Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

‘He is going to make it… He is going to be okay?’ Only Paige’s last word rose in a question.

‘The next twenty-four to forty-eight hours will tell us a lot. We’ll finish up our tests, and then you can see him.’

Bernie came. She took Annie away from the hospital for a while, to get something to eat, and even offered to go to the apartment and take Callie for a walk. I thanked her and handed her the key. Annie went along willingly, burying her head in Aunt Bernie’s side as they slowly walked down the corridor.

When they let us in Zach’s room, we stopped before going up to him, trying to get our minds around the fact that the blue-tinged swollen little boy was really Zach; the fury of arms and legs of the paramedics working to keep him alive had been replaced by blue tubes that ran every which way from his nose and throat and arm and chest, and instead of the paramedics’ knowledgeable chants of numbers and letters, Zach’s vital signs now blipped and beeped on connected digital screens. Paige took hold of one of his hands and I took hold of the other. It occurred to me then, as we each gripped one of his hands, that we had both loved and lost the same man. We had both loved and lost the same children. We had both lost our footing, lost our way, lost ourselves. We had both touched down at the bottom, only to discover that the bottom was sinking sand. Hours before, we were heavy weights tied to Zach, dragging him under. He needed us to be his buoys.

I saw every action I had taken, every choice I had made, lined up like squares on a board game, as if I had led us all to this moment, this tragedy, as if I alone had rolled the dice that would move us to this day, with my decision to stop in Elbow for a sandwich. I could have kept going, could have ended up in Oregon, or Seattle, maybe in a cabin on one of the San Juan Islands, alone on a driftwood-strewn beach, making my life’s work the study of tide pools, or working in a fish hatchery in Alaska, far, far away from these people whose lives were now destroyed. Everything would have been set in a different motion: Joe would have welcomed Paige back with open arms, they would have stayed a family, she would have known about the store and helped him turn it around long ago, and he wouldn’t have gone out to Bodega Head to take pictures that morning because they would have been on a family vacation to Disneyland or a second home in Tahoe. I would not have made my feeble, stupid attempt to try to make Zach feel better about Batman and Robin, confusing him about the permanence of drowning. Zach would not have ridden his red trike into a pool in Las Vegas; he would still be playing with his action figures under the butterfly bush. I promised God I would do everything and anything, even leave Zach and Annie in Paige’s care for good, if it only meant that Zach could live.

Paige and I said little, just held on and willed Zach’s eyes to flutter open, to say Mama or Mommy, it didn’t matter which. It didn’t matter at all. Sometimes I would look up and she would look up, our gaze full of regret and fear and sadness and pain and good intentions and hope and mother love — all the things we shared, that had been there all along, that we hadn’t been able to see because we had seen each other only as a threat.

I called David from my cell phone in the waiting room, and he showed up late that afternoon, with Marcella and Joe Sr. My mom was on her way down from Seattle. There was no room in the small dedicated space for feuds or awkwardness, and we took turns embracing, not merely as if our lives depended on it, but because Zach’s truly did. Marcella held me, her tears raining on my neck while Joe Sr hugged Paige, and then I was hugging David, Joe Sr. We stood in a circle around Zach, and I once again thought of the redwoods, how they formed their family circles, how they reached for the sun together and cast their long shadows together. A nurse named Lester came in and looked at Zach, looked at the blips on the screens, wrote something down on the chart, and when Joe Sr asked him what the prognosis was he said, ‘We really don’t know. We’ll see how he is in the morning.’ He kept nodding his head, even after he spoke, looking at each of us. ‘Only family members are allowed in the ICU. You all family?’ We nodded. ‘Lucky kid.’ Then he said, ‘If you haven’t eaten yet, now’s a good time. He’s stabilized.’ Eating was the last thing I felt like doing, but Marcella and Joe Sr and David went to get coffees.

They opened the door to the rushing and crashing of carts and gurneys and doctors and nurses, of pages over the intercom and bright lights and the smell of distant Jell-O and macaroni and cheese. The door closed and the room fell quiet again, except for the hum and blip of the machines.

‘Paige.’ I looked across Zach. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘No.’ She shook her head. She didn’t speak. I closed my eyes and continued my silent pleading with God to save Zach. Finally she said, ‘I went about this the wrong way. It was wrong of me. I should have never done this right now, not right when Joe died. I had started talking to the lawyer before, and he said it was time to move, but I knew better. I’d already waited so long — for lots of reasons.’

She pulled a tissue out of her purse with her free hand, still holding Zach’s. We stood in more silence before she went on. ‘Joe didn’t respond, but let’s face it, I’d also needed that time. But then, when I was finally really truly ready, I got the call from Lizzie that Joe had drowned. I wanted Annie and Zach above all else — even above what was best for them. They always say kids are the ones hurt in custody battles. And now Zach is paying the biggest price.’

‘And Annie…’

‘Yes. But you’ve got what you need now. Zach’s hurt, and you have proof I’m a bad mother.’

‘Paige. Both of us were there. Both of us played a part in this.’ She tilted her head, raised her eyebrow, as if to size me up, to see if I meant it. An orderly opened the door, letting in the echoes from the hallway, then let it shut without coming in. I thought about keeping quiet, keeping her secret under cover. But I was done with secrets.

I forced myself to say, ‘When you were giving him CPR? I saw your back. I saw the scars.’ More silence. ‘Your mother… she was psychotic?’

Paige let out a long sigh. ‘Only after she had me. I was her first and only.’ She fell quiet while we listened to the machines; then she said, ‘My mother had a horrible labour that lasted days, and then they ended up doing a C-section. This is all from Aunt Bernie. She pieced it together for me. I was colic.’ She looked at her hands. ‘My father was a salesman and gone a lot, according to Bernie. When I was about three months old, my father… he told this all to Aunt Bernie. That he’d asked my mother to iron his shirts. He said she had been acting strange and he thought it would help her to have something to do. Besides, he explained, he really did need his shirts ironed.’ She stopped and looked at me. ‘Do you really want to hear this? It isn’t pretty.’

I told her yes, I did. I wanted to know.

She continued, ‘When he came home that night, every single one of his shirts was ironed and hanging in the closet.’ She stopped, looked up at me again, looked at Zach.

‘It’s okay, Paige.’

Her voice quivered in a whisper. I leaned in to hear. ‘My mother was also hanging in the closet. I was lying on my stomach in my bassinet, next to the ironing board, not able to scream or move. The iron was on the floor, still hot.’ Her eyes locked on mine for a moment before redirecting them back to studying her hands, which now lay flat on Zach. ‘The police report said, “The iron was covered in a black substance that was later found to be the victim’s skin.” The man who was my father took me to the hospital in the bassinet, afraid that if he touched me or held me, the pain would kill me. Then he left. He called Aunt Bernie. He told her everything. He cried. He said he was sorry. We never heard from him again.’