That afternoon, she got another red hen from a friend down the street and never told Jeff what she had done.
She did, however, remove the remaining cartridges and put the gun back into storage. And…what had she done with the key?
Maybe she was missing the obvious place. She checked the key rack. It held several rings with all manner of odd keys that probably no longer had a use. She ran back up to the attic with several of the smaller keys.
Not a single one fit, and she was running out of time. With no other choice, she lugged the entire gun case down to her Suburban. But there were long guns as well. Before they’d had kids, Jeff had kept them on the landing by the basement stairs. She narrowed her search to every locked outbuilding that had a clean storage area. She knew Jeff was particular about the guns, because although she’d never seen him clean one, she knew he kept a pair of white cotton gloves in his dresser for this purpose.
She gathered all of the guns she could find and laid them out in the back of her Suburban. There were nine in all, pistols and revolvers and longer guns she did not know how to distinguish.
Now loaded symbols of her husband’s instability, Ronnie had hated to touch the guns, let alone drive anywhere with them. A Suburban was nothing but windows, she now realized—windows that would let anyone see these guns. What if she had to stop to get around an accident, or if she was pulled over for the burned-out turn signal she hadn’t gotten around to replacing? For all she knew, the cargo could be illicit. She didn’t know if Jeff had licenses for all of these guns or if he was even required to have them. She didn’t know how to check for ammunition without shooting off a toe or how to arrange the gun so it wouldn’t go off when the car hit a bump and blow a hole through the gas tank.
In the end, the enclosed trunk of Jeff’s Altima seemed a better choice. Ronnie hoisted the locked handgun case into it, shoving it toward the front of the car as if it were a suitcase, then piled the long guns behind it.
Exhausted as she was, she was in no danger of falling asleep. Her fingers clenched the wheel; her shoulders braced.
Reminding herself to breathe, she drove well under the speed limit the entire ten miles to her mother’s house.
beverly
Beverly had been watering the tomato plant on her balcony when Ronnie pulled in the parking lot to her apartment.
“Glad I caught you home,” Ronnie said when Beverly met her at the security door. Following along like bait on a hook, Beverly listened to her reel out the story of Jeff’s commitment as she took trip after trip to the car for the unthinkable purpose of unloading guns into Beverly’s house. Ronnie was on a mission at this point and hadn’t noticed Beverly’s neighbor come out with his trash. She grabbed Ronnie’s wrist to stop her so the guy could wheel his can to the curb without fearing for his life.
“Mom, can you take one end?”
All that was left in the trunk was a display case with clear acrylic sliding doors on the front. Full of handguns. Beverly’s feet froze to the macadam.
“It’s not all that heavy, just ungainly.”
And dangerous. And scary. And deadly. The case was lined with bloodred velvet. “What if they all go off at once?”
Ronnie gave the case a heave—she was so strong, Beverly thought, so much stronger than Beverly would ever be—and headed to the house again. “Hasn’t happened yet, so I’m hoping it won’t now.” Ronnie climbed the steps and said over her shoulder, “Since you’re still standing there, could you at least close the trunk?”
Inside, Beverly looked at all the firepower laid out on her kitchen table, now set as if they’d been preparing for some sort of crime family rehearsal dinner. She was glad Janet didn’t have to witness this. Ronnie said, “Do you have someplace safe we can store these for a while?”
When Beverly had downsized into this apartment after her last divorce, that was a question she had never thought to ask herself.
“Mom, I’ve got to get home to the boys.”
Beverly’s vision blurred as if her eyes had focused in slightly different directions. “The coat closet, I guess.” Ronnie dove in, pushing jackets and umbrellas aside. At one point, Beverly’s faux fur lined her daughter’s back like the hide of a bear.
“I’ll do this,” Beverly muttered. “I’ll do this for Jeff.”
janet
Janet knew all about Jeff’s guns.
