The Far End of Happy

by Kathryn Craft

  Yet it took no more than a moment to forgive his strong-arm technique; despite his calm facade, his desperation was palpable.

  “What do you say, Ronnie? Will you wait for me?”

  Ronnie chose her words carefully. “I will be there as a friend, always. I care about you. I want you to have a better life. I’m the mother of your children, and that will always connect us. But I cannot promise I’ll be there as your wife.”

  She stood calmly. Wasting no time, per the psychiatrist’s recommendation, Ronnie went to her office, called her divorce lawyer, and made another appointment for the following week.

  To her knowledge, Jeff never placed a call for any kind of therapy.

  • • •

  “Mom, they’re showing the farm again,” Will said. “Look at the horses. They’re freaking out.”

  “Did you climb up and turn the TV on, Will?”

  “No. You never turned it off. You just hit Mute.”

  Ronnie was ashamed she’d left the television on. Her boys didn’t need to see any more of this. From the looks of it, more news vans had nosed up to the barrier at the edge of their property.

  As she reached up to shut off the set, the camera panned back for a full view of the way their property crested the hill. The huge red barn lording over the outbuildings, the rustic split-rail fencing, the snowflake patterns in the newly thinned pick-your-own strawberry field, the brilliant yellows and reds of the fall leaves against the green yard and white stucco house—it was breathtaking. Until the line of black-and-whites in the driveway led her eye to the store. The horses paced in the pasture beside it.

  Actually, pasture was a kind word for it. It was more like dirt with an occasional sprout of onion grass and broadleaf weed. Jeff thought the smell of earth and onions projected just the right organic image they wanted for their farm store, but Ronnie thought they should keep it looking better, with customers gathering at the fence to pet those velvety noses. The cameras focused again on the horses. The boys’ lame Shetland pony, Horsey Patch, had thrust his entire spotted head through the lower two rungs of the fence to eat the grass at the edge of the road. Camelot and Daydream ran the length of the pasture, raising a cloud of dust that stuck to their lathered necks—right beneath the window of the store’s office.

  Ronnie could see nothing through its dusty glass.

  Rob White’s lips were moving; a banner said “Breaking News.” How could she turn it off now, when this man had information that might have a grave impact on their lives? She found the volume on the remote as White said, “Correspondent Maura Riley has the latest. Maura?”

  The scene cut to a picture of Riley standing by the barricade, her blond hair sprayed into artful layers.

  “Thank you, Rob. I’m standing here with a neighbor, Karl Prout, whose house is located up the hill from the Farnham place. I understand that you aren’t able to get home, Karl?”

  “That’s right. I work the night shift at a plant in Reading. I stopped to eat, and on my way home, I ran into this here barricade. So me and some of the other neighbors have been standing here talking. We just can’t believe it.”

  “What’s the consensus?”

  “Like I said, we just can’t believe it.” The camera pulled back to show others nodding their heads. Ronnie recognized a few of the local fire police, pressed into service every time an accident required that traffic be rerouted.

  “Tell us what you know about Jeffrey Farnham.”

  “I mean, Jeff is a real nice guy. About fifty, fifty-five, I’d guess. Always happy. Plowed me out a few times. His family’s lived on the hill here for a long time and I know ’em all. Never had a problem with any of ’em. Real nice.”

  “We understand he may be intoxicated. Did Jeffrey Farnham have a problem with alcohol?”

  “Well, it’s not unusual if you work the night shift,” Karl said, chuckling and holding his gut so it wouldn’t spill further over his pants. “Look. He had no more trouble with booze than any of us do. They say he and his wife were fighting too, but I don’t buy it. He wasn’t like that. That stuff is all exaggeration. You know how people talk.”

