The Underside of Joy (18 page)
All day I picked up the phone, then set it back down. My mom? No. Lucy? No. David? Definitely no. Marcella? Heavens no. Gwen Alterman? Hell no.
They would all freak out about the letters. Like David, they might tell me to burn them. Or they might tell me to take them out to Bodega and throw them into the ocean.
Early the next morning I dropped Annie and Zach and the crate of kittens off at Marcella’s, but instead of heading to the store, I drove out to Bodega Head. I took the letters with me. I wanted to think, to come to a decision on my own. I passed the cemetery, but I didn’t stop.
Mine was the only car in the gravel parking lot. Like the Green Hornet had been when Frank and I left it, that first horrible day of summer. Now the fog bank lay thick, obscuring the view. A great egret stood in the ice plant, along the cliff, its white neck curved in a question mark. Joe had once pointed to one and said, ‘I have but one great egret.’ I’d smiled, and instead of asking him if he really did have one great regret, and if so, what it might be, I said, ‘
Casmerodius albus.
’
I held the packets of letters in my hand, snapping the rubber bands in a steady rhythm. I did not know what to do. I wanted to do the right thing, but mostly, to do the right thing for Annie and Zach. Paige had cared more than I’d thought. Cared at least enough to write twenty-six times. I tried to push away the selfish fact that I couldn’t imagine my life without Annie and Zach. But how do you push a fact like that away?
I got out of the Jeep and headed towards the cliff, letters in hand. I stood and watched the waves, steady, predictable, calming, even – but the locals knew better. And Joe had known better. ‘Never turn your back on the ocean,’ he’d told the kids and me over and over. Then he’d gone and done exactly that, focusing all his attention on the way the cliff stood against that morning’s light, totally disregarding the way something could sneak up from behind and knock a person clear to kingdom come.
A black Ford Explorer pulled into the lot and parked; a man and a woman, their four children tucked into the backseat. The woman was screaming; I couldn’t hear what she was saying through their closed windows but could see her contorted face, her hitting the dashboard.
The man got out of the driver’s seat. He was trim, neatly dressed in khaki shorts and a polo shirt. He looked out towards the ocean and stretched, then walked around and opened the back of the Explorer. He took a six-pack of Pepsi from a cooler and methodically plucked each can out of the plastic holder, then placed them back in the cooler. He then ripped each plastic ring, in what I thought was an act of concern for the environment, until he dropped them on the ground.
One of the children, a girl of about eight or nine, turned in her seat and watched him. He looked back at her, but no one spoke. Carrying one of the Pepsis, he opened the passenger door and handed it to the woman. He took a brown prescription bottle out of the pocket of his windbreaker. He tapped out one pill and held it out for her in his open palm.
She took it and swallowed.
He returned to the back of the Explorer, and before he pulled the hatch down, the girl looked at me, speaking to me now with her eyes.
The man followed her gaze and said to me over his shoulder, ‘Don’t you have anything better to do?’
Until then, I hadn’t realized that I’d stopped and was blatantly staring. I mumbled, ‘Sorry,’ and turned and walked back to the car, still carrying the packet of letters, which now felt as heavy and conspicuous as a body.
The only thing I saw on my ride back were those young girl’s eyes. The knowing stare of a child. I drove straight home, took the phone out to the porch, and called my mom. But I didn’t tell her about the letters.
I said, ‘Tell me about Daddy.’
I expected the beat of silence before she said, ‘Well, Jelly? What would you like to know? I mean, we’ve talked about Daddy over the years. I think I’ve told you –’
‘You’ve told me what a great father he was. I mean, tell me about your marriage.’
‘Oh! Our marriage? Well? Let’s see . . .’
‘Was it a good marriage?’
‘Yes . . . I mean, all marriages are hard, honey. Everyone goes through difficulties. But I loved your father very much . . .’
‘Were you happy?’
‘Were we happy? Yes. Sometimes . . .’
‘But . . .?’
She let out a long, loud sigh, like air escaping a balloon. ‘There are certain things that are private. That you don’t need to know. Your father was a good man. He died way, way too young. You were robbed and I always felt so sad for you.’
For me. But not for her. ‘Were you with him when he died?’
‘No. I wasn’t.’
‘Where was he? How did you find out?’
‘Ella . . . I don’t really remember . . .’
My voice shook. ‘Now I know you’re lying. Of course you remember. Because I remember. Something happened and no one would talk about it. But. I knew. I
knew.
And I said something . . . something to Grandma Beene. And she slapped me.’
‘Grandma Beene slapped you?’
‘Yes . . . and she told me, “Never say that again” . . .’
‘What did you say?’
‘I knew something. That I wasn’t supposed to know . . .’
‘You did? You do?’
‘Mom. Stop it. Just tell me what
you
know.’
There was a long silence. I watched Callie chase a covey of quail in vain, their black feathered hats bobbling in front of their plump bodies like middle-aged flappers. That spring, Joe and I sat out here in the evening, listening to the males’ courting call:
Whereareyou? Whereareyou?
