The Far End of Happy

by Kathryn Craft

  She’d wanted another Dom.

  He was her one true love; a connection like theirs was not easy to recreate. Since then, intimacy had seemed to require negotiations that were daunting and complex, and it was so much easier to shrug her shoulders, crack a joke, and walk away while saying love just wasn’t her thing.

  But it was. Love was her only thing, and she wanted to believe it had some measure of influence. She patted the hand Janet had looped through her arm. She would be the rails for her family today and steady them as they picked their way through what frightening and chaotic moments this day might yet hold.

  When they emerged from the trail at the far end of the park, Beverly’s newfound resolve already started to curl at the edges. Looking up at the row of trees she had seen from a distance, she saw that they weren’t glorious red at all.

  They were yellow and turning brown.

  ronnie

  Corporal McNichol asked Ronnie to draw a map of the farm property. Of specific interest, she said, were the locations of all interior and exterior doors and which of them had locks. It was like giving her a coloring book and crayons, Ronnie supposed: busywork disguised to look relevant. The big barn with all its horse stalls and the chicken penthouse they’d built onto the far end. The empty stall where Will had always wanted to keep goats. The woodworking shop with tractor storage built into its side. The milk house that now held garden tools. Should her sketch warn them of the poison ivy growing through the rotted roof of the smokehouse, in which a man wouldn’t fit because it only stored yard trash for the next burning? Anyway, they’d already found Jeff; why did they need all this information about the other outbuildings?

  Yet the activity calmed her. There was a sane geometry to the square corners and circular layout.

  How to render the remains of the chicken shed? She and Jeff had thought its sagging floors and listing piers would have fallen long ago, but it kept weathering storms. But it had been an eyesore, leaning as it was toward its demise, and a fall-through-the-floor safety risk. No longer fit for even a flock of three-pound chickens, it had long been on the list for demolition. So, on a whim one September Saturday, while Jeff was working an all-day wedding, Ronnie and the boys had gingerly emptied it of broken cat carriers, litter pans, and warped sports equipment. Everything but a few old tires on what was left of the floor. Standing outside the building, Ronnie knocked each corner post with the sledgehammer until it clung by an inch, then looped chain around the center post and attached it to the tractor. The boys chanted, “Go, go, go!” Ronnie threw the tractor into gear…and as the last of the day’s sun dipped behind the hills, the building collapsed. When the dust settled, they found the roof sitting directly on top of the floor, the tires sandwiched in between.

  The elation they had felt! The high-fives, the pizza in front of the TV, the ice cream.

  Jeff had been livid that they’d taken on the project without him. But for Ronnie and the boys, it was a victory. They had taken care of something on their own—something big, men’s work—and it sent their confidence soaring. Ronnie felt assured they’d be able to care for the farm on their own once Jeff moved out and until she could find a new place for them to live.

  Ronnie examined her drawing. Their farm was a charming mishmash of a property in transition, from old and decrepit through old and charmingly renovated to new; it suggested the full circle of life.

  Only the farm store remained. She considered its layout, sketched so often earlier this year as they were trying to figure out the best way to arrange its displays. She walked mentally among the configuration of aisles, sidestepping the colorful mums, bushels of fall bulbs, and the artful arrangement of pumpkins and warty gourds spilling from the wheelbarrow.

  As she moved her pencil, she felt Jeff lay his hand over hers and pull it toward the office.

  She yanked away her hand, sending the pencil clattering to the floor.

  After shaking off the creepy feeling she picked up the pencil and returned to her drawing. She erased the desk and chair in the office store so many times that the place Jeff was most likely to sit was marked by a hole in the paper.

  It was then, as if it were ringing and lighting up, that she pictured her smartphone charging by the cash register. She wondered if Jeff had tried to reach her today, assuming she had her cell with her, only to hear the maddening ring of his own unanswered call.

