The Far End of Happy

by Kathryn Craft

  “Wow.” Ronnie took in the fresh sheetrock on the peaked ceiling, the exposed beams. “Why don’t you use this as your bedroom?”

  “I finished this for Fay, but she still couldn’t see the potential in the house.” Again, that impish smile. “I thought she could hang upside down from the beams.”

  The room offered an impressive endorsement of Jeff’s handiwork. Into the low vertical walls on one side, he’d inserted and painted plywood cupboards and cubbies; on the other side, he’d built in the drawers and shelves of a bedroom suite. He had even crafted a clever hinged hamper and a closet that fit beneath the eaves.

  “So why was there tar on the floor?”

  “I keep wondering that myself. The place had stood empty for a while. Maybe because there was only plastic over the window holes when I bought it?”

  “How on earth did you remove it?”

  “What worked best was a blow-dryer. Once the tar was warm, I could scrape it off.”

  “That sounds like so much work.”

  “It did take a while,” he said. He pointed to a few places where tar still streaked the wood, which Ronnie would have taken for natural markings.

  Ronnie squatted by one of the end windows and looked out over the rolling landscape. Jeff explained that most of the land she could see belonged to his parents, whose house was beyond view on the side of the next hill.

  “You told me it’s been what, six or seven years since your wife left?” Ronnie said, standing. “Not that the place doesn’t have a certain…charm, but if you’re capable of doing work like this, why didn’t you keep going?”

  Jeff pulled Ronnie into one of his soul-enveloping hugs and whispered, “I was waiting to find the person I’d be doing it for. Turns out I may have known her for quite some time.”

  A shopping excursion that day left each of them proud new owners: he of a matching bed set, she of a little calico kitten Jeff bought her at the pet shop. Later, she tucked the kitten, Cupcake, into the collar of her shirt. She and Jeff lay back on the hammock in the yard, side by side, looking up at the stars through the branches above.

  “You think you’ll stay in bartending?” Ronnie said. “No other plans?”

  “I’d like to start a business someday,” Jeff said. “I love tools. Maybe I’ll open a rental shop.”

  “Or maybe we should combine our skills and open a restaurant,” Ronnie said.

  “There’s nothing better than an exquisite meal and fine wine.” Jeff pulled her into a deep kiss. “Except maybe this.”

  “You do know how to keep a customer happy,” she said, smiling.

  “Or maybe we don’t need jobs at all,” Jeff said. “We could hole up here and homestead. Milk goats, chop wood, raise food, avoid the tax man.” Ronnie laughed. He kissed her again and touched her on the end of her nose. “I feel like I could do anything with you by my side.”

  “This dreaming is fun, but I got a journalism degree for a reason,” Ronnie said, although while looking into Jeff’s eyes, and with his fingers tracing her ribs, that reason would not fully form. “Those jobs are drying up. I won’t find one near here. I have applications out in New York City I’m still waiting to hear about, and one in Boston that sounds promising.”

  Jeff dug his foot into the ground to stop their swinging. “You do?”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, reaching into her shirt to pet Cupcake. “Kitty cats can live in New York.”

  “But what about the horse?”

  “I do believe they have laws about apartment horses—”

  “Ronnie, I’m serious.” He sat up; his voice grew urgent. “Please. Don’t take those jobs. Let me call the Inquirer tomorrow. We’ll find you something you can commute to.”

  He sounded serious all right, almost desperate. “Jeff, we’ve only been dating a few months.”

  “But I adore you, and I can’t just up and leave.” Jeff looked around. “This is my home. Where I belong.”

  How easy for him, to know where he belonged. Tagging along through her mother’s marriages hadn’t instilled the same confidence in Ronnie.

  The light from the front porch light glinted off Jeff’s face. When Ronnie touched it, her fingers came away damp. “Jeff, are you crying?”

  “I love you, Ronnie. I love you and I can’t imagine my life without you. Stay here. Marry me. We’ll renovate the house however you want it, and we’ll create a little piece of heaven here. Together.”

