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Tell Me a Story About Happiness
By Angela Readman
My girlfriend lost the key to her happiness. It’s why her smile looked like the stretch of a tired muscle. The stuffed animals I bought never got names, they were wadding and fake fur alone. Even my foam milk moustache wasn’t a sublime lack of self consciousness; it was purely lactose.
‘Is it me?’ I said.
She shook her head, scratching her stomach like happiness leaked out her belly button. She was matter of fact about the whole thing; she looked around the room as if her happiness was a mislaid train ticket, or keys left in the fridge with the milk.
‘What does it look like?’ I asked.
She shrugged.
Till she found her happiness she wasn’t going to be much good at this love stuff, I thought. I wanted to find it for her, make her laugh impolite, snort till beer streamed from her nose. I was a man on a mission.
I made a poster and taped it to lamp posts.
‘HAVE YOU SEEN HAPPINESS? CASH REWARD.’
If someone could tell me what happiness looked like I thought I’d have more chance finding my girlfriend’s. I got calls in response to my flyer. Most people said if they got the cash reward they were pretty sure happiness would turn up at their door. Someone drew a small pornographic sketch on my poster. Someone else texted and asked me to meet them in pub toilets. They said happiness was a hole between the stalls. Finding the real deal would be harder than I thought.
I took a new approach. Rather, it landed in my lap, spooning my girlfriend.
‘Tell me a story about happiness,’ she said, ‘Please.’
I looked at her. She reminded me of a starving woman pressing her nose to a window to watch girls eat ice cream. No one ever asked me to tell them a story before. I didn’t know where to start. I thought, and I opened my mouth.
‘Once there was this bloke,’ I said.
‘What was his name?’
‘I dunno.’
My girlfriend frowned. ‘How can I relate to him if he doesn’t have a name?’
‘OK, Dave,’ I said. ‘Once, there was a guy called Dave.’
‘Dave isn’t a very imaginative name,’ she said.
‘What would you call him?’
She knitted her brow. ‘I dunno. OK, you’re right, Dave’s as good a name as any I suppose.’
‘Thank you.’
She turned to face me and settle into a story about happiness, and apparently, a guy called Dave.
My girlfriend lost the key to her happiness. It’s why her smile looked like the stretch of a tired muscle. The stuffed animals I bought never got names, they were wadding and fake fur alone. Even my foam milk moustache wasn’t a sublime lack of self consciousness; it was purely lactose.
‘Is it me?’ I said.
She shook her head, scratching her stomach like happiness leaked out her belly button. She was matter of fact about the whole thing; she looked around the room as if her happiness was a mislaid train ticket, or keys left in the fridge with the milk.
‘What does it look like?’ I asked.
She shrugged.
Till she found her happiness she wasn’t going to be much good at this love stuff, I thought. I wanted to find it for her, make her laugh impolite, snort till beer streamed from her nose. I was a man on a mission.
I made a poster and taped it to lamp posts.
‘HAVE YOU SEEN HAPPINESS? CASH REWARD.’
If someone could tell me what happiness looked like I thought I’d have more chance finding my girlfriend’s. I got calls in response to my flyer. Most people said if they got the cash reward they were pretty sure happiness would turn up at their door. Someone drew a small pornographic sketch on my poster. Someone else texted and asked me to meet them in pub toilets. They said happiness was a hole between the stalls. Finding the real deal would be harder than I thought.
I took a new approach. Rather, it landed in my lap, spooning my girlfriend.
‘Tell me a story about happiness,’ she said, ‘Please.’
I looked at her. She reminded me of a starving woman pressing her nose to a window to watch girls eat ice cream. No one ever asked me to tell them a story before. I didn’t know where to start. I thought, and I opened my mouth.
‘Once there was this bloke,’ I said.
‘What was his name?’
‘I dunno.’
My girlfriend frowned. ‘How can I relate to him if he doesn’t have a name?’