  “Okay, well, there you have it, Rob—”

  Ronnie flipped off the set. Until recently, even Ronnie hadn’t realized Jeff had been an alcoholic. What did Karl Prout know about her husband? She wondered if Karl Prout knew that Jeff had once dreamed of opening a rental center for tools and party supplies. That he’d never had a cold in all the years she’d known him. That he was at greatest peace sitting on the porch on a summer evening, after a long day of work, surveying the mowed yards and growing gardens. Of course he didn’t. Why on earth Action News would resort to a man-on-the-country-road interview during a situation like this was beyond her.

  And no one seemed to get the simplest fact right. Her husband’s age. She could only hope he’d make it to fifty.

  “That’s it.” Ronnie pulled the list of media contacts from her back pocket. “Mom, let me use your phone.”

  “Oh, honey, don’t bait them.”

  “This is family business,” Janet said.

  Ronnie left the social hall, turned right, and searched for a phone. Down the hall, she found an office where a couple of uniformed officers were manning radios. Ronnie, so removed from the police operation in the social hall, seemed to have slammed right into command central.

  One officer was picking peppers off his sandwich. “My gut won’t take ’em any more. It’s peppers or coffee, one or the other, and you know who’s winning that battle.”

  “Some respect, gentlemen?” Corporal McNichol said, coming up behind Ronnie. Both men stood.

  Static on the radio. Ronnie caught her breath. “Scopes say Farnham hasn’t moved in a while. Thought we heard him snoring, but it was a chain saw starting farther up the road.”

  One of the officers stifled a smile; the other cleared his throat.

  “I just want to use the phone,” Ronnie said. “I’ll only be a sec.”

  The men turned down the radio. Her rapid loss of bluster left Ronnie’s hand shaking on the keypad.

  “Maura Riley here.”

  “This is Veronica Farnham.” For once, Ronnie was glad for the added syllables and the gravitas they conferred.

  “How are you doing?”

  How the hell did she think?

  “Quit guessing at my husband’s age.”

  “We hear you’re divorcing. I’m so sorry. I’ve been there. It’s tough. Is that why he’s so distraught?”

  Yellow journalism 101. Delve into the emotional; befriend the interviewee. Tabloids did this all the time to make people spill their friends’ stories.

  Ronnie took a deep breath and tried to stay on point. “On a day where many things cannot possibly be known, it seems the very least a journalist could do is get this one fact right.”

  “Were your children afraid of the guns their father kept on the property?”

  Go for the innocent. Oh, she’s good.

  “He’s forty-seven.”

  Heart racing, Ronnie hung up the phone and ripped up the list. “Feel free to refuse all further calls from the media on my behalf,” she said, tossing the torn bits in the trash and heading for the door. This was her story that was unfolding. If anyone was going to write about it, it would be her.

  Ronnie agreed with Karl Prout: this was overkill. Suicide was such a big, splashy statement. So unlike Jeff, who preferred the invisible periphery of most situations. When Ronnie had been low herself, after college, the notion of self-harm had never once crossed her mind. “Suicide,” with its soft, slippery sound, still felt like a mercurial threat.

  She thought this even as her knuckles and jaw ached from clenching, and a nerve was zapping hot down the back of her left leg.

  Anyway, the last time Jeff hadn’t acted on it; he’d simply written the note. To scare her i
nto taking him back. Now, it would seem, even the police thought this was a joke.

  Yet as Ronnie returned to her family in the social hall, the tinny voice of the hospital psychiatrist grated on her memory: He just might.

  beverly

  The manhunt, the standoff, the airing of marital issues, the public humiliation—the day had pulled on her daughter like an unrelenting winch. Beverly wondered how Ronnie pushed on without snapping.

  “Mo-om, we need the TV. We’re bo-ored.” Will always stretched the word to two syllables to underscore his point.

  “I have to talk to Corporal McNichol, Will,” Ronnie said. “Just sit.”

  “We’ve been sitting all morning. I want to go to school.”

  “Sorry, you can’t.”

  “Then let us go over to the park,” Andrew said. “You can’t keep us here like we’re in prison.”

  “Boys. Sit down. I can’t deal with you two right now!”

