The Happiest People in the World (21 page)

I
t was 2:55. Ellen and Matty were seated next to each other in the auditorium, third row, off to the right. Ellen was nervously drumming her fingers on the armrest; Matty had to resist the urge to cover her hand with his. Meanwhile the musicians were making their rude warming-up sounds. Kurt was with the rest of the trumpeters, in the second row, behind the flautists. Mr. Ferraro, that round-faced, black-Converse-All-Star-and-tuxedo-wearing ham, bowed low to the audience—students, parents, faculty, and staff—and then turned back to his musicians. Nobody really knows
what
conductors do, if anything, but it was still sweet to see how closely the kids paid attention to their leader. Kurt, too, was looking intently at the band director: Just tell me what to do, Kurt's eyes said. Ferraro raised his baton, Kurt put his trumpet to his lips; Ferraro started moving his baton, Kurt and the other kids started blowing. In concerts past, Matty oftentimes did not recognize a song unless Ferraro said, after the song had been played, “That was . . .” etc. But Matty recognized this one right away: it was The Who's “My Generation,” that famous adolescent call to suicidal arms. Hey, Matty realized, the band was actually pretty good this year. And Kurt seemed particularly great. It is a truism that every father in the audience at a school band concert thinks he can distinguish his child's trumpeting from the other children's lesser trumpeting. But Matty really could tell. Kurt somehow had gotten really good. Matty looked at Ellen to see whether she was hearing what he was hearing. But she wasn't looking at the band. She was scanning the audience, looking for someone, wondering where he was, why he wasn't there. Matty knew who, of course; he didn't see him, either. Good, he thought. Forget Henry. I'm here. Kurt is here. And he's really good. Did you know he was really good? “When did Kurt get to be such a good trumpet player?” he whispered to her. When Matty whispered that, Ellen sort of snapped to, smiled at Matty, and then started looking toward the stage.

A
ll day, all day, all day. For the second straight day, Henry had waited all day for something to happen: for the stranger to show up again; for Kurt to slip another menacing note under Henry's door; for Ronald, Matty, Ellen,
everyone,
to figure out who he really was. None of that had happened. Now, 2:55. Time to go to Kurt's band concert. A certain kind of insanity overtakes a person who makes it through what has promised to be a difficult day. He thinks, I knew something bad was going to happen to me. But nothing bad has happened to me yet. Maybe nothing bad will happen to me at all. Wouldn't it be incredible if Kurt's band concert was the worst thing that happened to me?

Henry got up from his chair, walked around his desk, and opened the door, and standing there was that odd security guard. Joseph, that was his first name. Henry didn't know his last. They had barely spoken. Every time Henry happened to walk toward Joseph in the hall, Joseph ducked his head or bent down to tie his shoe or veered off in an entirely different direction, usually the one from which he'd just come. Odd. Henry thought Joseph looked familiar, too, but maybe that's because we always think we recognize people who are trying to avoid us.

“Did you get my note?” Joseph said.

“Your note,” Henry repeated. He'd received probably a dozen notes that day—from students, teachers, secretaries—and each time the note sender had followed up with a personal visit. And why did Americans, or at least Broomevillians, always do that? They would send Henry a note or an e-mail, or leave him a phone message, and then come to him in person and ask whether he'd gotten their note, e-mail, or phone message.

“My note,” Joseph said, whispered actually. The words seemed to cause him some discomfort: he wiped the sweat away from his hairline and bent over at the waist, either in an attempt to get closer to Henry or in reaction to a stomach pain—Henry honestly couldn't tell which. “Under your door at the Lumber Lodge,” Joseph whispered.

“Your note,” Henry said, finally remembering the note he'd woken up to yesterday morning. He took a step back; Joseph took a step forward and then closed the door behind him. He was wearing a blue uniform onto which were stitched many badges onto which were stitched many initials. He was also wearing a thick belt with many holsters: in one was a radio of some kind; in another, a black stick or club; in yet another, what looked to Henry like an actual gun, although it was probably fake. In thinking this, Henry was still properly Danish: to citizens of countries where gun ownership is looked down on and in any case pretty much impossible, all guns looked like they were probably fake guns. Even though Henry was fully aware that lots of people in Broomeville owned and carried real guns, and he wasn't aware of a single person who owned and carried a fake one. And then Henry put up his hands, even though Joseph's gun was still in its holster, and blurted out the thing he'd been trying not to say but also had been really desperate to say ever since he'd first arrived in Broomeville two years earlier: “I'm Jens Baedrup.”

