Happy and You Know It

by Laura Hankin

At times like these, Claire thought that maybe God did exist, not as some benevolent being or terrifying father, but as the omniscient equivalent of a prank show host. An Ashton Kutcher kind of God.

Sometimes, Amara wished she could lop off her tits and toss them in a dumpster. All her adult life, they’d been causing her trouble.

Fucking babies. The most narcissistic rock star on the planet was no match for the average six-month-old.

she loved to see the limitless ways that people made themselves a home. It was a reminder, coming upon her like a flash, that everyone had an inner life, one they attempted to translate into their own corner of the world.

Don’t you ever miss that?” “No,” he said, leaning back, the glow of the lamp casting his face into shadow. “I’d argue that thoroughly weighing an action makes choosing to take it even more rewarding.”

he didn’t drink. She didn’t realize at the time that he might have other vices. She only saw the golden life she could have with him. She reached out and took it.

(when did she get older than people with real responsibilities?),

She wanted to do something astonishing with her life.

Around her, people laughed and smiled, but it was like she’d gotten a particular form of X-ray vision she couldn’t turn off, and now all she saw was an undercurrent of regret beneath it all.

The story didn’t talk about the emperor afterward, did it? How he felt when everyone realized that he’d been duped, that his expensive new suit was no suit at all?

“But, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, don’t wait forever to get your shit together, all right? Life only gives you so many chances.”

It was more like jabbing a shovel into concrete over and over again. What a terrible feeling it was, to sift through your heart and guts and soul and to come up short.

It struck her that bringing a kid into a marriage was like getting a huge promotion, but with no raise and still having to do all your old work of being a good partner too.

Amara firmly believed she could trounce the average man in a battle of wits—but because they weren’t primed from birth like women were, told that they could be anything they wanted to be while handicapped at every turn by invisible forces, told that they were more than just their looks while also culturally programmed to believe that their value was tied to their desirability. Men aged into silver foxes while women aged into obsolescence.

Because even though fathers stamped children with their last names, the world didn’t ask as much of them. No one really expected fathers to consider giving up their careers to put their children first, to stop managing a company and start managing a household. Women had to grapple with a choice that men never did while remaining uncomplaining and generous so that they didn’t nag their husbands straight into the arms of less complicated lovers.

Where past boyfriends had tried to diminish her, Daniel had stood right by her side, holding a microphone to her mouth.

Maybe, over the course of even the best marriages, you acquired a collection of secrets that you walled off in a little section of your heart where your partner would never be allowed to go. And you did everything you could to keep the walled-off section small, to keep the secrets from slipping out of it and pervading all that was good and open and free in the rest of your heart, and you just made it work.

She wanted to take care of her new friends, but she had no idea how to do it, and so they’d all inevitably slip away too.

Mothers who felt that they were mothering wrong were a uniquely vulnerable group.

Now, as she widened her eyes and asked about their jobs, which sounded so exciting and so tough, some badass bitch inside of her threw her arms open and howled into the wind.

The truth is just that sometimes you think you’re a good person, and then little by little, you justify your way into being a bad one.”

Or maybe Whitney could impress upon her daughter the thing that she was only beginning to learn—that women didn’t have to be perfect to be worthy.