The Underside of Joy (13 page)

And then it all became clear: What I needed most was to get to a hospital.

Memorial Hospital was just around two corners, but I was afraid to keep driving, afraid I might run my car off the road and hit a pedestrian. I parked and cut across the street, almost getting hit myself. The sweat continued pouring down my face, my chest crushed with pressure. I was a thirty-five-year-old skinny woman who ate a boatload of organic vegetables. I was also the daughter of a man who’d died at age forty of heart disease. I walked into the emergency room, up to the check-in desk.

‘I think . . . I think I’m having a heart attack,’ I whispered.

She took one look at me and picked up the phone and shouted into it. ‘Possible cardiac arrest. Female. Thirty . . .?’

‘Five,’ I said. Within seconds I was on a gurney, answering questions. What were my symptoms? When did they start? How severe was the pain? Who should they contact?

Who should they contact?
Joe,
I thought.
Contact Joe.
‘My husband,’ I said. ‘But he’s dead.’

Who should they call? They asked again. Not Marcella – she was taking care of the kids. My mom was too far away. Who else was there? Lucy. They could call Lucy. I gave them her number along with my insurance card.

Four hours and five test results later, Dr Irving Boyle explained the fine intricacies of an anxiety attack, why I was the perfect candidate. He had a straggly grey beard that made him look more like a professor of philosophy than a doctor of medicine. He said, ‘Your heart is fine.’ He sat down on his stool and stuck his pen behind his ear and placed both hands on his knees. ‘Except for the fact that it’s broken. Sadness and depression can result in anxiety. Anxiety can result in the kind of attack you experienced today. Your husband’s recent death is taking its toll on you, both physically and emotionally. I’m very sorry for your loss. I want to suggest you try an anxiety inhibitor and possibly an antidepressant to get you over this bump.’

This
bump
? But I knew by the gentle sympathy in his eyes that he wasn’t minimizing anything. ‘So what you’re saying is, the good news is I’m not going to die of a heart attack, and the bad news is I’m not going to die of a heart attack?’ The look on his face made me add,
‘Kidding.’

‘We take suicidal references seriously around here. And especially in folks who’ve suffered losses like you have. I can understand why you might be feeling that way, but you have your children to think about. You have a lot of life – and wonderful times – ahead of you.’ I nodded. ‘I know that. I do. There’s no way I’m bailing on my kids.’ I didn’t tell him that someone was trying to take them away from me. That the grief was only part of what I was feeling. That I was also terrified of losing Annie and Zach. He asked me if I was tired and I asked him if it was possible to die from sleep deprivation.

He prescribed Xanax to help me sleep and help with the anxiety. I told him I wanted to wait on the antidepressant, that it seemed natural to let any grief I was feeling run its course. I wasn’t depressed, I told him. Just tired and sad.

Lucy drove me home. Marcella had fed the kids and put their pyjamas on them, and the house smelled of eggplant Parmesan – Joe’s favourite – and SpongeBob bubble bath. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told her, but she waved her hand.

‘No worries. We had fun. How you doing? You doing okay?’

I squeezed her hand and nodded, but I felt so Not Okay. I’d spent most of the day in the hospital only to discover that I was a nervous wreck. A head case. Not completely unlike Paige.

Annie came running out of their room. ‘Mommy! Mommy!’ she sang. I hadn’t seen her that happy since before Joe’s death. I scooped her up in my arms. Her delight in seeing me worked like a salve for my soul. ‘Can I tell her now? Can I?’ she said to Marcella. Marcella shrugged, turned, untying her apron. ‘Mommy? Guess what!’

‘You cleaned your room?’

‘No, silly.’ She ruffled my hair again. She’d been doing that a lot lately. I wasn’t quite ready for parent-child role reversal. ‘Mama invited us to Lost Vegas! She wants Zachosaurus and me to visit her next weekend!’

Chapter Sixteen

The next morning, at the store before it opened, while I made risotto cakes and brought the puttanesca sauce to a boil, I called Gwen Alterman and asked her what I should do about Paige’s request. ‘And I can’t stand that she’s manipulating Annie. That’s got to stop.’

