The Secret of Joy

by Melissa Senate

  “Then let’s do it,” he said. “I mean it. Kids are great, right?” He directed this last at Harry.

  Harry nodded. “Rex has made me want to be a better person.”

  “So what are the main issues between you two?” Aimee asked, looking between Harry and Joy.

  Joy stared at her eggs. “It just feels like we’ve grown apart somehow. We’re both only twenty-six. With a three-year-old child. And it’s like we’re this old married couple who eat in silence, who have nothing to say after ‘So how was Rex today?’ After dinner, I go read or plan a tour, and Harry’s in his office, working on a design or on the computer.”

  “What do you want to say?” Rebecca asked.

  “Everything. I want there to be this rush of conversation, like in the beginning.” She shook her head. “I sound like Tim.”

  “No you don’t,” Rebecca said. “You sound like you want your husband back. You sound like you feel as if you lost him inside your own house, inside your marriage.”

  “That is exactly how I feel,” Joy said softly.

  Harry picked up his mug of coffee. “She’s been saying that. And I’ve been saying, ‘I’m right here.’ And she says, ‘You don’t understand,’ and I say, ‘You’re right, I don’t.’ And then we go back to our silence, our separate rooms. I’ve been living in the half-finished basement for the past six weeks.”

  Joy stared at him, then down at her plate, then back at Harry. “You say I’m cold and emotionally frigid. How do you think that makes me feel? I am the way I am.”

  “Didn’t Tim just say that?” Aimee asked gently, tucking her frizzy orange curls behind her ears.

  “I’m not making excuses,” Joy snapped. “Sorry,” she added.

  “Yes you are,” Harry said. “You’re saying you’re just not warm and fuzzy. But you are. I’ve seen how you are with Rex. I’ve seen how you let that wall down when you’re with him. I’m asking you to keep it down.”

  “Does anyone want more coffee?” Joy asked, jumping up.

  “Tim ran off, too,” Harry said loud and clear.

  “I’m going into the kitchen,” Joy snapped.

  Harry rolled his eyes and walked over to the fireplace to add another log. The flames mesmerized Rebecca. She wished they’d offer some wisdom, the right thing to say.

  When Joy came back with her mug full of steaming coffee, Rebecca said, “Can I ask you something?”

  Joy shifted as though she were about to get up, but then resettled herself. She had been about to storm off and had stopped herself. That was good. “Okay.”

  Rebecca picked up her own coffee mug and took a bracing sip. “Your mother is renewing her vows. How does that make you feel?”

  Joy leaned her head back and stared up at the ceiling. “Truth? Like a total failure.”

  “Does she know you and Harry have separated?”

  Joy nodded. “She tells me we can talk about it, but I can’t. I think she thinks renewing her vows will make me focus on my vows.”

  Ha! Like vows mattered to Pia Jayhawk, Rebecca thought. Her father had no doubt been wearing his wedding band on the beach that day. She knew when she’d kissed him, when she’d slept with him, that he was a married man, that he’d taken vows to love, honor, and cherish someone else.

  “You know what I think?” Harry said quietly. “I think you’ve been thinking a lot about your father. And then all of a sudden, his other daughter comes looking for you. The universe is telling you it’s time to deal with it.”

  “You were thinking about him?” Rebecca asked.

  “Not thinking about him. I mean, there’s nothing to think about. I never knew him. It’s like he doesn’t exist.”

  “But he does exist,” Harry said. “He always has. There’s a painting of him in our house, Joy.”

  So she did know.

  Now it was Joy’s turn to roll her eyes. “I know. And I also know that you throw his existence in my face whenever we’re arguing about something. I didn’t know my father. My father wasn’t interested in knowing me. So what? It hasn’t affected me. I never knew him, so there was no loss involved. It’s like kids who are conceived through sperm donors.”

  “Well, not really,” Aimee Cutlass said as she poured a glass of orange juice.

  “No, not really at all,” Harry said, his eyes on Joy. “That’s how you’ve rationalized it, though. And that’s okay. But maybe it’s time you let yourself really grieve it or something.”

