My American Unhappiness (16 page)

"She transferred to another store," Wallace says.

"She did," I say. "Really? I thought she liked this store."

"She's managing the second shift at the Starbucks on the west side."

"Oh, right. Which one is that again?"

"In Fitchburg," Wallace says. "Highway PD."

"Right," I say. "That's a shame. She was very nice."

Wallace nods, as if he is afraid to commit to any more banter. His eyes shift to the person who has just come into the store, a young woman dressed in track pants and a tank top. I predict the drink in my head—nonfat latte with sugar-free vanilla syrup—and bingo, I am right. At the last minute, I predict, she will also order a cookie to go. Right again.

I
GET BACK
to the office with my still-steaming beverage. (Wallace cannot make a decent Americano to save his life—they're always too hot and without enough room for cream.) Two men in suits are waiting outside on the concrete steps. They rise when they see me coming toward them, my key already pointed at the door. One of them is very tall with blond hair cut in a style that used to be known as the Princeton. The other is shorter, squarer, with black wavy hair combed back on his head. They are both about forty-five years of age, both fit and tan.

"You must be Zeke Pappas," the tall man says.

"I am," I say.

"Can we ask you a few questions?" the other says. "I'm Josh Farnsworth and this is Temple Morris, and we're with the Department of Departmental Compliance and Oversight in Washington, DC. We spoke briefly, on the phone."

The men each hand me business cards that back up their claims.

"I've never heard of such a department," I say.

"We're housed in the Department of Homeland Security," Farnsworth says. "I trust you've heard of
that
department."

I nod. Just the mention of that chilling wing created by the Bush administration is enough to silence me.

"It's all pretty new," Morris says. "Sarbanes-Oxley, reform-driven kind of stuff. Fallout from all of the big scandals, the collapse of Wall Street. We're swiftly implementing new powers of oversight. Protecting the taxpayers."

"We just try and keep everybody honest," Farnsworth says, "at the domestic level, at least."

"Well, can that be done?" I ask.

"What?" Farnsworth asks. He is typing something in a hand-held wireless device and doesn't look up.

"Well, isn't honesty something you have or you don't have? I mean can you
keep
people honest? Aren't some people genuinely dishonest?"

"Can we go inside your office?" Farnsworth asks.

"Sure," I say.

"It's unlocked," Morris says.

"Oh?" I say. "You've met Lara then. Good. I trust she offered you coffee or water?"

"We've spoken to Lara a lot over the summer," Morris says. "But she wasn't here this morning. We had a key made. Lara had it made."

"We're sorry to hear about your mother," Farnsworth says. "How is she doing?"

I nod. "Thank you," I say. "She is okay."

It seems odd that these men would have any knowledge of my personal life, and equally odd that they should have a key to our building, but it is possible, I suppose, that some federal regulation required us to give a building key to the Department of Departmental Compliance and Oversight. I find complying with federal regulations tiresome and it is Lara's responsibility to handle such things.

When we go into the office, two men and three women in business suits are going through files in the conference room.

"Auditors," Morris says. My face must look a bit baffled, because he is quick to add: "Nothing to worry about."

"I was under the impression the audit was almost through," I say. "I thought Lara had finished all of this business while I was away."

"I'm sure you run a tight ship, Mr. Pappas," Farnsworth says. "We're just double-checking a few things."

"Inconsistencies," Morris says.

I nod. I wish Lara were here, so she could advise me as to whether or not this sort of appointment had been a scheduled part of the audit. We go to my office and I take a seat behind my desk while Farnsworth and Morris sit in the only other chairs in the room, the ones in the corner by a small end table, arranged as if they were waiting for two old chums to sit down for tea together.

"Do you need a warrant of some sort?" I ask.

They chuckle. "It's not a criminal investigation, Mr. Pappas," Farnsworth says.

"Of course not," I say. "It just feels a bit unsettling."

"So tell me, Mr. Pappas, about the way the GMHI awards grants," Morris says.

I begin to give the usual answers. "We work with certain individuals and organizations to assess the cultural and social needs of the region, and then we ascertain—as best we can—how public humanities programming can meet those needs."