My mom said, ‘I never wanted you to know. His death was hard enough.’ I waited. The quail lifted together like one wing and lit on the butterfly bush. Callie’s attention turned to a gopher hole, and she started to dig. ‘And to find out now? When you’re in mourning? When you’re in the heat of a custody battle?’
‘Just say it. Please.’ But in the corner of my soul, a lid lifted and the words floated, whole, up to my lips before they touched my brain, and I blurted them before she could make herself say them. ‘He was having an affair, wasn’t he . . . with my teacher. Miss McKenna . . . And he was with her when he died. At her house.’
‘You knew that? How?’
‘Mom. Of
course
I knew. The way kids always know.’ The way that little girl’s eyes could tell me she knew why her mother was screaming again, why her father chose controlled silence. And it all started coming back to me. ‘I thought it was my fault, that if I’d had Mrs Grecke for third grade instead of Miss McKenna, and if I hadn’t fallen and split my knee open on the blacktop, Daddy wouldn’t have had the chance to fall in love with her. God, I think every one of us was in love with her. The boys
and
the girls.’ More words that escaped the editor in my brain. ‘I’m sorry . . . God, I’m really sorry I just said that.’ Then another memory that I had the decency to keep to myself: When I wasn’t feeling guilty, I was fantasizing about Miss McKenna marrying my dad and becoming my mother – all light and perfume and pink lipstick and exclamation points in comparison to my own mother, who at the time, now understandably, was morose and prone to sitting alone out in our parked station wagon for extended periods at night.
‘I’d filed papers for divorce three days before he died.’ Her voice broke. ‘I always felt responsible, like those papers must have prompted the heart attack.’
‘No, Mom. It was me. It was my fault he died.’
And then I told her the story, the light and shadowed images, fully developed, always waiting for me to finally pluck them up and hang them out on the line between us.
Months before my father died, Leslie Penberthy had pointed out Miss McKenna’s house to me, and one Saturday afternoon, when I was walking my dog, Barkley, I’d gathered up my courage to knock on her door. I was going to tell her that I just wanted to say hello but thought that perhaps she would invite Barkley and me inside, offer me blue Kool-Aid and Rice Krispies Treats, show me picture albums of her own childhood, the one in Iowa that she’d told our class about.
Miss McKenna answered the door in her robe, seemed very surprised to see me, blushed, and said she was just going to take a nap, that she felt a cold coming on and needed to get some rest but that it was so nice of me to stop by. I didn’t notice my father’s blue truck parked on the street, one house down, until I walked past it and Barkley jumped at the door. In the truck bed, I saw more pickets for the quaint front-yard fence he was erecting. I never asked him why his truck was parked on Miss McKenna’s street that Saturday, or the next. Or why we never went camping anymore, just the two of us traipsing along the Olympic Peninsula, writing down the names of plants and birds and insects we’d see. Now on the weekends, whenever he said he was heading to the hardware store, I made it my habit to walk Barkley, carrying my Harriet the Spy notepad, his birding binoculars around my neck. And though my father always came home with hastily purchased supplies for a new fix-it project, I knew something besides our house was in need of repair.
And then one Saturday, his truck in its spot down the street from her house, I quietly opened the side gate to Miss McKenna’s backyard and peeked in an open window, and then another, until I saw my father sitting up in bed, a sheet up to his waist, reading the paper and smoking a cigarette.
‘Dolly?’ my father called. ‘Can you get a poor fellow another cup of your fabulous coffee?’ And then Barkley did what dogs do, especially dogs named Barkley.
‘What the hell? Barkley? Jelly Bean?
What the hell?
’
Our eyes caught each other, and I realized, as I was telling my mom the story, that my father’s eyes, at that moment in time, had forever been locked on me; the panic, the terror, the sadness, the shame of that single moment had never left me.
‘Jelly, wait . . .
wait . . .
’ But I was already fumbling with the gate that swam behind my tears. I ran, pulling Barkley instead of the other way around; I ran until I couldn’t, then walked and walked and walked until dark, when I finally made my way up our porch steps, my mother waiting on the swing, her cigarette glowing and reflected in the front window, as if there were two cigarettes, hers and my father’s, instead of just hers alone. She jumped up and asked me where I’d been, that she’d been so worried, that she’d called the police, and I shrugged and said, ‘Nowhere.’ She held me in her arms. She tucked my hair behind my ear. She told me my father had gone to heaven.
‘So,’ I said to my mother across the phone line, between sobs, ‘it was
me.
Snooping around. That gave him a heart attack. That literally scared him, scared him to death.’
‘Ella,’ my mom said. I could almost see her herding her thoughts. ‘I’m so sorry that’s what you’ve thought. All these years. Honey, you’re a scientist. Look at the evidence: The man smoked over two packs of cigarettes a day, worshipped butter and bacon and cream, and apparently was rigorously fucking a twenty-two-year-old. None of this was your fault. Or mine, for that matter.’