Gwen agreed. ‘Making the request through the kids is fighting below the belt. I’ll send her counsel a letter today to put an end to it. Now. You could say no about the visitation . . . and then they’d probably file a motion to compel. We’d need a psychological evaluation to show that she’s not wacko, or that she won’t steal the children. But you also don’t want to look like you’re antagonistic to a relationship between the children and their birth mother.’ She paused, and I pictured her taking a multiple-choice test, weighing the answers, while I turned the burner down to let the sauce simmer. ‘You don’t want to come across as a jealous, overbearing type. You’re loving. You’re open to some visitation. But it’s best for the kids to live with you. Period.’

I listened. I remembered to breathe. I held the phone with my shoulder, set down the copper mould for the risotto cakes, poured a glass of water, and opened the bottle of Xanax from my purse under the counter. Joe used to tease me about my reluctance to take medicine, even an aspirin. But after my afternoon in the emergency room, the Xanax felt necessary. As I took one, it occurred to me for the first time that even if everything went my way in this case, Paige was still going to be a part of our lives. Forever. Unless she decided to disappear again. But visitation meant her and the kids . . . hanging out. On some kind of regular basis.

‘Look,’ Gwen said. ‘I’ll request a psych evaluation. They’ll say no. I’ll get a court order. At least it’ll buy us some time.’

But that evening, as I chopped a bucketful of kale at home, she called me back. ‘I don’t believe this, but I’ve got a psych evaluation in my hand. Faxed over by Paige’s attorney. She had one done a week ago, and she checks out. We’re talking flying colours. Of course, we can order another psych eval from a doctor we choose, but then they’ll want to have one done on you.’

I took another Xanax and wondered how I’d fare on a psych eval right then. ‘Oh,’ I said.

Gwen sighed. ‘We can fight this and win.’

That sounded good – but for whom? Not for the kids, and I told her so.

Zach bellowed from the next room, ‘I’m
telling
!’ and I waited for him to bolt into the kitchen, but he didn’t follow through.

‘Zach is too young to go on the plane without me. How about this? She can come here and visit them in the area.’

‘Say within a thirty-mile radius? What about overnight?’

I sighed. ‘Okay . . . Yes.’

‘Then we cross our fingers that this is a wake-up call and she’ll realize being a mommy is way over her head.’

I went to check on the kids. Annie had pulled out the little pink suitcase Marcella had bought her for overnights and was filling it up with the dresses she rarely wore.

‘I’m packing for Mama’s house. It’s not in the country like this one is,’ she explained.

‘Hence the dresses?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘Hence the dresses.’

Zach said, ‘I don’t wanna wear dresses. They’re barfy.’

‘Banannie, I think your mama is going to come and visit you here –’

‘What? No!’ She stamped her foot. ‘That is so boring! I want to go on the plane!’

‘You will . . . someday. But for this first time, she’s going to come here. Maybe you’ll get to stay at a hotel.’

‘A big hotel?’

‘Hotels are barfy too.’

‘Zach, what’s with all the barf ? Do you have a tummy ache?’

‘No! I’m just packing my
BAR FY
jay-jays and my
BAR FY
clothes.’

‘I see . . . Annie, I don’t know if the hotel is big. You’ll have to ask your mama.’

‘At a big hotel, I could wear my dresses. I want to look
sophisticated.
Like Mama.’ She added her black patent leather shoes that she’d worn to the funeral. She didn’t pack her little Birkenstocks and clogs that matched mine. She stood with her hands on her hips, scanning the closet. ‘I have nothing to wear,’ she said, pushing a blonde strand of hair off her face. Zach stood up, carried over his brontosaurus and an armful of Matchbox cars, and dropped them in his Thomas the Tank Engine suitcase. I picked him up and kissed his ear, and he laid his head on my shoulder and let out a long, tired sigh.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Let’s watch
The Sound of Music.
’

‘Again?’ Annie asked.

‘Sure,’ I said, shrugging. ‘Why not?’ I was hoping they’d fall asleep in my bed. I didn’t want to sleep alone.

‘Okay . . . I can finish this tomorrow, I guess.’

‘Sure you can. Get your jays on. I’ll make the popcorn and meet you in our room.’