‘OK, Dave,’ I said. ‘Once, there was a guy called Dave.’
‘Dave isn’t a very imaginative name,’ she said.
‘What would you call him?’
She knitted her brow. ‘I dunno. OK, you’re right, Dave’s as good a name as any I suppose.’
‘Thank you.’
She turned to face me and settle into a story about happiness, and apparently, a guy called Dave.
~
Once, there was a guy called Dave. His wife left him. With her, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen happiness. Without her, he thought she took it, packed it next to her slippers in her case.
‘What did his happiness look like?’ my girlfriend said.
I looked at her and said, ‘His happiness looked like a girl.’
She nodded, resting her head on her hand.
‘So, anyway, Dave’s happiness looked like a girl. When he was young he saw her in skinny jeans at the bus stop by the cemetery all the time. She never wore a coat. She was gorgeous. Dave never spoke to her, but knew he would one day. Then, he stopped seeing her around. Some nights he spotted her in a crowded bar, but in the morning he realised happiness had many impersonators. It was never her he’d brought home.
When sat in front of his TV dreaming about finding happiness after his wife left, he fantasised about letting her in, then locking the door. He planned on being the nicest of captors, feeding her fruit and renting her rom-coms so she’d never want to leave again. Dave’s friend, Jill, said it was unhealthy. She said, as long as Dave chased happiness she’d always be on the run.
‘Dave had a friend?’ my girlfriend asked.
I looked at her, thinking about friends in relation to happiness.
‘Well, Dave had a sort of friend,’ I said. ‘Jill was a neighbour who used to ask his wife to wait in for the freezer repair man and stuff. She still popped round like she’d inherited Dave, a friendship as part of the house.’
‘What was Jill like?’ my girlfriend asked.
I continued the story, about happiness, and apparently a guy called Dave and a woman called Jill.
Dave could tell what mood Jill was in by the sort of biscuits she brought round. Jill called them ‘biccies’. When she brought caramel wafers, Dave knew she wouldn’t leave anytime soon.
Jill sat in Dave’s kitchen and asked, ‘If you found happiness, what would you do?’
‘I’d keep her here,’ Dave said.
‘Seriously?’ Jill said. ‘You’d keep her for yourself, even if it meant someone else could never be happy?’
Dave said he would. Selfish, but the alternative was worse.
‘What do you think happiness looks like?’ Dave said.
‘I used to think a dress with a sale tag. Happiness isn’t polyester,’ Jill said. ‘It might be chocolate though, or sex.’
Dave had never heard Jill say ‘sex’ before. He wasn’t sure he liked it. He wondered what Jill and his ex-wife talked about. Jill stood up, pulling her jumper over her belly. ‘I think happiness knows where everyone lives,’ she said, ‘but we’re too scared to answer the door.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Dave said.
He was offended, and still thrown by the new possibility that biccie-loving Jill knew about sex.
Jill shrugged. ‘You think you don’t really deserve her,’ she said, and left.
Dave rinsed biscuit mush from mugs, Jill’s lipstick and chocolate on the rim. He went out for a walk. In the park an old woman sat on a big tyre swing. An old man sat beside her. Very gently, they lifted their feet an inch off the ground, looked at each other and grinned.
Dave looked away. Through the trees, he thought he caught a glimpse of happiness. She’d really let herself go. She was plump and her hair was messy. It was autumn, but she still hadn’t switched from summer shoes. She walked and stepped out of her sparkly slip-on mid-step. She looked slightly ridiculous, a fat woman in one shoe. Dave watched her stop, bend, and put her shoe back on. Though she was alone, she laughed out loud.
~
My girlfriend smiled.
‘What happened then?’ she said.
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘What you decide the story is really about,’ I said.
I don’t know what she decided, she fell asleep right there and then.
