Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

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…’