by Mark Gunther
12.
DANNY’S GRIEF WAS becoming indiscernible to her. Maybe hers left no room to see his. Back at work since January, his daily habits had fully reasserted themselves—setting the coffeepot, reading the paper in the morning, stopping off at the gym after work three times a week, reading business magazines and law journals at night. They orbited together at dinnertime, planning Jake’s next day. Danny would note the plan in his calendar. If Joy had to do something out of the usual routine, she would often receive a reminder call the next day from his secretary.
At least I still have my husband. There he was, in her bed. She could see the hair on the back of his neck growing out below the sharp line of his last haircut. Before, she would have pointed that out to him; now she wondered why she ever had thought that merited her attention. He never used to worry about her, before, or if he did it was well masked, sounding more like a companionable comment than a diagnostic inquiry. Now he kept asking her and she kept telling him it was okay, whatever it was that needed to be okay. But nothing was really going to be okay, so it was okay to stop listening.
She had always listened. Her presence had been reassuring to him, a touchstone; his now permanently grief-stricken wife wasn’t. She lightly caressed his shoulder. He jerked away from her touch, hand rising to bat hers away as if it were a stray mosquito. She sighed. She had no tears for this, their separation. It was the slightest thing.
Oh, Danny! The beautiful children we once were! Our plan, my plan, to build a life together!
She had challenged him, after he had proposed and they had moved in together, to map it out on big sheets of paper tacked to the walls of their Berkeley studio apartment: career goals, income goals, when to have two kids, saving for college, for retirement, making sure it all fit, no barriers in the way of their gloriously imagined future. Such happiness! So well earned! The living of her daughter was urgently entwined in all those plans, and her death collapsed them all.
On their first weekend away together, Danny took her to a pretty little place in Carmel, a room on the top floor with a private patio open to sky and sea. She already was in love with him, but that first night shocked her. He took her for drinks and dinner, but she wanted only touch. She barely made it back to the room with her clothes on, flooded with a blind passion that obliterated time and caution, body and soul completely exposed. Abandoning herself like that was scary, in retrospect. But exquisite. She had wanted him—them—and nothing else.
But now they were something else.
Their bed was big and they were using it all. Some nights the middle was untouched, mutely denying the hot, mobile sex that used to happen there. She thought about the photo album hidden in her dresser. “Our Kama Sutra,” Danny had called it, red-faced and stammering after she teased the fantasy out of him at a beachside restaurant the first night of their tenth anniversary trip to Hawaii. “Don’t get your hopes up,” she said, but he had a new digital camera. He was taking a lot of pictures and they were making a lot of love, and before the week was out Danny got his wish.
The resort photographer had found them twice, and two of his gloriously tropical shots usually sat on her dresser. In the first she was nestled against Danny’s chest on the beach, their feet in the water, her right arm up around his neck, his right arm draped casually over her hip, hand spread very low on her belly, the fingers of their left hands entwined at her side, wearing the smallest bikini she had ever owned. The second was in the evening, Danny in his finest alohawear, she on his arm, her short white sundress cut low in the front and back, contrasting vividly with her tanned skin; she had been naked under the dress.
When she took the photos off the dresser and put them in the drawer with the book she told him it would just be for a while. Danny had groused, but hadn’t really objected. She knew it must have upset him. He had told her over and over again that he had never felt as rich as he had that day. He had a small print of the beach photo on his desk, facing him. She was embarrassed that his visitors might see her practically naked, but she liked being his all the same. Now her marriage was reshaped by something untouchable. They shared its presence, this untouchable knowledge, binding them together and pushing them apart.
Joy got out of bed. She nodded at the shadow woman in the bathroom mirror, barely visible in the darkened room. Mostly the world looked like this to her. She put on her fleece and left the bedroom. Checked on Jake. His breathing was an unexpected relief each morning. She didn’t know how long she still would have him—she’d only been a mother for ten years, and half of her children already were dead. She watched him for a while. Jenny’s door was closed. Her hand moved to the doorknob; the block J rattled softly. She promised herself that she could go in later.
The pilgrimages had started when Danny went back to work and Jake went back to school. It was something very private. She tried not to do it every day, but some days she did it twice. Like a junkie. Joy would wait until her boys were away, until the beds were made and dishes washed. She approached Jenny’s door. She opened it and stepped inside. First, she checked that the bed was made, pillows fluffed, things still neatly arranged on the shelves. She vacuumed and dusted and washed the window. Then she would lie flat on her back on the floor, arms and legs spread, trying to remember. Some days she would crawl into Jenny’s closet or open a drawer and dump the clothes into a pile to rummage around for a smell or a taste, but everything was clean, waiting for that preteen girl who would never come home.
So she played. She sat on Jenny’s bed and talked with Jenny’s dolls. They had a tea party. She sat at Jenny’s desk. She leafed through Jenny’s school art. She sat on the floor by the bookcase and read Jenny’s books. She added a coin to Jenny’s penny collection. Played solitaire with Jenny’s favorite cards. Made a bracelet with Jenny’s bead set. It helped, for a while, but she could never really hold it, and the boys couldn’t know—it was hers.