  Ah, there she blows, Beverly thought. At least I spawned a human.

  The boys’ faces went blank as they stared her down.

  “I didn’t mean to yell,” Ronnie said. “Sorry.”

  “You’re just going to keep saying bad things about Dad.”

  Will had her pegged all right. If Beverly knew one thing about her daughter, she would talk. Ronnie laughed words, cried words. Honestly, you could only stop her up so long before the words came tumbling out. Those words were going to come whether her sons wanted to hear them or not.

  What her grandsons needed was a distraction—and that was Beverly’s specialty.

  “Come with me, boys. And, Mr. Eshbach, would you like some entertainment?”

  Beverly took Andrew and Will to the far end of the room. Sure enough, her daughter was already gabbing away to Corporal McNichol. That girl could go to the end of the drive to meet the mailman and come home fifteen minutes later knowing his son was flunking history and his dog was allergic to his flea treatment. Where had that knowledge ever gotten her? Conversation couldn’t solve everything.

  “Let’s sing,” Andrew said. “Mom loves it.”

  “Okay, what do you want to sing, sweetie?” Beverly said, a smile always at the ready. Even when she was frightened out of her mind.

  “‘On Top of Spaghetti’!” Will said.

  “You always say that, and you can never remember the words,” Andrew said.

  Yet they started in anyway, not fearing the ragged end of the journey.

  Ronnie had no clue what she might be in for. Ever since Beverly had spoken with that policeman this morning, one thought kept pulsing through her mind: someone commits suicide in this country every fourteen minutes. Was this one of those minutes?

  Beverly sat looking around the fire hall, so festive when decorated, now so barren. That old mirror ball had seen so many rites of passage in this room, many of which she’d attended through the years. Ronnie was ten years old when they had the reception after her brother Teddy’s baptism here. Beverly couldn’t afford flowers so they’d decorated the whole place with Mylar balloons. Little Teddy had untied some of them from their weights and sent them heaven bound.

  Ronnie’s high school graduation party had been held here too. Even though Beverly had decorated the whole front wall with tissue paper butterflies, she’d had a hard time handling her daughter’s transformation. It was back then that Ronnie started rolling and blowing and relaxing her hair in order to look like her idea of an adult. Yet the mirror ball threw its colored fairy lights across faces still innocent; at their age, Beverly already had a one-year-old. She’d wanted Ronnie, she absolutely did, and no matter how tough things had gotten she’d never regretted having her, but at that party, Beverly’s unlived life loomed so close that she could feel it taunting her.

  Twice she’d been in this room for Janet’s husband, Jerry. Janet could afford flowers. The place had looked like an indoor garden for Jerry’s induction into the high school sports hall of fame and again, later, for his funeral reception. Both events were crowded. The whole town loved Jerry; as a coach, teacher, and summer playground administrator, he kept grooming new batches of admirers. Janet never seemed to bask in the glow of his popularity nor hide in his shadow, as many women would around a strong man. Beverly admired her independence.

  Beverly remembered Jerry’s surprise when some of his former students brought in a freestanding basketball hoop and set it at one end of the hall, then his laughter when one of them made off with his commissioned portrait and climbed up to rest it against the backboard. They reprised the prank at Jerry’s funeral reception, with a black sash across the painting. Beverly had thought it was a touching tribute. Jeff had ranted about it and wanted to take it down, but the players had surrounded the pole with dozens and dozens of huge floral arrangements, creating a fragrant island to guard their beloved coach’s untouchable reputation.

  Celebration and letting go, beginnings and endings. Today the hall was stripped bare, as if it hadn’t known how to dress. As if waiting, like the rest of them, to know what kind of event this would be.

  Now these sweet boys, belting their little meatball hearts out, had brought a smile to two of the most needful faces: Janet’s and Mr. Eshbach’s. Beverly felt flush with warm pride. These were Dom’s grandsons. The song connected them: Beverly had taught it to Ronnie, and Ronnie had taught it to Andrew and Will, and all of them connected her back to Dom.

