The Underside of Joy (26 page)
I knew it was rude to just show up at Aunt Bernie’s, but I had no way of getting her phone number except to call Paige, which defeated the purpose. Following the map out to the edge of town – or I should say the last edge, because I could tell they kept adding as the place grew, edge after edge, like a beige braided rug that someone couldn’t leave alone – I imagined that when Paige lived there as a child, it was out in the middle of nowhere. But now there was a Vons supermarket and a Rite Aid, some restaurants and a housing development. The trailer park had mature trees, and the trailers didn’t look so much like trailers, but neat, boxy houses with tiny front porches and small multicoloured rock gardens. Much nicer than I’d imagined.
I knocked on the front door. No one answered. I was glad I’d left Callie back at the apartment, because even though it was morning, the sun already bore down relentlessly on the dry, dusty pavement. I waited, then knocked again. I was hoping to catch her before she left for work. But maybe she didn’t work. Maybe she was still asleep. ‘Aunt Bernie?’ I called before I realized that was Paige’s name for her, but certainly not mine.
Almost immediately, I heard her say, ‘Paige?’ and she opened the door. She was not what I expected, not at all. Midfifties, trim and tall, with a dark, stylish bob haircut and a lovely dove grey business suit. ‘Oh! I thought you were my niece.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call you “aunt”.’ I stuck out my hand. ‘I’m Ella Beene.’
She stared.
I slipped my hand into my pocket. ‘I was hoping we could talk . . .’
‘Oh?’
‘Could I come in?’
She stared another moment, then said, ‘Oh, why not?’ and turned and led me into her house. The front room was cluttered with boxes and magazines and gadgets and gizmos. ‘The kitchen is this way,’ she promised. ‘Don’t mind all this. I’ve been cleaning out the closets.’
Her kitchen wasn’t dirty, just crowded with magazines and appliances and stacks of papers. I realized that her niece wasn’t the only thing Aunt Bernie had saved. I also suddenly understood Paige’s passion for feng shui and home staging.
‘Here, have a seat.’ She motioned to the table. She sat on the bar stool, stacks of
Redbook
s,
National Geographic
s, and bills on the table. ‘Excuse the mess. I don’t have company much.’ Her face coloured but she regained her composure. ‘Coffee? Tea?’
‘Tea, if you have it.’
‘Dear, as you can see, I have everything.’ She filled the pot with water.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t call,’ I said. ‘I didn’t have your number. Paige doesn’t know I’m here.’
‘Yes, I figured as much. I don’t have a lot of time. I’m on my way to work.’
‘What do you do?’ I was curious. She looked so professional, so out of place in her own home.
‘Oh, I work for the IRS, if you really want to know.’ She tilted her chin up in mock bravado. ‘I am a tax auditor.’
‘Good to know,’ I said, attempting to hide my surprise.
She brought me the tea in a delicate cup and saucer. ‘So you see’ – she smiled as she set it down in front of me – ‘I’m not used to people seeking me out. It’s usually the other way around. Now, what would you like to talk about?’
‘It’s Paige.’ I chose my words carefully. ‘I’m sorry about everything she’s been through, and I can understand why she’s angry. But I love Annie and Zach too. I understand that I’m not, you know, their
birth
mother. But I love them that way. And I want to have a relationship with them. I want things to be more open.’
I talked about finding the letters, how I hadn’t known Paige had been writing the kids and Joe, or that she had wanted to come back.
I said, ‘I was nervous to come here. I figured you’d slam the door in my face too.’
Bernie nodded. She moved her watch around and around on her slim wrist. ‘Actually, Ella, I am glad you came to talk to me. Yes, I am Paige’s aunt, and I love her very, very much. But you and I’ – she glanced up at me – ‘we have something important in common.’ She took a deep breath, readjusted herself on the bar stool. ‘You see, I loved and cared for Paige since she was an infant. Her own mother had serious problems; I won’t go into that – that’s Paige’s private business. But I took her in and kept her under my wing as if she were my own. And although she called me her aunt, I felt every bit her mother, as I can see you feel towards Annie and Zach. She’s my daughter, in my mind and in my heart.
‘And so I do understand your position, Ella. My sister was never able to return. I haven’t told Paige this: But if her mother had been able to return, if she had come back and taken Paige away from me, I would not have been able to forgive her.’
