The Secret of Joy (4 page)

Focus them on the good ending
, Rebecca told herself.
Before they lose control
. “Hey,” she said, setting out some documents. “Let’s go over the few areas left unresolved. You’re so close to reaching a resolution that’s good for both of you and for Angelina. Let’s focus on that, okay?”

“Do you know what
I’m
focusing on?” Gwendolyn said through gritted teeth. “Do you know what we
haven’t
been through over and over? That his skanky slut had the nerve to show up on my doorstep yesterday to ‘talk woman to woman.’ First of all, she’s not a woman—she’s a dirty slut. Second of all, I wouldn’t give her two seconds of my life. And third, she’s not getting a goddamned penny extra that should be allotted to me and my child.”

Edward crossed his arms over his chest and turned toward Rebecca. “I’m not speaking directly to her.”

Gwendolyn picked up her water glass and flung its contents at her husband. It was time for an office memo about not allowing beverages in the conference rooms.

Edward leaped up, flailing his arms and shrieking, “You bitch!”

Rebecca rushed to the credenza in search of a roll of paper towels, but only found a box of tissues. The tissues left a sheddy residue on Edward’s jacket.

Restore order. Restore order. Restore order
, Rebecca chanted to herself. “Gwendolyn,” she said. “I understand how difficult this is for you. But you are so close to a peaceful resolution. That’s what you wanted most of all—for Angelina’s sake.”

Gwendolyn glared at her husband. “I want additional child support for the extra therapy that poor Angelina will require from having an illegitimate half sibling. An additional one thousand.”

“I have another child to support,” Edward yelled.

“I don’t care about your other child. I care about
my
child. That slut’s spawn can rot in the street for all I care.”

You
should
care
, Rebecca wanted to yell in her face.
It’s not the kid’s fault
.

She wondered about Pia and how she’d managed, an artist in Maine left to raise a child alone. Perhaps Pia Jayhawk had had a trust fund. Or, very helpful, rich parents. Perhaps she hadn’t been a struggling single mother, which was what Rebecca envisioned: Pia sitting at a kitchen table in a small one-bedroom apartment, the flip-out couch open in the living room, a pile of bills that would leave just enough for one new shoe but not two.

“Gwendolyn,” Rebecca said, “Edward is taking responsibility for his child—”

Gwendolyn stared at Rebecca, her cheeks bright red. “So now you’re on his side?”

Rebecca held up a hand. “I’m not on anyone’s side. I’m here to help both of you reach agreement.”

“But you’re saying I’m right, right?” Edward said, his beady eyes suddenly bright. “I can petition for less child support now that there’ll be another baby?”

“You stupid bitch!” Gwendolyn screamed at Rebecca.

The door opened and Marcie entered, Jane at her heels with the tray of coffee and pastries. “Rebecca,” she whispered through gritted teeth. “We can hear you all down the
hall
.” She smiled from one Frittauer to the other. “May
I
be of assistance?”

Gwendolyn lunged for Rebecca’s folder and began ripping papers in half and tossing documents in the air. “I want Harold Goldberg in here right away! She’s fired!” she added, pointing at Rebecca with her long red fingernail.

This was not the good ending Rebecca had envisioned. Then again, maybe it was.

• • •

Rebecca arrived at the hospital just as it began drizzling again, the heavy gray sky and distant crack of thunder warning of a downpour. She stood outside and lifted her face up and let the intermittent raindrops pelt her until someone bumped into her with a
“Lo siento, señorita.”

The
“I’m sorry”
did her in and tears pricked her eyes. People rushed by her in both directions, and a taxicab driver slammed on his horn so hard that Rebecca almost jumped. She stared at the taxi driver, blabbering into his cell phone and making angry hand gestures out the window at the cab that had stopped short in front of him to let out a passenger.
You could be the lunatic driver who killed my mother
, she thought, tears streaming down her cheeks. And in that moment she was filled with a hatred of New York. Of the speeding taxis and the noise that never stopped, even at three in the morning. Of the cancer that was taking her father from her, eight floors up.

