Happy and You Know It

by Laura Hankin

Claire Martin didn’t want to throw herself in front of a bus, exactly. But if a bus happened to mow her down, knocking her instantly out of existence, that wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world.

It happened for the fourth time not long after New Year’s Day, as she sat on a stool in some Upper West Side dive, performing her fun new ritual of Drinking to Forget.

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

She went to the bathroom and then boxed up her stuff. They weren’t going to fire her—then who would the writers go to when they needed to ask if a joke was racist or just edgy?—but she wasn’t going to work under fucking Robby.

She was never alone. She was so lonely.

“I’d argue that thoroughly weighing an action makes choosing to take it even more rewarding.”

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.

That was one of the strangest things about motherhood. You could love your baby to pieces, be thankful every day for his ten tiny toes and his piercing wail and his all-consuming existence, and yet still mourn the life you’d had before.

You had to be all joy, all gratitude. But she missed Sundays alone in her apartment, listening to music. She missed cherishing a cup of coffee, sipping it slowly all the way down to its dregs. She missed going out like this with a friend, letting the night take her where it wanted. All this had disappeared, and she’d never gotten the chance to properly grieve.

Introducing two people who were both grade A excellent was one of life’s great joys.

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.

Because even though fathers stamped children with their last names, the world didn’t ask as much of them.

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.

And now moms weren’t even allowed to acknowledge how much work it all was anymore. Modern women of privilege had to claim that their manic exercise routines were about strength, not a body ideal; that their beauty regimens were all natural, designed for emotional balance and skin health, rather than for looking nubile for as long as possible.

She’d fallen in love with him for so many reasons, but chief among them was how much he respected her. He trusted her judgment. He came to her with quandaries and asked for her advice. He’d never been one of those men who’d run from her ambition, from her forceful opinions, even though plenty of other guys had. Where past boyfriends had tried to diminish her, Daniel had stood right by her side, holding a microphone to her mouth.

She’d been a bad mother. And that, it seemed, was the worst thing a woman could possibly be. A prostitute who moonlighted as a contract killer could be redeemed if she was doing it all so that she could tuck her child into a warm bed every night. But a woman could be charming, immensely intelligent, ambitious, strong, and head-turningly gorgeous, and if she screwed up her parenting, the world deemed her a piece of shit.

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.

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Claire said. “I’m a well-balanced person, and I never have to come to bars to deal with my self-loathing in the early afternoon.” He smiled and held up his club soda. “To self-loathing, that old friend.” “To self-loathing,” Claire said, and drained the rest of her drink.