My girlfriend and I didn’t talk about happiness during the day. We went on daytrips and queued for rides at theme parks. I hoped we’d find happiness in a puddle of rain at the top of a big dipper. Or, I thought we’d see it at the zoo. Happiness might just be a pigmy hippo with hiccups, or the purple tongue of a giraffe. My girlfriend put souvenir bookmarks on the table next to the bed.
‘Tell me a story about happiness,’ she said.
I tried to find a story. It seemed important; it was the only way we could talk about some things.
‘Once, there was a boy called Salvador,’ I said.
‘Was he happy? I don’t think anyone called Salvador could ever be unhappy,’ she said.
I thought I’d learnt something from last time I told a story, but I shot too high. I started again.
‘Once there was a boy called Rodney.’
‘I like Salvador better.’
‘So would he,’ I said.
‘OK, makes sense. It would be hard to be happy if you were a Rodney who wished he was a Salvador,’ she said.
Rodney was an ordinary boy. He had a favourite way to eat his cereal and stood against a doorframe covered in biro marks. Rodney’s mother measured him, but not to see how tall he’d grown. She wanted to know if he was as happy as the day before. Coming out of school, he walked past mothers in pink hoodies and saw his in her anorak, biting her nails at the gate.
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘What you decide the story is really about,’ I said.
I don’t know what she decided, she fell asleep right there and then.
My girlfriend and I didn’t talk about happiness during the day. We went on daytrips and queued for rides at theme parks. I hoped we’d find happiness in a puddle of rain at the top of a big dipper. Or, I thought we’d see it at the zoo. Happiness might just be a pigmy hippo with hiccups, or the purple tongue of a giraffe. My girlfriend put souvenir bookmarks on the table next to the bed.
‘Tell me a story about happiness,’ she said.
I tried to find a story. It seemed important; it was the only way we could talk about some things.
‘Once, there was a boy called Salvador,’ I said.
‘Was he happy? I don’t think anyone called Salvador could ever be unhappy,’ she said.
I thought I’d learnt something from last time I told a story, but I shot too high. I started again.
‘Once there was a boy called Rodney.’
‘I like Salvador better.’
‘So would he,’ I said.
‘OK, makes sense. It would be hard to be happy if you were a Rodney who wished he was a Salvador,’ she said.
~
Rodney was an ordinary boy. He had a favourite way to eat his cereal and stood against a doorframe covered in biro marks. Rodney’s mother measured him, but not to see how tall he’d grown. She wanted to know if he was as happy as the day before. Coming out of school, he walked past mothers in pink hoodies and saw his in her anorak, biting her nails at the gate.
‘What did you learn today?’ she asked.
Rodney learnt his mother was older and not as pretty as the other mothers, but he didn’t want to say. He stood against the kitchen door.
‘Hmm, not quite as happy as yesterday,’ his mother said, like she’d stuck a thermometer in his mouth and didn’t like what she saw.
Rodney looked at a red line on the door, maybe a greenfly lower than the one before. Next to how happy he was that day, about as happy as a doorknob, were notches of black marker right down to the lino. The last was low as a limbo pole for ants. Rodney didn’t know what the black lines meant, his own happiness was red. His mother scooped mint choc-chip into a bowl. Rodney ate it, and stood against the door.
All day Rodney thought about happiness. He thought of his body as a glass wand with a thin line of silver rising and dipping down. Happiness didn’t like subtraction or sitting at a desk. It was a shark, had to keep moving or drown.
One day, the teacher looked at Rodney and said, ‘Rodney Green? Was Stephanie your sister?’
Rodney shook his head, but asked his father about it later.
His father said, ‘Yes, Rodney, you had a sister, before you were born.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She wasn’t happy. Then she just wasn’t there anymore.’
Rodney pictured an egg timer, happiness slipping away like grains of brightly coloured sand. Every day was a race to get happy or disappear. Rodney studied the kids in his class, thirty versions of happiness around him. Happiness was a scored goal, or tripping someone up, or a drawing on the wall. He joined in at football and painted a space man reaching for a bright blue ball of happiness, but he didn’t get his picture on the wall. He snuck back into the empty classroom and ran the drawings of his classmates under the tap. He saw felt tip suns, grass and houses run into one colourful blur.