  Beverly looked back over at her daughter, hoping all those words she was speaking were adding up in some new way. But she was thrilled to see her hair restored to its natural beauty. After so many years, Beverly had feared Ronnie had ironed the life right out of those curls.

  She had to believe there was a way for her family to make it through this while still holding a song in their hearts.

  ronnie

  At the other end of the room, the poor meatball rolled out of the door—and the boys’ voices stopped. Ronnie waited for it…and the creative verses began: “I ride on a Yeti,” “My frog is named Betty,” “I ate the spumoni.” Will’s voice: “Hey, that doesn’t rhyme.” Andrew’s: “But ice cream is always good!” They sang with gusto, occasionally dissolving into giggles. Andrew raised his arms as if on Broadway; Will threw in a hip wiggle. From where Ronnie sat, the boys seemed up for the challenge of getting their grandmothers to smile. She couldn’t imagine how Janet was managing. How would Ronnie, if it were Andrew or Will holed up in that store? She hoped that their childlike joy, which had found expression even on a day like today, would never be extinguished.

  Good singers, both. Where had that talent come from? Ronnie’s voice was thin, and Jeff couldn’t even sing “Happy Birthday” in any recognizable fashion.

  “A lot of people have been coming to see you,” Corporal McNichol said after checking in with her men. “A store employee, Karl Prout, and a few others who may or may not have been neighbors. My team has turned them away. But a Lisa Schulz is here and says she can help with the boys.”

  Corporal McNichol’s gaze flicked to the far end of the room where Andrew had just run Will through with an imaginary sword. Will clutched at his heart and fell to the floor, his tongue hanging out.

  Ronnie wished Jeff were sitting beside her to listen and laugh, so they could feel their love for the boys amplified through each other. Wished he had ever felt the glory of a song in his heart. Wished his sons had inspired him to become the man he wanted his sons to be. Tears fought their way to her worn-out eyes. She had lost Jeff so long ago and was well aware she had stayed in the marriage long past its useful life. She’d done so for her boys, until she couldn’t abide Jeff’s role-modeling a moment longer.

  The fact that this day had inserted itself into her life story was one more thing she’d have to deal with on the long, slow road to becoming Ronnie.

  But it should never, ever have happened to a child.

  “Ronnie?”

 
; “Mmm?”

  “This is hard enough on you as it is,” Corporal McNichol said gently. “There are people willing to help. Shall we let her in?”

  “Who?”

  “Lisa Schulz.”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  A minute later, Lisa, who lived in the house across the street and was the mother of Will’s friend Brandon, walked into the room wearing white scrubs and a pink sweater. The thought of Lisa being unable to return home after working a twelve-hour night shift at the hospital brought Ronnie a deep sense of shame.

  Lisa’s concern, however, was for Ronnie. She offered to take the boys to her mother Beth’s house, a few blocks away. The boys were familiar with the place, a stone house set way back into the woods, and since Beth cared for a constant string of foster children, there would be plenty for them to do. Besides, Lisa said, her mother wanted to help.

  “What do you say?”

  Ronnie supposed Corporal McNichol was beyond done with the boys. The police had their statements, and at this point, the boys could contribute nothing but distraction.

  Lisa and Beth could offer what Ronnie had wanted when she’d first called her mother that morning—for the boys to be removed from unfolding events. This wasn’t their battle. They shouldn’t have to witness it. And she wanted them safe.

  Yet with everything in her world upside down, Ronnie wanted to hold her sons close. She wanted the distraction they provided her. While Ronnie hesitated, her mother went to round them up.

  Ronnie pulled Lisa aside. “They can play video games but not on the computer. And don’t let them watch TV, okay? They’ve seen enough.” Ronnie was suddenly glad she hadn’t been able to afford to buy the boys cell phones, like Lisa had for Brandon. “And if Brandon comes over—”