Happiness for Beginners (38 page)

But just then, as if in response, the elevator dropped again. A foot? Two feet? The floor literally dropped from under us, and then we dropped, too, and then we hit the floor, both landing facedown on the carpet.

As soon as he could, Jake commando-crawled over to me. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “Are we going to die now?”

“No,” Jake said. “We're just going to stay trapped for a while between floors fourteen and twelve.”

“What happened to thirteen?”

“There is no thirteen.”

“The floor above twelve isn't thirteen?”

“It is,” he said, “but they don't call it that.”

“Why not?”

“Don't you know this? Everybody knows this! Because of bad luck.”

“So the fourteenth floor is the thirteenth floor.”

“No,” he said. “The thirteenth floor just doesn't exist. And that's a good thing, because we need all the luck we can get right now.”

We stayed like that for a minute, listening for a calming voice over the speaker, or for the sound of firemen prying the door open. Some—any—noise from the outside world. Which turned out, instead, to be my cell phone ringing.

As I inched my hand across the floor toward my purse to grab it, I said, “Maybe it's the hotel. You know, with elevator information.”

“And they'd have your cell number because?”

Good point. It wasn't the hotel. It was Mike.

I turned it off.

Jake watched Mike's picture on the screen go blank. “You're just going to turn it off?” Jake asked.

I nodded.

“Aren't you curious why he's calling?”

“I know why he's calling.”

“Why?”

“To beg me to come back.”

“You don't want to be begged?”

I shook my head the tiniest bit. “Not by him.”

Jake narrowed his eyes, all flirty. “Who do you want to be begged by?”

But I just smiled.

“So,” Jake said, watching me. “I've just confessed how horribly I love you.”

I nodded.

“What do you think of all that?”

Here, dangling above our deaths, it didn't seem like a good idea to be coy. So I just looked into Jake's eyes and said, in what felt like slow motion, “I love you horribly, too.”

He shook his head in amazement. “But how? When did that happen?”

I thought about it. “It might, actually, have started when you almost peed in that Evian bottle.”

He smiled and gave a nod. “Works every time.”

“Or,” I went on, “it might have been when you spelled the word ‘lascivious.' Or when you forgot to dry off your collarbone and just left all those droplets of water. Or when you fell during the bear hang.”

“These are the things that work with women?”

“Or,” I went on, thinking, “it might have been how you kept rescuing me from Beckett, even when I didn't deserve it. Or how tender your hands were when you bandaged my knee. Or the way you do the right, brave, kind-hearted thing in every situation, no matter what. Or maybe it's just the way that I always, invariably, feel happier when I'm near you.”

“I thought you hated me.”

“I did hate you. In that way you hate people you're in love with.”

“On the trip, too?”

I nodded.

“That whole time?”

I nodded.

“You sure hid it well.”

“I thought you liked Windy.”

“Even when I mauled you down by the stream?”

“I thought we were cheating on Windy. Which I felt hugely guilty about.”

“I thought you were giving me a pity kiss.”

I shook my head.

He applied all this new information to the memory of that kiss. “If I'd known you didn't hate me, I would have done a better job.”

“You did a fairly heart-shattering job, as it was.”

Jake looked at me in amazement. “You don't hate me.”

“Just the opposite, in fact.”

“So if I kissed you again, you wouldn't mind?”

“I wouldn't mind,” I said. “But we're about to die, so you better get after it.”

With that, he kissed me again. No tricks. No games. Just him, and me, like nothing else could ever matter, on the carpet in a broken elevator beside a hotel floor that didn't exist.

 

Epilogue

Every story has to have a beginning and an end. Looking back, I could have begun it anywhere, or lingered on anything. I could have started it on the day I met Mike, for example, and ended it on the day I left him. I could have begun with the day we lost Nathan, and ended on the day we almost lost my mother. I could have lingered on sorrows. I could have painted the portrait of a crumbling marriage, or a family drowned by grief. It's all there.

But that's not the story I want to tell. Those aren't the moments in my life I want to dwell on. They happened. They mattered. They left their marks. But the things we remember are what we hold on to, and what we hold on to becomes the story of our lives. We only get one story. And I am determined to make mine a good one.

After all, life will hand each one of us our fair share of despair and loss and suffering—and then some. That's certain. But just as certain: It will also give us slices of chocolate cake, and sunny, seventy-two-degree days, and breezes that rustle the trees. Good things are so easy to overlook, but that doesn't make them any less
there.
A forgotten song will come on the radio. A stranger will help you change a flat. A lady walking by will love your red scarf. A mistake will turn out to be a blessing. An old friend will forgive you. A new friend will make you laugh.

