The View From Alameda Island

But he didn’t even look at it. He switched it off. “What, besides flowers, makes you happy?” he asked.

“I like my job. Most of the time. Really, ninety percent of the time. I work with good people. I love to cook.”

“All these domestic pursuits. You must have a very happy husband.”

She almost said nothing makes Brad happy, but instead she said, “He cooks, too—and thinks he’s better at it than I am. He’s not, by the way.”

“So if you weren’t a chemist cooking for a food company, what would you be? A caterer?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “I think trying to please a client who can afford catering seems too challenging to me. I once thought I wanted to teach home economics but there is no more home ec.”

“Sure there is,” he said, frowning. “Really?”

She shook her head. “A nine or twelve-week course, and it’s not what it once was. We used to learn to sew and bake. Now there’s clothing design as an elective. Some schools offer cooking for students who’d like to be chefs. It’s not the same thing.”

“I guess if you want homemaking tips, there’s the internet,” he said.

“That’s some of what I do,” she said. “Video cooking demonstrations.”

“Is it fun?”

She nodded after thinking about it for a moment.

“Maybe I should do video gardening demos.”

“What makes you happy?” she surprised herself by asking.

“Just about anything,” he said with a laugh. “Digging in the ground. Shooting hoops with my boys when they’re around. Fishing. I love to fish. Quiet. I love quiet. I love art and design. There’s this book—it’s been a long time since I read it—it’s about the psychology of happiness. It’s the results of a study. The premise that initiated the study was what makes one person able to be happy while another person just can’t be happy no matter what. Take two men—one is a survivor of the Holocaust and goes on to live a happy, productive life while the other goes through a divorce and he can hardly get off the couch or drag himself to work for over a decade. What’s the difference between them? How can one person generate happiness for himself while the other can’t?”

“Depression?” she asked.

“Not always,” he said. “The study pointed out a lot of factors, some we have no control over and some are learned behaviors. Interesting. It’s not just a choice but I’m a happy guy.” He grinned at her.

She noticed, suddenly, how good-looking this man was. He looked like he was in his forties, a tiny amount of gray threading his dark brown hair at his temples. His eyes were dark blue. His hands were large and clean for a gardener. “Now what makes a volunteer gardener decide to read psychology?” she asked.

He chuckled. “Well, I read a lot. I like to read. I think I got that from my father. I can zone out everything except what’s happening in my head. Apparently I go deaf. Or so I’ve been told. By my wife.”

“Hyper focus,” she said. “Plus, men don’t listen to their wives.”

“That’s what I hear,” he said. “I’m married to an unhappy woman so I found this book that was supposed to explain why some schmucks like me are so easy to make happy and some people just have the hardest damn time.”

“How’d you find the book?”

“I like to hang out in bookstores...”

“So do we,” she said. “It’s one of the few things we both enjoy. Other than that, I don’t think my husband and I have much in common.”

“That’s not a requirement,” he said. “I have these friends, Jude and Germain, they are different as night and day.” He got to his feet and brushed off the seat of his pants. “They have nothing in common. But they have such a good time together. They laugh all the time. They have four kids so it’s compromise all the time and they make it look so easy.”

She frowned. “Which one’s the girl? Oh! Maybe they’re same sex...?”

“Germain is a woman and Jude’s a man,” he said, laughing. “I have another set of friends, both men, married to each other. We call them the Bickersons. They argue continuously.”

“Thus, answering the question about gender...”

“I have to go,” he said. “But... My name is Beau.”

“Lauren,” she said.

“It was fun talking to you, Lauren. So, when do you think you might need to spend time with the flowers next?”

“Tuesday?” she said, posing it as a question.

He smiled. “Tuesday is good. I hope you enjoy the rest of your week.”

“Thanks. Same to you.” She walked down the path toward her car in the parking lot. He steered his wheelbarrow down the path toward the garden shed.

Lauren made a U-turn, heading back toward him. “Beau!” she called. He turned to face her. “Um... Let me rethink that. I don’t know when I’ll be back here but it’s not a good idea, you know. We’re both married.”

“It’s just conversation, Lauren,” he said.

He’s probably a psychopath, she thought, because he looks so innocent, so decent. “Yeah, not a good idea,” she said, shaking her head. “But I enjoyed talking to you.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I understand. Have a great week.”

“You, too,” she said.

She walked purposefully to her car and she even looked around. He was in the garden shed on the other side of the gardens. She could hear him putting things away. He wasn’t looking to see what she was driving or what her license plate number was. He was a perfectly nice, friendly guy who probably picked up lonely women on a regular basis. Then murdered them and chopped them in little pieces and used them for fertilizer.

She sighed. Sometimes she felt so ridiculous. But she was going to go to the bookstore to look for that book.

* * *

Lauren was in a much better mood than usual that evening. In fact, when Brad came home in a state—something about the hospital screwing up his surgery schedule and flipping a couple of his patients without consulting him—she found herself strangely unaffected.

“Are you listening, Lauren?” Brad asked.

“Huh? Oh yes, sorry. Did you get it straightened out?”

“No! I’ll be on the phone tonight. Why do you think I’m so irritated? Do you have any idea what my time is worth?”

“Now that you mention it, I don’t...”

“Isn’t it lucky for you that you have a husband who is willing to take care of details like that...”

“Oh,” she said. “Lovely.”

“It might be nice if you said something intelligent for a change.”