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John Casey was born in 1939 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and the University of Iowa. His novel Spartina won the National Book Award in 1989. He lives with his wife in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is a professor of English literature at the University of Virginia.

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"[Casey] is an astute observer of the ruses as well as the private confrontations that govern our behavior."
--The Washington Post Book World
In The Half-life of Happiness, National Book Award winner John Casey brings us a family portrait rendered with masterful precision--and unwavering compassion. On a spring afternoon in Virginia, progressive attorney Mike Reardon strolls downtown Charlottesville feeling terrific. He surveys the elements in his appealing life: filmmaker wife Joss, his clever and canny daughters, the bohemian characters that share his seven-acre haven on the Rivanna River.
But Mike's blissful certainty is to be short-lived. A friend's suicide and Joss's affair with a mercurial woman turn Mike's world upside-down. Then Mike discovers the erotic quicksilver of the political campaign and so begins a farcical run for office that consumes all their lives. Here too--through Casey's brilliant rendering of Mike's sensitive, perceptive daughters--is the story of two children who grow up painfully aware of their parents' strengths and weaknesses. Superbly plotted, buoyed with humor and hope, The Half-life of Happiness embraces the accidents and choices that shape our lives and the lives of those we love.
"Riveting and beautifully written." --San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner
"A major novelist at the top of his form, Casey captures not only the texture of individual lives, but the shape and momentum of all lives that begin with the best intentions, then stray off course. . . . A wise and forgiving book as well as an entertaining one."
--Chicago Tribune

Aus dem Klappentext

"[Casey] is an astute observer of the ruses as well as the private confrontations that govern our behavior."
--The Washington Post Book World

In The Half-life of Happiness, National Book Award winner John Casey brings us a family portrait rendered with masterful precision--and unwavering compassion. On a spring afternoon in Virginia, progressive attorney Mike Reardon strolls downtown Charlottesville feeling terrific. He surveys the elements in his appealing life: filmmaker wife Joss, his clever and canny daughters, the bohemian characters that share his seven-acre haven on the Rivanna River.

But Mike's blissful certainty is to be short-lived. A friend's suicide and Joss's affair with a mercurial woman turn Mike's world upside-down. Then Mike discovers the erotic quicksilver of the political campaign and so begins a farcical run for office that consumes all their lives. Here too--through Casey's brilliant rendering of Mike's sensitive, perceptive daughters--is the story of two children who grow up painfully aware of their parents' strengths and weaknesses. Superbly plotted, buoyed with humor and hope, The Half-life of Happiness embraces the accidents and choices that shape our lives and the lives of those we love.

"Riveting and beautifully written." --San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner

"A major novelist at the top of his form, Casey captures not only the texture of individual lives, but the shape and momentum of all lives that begin with the best intentions, then stray off course. . . . A wise and forgiving book as well as an entertaining one."
--Chicago Tribune

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The Half-Life of Happiness

Vintage Books USA

Chapter One

For no reason he could think of Mike felt terrific. What had seemed a smallerlife in a smaller town now seemed as large as the clear spring sky. He took anextra turn around Courthouse Square and was happy to see faces opened up, eventhe faces of fellow lawyers, even the faces of those who did not necessarilybargain in good faith.

The pretty tax specialist rang her bicycle bell at him and pedaled by in herslit skirt. He felt no base stirring, nothing but benign sympathy for how goodshe must feel coasting home with a breeze lifting her hair. During the winter onhis walks home he'd often felt peppery grains of lust falling on the plainboiled meat of his day. Now he was full of serene benedictions. Here was anotherfor the tap-dance teacher on her way to class, her springy ringlets crushedunder a wool watch cap. (He'd once been unable to resist putting his hands onher hair at a party, and she'd said, "I wish I had a nickel for every guy whodoes that." Mike's wife had laughed and put her hand in. The tap teacher hadsaid, "Maybe I could get into this." Later Mike had claimed she'd said thislooking at him, and his wife had said, "Dream on, buster.") Now the tap teachersaw him and waved. As usual she looked a mess in her street clothes, even alittle squat and dumpy in her oversize sweater and leg-warmers. But the firsttime Mike dropped his daughter Nora off at class, he'd watched the teacher warmup, peeling off layer after layer down to her red leotard and silver tights. Shewasn't thin, but trim and compact and, when she moved, as bouncy as a rubberball. Her leotard was dark red around her short small waist but stretched topale rose over her hips and cannonball bottom. Now she smiled across the streetand yelled, "Nora's doing great!" Mike waved back and dipped his head, awell-behaved, pleased dad.

