If It Makes You Happy

Michelle and Cliff experience parallel journeys toward change, healing, and renewal. Their alternating first-person points of view enact how their personal paths intersect as they get to know one another. The romantic partners couldn’t be more different: “Michelle wears polished belts, tailored shirts, and fifty different flavors of designer shoes,” while Cliff wears “flannel and sneakers, and half the time, [he’s] got some wisp of flour or sugar somewhere on [his] skin” (194). Bringing them together are their common encounters with loss. A few years prior to the narrative present, Cliff’s wife, Tracy, divorced him and left Copper Run to start her life over in New York City. Cliff encouraged Tracy to go, but he is still adjusting to single fatherhood in Copper Run. He is also still reconciling with life without Tracy—his high school sweetheart. Ever since the divorce, “Copper Run has been waiting for the gun at the starting line,” perpetually urging him “to get back on the market” (122, 123). Cliff isn’t fundamentally opposed to dating but is wary of starting over romantically because of his domestic and vocational obligations. Meanwhile, Michelle is still reeling from her mother, Birdie’s, recent death and her divorce from the emotionally abusive Allen. She temporarily relocates to Copper Run in hopes of getting a reprieve from her loss, but finds it challenging to start over without guidance.

Michelle and Cliff’s respective insecurities complicate their ability to perceive a new future for themselves. Cliff doesn’t “need someone else voicing” (123) frustrations with him the way Tracy did. Michelle does not want input on her vocational or romantic choices and is wary of fully confronting her mother’s death. When she comes to Vermont she is forced to recognize how much more involved Birdie was in the Copper Run community than in Michelle’s life: “She was detached. She spent a lot of time in bed alone. She was kind but flawed” (116). Michelle does not know how to mourn a woman she never fully knew. She is also unsure how to grieve a marriage that never felt supportive. Enveloped in “the crushing quiet of not being in a city,” Michelle faces the “distinct lack of another person. The simple fact that I’m alone” (63) for the first time. She does not miss Allen specifically, but the idea of a partner, marriage, and companion.

Over time, Michelle and Cliff help one another imagine a new version of happiness. Michelle loves Cliff for who he is—providing unconditional acceptance which his previous relationship lacked. She also contributes to his family life and encourages his baking passion. Meanwhile, Cliff validates Michelle’s hardworking nature and ambition, while recognizing that “she’s also funny. Kind. Gentle even. More generous than she lets on” (166-67). The romantic partners help one another overcome their loss by authenticating their grief and disappointment. They then help each other see, honor, and nurture their positive traits. Their happily-ever-after ending conveys how love has helped the characters to overcome and move beyond their loss.