“Well, yeah,” Joseph said.

“Don't kill me,” Henry said, and when Henry said that, Joseph doubled over, in genuine agony now, no fooling. He cradled his stomach with his right arm while he groped around with his left until he found a chair. And into the chair he fell, hunched over, moaning.

“I'm not going to kill you,” Joseph said. “Why would you even
say
that?”

Henry was sitting behind his desk now. He'd placed his satchel on the desk. Inside the satchel was Joseph's note, now crumpled. Henry extracted it, placed it on the desk, smoothed it. “I understood this as a death threat,” Henry said.

“What?” Joseph said. He leaned forward to get a better look at the note, the name, the big black
X.
“Well, you know what, I can kind of see where you're coming from,” Joseph said. “It's that X, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Henry said. “Did you not mean it to be menacing?”

“No,” Joseph said. He looked at the note, thinking. “Kind of,” he said. Henry sat back in his chair, arms across his chest now. He was used to this kind of stammering as students haltingly made their way toward their true meaning. “It actually has a double meaning,” Joseph said. Now he looked more proud than pained. It was that look that students get when they realize they've grasped what heretofore had seemed like a forbiddingly foreign concept. Henry knew that when Joseph had said “double meaning,” what he'd really wanted to say was “double entendre.” But he hadn't. Who knew why. He'd probably been uncertain about how thickly he was supposed to apply the French pronunciation. “The first meaning is, don't mention the name Jens Baedrup again.”

“OK.”

“And whatever you do, stop telling people that the stranger's name is Jens Baedrup.”

“Is this the second meaning?”

“No, this is still the first,” Joseph said. “Do not mention the name Jens Baedrup. Do not say you are Jens Baedrup. And definitely do not say that Søren Korkmaz's real name is Jens Baedrup.”

“Søren Korkmaz,” Henry said.

“Søren Korkmaz is the man who burned your house down, and when he found out you were still alive, he came here to kill you. And now he's dead.”

That was the second meaning. Henry understood that, without Joseph having to tell him so. Henry also understood that Joseph had killed him. He knew this because Joseph was starting to sweat and moan again, but also because this was the way students, and perhaps all people everywhere, confessed: they told you one thing that seemed big enough but that was only in preparation for the truly large confession to come. Henry kept his arms crossed, kept frowning, waited.

“I killed him,” Joseph said.

“I'm sorry,” Henry said. Although that wasn't quite right. “Thank you,” Henry said. Although that wasn't quite right, either. What do you say when, after four years of running and wondering and hiding, you learn the name of the person who'd tried to kill you and also that that person is dead? Henry tried to picture a cartoon that would do justice to the feeling. But he couldn't. The part of him that could think of cartoons that would do justice to anything was gone. Perhaps it had never existed. Certainly, Ilsa had thought so. He was sure Locs had thought so, too.

“Are you working for Locs?” Henry asked. And when he did so, Joseph straightened up somewhat. “Well . . . ,” he said, and then he scooted forward in his chair, and that's when Henry recognized him. The scooting, the headphones, the sweatshirt, the air guitar, the Stevie who was not Stevie Wonder. Joseph had been the man on the bus that had brought Henry to Broomeville. Although Joseph's hair had been much longer back then.

“You got a haircut,” Henry said, and Joseph nodded, ruefully ruffled the back of his head.

“He doesn't feel like me.”

“Who?”

“The guy with this haircut.”

“Why did you get it cut?”

“Capo made me,” Joseph said.

“Capo?” Henry said, and then he thought Joseph was actually going to put his hands over his mouth, but he didn't. “Listen,” Joseph said, “about Locs . . .” But then he stopped, head cocked, as though he'd heard something. Joseph got up, opened the office door, stuck his head out into the hallway, looked one way, then the other. Then he stuck his head back in, turned to Henry. He looked different now. His eyes were big. “Someone was out there,” he said.

“Who?”

“Jenny.”

“Jenny Tallent?”