Her gaze shifted past me, and I followed it to a patch of sunlight, which seemed to have adhered to a crack along the wall like a bandage. Our eyes met as she continued. ‘Paige is their mother; she deserves to be their mother. But I see myself in you, and I understand your pain – and your love.’ She fished out her tea bag with a spoon. ‘I’ll try to talk to her. I’ll tell her what I have never said to this day. I’ve kept my mouth shut when she says, “But I’m their mother. No one can love them and take care of them like I can!” I haven’t held her face in my hands and said, “But, Paige, have
I
not loved
you
as a mother loves her child?” I have not said this, you see, because my sister was never a mother to her. Never a mother at all.’
‘What . . .’ I picked up my teacup, then set it back down. ‘What, exactly, did Paige’s mother
do
?’
‘That, my dear girl, is a question for Paige.’
As I was leaving, I passed the refrigerator. It was covered with pictures of Paige at different ages. When she was little, she looked exactly like Annie. And then I saw a paper cut-out purple heart. It said
Happy Valenites DaY Mama, from Annie, age 3.
Aunt Bernie saw me looking at it. ‘That’s the one thing Paige brought with her when she left Joe and the kids and showed up here. I told her it was her purple heart. For a long time, it was her talisman. It helped keep her alive. When she moved out, she said I could keep it. That she knew someday Annie would make her another Valentine’s Day card.’ She smiled. ‘Paige understands how hard it is for me to let go of things.’
I got on the freeway, and I should have gone straight back to the apartment. I shouldn’t have been so pushy, so determined to finally make a breakthrough with Paige. But I couldn’t wait. My God! Aunt Bernie! Why hadn’t I thought to talk to her from the beginning, or when I found the letters, at the very least, with her address right there in Paige’s own handwriting? As if this whole mess I was in had come with simple, easy-to-follow directions on how to get out of it.
I turned up Paige’s street. She and Aunt Bernie were probably just hanging up. With Bernie’s endorsement and the letters from Paige to the kids – all unopened – she’d have to trust me, to see that I was a good person and that we could work out something so we could both be a part of Zach’s and Annie’s lives. ‘I want
both
of you,’ they had said. Hell, if we had to live in this awful place, so be it. It’s not what I wanted, not what Annie and Zach wanted, but I was willing to do anything to see them, to be in their lives.
I drove up the hill to Paige’s house and parked. The sun spread itself like a big white sheet over the neighbourhood, which was treeless, except for the straight line of new birch saplings, staked one to a yard. I pulled the packet of the kids’ unopened cards and letters out of my glove compartment and tucked them in my bag. Her grass had just been watered. I saw Bubby lying bedraggled in a puddle and picked him up. I breathed deep, knocked on the door, stuck one hand in my pocket, then pulled it out again and grabbed the strap of my shoulder bag. Paige answered the door wearing a white terry robe. Her bra strap, pink, peeked out from the collar. Her hair was wet, like she’d just stepped out of the shower. She looked tanned and healthy and strong. I crossed my sunburned skinny arms. She stepped outside onto the front step and closed the door behind her.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I just want to talk to you.’
Stay calm. Don’t blow this.
‘Have you talked to your aunt Bernie lately?’
‘What? What do you mean? Did
you
talk to her? Unbelievable.’
‘Paige,’ I said. ‘Please? I just want to talk.’ Our eyes locked.
‘Come on. Remember when you just wanted to talk to Joe?’
‘This is different.’
‘In some ways yes, in some ways no.’
She looked down. ‘This is so hard,’ she said.
‘I know. But we’re making it harder than it has to be.’
‘I want you to leave us alone. They can learn to love me, but not when you keep showing up.’ She looked down at Bubby. ‘Where did you get that?’ She reached out to take it from me. I held on. She pulled the slightest bit.
‘They can love both of us.’
‘But I wonder if you would say that, Ella, if the judge had ruled in your favour. I don’t have time for this. I have to get the kids ready for school.’ She pulled harder, and I pulled back. Bubby started to rip. I was horrified and let go, and she stumbled slightly, looked embarrassed.
We stood there, quiet, staring at the ground. As long as she didn’t turn and go back inside, it wasn’t over. I wanted to bring up my conversation with Bernie, but I knew that could make Paige mad again. I had to hand her the letters.
‘I have something for you.’
She looked up. ‘What?’
‘Some of the cards and letters you sent Annie and Zach. The ones they never opened.’
‘You mean, were never allowed to open?’
