Spectacular Happiness - Couverture rigide

Kramer, Peter

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0684864304 ISBN 13 : 9780684864303

Editeur : Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2002

A propos du livre

Extrait

Chapter One: Calling

I saw you today on the midday news: a teenage boy, skinny body draped in an oversized Chicago Bulls shirt, eyes shaded by a Swoosh cap, matching red, with brim curved just so. I knew you instantly, before the label was added to the picture, before you spoke. I was struck by an emotion that had more force than direction. It could as easily have been despair as elation. A phrase ran through my mind: already grown. Words that toward the end of his life my father repeated when he caught sight of me. In the midst of disorientation, what abides is wonder at a child's taking adult form.

You looked thinner than I had imagined. The effect of Ritalin, I suppose. You were taller than the reporter, so it seems not to have stunted your growth. Like a daytime talk-show hostess, the reporter prompted, If you could speak to your dad, what would you say? She held the microphone to your mouth. For a moment you stared at her tongue-tied. Hi, Dad, you said, perhaps because that is the first thing one says into microphones.

The television people were telling a story with your image. It said ordinary, normal, the youngster next door. Not a bad appearance to have in these times when too many try to stand out.

The microphone rested by your mouth, urging further speech. You thought and then asked, Dad, did you do it? After another silence, you giggled, which struck me as appropriate for a young man asked to betray private feelings in public. Appropriate, and wonderful for being so. The reporter pulled the microphone away, so that it did not quite catch your afterthought: Why?

That is the picture the video editor ended with, the lips of the "son of accused bomber" pursing and parting in silent query.

As soon as I could collect myself, I phoned Sukey Kuykendahl. You will remember Sukey. We saw a good deal of her the spring and summer your mother was gone. Sukey was down on her luck then -- booze and man trouble -- but she perked up around you. She had a way of getting you to do things, by saying out loud what was on your mind: Those kids look too big for you. You don't want to play with them. You want to sit on the sidelines and eat cookies.

Once she named your fear, it seemed foolish, and you would head back to the game. The reporters like her frankness of manner and that forceful, high-pitched New Englander's voice, at once throaty and twittery. They have her pegged as a Cape Cod type, the lady realtor, the Yankee straight-shooter. She's the stoutish "longtime neighbor" you see saying, Good Lord, of course I know Chip Samuels. Known him for years. He grew up on my mother's estate. Salt of the earth, honest as the day is long. That man never did a violent thing in his life.

On tape, she sounds something like Julia Child.

Sukey is a strategist. If you have been following the news, you know that I have not yet been charged with any crime. When the FBI cannot make a case, they leak the name of a suspect in the hopes that citizens will come forward with evidence. Sukey thinks the FBI's approach has backfired. She tells me that people remember times the FBI stumbled. They remember how the FBI had the press convinced that Richard Jewell set the bomb at the Olympics in Atlanta. In the end the feds exonerated the fellow and apologized, which is what Wendy Moro, my lawyer, is calling on them to do now.

For the meanwhile, I am more or less on home confinement. The media are too intrusive for me so much as to walk down Bridge Way. And there have been threats, some vicious and anonymous, some open and milder, couched in language meant to evade this or that criminal statute. The open threats come from families whose houses have lost value or been destroyed. Wendy says I am safest in the cottage, watched over by the agents investigating me.

I have little need to venture out. The community college has placed me on leave, and there is no question of my continuing with the handyman jobs I used to do. For all that certain neighbors express belief in my innocence, I doubt there's a sober citizen on the Cape who would let me bring a toolbox into his home.

When I phoned, Sukey picked up on the first ring. Is that you? she said. I just saw your boy on television.

Me, too, I said. How did he seem?

You at sixteen.

Did he look thin?

Not a bit of it. Your spitting image. Wouldn't have surprised me if he'd jumped off the screen and tried to shanghai me up to the attic.

Sukey was speaking my mind. I have always considered your resemblance to me uncanny. I once heard on the radio -- I caught only the end of the story but I believe I have it right -- that a child who looks decidedly like a given family member may resemble that relative in talents or temperament, that external appearance provides a fair sampling of the ways the genes express themselves. Overidentification was a word the court psychologist used in the custody evaluation; she said I exaggerate what you and I have in common.

That remark caused me much soul-searching. But on seeing you again, I find my opinion is unchanged. You do have my manner. The shyness, the hesitancy, those are me. Sukey is right, I was wiry as a youngster.

I never shanghaied anyone. That was a little joke. It was Sukey who dragged me to the attic. I will write about that incident in time. I will set down everything if there is time.

