Catherine Lacey Reads "Rate Your Happiness"

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1:51This is The Writer's Voice, new fiction from The New Yorker. I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at The New Yorker. On this episode of The Writer's Voice, we'll hear Catherine Lacey read her story, Rate Your Happiness, from the April 13, 2026 issue of the magazine. Lacey is the author of five books of fiction, including the novels Pew and Biography of X, which was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2024. A memoir and novella, The Mobius Book, was published last year. Now here's Catherine Lacey.

2:31Catherine Lacey:Rate Your Happiness For a few moments, Louise had been sure that she was dying, that a valve or vein in her body had gotten clogged or burst, and she was going to expire right there in the back of the plane, pathetic and dehydrated, traveling alone, hurtling through the air somewhere high above the Midwest. And during those queasy moments that seemed to be her last, Louise didn't think of her parents who would survive her, and she didn't think of her brother in Montana with his ranch and several children, or of her sister in Miami, and she didn't even think of her plentiful minor and major regrets.

3:11Catherine Lacey:Instead, Louise thought of her small, dark apartment back in Manhattan, how dirty it was right now, how full of humiliating artifacts, like that brochure from a skin rejuvenation clinic she'd hidden in the bathroom, and the several Warren romance novels stowed under the bed, and the fridge full of decaying takeout and styrofoam clamshells, as she'd been going through a tough time, a long, tough time, and Louise thought of the situation with Diana, how their relationship, if you could even call at that, had accelerated rapidly during the first month, but then lost inertia and turned weird. And yet Louise knew that, if she really did die, Diana would retroactively make their whole thing sound a lot more serious than it had been, and relish telling everyone, for the rest of her life, that her girlfriend, Louise, had tragically died on a flight to San Francisco.

4:09And Diana would probably start talking about grief all the time and join more than one support group for young widows, and she would add a third day to her bi-weekly therapy sessions, and maybe she'd even wear a veil. It wasn't out of the question. A little vintage veil and pillbox hat. And dear God, she was so beautiful, which made their moody little relationship even more upsetting, even more of a letdown. All of this passed quickly through Louise's mind as she gripped a headrest in the last row on her way to the bathroom, trying to stay on her feet as her vision tunneled, as her knees softened, as a cord of drool dripped from the corner of her mouth.

4:51Catherine Lacey:She fell into a woman in a wool cardigan, who reacted in time to calmly lower Louise to the floor of the galley kitchen. After alerting a flight attendant, the woman vanished into the restroom to avoid further entanglement. The last thing Louise saw before losing consciousness was this woman's face, wrinkled in an unapologetic way, old, shamelessly old, defiantly so. It seemed there were fewer and fewer of these faces around. Are there any medical professionals on the plane? The airline's policy stipulated that flight attendants no longer ask only if there was a doctor on board when a passenger passed out, as passengers were often passing out, much more often than most people realized.

5:38Catherine Lacey:Now they would accept anyone who could take a pulse. Fewer and fewer availed themselves. They had their noise-canceling headphones and their prestige television. The possibility of lawsuits frightened off the most qualified. Veterinarians volunteered in disproportionate numbers. Louise was out for no more than two minutes, and by the time she came to, she'd been propped up against a beverage cart, and some man was kneeling at her side. He was taking her blood pressure when he saw Louise's eyelids flutter open. He dabbed at the sweat on her brow with a cocktail napkin and pushed a lock of hair out of her face, tucking it carefully behind her ear.

6:17Catherine Lacey:Are you with me? She nodded. What's your name, honey? Louise? Louise? Well, where's Thelma? He was trying to lighten the mood, but her eyes indicated an unlightenable mood, so he retreated. I'm just being silly. I'm just being awful. My name is Bruce. She became aware of the oxygen mask on her face, a cool whisper spilling its way up her nose. Louise focused everything there. She'd passed out because she'd run out of oxygen, and now she was being refilled. Awful. Did he really say awful? And what year is it, my friend? 2025? What month? It took her a moment. December? Her voice was weak and muffled by the mask, but Bruce had leaned in close.

