The Underside of Joy

by Seré Prince Halverson

  I grabbed Gwen’s pen and wrote NO!! on her manila folder.

  She stood. ‘Your Honour, before we get into a drawn-out investigation, can we each talk to our clients?’

  Gwen and I sat in an attorney conference room. I said through clenched teeth, ‘They cannot be separated.’

  ‘This judge is so over the top, it’s ridiculous. He could be grandstanding. It doesn’t happen often that a judge splits up the children.’

  ‘You heard him. I cannot take that chance. How is this happening?’

  ‘Look. It’s not happening today; he’s speculating. First there has to be an investigation. They’ll look into everything. Everyone will be interviewed. It’s going to be an intense six months. And expensive.’

  ‘I don’t care about the money. I’ll find the money. It’s just that this is taking its toll on everyone. Marcella . . . I don’t think she and Joe Sr could live through much more of this. But it’s going to be the hardest on Annie and Zach.’

  ‘And we’ve barely scratched the surface, compared to what’s coming with an investigation. Ella, right now Paige is offering you joint custody. We can also ask that the court retain jurisdiction for either party to seek a modification, which means it can be revisited in the future.’

  ‘But she gets physical custody?’

  Gwen nodded. ‘We could let this go to a hearing, and the judge could rule that she has full custody and you have nothing. Not even visitation. And that’s possible. Typically, stepparents have no rights when it comes to custody.’ She leaned into the table. ‘Except when you can prove abandonment. Ella, the best-case scenario is that you get Zach but not Annie. And you clearly don’t want them separated.’

  How did this happen?

  The letters happened.

  ‘Gwen, what would you do if they were your kids?’

  She placed her hand on my arm. ‘Joint custody. I would agree to their stipulation. This may be the best we can do right now. Okay?’

  I nodded but couldn’t say the word yes.

  She left me in the room so I wouldn’t have to talk to Joe Sr, Marcella, or David, and went to draw up the papers. I sat with my face in my hands, knowing without a doubt that I had tried to do the right thing and instead had failed everyone I loved.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Lizzie answered the front door and hugged me. ‘Frank called. You did an amazing thing.’

  My throat clenched. I shook my head, heard Zach’s voice, ‘Mommy’s here! Mommymommymommy!’ He ran to me, holding a stuffed T rex in a Hawaiian shirt, and I picked him up and did not cry. Lizzie looked away. Annie came out and slipped her hand through my belt loop. And I did not cry.

  I thanked Lizzie, the kids thanked Lizzie. We drove the four blocks home. I didn’t know how to tell them, because the reality still circled around, like the tip of a shark that would soon eat us alive.

  I knew I didn’t want Annie to piece together bits of whispered conversations on my end of late-night telephone calls. I also didn’t want Paige to tell her first. Gwen had insisted that I be the one to tell the kids, and while the judge had agreed, he’d given me only two days.

  I didn’t wait that long. I sat them down on our back porch with the lemonade Popsicles we’d made together, Zach spilling a good portion of the lemonade onto the kitchen floor. I squeezed myself between the two of them and said, ‘Something happened today that I need to talk with you about.’

  Annie looked up at me. Her fringe was clipped back with a pink barrette – probably the work of Lizzie’s daughter – and she looked more and more like Paige. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you know your mama Paige?’

  They both nodded, and Annie said, ‘Of course, silly.’

  I forced a smile. ‘Of course you do. You see, when Daddy died, she and I had a . . . disagreement . . . about where the two of you should live. She thought you should live with her. I wanted you to stay here with me. So when two people can’t agree, sometimes they go to a place called court and talk about it until a decision is made. And this morning? It was decided that both of you should live with Mama Paige right now.’

  ‘Why?’ Zach said. He’d been swinging his chubby legs, kicking the lattice beneath the porch, and he stopped, searching my face. His Popsicle dripped streaks down his wrist, his arm, and onto his big-boy jeans.

  Because I blew it. Because I didn’t fight hard enough for you. Maybe I didn’t do what a real mother would have done.

  ‘Because,’ I said, ‘since Mama Paige is your . . . birth mother, she wants to have more time with you than she’s had.’

  ‘Why? Because I was in her tummy?’

  ‘Because. She loves you. And she really, really misses you.’

  Annie finally spoke. ‘What about you? You love us.’

  ‘Yes.’ I swallowed. ‘I love you very, very much. And I will miss you.’

  ‘Are you sad?’

  I nodded. ‘But. You and Zach will have a wonderful new adventure. You’ll get to live in your mama’s big, beautiful house with your own rooms and play with lots of new friends. And I will still get to visit you.’

  ‘Visit us? Like Nana Beene visits us?’ Zach asked.

  ‘Yes. Sort of like that.’

  His eyes went wide; his sticky chin crumpled up in a trembling mass of dimples. I pulled him to me and held him in the crook of my arm.

  He said, ‘No way, José.’

  Annie said, ‘You promised!’ Her voice shook, and a tear traced down her cheek. ‘You said you’d never leave us! You lied.’

  ‘Annie, I never wanted this to happen. I love you. I promise. I –’

  ‘Don’t promise me anything!’ She threw her Popsicle, scrambled up, and started to run into the house, but then she turned around at the door, hands hanging at her sides, tears streaming, eyes on me. ‘You pinkie promised! You said never, ever!’