Both kids did fall asleep early, by the time the storm hit the Von Trapp house and Maria sang ‘My Favourite Things’. When the dog bites. When the bee stings. When I’m feeling sad . . . When the husband dies. When the ex-wife tries . . . to take away my kids . . . I simply remember my favourite things. Then her confrontation with gorgeous Captain Von Trapp, Maria plotting to make play clothes out of the curtains.

Lucy called to check in. I told her what I was watching.

‘Again?’

‘Maria. What a stepmom. What a role model. But then, she didn’t ever have to worry about their mother coming back, because she was dead.’

‘True story.’

‘It
is
a true story,’ I said. ‘I could use a Mother Superior who could tell me, in a moving rendition, what I should do. No, I need to
be
the mother, superior. The superior mother, as judged by the court of the County of Sonoma.’

‘You, my dear, are clearly the mother superior. Oh, I love that gazebo scene. God. Christopher Plummer. I’ve loved him since I was, like, six. Call me later.’

I hung up. Joe was gone, but I did still have some of my favourite things. Digging in the garden with my kids, collecting eggs with the kids, walking into town with the kids on their bikes, Play-Doh and finger paints and beads, ironing crayon shavings between sheets of wax paper – all the messy things that I loved to do with them. Many other things besides watching
The Sound of Music . . .
again, as Annie and even Lucy had pointed out.

Dr Irving Boyle was right. Because of Annie and Zach, I had a lot to live for. I was not only their mother; I was a good mother, a superior mother. We just needed to keep doing our favourite things. A weekend with Paige wasn’t going to threaten what we’d taken three years to establish. Gwen Alterman was right too: It would only help our cause. Imagine Paige with her perfectly manicured nails covered in barfy finger paints. Ha!

Annie and Zach and I sat on the couch in the not-so-great room. Callie went from one to the other of us, pushing her head and her backside into us, thwacking us with her tail, panting. The pink suitcase was packed to the gills, along with Zach’s Thomas the Tank Engine suitcase; they waited by the door. At 10:15 a.m. – precisely when she said she’d arrive – Paige’s rental car turned up our drive. Callie galloped down the hallway with Annie, while Zach, holding his Bubby, stood and watched me. I wiped my palms on my jeans and tried to smooth my hair down.

Zach jumped into my lap. ‘Bella,’ he said, planting a kiss on my cheek, ‘you look
gorgeous.
’

I laughed and planted my own kisses all over his face. I knew he’d taken that line from Joe. My insecurity must have been bouncing off the walls for a three-year-old boy to be prompted to flatter me. He wriggled free, and I stood up, remembered to breathe a few abdominal breaths, then walked into the kitchen and picked up a dish towel so it looked like I was busy doing something. I’d been cleaning all morning, but the house still looked cluttered. She probably wouldn’t even come in.

But she was already walking down the hallway and into the kitchen.

‘Annie let me in.’ She looked across to the great room. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you, I like how you tore down that wall. It looks much better. I knew it would. Do you mind if I use the bathroom?’

I had started to clean the bathroom but got distracted and then forgot about it entirely. I considered telling her no, she could use the bathroom at Ernie’s Gas, but knew I couldn’t get away with that. ‘Oh? Oh, okay. It’s through – Well, you know where it is.’

‘I do,’ she said. While she was in there, I was kicking myself for not cleaning the bathroom. Of
course
she’d have to use it. She’d driven all the way from the airport. I thought of my new prescription in the medicine cabinet and the hard-water ring around the toilet. Joe’s aftershave that I kept on the counter for quick fixes. Would she open it, inhale it like I did, press some on her wrists? Or would she dump it down the toilet? Had I left my underwear on the floor? The old ones with the two rips around the elastic?

When she glided out, Zach ran over to me and grabbed my leg. I rubbed his back and handed her the kids’ health insurance cards, their pediatrician’s phone number, and some instructions including Annie’s allergy to Ceclor and Zach’s attachment to his Bubby. She didn’t smell like Joe’s aftershave, just her own jasmine citrus perfume, her signature scent that kept permeating my house. She took the insurance cards but handed me back Dr Magenelli’s number and the instructions. ‘Thanks. But I know Doc Magic and his number. Along with Annie’s allergy. And as far as instructions, Annie’s such a smart girl. I think she can help me with any questions that arise. But thanks, really. It was thoughtful.’ She tucked the insurance cards in her streamlined wallet, snapped it shut, slipped it back into her streamlined shoulder bag. She wore white pants and a peach silky shirt that looked perfect against her skin. She must have never covered herself with baby oil and baked in the sun on one of those foil-coated space blankets when she was a teenager. She looked slightly different from the last time I’d seen her. She’d cut her fringe, wispy, framing her eyes, making them look even bigger.