Shanghaiing is a concern, I said, believing Sukey would know what I meant. Now that you have been located, you may be in danger. You are in Milwaukee, the reporter indicated. Living in a neighborhood of substantial houses, judging from the background you were shot against. Even in this era of ubiquitous trophy homes, how many such neighborhoods can there be in Milwaukee? I suppose you will be safe while the press keeps an eye on you. But when their attention flags?

Sukey and I talked on about how it was to see you, how a thirty-second video clip enriches and impoverishes the imagination. I wanted the conversation to flow naturally, without rapid changes in topic. After a couple of minutes, I declared myself. I said: Sukey, I need to ask a favor. I'm hemmed in here, by cops and reporters and rubberneckers. I wonder if you could bring by a few bags of groceries.

That is the code we had arranged. If I wanted to sign on to Sukey's next plan, the plan for me to appear in public, I was to ask for groceries.

Sukey suspects the phone is tapped and the cottage is bugged. For important communication, we use key words. Repair means to install explosives. Astonish indicates a project has come to fruition. When a house has been blown, I may phone Sukey and mention that I find this or that news item astonishing. Groceries means a new phase of the Movement.

Sukey said, I imagined you might need groceries. Is that all? Do you want company? I can bring round some friends.

No need to involve others, I told Sukey.

She had in mind a media event, I suspected, a parade of well-wishers to give visual confirmation to the claim that I am a regular guy. I have resisted the temptation to engage in conventional publicity. I believe our success to date is due to our invisibility. To what the old anarchists called propagande par le fait. Letting the explosions speak for themselves. Sukey has said that in the end human faces are always needed, faces and words. She tends to be right. I hope she is right now, that if I break my silence, there is a chance of keeping you safe, even bringing you home. Safe home, most desired of endings.

By home, I mean the cottage where you spent your early years. I believe you found it cozy. I did, and do still. But a person can feel exposed on the bayfront.

Your mother never adjusted. She complained of the freight-train sounds of the north wind on winter mornings and the stink of rotting shellfish at ebb tide on summer afternoons. Sometimes I think she left the marriage because she could not bear to live on this sandbank, and she could not bear to ask me to live anywhere else. I would have moved, of course, would have done anything for her and you.

But I am at home here. In the Vietnam days, boys I grew up with went AWOL from basic training because they missed the sea. I always felt a bit like them, lost away from this bay. If the cottage has its shortcomings, I overlook them as we should overlook the failings of those who sustain us. I do not know how I would endure prison; I fear that I would find myself unable even to do what I am doing now, put my thoughts in writing. But I am comfortable for the moment, with my view of the small boats at anchor.

There is a spot at the crest of the bank where reporters like to be videotaped. From that angle, the cottage looks ramshackle. In truth it is sturdy. Whatever his shortcomings, my father knew the ways of buildings. This one will last until the land beneath it is worn away. The television image is political, meant to make a visual comparison to Theodore Kaczynski's cabin or Randy Weaver's -- though I believe I am no more like those men than Sesuit, Massachusetts, is like Lincoln, Montana, or Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

You can see from the same shot how much the bay has encroached. They say we lose a foot a year, but the losses are so irregular that they have the power to surprise and dishearten. Some seasons beach builds at the foot of the bank. This past March a no-name storm -- the same storm we took advantage of toward the start of our campaign, when we breached the seawalls on Quivet Cove -- took a bite ten feet deep and fifteen wide, to the far side of the path. A chance event, perhaps, though nowadays people connect bad weather with the cataclysms we humans have brought upon ourselves, the rash of tornadoes and floods and mudslides that plague the planet as it warms.

On the sandbank, I did the tasks you used to help with. Replaced storm fencing, planted plugs of American beach grass, strewed seeds of weeping love grass. I fear the trampling of the press corps -- human erosion -- has undone my work. And to think that your mother used to scold you for running down the bank with your kite! I have never been one to feel outrage. All work is Sisyphean. We make our fruitless contribution, playing at shaping chaos. At the shoreline, planting grass, like planting explosives, is mostly symbolic. Wind and waves do what they will.

Despite the isolation, my life has assumed the breathless pace the media imposes on its chosen subject. Revelations intrude hourly. I learn on the news that hairs believed to be mine (and so few are in evidence on my scalp!) have turned up in the Altschuler house. I learn that in my college years I worked on the fringe of a radical clique. That I have reason to be bitter over the circumstances of my divorce. That I am a local boy with community ties and no history of mental illness. That I fit no profile. Half of what is said is false, and the rest is not quite right. Having seen your face, I feel a need for time. Time to write the story as I know it -- so different from the public version, moralized by television.

Last week, Wendy Moro presented me with the leather-bound blank book in which I am writing. She wanted me to use it as a place to gather memories that might help in my defense. Fill it with thoughts, she said. The form of the recollections did not matter, so long as I set them down while they were fresh. If I was reluctant to share the memoir with her now, I might want to do so later. (By later, I suspect she meant in the "sentencing phase," after I am convicted.) All would be confidential, protected by attorney-client privilege.

