Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

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.’