She went downstairs and sat in the den, staring at the row of unopened photo albums, comforter wrapped around her, her left hand on Jenny’s table from Handcrafts Day Camp summer before last. How proud Jenny was to bring it home, cleverly assembled and sanded smooth. Later that summer Joy and Jenny had painted the table on the back deck outside Joy’s office. Jenny wanted to paint it like a rainbow. Although Joy had thought she’d end up with a kaleidoscope, Jenny’s focus was impeccable, painting thin stripes up the legs, carefully keeping the colors in order. Joy cleaned the brushes between colors, smiling at the paint dripping on Jenny’s shoes, collecting under her fingernails and coloring the dangling strands of her curly black hair.
One day Joy found the baseball Danny had muscled up to catch at Jenny’s first Giants game. She had let it sit on the counter for a few days. Danny moved it the first day, but Joy put it back and he let it be. A few days later, she brought the table down from Jenny’s room. She first put it in a corner of the den often hidden by the door, but the table found its way to a coveted spot by the couch. She put the ball on it and then moved the little pink double picture frame with tiny white flowers on the corners, displaying a sweet picture of the four of them and a sweeter one of Jenny holding Jake as a baby. Danny called it their shrine and he added other things that once were Jenny’s: her first pair of tap shoes, perfectly polished; two of her favorite candles, one in the shape of a blue globe, decorated with stars, and the other a tall, braided Havdalah candle from her grandmother; a Chinese dragon backscratcher she had pleaded for on Grant Street one day, because her back itched; a cheap ballpoint pen with four colors that, at three, she thought was just amazing. The chai necklace she had been wearing when she died.
Joy was picking these things up and putting them down when she heard Danny padding down the stairs, barefoot. The moment was reassuring. She hoped she wouldn’t be forced to leave him and become a crazy old lady. He came into the den with a cup of coffee and she showed him her empty hands. He gave her the cup, then disappeared back into the kitchen, returning with a second cup and the New York Times. As he
sat their eyes met.
“Thanks,” she said.
They took sips.
“How long have you been up?” he asked.
“Not too long. It was just getting light when I came downstairs.”
“Been here the whole time?”
“Here and there.”
They took a couple more sips.
“Watched Jake breathe for a while. That was good,” she said.
He nodded. “We’ve been lucky with him so far.”
They were quiet. Danny opened the paper.
The clouds of the Other World blew up between them and she watched the paper attenuate; his face appeared beyond the type which floated unattached, suspended between them, where she knew the rest of the paper must be. X-ray vision, she thought. Okay. At the atomic level things have more space than substance, so the more of me that’s in the Other World the less of me is here and so I can see through the spaces. She looked down at her coffee cup, through the liquid, through the bottom of the cup, through the surface of the table beyond its legs, her attention sucked into the vast roiling chasm that spread out below.
Danny coughed, and the paper firmed up again as she remembered that he was reading it. His presence was a place to plant her foot in this world. What is in his mind? He went to the junkyard and cleaned out the car. The car must have been filled with Jenny’s blood. How can he live with that? Joy realized she never had really asked him about that part. Probably she should, but he could bear it, her Danny. He could.
“Danny.”
He looked at her over the paper.
“Something really strange has been going on. I feel like half of me is living somewhere else.”
“You don’t say.”
She soldiered on. “Not like that. Much more. Please listen.”
He apologized and put the paper down. She told him everything about the vision she’d had on the path, how another world had opened up, a real one, as if she were in both places at once, and how it felt like Jenny might be there. She told him how often it appeared to her, like on Thanksgiving, and how it felt like the universal war between good and evil was being fought in her chest. She told him what happened after she left the museum the day of the field trip and about talking to the rabbi and about maybe becoming a prophet or a seer or a seeker or a crazy old lady and about how it felt like a calling and a secret and a threat. She told him about having X-ray vision and having seen his face right through the newspaper.
“So do I go look for Jenny?” She didn’t like what she was seeing in Danny’s face.
He took a deep breath. “Do you really think you could see her again?”
“Feels like it.”
“But you can’t, Joy.”
“I don’t know that. It wants me.”
“I want you. Who wins?”
“It’s not like that. Something different.”
“Joy, she’s gone.”
“Rabbi took me seriously. It seems so real to me,” she said.
“That’s crazy.” He stood up and paced the room. “I don’t like this at all.”
“It’s not about you, Danny.”
He stopped and studied her.
He’s getting mad. I shouldn’t have said anything.
“It is about me, Joy. If it is the world of the dead, to go there you’d have to be dead. I want you alive.”
She stayed quiet. Would I have to be dead? How could he understand? The feeling was hers still, even after she told him. Her sword hand twitched.
“It feels real,” she said, which now sounded kind of lame.
Danny sat. He retrieved the paper that had fallen off his lap and very deliberately folded it. He set it on top of the other sections on the ottoman and straightened the pile. Then he sat up straight in his chair and clasped his hands in his lap.
“It might feel real, Joy, but it’s not.”