“Yes,” Joseph said. He looked down, thinking, thinking. “Now, Jenny's a good girl,” he said, more to himself than to Henry. In any case, that uttered sentence seemed to decide something for Joseph: he took his gun out of his holster, put it on Henry's desk, pushed it toward Henry. Henry didn't touch it. Just a few weeks ago, Henry and Ellen had watched a movie in which a police detective had placed his gun on a table, pushed it toward the criminal sitting across the table. “Go ahead, take it,” the detective had told the criminal, and when the criminal had tried to go ahead and take it, the detective had shot him with his other gun.

“Go ahead, take it,” Joseph said.

“But it's your gun,” Henry said.

“I don't even
want
it anymore,” Joseph said. Quickly, quickly, Joseph picked up the gun he'd just given Henry and showed him how to use it. Then he put it back on the desk. “Got that?” Joseph said. Henry nodded. It wasn't hard. Any idiot could do it. Not that he was going to.

“I'm not going to use that gun.”

“But you might have to.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I can think of lots of reasons,” Joseph said. And with that, he got up and left the room, and also left the door open. Henry was suddenly highly conscious of a gun sitting on his desk where anyone could see it. He was also conscious of really not wanting to touch the gun. He picked up the note, then used it to pick up the gun, then deposited both in his coat pocket. Henry closed his office door behind him and walked toward the auditorium. It was three thirty when he arrived. The band concert was almost over. The band was playing its last song. Henry recognized it right away. It was that famously plaintive rock-and-roll song about swimming in a bowl with fish and wishing people were there. Henry looked for and then spotted Ellen, sitting next to Matty near the front of the auditorium. I'm here, he wanted to shout but didn't. Ellen didn't seem to be looking for him anyway. She was looking at the stage. Henry looked, too, and saw Kurt stand up and begin playing a mournful solo on his trumpet. It really was beautiful, and suddenly Henry was trying hard not to cry. Schoolchildren's band concerts do strange things to the adults in the audience. Don't cry, Henry told himself. And then, to Søren: I'm sorry you're dead, but I'm glad I'm not. I'm glad that's all over. And to Ellen: I'm going to marry you tomorrow. And then to Kurt: I'm sorry I thought you were the person who wrote the note. I'm sorry I didn't trust you. And then came the chorus, and all of a sudden, many people in the audience were singing it. Henry could see that Ellen and Matty were singing it, and he started singing it, too: “How I wish, how I wish you were here,” he sang, and then he really did start crying. Harder than he'd ever cried before. But why? Everyone that mattered to Henry was here. There wasn't anyone to miss. Was there? Who was here? Who was not here?

O
ut in the country north of Broomeville there was a winding two-lane road that, briefly, when it crossed the Otanga River, turned into a one-lane wooden bridge. There were older wooden bridges in the state of New York, but this was the oldest one that still allowed automobiles to cross. Schoolchildren were often bused to the site to appreciate the bridge's historical significance and also its sturdy architectural features.

And on the other side of that bridge was an ice cream stand. It, like so many of its kind, had picnic tables overlooking the river, encouraging people to enjoy watery nature while eating their soft-serve. Ellen and Kurt were doing that. They'd come straight there after the band concert, to celebrate. But it was a muted celebration. This was the last week of the ice cream stand; on Sunday it would close and not reopen again until Memorial Day. There is a melancholy known only to the owners and patrons of seasonal businesses. Still, Ellen was doing her best.

“When did you learn to play the trumpet like that?”

Kurt smiled, shrugged. Ellen had chosen vanilla; Kurt, a twist. He twirled and addressed the dark side of his cone. They were sitting on the same bench, their backs against the table, watching the river, which was full to the point of possible flooding. Ellen liked the river when it was this way. It was fun to watch fallen tree trunks roar down the river and then get hung up on the other big logs jammed together under the bridge. Suddenly a guy wearing a wetsuit and a cap with many lures attached and holding a fishing pole came bobbing by in an inner tube. He waved to them with his feet as he drifted past, going under the bridge and out the other side, not getting stuck on the logs. Ellen had never seen any such kind of person on this river before. The sight of him made her even more uneasy than she'd already been. Where did he come from? she wondered. And where is he going?

“Well, you really were great,” she said.

“I didn't see Mr. L. there.”

“He was late,” Ellen said.

