Excerpt from Spectacular Happiness by Peter D. Kramer, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

To my new senses, a single feature was vivid, those oaken beams. Though they were four feet above my head, I could all but feel their texture, wood dry and splintery under my hands. Hewn by what lumberjack, squared by what sawyer? Timbers that had groaned under the pressure of storms, borne honest work, carried men at sea. Objects are not silent.

I put my hand on Sukey's shoulder, to steady myself. Her breath was slow and deep, as if she, too, were entranced. Here is the strange part: In her breathing I heard yours. Yours at age seven, on a night when your mother was away on her private journey. How I loved to kiss you one more time and slip your leg back under the covers. From Sukey's damp parka came your puppy-dog smell, and I felt that you were with me. For weeks, I continued to feel your presence in that house, as if you were a worksite companion, as I was for my father. Which may be why your appearance today on the television -- older, and yet yourself -- struck me with such force.

In the grayness of the great room, Sukey and I stood side by side, looking, listening. At last I said: I think those beams are structural.

Sukey laid her head on my shoulder, as if she were a teenager saying, You are my man.


You will wonder, I suppose, what I felt for Sukey, what there was between us. Hard for the young to imagine the poignancy of memory. Sukey's thighs and arms have taken on weight, and her bosom has turned from ample to matronly. Years of sun and Scotch and cigarettes have given her face excessive character. The hair that was her glory has faded from spun gold back to straw. I am capable of seeing her as the world does. I am capable of seeing most matters

as the world does, though generally I do not. I have always been attracted by the stigma of mortality in a woman's face. The memento mori of European actresses in the art cinema your mother favored. From adolescence, Sukey has had that worldly beauty, has been careening toward the grave. Besides, for me, Sukey as she once was shines through in who she is now.

What she sees in me is less clear. Whatever her recent politics, Sukey's sexual tastes are of the late twentieth-century American variety; they run to power and status and full heads of hair. She returned to me as a friend. She allowed me to help her through her hard time, and I believe she has tried to help me through mine.

You may wonder, too, about the gap between the father you remember and the man I am asking you to imagine, the one who blows up houses. I know you have an image of me, else why say Hi, Dad? Can you call up our mornings in the cottage the summer we worked so hard on reading? I would like to hope I am with you when you turn to a book for consolation. I am sure you experienced me as mild. Too gentle, too stable, those were your mother's complaints. By now you may see me through her eyes.

She may have been right, about stability. To me, it sometimes seems that I have changed the least of any man I know. Sukey likes to say that I am coming into my own, which I hope is true, though I am not certain what that expression means. Lately, it has been hard to avoid self-aggrandizement, in the face of the Movement's success. I have tried to hold steady. Perhaps a man who comes into his own is one who (as Manny advises) lets his character play itself out, in which case you know me still. I would be glad for you to know me. Shakespeare had it backward: It is a wise child, and a lucky one, that knows his own father.

Copyright © 2001 by Peter D. Kramer