‘It was wrong of him.’
Her shoulders fell slightly; her weight shifted to the other foot. She searched my eyes. ‘Ella? I can’t ever undo the fact that I left them. I can never get that time back.’ The door behind her bolted open and there was Annie, screaming something indecipherable, her red face twisted, pulling on our arms, screaming, the words finally registering, ‘Zach! Zach! He’s hurt in the pool!’
‘No!’ Paige took off, with me right behind her. ‘No!’ She ran through the house and out the French doors and jumped into the pool, where Zach floated, his bright red tricycle lying overturned at the bottom.
She was tangled in her robe, pushing him over to me, so I could lift him, lift him out as she pushed him up, and I pulled him out, so heavy, so full of water, the water flowing out of him, and then I turned him over and breathed into his blue lips while Paige freed herself from her heavy wet robe in the pool, got out, called 911, and said, ‘My little boy fell into the pool he’s blue, he’s not breathing, 1020 Hillside Way, I’ll leave the front door open, hurry, hurry, he’s not breathing, I thought I locked the gate, I thought I did I always lock the gate,’ while I tried to remember CPR, tried to count to fifteen while I breathed into his mouth, was it fifteen, and how many had I done? And then two pushes on the sternum, I remembered something, what was it? One hand for a child, my child, and then Paige was there, taking over while I stood up to go flag down the paramedics, whose siren I heard, and I saw Annie standing by herself, wailing, ‘DaddyDaddyDaddy,’ holding the little water wings I’d bought for Zach, one in each hand, and I saw Paige bent over my little boy, her little boy, and I saw then that her entire back was a terrain of hideous scars, a raised map of unbearable pain, as her back expanded and deflated with her breath, trying to push life back into Zach, back into our little boy.
The firefighters and paramedics worked on Zach, and I held Annie, who sobbed uncontrollably, still clutching the water wings. Someone had thrown a blanket over Paige, who slumped on the end of a lounge, staring at the dark blue uniformed arms and legs and torsos that attached themselves to Zach and started an IV, intubated him, put him on a stretcher, moved with him across the patio in synchronization. A man approached me and said, ‘I’m the medical services officer. How long was he in the water before you started CPR?’
Paige looked up and said in a high, tight voice, ‘Three minutes. I saw him inside right before I answered the door.’ She asked me, ‘How long were we talking?’
‘Maybe three minutes, maybe even less.’
‘And you started CPR right away?’
We both nodded. Paige’s robe now lay like a blanket over Zach’s trike in the bottom of the pool.
‘Okay. That’s good. That’s a good thing. They’re going to try to get him breathing on his own while we get him to the hospital. Luckily, we’re minutes away from Children’s.’
‘Is he going to be okay?’ Paige asked the question I was afraid to. He looked at Annie. He said, ‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
Only one of us could ride in the ambulance, and Paige said, ‘You, you go. I’ll get dressed and take Annie.’ I nodded, hugging Annie, and sat in the front. They wouldn’t let me ride in the back with Zach. They were still working on him.
The hospital was only five or six blocks away, and they made me stay in a waiting room while they sped him down the hallway. I sat, staring at a television, not seeing anything but Zach’s blue, bloated face. How long? They’d asked us. Minutes, we’d both said. Only minutes. I prayed the only prayer I could remember, which was
Please.
I prayed it over and over and over.
Please. Please, God. Please let him be okay. Please don’t take him. Please, please, God. Please.
I felt a hand on my head and I looked up to see Annie. I held her while she wailed, ‘I wasn’t watching him!’
I held her face in my hands. ‘Annie. This is not your fault. Do you understand me?’ Paige stood by the door in jeans and a sweatshirt, her hair dripping, her eyes frantic. In her right hand she loosely held a clipboard with registration papers; in her other hand she clutched Bubby, still wet from the puddle. I said, ‘They took him. I don’t know anything.’
She slumped down in a chair and said, ‘I thought . . . I locked . . . the gate.’
I said, ‘I know, I know. I shouldn’t have come over. I shouldn’t have bought him those stupid water wings. God. Or that stupid trike. He kept
telling
me he wanted to ride it in the water, to go see Joe . . .’ A doctor appeared. She was young, with short dark hair and stylish black glasses. She said, ‘Who’s the mother?’ We both stood up and mumbled words that came out, ‘I am, we are.’