I understood that she was right, that by finally speaking the truth about what I did know, I could see a more truthful version of what I as a child hadn’t known, couldn’t have known.
My mom said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I should have known that the change in you was more than . . . I . . . just . . . it was easier for me;
you
were easier. And I guess, all these years, bringing up your father felt like digging up his grave. You know, let the dead be perfect. It’s all they have.’
‘It’s beginning to occur to me . . . perfection is a weight none of us can bear, alive or dead.’
My dead perfect father. My dead perfect husband. No longer perfect in my mind. I knew I’d somehow freed them both and was even starting to free myself. But I still had a long way to go.
‘I wish you could have told me about this back then, Jelly. You kept this all to yourself ?’ I said I had to hang up, that the kids were walking in the door, even though they weren’t. I stood on the back porch, taking big, deep breaths. Callie sprinted up towards me and rubbed her muddy nose on my leg, thwacked me hard with her tail. Back from her most recent excavation.
I went to get an old towel and wiped the fresh dirt off her nose and paws.
What was I doing? I had enough to figure out without unearthing old pain-laden memories. I needed to focus on the letters and try to unscrew all Joe’s screwing up, instead of focusing on my father’s just plain screwing my third-grade teacher almost thirty years before.
I called Lucy and told her about the letters. Lucy whistled. ‘What do they say?’
I told her I hadn’t read them yet, which she couldn’t believe. ‘They’re not addressed to me. Plus, it’s tampering with evidence. If –’
‘If you submit them as evidence, which you won’t.’
‘But then I’m
withholding
evidence.’
‘Look. I can come over. I’ll open them if I have to. You have to know what, exactly, you’re dealing with. I know the real reason you don’t want to open those letters, and it has nothing to do with breaking the law. Ella, you know. It’s about breaking your heart. And everyone else’s in this town.’
‘It’s about a lot of things,’ I said too quickly, too defensively. Lucy had my number. I told her I’d think about it.
Later, in my kitchen, while I washed dishes and Marcella dried, I told her about the letters. She held a glass up to the light, rubbed it with the towel again. She set the glass in the cupboard before turning to me. ‘You,’ she said, ‘cannot believe that my Joey would have hidden those letters! Paige was in your house! She was there alone with the kids that day Aunt Sophia had one of her spells! That woman planted those letters there. It’s as obvious as the empty tomb.’
‘Marcella, they were postmarked.’
She threw her arms in the air, the fat shuddering like a long afterthought. ‘They can do anything on the computer these days. That doesn’t mean diddly-squat. Have you read them?’
I shook my head.
‘She abandoned my grandbabies, Ella. Zach was only two months old. He was still taking the breast! Do you know how much he screamed and cried those first weeks, while we tried to get him used to the bottle? I will remember those screams for the rest of my days. She has no rights as their mother. You are their mother. Now, behave like it. And don’t you go talking about your husband like he was some sort of lying criminal!’
She turned and walked out. Joe Sr, who’d been feeding the chickens with the kids, heard the last of it as he came in through the kitchen door. He said, ‘Ella, I love you like you were my own. But I don’t know how Marcella will get up in the morning if she loses our two
bambini
along with Joe. A person can only take so much in one life. A family can only take so much.’ He ran his hand over his bald head and sighed. ‘My big brother? Lost to the war.’ He paused. ‘Even my papa – we lost for a while.’
‘But he came back.’
‘Yeah, but not the same as he was. Different.’ He reached out, held my shoulder. ‘And it wasn’t just Sergio, you know. Marcella’s papa, Dante. They took him too. They were treated like criminals when they did nothing wrong. I love this country. But I don’t trust the government when it comes to my family. Let ’em take all our money and call it taxes. But for Christ’s sake, not our papas. And not our grandbabies.’ He gripped my shoulder tighter. ‘Please, honey. Don’t let ’em take our grandbabies.’
Later that night, after I’d read stories and put Annie and Zach to bed, Callie barked. I walked down the hall and saw Marcella through the glass. I opened the door. We stood facing each other, not saying a word. Her face bore the ravages of those past months, and I wanted to say something – anything – to ease her pain, to ease mine too.
Her eyes held tears. Finally she spoke. ‘I’ve loved you like a daughter . . . but you won’t listen! That store you call Life’s a Picnic? That store is for Annie and Zach. You remember that. We helped you because of
our grandchildren.
Because we trusted you with their future! Ella, those letters. Burn them. Don’t read them.’
‘I have to read them. I have to know.’
‘No.’
She kept her dark sad eyes on mine, lifted her hand, and slapped me, hard, across the face. She covered her mouth, her eyes wide.
The sting spread like hot needle points. My eyes watered, in more of a physical reaction than an emotional one; I was too shocked to cry. She turned, walked, wringing her hands, down the steps, got into her car, and sped off.