He dropped by the secondhand bookstore to say hello to the clerk who workedthe evening shift, a graduate student from the deep South whose mouth was sowide and full that when she drawled, "Hey there, Mike," and broke into a smile,Mike imagined exquisitely slow hydraulic pressures moving her cheeks and lips.

On his way past Martha Jefferson Hospital, he saw the family doctor, MaryAmes. She looked up and said, "Hi, M-M-Mike." She only stuttered when speakingto grown-ups. With Edith and Nora she was fluent. Mike had a crush on her, butit was high-minded, based mostly on gratitude for how kind and precise she'dbeen when she'd diagnosed Nora's idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. Mike hadbeen wildly alarmed, and Dr. Ames had calmed him, holding his hand andexplaining every word. Purpura--bruising. Thrombocytes--blood platelets.Penic--deficiency. Idiopathic--of unknown origin. "There's an old joke," she'dsaid. "Idiopathic means that the patient's got the p-p-pain, and the doctor's anidiot."

Mike had a theory about his little crushes. Like all lawyers, he formulatedlots of theories to justify his clients. His off-the-job theories were tojustify his off-the-job habits. This particular theory depended on a distinctionbetween dangerous crushes and harmless ones. Dangerous crushes he compared toaerobic bacteria. They thrived on exposure to the oxygen of possibility: signsof response, opportunity, reported inclination of the crush-object. Harmlesscrushes he compared to anaerobic bacteria. They thrived in a sealed fantasy butdied on being exposed to the open air: a further conversation that placed thecrush-object in a taboo zone (family friend, girlfriend of a friend,professional relationship to the family, etc.) or--even more deadly to thefantasy bacteria--a conversation in which the crush-object said somethingpatently stupid, snorted unpleasantly when she laughed, or didn't get the joke.

If he sensed that a crush might contain dangerous aerobic bacteria, therewere two solutions. He could invite her home, and the crush would becomefriendly with his wife, Joss. Mike had used this as an extra prevention with hislaw associate Ganny, who was now friends with Joss and on his roster of safelyadored women. Or he could introduce the crush to his single male friends. He hadrecently tried this solution for the graduate student with the hydraulic smile.He had yet to hear from his friend Bundy how their date had gone.

Had he carved out an arguable qualification to the Sermon on the Mount? "ButI say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hathcommitted adultery with her already in his heart." Matthew 5:28.

For someone who was no longer a practicing Catholic, Mike spent a lot of timespinning Jesuit spiderwebs. But this spring day was too bright to spend nigglingand spinning. He looked with affection at the muddy little Rivanna River eddyingunder the Free Bridge. He quickened his pace on the city-maintained road, pastthe last store, past Ezra's gym, where the paved street turned away from theriver and where a little spur of dirt road led to his own one-lane woodenbridge. He crossed it and caught sight of his house up on the wooded ridge. Aramshackle house, as cluttered as a pharaoh's tomb with things Joss or he mightneed in middle life. Garden tools, canoe paddles and fishing gear, theirdaughters' toys and sports equipment, Joss' movie gear sprawled on theindustrial shelving in her studio, mismatched furniture. The girls' wardrobeswere filled with four versions of clothing: Joss' mother's gifts ofjeune-fille-de-bonne-famille dresses, Mike's notions of outfits for the greatoutdoors, and Joss' indulgence of their wish to look like the other kids atschool and her own wish that they be the prettiest girls at the peace march. Allthese things spilled from closets and racks and chests so that the whole housewas a series of partly assembled kits for family happiness.

The house, like their marriage, was a place for storing years that weren'tever quite what was planned but which he believed might still be made whole bysomeone turning up with the missing piece.

Mike was early picking up Nora at her tap class. It was on the top floor ofthe McGuffey Art Center, an old red-brick public school which the city had givenover to an association of artists who paid nominal rent and provided classes andexhibits for the students and citizens of Charlottesville. Mike was the lawyerfor the association, whose legal difficulties were minor but whose intramuraldisputes often needed a disinterested patient audience.

Mike went to Bundy's studio to ask him how his date with the graduate studenthad gone.

"'Slow hydraulic smile,'" Bundy said. "You got the slow part right. MaybeI'll go for slow when I get to be your age."

Mike said, "I'll bet you got into one of your let's-stir-things-up moods.I'll bet you told her about how to gut a deer. I'll bet you--"

"Nope," Bundy said. "I was as nice as you please. She was--what was thatother thing you said?--languorous. She was so languorous when she danced it waslike there was a sandbag in one hip and she'd move some and all that sand wouldpour over into the other hip. And then she'd try again and sag back the otherway. I could have boiled an egg."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have--"

"Slow's not so bad if it's on the beat. She couldn't keep time to a bassdrum."

