The Happiest People in the World (8 page)

T
urku!” Lawrence was saying, but Matty was barely listening. He was looking at Kurt, who was standing with his buddies against the fence. None of them were wearing coats. Instead they were wearing sweatshirts, with the hoods up and their hands in the pouches. God, Kurt looked so cold. Matty wanted to go over there and hug him. But then Kurt would say, What are you
doing
? and then Matty would feel hurt and then get on Kurt's case for not even being half smart enough to dress for the weather, and besides, it was possible the clothes Kurt
was
wearing would smell like pot, and Matty would either have to pretend he didn't notice or admit he did notice and then make a big scene about it in front of Kurt's friends, who were also, of course, Matty's students. If Kurt smelled like pot, then they would also smell like pot, and if Matty made a big scene about Kurt, then he'd have to make a big scene about them, too. Meanwhile, there was this baseball game to be played. Everyone had told him to cancel it. There had been no school that day, because of state-mandated teacher workshops. That would mean that students would have to come back to school for the game. Plus, there was supposed to be a big snowstorm. But it was a tradition: they always held the faculty-student baseball game on the first Wednesday in October. And besides, it was only the first Wednesday in October. They would never actually end up getting that much snow. And yet, it seemed like they really were getting that much snow.

“Turku!” Lawrence was still saying.

“What does that mean?”

“So much snow!” Lawrence said. “It reminds me of that December I spent in Turku.” And then he was off, talking about that December he spent in Turku. Wherever that was. Someplace where there was snow in December, evidently. Just one of many stops on what Lawrence called his “grand tour” and what everyone else thought of as his more than ten years of fucking around after college before settling down and getting a real job back in Broomeville. Although he couldn't have been entirely fucking around: he must have had a job somewhere doing something to pay for all his traveling. But finally, Lawrence must have run out of money or gotten bored or something, because twelve years earlier he'd come home and Matty had given him a job teaching twelfth-grade history. It had worked out, too. It turned out that Lawrence was a pretty good teacher. He'd even become the Civics Club adviser; the club met down at Doc's every Friday after school. The students in the club loved him and in fact were younger versions of him: conscientious, smart, eager, not quite right, but not demonstrably wrong, either. Matty sometimes dropped by Doc's and watched the students listen with big eyes as Lawrence told them about all his travels to all these places where this man and that had welcomed Lawrence into their homes. A few of them even kept in touch with Lawrence after they graduated, would meet him for coffee at Doc's when they were back in town visiting. Matty thought the whole thing was very sweet; it made him hopeful: everyone finds the people, or person, they're meant to find, eventually.

“I have missed you,” Matty had told Locs on the phone.

“That's the second thing,” she'd said.

So he'd agreed to hire this guy—whoever he was, whatever kind of trouble he was in—as his guidance counselor. “Is he going to come here by himself?” Matty had asked. He waited for Locs to answer. But she didn't. She was waiting for Matty to tell her something. Either: Because I want you to bring him. Or: Because I don't want you to bring him. And before he could ask himself, again, Am I really going to do this? he'd said, “Because I want you to bring him.”

“Maybe I will,” Locs had said. “But then again, maybe I will not.”

And then she hung up, leaving Matty with two visions of the future. Both of them gave him a bad feeling.

“I have a bad feeling,” Matty said.

“Well, as I was just saying, I had a bad feeling that December in Turku as well,” Lawrence said.

“Uncle Lawrence!” Kurt yelled, and then he waved at Uncle Lawrence to come over.

“I'm being paged,” Lawrence said, and he walked over to his nephew. Matty then turned in the opposite direction and thought, Where are they? And a second later, there they were: Ellen and a man walking toward him through the snow. The man looked tall—taller than Matty—and thin; he had gray hair and had lost most of it except for on the sides, but he was one of those tall, fit men who cut their remaining hair very short, and so he looked youthful even though he was not young. Locs had described the guy—Henrik Larsen—as a goofball. But he did not look like a goofball. Matty, on the other hand, was dressed in his ridiculous homemade umpire uniform. The uniform was supposed to be a joke, but now he wondered whether he'd succeeded a little too fully in making it so. He was wearing Kurt's old soccer shin guards, and the pieces of black plastic barely covered half the length of his shins. He'd also stuffed a pillow into his red sweatshirt for a chest protector. And while his mask was a genuine umpire mask, it was ancient, and several bars had been broken, so that the ones that remained were too far apart to stop anything—a ball, a rock—from reaching his face. He'd dressed like this for the fourteen years he'd umpired this game, but today, for the first time, he felt like a man who was absolutely ill equipped to go into battle.