7:13Catherine Lacey:Who's the president? She didn't want to say. She hated all presidents. She shut her eyes. Do you take any medications? No. No meds? All right. And did you have any breakfast today? Yes. Louise always ate breakfast. Toast. Toast? That's all? Toast and an egg. Maybe it had been the egg. How long had that egg been in the fridge? Could have been months, really. What was wrong with her, she wondered, both generally and specifically. What was wrong with her body? Why had everything with Diana gotten so strange? Louise was still too weak to move, but she began to cry. Bruce elevated her legs on a life jacket and wiped away the tears, while two flight attendants stared down at her with vacant impatience.

8:08Catherine Lacey:One of them was mechanically eating a packet of Pretzels. Are you in any pain? Some. Where? Everywhere. Can you rate the pain on a scale of one to ten? She thought for a moment. No? With zero being no pain and ten being the worst pain you've ever felt in your life? No. Bruce frowned at her, then turned to ask the flight attendants if she'd hit her head in the fall, but the flight attendants hadn't seen it happen. The one eating the pretzels ate her last pretzel, then crushed the little metallic bag in her fist. By then, Louise had regained enough oxygen to ask a question of her own. Are you with the airline?

8:55Catherine Lacey:No, honey, I'm a nurse. I just happen to be on the plane. On the plane? We're on a plane. She knew that. She didn't want him to think that she didn't know that. Yes. Louise stared up at Bruce with the sincere yet dazed seriousness of a terminally ill child. No one was paying him to do this. It was so wild what people would just do. She thanked him, then told the flight attendants that she was very sorry for the trouble. No one responded to Louise, but Bruce smiled an almost imperceptible smile. The airline, she stammered. The airline should give him a free ticket. That's not our policy, one of the flight attendants said.

9:42Catherine Lacey:Twenty minutes after hitting the floor, Louise had enough energy to stand and return to her seat, but she was still pale, so the flight attendants arranged to have Bruce move to the seat next to hers. Once she was vertical, shame and anxiety arrived. She was not an adorable and delicate child who deserved the care of helpful grown-ups, but rather a 1099-receiving adult with the kind of health insurance that didn't cover anything and would certainly not reimburse her for expenses incurred out of state if she, as she had been advised, sought medical attention upon landing. After Bruce had stowed his personal item and settled in beside her and had been given an extra tomato juice for his service, he looked through the films and TV shows available for in-flight entertainment, but nothing appealed.

10:32Catherine Lacey:He glanced at his phone, then put it away. He drank down his can of juice in one go, opened and closed the flight map, reclined his seat slightly, then pushed it upright again. How's that reading now? Bruce checked the number on the oxygen monitor, still clipped to Louise's finger. Ninety-five. That's good. Louise apologized for having interrupted his flight, but Bruce insisted that he was happy to help, that it was no problem at all. He did not admit that he'd been a little disappointed that it was such a minor issue, and not something exciting, something like an aneurysm, which would have required an emergency landing.

11:10Catherine Lacey:He liked to make a difference in people's lives, a big difference, and to do so at all times, if possible. Where do you work for real? She wasn't especially in the mood to talk, but sensed that he was. Mount Sinai, Upper East? At which point she remembered that her father had a friend named Bruce, a nurse who worked at Mount Sinai, someone she'd never met but whom he'd mentioned, on and off, for a few years, during his erratic visits to the city. What compelled Louise to ask Bruce if he knew anyone named Harry from New Orleans? What compelled her to say his last name and his profession, and to confess that this man was her father.

11:54Catherine Lacey:Bruce was visibly shocked, and Louise smiled, nodding. Yes, he's my dad, yes. The recent deprivation of oxygen to her brain had perhaps washed away her good sense, as her father was not a topic of conversation she enjoyed, nor had it ever been a good idea to associate herself with him. As she knew he had a habit of betraying friends and lovers, It was never clear who was who, and leaving them with resentments, debts, and unresolved issues. Her father moved through the world like a cruise ship, promising a gaudy good time, a break from reality, yet he mainly left waste and hangovers in his wake.

12:36Catherine Lacey:What are the odds? How is Harry doing? He's fine. That's good. Still in Alaska? Harry had never lived in Alaska, but it sounded like something he might have told people. Still there. Why had she brought him up? Why? Now she had joined herself to Bruce with the bruised intimacy of family. You're the designer, aren't you? Like, high fashion or something? It would have been a stretch to call her tiny label with a cult following high fashion, but she had quit the industry years ago now, tired of the instability and the long hours, tired of the fashion people and the fashion weeks and the everything.

