Read Online How Happy to Be by Katrina Onstad - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Katrina Onstad
Tags: Contemporary
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And I’m lit up then just because he called. That’s enough for me, that’s a touch of joy right there. I want to skip the movie or the dinner or the drinks and get right to those hands.
“Absolutely.”
I spit out my address and press
End
, and swivel back to Ethan Hawke, who suddenly looks small, all by himself on the big brocade couch.
“So –” I say brightly. “Fatherhood!”
“Is everything okay?” asks Ethan Hawke. That’s the weirdest thing about these ten minutes in a hotel room; it’s so much like therapy, so quiet and intimate and meaningless. What comfort would he offer me if I started to cry right here, right now?
“I’m fine, thanks.”
I have to get the Uma crap, which is what the Editor wants, so I give him a little spiel about how hard it must beto have kids in the city, and my deliberately gender-neutral “partner” and I (he strikes me as someone who might open up to a lesbian) don’t know how to do it in this corporate Nintendo McDonald’s universe and how do he and Uma and baby Maya keep it real?
Oh, he likes this, it’s kind of great. He’s over the cellphone thing. Ethan Hawke is springing up out of his chair, talking about the dangers of globalization, pacing around the hotel room, on and on with some great tidbit about Uma’s parents out in the garden planting flowers and how people abuse Buddhist philosophy to justify their passive existences and his fear that his kid will end up in a Batman T-shirt and this will symbolize some great loss of character.
I start to kind of like the guy and I feel a bit bad for lying to him about my imaginary lesbian lover’s desire for an uncorrupted unborn child. There’s an innocence celebrities possess, like they’ve been raised in wire cages by agents and studio daddies and when they’re out there in the world, face to face with something resembling real people, they blink like albino squirrels in sunlight and you feel you could just crush them with a truthful comment. Ethan Hawke is almost worse because he genuinely thinks he can function normally in the world, ride the subway, make digital movies of his friends (who are all stars), and as he rambles I picture his and Uma’s beautiful baby with her wooden, non-toxic blocks and I feel a little twinge of sadness. It will be difficult for her to reconcile the safety of her flowered Connecticut farm with the flashbulbs at the airport and the one-way windows on the limousines.
So I feel like confessing to Ethan Hawke, and maybe having a real conversation with him, but I don’t want to interrupt his moment (this is great shit; the Editor will be pleased), and just as he’s going on about the razor’s edge of Buddhism, attached and detached, there’s a knock at the door. Ethan Hawke sits down and shouts, “Sorry, no one’s home.” Curly Hair peeks in anyway.
“Time’s up,” she says as if she says it a lot.
“Well, that got a little heavy, huh?” Ethan Hawke, flushed and exhilarated, smiling at me, and I do it, I’ll just say it right now, I swoon a little before I’m forcibly removed.
S UNERA WANTS TO TALK. SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO do about Stewey. Stewey’s on the phone, Stewey’s sending e-mails, Stewey’s on the doorstep like a baby in a basket. Stewey’s got it bad. This borderline-stalker thing might be okay from certain guys except Sunera has decided that Stewey’s problem is – Sunera always finds one thing – that his teeth are too small for his mouth. Even as I’m talking her down, telling her that in some cultures small teeth are a sign of financial prudence, suddenly I picture Stewey and all I cansee are the bright white mouse teeth of his namesake, Stuart Little, and I know it’s doomed.
Sunera is telling me this in the cafeteria of
The Daily
. “Half-day,” she declares, as she often does, explaining why she’s in a suburban area code at three o’clock on a Wednesday, four hours from date time. I’m happy to take the break, having spent
“Absolutely.”
I spit out my address and press
End
, and swivel back to Ethan Hawke, who suddenly looks small, all by himself on the big brocade couch.
“So –” I say brightly. “Fatherhood!”
“Is everything okay?” asks Ethan Hawke. That’s the weirdest thing about these ten minutes in a hotel room; it’s so much like therapy, so quiet and intimate and meaningless. What comfort would he offer me if I started to cry right here, right now?
“I’m fine, thanks.”
I have to get the Uma crap, which is what the Editor wants, so I give him a little spiel about how hard it must beto have kids in the city, and my deliberately gender-neutral “partner” and I (he strikes me as someone who might open up to a lesbian) don’t know how to do it in this corporate Nintendo McDonald’s universe and how do he and Uma and baby Maya keep it real?
Oh, he likes this, it’s kind of great. He’s over the cellphone thing. Ethan Hawke is springing up out of his chair, talking about the dangers of globalization, pacing around the hotel room, on and on with some great tidbit about Uma’s parents out in the garden planting flowers and how people abuse Buddhist philosophy to justify their passive existences and his fear that his kid will end up in a Batman T-shirt and this will symbolize some great loss of character.
I start to kind of like the guy and I feel a bit bad for lying to him about my imaginary lesbian lover’s desire for an uncorrupted unborn child. There’s an innocence celebrities possess, like they’ve been raised in wire cages by agents and studio daddies and when they’re out there in the world, face to face with something resembling real people, they blink like albino squirrels in sunlight and you feel you could just crush them with a truthful comment. Ethan Hawke is almost worse because he genuinely thinks he can function normally in the world, ride the subway, make digital movies of his friends (who are all stars), and as he rambles I picture his and Uma’s beautiful baby with her wooden, non-toxic blocks and I feel a little twinge of sadness. It will be difficult for her to reconcile the safety of her flowered Connecticut farm with the flashbulbs at the airport and the one-way windows on the limousines.
So I feel like confessing to Ethan Hawke, and maybe having a real conversation with him, but I don’t want to interrupt his moment (this is great shit; the Editor will be pleased), and just as he’s going on about the razor’s edge of Buddhism, attached and detached, there’s a knock at the door. Ethan Hawke sits down and shouts, “Sorry, no one’s home.” Curly Hair peeks in anyway.
“Time’s up,” she says as if she says it a lot.
“Well, that got a little heavy, huh?” Ethan Hawke, flushed and exhilarated, smiling at me, and I do it, I’ll just say it right now, I swoon a little before I’m forcibly removed.
S UNERA WANTS TO TALK. SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO do about Stewey. Stewey’s on the phone, Stewey’s sending e-mails, Stewey’s on the doorstep like a baby in a basket. Stewey’s got it bad. This borderline-stalker thing might be okay from certain guys except Sunera has decided that Stewey’s problem is – Sunera always finds one thing – that his teeth are too small for his mouth. Even as I’m talking her down, telling her that in some cultures small teeth are a sign of financial prudence, suddenly I picture Stewey and all I cansee are the bright white mouse teeth of his namesake, Stuart Little, and I know it’s doomed.
Sunera is telling me this in the cafeteria of
The Daily
. “Half-day,” she declares, as she often does, explaining why she’s in a suburban area code at three o’clock on a Wednesday, four hours from date time. I’m happy to take the break, having spent
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