  Joy stared at him. “Grieve it? Grieve the loss of someone who turned his back on his own child? That person isn’t worth my trouble.”

  “That person is your father, Joy,” Harry said.

  “God, this argument is boring,” Joy snapped. She got up and stalked into the kitchen, then appeared in the doorway a moment later with another cup of coffee. She stayed there. “That person isn’t my father. He’s just DNA.”

  “She’s right, really,” Charles put in. “A father isn’t a father because of biology alone. I mean, aside from technically.”

  “But Joy wasn’t conceived via a sperm donor,” Harry said. “Her mother had an affair with a married man, got pregnant, and when he heard the news, the man disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “Oh,” Aimee said, her expression softening.

  “And that man had a daughter at the time. A two-year-old. In fact, she’s right there,” Joy said, pointing at Rebecca.

  Aimee and Charles stared at Rebecca.

  “My father died a few weeks ago,” Rebecca said. “He told me about Joy. I thought I should find her.”

  “What was your plan?” Aimee asked. “I mean, once you found her?”

  Rebecca shrugged. “I didn’t have one. I just wanted to find her.”

  Joy’s pale brown eyes were trained on Rebecca. “Why? And if you say because we’re sisters, I’ll throw this mug at you.”

  Because we’re sisters, Rebecca said to herself instead. We are, at the most base level.

  “Well, you are sisters,” Harry said for her. “DNA says so. DNA says you’re half sisters.”

  Joy raised her chin. “My biological father is not my father. And just because Rebecca and I have his blood in common doesn’t make us sisters. It gives us something in common, that’s all.”

  “Something big,” Aimee said.

  Joy let out a breath. “I’m so tired of this. Whenever Harry and I fight, it’s because of my father. And how am I supposed to argue back about it when there is no father? I say, ‘There is no father,’ and he says, ‘That’s my point.’ And suddenly this is what we’re fighting about. Dead air. Nothingness. Emptiness.”

  Emptiness. It was a word Joy hadn’t used before about her feelings about her father.

  “I don’t mean to ‘throw it in your face,’” Harry said gently. “Or use it like a weapon. I just want you to acknowledge it instead of not talking about it. You never talk about it, Joy.”

  “Well, I hardly have a choice now,” Joy said. “And considering Rebecca is here—I mean, I invited her—I’d say that shows … something.”

  Harry walked over to Joy and took her hand. “It does. A big something.”

  Joy’s face crumpled and she turned away, but then wrapped her arms around Harry’s neck and sank into him.

  Rebecca gave her the moment, then said, “If you want to know the why of your father, Joy, it’s all there in the letters he wrote you. Every year on each of your birthdays. Starting with your first. Ending with your last.”

  “I just can’t. I can’t bring myself to even think about it.”

  “Why?” Harry asked. “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Sometimes I am and sometimes I’m not. Every now and then I do look at my mother’s painting of him, the little one in the house. But I look at it and there’s nothing there.”

  “Maybe you’re blocking that, Joy,” Rebecca said. “Maybe you’re afraid of what letting yourself feel something about him will unleash. A flood of frightening emotions you can’t control from years of
repressing them? Years of not knowing? Of wondering? Of not having your birthright? Your father in your life?”

  Joy stared at her, her lower lip trembling. She caught herself, though, and the hardened expression was back. “Maybe.”

  “You are good,” Harry said to Rebecca.

  twelve

  By Sunday morning, both couples were kissing in the kitchen, walking hand in hand upstairs, giving impromptu backrubs—well, the Cutlasses more than the Jayhawk-Joneses. For every Joy and Harry embrace Rebecca had spied (not that she was spying), she’d seen one of them huff off with a “You just don’t listen” (Harry’s favorite) or “That’s not what I’m saying!” (Joy’s usual).

