Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

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.