"And do you choose the grant recipients?" Morris asks.

"No. Not technically. The board of directors does that, in theory. Though, I suppose, they give me a great deal of latitude. They really listen to my input on matters dealing with mission, vision, and scope. Those kinds of things."

Morris nods.

"How do you let the general public know about available funds?" Morris asks.

I begin the litany of press releases and online marketing activities that our former marketing director, Jennifer Holbein, used to do before I laid her off.

"Now I handle a lot of that myself, sort of on a smaller scale," I explain. "There are not enough funds to give away anymore. We're in a redevelopment of sorts. A reinvention."

There are more questions about staffing, budgets, that kind of thing. One of the auditors—a woman of Asian descent—comes in and hands Farnsworth three files from our grants database. Farnsworth asks me to tell him a little bit about each project. Thankfully, they are three GMHI-funded projects I remember fairly well and not one of them was controversial by any means: a rock-and-roll history program in Detroit, a conference on Northern Ireland in Milwaukee, and a symposium, hosted at Illinois Wesleyan University, on the image of the prairie in American literary and artistic work. Morris makes very few notes as I am explaining the reasons why such projects were funded.

"You've also funded," Farnsworth says, "a project on the socialist movement in Milwaukee, yes?"

"Yes, it was a very important part of Milwaukee's history," I say. "The only major American city to ever elect a socialist mayor."

"Grant 88-009-2006:
Urban Utopias Reconsidered: What Almost Was and What Still May Be in Marxist Milwaukee,
" Farnsworth says.

"Yes," I say. "That was it."

The truth is that I am only a little unsettled by this revelation. A little political controversy may be good for the organization if we can arouse the sympathies of the same rich leftists who donate to the ACLU and Amnesty International.

"And Bill Ayers once appeared at the Book Festival, did he not?"

"I believe so," I say. "We've hosted hundreds of authors over the past decade."

"I'm sure you have," Farnsworth says.

"Next year we'll be having a new signature event. The Festival of Midwestern Unhappiness."

"Nice," Farnsworth says. "Sounds like a blast."

"Zeke," Morris says, "if I may? Our job is to be sure that federal funds are not used for political advocacy."

"Of course. Would you gentlemen like some coffee?" I ask. "You sure?"

They both shake their heads no. I have finished most of my mediocre Americano by now, burning my tongue in the process, and I'm now feeling the fine flutter of three shots of espresso hitting my bloodstream. My right eyebrow is pulsing.

Morris writes something down in his notebook while Farnsworth gets up and peruses the books on my shelf.

"Could you tell me a little something about the sign on your door?
The Inventory of American Unhappiness?
"

"Oh, that's just a sort of thing I run."

"From the office?" Farnsworth asks.

"And with the board's full approval and backing," I say. "We examine our nation's swelling, collective unhappiness through the prism of individual woes and disappointments."

"Do you think the nation is that unhappy?" Farnsworth mutters, without looking up from the book he is perusing, Nicholas Delbanco's
The Martlet's Tale.

"That's a rather rare book," I say. "It's signed, by the author, or else I'd let you borrow it. Have you read it?"

"Could you answer my question, Mr. Pappas? Do you think that the nation is unhappy?"

"Well, I am compiling all my research—our research—into something I, we, call
An Inventory of American Unhappiness.
"

"What's that?" Morris asks.

"It's an oral history and documentary project that examines the diverse histories of a generation in an attempt to find commonalities among our individual fears, eccentricities, obsessions, and dissatisfactions. It does so in the belief that such exploration is essential to a thriving democracy and a healthy human community."

"Fascinating," Farnsworth says. "Do you keep separate books for that?"

"Did you ask Lara?" I say. "She really is the puppet master around here. Makes the trains run on time, and so on."

"And the public response," Morris says. "How is it?"

"Well, as with any new program, we have our detractors. But I do think it's an adequate, if not innovative, public humanities project and that is what I am paid to produce."

"You think it's innovative?" Farnsworth says.

