Preface We almost hit a deer, the night we drove up. We had the high beams on, and they broke through the darkness of the long dirt road that led to Happiness House, but we mostly saw encroaching leaves…
I have always been fascinated by the inside of a relationship. As for many writers, the mechanism of romantic attachments—the push and pull of disparate gears of emotion, the faulty connections, the magnetism of intimacy—makes me want to open up the whole apparatus and examine its parts. But as my life has progressed through new and, at times, destabilizing chapters (motherhood, divorce, a global pandemic), my fascination has expanded from just inner workings to include outer influences. How combustible does a relationship become when you add a child? What about when you isolate from friends and family? Or possibly even more unusually, when you are living full-time among a larger group? Living among a group and with a child? The permutations carry endless stories.
This interest immediately suggested to me one particular story, and I knew that story would require the space and complexity of a novel. Communal living has moved into a more public spotlight since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted. The human need for community and connection has become a national topic of conversation with the plight of lonely and exhausted parents at the forefront. I experienced my own share of loneliness and exhaustion during the height of quarantine—teaching middle and high school literature through a screen while bouncing my one-year-old on my lap and starved for months of another adult’s touch. I could see the vast appeal of having a network of friends, especially other parents, to carry the load together.
Happiness House is by no means a representation of all communal living arrangements. There are surely many supportive and healthy collectives that bring their participants joy and relief. But in this story, for this character of Lydia, for this damaged machine of a relationship with John, I knew that the experience of living communally would bring complications.
This novel’s beginning, however, has other preoccupations. Lydia’s conflicted yearnings, her history with her mother, the contradictions of love on unsteady ground, her decision of whether or not to have the baby. It was important to me that Lydia’s decision would be a consideration of her desires and not a moral question, and I needed her to be able to say the word “abortion.” Women’s autonomy, particularly in the often limiting context of romantic relationships with men, is another puzzle I write to solve.
While in my own life, I’ve unknotted the joy and despair that comes with loving others, as a writer, I’ve tangled Lydia further in the intricacies of pregnancy, old relationship patterns, and new and unnerving contexts. Trying to make sense of this endeavor to commune. Telling just one version of the story.
HADLEY FRANKLIN has an MFA in fiction from NYU’s Creative Writing Program and was the 2023 winner of the Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize. Her work has been published in The London Magazine, Joyland, Cagibi, The Boiler, Narrative, and others. She lives in Brooklyn. Find her on Instagram @hadleyf.
