This is one of my dogs — her name is Lulu. She was found on Sunset Boulevard by three kind-hearted people who were on their way to dinner. They coaxed her off the street and told me later that she was completely black with dirt, and terrified. The deep scar on her snout and cuts on the sides of her gums indicated that her mouth had been wired shut for years.
By the time I met her, these kind people had given her a bath, had her seen by a vet and bought her a collar and an ID tag. My family and I fell in love with her and she’s been part of our family for about three years.
She’s got the good life at our house and is most beloved.
Such a good end of the story… and it’s a story I tell again and again, almost compulsively. Whenever asked about her by neighbors or other people we encounter on walks, I’m overly-eager to tell it.
I think it’s because Lulu’s story is so happy — and everyone craves happy endings. Craves them!
Happy endings help me to keep a toe-hold on hope, to remember that there is a lot of good in the world, in spite of appearances. But happy endings can become forced and false quickly, and the need for happy endings can cause story-tellers to leave out meaningful details of a character or a plot.
What I liked about the movie “Three Billboards…” was that right away the plot seemed to identify the good and bad characters, and then slowly those roles dissolved. The good ones were not so good, and the bad ones were not so bad. And… there was no real happy ending. The book Atonement by Ian McEwan totally played with the readers’ desire for a happy ending, which propelled the drama.
I like noir books and films. I also like sarcasm when it’s matched with good wit. To leave out darkness is a mistake for writers, a death knell for novels.
Yet, happy endings, when they really do happen, can seem miraculous, especially when I’ve decided the world really has gone to hell.
So, just to let you know: It’s 3 p.m. on a warm afternoon in Los Angeles, and Lulu is asleep on our back porch, partly in the sunshine, partly in the shade. Her little stomach rises and falls with her naptime breathing. She looks pretty happy.