“I refuse to be ignored one more moment!”
The two older women glared at each other with their toes at the edge of opposing cliffs. Ronnie dared not speak again for fear of causing a landslide.
Beverly finally spoke. “That was the only time I ever asked you for money.”
“Yet it’s not the only time I’ve supported you. Or Ronnie.”
“I did not ask you to pay off our credit cards,” Ronnie said. “That was Jeff.”
“And if you didn’t want to loan me the money, why did you do it?” Beverly said.
Janet’s lips twitched as if she was working at the words. Ronnie waited—hoped—that she’d say she’d done it because she loved her mother. Love had too long skulked at the perimeter of this room and she longed for it to be summoned front and center.
“Because it needed doing,” Janet finally said. “Just like the kids’ loan needed to be paid off. If you all would live within your means, you’d be a lot happier.”
“What loan?” Ronnie said.
“The one he used to pay for the renovation, and the store, and all the other things you wanted.”
The things she’d wanted? She’d wanted one thing—the antique hutch in the living room—but she had balked at the fifteen-hundred-dollar price tag. Jeff insisted on buying it, saying he could make that money back on New Year’s Eve. Ronnie thought of the gleam in Jeff’s eye whenever he suggested an upgrade. His excitement about the way keeping so many creditors happy beefed up his credit score. He was Captain Consumer, the superhero of creative finance. “But we weren’t able to get a loan. That debt was all on credit cards, some with interest as high as twenty-five percent. And most of them I didn’t even know about.”
Janet looked stunned.
“I see you didn’t know. He lied to you, Janet,” Ronnie said. “I’ve been trying to tell you these problems were real, but you wouldn’t listen to me. Apparently you didn’t know your own son.”
“And apparently, you didn’t know your husband.”
“I’m warning you, Janet. Ronnie has been through enough today and I will not have you attacking her. You have to face the fact that your son didn’t know the first thing about managing a household. You’ve spoiled that boy his whole life long and lorded your money over us like the freaking Bank of Bartlesville.”
Janet backed up so Beverly and Ronnie could see her, head to toe. “Look at me. Really look. I wear stretch pants and sweatshirts from Kmart. The barber down the street cuts my hair for five dollars. The shoe box in my kitchen is full of coupons I clip from the Sunday paper. I have never in my life had a manicure.”
Beverly crossed her arms to hide her red lacquered nails.
“I never go out to eat. It killed me to pay Sophie Perlmutter seven dollars today for a sandwich I could have made at home for two fifty. I pay in cash only, and if I don’t have the money, I don’t buy it. I have scrimped my whole life long so I would be able to have something to leave Jeff and my grandchildren.”
“Well, there you have it, Ronnie. Janet Farnham’s keys to happiness. Hope you took notes.”
Janet uttered a mirthless chuckle. “That’s rich. A lecture on happiness from a woman who’s worn a hundred-dollar promise ring her whole life. What are you holding out for, Bev?”
“Don’t go there, Janet.”
“You have discarded perfectly good husbands because they don’t live up to, what, some youthful illusion?”
“You do not want to push me, Janet. I was seventeen and scared and the man I loved was never coming back.”
“You’re still scared.”
“Of course I am! My god, aren’t you?”
“Why didn’t he come back, Mom?”
“Go on, tell her.”
“Why, Janet? Isn’t there enough suicide in the air today?”
Suicide. The word hit the mirror ball and refracted, its shards bouncing around the room until one of them sliced Ronnie’s heart. Slowly, she sank onto her chair.
Beverly sucked in a breath and put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Ronnie. That’s not how I wanted you to find out—”
Ronnie put up her hand to cut her mother off. Thought of what her mother had told her about her father surviving the accident that killed his parents. Of that odd sense of survivor guilt she’d identified with and had been feeling even more acutely since being whisked from her home today, yet could never explain. She looked at her mother, who so rarely touched her. “It was because of me, wasn’t it?”
Her mother trembled, not like a woman falling apart, but like a volcano whose red-hot lava was already pushing through her pores, which made her hushed tone even more frightening when she turned on Janet and said, “Thank you for your support.”
Janet smiled in that self-satisfied, vacant way Jeff had in recent weeks, and it chilled Ronnie to the bone. Janet said, “And you can go to hell before I’ll let you tell me how to raise my boy.”
The standoff infiltrated the room. With nothing left to say to one another, the three women pushed away, each to her own wretched corner.
In the fourth stood the bar, dark and silent.
5:00 p.m.
beverly
Beverly didn’t stop at her corner of the room. She went out the door and down the metal steps. More than anything she wanted to tell Ronnie everything would be all right, but she just didn’t know that to be true. Anyway, she was done with sitting. She had to do something, and even though she didn’t know yet what that was, inspiration rarely flew into a room and laid an egg on your head. Outside, at least, she could put one foot in front of the other and actually get somewhere.
She headed uphill because it was harder. She wanted her heart to pump and her lungs to fill with cooling air. She wanted to outdistance her thoughts of Dom, and she wanted her calves to ache in trying.
It was as true at fifty-two as it had been at seventeen: lovers kept apart can literally ache for each other. Even though they had spoken by phone each Sunday that fall she returned to high school, every inch of her body had yearned for Dom, and only in reuniting with him would she find relief.