Not a quarter mile from where she sat in the firehouse stood the Bartlesville Rod and Gun Club, where Jeff first attended a shooting demonstration with his father. It was the spring of Jeff’s sophomore year, and after a second try had not gained him a spot on the basketball team, Jerry decided to encourage Jeff’s interest in the gun club with an air rifle and a three-dollar junior membership. A shooting education class was just forming, so Jerry signed him up.
Jeff took to it immediately. Being such a huge animal lover, Jeff had no interest in hunting, so he soon dropped the gun club membership with its antler- and jerky-crazed members. He was interested in marksmanship. Jerry helped him set up a course on their property that met NRA guidelines, and over the years, Jeff started to amass his Distinguished Expert qualifications.
Jerry continued to inflame Jeff’s newfound interest, picking up secondhand long guns at local shows and estate sales that he thought Jeff might be interested in, adding some pistols once Jeff turned twenty-one.
But it was for his eighteenth birthday that Jerry had bought Jeff a shotgun—the one her son was holding now—and Janet wanted to damn him to hell for it.
And, of course, she knew all about the booze too. She’d been helping herself to it for years.
11:00 a.m.
ronnie
Sharing the story of Jeff’s psych commitment with Corporal McNichol, her mother, and her mother-in-law had Ronnie all twisted up. It was hard enough to live through the first time. Her bones ached, her abdomen cramped, her head pounded—and all of this was made worse by having to sit on a metal folding chair for two hours. She needed relief. She stood to stretch out the fronts of her hips and realized she was still carrying several sets of car keys in her pockets. She pulled them out and laid them on the table. With Jeff secluded, she alone had the power to go somewhere, yet here she was, stuck.
“Mom, you have any painkillers?”
“I could use some too.” Beverly found ibuprofen in her purse, and on their way to the drinking fountain near the restrooms, she shook out two for each of them.
Ronnie could sense the pending relief. Was this why Jeff drank? Was accumulating emotion twisting his body as well, causing pain that only the drink could relieve? Ronnie filled her mouth with water, stood, and popped in two of the painkillers. Maybe she knew something about chronic intoxication. Intimately. Her drug of choice: Jeffrey Farnham.
The way Ronnie recalled it, they had only been home from their honeymoon a few minutes before she and Jeff changed into overalls and started steaming off wallpaper and hacking at loose plaster.
They soon sorted out their roles: Ronnie was the room designer, carpentry crew, and gofer, and Jeff was the mastermind whose carpentry expertise could bring the ideas to fruition.
Ronnie wanted to expose the original wood trim on the second floor. Eager to see what it would look like, they slathered paint remover onto baseboards, windowsills, door frames, and doors and scraped off numerous layers of paint. It was only when they butted up against the stubborn red, green, and brown layers beneath that they learned about milk paint, a turn-of-the-century product farmers would make from ingredients found right on the farm. The wood had absorbed the milk paint into its porous surface.
“We’re going to have to sand this off,” Jeff said.
“That’ll be a chore.”
“Yep.”
“It’ll take a long time.”
“Yep.” Jeff paused and raised an eyebrow. “But we’d be doing it together.”
Ronnie smiled. “I suppose we’re wasting time standing here talking about it then.”
Jeff unbuttoned her denim shirt, slipped his hands around her waist, and kissed her bare shoulder.
“How long do you think this renovation is going to take?”
He pulled her hips to his. “Mmm. Twenty years,” he mumbled, his mouth full of her. “At the very least.”
They heard a knock on the door downstairs. Jeff leaned his forehead against Ronnie’s. “That timing sucks.”
Ronnie giggled and buttoned up her shirt. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”
It was the nurse from the life insurance company. Jeff had wanted to set up the policy right away, one of the many ways he was assuring Ronnie that he would care for her no matter what life threw their way. Jeff easily passed the physical. Yet after filling out the lifestyle survey, the nurse informed them that his premiums would be higher than most. Ronnie had expected the smoking might factor in, but there would be additional costs since both bartending and farming were occupations with elevated suicide risk.