  • • •

  One day, after she’d decided to divorce him but before she’d had a chance to meet with an attorney, Jeff had sat in the recliner in her office all morning, watching her work. He’d showed amazing fortitude, she’d thought. It’s not entertaining to watch a writer write. Finally he said, “I’ve thought of a way for you to keep the house.”

  “I won’t take the house from you, Jeff,” Ronnie said, not looking up from her article.

  “I could come back and mow, and take care of the gardens.”

  “Jeff,” she said, now meeting his eyes. “I do not want you coming back and watching my every move. We’ll be divorced. I’ll want to move on. Can we discuss this later? I’m on three different deadlines, and unless you want to do it, I have to relieve Amber down in the store in fifteen minutes. It’s hard to concentrate with you staring at me like that.”

  The next morning, Ronnie found an extra card table set up in her office.

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s my workspace,” Jeff said. “So we can be together.”

  He’d interrupted her many times that day, about coordinating their schedules and reviewing insurance policies. After going upstairs to answer a call, he returned with the “happy news” that his mother had agreed to pay off their debt.

  “Oh.” Ronnie didn’t know how to feel about this. Pros and cons swirled through her mind. But it was no mystery how Jeff felt about it. His mood lifted as if he’d solved every last one of their problems. He worked with the boys on their homework that afternoon and lamented aloud that he would miss Will’s next soccer game. He helped with dinner and dishes. He insisted on attending the boys’ gifted conference at school the next day, exclaiming afterward that he sure was glad he went because he didn’t know what a great program it was—although Andrew had already been in it for two years. He actually participated in the bedtime rituals.

  Later, when Ronnie went into the master bedroom to get out her clothes for the next day, he followed her in to put away new jeans and brightly colored T-shirts he’d bought to replace the torn ones he had worn since they’d married. For a moment, Ronnie had dared to hope.

  He’d then handed her a “thank you for being you” type greeting card to which he’d added the message, “I want to share my days and nights with you.”

  She looked up at him in time to catch his smile that said I’ve earned this.

  “Good night, Jeff.” Ronnie returned to the guest bedroom and shut the door behind her.

  The next day, when Ronnie went down to her office, the card table was gone.

  As she settled in to work on an article, her phone rang, and Janet’s name came up on the caller ID.

  “Hi, Janet,” Ronnie said. “You don’t usually call on this line. Is something wrong, or is this business?”

  “Both,” Janet had said. “Ronnie, if I pay the money you owe, will you stay with Jeff?”

  Her tremulous voice begged Ronnie’s empathy. It almost worked. But Ronnie had grown sensitive to Farnham manipulation, and it felt all too familiar in her mother-in-law’s request.

  “Oh my god. You’re trying to bribe me.”

  “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

  “When Jeff told me about your offer yesterday, I wanted to say yes. It sure would be easier, because I have no clue how I will possibly address half of this debt. I can’t even imagine being divorced.”

  “Then take the money. Stay married.”

  “I said it would be easier, not r
ight. Sometimes we don’t get to do the easy thing. Sometimes life is tough.”

  “I’m in a position to help.”

  “But will it help? If it were my son, I wouldn’t do it. If Jeff stands any chance of pulling out of this downward spiral with his self-respect intact, he needs to spread his own wings and flap like hell.”

  “Ronnie,” Janet said with a moan. “Don’t let your pride break up our family.”

  “I have loved you for a long time, Janet, and that does not have to end. But it will if you think you can buy me for your son. I am not a bauble. I am a living, breathing person. The mother of your grandchildren, and soon enough, your son’s ex-wife. Because Jeff and I are divorcing. The marriage was over long ago. I can’t tell you what to do with your money, but you will not throw it at my feet and get me to dance. Got it?”

  Ronnie hung up the phone and swiveled her chair back toward the computer—and saw Jeff standing in the doorway.

  “So. I guess you don’t like me very much.” Jeff walked through her office, adding, “I guess that makes two of us,” then went out the door and down the hill to the farm store.