Rodney stood against the kitchen door, smiling. Like stuffing his socks with shoes to make himself look taller, he took a little of someone else’s happiness. It was enough to get by.
‘That’s not a very happy story,’ my girlfriend said.
‘No, but it’s a story about happiness,’ I said.
She wasn’t satisfied.
‘Did Rodney disappear like his sister?’
‘No.’
‘Did he just continue stealing other people’s happiness?’
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘Whether you think anyone can truly be happy if they’re making someone else unhappy,’ I said.
‘What do you think?’
‘Not for me to say, I just tell the story.’
‘I don’t like it,’ she said, frustrated
‘OK, tell me a story about happiness,’ I said.
I waited. Now that I thought about it, maybe this is what she needed all along. If she could find happiness had a beginning, a middle and an end, she could recreate it like getting a copy of a key.
My girlfriend took a deep breath as if telling a story was blowing up a balloon. She started talking, head on my chest. She talked to the beat of my heart, word over beat, pause over pause.
‘Once, there was a little girl,’ she said.
I was tempted to heckle, ask the girl’s name, but I didn’t.
‘There was a girl who was happy. Too happy. She bounced around all the time, laughed in all the wrong places, and wore socks that didn’t match but didn’t care. She was happy when she put her hamster on the record player to watch it spin round. And she was happy when she turned up the speed and watched it fly. The girl was too happy to wonder what it felt like for the hamster. Her happiness was unbearable. Her mother found a way to make everyone’s life easier.
She pointed to the child’s chest and said, ‘From now on, you keep your happiness in there.’
She drew a rectangle in the air. It wasn’t very big. The girl looked at the small metal box that appeared on her chest. It was hard to believe so many birthdays, ponies, cakes and snowmen could fit inside. There was a lock on the box and it had a key. The girl’s parents took the key and gave it to her on special occasions. When the girl grew up her parents gave her the key back. In a box in her chest, her happiness was safely contained. Then, she lost the key.’
I waited, wanting her to keep talking. I didn’t want this to be the end.
‘When was the last time the girl saw the key to her happiness?’ I said.
My girlfriend closed her eyes, lay back and told me about the girl’s last boyfriend. She gave him the key and climbed on to the back of his motorbike.
‘Clutching leather till her fingers turned white, she never wanted the ride to end. Going fast felt like the sea,’ she said. ‘He smelled like motor oil and fresh bread.’
She smiled and a metal door on her chest swung open, jimmied by memory. It opened hard, tearing her nightdress. I looked at my girlfriend. She seemed more beautiful than before. The box in her ribcage glowed and lit up the room. It was so bright it hurt my eyes. I had to look away.
I lay beside her, her happiness was a slice of light like a knife between us. I touched where she’d lay her head on my chest and found a small metal locker there with scratched paint. We found the key to her happiness, she recreated it for herself. But not in my pockets, the nightstand, or even amongst these sheets that smelt of her dreams, could I find my own.
© Angela Readman
Tell Me a Story About Happiness was first published in The Journal, 3 December 2011
Rodney learnt his mother was older and not as pretty as the other mothers, but he didn’t want to say. He stood against the kitchen door.
‘Hmm, not quite as happy as yesterday,’ his mother said, like she’d stuck a thermometer in his mouth and didn’t like what she saw.
Rodney looked at a red line on the door, maybe a greenfly lower than the one before. Next to how happy he was that day, about as happy as a doorknob, were notches of black marker right down to the lino. The last was low as a limbo pole for ants. Rodney didn’t know what the black lines meant, his own happiness was red. His mother scooped mint choc-chip into a bowl. Rodney ate it, and stood against the door.
All day Rodney thought about happiness. He thought of his body as a glass wand with a thin line of silver rising and dipping down. Happiness didn’t like subtraction or sitting at a desk. It was a shark, had to keep moving or drown.