13:18Catherine Lacey:After a brief stint in marketing, she'd had a mild nervous breakdown and tried to pivot to an even more impossible career in acting, but that hadn't panned out either. So then it was costume design, but there was something so lonely about making clothes for fictional worlds. And, after two other false starts, she'd ended up narrating audiobooks, specifically murder mysteries, and now she'd developed enough of a reputation to enjoy steady work, and there were even listeners who sought out her particular voice reading those brutal stories. That's crazy, Bruce said, to each turn in her career history.

13:53Catherine Lacey:That's literally crazy. That's the craziest thing I've ever heard, though he made this last declaration with almost no affect at all. To change the subject, Louise asked question after question about his life as a nurse, about his habits, his schedules, and how he stayed up for so long, and whether he had ever considered doing anything else. For like five minutes I wanted to be a journalist, but Dad told me that it was impractical, that I had to study something real, like plumbing or carpentry or nursing. Bruce's father had been dead for ten years, but Bruce still teared up when he spoke of him.

14:30Catherine Lacey:The tears came and stood alert in his eyes, looked out at the world, then retreated. No one had ever suggested to Louise that she do something practical, but she didn't let herself consider why that might have been. How's it reading now? He checked the oxygen monitor again. Ninety-six. That's good. At this, the two strangers returned to a parallel silence for the rest of the flight, both of them thinking about their fathers while trying to think of something else. The moment they hit the ground, Louise sent Diana a text. fainted during the flight for some reason, got hooked up to an oxygen tank, maybe I'm dying, lol, and watched her phone for a while, waiting for a panicked response, but nothing came.

15:14Catherine Lacey:When Bruce asked where in the city she was staying, Louise was grateful to have a reason to stop monitoring her phone. It turned out that they were going to the same neighborhood. What are the chances? What a small world. So they shared a cab, and it was only then, only once Louise had regained her color and re-entered the more natural light of the world that Bruce could see it. You look so much like your dad. People say that sometimes. And you don't like it? Well, I don't mind it. I really don't. But I don't see it. But of course she did mind, and she did see. That was just the problem. Big, sad, stupid eyes that gave everything away, that bulged when he was angry, when she was angry, though they both tried not to be so angry, tried and tried with mixed results.

16:04Catherine Lacey:Harry had once been angry about the indignities of the world, Ronald Reagan, the degradation of the Louisiana wetlands, the AIDS crisis. But as he'd gotten older, he became angrier about his own tragedies, that his wife had left him, that his father had been a scammer, that everyone always abandoned him, that even the dogs he'd adopted had fled. For Louise, it had been the opposite. She'd first been angry about her parents, her heartbreaks, her missed opportunities, but in recent years it had shifted, and now she was unmanageably pissed about corporate control of the government, tax-supported genocide, ice raids, and the way people boarding trains always tried to muscle their way on before the people exiting could get off.

16:51Catherine Lacey:These were communal angers, though she took them also personally, and the fire of her fury fed endlessly on the era. I don't know what Harry told you about me. Bruce was blushing. It had taken every shred of his limited courage to bring up Harry again. Well, Harry and I were very close, and I cared for him very much. And the thing is, I don't really know what happened for him on his side. But if he called, I'd be happy to hear his voice. You can tell him that. I wish him the best. I really do. She looked out the window. Do you talk to your dad much? Not really. Does that bother you? They were in San Francisco proper now, their cab surrounded by white cars, driverless cars covered in cameras that all belonged to the same company.

17:46Catherine Lacey:Each carried one passenger in the back seat, all of them busy on their phones. No. Bruce wanted to give her advice, to say it was important to have a relationship with your father, but he stopped himself. There was nothing particularly paternal about Harry. He'd seemed to Bruce something like a little boy who'd lost his mother in the grocery store, but was trying to play it off like he was simply there on his own, just doing a little shopping. The cab arrived at Bruce's stop first, and he asked if she wanted to meet up for coffee that week. Sure, of course, though Louise wasn't so sure. They exchanged phone numbers, and as the cab pulled away, she unthinkingly found and played the last voice note her father had sent to her two years prior, which she had saved and never replied to.