I wanted to oblige but found I could not. Any account of my activities would reveal past crimes and -- surely these Wendy would not want to read about -- preparations for future ones. I understood that certain details might prove useful. Evidence that I was here when a witness claims I was there. Sukey says that the right wing has made the public so mistrustful of the government that the state cannot win any prominent case where there is room for doubt. I could, perhaps, generate doubt. But the work should do that on its own. Crafting installations, Sukey and I took care to introduce red herrings, to cast suspicion away from me.

I do want to please Wendy. In person, she is the way she looks on television, patient and reasonable. I believe her presence conveys humility, a modest hope that in time the rest of the world will arrive at her viewpoint.

News analysts have asked why I do not hire seasoned defense attorneys. Many, seeking publicity, have offered their services. My policy is not to explain myself to the press. But I can tell you that I think we all might benefit from less brash assertion of our individual rights. I like that Wendy has nothing in common with the slick men we are used to seeing -- Johnnie Cochran, Alan Dershowitz, Stephen Jones, Barry Shenk, Gerry Spence, F. Lee Bailey. I like how slight and fine-boned Wendy is, as if she were intent on not taking up space in the world.

Sometimes I think it is an odd thing for a man of my age to place his faith in women with girls' names, Sukey and Wendy. But that is what I have done, and without regret. When Sukey was recovering from drink, I found myself speaking with her psychologist, Emmanuel Abelman, a quirky and unhappy old gentleman whose opinion I came to respect. Manny said that I have a talent for faith and that I should rely on my talent. I have tried to do so, though it would take someone of greater capacity than mine to sit sequestered with the FBI at the door and not worry at all.

Much of this I said to Wendy. Not the bit about girls' names -- I am sure Wendy finds it equally odd that her fortunes should be tied to those of a community-college teacher named Chip -- but about my mixture of faith and doubt. She asked only how she could make it easy for me to set down my recollections. I had no answer. Manny often said I was dogged in my efforts for others but resourceless when it came to helping myself. He worked to change that in me, but the transformation went only so far.

Then I saw you on the screen. Wendy's notebook came to hand, and I felt moved to write, justify, explain. To the son I have followed in imagination all these years.

I have come to respect these drives, to respect the absurd -- a posture that has served well this past year, the year of installations. It is absurd to write you. I do not imagine this journal in your hands. The stories I need to tell would only disturb a boy of (almost) sixteen. Too many explosions. Too many delicate family matters. Even if you were here -- fond wish -- I would hold back. The understanding I have with Sukey is that we will keep the secrets of the Movement to ourselves. As for the separation, mine from you, I would want my version to emerge gradually, gently, alongside your mother's, in the course of our efforts to create a new life together: wife, husband, child.

Only from this standpoint does the compulsion make sense: I write you anyway, compose letters in my mind, incessantly. The way Herzog writes his former wives, I write my absent son. About events of the day, stray ideas, foolish jokes. The latest on Leno: Good news and bad -- you just inherited a waterfront home...in Sesuit.

If I am to respond to Wendy's request, why not in this form, the form of my thought? It occurs to me that Herzog often writes on paper, too, unsent letters, a precedent that though it is fictional makes my compulsion seem less strange to me. For as long as I can remember, I have found literature a reliable companion, surely the best guide to how we live when we are by ourselves.

In his essay on walking, Thoreau makes a...

Présentation de l'éditeur

From Chekhov to Walker Percy, from William Carlos Williams to Ethan Canin, doctors have turned to fiction with a compelling acuteness of observation. Now Peter Kramer joins their ranks with a sly and provocative novel. Like his international bestseller LISTENING TO PROZAC, SPECTACULAR HAPPINESS examines the effects of drug-induced social adaptation; like SHOULD YOU LEAVE? it weighs the relative values of intimacy and autonomy. But here Kramer is free to plumb the depths of his imagination and he has done so with spectacular results.
Someone has been blowing up bayfront trophy homes on Cape Cod and doing a meticulous job of it. Chip Samuels has been fingered as the prime suspect. He seems an odd choice: a junior college English teacher and part-time handyman, he is a devoted friend, husband and father. But he did it, all out of loyalty to a friend and to the radical ideals he and his wife once shared. Pursued by the FBI and a voracious media, Chip has limited time in which to explain himself to his estranged son and rescue his wife from her medicated conformity. His only way out may be to turn his notoriety into celebrity - to exploit 'the society of the spectacle.'

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Date d'édition: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0684864304
• ISBN 13: 9780684864303
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 288