"Okay, okay."

"She did say one good thing. When I took her home she said, 'I suppose you'dlike to hear I had a wonderful time.' She waited a second and then she said, 'Ihad a good time.'" Bundy laughed.

"Okay, okay," Mike said. "I've got a better idea. Come with me to pick upNora at her tap class. You want someone to dance with, take a look at the danceteacher."

"I've seen her. She comes dragging in looking like a dust ball someone sweptout from under the bed."

"Wait'll you see her in her dance outfit."

Bundy came up the stairs, grumbling the whole way. He brightened up at thesight of the color photo on the studio door--the dance teacher in midair wearingsilver shoes, red short shorts, an American flag vest, and a top hat. Atoothpaste-ad smile.

The title under the photo said: Polly Trueheart. Tap, Jazz, Modern.

Mike opened the door a crack.

From inside there came a screech as harsh as a crow's caw. Then the shrillscramble of a tape rewind.

Polly shouted, "No, don't stop! I don't care how bad it is, don't stop!"

Bundy said to Mike, "Yeah. I'd sure love to go dancing with her."

Mike opened the door wider and caught sight of Nora. The tape hissed and thenplayed the vamp for "Singin' in the Rain." There was a clatter of taps as theline of kids marched forward unevenly.

"You're supposed to be in two rows," Polly shouted. "Don't stop! Raymond,you're in the back row!"

The kids were carrying furled umbrellas, whose tips they now hit on thefloor, blurring the rhythm further.

"Dah DUM du di dum," Polly shouted. "Now turn and..."

The girl next to Nora struggled to open her umbrella and got bumped by theboy next to her. The girl turned toward him as her umbrella popped open. Noralet out a high-pitched sliver of a sound.

Nora was sitting on the floor holding her eye. Mike shoved his way to her. Heknelt beside her. She wasn't crying but she was whining and panting. He said,"Let me take a look, honey."

She yelled, "No!"

He started to coax her, but she lowered her hand to look at it.

Mike said, "Jesus Christ!"

Nora put both hands over her eye and said, "Dad?"

Mike scooped her up.

In the hall Bundy said, "I've got my truck here. Out back."

Bundy drove them to the emergency room at Martha Jefferson. Nora stayedcurled up in Mike's lap, making little noises, but not crying. Bundy jumped outand opened Mike's door and stormed in ahead of him. By the time Mike got inside,Bundy was at the front desk saying, "I'll move my pickup as soon as we see aneye doctor."

Mike managed to get his wallet out of his suit coat and give the Blue Crosscard to the receptionist.

When a nurse tried to take Nora, she kicked her hand. Mike was somehowencouraged by this. He said, "Dr. Ames is her doctor. Dr. Mary Ames. But if youcan get an eye doctor faster..."

Mike turned to Bundy. "It'll be okay, you might as well park it."

Bundy looked all around the room as if deciding who to start with.

An intern arrived and said to Nora, "What's your name, honey?"

Mike said, "Tell her your name, honey."

Nora whispered her name.

Mike said, "Nora."

The intern said, "My name's Sue. I'm a doctor. You want to let me take apeek, Nora?"

Nora didn't say anything. The intern said, "You're her father? Well, let's goright in here, away from all these people, and take a look." She started to leadthem to a room but stopped to look at Mike.

Mike said, "It was an umbrella. I don't know if it was the tip or a spoke."

"Uh-huh." She touched Nora's forehead and then touched Mike's. "I think yourdaddy needs to sit down, Nora."

"In there," Mike said. "It'll be easier for you if I hold her. I did a lot ofthis in the Navy." He was about to lie wildly and say he'd been a medic, but theintern put an arm across his back and guided him into an examining room.

"Okay, babe," he said to Nora. "The doctor's on the right track here, so wecan ease up." His voice was strange to him, floating uselessly in the smallroom. He sat Nora on the gurney and held her free hand.

He closed his eyes when the intern started to take Nora's other hand away. Hetried to make himself look. When he opened his eyes, Nora's good eye was shutand the intern's gloved hands were cupped around the other eye.

A nurse came in and took Nora's other hand, squeezing in against her.

The intern said, "Don't move, Nora. I'll be right back."

Mike said, "This is the hospital where you were born, babe. They'll make sureyou're okay."

He touched Nora's back. It was hard as a turtle's.

All this nonsense he was saying was as useless as Bundy's stomping around thelobby.