  Over bagels and cream cheese and more fresh-squeezed orange juice and strong coffee, Aimee and Charles asked if they might leave early, since the weekend was such a success for both couples, and just get back to their lives. Aimee was eager to start filling out the application she’d had in her desk drawer for months. Joy and Harry missed Rex and said they’d be glad to get home, too. Rebecca had a feeling that being back on their home turf, where their little guy was, might help them find their way back to each other more than this place would at the moment.

  And so Rebecca found herself back on the Love Bus at 10:00 a.m. and home by 10:40. With no one to greet her, not even Charlie. Theo had said he’d be home after three o’clock, so she’d just have to wait to collect her little dog.

  She called Ellie, who assured her she was fine, though not really, and that she and Maggie were starting the Bitter Ex-wives Club of Wiscasset, though exes of any kind were welcome, from ex-girlfriends to ex-husbands. She asked after the fate of the two other couples and was pleased to hear there was hope out there for the right matches, the right couples, that long-term love wasn’t doomed. Two years of marriage might not be considered long-term to most, but two years was the longest Rebecca had been in a relationship. She wasn’t so sure if relationships were supposed to go through these ups and downs, these “I don’t even like you” ups and downs, or if the way she’d been feeling for the past year meant she should have gotten out long ago. Sometimes she did love Michael, in a way that moved something inside her heart, made her toes tingle, made her grateful to be alive. And then for long stretches she’d look at him every morning and want to pour the contents of his prissy water pitcher (that always had to be on his bedside table) on his face. Slowly.

  He’d arranged her father’s funeral.

  He’d called Joy trashy.

  That was how it was, though. He’d do one huge thing, something so vital to her ability to take a breath, and then in the next moment he’d do something that would suck that breath right out of her body.

  Was this what marriage was? This push and pull, give and take? She’d once heard Charlotte say she hated Peter’s guts, that he was the biggest asshole on the planet. Then the next day, they’d be arm in arm, nuzzling noses. And when Rebecca would ask Charlotte how they’d made up so fast, Charlotte would look puzzled and say, “Rebecca, we’re married” as if Rebecca understood what that meant.

  Well, Rebecca didn’t get it. Did it mean you forgave everything? How did you know, really, what a deal breaker was—and when? It had taken quite a while for Ellie to reach the deal-breaking point.

  She wondered what her mother would have done if she had known about her husband’s affair with Pia Jayhawk that summer. If she’d known about the baby. Rebecca had first thought her mother would leave her father, that she wouldn’t tolerate the betrayal, but Rebecca had no idea, really. She knew her mother, knew her father, but to a point. Their marriage, the real inside of it, was private. From what she did know of her mother, the deal breaker would not necessarily have been the affair. It would have been the back turning.

  She heard Marianne come through the side door. Rebecca found her in the kitchen in her church clothes, little hat with veil and all, putting away groceries. Rebecca told her she’d put everything away, she needed to do some mindless work, and a grateful Marianne went off to change her clothes. When she came back in a fleece top and jeans, they set to work on five trays of whoopie pies with traditional cream filling.

  “Marianne, why do you think husbands cheat on their wives?” Rebecca asked as she measured the flour and dumped it into a silver mixing bowl.

  “Big question,” Marianne said, working on mixing the sugar, butter, and eggs. Rebecca handed her the half cup of oil and the vanilla extract, then added the cocoa powder in her own bowl. “I don’t think anyone knows the answer, either. Not God or marriage therapists or Einstein. I’ll bet there are as many reasons why men cheat as there are men.”

  Rebecca sighed. “I guess so.”

  It was interesting to Rebecca that her father had had an affair only three years into marriage with her mother, yet then hadn’t “even committed adultery in my heart like Jimmy Carter” (per one of his letters to Joy) with another woman for the next fifteen years. Why? Rebecca could only assume it was a combination of fear and guilt and the utter gravitas of the situation. Even if the vasectomy had nixed the chance of another phone call interrupting his crossword puzzle, the “invisible” consequence of what his affair had resulted in had been like an albatross. That was what kept her father from so much as glancing at another woman. Rebecca was sure of it.

  Marianne turned off the electric mixer. “You’re not married, are you?”