And so, given every moment I could choose from, I end my story here, in the elevator, with the memory that I always turn to when I need to think about happiness and remember what it feels like. It's the image I'm most likely to reach for when I'm daydreaming. Or when I can't sleep. I carry it with me like a love poem tucked into my bra. I don't even have to read it anymore, I've looked at it so many times. But I read it anyway and let my eyes caress all the details that might otherwise disappear. It's so hard to look back on a moment without remembering all the other moments it led to, but sometimes I try. I close my eyes and see the two of us, so breathless at the start of our life together.

Here's what I know now that those two don't: There's heartbreak to come, and sadness, and trouble. But no matter what, we'll face every hard thing better together than we would apart. Every single one.

But we don't know that in the memory. In the memory, we hear a set of clanks outside the doors, some scraping, a few metallic bangs—and the elevator doors open. We're several feet lower than floor level, and we look up to see three firefighters—and a hallway full of middle schoolers—peering down at the two of us tangled together on the floor.

The firefighters clear the crowd back and lower a ladder down.

“Everybody okay in there?” a fireman asks.

“We're fine,” I say.

“We're great,” Jake says.

“We've locked the car in place,” the firefighter says. “It's safe to climb out.”

As I climb up into the lobby, I see the whole crowd. Dave and Darcy are there, and Grandma GiGi and her new gentleman friend in the bow tie. Duncan, too, who's rolled up his shirtsleeves and popped his collar. He whoops for me and then shouts a special “Attaboy, J-Town!” for Jake.

Then the crowd bursts into cheers. Jake helps me up, and we wave and take a bow. Duncan cups his hands and shouts over the noise, “Kiss her, buddy! You've earned it!”—and I barely have time to register the shocked expressions all around before Jake gives a quick salute with one hand and reaches out with the other to pull me in for a kiss so full and luxurious that the whole room falls silent, or seems to. I don't think at that moment about all the seventh graders looking on, or the fact that my brother and grandmother are watching, or even that Dave and Darcy are right there, taking it all in like they're at the movies. Nope. I can't think. About anything. All I can do is feel Jake's warm mouth and his hand behind my neck until everything else fades away. Maybe wanting something can't be the same as having it. And maybe getting what you want doesn't make you happy. But I'll tell you something: If the emotion flooding my body in this exquisite moment isn't happiness, I couldn't possibly tell you what is.

By the time Jake pulls back, looks into my eyes, and says, “That was okay, right?” all I can do is nod.

The next half hour is a blur. Somehow, the crowd disperses, the EMT pronounces us both unharmed, and the concierge offers Jake 50 percent off his room rate. Not that Jake needs it, apparently.

Speaking of Jake's room, it's on the seventh floor. Lucky seven.

That's where we go next, at last, leaving everyone else far behind.

Except, of course, we take the stairs.

 

Acknowledgments

Because my cute husband got the dedication this time around, my first thank-you must go to my awesome mom, Deborah Detering, who is really just a fountain of patience, support, babysitting, and carpool driving. She is my go-to person for processing anything, whether real-life or fiction, and she also happens to be my personal hero. Thanks, Mom! I will always try to pay all that goodness forward.

Also, huge thanks to my awesome husband, Gordon, who always makes everything more fun. Thank you for being so darned funny, for always seeing the best in everyone, and for taking such good care of me and the kids and the pup!

Much gratitude to my fantastic agent, Helen Breitwieser, whose name I love, and my two editors at St. Martin's Press—first Kate Ottaviano, and now the very charming Brenda Copeland. I'm truly grateful to Jen Enderlin, Laura Chasen, and all the good people at St. Martin's Press for their help and enthusiasm.

Also sending a hearty shout-out to my dear childhood friend—and almost-sister, at this point—Katherine Weber. So thankful, Kath, for your brainstorming help, enthusiasm, and encouragement.

Two nonfiction books that I was reading for fun the summer I wrote
Happiness for Beginners
made their way into the story and helped shape it. Many of the character Windy's thoughts about dogs—in particular, both the question of how one of man's worst animal enemies could have evolved into “man's best friend,” and the idea of “survival of the friendliest”—were informed by the fascinating and highly readable book
The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs Are Smarter Than You Think,
by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods. Windy also gleaned a lot of her wisdom about happiness, and what it is, and how to approach it, from a very thoughtful book by Richard O'Connor called
Happy at Last: The Thinking Person's Guide to Finding Joy.
Windy's idea of appreciating Three Good Things every day came from that book.

Thanks also to my family, just for being awesome! My dad, Bill Pannill. My sisters, Shelley Stein and Lizzie Fletcher. And always, always: my sweet-hearted, lovable, absolutely yummy children, Anna and Thomas.

 

About the Author

KATHERINE CENTER
is the author of five novels about love and family including
The Bright Side of Disaster
and
The Lost Husband
. Her writing has appeared in
Redbook, People, USA Today, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic,
and
Real Simple
. A graduate of Vassar College and the University of Houston's creative writing program, Katherine lives in Houston with her husband and two sweet children. You can sign up for email updates
here
.