Mary Ames came in followed by a male doctor who Mike supposed was the eyespecialist. When Mike started to ask her what was going on she held up her handand tipped her head toward the male doctor--it must be the eye specialist, Mikethought, we're all deferring. The thing that the eye doctor had around his headwasn't a reflector, as Mike had taken it to be, but a sort of magnifying glass.The eye doctor swiveled it down and hovered over Nora's eye.

A bony man with a bony face. He hardly moved. He didn't even say "Mmm." Mikehad a feeling this guy would say the worst in the same monotone he'd say thenot-so-bad.

Mary Ames moved next to Mike, and put an arm around his back and a hand onhis arm.

Mike couldn't see anything except the eye doctor's magnifying glass. The eyedoctor dabbed around Nora's eye and then hovered some more.

He told a nurse to hold another light to one side. "Up. Now left. Good. Rightthere."

Mike began to have confidence in the guy's monosyllables.

Nora, who'd been amazingly still, wiggled her feet. The eye doctor said,"Don't."

He didn't even say "Mmm" when he clicked off his light. He said to the nurse,"Prep her. Use my OR. I'll need you and Dr. Akerblad. Page me when Dr. Akerbladgets there."

And he was gone.

Mike looked at Mary Ames. He said, "Isn't he going to explain anything?"

She said, "Mmm, maybe later. I don't think it's that serious. If it wasreally serious I don't think he'd go away. What I saw looked like not a wholelot more than a scratch, but I just got a glimpse. He's very very good."

The nurse had stretched Nora out on another gurney. Mary Ames said to her,"You're not supposed to talk. And don't put your hands near your face. If you'dlike me to stay with you, give my hand a little squeeze."

Mike took Nora's other hand and said, "You'll be all right, babe. One thingabout eyes is they don't do anything that hurts."

"Uh-huh. We don't want you twitching or blinking, so we make you real comfy.You won't be all the way asleep, but we'll give you something that makes youfeel all relaxed and snug. What I saw was a little tear in the skin right nearthe corner of your eye, and that's the thing you probably feel. Then there'sthis tiny tiny little scratch that the eye doctor probably wants to just take alook at."

The nurse, Mary Ames, and Nora all swept away together.

Mike still felt the alert nerve that ran through him that had been receivingthe staticky rush of Nora's wordless broadcast. Now he'd lost contact. He was inone of Joss' movie clichés now--"Alameida calling China Clipper, Alameidacalling China Clipper...Come in, China Clipper."

Joss loved to juggle them for fun. She wished life to be that simple; shewouldn't allow life to be that simple. Now it was that simple--here he wasnothing but attention--an attention that was as anxious and helpless as Nora, asprecariously flying through clouds. "Alameida calling China Clipper." He thoughthe should call Joss. Then he thought he should wait to call Joss until he couldsay, "Look, first off, everything's okay now, but we had a little scare."

And he should see if Bundy was still waiting--of course he would be.

As though he'd been in a bathroom he checked his tie, cuffs, fly, shoes. Thatreminded him he was a lawyer: Was Polly Trueheart negligent in having a roomfull of seven-to-nine-year-olds tap-dance with umbrellas? Now, there was acutie-pie who wouldn't be darkening the door of his fantasy....

Bundy was filling the waiting room with his pacing, making everyone nervouswith his menacing energy. Bundy said he'd stay and keep Mike company. Mike hadto come out and say he'd rather be alone.

Mike called home. Nobody there. Joss might reproach him anyway, say in aniron-hard voice, "Thanks for letting me know." Joss and Bundy had that incommon--their reproaches were never gentle. They had only two gears--reproachfulhigh-speed forward or self-lacerating apologetic reverse.

He stood in a corner where he could look out two windows at once. He thoughtwith gratitude of Mary Ames' cooing at Nora.

He wondered if Mary Ames liked treating children because she didn't stutterwhen she spoke to them. Or had it worked the other way--by caring for children,she'd stopped stuttering with them? Would her gentleness be boring in the longrun? When she was giving medical explanations the mix of hard and soft was justright, but what if she never stopped being nice, never showed a tooth?

His occasional fantasy--which even now flickered briefly through hismind--had her saying, "I don't know what's come over me--I feel like acompletely different person," so some revision was necessary. But his Mary Amesfantasy was based on the one time he'd said something funny to her and she'dbecome helpless with laughter, squeezing tears out of the corners of her eyesand choking herself pink. He'd taken her hand and said with mock severity,"Doctor, control yourself," and she'd clung to his hand and laughed some more.

