The Happiest People in the World (6 page)

M
atthew, Matthew. Kurt's mother must have said “Matthew” about a thousand times, like it was more than just a name. It wasn't. It was just a name: his father's name. Although it was true that almost no one called him that, except for his mother, and only when she was mad at him. And even then, when she called him Matthew, it was like she was impersonating someone else who called him by that name. Like when he called Kevin and Tyler his cronies, which was not his but rather his mother's name for them.

“Cronies,” he said to them, loud enough to be heard over their slurping but not loud enough for his mother or this weird guy to hear over all her “Matthews.” Kurt gestured with his head in the direction of the door, and then wondered, Why do people do that? Because he was just going to get up and walk out the door anyway. And then his cronies would know what he wanted them to do, although that was perhaps overestimating their powers of cognition. Kevin and Tyler stared at him blankly for one beat, then another. They were fraternal twins, and also wrestlers, and wore that perpetually dopey look of people who are always trying either to starve or to stuff themselves. Also, they were often high. Anyway, they looked at Kurt, then at each other, then shrugged before returning their attention to their soup, which they were now drinking directly from the bowl. Jesus, maybe his mother was right to call them cronies.

In any case, he got up and walked out of the bar, daring his mother to notice. She didn't.
Matthew,
she'd been saying to the guy.
No one calls him Matthew
. Once outside, Kurt leaned against the building, waiting for Kevin and Tyler so they could go do whatever. A few minutes later, the stranger walked out of the bar. He looked one way, and then the other, before crossing the street and entering Doc's. In his fifteen years on earth, Kurt didn't think he'd seen anyone over the age of four actually look both ways before crossing the street. In fact, by the time he'd finished this thought, Kurt himself had already crossed the street, not having looked.

The stranger was standing just inside in the diner's doorway. Kurt watched the stranger from outside, watching him wait for Crystal, the waitress, to notice him standing there. There were no customers; it was the kind of place that almost never had any customers, and still, somehow, it stayed open. Crystal was standing behind the counter, reading the
Broomeville Bulletin,
but otherwise not doing anything, including noticing the stranger standing there. But still, the stranger didn't do anything. He just stood there. Like an idiot. Finally, Kurt couldn't stand it anymore. He crouched down so that no one in Doc's could see him through the window and bellowed, loud enough for the people inside to hear him, “Hey!” Kurt then waited a second before standing up. When he did, he saw that Crystal had come out from behind the counter and was standing next to the cooler labeled
LES DESSERTS
. She blew a stray piece of brown hair off her brown eyes, but then it just fell back to where it'd been. She didn't look happy. But then again, she never looked especially happy. Was it possible that no one Kurt had ever known had ever looked especially happy?
Matthew, Matthew,
he heard his mother say. As for the stranger, his back was to Kurt. His back gave away nothing: it looked neutral.

“Counter?” Crystal said to the stranger.

“Yes?” he said. It really did sound more like a question than an answer, as though he really weren't sure after all that he wanted to sit at the counter. In any case, the guy didn't move. He just stood there. Crystal had turned and walked back behind the counter. Still, the stranger just stood there! Kurt started to itch all over. Is there anything more embarrassing than someone who doesn't seem to know that he should be embarrassed? Please move! Kurt thought, and just then Crystal, seeing the stranger still standing there, took a menu off the stack, bowed, presented the menu with a little flourish before letting it drop
smack
on the counter, as though to say, Here's your frigging invitation. Only then did the stranger walk to the counter and sit on one of the stools. Kurt could see his face now. He didn't look embarrassed at all, although he did offer Crystal a baffled little smile.

“Coffee?” she said.

“Yes, please,” the stranger said, although Crystal was already pouring it into a white mug.

“Black?” she said. And again the stranger sat there, not saying anything, with that confused, genial smile on his face. Kurt was beginning to wonder whether he was retarded or something. Possibly Crystal wondered the same thing, because she didn't even bother to ask, Or do you want cream? She just reached into the pocket of her apron and withdrew two plastic containers of half-and-half, which she tossed onto the counter, dice-like. “Thank you very much,” the stranger said, although he didn't bother with the half-and-half. His English was formal, definitely foreign sounding. Kurt wondered where he was from. The stranger took a sip of his coffee and said, “It is excellent.”

“I'm so glad,” Crystal said, not sounding especially glad. She was standing directly across the counter from him, holding a pad in her left hand and a pencil in her right. The stranger smiled at her again, still; he took another sip of his coffee.

“Just the coffee?” she finally said.

