THE HA-HA
By Dave King
Little, Brown. 340 pp. $23.95
A"ha-ha," just so you know, is a garden wall concealed within a ditch, so called because people apparently say "ha-ha!" when they stumble into one.
Howard, the protagonist of Dave King's first novel, is a lawn maintenance worker, and in fact there happens to be a ha-ha at the convent where he's employed. Mowing the ha-ha, he says, "is my break in the succession of unvaried days," and he has come to look forward to skirting along the apex -- "the sudden infirmity as the big John Deere loses its purchase, the heedless ribbon of traffic below . . . as I hover at the edge of imbalance there are moments when my old eighteen-year-old self is still practically within reach -- as though all the years since were no more than a blink."
Even more than most middle-aged men, Howard has a good reason to long for that lost youthful self. He was 18, we learn, when he encountered a landmine during his first month of duty in Vietnam. He was left with permanent brain damage and has lost his ability to speak, read or write. For the last 30 years, he has been able to communicate only through grunts and gestures, though on the inside his thoughts are still lucid. He carries around an explanatory business card that says Please remember: I am of normal intelligence! But he avoids people so much that he rarely has to use it.
Instead, Howard's is a mostly lonely existence. He lives in his old childhood home and, after his parents' death, rents out rooms to strangers to make ends meet. He hovers around on the periphery of his former high school girlfriend's life, occasionally stopping by to help out -- "a couch moved, some wood chopped, the cat brought off the roof" -- though the ex-sweetheart, Sylvia, has long since moved on. Over the years, as Howard looks on silently, Sylvia goes through boyfriends, becomes a single mom and develops a pretty serious cocaine habit.
This is where the novel opens. Howard is wending his way through his "succession of unvaried days" when Sylvia's drug problems hit rock bottom. Her sister arrives to take her to a rehabilitation clinic, and Sylvia, not sure where else to turn, calls Howard. Will he take care of her son, Ryan, for a few days? "It won't be that long," she says. "Just a tune-up, get me on track." And Howard agrees. "Actually," he thinks, "I'm not a bad choice when it comes to child care, even if no one's asked me before. There's nothing wrong with my intellect or judgment. . . . I'm home a lot, and I run a stable household and keep my nose clean." So Howard takes the reluctant 9-year-old Ryan back to his house, and off Sylvia goes to rehab.
Some readers might look at this premise and say hmmm. The truth is, many of the novel's basic premises, though compelling, depend upon a reader's good-natured willingness to suspend disbelief. We have to accept, for example, that Sylvia really has no other choice than to leave her son with Howard (even though her yuppie sister is standing right there when she hands the boy over to him). We have to accept that Howard, who can't speak, read or write, can nevertheless acquire a driver's license, that he can somehow arrange to rent out rooms in his house, and so on.
Actually, for the first few chapters or so, some readers may feel that the whole setup seems a bit like a gimmick. At times, it feels as if we are on the verge of the familiar narrative structure of a typical situation comedy, in which an unusual circumstance disrupts the steady life of a definable, representative set of characters, leading to a series of episodic conflicts. Howard takes the kid to a boxing match and baseball practice. Howard's housemates -- a pair of goofy twentysomething house painters, a pretty Vietnamese caterer with a Texas accent -- emerge to help out, and slowly the group comes together around the boy and begins to form "a non-traditional household." Occasionally, moving through such incidents, you can almost picture it as a future Adam Sandler movie: Brain-Damaged Guy Takes in a Moody Biracial Kid, and Heart-Warming Hilarity Ensues.
But The Ha-Ha never devolves to that level. In fact, this is one of those books that probably can't be made into a film since the real action all takes place inside the head of the narrator. And this is what rescues the novel from the more predictable elements of the plot. King imbues Howard with so much soulful nuance that commonplace dramatic devices take on a fresh vividness and urgency. "For a while," Howard thinks, "I awakened to all that was denied me," and King plunges us deeply into both the joys and pains of such an awakening. It's a tribute to King's skill that Howard's movement toward reconnecting with the world never seems merely sentimental, but genuine and quite touching. With Howard as a guide, a potentially corny situation develops into a complex exploration of loss and loneliness that packs a potently bittersweet punch. You laugh, you cry. And you're left with a character who will stick with you for a long while afterward. •
Dan Chaon's most recent novel is "You Remind Me of Me."