She shook our hands, said, ‘I’m Dr Markowitz.’ She looked at Paige, then at me. She said, ‘It’s going to be a long night for you and for Zach. But he has a lot going for him. Early CPR, early EMS support. We call this first hour the Golden Hour, and his has been good. They got him in here fast. But his breathing rate is very low, even for a child’s. The ventilator will help. We’re checking blood gases, pupil response. We’ll be doing a CT scan to check his brain activity . . .’
‘He is going to make it . . . He is going to be okay?’ Only Paige’s last word rose in a question.
‘The next twenty-four to forty-eight hours will tell us a lot. We’ll finish up our tests, and then you can see him.’
Bernie came. She took Annie away from the hospital for a while, to get something to eat, and even offered to go to the apartment and take Callie for a walk. I thanked her and handed her the key. Annie went along willingly, burying her head in Aunt Bernie’s side as they slowly walked down the corridor.
When they let us in Zach’s room, we stopped before going up to him, trying to get our minds around the fact that the blue-tinged swollen little boy was really Zach; the fury of arms and legs of the paramedics working to keep him alive had been replaced by blue tubes that ran every which way from his nose and throat and arm and chest, and instead of the paramedics’ knowledgeable chants of numbers and letters, Zach’s vital signs now blipped and beeped on connected digital screens. Paige took hold of one of his hands and I took hold of the other. It occurred to me then, as we each gripped one of his hands, that we had both loved and lost the same man. We had both loved and lost the same children. We had both lost our footing, lost our way, lost ourselves. We had both touched down at the bottom, only to discover that the bottom was sinking sand. Hours before, we were heavy weights tied to Zach, dragging him under. He needed us to be his buoys.
I saw every action I had taken, every choice I had made, lined up like squares on a board game, as if I had led us all to this moment, this tragedy, as if I alone had rolled the dice that would move us to this day, with my decision to stop in Elbow for a sandwich. I could have kept going, could have ended up in Oregon, or Seattle, maybe in a cabin on one of the San Juan Islands, alone on a driftwood-strewn beach, making my life’s work the study of tide pools, or working in a fish hatchery in Alaska, far, far away from these people whose lives were now destroyed. Everything would have been set in a different motion: Joe would have welcomed Paige back with open arms, they would have stayed a family, she would have known about the store and helped him turn it around long ago, and he wouldn’t have gone out to Bodega Head to take pictures that morning because they would have been on a family vacation to Disneyland or a second home in Tahoe. I would not have made my feeble, stupid attempt to try to make Zach feel better about Batman and Robin, confusing him about the permanence of drowning. Zach would not have ridden his red trike into a pool in Las Vegas; he would still be playing with his action figures under the butterfly bush. I promised God I would do everything and anything, even leave Zach and Annie in Paige’s care for good, if it only meant that Zach could live.
Paige and I said little, just held on and willed Zach’s eyes to flutter open, to say
Mama
or
Mommy,
it didn’t matter which. It didn’t matter at all. Sometimes I would look up and she would look up, our gaze full of regret and fear and sadness and pain and good intentions and hope and mother love – all the things we shared, that had been there all along, that we hadn’t been able to see because we had seen each other only as a threat.
I called David from my cell phone in the waiting room, and he showed up late that afternoon, with Marcella and Joe Sr. My mom was on her way down from Seattle. There was no room in the small dedicated space for feuds or awkwardness, and we took turns embracing, not merely as if our lives depended on it, but because Zach’s truly did. Marcella held me, her tears raining on my neck while Joe Sr hugged Paige, and then I was hugging David, Joe Sr. We stood in a circle around Zach, and I once again thought of the redwoods, how they formed their family circles, how they reached for the sun together and cast their long shadows together. A nurse named Lester came in and looked at Zach, looked at the blips on the screens, wrote something down on the chart, and when Joe Sr asked him what the prognosis was he said, ‘We really don’t know. We’ll see how he is in the morning.’ He kept nodding his head, even after he spoke, looking at each of us. ‘Only family members are allowed in the ICU. You all family?’ We nodded. ‘Lucky kid.’ Then he said, ‘If you haven’t eaten yet, now’s a good time. He’s stabilized.’ Eating was the last thing I felt like doing, but Marcella and Joe Sr and David went to get coffees.
They opened the door to the rushing and crashing of carts and gurneys and doctors and nurses, of pages over the intercom and bright lights and the smell of distant Jell-O and macaroni and cheese. The door closed and the room fell quiet again, except for the hum and blip of the machines.
