Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

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!’

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.