“I don’t know that.” Truculent.
“Shit,” he said.
Danny found the Times magazine, flipping to a particular page. He took a pencil out of the coffee table drawer. He laid both in her lap.
“Think about something else, please. Here. Do the crossword.”
“The Saturday one is too hard.”
“It’s Sunday today,” he said.
“Whatever. It’s too big.”
He turned back to the paper.
“Daddy!” Jake called from upstairs.
“That’s your son, Joy. Remember him?”
That hurts.
Danny came to her. He put his hand on her shoulders: Gently. Lovingly.
“We both are crazy now. I can’t be a part of your vision. I don’t like that. Please stay with us. Why don’t you go make breakfast?”
She stood and turned to him. “Stop patronizing me. I know what’s next.”
“Do you? I don’t have a clue.” He spun away on his heel. “Leave me a note if you go on your vision quest, okay? I’ll have to arrange babysitting.” He disappeared upstairs.
Maybe I should go so he would have to deal with it. Serve him right. Maybe he’s just biding his time until someone else comes along. Maybe I should do him a favor and follow the vision just so he can be free of me.
Instead she made oatmeal with raisins. Danny and Jake were upstairs for a long time before they came down, but when they did the oatmeal still tasted good even though she had to reheat it. When she went to hold Danny’s hand, it was rigid and clammy. I made that, she thought.
After breakfast, Danny cleaned up and she walked Jake up the block to Bobby’s house. When she got back Danny met her at the door. He still was holding a dishtowel.
“This other world of yours? I’m frightened. I don’t trust it at all,” he said. “I feel like I have to keep the family from exploding when all I really should have to worry about is at the office.”
“Please don’t be mad, Danny. I can’t help what I’m thinking.”
“We have a living child too.”
“Don’t say that. I’m putting my time in with him.”
“You can’t just punch the clock,” he said.
“That’s not what I’m doing.” But if it looked like that to Danny, maybe it was and that’s all she was going to be able to do for her son. “I love him, Danny.” A plea.
“Am I going to lose you to this?” he said.
“Not unless you throw me out. But I didn’t choose this. I’m sorry if it hurts you.”
He shook his head impatiently. “Your questions have no answers, Joy. Rabbi said that too. Where is she? Why did she die? Did we do it? They don’t help.”
“My daughter died eight weeks ago and this is the thing that’s happening now. Please deal with me.”
“That’s all you’ll let me do anyway.”
“That was really unfair.” She turned and walked down the hall into the kitchen. He followed. He didn’t apologize, but the petulance was gone from his voice.
“When my grandpa died I remember seeing my dad through the door of his bedroom, sitting on the bed with his head in his hands. That became what grief looks like to me. But it doesn’t work for me, putting my head in my hands. It doesn’t work for me to do what you’re doing, whatever it is. I don’t see how it isn’t just going to be there, every day for the rest of my life. It’s going to be a lot harder to manage if you go south on me.”
Manage. That’s it?
She had nothing more to say. She started to turn away but he pulled her to him, wrapping her up with both arms. It was real, and she felt it, but she was stiff and he let her go.
It’s going to be really, really hard, she thought, to get through this together.
13.
THE FIRST DAY Joy went back to the gym it was 10:30 in the morning. The time was chosen carefully—she’d be very unlikely to see anyone she knew. In the deserted spinning studio, she adjusted a bike and got on it. Memory haltingly returned to her legs, from under the layers, but the yearning of her long-unused muscles overtook any resistance and she surged power into the peda
ls. Sweat was soon pouring off her. She rode straight tempo until her lungs exploded. She sat up, legs tingling, cooing down as her breath returned to normal, she thought that she really, really wanted to go riding.
Tomorrow. Tell Danny. I’ll be safe.
Outside the studio she filled her bottle and leaned on the wall, stretching her legs. But then a hand clasped her shoulder and some woman’s husband trapped her between the wall and the drinking fountain.
“Hi, Joy, how are you doing?”
His voice resonated with the low notes of a passing engine. He wrapped his arms around her for just a bit too long, giving her a paternal pat on the back and a little too much of a rub.
John’s son Max was in Jake’s class at school. “We’re okay, we’re managing.”
“I can’t imagine what it’s like.”
She wanted to slap him. Instead she said, softly, “It’s fortunate you don’t have to.”
He blundered on. “I’m glad to see you,” he said. “When my aunt lost her father she was in bed for weeks. It’s brave of you just to be here.”
John waited briefly for the thank you that was not forthcoming. He tried again.
“Jake seems to be doing well. I was on a field trip last week; he was involved, asking questions, talking to Max.”
“He’s a brave boy. Pretty resilient.”
There was a silence.
He said, “We made you a dinner one night.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry we couldn’t respond separately to everyone,” Joy said.
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean . . . We’d love to have you over when the time is right.”
She was getting anxious, which must have come out in her voice when she said, “Okay, that could be nice.”
A welcome musical voice and bright flash of orange and yellow leotard caught her attention. “Namaste, Joy. Nice to see you back.”