“How late?” Kurt asked, and now it was Ellen's turn to shrug. In truth, she didn't know. After the last song, Ellen had gotten out of her seat, and there Henry was, standing toward the back of the auditorium. He'd smiled at her. But there was something
wrong
with his face. It looked red, wet. Had he been crying? Why the hell had he been crying? Why the hell had he called Denmark from Matty's office? Before Ellen had seen him standing there, she'd thought, Just one more thing, and she was thinking it now, too.

“Køkkenbord!” Kurt said, suddenly, loudly, startling Ellen into dropping her ice cream.

“Jeez, Kurt.”

“Sorry.”

“What was
that
?” she said. He repeated the word, and she asked, “What does that mean?”

“Counter,” he said. He had a kind of secret smile on his face. “
Køkkenbord
equals counter.”

“In what language?”

“Swedish, I guess.” He told her about the day that Henry had come to town, two years ago. How Henry had dropped two pieces of paper on his way out of Doc's. One was a cartoon of Henry sitting at the counter in Doc's with Kurt watching him from outside. On the other piece of paper, Henry had written the words
KØKKENBORD=COUNTER
. Kurt told Ellen that he and his cronies were trying to figure out how to pronounce the word when this strange woman started hassling them. And then they couldn't find the piece of paper. And then Kurt couldn't remember the word, until now. It'd been driving him crazy. “Weird, huh?” Kurt said.

Yes, Ellen thought but did not say. Cartoon? Strange woman?
Køkkenbord
? Suddenly she remembered that cartoon, that word, although not the strange woman. The pieces of paper on which they'd been written and drawn had been on Henry's floor the first night she'd slept with him. He'd said he'd drawn the cartoon; he'd said the word was Swedish. The explanation seemed reasonable, so reasonable that she'd forgotten about the whole thing. “Not that weird,” she said. Still, Ellen took her phone out of her pocket. “Spell it,” she said. Kurt did; Ellen typed the letters.
Køkkenbord,
her phone said, was the Danish word for “kitchen counter.” Then she translated
kitchen counter
into Swedish; a word came up, but it was not
køkkenbord.
Her first thought was, Deny! But Kurt was already looking over her shoulder at the phone.

“Huh,” Kurt said.

“Huh,” Ellen said, putting the phone back in her pocket. “I'll have to ask Henry.”

“Yeah,” Kurt said. He was almost done with his cone. Meanwhile, Ellen looked at hers, lying on the grass, which was dead. The cone was ruined, she thought, the grass was ruined, everything was ruined. These were her thoughts. And then to counter those thoughts she thought, Don't be ridiculous. And then she thought, Counter. She thought, Cartoon. She thought, Denmark. She thought, Strange woman. She thought, This is that one more thing.

“Where do you think that guy in the inner tube went?” Kurt said. And when his mother didn't answer, he said, “I really want to go somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere,” Kurt said. “Another country.”

“You've been to Canada,” Ellen said. She and he and Matty had taken a trip to Niagara Falls four years ago. They'd walked across the bridge and said, “We're in Canada!” and then walked back. That was her only time out of the country, too.

“Canada doesn't count as another country,” Kurt said, finishing off his ice cream and wiping his hands on his jeans. “Come on, Mom. Everyone knows that.”

“I don't know that,” Ellen said. Because she and Henry had been planning to go to Canada—to Montreal—for their honeymoon. They were to leave on Saturday, after the wedding. She got up and then Kurt did, too, and they walked to the truck, got in. Kurt drove. He drove in a way engineered to make his mother crazy: casually, one hand out the window, the other at the bottom of the steering wheel. But just now, Ellen barely noticed. The truck made loud thumping noises as it crossed the wooden slats of the wooden bridge. But the rest of the ride was smooth to the point of unconsciousness. It was as though Ellen had fallen asleep and twenty minutes later woke up in front of the old stone house. I'm home, she thought, and then she thought, What a weird thought to have. This hadn't been her home for two years. Meanwhile, Kurt was already out of the car and leaning in through the driver's side window, looking at her worriedly.

“You OK?” he asked. Kurt seemed genuinely worried about her. God, she loved him. There was always that, right? No matter what happened, she would have Kurt, and Kurt her. That would be enough, right?

“Just taking a little nap.”

“Your eyes were open.”

“Yup,” Ellen said. And then she scooted along the length of the bench seat, put the truck in gear, and drove in the direction of the Lumber Lodge.