Could this man be alone for five minutes without dreaming about women? Can we forgive him for having a fantasy about his daughter's doctor at the very moment his daughter is going under the knife? It's not a rhetorical question. I know lots of men afflicted in this way who nevertheless lead normal productive lives. I'm joking. I guess I'm joking. But it makes it hard to take men seriously, if they just drift off into fantasy land when things get a little tough. One problem is that they then want some of their fairy tale acted out for them. And if you do, you can end up one of their thousand-and-one fantasies, as shelvable as all their other videocassettes. It's true, the man was genuinely in distress, and because there was nothing he could do, he slipped into a little displacement activity. Would I be criticizing him if he fantasized about, say, boats? Is the problem that our parents wanted us to be perfect, and the flip side (not even a conscious reverie, just a reflex) is we want them to have been perfect at the time they were the potent perfectionists in our lives? Is this just an American middle-class problem? Let's let the boy get on with it.

It occurred to Mike that Joss and Edith might be at Edmond and Evelyn's. Hetried that number. No answer. He got a little cross. Where the hell waseveryone?

He had one spasm of terrible worry--Nora losing her eye. All right, then,take one of mine. I'm halfway through my life, done all the stuff you need tolook good for--college, gone around the world, got married. Now all there is todo is write a few briefs, putter around the house.

He was relieved when the receptionist brought him his Blue Cross card and hadsome more forms to fill out and sign.

Maybe this was just another trip to the hospital. With the four of them plusthe dog there wasn't a month that went by without a trip to some doctor. Justfamily life--a little wait, a little anxiety, and then you got to go home. Acomforting superstition: if enough goes wrong in small ways, it wards offdisaster. Just sit here and be dumb for a little while. He picked up aLadies' Home Journal and read it, including the twenty-day shape-upprogram.

That's what he was doing when Joss came in. She looked like a whirlingdervish just standing in the doorway--her swept-back eyes flicking from side toside, her nose jutting, her collar with one cocked wing, the weight of her solidbody unsettled. It was his job to calm her down. He tried jauntiness. He wavedthe magazine toward the corridor leading into the hospital maze and said, "Nonews yet. Probably everything's okay. Mary Ames is with her, but some eye doc isdoing the work."

"What work? What happened? What are they doing?"

It took him a moment to think of where to begin, which made Joss frantic.

He said, "How'd you get here? When I called there was no answer."

"Never mind. Bundy drove by. But what's going on?"

"Okay. Mary Ames thinks there's a little tear in the skin. The skin, right?Not the eye. Maybe a scratch on the eye."

"Thinks? Doesn't she know?"

"The eye doctor did the examination. She was just looking over his shoulder.He didn't say anything."

"Didn't you ask?"

Mike felt dumb. He sighed. He thought of explaining that he was being slowbecause he'd already gone through the frantic part and now...he wanted to be ascalm as sleep. He also was trying to think of just why it was he hadn't askedthe eye doctor. It seemed to him now that he should have. He finally said, "MaryAmes said that, if it was really serious, he would have said. We didn't reallygo into it in front of Nora."

Joss looked around the room.

Mike said, "So we have to wait. Want to sit down?"

Joss went off to the front desk.

Sometimes they danced well together, sometimes they didn't.

Joss was talking a blue streak to the receptionist, who was listeningamiably.

Mike believed in the essences of things. He had no specific belief, such asNeoplatonism, but he liked the idea of things having deep cores inside to whichthey could retreat to cure themselves of disorder.

Joss looked around the room again, as the receptionist pointed out someone.Joss trotted down the hall, unignorably energetic.

Mike, in spite of his Jesuit schooling, had a Franciscan notion of souls,which is that pretty much everything has a soul.

Joss came back up the corridor, walking briskly but apparently somewhatcalmed by whoever it was she'd chased down.

Because Mike had this Franciscan tendency (animism, really, in Catholicrobes) he believed that marriage too had an invisible soul that existedindependent of Joss and him. He thought that most problems could be solved bywaiting, that there was a natural stabilizing grace which would sooner or laterreach them.

Joss came back and sat down. She crossed her legs and wiggled her foot. Shetwirled her wedding ring with her thumb.

On a practical level Mike knew that Joss didn't like to be stared at when shewas fidgeting. He also knew that she didn't like him to be completely still,because that too implied disapproval. She preferred sympathetic but noncompetingnerves.

In her own calm moods she was very acute about the subtle tyrannies ofmarriage--the ones she was subject to and, to an extent, the ones she inflicted.In her calm moods she laughed at both of them. She had other moods, however, inwhich she was a hypochondriac of marriage. She could take what Mike took to be anormal short conversation and, putting it under her microscope, find dangerousbacilli crawling on every word.

For the first ten years of marriage Mike had been able to kid or coax her outof it. Lately he seemed to have lost the knack. Or perhaps the energy.