  Ronnie had never before inspired anyone’s tears. She’d never even seen her own distractible mother cry. She hadn’t realized how very much she mattered to Jeff. But it had taken all of a moment for her youthful crush to blaze again the night her mother took her to the hotel to see him. And he was so settled, with a home and a life she could slip right into.

  Maybe Jeff was right. Maybe this was exactly where she belonged.

  janet

  Janet was tired of accepting fate and wanted to rail against it. Determined to punish something, she slapped the table.

  “If she hadn’t committed him last month,” she said, tipping her head toward Ronnie, “none of this would be happening. Now my son is surrounded by police. Look at all the trouble she caused.”

  Her tirade was cut short when a uniformed police officer came into the room. They all watched as he sat at another table to fill out paperwork.

  “We don’t act based on past behavior, Mrs. Farnham,” Corporal McNichol said. “This is about what’s happening today.”

  “Jeff’s upset,” Janet said. “Our families are so close, and Ronnie wants to divorce him. He’s beside himself, that’s all.”

  “I understand that you love your son and feel protective of him,” Corporal McNichol said. “But do you see the officer at the table over there? The man who just walked in? He’s currently charging your son with reckless endangerment and aggravated assault for turning his weapon on the police. This is a serious matter.”

  “I’ve heard enough,” Janet said, rising.

  “Don’t you want him to get the help he needs?” Ronnie said.

  “Listen,” Corporal McNichol said. “We understand that there are extenuating circumstances. And Jeff has no criminal record. The main reason we’re charging him is to force him into rehab. If he doesn’t agree to it, he’ll face jail time.”

  Janet looked down at the floor around her chair, as if to collect her things, but she had nothing other than the purse already hanging from her arm.

  The corporal added something to her notes. If she were writing about Jeff, or her, Janet wouldn’t know—the notes were either in shorthand, a foreign language, or chicken scratch worse than Jeff’s.

  “So this commitment—does Jeff have a history of mental illness?”

  “No,” Janet said. She looked straight at Corporal McNichol, wondering whether Ronnie or Beverly would challenge her.

  “Does he take medication?”

  Janet had finally felt she had this interview under control. It bothered her that she had to look to Ronnie for the answer to this question.

  Ronnie shook her head. “His psychiatrist prescribed detox. But Jeff wouldn’t go.”

  “He’s worked at that hotel for twenty years,” Janet said, directing her comment to Ronnie. “These days, that’s as loyal as they come. Why would you go around calling him an alcoholic?”

  “Because it’s the truth. Someone has to face this problem.”

  Oh, Janet saw the problem all right. Her son had no way to decompress from all his wife’s nagging.

  “The only alcoholic I ever knew was a homeless person who’d sleep in the gutters near campus when I was in college,” Janet said. “Jeff’s not like that. He’s made a good home for you and the boys.”

  “You’ve met more alcoholics than you know, Mrs. Farnham,” Corporal McNichol said. “Probably a third of the people in our country suffer from alc
ohol disorders.”

  “I didn’t want to believe it was all that bad either,” Ronnie said, softening. “I thought we were having interpersonal problems. An inability to communicate. But then he had a really hard time with the changes at the hotel, and there were health problems, and—”

  “Goodness, Ronnie, everyone strains their back from time to time,” Janet said. “Let it go.”

  “You must have noticed he’s lost weight. He was 165 when we married, and when we went to the doctor about his back, he weighed 135. And the periodontal disease—”

  “What’s that?”

  “He goes to bed every night with booze on his breath. He’s in danger of losing his teeth.” The potential loss of that adorable gap-toothed smile to a set of perfect dentures still threatened her composure. “But he won’t use the rinse or have the recommended procedure or even brush his teeth before he goes to bed.”

  “I suppose you think I never taught him to brush his teeth.”

  “Jeff’s a grown man, Janet. I’m talking about him, not you. And I understand you cut a check so you know all too well about the debt. But I took a look around the farm. You might be surprised at what I found.”