‘Let me get you their car seats,’ I said.

‘No need. The rental car has them built in. We’re staying at the Hilton in Santa Rosa.’ She turned to the kids. ‘Did you two pack your suits?’ They nodded.

Annie said, ‘And quite a few dresses.’

‘Excellent.’ Paige looked at her watch.

I said, ‘What a long day for you . . .’

‘Oh, I don’t mind. I’m thrilled to be able to see them. Okay, Annie, Zach, say good-bye to Ella.’

Ella? Nice try. And she didn’t need to tell my kids to say good-bye to me.

Zach said, ‘I wanna stay here.’

I bent down and smoothed his hair back. ‘You can call me anytime. And Annie will be with you. And Bubby. And you’ll be back tomorrow.’ He started hitting the ground with Bubby. ‘Okay, honey?’

He looked at Paige and slowly nodded. Annie took his other hand, and the three of us followed Paige down the porch steps. I knelt down and hugged them both maybe a little too long, and willed the tears to wait.

‘Bye, Mommy!’ they shouted from the car, waving as she drove them away. I watched until they disappeared around the bend, then watched the dust from the gravel dissipate in the morning air.

I slipped on Joe’s jacket, and Callie and I went down to the chicken coop, Callie zigzagging in front of me. We had four hens, Bernice, Gilda, Harriet and Mildred. When I reached under them, they’d each left me an egg, except for Mildred. She hadn’t been laying as much. I wondered if she was in mourning too. I slipped the three warm eggs in the pockets of Joe’s jacket and followed Callie back to the house.

I had a plan to keep occupied, to look for the documents Paige had requested. Gwen had said, ‘You’ll need to be able to tell the court that you’ve conducted a diligent search and you did not find the letters.’ I would go through the boxes and files in Joe’s office so I could sign off on that and be done with it.

I sat in his old office at Life’s a Picnic and went through the files, flipped through the books, and pulled up tax records I’d once blindly signed without even reviewing. The signs of financial doom flashed from documents I’d never bothered to look at. Like some kind of fifties housewife, I’d stayed out of the finances and spent my days tending to the children. It naturally happened that way; it hadn’t been a decision. It seemed to work for us then, but now I could see that it really wasn’t working at all. Joe hadn’t told me the truth, but some part of me clearly preferred it that way.

The door behind the file cabinet led to a storage area. The cabinet was too heavy to move, but I didn’t want to ask David for help, so I emptied out the drawers and then pushed and shimmied the shell until I could open the door. I pulled the string to turn on the bare lightbulb that hung from the rafter. The air smelled of mould – and memories. Stacked boxes, a few pieces of old dusty furniture; a mirrored dresser and a secretary’s desk that probably belonged to Joe’s grandparents. If there were any letters, I’d find them there.

I started going through boxes. Not the marked ones that said things like
Joey’s Baseball Trophies
or
Davy’s Schoolwork.
But the unmarked boxes in the corner. In the first one I opened, I found the paisley robe.

I recognized it immediately, the swirls of teal, of honey and periwinkle, and now I could see how it would highlight Paige’s eyes and complexion – even if she did wear it every day, all day, she still had looked amazing. Joe had saved it that evening after we met. He’d taken it from the hook on the back of the bathroom door, but he hadn’t thrown it out or given it away or even sent it to Paige. He’d kept it. Because he missed her? Because he hoped for her return? Had he locked his office door as I had just done, and moved the file cabinet and opened the box to take out the robe and inhale her perfume the way I’d inhaled every one of his shirts?

Or maybe he had just stuck it back there with some of her other belongings, not wanting to deal with any of it. Maybe he’d forgotten about it all.

There were other things that I could bet he didn’t care about. Old bottles of makeup. A box of tampons. A worn copy of
What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
Some loose change and a brush still tangled with golden hair.