“Oh!” the stranger said, apparently getting it. Or maybe he was pretending not to have gotten it before. Kurt was starting to think of this guy not as possibly retarded but as a wild card. Maybe you could be both? Even though in his experience, adults were never wild cards. They were always totally predictable, even, especially, when they thought they were being mysterious.

The stranger opened the menu. Kurt watched his eyes travel down it. “Two eggs,” he said, “with a side of hash?” He said these last words slowly, and definitely with a question mark at the end, as though he wasn't sure of their pronunciation or meaning. Or maybe he just wasn't sure he really wanted the hash.
That,
Kurt understood. Who knew what that stuff really was? Kurt could see Doc in the kitchen, baseball hat and gut straining, yellow-armpitted white T-shirt and no apron and no rubber gloves, dumping the hash out of the can and onto the griddle. The can looked rusty, too, although it
was
hard to distinguish between the color of rust and the color of hash.

“How do you want your eggs?” Crystal asked.

“How do I want them?” he repeated. On a plate, Kurt thought. Next to the hash, Kurt thought. “How
do
I want them?” the stranger asked.

“Scrambled,” Crystal said. “Poached. Sunny-side up . . .”

“Sunny-side up,” the stranger said. Crystal nodded, snatched the menu, stored it somewhere underneath the counter, and walked away from the stranger and toward the kitchen. When she did, Kurt watched the stranger look around the place: First, to his left, was the cooler labeled
LES DESSERTS
. Then the stranger turned to his right and regarded, at the far end of the counter, four analog clocks over the door to the men's bathroom. The clock labeled
BERLIN
said it was 10:10; the clock labeled
CAIRO
, 5:47;
BROOMEVILLE
, 4:59;
MOSCOW
,
1:22. There was no clock for London, just the word
LONDON
and an empty space where the clock should have been. Time was correct and moving only on the clock labeled
BROOMEVILLE
. The stranger looked at these clocks for a long time, as though he had never seen one before, just like he'd looked at the counter like he'd never seen one before, and the cooler, and the menu, and the Crystal. Kurt was starting to change his mind again: Maybe this guy was just retarded. Because there was nothing odd about any of these things. They were normal. They had been there for as long as Kurt could remember.

After staring at the clocks for a while longer, the stranger shook his head, then took a pad and pencil out of his jacket pocket and began scribbling. Soon, Crystal brought out his eggs and hash. The stranger looked at the food, shook his head again, and then started shoveling the eggs and hash into his mouth. This was about right, as far as Kurt was concerned: the food in Doc's looked disgusting, but Kurt knew from experience that it tasted delicious. When the stranger was finished eating, he pushed the plate aside and then resumed his scribbling. Kurt could hear the scratch of the pencil on the page. He could hear Crystal laughing with Doc in the kitchen. The lights dimmed in the restaurant. Or maybe it was just the sun going down. The stranger didn't seem to notice; he scribbled on, hunched over his pad, all by himself, looking lonely. It was the kind of loneliness so powerful that it was contagious.

I'm so lonely, Kurt thought, and then, to counter that thought, he thought, Fuck that shit. And then he thought, Counter. The stranger didn't seem to know what Crystal had meant when she'd said, “Counter?” Kurt had been taking Spanish for three years in school; he tried to think of the Spanish word for “counter.” There had to be one. It was such a simple, common word. He must know it. What was the Spanish word for “counter”? And then he thought, Why
is
the cooler full of soda labeled
LES DESSERTS
? And what's with the clocks? Why do none of them work except for Broomeville? Why those four cities and not four others? What happened to the London clock? And for that matter, why was Doc called Doc? Because he definitely did not look like someone who had ever been a member of the medical profession. Why, why, why? Kurt thought. It wasn't the first time he'd asked why, of course, but it might have been the first time he'd asked why for a purpose other than being an absolute pain in the ass. For the first time, he really did want to know. Why, for instance, did the stranger order his eggs sunny-side up and not scrambled or poached?

Suddenly the stranger was standing in front of him. That smile still on his face, the pad of paper sticking out of his jacket pocket. The stranger didn't seem to be surprised to see Kurt there. It was impossible to tell whether he recognized Kurt from the bar, or knew he'd been standing there the entire time, or cared. Except for that goofy, hopeful smile, there wasn't anything on his face, not even a chunk of hash, a smear of egg.

“Why did you order your eggs sunny-side up and not scrambled or poached?” Kurt asked.

The stranger didn't hesitate. “Because it seemed the most optimistic and least violent of the three choices,” he said. He then stuck out his hand and Kurt took it. “My name is Henry Larsen,” he said. “I'm going to be your new guidance counselor.”

“My name is Kurt. And I'm definitely going to be needing your guidance counseling.”