As she stood there letting the rain soak her instead of dashing under the hospital’s overhang, she realized she was in trouble. There was no haven anymore, now that her father was lying on the cot, attached to those tubes, barely able to bite into the fancy chocolates she brought him. Her best friend Charlotte was married and wrapped up in her career. Her mother was long gone. And Michael …

She desperately wanted to blink herself away to Aruba again—without Michael.

“I told you to go home!” he’d said in his office after the big blowout with the Frittauers. “I wish you’d listened. Take the rest of the day off, Rebecca. Go see your dad. I’ll see what I
can do to get this fixed. Don’t worry, okay? Everyone knows you’re up against a wall.”

Up against a wall. When she was younger, Rebecca would bargain with God.
If you let me pass this test I will never not study again. If you make me more popular this year, I will think kinder thoughts about Claudia Herman, of whom I am deeply jealous
.

There was no bargaining now. No
If you let my father live by some miracle, I will be a better daughter, a better person
. She knew because she’d tried that on her way over to the hospital that first day, before she’d known just how sick he was. And she’d tried when the oncologist had explained to her that she should start thinking about arrangements.

The tears pricked again, but as she headed inside, the anger rushed up inside her. Her father had had an affair. And he’d let his own child grow up without him. Without being acknowledged in the slightest. How dare he! He wasn’t who she’d thought he was. Not from the time she was two years old.

She pushed back the wet hair stuck to her face and closed her eyes and counted to five. As she passed the nurse’s station, Rebecca nodded at the kinder of the two nurses who attended her father during the day, then took a deep breath and headed inside room 8-401. Her father was still. She moved closer, checking the telltale sign of his chest rising and falling. He was sleeping. The anger abated, then returned with a rush a moment later. He’d slept through his child’s entire life.

She had so many questions.
Did you ever think about the baby? As she was growing up? Did you send money? Did you ever see her? Did you love her mother?

And the biggest:
How did you just turn your back on them?

“I don’t understand,” she whispered. And she didn’t want to learn the whys from whatever was in that safety-deposit box; she wanted answers from her father, the man she loved more than anyone else on earth.

“How could you?” she whispered so low that if he were by chance awake, he couldn’t have heard. She kissed his forehead and watched him for a moment, then took the long way out of the hospital and walked uptown in the rain to his apartment building. He’d downsized from the house Rebecca had grown up in when she’d moved to the city to be on her own with a roommate from work. They lived in the same neighborhood, and Rebecca always liked the surprise of running into her dad in The Food Emporium or in Barnes & Noble or on the subway platform.

She let herself in with the key that was always on her key chain. His third-floor one-bedroom was spotless, thanks to his weekly cleaning service. She stood in the small living room and felt his presence so strongly. Her dad was a collector, and his apartment was like a scrapbook and photo album of his life. His fossil collection from an excavation trip to Belize lay on the long windowsills. Shells from every beach he’d ever walked on were strewn across the top of the upright piano against the far wall. And a self-portrait Rebecca had painted in seventh grade was hung above it.

Family photographs graced every spare space. Of Rebecca at every age. Had her father looked at those pictures and wondered, every day, what Joy Jayhawk was doing, how she was doing? How could he not?

She forced herself to move over to the small desk by the windows. In one corner was a picture of her and Michael and her dad, from her father’s birthday party last week. The desk had only one drawer, so finding the key wouldn’t be difficult. But she was frozen.

Oh, just open it already
, she told herself. And so she forced her hands forward, and there it was, the red leather case with the key, an ordinary, ugly gold key. She zippered the case shut and dropped it in her bag, then glanced at her father’s papers and folders and files, his checkbooks and ledgers. What of a baby he hadn’t acknowledged twenty-six years ago would she find in the safety-deposit box? In these papers? The idea of her father carrying this secret for all these years seemed preposterous.
“Ask me anything!”
he always told her when she was shy about asking questions, about boys, about her mother. It had never occurred to her to ask if he’d ever had an affair. She wouldn’t have thought it possible. Not with the way he’d looked at her mother, right until the end.