Matty shook the guy's hand when he got close enough, and said, “So you must be my new guidance counselor.”

The guy didn't say anything. He just took his hand back, then crossed his arms and frowned. Locs was supposed to have told this Henrik that he was going to be the new Broomeville Junior-Senior High guidance counselor. Did this frowning and arm crossing mean she hadn't told him? Although she
had
told Henrik to call him Matthew. What
else
had she told him? Locs, Locs. He felt her nearby. She might even be sitting in the stands, watching him. He looked at Henrik, making sure he didn't look anywhere else. “Henry,” Ellen said. “This is Matthew.”

Henry? thought Matty. “I go by Matty,” he said to Henry.

“Or Big Red,” Ellen said.

Matty felt his face turn unhappy. He wondered whether Henry could see it behind the mask. Henry was still frowning; his arms were still crossed. “I went to Cornell,” Matty explained to Henry.

Henry let his frown disappear. For now. It felt so good, knowing he could and would be able to return to it. Earlier he'd wondered whether there was a difference between Jens and Henry. This was the difference: Jens was always a little out of control, even though he insisted that he was in control, that everything would be just fine. But Henry had a method. And Ellen had given it to him. Henry had known her for only a couple of hours, but already she seemed like the most incredible woman he had ever met. How could Matty have cheated on her (Henry had not asked with whom, and Ellen had not volunteered the information, but he had a hunch it was Locs, because Locs had said, “Matthew doesn't even know who
he
is,” and you don't say something like that about a person unless you're in love with him), Matty who apparently went to this Cornell? Henry had never heard of it, but the way Matty had said the word—“Cornell”—made it sound like some mystical, faraway place. Timbuktu. Kathmandu. Atlantis. “I went to Cornell,” Matty had said.

“And when did you get back?” Henry asked.

Ellen laughed. But Matty did not laugh. He lifted the mask up off his face and seemed to be prepared to say something unpleasant when a woman and a man walked by. The woman was dressed like an Arctic explorer with her fur-lined and hooded anorak. The man was wearing what seemed just to be a lined, checked shirt and a tasseled hat with the word
SKI-DOO
ringing its perimeter.

“Hello, Bossman,” she said to Matty. “Hello, Me,” she said to Henry. The woman smelled strongly of alcohol. She might once have had other smells, but the liquor had eradicated them. The man didn't say anything. He just extended his hand in Henry's direction and Henry shook it. There was clearly something wrong with the hand—the fingers seemed fused together and hard, so that it was like shaking a closed frozen lobster claw with human skin on it—but Henry shook it anyway, the man looking deeply into his face, seemingly daring Henry to in some way acknowledge the claw. Henry didn't; he didn't even need to frown, since the man wasn't actually saying anything. Finally the man retracted his hand, and he and the woman walked away, past a group of sweatshirted teenagers standing next to a chain-link fence, whispering conspiratorially and not even trying to hide the fact that they were pointing at Henry. It was easy to read their pointing: it said, Who the fuck are you?

“I fart in your general direction!” someone yelled in what seemed like a French accent. Henry looked in the direction of the voice. It clearly had come from a large man wearing a very colorful short-sleeved shirt who was looking—but as far as Henry could tell, not farting—in Henry's direction. A woman descended the bleachers behind the man, long braids trailing out of her ski hat. She had a martial look on her face, and sure enough, she struck the man in the arm, then ran back up the stairs. The man rubbed his arm but otherwise seemed unaffected by this sudden violence. Although he did seem cold; he wrapped his arms around himself and yelled in Henry's and Matty's direction, “Hey, chief, play ball already!” Henry looked at him. Henry looked at all of them, the whole crowd. And what did he see? What did he not see? He did not see one Muslim in the crowd. He did not see one person who by evidence of their skin color or headgear or dress or
anything
seemed likely to want to kill him. Henry did not like himself for noticing this. But neither did he like himself being around people who might be trying to kill him. He turned back to Matty, who was busy feeling that crushing combination of shame and defiance known only to people in small towns who are forced to welcome an outsider into that small town. I know this place is awful, was Matty's feeling, and also: But don't even think about telling me how awful it is. “I apologize for the freak show,” Matty said.

“I really think I'm going to like it here,” Henry said.

“You do?”