  “You’d find a beautiful house he fixed up for you,” Janet said. “Horses he keeps for you and the boys. A farm store he built so you two could work side by side. A cornfield for the maze you dreamed up that’s half on my land.”

  “That’s what I’d always seen too,” Ronnie said. “Until I started digging, and found items that were a lot more menacing.”

  “Like what?” Janet said.

  “He’d been stockpiling booze.”

  Ronnie paused dramatically, as if it might come as a shock to Janet that a bartender would keep a supply of liquor. Janet refused to reward her little performance with a show of emotion.

  That’s when Ronnie added, “And guns.”

  Janet bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep her pain from showing.

  ronnie

  Since Ronnie didn’t get the boys home until four in the morning after Jeff’s commitment, she let them sleep in. She rose with the sun, reached under the guest room bed to pull out her journal, and opened to a fresh page. Too tired to write out a narrative of last night’s suicide scare, she resorted to a list of bullets.

  • I feel as powerless divorcing Jeff as I did in my marriage.

  • I do not want to watch what’s happening to him.

  • I don’t think it helps that I’ve been picking up Jeff’s slack.

  • But I do not want to become a nag.

  • I do not want to let Jeff manipulate me into staying married.

  • I don’t want to manipulate Jeff either. But.

  • I worry for the boys.

  Ronnie shoved the journal under the bed, woke the boys, and drove them to school late.

  She then went on a mission to rid the farm of booze.

  When she and Jeff started dating, they were both working in restaurants, and drinking after work was typical. It was the single life. Ronnie left that behind once they started a family, but Jeff never did. He drank habitually, even during one intestinal flu. When Ronnie questioned this behavior, he’d countered with a smile and a quip: “The alcohol kills the germs.” And he’d kicked the bug, so Ronnie wasn’t overly concerned. It wasn’t like he ever got drunk. While she was growing up, her mother was also a fan of happy hour, sipping a cocktail as she made dinner, and often kissed Ronnie good night with the same sweet vermouth on her lips. To Ronnie, it was the taste of love.

  Plus, Ronnie understood that Jeff wanted a variety of bottles on hand for entertaining. Only now did she realize how long it had been since they’d entertained. Or since she’d had any of the scotch from the bottle Jeff kept on hand just for her.

  Four at a time, Ronnie took more than a dozen liquor bottles off the kitchen counter and poured the contents down the drain, following suit with the Courvoisier, Amaretto, Bénédictine, and other after-dinner drinks Jeff kept in a living room cabinet. It dawned on her that this might not be the healthiest thing for their cesspool. As it leached into the soil, would the alcohol kill the grass, just as it was killing Jeff?

  The worst part was that this was not all the booze.

  She grabbed the barn keys from one of the hooks on the antique rack and went out to where Jeff kept the rest of his stash.

  Jeff had explained that when people contracted with the hotel for a wedding, they were charged for complete bottles of opened liquor; anything remaining in those bottles could not be resold at the front bar. Until the booze was claimed, the opened bottles were held in a special closet.

  Since few newlyweds had returned for it over the years, Jeff had helped himself to that alcohol. Ronnie knew they had a couple boxes of clear booze in half-gallon containers that Jeff had marked with a V for vodka or G for gin. They’d tapped the supply before, for summer picnics. In an attempt to be thorough, Ronnie headed up to the barn to see if any remained.

  Poking around in the clean storage room as well as two dirtier grain rooms she didn’t frequent, she couldn’t believe how much booze Jeff had amassed. She found box after box full of intact bottles and dozens of half-gallon containers.

  No way could Ronnie imagine putting all of that down the drain. Why try? Even if she did get rid of it all, Jeff could easily replace it.

  Yet she had the need to make a statement, and the warm September day inspired an idea. She loaded boxes of bottles into her garden cart, wheeled it out to the driveway, and dribbled the booze over the warm gravel to evaporate.