  Ronnie realized, with a heavy heart, that she really didn’t have anything more to say.

  Later that day, Jeff returned to her office to ask her to make out his will. “You’re a writer. You can do it.”

  “It hardly seems appropriate to ask me,” Ronnie had said. She had the capability to do it, thanks to software she’d purchased a few years earlier. But they’d put the task off for so long the software and her computer were no longer compatible. She wouldn’t bother trying to explain this to Jeff, though. Beyond the computations necessary for tracking money at the bar, he’d never joined the technological revolution. One more way in which he relied on her. “Anyway, I told you I was busy. I have articles to tend to here.”

  He pulled out his money clip, flipped off five twenties, and placed them on her desk. “That should cover it.”

  Easy cash—Jeff’s ultimate seduction. She aimed her answer at the cash, hoping it would go away more easily. “I’m not writing up your damn will, and that’s final.”

  • • •

  Ronnie took one last look at the drawing she’d made of the farm. If Jeff died today as a result of this standoff, he’d do so without a will. Ronnie and her sons would inherit the house and property, although that would not constitute the entire inheritance. Add two horses, a Shetland pony, a dozen chickens, a few barn cats. Max. An International Cub tractor, circa 1960. A corncrib–turned–tack room full of saddles and bridles and extra horse blankets and who knows what else they probably had never been able to afford. Six acres dotted with fruit trees whose leaves had become lace doilies, whose fruit was gnarled. A mother-in-law with no other family.

  “Oh no,” Ronnie said.

  “Don’t stress over this drawing,” Corporal McNichol said, approaching. “Whatever information you can provide will be helpful.”

  “It’s not that. Some things he said, all on different days, are kind of lining up in my head.”

  “Like what?”

  “First, Jeff said he’d found a way for me to stay in the house. Another day he asked me to write his will. And then yesterday, when I asked him if he still planned to move out today, he said yes.”

  Corporal McNichol nodded as Ronnie finished.

  Ronnie felt the combined onrush of revelation and panic. “He was trying to tell me he planned to kill himself, wasn’t he?”

  She answered, “They usually do.”

  beverly

  Beverly couldn’t have been more surprised to find out that Ronnie and Jeff’s marriage was crumbling. Her first inkling came one night last year when she found herself sitting in the living room of her apartment across the coffee table from Ronnie. Ronnie came over from time to time, sure, to drop off the boys or share a magazine with a good article about growing patio vegetables or a photo essay of Hugh Jackman (what could Beverly say, she wasn’t dead yet). But it was nine p.m. on a school night, and the absence of the boys, an article, or Hugh had Beverly’s palms sweating.

  “What’s up, Sunshine?”

  “I think Jeff and I are in financial trouble.”

  “Okay.” Beverly rubbed her hands on her pants. Trouble was not her specialty; when it reared its mighty head, she hid. “What sort of trouble?”

  Ronnie shook her head. “I think he’s sunk us deep in credit card debt. On cards I didn’t know about.”

  “Oh dear,” Beverly said. “Don’t tell Janet. She has no use for credit cards. She’d disown him. What are you going to do?”

  “I was hoping you’d have some advice.”

  Beverly nodded. Boy, this really didn’t come naturally at all. She thought back to Ronnie’s two miscarriages and how Ronnie had been so hurt that Jeff had to leave and go to work. As if getting pregnant were a joint effort but losing a child was a solo thing. The second time, Beverly had brought over some pretzels and cheese and they’d sat up all evening watching movies, pretending Ronnie had a simple case of menstrual cramps, until one punishing contraction after another ended the pregnancy. All hope had seemed lost. But now they had such a wonderful family. Beverly hated to hear this terrible news from Ronnie.

  “What did Jeff say about it?”

  “He said he’d pull together all the necessary information. I’m still waiting on it.”

  “When was that?”

  “A year ago.”

  “Oh, baby.”