Twenty-four times she’d called him that last day, one call every hour, to make plans to see him for Thanksgiving. When he never answered, she’d called Janet in a panic, borrowed her car, and driven to the shore to check on him. She had taken the key off the hidden hook halfway up the stairs and let herself in.
The odor in there. Food left to rot. She checked the stove, the oven, the fridge. Opened the kitchen windows and the French doors.
She found him on his bed, sleeping on his stomach. She loved the way he did that, his face turned toward hers so he’d see her as soon as he opened his eyes.
“Dom, wake up.” The smell. She opened the bedroom window and returned to shake him. Something felt wrong, but her hand refused to tell her what. She rolled him over—and screamed.
No, Beverly thought, arms pumping up the hill. I will not. I will not think of him that way.
The pistol lying beneath him had refused to take responsibility for what it had done.
The memory of that smell lingered in her nose, and Beverly tried to clear it by pulling in lungful after lungful of autumn air, spiced with drying leaves and goldenrod and all manner of pods releasing their seeds to the wind. Finally, she sneezed.
Dominic. Oh, Dom.
How alone he must have felt as he struggled to make his ungodly decision. Nightmares—not of his ruined face but the crush of his loneliness—had tried to suffocate Beverly, who would wake up in the middle of the night, panting. Maybe that’s why she’d left the beds of so many husbands. She’d needed air.
Beyond ache now, her calves burned. She relished the way a little bit of manageable pain focused her on the present. Helped her outdistance memory. Made her feel…so…alive.
Up ahead: the barricade. She recognized it as her destination.
Most of the tension still on scene was in her body. Once-curious onlookers had gone home to help their kids with homework or to fix dinner. Maura Riley, wilted inside the news van, sat looking at her phone. Beverly was surprised to see she was only dressed for the camera from the waist up; below she was wearing jeans and running shoes. She paid Beverly no mind.
Beverly walked right up to the barricade and paced. So close to Jeff now. On the other side, a policeman sat in a black-and-white with the window rolled down.
“Excuse me,” Beverly said. “Anything new happening?”
He shook his head. “You look familiar. Hey, is that your husband up there?”
Beverly shook her head. No. And yes.
Off to the side of the barricade, at the edge of the woods, Beverly found a rock to prop herself against and took a seat on the ground. If Dom had only reached out to her, she would have been there in a heartbeat. She would have put her own heart right into his chest if it weren’t for the life growing within her that depended on it.
She couldn’t imagine the nature of Jeff’s inner torture, which had risen to the surface and demanded control. But then again, she had smelled her lover’s death. Maybe she could.
The ground’s cool dampness seeped into her bones. Now that she was no longer moving, Beverly felt the familiar cloak of fear cinch around her. Smelled its mildew. She would tolerate it and live through it, for Jeff. She would not let him go through this alone.
Intention was a powerful thing, she reminded herself. In her mind, she cast off the cloak and laid it in what was left of the life-giving autumn sun. Once warmth and love had restored it, she wrapped the cloak around Jeff’s shaking shoulders.
ronnie
Tension increased in the fire hall as the first round of Mace was shot into Jeff’s stronghold. Ronnie had something new to cling to: the Special Emergency Response Team would start playing by its own rules, not Jeff’s. She welcomed nature’s deadline. The sun would set, Jeff would need to breathe clean air, and the situation would soon be brought to a close.
Expectation infused every moment with possibilities too numerous to count, too frightening to envision.
A half hour dragged by.
Ronnie wondered if maybe her mother had left for good. She’d never been one to handle adversity well, and Ronnie had an inkling of why that was true. On the other side of the room, Janet sat staring into space as if her senses were shutting down.
“Why isn’t he coming out?” Ronnie asked Corporal McNichol when she returned to the room. “How can he breathe?”
“He must be quite drunk,” she said. Obliterated, Jeff used to call it when Paco drank to excess. The assessment didn’t surprise Ronnie. She’d heard his voice on the answering machine. The corporal cited instances in which people high on drugs could breathe the Mace without noticing it.
Ronnie hoped that after making his statement to Janet earlier, Jeff had stopped drinking. Or run out of booze. Or run out of ammunition. Maybe he’d fallen asleep and awoke feeling better.
Five thirty arrived. Corporal McNichol informed them that troops had fired more of the chemical irritant into the store office.
Ronnie stood at the edge of every second, peering over.
Corporal McNichol said this still might take some time and suggested the women accept the firehouse cook’s offer to make them dinner. She sent him in while she returned to her men.
It seemed odd to think about eating as such dire circumstances were unfolding for Jeff, but Ronnie had to admit she was hungry. Janet looked beyond feeling anything, but she’d need her strength.
Ronnie ordered them cheeseburgers. She could hear Jeff, so much a part of her whether she wanted it or not: That’s off the lunch menu, not the dinner menu.
The cook looked around the room. “So that’s two?”
“I’m hoping my mother will be back soon. Make it three.”