Ronnie and Jeff had looked at each other and laughed. They didn’t need risk assessment to prove what they knew in their hearts: love would keep them alive.
The renovation work was rewarding and the twenty-year plan on track as they slowly but surely completed the rooms on the second floor. Ronnie struggled to reframe her career expectations. She did not earn a paycheck or time off, although Jeff effusively praised her efforts; they could only afford to do such an extensive renovation because of all the work she did for free. Each night she would wash a rainbow of dust particles from her skin and blow her nose until its contents ran clear. She worked for a demanding boss, but he adored her, believed in her, provided her with all the materials she needed to succeed, and then took her to bed every night. It was the house, the farm, Jeff, and Ronnie. Life was simple. They were happy.
But over time, the drilling and sanding and sawing drained her, as if it were dust from her own drying soul falling to the floor. Ronnie was learning new skills, but the fact that she was not using her formal education always bothered her. College had allowed her access to such an interesting variety of people who stimulated her socially and creatively and intellectually. Life had been more complex. She had been happier.
Such thoughts would sneak up on Ronnie in the early years of their marriage, and when they did, she would go out and sit on an old concrete slab attached to a mostly collapsed pig barn to entertain thoughts of becoming a journalist in private. She’d tried, once, to share her anxiety with Jeff: she wanted to fix up the farm to create a strong sense of home and have a career that allowed her to engage with the world. She’d said, “You make me feel so loved. But sometimes I feel like my mind is wilting, you know?” And he’d answered gently, “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. But you’re great, Ronnie, and you’re beautiful, and our house will be so perfect. You’re going to be just fine.” He looked at her with those sparkly blue eyes and his warm smile and wrapped his big hand around hers—and Ronnie chose comfort over answers.
Yet the questions kept returning. Why couldn’t she be more like Jeff, satisfied with his day-to-day life? Why did she have to set her sights on some distant future and let its lack of definition devil her? Here on the farm, simplicity surrounded her. Apples and pears filled out until they pulled their branches toward the earth; whatever Jeff and Ronnie didn’t pick dropped to the ground for the bees and the groundhogs. The late-day sun caught the red in her horse’s mane as its teeth tore at the grass; when its lips reached out, it was for more of the same. Every day the chickens scratched at the ground and dusted their feathers in the dirt.
This pastoral setting was never calm, though. Not really. An ever-present breeze whistled through the outbuildings and stirred things up on this side of their lush hill—drifting snow in the winter, dispersing pollen in spring, spreading dandelions in summer, and scattering leaves in the fall. The wood beyond the property line would not be kept at bay, its vines and bramble and sumac snatching at the fence.
Their little farm represented more bounty than Ronnie had ever dreamed of having at this stage of her life. And it should have been enough. Yet her soul felt as rent as the concrete pad she sat upon, from whose deep fissures slithered the occasional snake.
To accommodate Jeff’s growing bevy of tools, they soon built a new structure on the site of that old pig barn. Ronnie lost her decrepit hideout; he gained a workshop. They overlaid rifts in the foundation with fresh concrete that buried her fears. They framed the building, sided it with wood, and lined it, Ronnie straining to hold unwieldy four-by-eight-foot sheets of particleboard over her head while Jeff screwed them into place. Jeff had never been happier than he was when designing this space, choosing with great care the locations of his radial arm saw and other large pieces. He outfitted the building with rolling cabinets to house innumerable hand tools and stocked shelving with boxes of screws and nails. He spent hours out there, organizing and labeling inventory as if it were his personal hardware store, although they would come to laugh at Murphy’s law of tool ownership: you always need the item you don’t own, requiring yet another run to the store.
“Do we really need a router?” Ronnie said. She hadn’t known what one was until theirs was delivered.
“You saw how much custom door trim costs. It’ll be cheaper to replace the rotting window trim if I make it myself.”