18:35Catherine Lacey:You're unhappy about your childhood, and I can't help you with that. You had a perfectly happy childhood, and now you remember it being awful because the culture, the culture wants you to be unhappy about your childhood. And that's not my fault. It's not anything I did. I can't understand you, why you want to suffer, why you want me to be the bad guy. And it doesn't make a bit of sense why you have to be so unhappy about the life I worked hard to give you. So that's it. That's what I've got. You can take it or leave it. Makes no difference to me. The recording ended, and the cab driver acted as if he hadn't heard it.

19:12Catherine Lacey:They arrived silently at Joan and Lynn's address, and the driver got out to lift her luggage from the trunk. Her friends were waiting on the sidewalk, smiling and holding hands. They opened their arms and embraced her. That evening, as Louise sat at the counter in her friend's kitchen, watching Joan cook and waiting for Lynn to get off a work call, a response finally arrived from Diana. Three exclamation points and no actual words. This was unusual, as Diana often communicated in paragraph-long texts or in voice messages that Louise had to play on double speed only to discover that they contained no real information at all.

19:54Catherine Lacey:She stared at the three exclamation points for a while, waiting for the rest of the text to arrive, or perhaps for Diana to call, or at least an OMG baby, are you okay? But nothing came. Diana might have lost signal on the subway, or in an elevator, or maybe she'd dropped her phone down a sidewalk grate again. Joan and Lynn's eldest daughter, the ten-year-old, climbed onto the barstool beside Louise. Long time no see, lady. Louise tried to engage her with a secret handshake they'd come up with on her last visit, but the effort failed. Kid stuff, the eldest daughter said. That's your Aunt Lou, Joan shouted without looking up from her cutting board.

20:38Catherine Lacey:Neither Joan nor Lynn had any sisters, so all their friends were deemed aunts. I know, the child said. Louise had always felt unsure of how to interact with the eldest daughter. She possessed an abnormal calm. As a toddler, she'd never cared for peekaboo, displayed little interest in toys, and from the moment she could stand up, she'd station herself at her parents' bookshelf as if reading the titles and making little judgments about her mother's taste. You're getting so tall. I've never been able to figure out why adults find it necessary to point out the increasing height of a child. The eldest daughter stared squarely at Louise, waiting on a rebuttal for a few moments before she gave up, took an 800-page fantasy novel from the counter, and retreated to a reading nook built into one of the window recesses.

21:32Catherine Lacey:The younger daughter had arrived with foreknowledge of the role her older sister had already claimed. She took the other route in turn, spending all six years of her life wearing a perpetual grin and giggling through almost everything she said. Earlier that year, she had decided that she would wear only pink and yellow, down to her socks, underwear, and pajamas, and that she would like to be referred to as sprinkles. Her parents had complied without question. Are you still dating the same woman? Lynn had ended her call and immediately made a pair of pastiche cocktails, a particular blend that she and Louise had invented in college.

22:13Catherine Lacey:That everyone else found the drink too bitter to tolerate was part of the appeal. Diana? Is she the model? No, that ended a while ago. Let me see a picture. Diana had set her own best selfie as Louise's lock screen, smiling, her hair blown back, the Manhattan skyline behind her. I thought this one was the model. Diana's a publicist. And how's it going? Her work? Obviously not, I mean the relationship. At that moment, Sprinkles ran into the room, laughing as she handed Louise a bouquet of slightly wilted dandelion she'd picked in the park that morning, then ran away. Unaccustomed to living with someone like Sprinkles, Louise was nearly moved to tears by this delivery of weeds, but Lynn had barely noticed.

23:04Catherine Lacey:When Louise hung out with her friends who'd become parents, she always wondered if they were paying either too much or too little attention to their children. But maybe it was impossible to pay exactly the right amount of attention to a child. Maybe that was just the problem. I mean, is it serious or what? Louise took a long sip of her drink. I don't know. One of the issues with Diana, Louise explained, was that she had this habit of nonchalantly telling anyone, strangers on the subway, her dog walker, bartenders, the most dramatic things that had ever happened to her. And maybe that was fine, but she really did seem to enjoy shocking people.

