sense of humor keeps me from self-pity. Similarly, my colleagues and students at Warren Wilson's MFA program have taught me a great deal about craft and the writing life, and for that I am grateful. Thanks to Dr. Peter Kish, chiropractic genius, as well as my pals Coleman, John Fetters, Julian Goldberger, Perrin Chiles, Darragh Kennan, Jessica Kennan, Joe "Blessed Are the Cheesemakers" Burns, Katie "The Cheesemaker's Wife" Burns, Natalie Bakopoulos, and Jeremiah Chamberlin. Thanks to Lorrie Moore, for crucial encouragement in a dark time, and Charlie Baxter, for a million kind words and one harsh letter. Thanks to Becky Saletan for her faith and good humor. Thanks to Jeff Bean, the teacher who started everything. Thanks to copy-editing genius Barbara Wood for the kind of eagle eye that is so necessary after eleven drafts. And finally, thanks to my wife, Amanda Okopski, who always supports the quitting of day jobs but never supports quitting on a manuscript; to my agent and unflappable friend, Amy Williams, who stayed with me in the desert; and to my editor, Adrienne Brodeur, who arrived with fresh horses and cold water, just in the nick of time.

Dean Bakopoulos is the author of the novel
Please Don't Come Back from the Moon,
a
New York Times
Notable Book for 2005. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, he is also a playwright with the Alley Stage theater company in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University, as well as the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.