Once, at a very long French movie which Mike was liking but which was drivingJoss nuts, she couldn't help crossing and recrossing her legs. She did this ascarefully as she could, but still there was the sound of the upper regions ofher panty hose slithering mesh against mesh. Mike finally whispered to her,"You're either trying to get me to leave or you're trying to arouse the man onthe other side of you."

She'd laughed. Then she'd said, "Eros wanes." But then she'd laughed again.Nothing like that now. He was too precarious himself. He couldn't get himself togo back to the first stage of anxiety, which Joss was still in.

But just then--out of God knows what secondhand lore--no, it was out of anold Reader's Digest in his dentist's waiting room, he saw thedouble-column page, the pathetic drawing, and--out of his magpie memory--thetitle, "Doctor, Will My Child See Again?" The crucial fact of that case was thatloss of vision in one eye had somehow resulted in loss of vision in the othereye.

He strained to remember the rest of the story. Surely some hope, maybe even ahappy ending? But then his memory switched from visual to audio and he heard thedental hygienist call his name, the sound of the Reader's Digest ploppingon the coffee table with exasperating nonchalance. Then even the audio wentblank in the mint-mouthwash smell of the dentist's office.

He grunted a sort of snarl-moan, a noise Joss usually couldn't stand becausehe could never explain what he meant. Joss took his hand in both her hands, puther forehead on his shoulder. She said, "I'm sorry. You did a great job gettingher here, kiddo."

You just couldn't ever tell. He said, "Well, look. I think it'll be okay.Except, boy, are you going to hate the way this eye doctor talks. Mr. Monotone."Joss lifted her head. She was on the edge of crying but laughed a little. Shethought a second, then opened the fingers of one hand and rippled them closedagain, which in Naples would have meant "stolen goods" but for Joss just nowmeant "so long as he does the job."

Mike said, "Yeah."

Leaning their shoulders against each other over the plastic arms of theirchairs, for the moment they were as companionably exhausted as if they weredancing at the tag end of a daughter's wedding. What did they know about thisguy? They didn't know beans really. So they shuffled gently once more around thefloor, dazed but aware of each other, each feeling just how much the other hopedeverything would be all right.

It was mostly good news. Nora would have to stay completely still for a coupleof days. She'd have to wear an eye patch for a while after that. The "slightlaceration" would in all likelihood heal nicely. The tear in the skin mightresult in a little droop to the corner of her eye, but that could be taken careof later with a little cosmetic surgery. Maybe it wouldn't even be necessary.

Joss wanted to go see her. Mike wanted to sit quietly for a bit. The eyedoctor said to Joss, "You can look in, but she's still out. We had to give her ageneral anesthetic after all." And then he was off. Joss ran him down in tensteps with a clatter of her stacked-heel sandals. "What's her room number?"

"Ask the nurse."

"And I'd like to thank you," Joss said, with irritated correctness.

Mary Ames smiled at Mike and said, "She'll be just fine." She looked at himmore closely and said, "Are you all r-r-r-right?"

"Yeah. What's the deal? That intern thought I was about to keel over too."

She took his hand, which pleased him, but it was to take his pulse. She said,"Mmm. You have this far-off l-luh-look."

"Just a long day." He took her hand. "It was very nice of you to stay." Josswas off wandering the hospital; he was filled with dizzy relief. He said, "HaveI ever told you how attractive your stutter is?"

This man needs a guardian, a dog handler with a leash, someone. What is it with him? Is he lonely? Then why didn't it occur to him to come home and play with me? Okay--actually I can see he might have burned off a lot of high-octane child-worry. But there's an arrogance here--I remember Dr. Ames and she wasn't all that great-looking, so did he figure she would be flattered by any sort of attention from the big-suit lawyer? Dad's father was the same way, apparently, flirted his head off around Washington. But that was back in the days of the complete double-standard, when the women wore little capes made of a single fox pelt and they fastened it around their shoulders by clipping the little fox mouth to the tail. The fox head was whole, it even had little fox eyes made of glass. What were these women saying? "I'm a little furry creature"? The actresses all had little furry voices too--Jean Arthur, June Allyson. They used to lean way over backward and lift one foot when the hero kissed them. But Dr. Ames wasn't straightening the seams of her nylons, she was doing her job and being nice, so what's this guy's excuse?

She withdrew her hand and said, "I think someone must have given you a shot ofsodium pentothal by mistake."

It took Mike a second to remember what sodium pentothal did--it made youbabble. He blushed.

She patted his shoulder. He shook his head and said, "Look, I justmeant...I'm very relieved. Thank you."

She said, "Okay. Nora will be awake in a couple of hours. She'd probably liketo have you or your wife there then. It hasn't been, mmm, a real painfulprocedure for her, but she was a scared little g-girl."