  “Me, no. Just curious.” Rebecca measured the baking powder and baking soda and poured them in the bowl.

  Marianne regarded her for a moment, then said, “My husband cheated on me twice. And to be honest, yeah, it hurt, but I didn’t pay it much mind.”

  Rebecca raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

  “Well, the first time, an enemy I made at a P.T.A. meeting went for him whole hog. Just went after him to hurt me. She worked in the same office and started dressing all sexy, sidling up to him in her low-cut blouses and Miracle bras, and he finally couldn’t resist. She made sure the gossip got back to me. And her work was done.”

  Rebecca paused with the salt in her hand. “So you weren’t upset?”

  Marianne wiped her hands on her apron and sighed. “At her more than anything. I wished he’d been strong enough to ignore her, but between the flattery and her huge breasts and all the hot-breath whispers in his ear about what she wanted to do with him, he went for it right there in the inventory room.”

  “And there was a second time?”

  “A tramp at work again. But this time she really did like him, thought she could steal him away. What a mess that was. He was carrying on a sexual affair, and she thought she was having a love affair.”

  Rebecca handed the dry mixture to Marianne, who poured it into her bowl. She added some milk, then began beating again. “How did you find out about it?”

  “Woman from his office called. She said she thought I should know my husband was canoodling with a coworker. She used that word, too. Canoodling. Made it sound less sleazy. Anyway, he told me he was trying to end it with her, but she wasn’t taking no for an answer. I told him he’d just better up and quit before we had a Fatal Attraction scenario on our hands. He was out of work for three months before he found another good-paying manager’s-level job.”

  “Any more phone calls?”

  Marianne turned off the mixer. “No. But I have no doubt he had his dalliances.”

  “And … that was okay?”

  “Yes or no. Oh, Rebecca, it’s complicated, really. No, it’s not okay. Of course it’s not okay. But yeah, if it’s just sex and a midlife crisis and a little fun in the humdrum every day of life, fine. I knew Aaron loved me, loved me in his heart and soul. I guess I made it okay for me, since he was going to cheat anyway.”

  Rebecca began spooning circles of batter onto the cookie trays. “And if you’d given him an ultimatum?”

  “I think he would have said okay and then been very careful about his affairs.”

  “Do you think it’s possible for some men not to cheat at all? To be mon
ogamous till death do you part?”

  “I most certainly do think so. I know some of them, too.” She slung an arm around Rebecca. “I didn’t turn you off to marriage for all time, did I?”

  “No. Truth is always good, don’t you think?” Rebecca finished her second tray and began scooping batter onto a third.

  “Well, as long as you remember that there’s rarely a truth to be found even in absolutes. Yes, there are facts and there are lies, but there are usually mitigating circumstances, even the smallest of ones, that can make sense out of anything. My mother called that ‘being flexible.’”

  My mother would call that rationalizing, Rebecca thought. But she wouldn’t say that to Marianne. “But how do you know when you’re being too flexible? How do you know when you should refuse to bend on something?”

  Marianne slid the trays into the oven. “You just do. You wake up one morning and you just know. You wake up different. And I’ll tell you—if you give in after that, after you’ve woken up different, after you’ve reached your point, it’ll kill you. It’ll take a while—a few months, maybe a year—but it’ll break your spirit. Then you’re done for.”

  That was sobering.

  At Rebecca’s expression, Marianne added, “Honey, you’ve heard the expression ‘Follow your heart?’ That’s what it really means. You follow what you’ve been waking up with for days on end, for weeks on end, even if your head isn’t too sure. That’s how you don’t regret things, even your mistakes. The heart isn’t as stupid as some people think.”

  “I’m confused. On the one hand, I understand what you’re saying, and on the other, I don’t get it at all.”

  Marianne smiled. “That’s not always a bad thing.”

  Rebecca glanced up at the moose clock on the wall. It was ten minutes to three. She took off her apron and hung it on a peg with the others. “If you don’t need me anymore, I’m going to pick up Charlie from Theo’s. I miss that little guy so much.”