One day, the teacher looked at Rodney and said, ‘Rodney Green? Was Stephanie your sister?’
Rodney shook his head, but asked his father about it later.
His father said, ‘Yes, Rodney, you had a sister, before you were born.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She wasn’t happy. Then she just wasn’t there anymore.’
Rodney pictured an egg timer, happiness slipping away like grains of brightly coloured sand. Every day was a race to get happy or disappear. Rodney studied the kids in his class, thirty versions of happiness around him. Happiness was a scored goal, or tripping someone up, or a drawing on the wall. He joined in at football and painted a space man reaching for a bright blue ball of happiness, but he didn’t get his picture on the wall. He snuck back into the empty classroom and ran the drawings of his classmates under the tap. He saw felt tip suns, grass and houses run into one colourful blur.
Rodney stood against the kitchen door, smiling. Like stuffing his socks with shoes to make himself look taller, he took a little of someone else’s happiness. It was enough to get by.
‘That’s not a very happy story,’ my girlfriend said.
‘No, but it’s a story about happiness,’ I said.
She wasn’t satisfied.
‘Did Rodney disappear like his sister?’
‘No.’
‘Did he just continue stealing other people’s happiness?’
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘Whether you think anyone can truly be happy if they’re making someone else unhappy,’ I said.
‘What do you think?’
‘Not for me to say, I just tell the story.’
‘I don’t like it,’ she said, frustrated
‘OK, tell me a story about happiness,’ I said.
I waited. Now that I thought about it, maybe this is what she needed all along. If she could find happiness had a beginning, a middle and an end, she could recreate it like getting a copy of a key.
My girlfriend took a deep breath as if telling a story was blowing up a balloon. She started talking, head on my chest. She talked to the beat of my heart, word over beat, pause over pause.
‘Once, there was a little girl,’ she said.
I was tempted to heckle, ask the girl’s name, but I didn’t.
‘There was a girl who was happy. Too happy. She bounced around all the time, laughed in all the wrong places, and wore socks that didn’t match but didn’t care. She was happy when she put her hamster on the record player to watch it spin round. And she was happy when she turned up the speed and watched it fly. The girl was too happy to wonder what it felt like for the hamster. Her happiness was unbearable. Her mother found a way to make everyone’s life easier.
She pointed to the child’s chest and said, ‘From now on, you keep your happiness in there.’
She drew a rectangle in the air. It wasn’t very big. The girl looked at the small metal box that appeared on her chest. It was hard to believe so many birthdays, ponies, cakes and snowmen could fit inside. There was a lock on the box and it had a key. The girl’s parents took the key and gave it to her on special occasions. When the girl grew up her parents gave her the key back. In a box in her chest, her happiness was safely contained. Then, she lost the key.’
I waited, wanting her to keep talking. I didn’t want this to be the end.
‘When was the last time the girl saw the key to her happiness?’ I said.
My girlfriend closed her eyes, lay back and told me about the girl’s last boyfriend. She gave him the key and climbed on to the back of his motorbike.
‘Clutching leather till her fingers turned white, she never wanted the ride to end. Going fast felt like the sea,’ she said. ‘He smelled like motor oil and fresh bread.’
She smiled and a metal door on her chest swung open, jimmied by memory. It opened hard, tearing her nightdress. I looked at my girlfriend. She seemed more beautiful than before. The box in her ribcage glowed and lit up the room. It was so bright it hurt my eyes. I had to look away.
I lay beside her, her happiness was a slice of light like a knife between us. I touched where she’d lay her head on my chest and found a small metal locker there with scratched paint. We found the key to her happiness, she recreated it for herself. But not in my pockets, the nightstand, or even amongst these sheets that smelt of her dreams, could I find my own.
© Angela Readman
Tell Me a Story About Happiness was first published in The Journal, 3 December 2011