Later they’d buy a cement mixer because it was cheaper than renting one for the number of weeks they’d need to use it. Jeff used his own drill press to make Shaker-style peg racks for the bedrooms because the materials would cost less than purchasing that many prefabricated racks. They saved money on lumber by ripping their own scrap boards on his table saw and cutting them to length on his radial arm saw. They did almost all the work themselves and patted themselves on their stiff backs for their thriftiness.
Hand-fashioning this farm meant everything to Jeff. When a contractor Jeff had hired for the bathrooms suggested they were investing in the property beyond what it could ever pay back, Jeff said, “Why would we ever sell? We’re creating the home of our dreams.”
Ronnie quietly let go of her own dreams, only half formed, and latched on to the twenty-year plan. She was married now, and Jeff’s dreams were big enough for them both.
But at night, Ronnie was often troubled by a vivid nightmare in which her car would break down and she would ask for Jeff’s help. Auto mechanics was not one of his many areas of handy expertise, but in the dream he’d nonetheless look under the hood of her car. She’d ask, “What’s the problem?” and he’d look back at her with a look so disturbing she’d wake up with a cry. She’d struggle to reorient. Renovated room. Coordinated sheets. Gentle, loving husband. When her breathing calmed, she’d snuggle next to Jeff and allow his warmth to woo her back to sleep. The dream would not be quieted, though, and would recur to haunt her throughout their marriage. Although its other details might vary, the dream always ended the same way. Jeff would look up at her—and those blue eyes that by day always held such admiration and warmth had turned, in this dream, stone cold.
janet
One thing Janet loved about Ronnie: she was never too busy to entertain her with stories about the boys. Each one added more personality and humor to an ever-burbling spring that bathed Janet’s heart with its only source of joy. That made a particular call from Ronnie, received the second Saturday in September, one that Janet would never forget.
“Jeff’s in the hospital,” Ronnie said. “I’m sorry to tell you this by phone, but I didn’t have time to come over.”
“Why? What’s the matter?”
“I guess there’s no easy way to say this. Jeff threatened to kill himself. He’s in the psychiatric unit at Reading Hospital.”
Janet braced herself against her kitchen counter.
“He wants visitors. You need to see him.”
/> “I can’t, Ronnie.”
“I’ll go, because he’s asked for me, but I’m the one divorcing him. He needs support from someone else. Visiting hours start at two. I’ll pick you up at one fifteen.”
The locked unit. The buzzing in. Ronnie wringing her hands and pacing. Janet’s heart flopping around in her chest so wildly she thought she might not live to see her son join them in the lounge. She almost didn’t recognize him, looking so thin. When had he lost weight? Jerry had kept his athletic physique until his final illness; Jeff looked sunken with his beltless pants slipping down on his hips. Even in this state, though, he hardly registered Janet’s presence. His eyes, as always, were just for Ronnie.
Ronnie quickly claimed the only single chair; Janet sat next to Jeff on the couch.
“Thanks for coming,” he said, giving Ronnie such a sweet smile that Janet had to focus on the cover of a magazine lying on the nearby coffee table to control her tears.
“How are you feeling?” Janet said, her voice tight.
“Better. Getting plenty of rest. Here. You can give these to the boys.”
He reached past Janet with two small wooden animals, a turtle and an owl. Ronnie took them. “We have to do crafts. I painted them.”
Their splotchy imperfection invoked the little Jeff who used to run to Janet with his art projects after school. She’d beg him to tell her the story of each painting to hide the fact that she hadn’t a clue to its subject. It wasn’t until shop class, in junior high, that his artistry began to shine.
Ronnie put the animals in her pocket.
“So,” he said.
“Yes?” Ronnie said.
If this were earlier in the marriage, Janet thought, even a few years ago, they’d be touching by now. It had always both humiliated and thrilled Janet to see that her son had the comfort of the physical intimacy that had been missing in her own marriage. Ronnie’s reticence now stirred Janet to reach over and put her hand on his. Jeff looked at her as if wondering what she was up to before moving his hand and turning back to Ronnie.
The Far End of Happy Page 9