Jeff was so in his element in a fine restaurant, ordering food and wine for them both. He’d try her salmon and she’d sample his filet mignon, his eyes sparkling in the glow of candlelight. She felt him watching her now, ordering without him, with silent tears rolling down his face.
beverly
Ka-pow.
When it finally came, the sound was muted from where Beverly sat but plenty violent; her whole body flinched. In the canopy above her, a crow screeched and lifted into the air. She sat, waiting—but there was nothing more. She heard tired voices from the police car radio, saw the lights come on, saw the car pull forward. She collapsed her face into her hands, knowing that Jeff’s standoff, and his life, had ended.
Maura Riley popped from the news van and headed toward her. Beverly pushed to her feet and ran down the hill, coaxing her chilled bones into service. “Wait, I want to ask you…” Beverly strained to put distance between her and whatever question that woman wanted to ask. Her breath grew uneven as the sobs came. Tears, too long denied, wet her face. She had done what she came to do, and now she had to get the hell out of here.
She ran until the road punished her feet, the effort set fire to what was left of her knees, and the waning daylight stole the last of her breath. Beverly wanted to take the pounding and more, but her body made its own decision and slowed her step. She gulped for air.
A car pulled up beside her. If it was that news van, Maura Riley better watch out because—
“Can I give you a lift?”
It was a man’s voice. Beverly slowed, wiping away enough tears to focus. It was Karl Prout.
“I heard on the scanner down at Perlmutter’s and raced right up to see if there was anything I could do. I’m so sorry, Beverly. Jeff was such a nice man.”
So it was true.
She couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. She folded her arms on top of his rolled-down window, put down her head, and sobbed.
He patted the back of her head with his beefy hand, more tenderly than she would have thought possible. “I’m so, so sorry.”
ronnie
In her mind, Ronnie reached up and wiped away Jeff’s tears, just as she had that night long ago, out on the hammock, on the day they’d bought Cupcake. Jeff had just asked her to marry him. With her hand damp, she’d undone a few buttons and pulled the kitten from her shirt.
“Cupcake is going to need to learn what grass is,” she’d said, setting the kitten on the lawn, then she slipped Jeff’s hand inside her shirt where the kitten had been hiding—against her heart. “I don’t want her to get squished. Because you’re going to have to kiss me now.”
He touched his lips to hers, then pulled back. “Is that a yes?”
“That, my love, is a yes.”
And he kissed her until the stars and the hammock and the earth fell away, and Ronnie sensed exactly who she was meant to be: Jeff’s wife. Later, as the damp settled in, Ronnie shivered and reached for the kitten mewling below them. Jeff tucked his jacket around all three of them. Then, after whispering dreams between touching lips late into the night, Jeff and Ronnie let the river of endless possibility rock them gently to sleep.
The sound of footsteps near the entrance to the firehouse social hall tore her from his side.
Three people appeared at the door: a uniformed officer, Corporal McNichol, and a man carrying a zippered nylon case.
Their steps were measured as they advanced, a color guard without a flag. Heels tapping the floor in a code Ronnie couldn’t crack. She wanted them to stop. Where was her mother? Beverly should be here. She’d been here all day; they needed to be together. Stop walking until all three of us are here. We need to see this through together. Turn crisply on your heels. Go away. But they kept advancing. Ronnie had no authority, knew no commands.
Ronnie shot a panicked look at Janet, converging from her corner. The threesome drew near. Halted.
Corporal McNichol took the lead. “Well, I have news.” She was near enough t
o speak quietly. Ronnie tried to conjure one more moment of hope. They hadn’t had anything that qualified as “news” in hours, since Jeff blew a hole in the office door.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Corporal McNichol began again.
Janet sank into her chair. Ronnie would not. She would take this standing up.
“He did it. He shot himself. Jeff is dead.”
ronnie
Ronnie’s legs unhinged; her knees smacked the floor. Everything went red. My god, Jeff, no. I was just holding you and the kitten. We were just dreaming, Jeff. Come back. How could you do this while the taste of you is still on my lips? We waited all day for you. I’ve been waiting for years for you to come back, Jeff. The red is filling my eyes. Get up, Jeff. You know you can’t just lie still in the middle of the day; you can never be still. Andrew and Will need you. Move your hands, Jeff. They’re too tight around my neck. Jeff, let go. I can’t carry you anymore. Get off me, I can’t breathe. Ronnie sobbed until time stopped warping and the room stopped spinning and her edges melted into the pool of her own bloody tears.
She felt her cheek against the cold floor. This is where Ronnie ends; this is where the rest of the world begins.
“Ronnie.” A man called to her, as if from far away. Not a low ugly snarl, like she’d heard earlier, but a voice that had healed. Jeff?
A hand on her shoulder, gently shaking. “Hey, Ronnie?” Ronnie came back to herself and lifted her wet face. Her vision cleared, filling with the sandy-haired man beside her.
“Ronnie, this is a paramedic,” Corporal McNichol said.
Ronnie looked at the stethoscope hanging around his neck. “Were you at the farm? Did you see him?”
He shook his head no. “Take even breaths,” he said, his fingertips on her inner wrist, his eyes on his watch. “Not too deep, not too fast. Nice and even.”
The Far End of Happy Page 25