You don’t know, really know, anyone
, she thought, then hoped it wouldn’t stick. She’d never been cynical, never a pessimist. She was strictly glass-half-full.

The ugly gold key in her tote bag, off she went to Citibank with twenty minutes to spare before closing.

The vault of gold safety-deposit boxes looked like P.O. boxes. Rebecca showed the key to the clerk, he verified access and then pointed to box number 1232.

“Do you want a private room or cubicle, or is this okay?” the
clerk asked, upping his chin at the long table in the center of the room.

“This is fine,” she said. She didn’t want to be alone with whatever was inside.

What was inside was a black leather box that flipped open with a tiny silver latch. Inside the leather box was a batch of letters, held together with a large blue rubber band. Rebecca flipped through them; there were twenty-six envelopes, each addressed to Joy Jayhawk. Just the name, no address. No stamp. No return address.

So he hadn’t turned his back emotionally, she realized. That was something. Almost.

There was another letter, a single one, addressed to Rebecca in the same chicken-scratch handwriting as the rest. She’d always been able to decipher her dad’s handwriting, even as a kid.
“What in the world does this say?”
her mother would ask when her dad left notes under magnets on the refrigerator.
“Went to have a swim, be back at six,”
Rebecca would proudly read for her mother. That she could read his illegible scrawl made her feel closer to him, that they shared a special bond.

She glanced at the stack of letters. Twenty-six letters for twenty-six years. She took off her trench coat and slipped it on the back of her chair, wishing she had time to stall. She glanced up at the round clock on the wall. A quarter to four. She had fifteen minutes.

She sucked in a breath and opened the one addressed to her.

Dear Rebecca
,

If you’re reading this, I’m in bad shape. Right now, it’s May, and I’ve just been diagnosed. But I’ve been told the end will come fast and furious
.

My Beckles, how I love you. I hope you’ll forgive me one day for keeping this secret from you, for having this secret in the first place
.

The letters will tell you something of the story. I don’t know what you’ll do with them, but I leave that up to you. I think she should know that I did care. In any case, I want you to know that I did
.

I’m so sorry, Rebecca. Know that I loved you—and will always love you—with all my heart
.

—All my love, Dad

She stared at the letter and then eyed the banded others. Then her gaze moved up to the clock, at the second hand ticktocking, ticktocking its way very slowly, very surely around and around. If she watched the little ticking arrow long enough, the big hand would eventually get to the twelve.

“Miss?” a guard said, appearing at the doorway. “The bank is closing.”

She let out a deep breath and nodded. She wasn’t ready to read the letters, even one. She stood up, slightly dizzy, and dropped back down on the chair. She’d had coffee for breakfast and then had picked at her crepe at the French bistro Glenda had taken her to. She needed more coffee and something in her stomach to get rid of the churning acid. She put the letters back in the little leather box and stuffed the box in her tote bag.

Good old Starbucks provided her with bracing coffee and a
cinnamon raisin bagel, which she brought with her to Central Park. The rain had stopped, and the pale blue sky was heavy with clouds. She sat on one of the still-damp benches lining the walk to the zoo, suddenly aware of all the young children in strollers and skipping around, their little hands in bigger ones.

What had it been like to grow up never having met your own father? Rebecca watched a little girl, three years old, maybe four, chasing after a pigeon intent on a discarded hotdog bun. She imagined the girl asking her mother where her father was, who her father was.

Jesus. What was
that
conversation like?

She took a long sip of her coffee, wrapping her hands around the warm paper cup. She’d screwed up today at work with the Frittauers, but she hadn’t been wrong. She’d just said it wrong.
“Don’t screw up the screwing up,”
her dad used to say all the time when Rebecca worried over a mistake like not handing in a high school assignment or saying something mean to her mother.
“Own up to it.”

Her father had never been a “Do as I say not as I do” type of person. When she and her friend Charlotte had experimented with cigarettes at fifteen, her father had caught them, his own cigarette between his fingers. He’d quit that day. Rebecca had never smelled smoke on him again. He’d always walked the walk.