Mike said, "It was really good of you to go with her."

"But don't let her talk too much. You do most of the talking, okay? Thatshouldn't be too hard for you."

All right. Dr. Ames, it turns out, can look out for herself. And handle him. Always a good move with him was to give him a job to do. So now this compulsive lawyer takes out his pocket appointment book and writes himself a memo. I still have a stack of his little leather appointment books--his billable hours to clients and in the same writing "Edith's birthday," "Nora's lacrosse game," "do times-tables with Edith." His client children.

Mike wrote: "Call: (1) Bundy (2) Polly Trueheart (3) Edith--where's Edith? CallEdmond and Evelyn to see--feed Edith."

It also crossed his mind to get some flowers for Mary Ames. He began to laughat himself and tumbled into visions of his Mary Ames behavior run amok, thefinishing touch a note with the flowers that said "S-s-sorry."

Joss showed up and plopped into a chair. "Poor little Ora-Nora. I just got aglimpse of her there breathing like a little fish. They have her hands tieddown." Joss blew out her breath, stamped her feet in a short tattoo, and satjiggling one leg. "I can't stand hospitals."

"Look," Mike said. "She won't wake up for a couple of hours. You want to gohome and eat supper? Is Edith at Edmond and Evelyn's?"

"No. She's with Tyler."

Arrangements felt like rain to Mike--even sounded like rain--unsettling ifyou were out in the open, soothing if you were under your own roof. Back to thehouse? Edith's supper, Edith would like you to check her arithmetic, and exactlywhat do we tell her about Nora?--She gets a peculiar anguish when Nora getshurt. And she has this eye fear--remember how she was about the prince in"Rapunzel" when he gets his eyes poked out in the thornbush? Wait'll she readsOedipus....But then maybe you should be the one to come back here, alittle continuity for Nora. Though I don't like to be alone out there without acar. Tyler's going out and he's taking Evelyn's car. Edmond and Evelyn arealready gone in Edmond's truck, they're out owl watching.

"Let's just go," Mike said. "We can figure it out when we get home."

An hour at home was an hour at home. He said to Edith, "If it's two miles tothe hospital, and I go ten miles an hour on Edmond's bicycle, how long will ittake me?"

"Wait," Edith said and began writing with her pencil.

Nora would have told him to get lost. He'd already drilled Edith on herregular homework, but Edith liked to go for extra credit.

"It's...five," Edith said.

Mike looked at her paper. She'd conscientiously written "R = T/D." "Look,slugger," he said. "Didn't they tell you Teddy Roosevelt is Dead? TR equals D.Now, the R multiplies on this side, so it has to do the opposite on the otherside. So T = D/R. And that's 2/10..."

"That's a fifth," Edith said.

Nora would have said, I got it part right when I said five.

"Okay," Mike said. "We're dealing with miles per hour and hours, so it's afifth of an hour. So, now, how many minutes is a fifth of an hour?"

Edith squinted and then said, "Twelve?"

"Good. That's good. So just remember Teddy Roosevelt is Dead."

"Why are you such a traditionalist?" Joss said. "Why not True Rapture isDelightful? Thelma Ritter is Dowdy? Why not Total Recall is Dumb?"

What? What? Eight hours at the office, go to pick up Nora, two hours at thehospital, let's not forget a little math, about to ride a goddamn bicycle backto the hospital...and Joss is finding something to criticize? Can't fuckingbelieve it. Can not...

He held still, except for grinding his molars, until the spurt of angerpassed.

"Okay, Edith, get everything squared away. Don't forget to feed Miss Dudley.I'm off."

