Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

‘Well,’ I’d said, ‘I’ll man the video camera.’

‘Then we’ll both be observing life. Who’s going to live it?’

I thought about what he’d said and vowed to try to stay in the moment, safekeeping it all in my head and my heart. Remember this: Remember the way Annie keeps snapping her fingers. Remember Zach’s quiet fascination with his boogers. Remember the way he dances with Callie, wiggling his hips like some kind of Chippendales dancer. And where in the hell did he learn to do that! Whenever my mind lurched forward, to when they’d be gone, I had to nudge it back to the here and now.

That night Zach wet the bed. Zach hadn’t wet the bed since he was potty trained more than a year before. Annie said, ‘He does it at Mama’s house all the time. Even during the day! Pee-yew!’

Zach hung his head, sighed, and said, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

He was standing there in his Barney underwear; his torso looked longer and leaner than it had been just a month before. His haircut made him look older too. He was older. Joe’s death, and now this huge change, had aged all of us. And yet there was Zach, embarrassed, feeling like a baby. I told him, ‘Honey, it’s just an accident. Sometimes lots of changes can cause accidents like this. Don’t worry about it.’

Zach asked me, ‘When are we going home?’ At first I thought he meant to Paige’s house, and that lead-in-the-chest feeling hit me again, but then he said, ‘I miss Nonna and Nonno.’

I hugged him. ‘I don’t know, honey. Right now this is our home.’ He looked around the room and sighed again, and again he said,

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

We spent a lot of Saturday in the pool, with breaks for them to ride their bikes. Zach wanted to ride his trike around the pool patio, but I told him that would be breaking the rules, that the bikes were for outside the fenced area, not on the patio. Still, he swung his leg over the seat.

‘Zach. We’ll ride after our swim.’

‘But I won’t ride on the patio.’

‘Where, then?’

‘In the POOL. Like my very own SUBMARINE. ’ He laughed. ‘I’m going to drive it all the way to Daddy!’ I wanted to stop him right there, remind him, once again, that he couldn’t ride his trike to his Daddy, that Daddy didn’t live underwater. But Zach seemed so happy and carefree in the moment, I let it go. I figured, so some people swear heaven is above the clouds, but Zach has decided it’s underwater. At least the kid can think for himself.

‘Okay. Get off the trike, Captain. As in now.’

I knew Zach was just talking big. Annie told me he still wouldn’t even go in the pool at Paige’s, so I wanted to resume coaxing him back to his love of being in the water and work with him like I had those days at the river. I’d even bought him plastic water wings to wear on his arms to help him feel more secure. By the end of the day, he was jumping off the side, flapping his arms, then splashing into the water, where I would scoop him up in my embrace.

That afternoon, after they rode bikes, they wanted to do crafts, but all I’d brought from Elbow were crayons and colouring books, and they quickly tired of those. Annie suggested we make bookmarks from ironing crayon shavings in sheets of wax paper. But I didn’t even have wax paper, so we went down to the store, them riding their bikes alongside me. When we got back, I plugged in my travel iron, while Annie carved the crayons with the scissors and Zach made a mess of the shavings. Annie said, ‘We can’t do this at Mama’s.’

I asked, ‘Oh? Too messy?’

‘No. She doesn’t have an iron.’

‘Oh, I’m sure she does…’

‘No. She doesn’t.’

Paige could probably afford to send her laundry out. ‘Do you have a washer and dryer?’

‘Of course, silly.’ Annie cracked up, like that was the funniest question she’d ever heard.

On Sunday afternoon, they asked if they could take their bikes back to Paige’s. I hadn’t planned to let them, wanted those bikes to be special perks at my place, our thing. But I knew I might not see them for a while and that the way they were growing, they’d hardly be able to ride them before they outgrew them. Besides, playing that kind of game would punish only them, not Paige. I had to take the top off the Jeep in order to fit the bikes in the back. Zach asked if he could take his water wings too, and I told him sure, felt that jealous twinge, and let it pass.

I drove them back in a silent car. Then Annie said, ‘This all feels like we’re playing pretend.’

‘What do you mean, Banannie?’

‘You know. This place. Everything. It feels like playing makebelieve and we just keep playing it and playing it. I want both of you. And I want Uncle David and Gil and Nonna and Nonno and everyone.’

‘I want BOTH of you too,’ Zach said. ‘And everyone!’

‘I know it’s hard. We’ve been through a lot of change.’

Annie said, ‘Change sucks.’

‘Um…’ She was right. I thought about pointing out her word choice but didn’t. She couldn’t have said it better.

When we pulled onto Paige’s street and started up the hill, Zach started to whimper, saying, ‘I don’t wanna go without you to the mama lady,’ and by the time we parked in the driveway, he was screaming, ‘I wanna stay with my mommy!’ Annie kept uncharacteristically quiet, then tried to smooth back Zach’s hair.

‘Zachosaurus. It’s gonna be okay,’ she said.

Paige came out, her arms open wide. I did not want to hand him back over to her. How ’bout we just get back in the car, guys? How ’bout we drive away and never come back?

She didn’t try to take him, though. She rubbed his back and let him cry. Finally she said, ‘I know you had a good time, and you’ll have a good time with your mommy again, soon.’

Not soon enough.

As he laid his head on my shoulder, she kept stroking his back until he started to calm down, his stuttered breaths taking over for the sobs, until he was almost asleep, and he let her lift him from my arms. With his eyes closed, he pointed to the Jeep and said, ‘Bike.’

‘They wanted to keep their bikes with them. If that’s okay.’

‘Well, there’s really nowhere to ride them here with the hill, except a little bit of patio out back, but of course, that’s fine, that’s really nice of you. We can ride at the park. I’ll open the garage.’

I lifted the bikes out and watched the door slowly rise. Inside her immaculate garage was a Suburban — so soccer mom of her. I wheeled the bikes in and parked them along the back wall. The door to the house was closed. I wanted to walk in, to draw their baths, to wash their hair and have them tell me the story of their day, of our day.

I drove west towards the sunset, which looked like the gods had been throwing cantaloupes at each other, cracking them open across the sky. I pulled out my cell phone and called Paige.

‘So, do you really think I can see them again soon? I mean, you told Zach “soon”.’

‘You’ll have them after Christmas, which is just a few weeks away. And then in three months after that. I’m comfortable with the court’s decision.’

‘Three months is a long time.’

‘Try three years.’ She hung up.

I needed to find a way to talk to Paige. Every time we spoke, hostility cut through the line — hers, and mine, too. I pulled into my parking stall at the apartment and reached over and opened the glove compartment. I’d stuck Paige’s cards and letters to Annie and Zach in there.

How could I get through to her? I still had the cards she’d sent the kids. But she’d wonder why I hadn’t given these to the court with the others in the first place, and she wouldn’t believe I intended for the kids to someday open them themselves. She also knew I was desperate and would do anything to see the kids. And she still believed I’d known about all the letters from the beginning. This was clearly my one and only chance to make it better between us, and I did not want to blow it.