‘Paige.’ I looked across Zach. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. She didn’t speak. I closed my eyes and continued my silent pleading with God to save Zach. Finally she said, ‘I went about this the wrong way. It was
wrong
of me. I should have never done this right now, not right when Joe died. I had started talking to the lawyer before, and he said it was time to move, but I knew better. I’d already waited so long – for lots of reasons.’
She pulled a tissue out of her purse with her free hand, still holding Zach’s. We stood in more silence before she went on. ‘Joe didn’t respond, but let’s face it, I’d also needed that time. But then, when I was finally really truly ready, I got the call from Lizzie that Joe had drowned. I wanted Annie and Zach above all else – even above what was best for them. They always say kids are the ones hurt in custody battles. And now Zach is paying the biggest price.’
‘And Annie . . .’
‘Yes. But you’ve got what you need now. Zach’s hurt, and you have proof I’m a bad mother.’
‘Paige. Both of us were there. Both of us played a part in this.’ She tilted her head, raised her eyebrow, as if to size me up, to see if I meant it. An orderly opened the door, letting in the echoes from the hallway, then let it shut without coming in. I thought about keeping quiet, keeping her secret under cover. But I was done with secrets.
I forced myself to say, ‘When you were giving him CPR? I saw your back. I saw the scars.’ More silence. ‘Your mother . . . she was psychotic?’
Paige let out a long sigh. ‘Only after she had me. I was her first and only.’ She fell quiet while we listened to the machines; then she said, ‘My mother had a horrible labour that lasted days, and then they ended up doing a C-section. This is all from Aunt Bernie. She pieced it together for me. I was colic.’ She looked at her hands. ‘My father was a salesman and gone a lot, according to Bernie. When I was about three months old, my father . . . he told this all to Aunt Bernie. That he’d asked my mother to iron his shirts. He said she had been acting strange and he thought it would help her to have something to do. Besides, he explained, he really did need his shirts ironed.’ She stopped and looked at me. ‘Do you really want to hear this? It isn’t pretty.’
I told her yes, I did. I wanted to know.
She continued, ‘When he came home that night, every single one of his shirts was ironed and hanging in the closet.’ She stopped, looked up at me again, looked at Zach.
‘It’s okay, Paige.’
Her voice quivered in a whisper. I leaned in to hear. ‘My mother was also hanging in the closet. I was lying on my stomach in my bassinet, next to the ironing board, not able to scream or move. The iron was on the floor, still hot.’ Her eyes locked on mine for a moment before redirecting them back to studying her hands, which now lay flat on Zach. ‘The police report said, “The iron was covered in a black substance that was later found to be the victim’s skin.” The man who was my father took me to the hospital in the bassinet, afraid that if he touched me or held me, the pain would kill me. Then he left. He called Aunt Bernie. He told her everything. He cried. He said he was sorry. We never heard from him again.’
Tears were running again, down both our faces, snot running from our noses, and we each let out a little laugh – embarrassed, a bit shy – as Paige reached into her purse for more Kleenex and handed me several. ‘So you see. Joe did have a lot to be scared of.’
‘And you were scared.’
She nodded, and when she spoke, her voice squeaked, high and tight. ‘It wasn’t the same as my mother, but I was afraid it was . . . when I got sick. And then when he didn’t respond to my letters? I didn’t know how much he told the kids. I thought that maybe it was easier just to tell them I was dead. So I was afraid that I would scare them also.’
I nodded. ‘But still . . .’
‘Still, both he and I could have done better. ‘
‘And me. I could have done better.’ I reached into my bag and felt for the letters, then pressed them into her hand.
She saw what they were, then held them up to cover her face. And then we leaned over the bed, over Zach, and hugged, not tentatively or suspiciously, as we had that first night after the funeral, but leaning into each other, holding each other up, heaving out sobs, clinging to each other and Zach like we were clinging to a rock.
We finally pulled away to blow our noses. We each took long, stammering breaths. As I slipped my hand around his swollen fingers, I remembered him back on that morning when he and Annie and I were playing Ship, how he jumped onto the bed and pulled the sheet up, how he laughed so loudly, not knowing yet that his daddy had died. Now I imagined he was sitting on Joe’s lap somewhere in a parallel universe, and I silently asked Joe to please tell Zach it was time to come back to us, that I needed him, and that Paige needed him too.