  “I’ve asked him time and again. I feel frozen, like we can’t move forward unless I know what we’re dealing with here. But he keeps ordering more sheetrock and spackle, putting up new walls and smoothing over the gaps in his accounting. It’s maddening.”

  “Are you going to leave him?”

  Ronnie fiddled with her wedding band. It was thinning, Beverly knew, because she was with Ronnie at the jeweler’s when he warned her that manual labor was too hard on it. Ronnie had refused to remove it, saying if she didn’t wear it while doing chores, she’d never wear it. “Of course not. But I need to figure out how to get him to honor my concerns.”

  “I guess he either honors them or he doesn’t. I don’t know how you can make anyone do anything without some sort of incentive.”

  “My god, shouldn’t human decency be enough? Let alone love? I don’t know how many times I’ve poured my heart out to him over the past year, begging him to come clean about the finances, only to have him wait me out in silence. He knows full well that after I release my concerns to the air, I’ll have made room inside to stuff more down.”

  “And is he right? Does that work?”

  Tears streamed down Ronnie’s face. “Of course it does. I love him. I love our life. I don’t want to be an angry, demanding bitch. But I can’t live in a fantasy world either. I need to know where the cold stone walls are.”

  Beverly nodded. “Oh, honey, I’ve got no advice. Just one fact that I’ve observed time and again: that man adores you, Sunshine.”

  Ronnie stood to go. “I just don’t know if that’s enough.”

  ronnie

  When Corporal McNichol excused herself to get some lunch, Ronnie suddenly found herself alone in the hall meant to be social. How many days, since becoming a mother, had she begged for some time alone? She’d meant alone with her writing, or alone with a book.

  Not this alone.

  For the first time, she considered Jeff’s odd note stuck to the phone this morning, with its implication that she was having an affair. Her great fear was that if she stayed in this marriage much longer, his accusation might come true.

  She’d met Kevin three months ago, in August, when Ronnie set off with Jeff, the boys, and Max for their annual vacation at the Jersey shore. To Ronnie, it felt like visiting family. The house was the only legacy connecting her to her father, and her week there was, in Ronnie’s eyes, the only nonn
egotiable item on a cost-saving budget. Once Jeff had parked in the driveway, she grabbed a few bags of groceries and left him and the boys to pull things from the back of the Suburban. Max raced past her as, halfway up the wooden stairs, Ronnie felt for the key, hanging on an inconspicuous nail hammered into the beam supporting the decking above. She waited up by the door for the boys to catch up, savoring the narrow ocean view between the houses across the street.

  Andrew pounded up the stairs and dropped his bag. Will followed. “Ready.” Ronnie compared the heights of both boys to the random-seeming nicks on the weathered door frame that had marked her height each summer of her childhood. “Beat me again, boys. One day you’ll stand taller than me or your dad.”

  She turned the lock and opened the door. With the first whiff of wet flip-flops and sun-dried towels, all of the Ronnies of every age fused together around the spine of this annual pilgrimage that had roots sinking all the way back to her mysterious father. Here, she felt whole.

  While the boys went down to the car for another load, she put away the groceries, set out water for Max, and enjoyed a quiet moment with the living room couch.

  The old leather still felt pliable beneath the hand she trailed across its back. Hi, Dad. When it was warm from the sun and little Ronnie would lie down on it to nap, its mass accommodated and supported every part of her the way she imagined a father would if curled beside his child. Her father had loved that couch, she thought, and his parents before him, and maybe the couch loved her a little bit back. At least that had always been her fantasy, and she couldn’t see how it hurt her to believe it.

  What Ronnie knew of Dominic Gallagher: he loved the beach and had inherited this house from his parents after the three of them were in a car accident—one he had survived, and they had not. Since her parents weren’t married, the house did not go to her mother, but even though they had little money for frills, Beverly had rented the house from its new owners for a week each summer. Even though a stepfather sometimes came along, Ronnie had always sensed that time spent at the beach house was so that her mother, Ronnie, and her father could be together.