“Yes,” Henry said. “I think everything is going to be just fine.” He allowed himself to say these things one last time, as a way of saying good-bye to Jens, the way Matty's baseball game was his way of saying good-bye to summer. Then Henry crossed his arms again. Now that he'd started truly being Henry, he couldn't imagine ever wanting to be anyone else. Meanwhile, Matty was looking at him in amazement. He wasn't sure he'd ever heard anyone say “I think everything is going to be just fine” before. And Henry had sounded like he'd
meant it
, too. Was he talking somehow about Matty and Locs? Matty felt sure Henry was. He glanced at Ellen, who was now talking to Lawrence and Kurt, and then said, “How is everything going to be fine?” Henry didn't respond to that, except with his frown, which communicated, to Matty, Oh, you know how. Matty did. He'd known it last time, and he knew it this time, too. He just needed someone else to remind him.

Meanwhile, Lawrence had walked over and was now standing in front of Matty and Henry. Lawrence said several things in a language that Matty didn't know and that Henry didn't seem to know, either: he stood there, arms crossed, frowning. “So you're from Sweden!” Lawrence said, in English. “Or as you say, Sverige! I'll never forget the fall I spent in Stavsnä! . . .” And then Lawrence said several more typically Lawrence things. None of which appeared to have any effect on Henry: he was still frowning and crossing his arms. Finally, Lawrence seemed to give up, and said simply: “I'm Lawrence Klock. I teach eleventh- and twelfth-grade history. Welcome to Broomeville.” Introducing himself! Like a real person! This new guidance counselor really was incredible. I know how, Matty thought. I know how everything is going to be just fine. And then he pulled down his mask, strode back toward the snow-covered field, and ordered everyone to play ball.

M
atty had ended up giving Henry a tour. He couldn't help himself. After the game (the students won; the students won every year; every year, the faculty insisted that they wanted the students to win, that it was important that the students win, that it was important for the students to feel good about themselves; every year, the faculty ended up doing everything they could to win and ended up losing anyway), all Matty had intended to do was walk Henry back to the Lumber Lodge and tell him what to expect tomorrow at school and maybe ask him whether he knew where Locs was, whether she was in Broomeville or somewhere else. But here he was, giving a tour of Broomeville. This was another burden for people from small towns: they couldn't stop themselves from giving an out-of-towner a tour and then at the end of the tour saying, I know it's not much, and then daring the out-of-towner to agree.

“And this was where Dietrik Broome lived,” Matty was saying. They were standing in front of the chalet. The snow was still falling, falling. There was at least a foot of it already on the ground and it was piled high on the roof and the gables, making the house look even more Swiss than usual. Although Broome himself had emigrated from Holland. “He emigrated from Holland, in 1789,” Matty was saying. “No one lives in the house anymore, of course. It's more of a museum than a house.”

“May we go in?” Henry asked.

“It's open only by appointment.” Matty hoped Henry wouldn't ask with whom he could make that appointment. Because honestly, Matty had no idea.

But Henry didn't ask anything. They kept walking, past the gazebo and monument, which memorialized Broomeville's war dead, and then they were in front of the Lumber Lodge, which was alive with drunk people. Matty could hear them from where he was standing, even though the bar windows were closed. Ellen had left the game early; she was inside now, tending bar. “Snowstorms make people want to drink,” Ellen liked to say. “As does extreme heat. Not to mention a light drizzle.”

“So that's the tour,” Matty said. “I know it's not much . . .”

“You haven't yet told me what a guidance counselor does,” Henry said. He sounded tired. Which made sense, since he'd traveled who knew how far to get there.

“No one really knows,” Matty said. “Don't worry. You'll do just fine.”

“Just fine,” Henry repeated. And then: “I think I'll go to bed now.”

“Fair enough,” Matty said. “See you at school tomorrow.” Then Henry turned and walked toward the Lodge. Matty watched him. The door opened. Matty heard a boozy roar. Then the door closed, and the roar disappeared. Matty looked through the bar windows. His teachers and staff were in there. They always went to the Lumber Lodge after the game. Matty really belonged in there, too. He always made a speech after the game, thanked his troops, bought them drinks. But tonight he ignored that tradition. Matty started to walk. This was one of the ways that he was different from Ellen. Locs, too. Both of them liked to drive, anywhere, always. But Matty liked to walk. He told people it helped him think. It also had the virtue of helping him postpone having to do the thing he was thinking about.