  By the time she was done, Ronnie was sticky from the booze, coated with dust from the boxes, and dizzy from the scent of a six-hundred-square-foot evaporating cocktail. She imagined desperate, addicted souls from miles around clawing their way up the drive to lick its stones.

  Her hands were jittery; she desperately needed sleep. But the boys would be home in ninety minutes, and she still had one more change she was determined to enact. One that made her feel like a thief.

  Ronnie searched the farm for Jeff’s guns.

  She started in the attic crawl space, where she knew Jeff stowed his handguns. For a dozen years, those guns had created a knot of tension in her home. Yes, they were in a locked gun cabinet; yes, the ammunition was stored separately; and yes, they were hard to see or reach, tucked as they were behind Christmas wrapping paper and luggage. But if Jeff didn’t ever plan to use the guns, why did he own them? Andrew and Will slept in the attic, separated from the weapons’ violent potential by only a sheet of drywall and a transparent acrylic pane that could be unlocked with a key the size of Ronnie’s thumbnail.

  On her hands and knees, she pulled luggage and wrapping paper and old college textbooks out of the crawl space, went into its farthest reaches, and inched the gun case toward her. She returned the other items to where she found them and opened the little drawer in the bottom of the case where Jeff kept the key.

  Empty.

  Maybe she remembered wrong. She went down to the first floor, dragged a kitchen chair over to the coat closet, and felt around on the highest shelf, where Jeff stored the ammunition. She pulled down box after box, looking inside, but found nothing but bullets and shotgun shells of various sizes.

  Where would he have put that key?

  Then again, the last one to use it may have been Ronnie.

  Back before the boys were born, Ronnie had found one of her hens ambling around the chicken pen with her innards dragging along the droppings-encrusted floor.

  While she and Jeff loved to say they lived on a farm, neither of them had the fortitude required of livestock farmers. They were “farm pet owners”; not one of their chickens was headed to the stew pot. After Ronnie’s attempts to wash and reinsert the oviduct per Internet instructions resulted in no permanent resolution, the hen was facing an almost hopeless situation inviting infection an
d a painful death.

  Ronnie was practical enough to know you don’t take a chicken to the vet and pay to have it euthanized. She tried to imagine Miss Scarlett’s silky neck feathers beneath her fingertips—the twist and the snap—and could not. When it came to animals, Jeff was neither the doctoring nor the killing sort. He would be no help.

  As suitable options dwindled, Ronnie remembered the gun Jeff had insisted on loading to protect them from a dangerous and presumably armed prisoner who had escaped from Graterford Prison, the maximum-security facility some twenty miles away. Jeff had showed Ronnie how to load and shoot a small .22-caliber revolver, about the size of a starter pistol, to keep by their bed.

  Because Ronnie would not use a gun in a way that might result in a man’s death, after a long tug of wills, he agreed to load it with something other than bullets.

  He used bird shot.

  She didn’t want her farm associated in any way with what she was about to do, so she tucked Miss Scarlett under her arm and carried her onto Janet’s land, through the woods to a small clearing. Ronnie set her down and put a hand on her back to calm her—to calm herself—and slipped the loaded gun from her jacket pocket.

  It couldn’t have weighed more than a can of chick peas, yet she felt its emotional heft.

  Then she took her place in a long line of cowards who put a gun between them and the act they were about to perpetrate: she stood up, stepped back one pace, and fired.

  And fired, and fired. Bird shot did not quickly kill a bird the size of Miss Scarlett, who was hysterical with pain and fear. She flopped around like the heart in Ronnie’s chest. Batting her wings until they were wet with blood, she spun around, seeking her attacker. With two more shots, she finally lay still. Ronnie stood until her breathing calmed and her ears once again adjusted to the rustle of the grasses surrounding them. She sank to the ground beside the still hen and cried for the horror of it all. Later, while burying her, Ronnie thought that euthanizing seemed so much more virtuous when a gun wasn’t involved.