"Funds are limited," I say. "It's a low-cost project that involves many citizens and hopes to illuminate something about our collective history and our civic future."

"I see that you're a natural fundraiser," Morris says.

I nod. "Thank you."

"We were spot-checking your travel records. Your chair, Mr. Logan: it looks as if he spent eight hundred dollars on the GMHI credit card at a male strip club in northern Virginia," Morris says. He slides a yellow credit card slip over to me. "That credit card, as far as we can tell, is paid with federal funds."

"That may be," I say. "But, I assure you, H. M., Mr. Logan, always reimburses us for his travel expenses. He is our largest donor. So technically that is not an expenditure of federal funds."

I examine the credit slip.

"The Bus Stop?" I say.

"We checked it out," Morris says. "A gay strip club."

"Oh, I see."

"Don't you check your staff and board travel?" he says.

"I skim them. We're all trustworthy here. Lara handles reimbursement. She makes sure that Mr. Logan covers all of his personal expenses."

"That's fine," Morris says. "I would suggest that he find another way to cover up his extracurricular activities, however. For his sake, if nothing else."

"We've been trying to reach him," Farnsworth says.

"Mr. Logan gave us one hundred fifty thousand dollars last year! Certainly we can look into this matter without costing him his privacy or dignity, I hope."

"We've already made copies of the receipts," Morris says. "By the way, your machine is low on toner. Anyway, we'll ask Mr. Logan when we catch up with him."

"Ask him what?" I say.

"To keep his personal expenses personal," Farnsworth says. "Even if he does pay the organization back."

"Many times over," I say.

"Your brother was a vet?" Morris says. "Lara mentioned he died in Operation Iraqi Freedom."

"That's right."

"I was in the first Gulf War," Morris says. "The 'easy' one. Though it wasn't easy for those of us who were there, let me tell you something."

"What was your brother's name?" Farnsworth says.

"Jeremiah Pappas. We called him Cougar."

"What did he think of your work?" Farnsworth says.

"I don't see how that matters. Frankly, I doubt that he knew anything about my work at all. We didn't talk much while he was at war. We e-mailed, sometimes. But we basically wrote about our mother, the Packers, that sort of thing. He was a good man. But did he understand me? My work? No. No, I don't think so."

"Don't you think he would have hated your work?" Farnsworth says. "Frankly, me, I'm just curious. It's a personal question. Off the record? How did an American soldier, serving in Iraq, feel about your work? And that's a term—
work
—that I am using very loosely."

"No, I'm sorry," I say. "But I
do
have
work
to do and I don't see how this process is illuminating anything about the operations of the Great Midwestern Humanities Initiative, which, by the way, have always been remarkably transparent and well documented."

"Doesn't it occur to you that your project might be responsible for unhappiness?" Farnsworth says. "Isn't art supposed to be uplifting?"

"Well, these are the humanities. There's a major difference between the arts and the humanities," I say. "Maybe art is uplifting. But, no, I don't think that art is
supposed
to be anything, do you? And the humanities are certainly not uplifting. They are the study of humankind's narrative—its tragedies and trials and sorrows and hurts and woes and continually broken spirit—how could that possibly be uplifting? They are, in an intellectual and spiritual way, however, exhilarating."

"Farnsworth," Morris says, "cool it."

"I just feel," Farnsworth says, "that you have an obligation to spend federal tax dollars in a way that celebrates rather than cynicizes."

"Seriously," Morris says. "You're an auditor. You're not allowed to have feelings."

"Did you say
cynicizes?
" I ask.

"One more question we have to ask," Morris says. "Have you ever associated with known terrorists? Have you ever knowingly diverted federal tax dollars to organizations that support foreign terrorists?"

"Do I need a lawyer?" I ask. "I think I need a lawyer."

"It's just a routine question," Farnsworth says. "We ask that of everybody, post-Patriot Act."

"They ask that when you open a checking account at the bank," Morris says. "Strictly routine."

"So just answer: have you?" Farnsworth says.

"Certainly not," I say. "I loathe fundamentalism of any sort."