23:48Catherine Lacey:Her older brother had been murdered when she was nine, and Diana brought it up a lot. Well, that does seem like a pretty big trauma, right? Except it was actually a half-brother, and she'd met him only once, and she didn't even find out about it until she was, like, 15 or something. Maybe it feels normal to her to be so forthcoming, Lynn offered. See, that's the problem. What's the problem? Joan asked, settling in beside them with a glass of white wine. Diana, she's... I don't know. I think she's too dramatic. Everything is either the best or worst thing that's ever happened to her. Nothing's just normal.

24:28Catherine Lacey:Joan and Lynn were staring at Louise with entirely blank expressions. Was she being ungenerous? A self-hating woman? She could never be sure. I don't know. I wonder if I'm the right person for Diana. But are you happy when you're with her? Joan asked. I guess sometimes I am. Louise touched her phone screen to look at the picture of Diana again. Gorgeous Diana smiling into the wind, all that thick hair billowing. She had sent no further texts about the fainting incident. Well, that's something, isn't it? I mean, you can't be happy all the time, but sometimes it's good. I guess so. Louise didn't want to admit it to her friends, but for some time now, she had been trying to work up the courage to break things off while always getting sucked in deeper.

25:20Catherine Lacey:She'd met Diana's mother accidentally, and she'd rationalized making Diana a copy of her keys by telling herself that it was simply more convenient this way. And somehow, they were planning a trip to Greece in the summer, as Diana was friends with a Greek shipping heiress whose family owned several homes. But Louise changed the subject. Talking about Diana only reminded her of the radio silence. It was one thing to always be on the verge of breaking up, but it was quite another to be ignored. after a near-death experience. Dinner was a delicate salad that Joan had made from$37 worth of farmer's market produce and a fresh pasta from an extraordinarily expensive local business that the residents of the Lower Haight enthusiastically supported.

26:07Catherine Lacey:There was no kid-friendly option for the girls. There never was. Instead, they had the same meal as their parents, dining at a child-sized table in the corner of the kitchen. Once they'd finished, the children cleared their dishes and wiped their table down with a spray bottle and sponge. Louise couldn't help but watch them, amazed by their cooperation and efficiency. But Joan and Lynn continued, you might say, to ignore their children. That night, just as she was falling asleep, Louise was visited by an image that occasionally haunted her, something she'd seen late one night, years earlier, on a trip through a rural corner of Oaxaca.

26:46Catherine Lacey:Hundreds of ants on a concrete porch had lifted the corpse of a cockroach as if they were going to carry it home for dinner, but their communication must have broken down, because instead of hauling the roach away, they spun it in a circle while Louise filmed the scene with her phone. Louise got out of bed, groped her way across the dark room, found her phone tethered to the charger, then scrolled back through her photos to find the grainy 27-second video of the ants. She watched it twice, checked Diana's profile for any activity. It was none. Considered texting her, refused her own suggestion to do so, then got back in bed.

27:26Catherine Lacey:A message from Diana had come in overnight. Out dancing, call you tomorrow. Louise mentally drafted and rejected possible replies as she ate pancakes with the eldest daughter, but sent nothing. Do you have a cell phone? Louise started to get it out, assuming the girl wanted to show her something. No, I don't want to see it, but you should get rid of it. Well, I mean, your moms have cell phones. Louise sometimes felt like a little sister in the presence of the eldest daughter, engaged in endless attempts to earn her favor. I've spoken to Lynn and Joan about the issue, but they're too far gone. She put her fork down.

28:08Catherine Lacey:It's actually really sad if you think about it. So you're one of those anti-tech kids? I might be the only one. Well, Lynn has a pretty complicated job, so it might be hard to... She has three phones, did you know that? Work, personal, and... Two work phones. That tells you something, doesn't it? Mama Lynn is very busy, Louise said. And again, the eldest daughter deployed that withering stare. She shouldn't have said, Mama, though Lynn and Joan referred to themselves this way. The eldest daughter stood and put her plate and fork in the dishwasher. We agree on a lot of things, philosophically, Lynn and I, but she's been weakened by techno-optimism.

28:55Aunt Lou felt a moment of real terror for this child, a fear that she would never be able to accept the world as it was,