Henry's face suddenly grew serious. But still goofy and hopeful. He patted Kurt on the shoulder and said, “Don't worry. I think everything is going to be just fine.”

“I really hope you're right,” Kurt said. But just in case, he sneaked the pad of paper out of Henry's coat before Henry crossed the street and went back into the Lumber Lodge.

E
llen was in the bar talking to Matty on the phone. In the background, she could hear the sounds of baseball. Not the game itself, which hadn't started yet, but the warm-ups. The lazy thud of a ball hitting a mitt. The ping of a metal bat hitting a ball. Someone apologizing for mishitting, or misthrowing, or miscatching. Someone complaining about how cold it was. Because it was
cold
. It was supposed to snow, too. Matty had told Ellen why this faculty-student baseball game had been played in October, right in the middle of football season. He had told her many times. But the specifics always eluded her. It had something to do with Cornell. A campus tradition. A morale booster. An official good-bye to summer. If it's good enough for Cornell, it's good enough for Broomeville. Something like that. She pictured rich white boys wearing red shorts and white sweaters with the big red letter
C
on the chest and drinking beer out of pewter steins in one hand while catching the ole horsehide with weathered old-timey leather gloves with the other and calling each other by their nicknames, which were all Tripp. Ellen sensed this mental picture was unfair and ridiculous. Which was not to say it was inaccurate.

“Your new guidance counselor is here.”

“What's he like?”

“He asked for you.”

Matty must have heard something in her voice. He didn't say anything at first. Ellen could tell he was trying to figure out where the trouble was and how he might steer away from it. That was marriage, pretty much. “Heads up!” someone yelled in the background. Ellen could hear the ball hitting someone or something. Then someone else yelled, “Hey, that fucking hurt!” And then the first person said: “I think you're overreacting a little. But anyway, I'm sorry.” That was pretty much marriage, too.

“He asked for you,” Ellen repeated.

“Did he ask in Swedish?”

“He said, ‘Is Matthew here?' ”

“Because he's from Sweden.”

This was news to Ellen: all Matty had told her was that the new guidance counselor would be showing up this afternoon, and to please have one of the rooms ready for him. “Sweden?” she said.

“Originally,” Matty said. “I bet you're wondering how a Swedish guy ends up a guidance counselor in Broomeville.” This was not what Ellen wanted to talk about. But yes, now that Matty mentioned it, she was wondering that. God, he made her hate him for sometimes making her forget why she still sometimes hated him.

“Yes,” she said. “How?”

“Well, it's complicated.”

“He called you Matthew.”

“That is my name.”

“Almost no one calls you Matthew.”

“My mother sometimes called me Matthew.”

“You didn't cheat on me with your mother.”

Matty paused again. He might make a joke about how all men cheat on their wives with their mothers and how he learned that in his first-year seminar on Greek mythology or Freud or something at Cornell. And if he did that, Ellen would finally leave him. Or he might ask her whether she was by herself. And then she might also leave him. But maybe not. Because this was what it meant to be a junior-senior high school principal in a place like Broomeville. You had to be sure no one was listening to you and your wife talk about things that everyone already half knew about already.

“Are you by yourself?”

Ellen turned and looked at Kurt's cronies. They were oblivious to everything but their bowls of soup. They were already on their third. “Yes,” she said. “I'm by myself.”

“Where's the Swedish guidance counselor?”

“He was hungry,” Ellen said. “I sent him across the street to get something to eat at Doc's.”

“Couldn't he have eaten something in the bar?”

“No, we don't officially open until five,” Ellen said, as though Matty didn't know that. And as though Matty also didn't know that Ellen often opened the bar earlier than its official opening time. To feed soup to their son and his cronies, for instance. Henry could have eaten some of that soup. There was no need to send him across the street to Doc's. But it was weird: She knew she was going to have this conversation with Matty. And she did not want Henry around to hear it. She did not want Henry to hear her being the shrewish, paranoid, needy, get-over-it-already wife talking to the husband who had cheated on her many years ago with that strange woman who was always walking around with binoculars in her hands and a scowl on her face. You swore you'd never see her again. I haven't seen her again; I don't even know where she is. You promise? I promise. Then why do I have a bad feeling that you're seeing her again? This was some of what Henry would have heard, had he stayed in the bar. And why shouldn't Henry hear it? Who was he to her? He was nothing to her; he was only Matty's new guidance counselor. Nevertheless, Ellen did not want Henry to hear her saying any of this. She did not even want to hear herself saying any of this.

“Is there anything you need to tell me?” she asked.

“Yes,” Matty said. “I need to tell you to please bring the new guidance counselor with you when you come to the baseball game.”