He's right, right? He could file a motion for summary judgment, case closed, right? But let's enlarge the context. I saw his jaw working, even though Mom was just hacking around. He got all huffy because she tweaked two things he was crazily proud of--his astounding memory and his Dad's-in-charge-when-things-are-really-tough, cool-under-fire, iron-man, I-wouldn't-ask-my-men-to-do-anything-I-wouldn't-do, anchors-aweigh act. He was sometimes funny, but not about that. I see now it was more fragile than it looked. Inside there was a fat little boy who quit his Boy Scout hike because his thighs chafed. A college freshman who quit crew because the coach said, "You're too short for any seat but bow and you're too fat for that." At the time he was only just under six feet and a few pounds overweight at one ninety. The coach figured he'd sting Dad and make him lean and mean. Typical macho-jock mentality. Coach didn't know he was talking to a ten-year-old fat boy. So Dad quit. That would have been great if Dad had let it go for a laugh. But he joined a canoe club and went crazy. It was crazy revenge but also crazy self-humiliation, because canoeing compared to crew was a no-status sport, sort of like learning to ride a donkey because you weren't good on a horse. This wasn't white-water thrills. It was flat-water racing. It's an Olympic sport that no one watches, sort of like archery or badminton. Poor Dad. I call him Dad, but I've got to remember he was nineteen. Two hours a day for two years. He still has his little trophies. And then he saw that he wasn't really going to get any better. I don't know how you know those things, but it came to him. And it came to him too that he just didn't like it that much. The part I love, though, is when he got on a four-man team and they were practicing two hours a day up and down the Potomac, paddling like mad in their genuflect position. Dad was hoping the rowing coach would go by and say, "Hey you--you're just what we're looking for." No. The person who said, "You're just what we're looking for" was a crazy sports doctor who was trying to find a way to measure the body temperature of endurance athletes. For reasons that will soon be apparent he couldn't get rowers or bicycle racers or even runners to volunteer. It shows you what these canoeists were like: The doctor fitted all four of Dad's canoe team with rectal thermometers. They were wired to a machine in the stern that recorded their temperatures and also gave a readout on a screen. So they paddled up and down the river with thermometers up their butts and wires down their legs and the doctor in a motorboat--I somehow imagine him with a German accent--saying things like, "Now ve vill stop and you vill drink a liter of vater."

I wish Dad had told me this much sooner.

Joining the canoe club because the rowing coach was mean to him--that's whathe was doing when he rode a bicycle back to the hospital and spent the night onthe floor beside Nora's bed.

But the rowing coach didn't ever notice him. Mom had to. If Dad could've hadthe gift of being right without...inflicting it...

So where was I in all this? I was being his dutiful daughter (An extra mathproblem? Let me at it!) who was nevertheless beginning to get angry, not becausehe was a demanding coach (I loved that), but angry with an anger that startedout as self-loathing. Teddy Roosevelt is Dead, the names of the stars, how apump works. I thought he knew everything, that he remembered everything. And Ithought he wanted me to know everything and remember everything too. In a way,that second part is true: if he could have given me what he knew was a painlessgift he would have. He didn't mean to inflict pain. He just had no idea aboutthe panic of inadequacy I felt. No--that's not true--when I was eleven I toldhim how mad I was that he knew everything and I wouldn't ever. He laughed--hewas pleased and flattered--and then he said that I was really very smart andthat I'd know everything that he knew--and, hey, kid, it isn't everything--whenI got to be as old as he was. "Even more," he added, waxing reflective. "Honey,you'll see things in the next century that I haven't dreamed of." So how comenone of this made any difference? Leaving aside his implicit little boo-hooabout his being an old geezer on his way to the grave, he gave the correctanswer to my kiddie complaint.

Is it that there are some curses that can't be lifted?--Not by common sense,not by love?

The only way to lift them is by another curse. Once, when I came home fromcollege, I got in very late at night, and there he was waiting up, watching TVin his plaid bathrobe. Tired, gray-skinned, some white beard stubble. All alonein the house. He was watching National Velvet--I think he'd been crying.Dirty dishes in the sink.

All squared away, Dad? Everything shipshape?

He was as glad to see me as I'd ever been to see him when I was little. Buthis lighting up with pleasure didn't light me up.

He said, "Hey, babe, am I glad to see you." Then he said, "I didn't hear youcome in."

I'd wondered before if he was a little deaf.

I said, "Where is everyone?"

He looked surprised, as if he couldn't think who I meant. "I don't know," hesaid. "Oh yeah. Nora's...in Washington, I guess."

I was his joy his sweetness his mercy and his hope. And I just hoped hewouldn't start a long conversation. Teddy Roosevelt is Dead, Dad.

I'd been loving a rival (it's not true that only sons compete with theirfathers), and it was a long time before that victory, that disappointment, thatdistaste, and that miserable taunting glee released me. The first curse of beinghis awed pupil had been less painful. Under that curse we both supposed that Iwas getting somewhere as he recited to me his instruction manual to the worldpage by page, while I struggled not to resist, struggled to make my mind aworthy receptacle for his lore.

He wanted to make me more sure of myself and I became more anxious, toenlarge me and I felt dwarfed. So then I wanted him to be less outfitted andarmed, to be--as we all used to say--more vulnerable. But when he was, Icouldn't help saying to myself, "Boy, is that not what I had in mind."

That's the bitter side of that little saying that otherwise seems sosweet--the heart has its reasons that reason does not know. TR = D.

Continues...

Excerpted from The Half-Life of Happinessby John Casey Copyright © 1999 by John Casey. Excerpted by permission.
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