The Struggle for Happiness black squirrels T he beautiful days are the worst. The bitter blue of the sky. The sun glaring like an interrogation spotlight: Confess every crime; betray every accomplice. The innocent green of the trees hiding the terrible spores and pollens and industrial chemicals that make me sneeze and ache and cry. Although for a moment, sometimes, when the temperate breezes have massaged me into a state of relaxation, the sky and the sun and the trees all possess a majestic clarity. But resplendence is always sharpened by impending loss. Witness Alexis. She had never looked more desirable than the last time I saw her, our belongings segregated into hers and not-hers in our on-the-market apartment.

The apartment had also never looked more inviting, its countertops gleaming from Windex and the lack of clutter of daily living. But this is more serious. This is the planet. Though most people don''t see it; don''t perceive that the earth is dying, gasping and thrashing. Maybe it''s the pleasantness that prevents people from comprehending. Days like these, perfect as five-for-a-dollar postcards, lull people into thinking that everything is fine. The sky is nothing other than wallpaper: embossed with clouds anduniformly blue. The sun a gently swaying chandelier; the trees coat racks of green jogging suits.

Instead of sharpening perceptions, people get dull. Insensate. That''s what beauty does. I should know. I wrote a book on it: Aesthetics and Argument in Women''s Literature. I also used to teach a course by the same title. And one called "Identity in Twentieth Century Manuscripts." And one named "The Sex of Text.

" And every fifth semester, in the democratic departmental rotation, I would be assigned "Survey" or even "Composition." Although it didn''t really matter what the course was titled. I always taught the same thing, only the context varied. Literary criticism according to Derrida. Take a text and twist it inside out. I guess I was effective, or at least entertaining. I was a popular professor. My enrollments and student evaluations told me so.

Despite all the pronouncements about the death of deconstructionism, it was thriving at what we called Cool U. And I was thriving. Although, of course, I didn''t think so. I thought I was riddled with neuroses. In another era, I would have used words such as angst and existential. In this era, no labels were necessary. In fact, no labels were permitted. To describe was to court imperialism, annulling all the referents that went unexpressed by one''s statement.

I achieved an enviable level of vagueness, but I used very important and precise words in discussing this vagueness. But my main weapon in my struggle to be happy was my secret box. Handmade paper, ten by twelve, and a cover with flaps lovingly diapered over the exposed slits. Baby blue, like worn and well-loved jeans the moment before the knee is about to rip. And as soft. Even the nubs are soft. Inviting as any fantasy: A lover (in her torn-at-the-knee jeans) sits on a couch; my face is on her thigh, my cheek rubs against the pulls in the warp of the thin denim. It was expensive, purchased at one of those trendy papiershops, and it wore a deep blue velvet necklace to conceal its cleavage.

It was difficult to violate its virginity with the first piece of paper, but eventually I stuffed it with a motley assortment of mementoes that might convince me I was valuable, appreciated, and loved. There were thank-you notes from students, expressing their feelings that I had made a difference in their educations, if not their lives. There were a few photographs of me in the company of people who were prominent and smart and voguishly controversial. An acceptance letter from a semiprestigious journal and my first and second book contracts. An anniversary card from Alexis. When I was feeling what I called underappreciated, I could lift the lid of my baby-blue box and have a tangible argument that my feelings were a brand of self-pity rather than a glimpse of truth. It had not been enough when I was denied tenure. Or not denied, according to the chair of the committee, but advised to withdraw my application.

I don''t think I consoled myself with the contents of my box even once during those dreadful two years when I felt that everyone at my second-rate university thought I was third rate. But after another--more traditional--book and another application, my baby-blue box could boast the formal university letter awarding me tenure. Tenure: success. It felt like failure, of course, but it was success. It all changed with the accident. Not that it was an accident. To call it an accident negates the intentionality involved. The gross negligence, as my attorney would say.

The sheer cruelty of it. To call it an accident makes it seem sudden. Like a lightning bolt on a crystal-clear day. Or like an automobile driving through the plate-glass front of my favorite bookstore, where I had been standing on line, waiting to purchase the newest translation of something or other. Like a rat bite. Instead of a seeping reality. I had expected Alexis to come up here once in a while. Tobring me some lasagna and gossip from the city.

It isn''t a far drive, not really, or that''s what she used to say when she wanted to escape the cement summer of the city. That''s what she had argued when she had wanted to buy this cottage as our vacation home. I had wanted to be on the beach, preferably in a gay resort: to be surrounded by surf and sand and women holding hands. She had snorted, as if I was being impractical. She said something about tax rates and disaster insurance costs. The numbers were on her side; they always were. I didn''t even argue. I let her win.

"Isn''t it lucky we got the cottage in the country?" she said after the accident. After we were splitting up and splitting everything. After the doctors said I needed to live in a more pristine climate, away from the city if possible. "The beach would have been better," I said. I no longer wanted to let her win. Still, I suppose I thought it would not be a far drive now; I suppose I thought she would want to check up on me. But she hasn''t been here even once. She did help me move out of the apartment and arranged for some of her students to help me move in here.

Move my clothes and my books and my desk and my computer. Which was nice of her. Very nice. It was amicable, really. She got the proceeds from the apartment and I got the country cottage. She got an offer from the mathematics department at a more prestigious university and I got disability payments. It all seemed so sensible, so fair, so fucking rational. I''m sure I depress her.

Hell, I depress myself. It''s better not to think about her. Forget any speculations: Forget shoe; forget other foot; forget if. It isn''t as if the accident were her fault. It was just synchronicity. I didn''t used to believe in such things as the possibilities of patterns in nature. Not patterns. Not nature.

I was poststructuralist, postromantic. But sitting on my deck all day watching the squirrels weave through the woods has changed my perspective about a lot of things. Including Alexis. I''m glad she left me. She is a selfish, shallow twit. Smart, certainly, but without depth. When I tried to talk to her about environmental degradation, she exhaled that superior-sounding sigh she had perfected in our years together. I think that was the last time she telephoned me.

The irises had just been starting to unfold their brief but purple existence. I was talking to her on the portable phone, sitting on the deck, enjoying the sun. She laughed, a sour little laugh, and told me I should think about other things. Like what? Like the day I won''t be able to slide the sliding-glass doors open and get out on the deck at all? Like this morning, leaning on the bathroom wall so I wouldn''t fall and trying to pull my pants down fast enough so I didn''t piss all over myself? Like trying to open the refrigerator? I didn''t say any of these things, of course. Not because I wasn''t thinking them or feeling hateful enough to say them, but because I didn''t want her pity. Didn''t want to imagine her getting off the phone and turning to her new girlfriend, the artiste, with a significant tear gleaming in her left eye (her left eye always teared first) and getting comforted. Like she was the one who was sick. It was probably that day or the next that I finally called Helping Hands, as suggested by my new physician and my social worker.

I didn''t want strangers in my little house, but I realized that Alexis wasn''t going to be here to help. And even if she were, she had become a stranger, so what was the difference? Linda was a student, she explained. Mountain Community and Technical College. Doing an internship at a home-service organization, Helping Hands. Working nights as a security guard, Protection Unlimited. And sometimes she was pretty tired. Once she fell asleep on my couch, still wearing her green uniform. And I let her sleep there.

While I maneuvered myself through the sliding-glass doors onto the deck and sat in the sun, looking at the weeds grow around the tomato plants. On a good morning, I could get myself into the garden. It was hell bending over withoutfainting, so I would lie down on one of the boards between the rows of plants and pull up those dreadful things Linda told me were called purslane, dropping them into a bucket. Th.