  ‘Come here, Banannie.’ She ran into me, and the three of us huddled on the porch, Zach wailing now too.

  Annie said through her sobs, ‘I don’t wanna be brave anymore.’ I stroked their hair. Two clouds drifted on the horizon, wispy white as baptism gowns. ‘You can cry,’ I told her. ‘You can be angry. That doesn’t mean you’re not brave.’

  Even to this day, when I play it over in my mind, our good-bye happens in the slowest of motion, but in reality it happened quickly. I guess Judge Stanton believed in the fast-ripping-off-the-Band-Aid approach. But people aren’t Band-Aids.

  Two days later, the day before Annie’s seventh birthday, the cold morning sky low and grey, Paige stood outside in a teal silk dress and heels, opening the car doors, opening the trunk. Inside, Annie led Zach through their circle of embraces and kisses: Marcella and Joe Sr, David and Gil, Lucy, Frank, Lizzie, Callie, Thing One and Thing Two, until the two of them stood in front of me, looking up, waiting. Marcella turned her wide back to us. Zach clenched his Bubby and picked up his Thomas the Tank Engine suitcase. He insisted on wearing his Thomas slippers that matched the suitcase, and I didn’t have the heart to argue with him, feeling like that was the least I could give him.

  But Marcella turned back around and came up to me, and said, ‘You put shoes on him. Right. This. Minute.’

  ‘Marcella. He wants to wear these. It’s the one thing he asked for. Let’s pick our battles.’

  ‘What do you know about fighting a battle? You give in. That’s what you do.’ She turned back around.

  Annie wore her Birkenstocks and jeans instead of the dress and patent leathers she’d insisted on wearing the first time she’d visited Paige. I toed her toe with my own Birkenstock, then opened the screen door for them. Taking their hands in mine, I led the three of us down the porch steps and across the gravel. Still, I hoped for some divinity or act of nature to intervene, to say, Stop. This was a test. The old Abraham-and-Isaac routine, but forget it, turn around, take them back inside, it’s over now. I concentrated my energy on not feeling, not crying, not looking at Paige, not throwing the kids into the Jeep and racing towards Canada or
Mexico.

  Callie followed us, circling around Paige’s rental car, while the rest of the family waited on the porch. Annie’s shoulders shook in a silent attempt not to cry, but when Zach saw her clenched face, he began howling. Paige yelled over him, ‘They’ll be fine! We just need to go!’ You know nothing, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I buckled the kids into their car seats as I had always done, and I kissed them, hugged them, wiped their tears and snot with my sleeves. I told them I would see them very soon and that I would call them that night.

  Paige and I both lifted our hands, barely, and she started the car, Zach screaming now, ‘I . . . want . . . my . . . MOMMY,’ over and over as we stood on the porch, silent, waving, listening to his screams get smaller and smaller until the screams, and Zach, and Annie, were gone.

  Everyone else filed down the stairs. Frank and Lizzie and Lucy all offered to stay, but I only shook my head. Joe Sr turned to me, his lip trembling, and said, ‘At least you could have put Zach’s shoes on for him. No man should have to leave his family in his slippers.’ I didn’t know why the shoes were so important to Marcella and Joe Sr, but that was the least of my worries at the moment. David hugged me, but the hug was weak armed and quick, with a pat on the back – nothing like the Italian embraces we usually shared. David told me, ‘Take some time away from the store. We’ll cover for you.’ I knew they needed time away from me too. Marcella left without looking at me.

  When they were gone, I walked directly to the kids’ room. Callie followed. I closed the door behind us. I threw myself on Annie’s bed, burrowed my face into her sweet-smelling pillow, and I howled just like Zach, his pain-filled screams that I could not comfort wracking through me. Callie yelped as if in pain too. Sobs came from my core; I could not stop them. I cried without ceasing. I tried Paige’s cell phone three times, but she didn’t pick up.

  Callie’s bark woke me, followed by a hard, persistent knock on the front door. Disoriented, I grabbed for my alarm clock that wasn’t where it should be, remembered that I was in Annie’s bed, still in my clothes, and then remembered why. The knocking continued, and I let myself think, for the instant I climbed out of bed, that it was Paige, back with Annie and Zach, to tell me she’d made a horrible mistake. Instead it was the UPS man with a delivery. It was a box addressed to the kids from Paige, sent a week before. Instead of signing for it, I scratched out the address and wrote Return to sender.

  Paige still didn’t answer. I left a message. I left four messages in the next four hours. I got three calls that day; not one from the kids. They were from the three other people on the planet who were still speaking to me: my mom, Lizzie, and Lucy. I screened them and didn’t pick up; I didn’t want to tie up the line in case the kids were trying to call me. My mom and Lizzie said they were thinking of me, to call if I wanted to talk. Lucy said she was coming over after work the next day, no questions asked.

  The only responsibilities I had were to feed Callie, the chickens, and Thing One and Thing Two, clean the coop and the litter box, and pull up weeds. I did these things. Callie kept trying to nudge me into a walk, bringing me her leash, cocking her head with the sad eyes I usually could not resist. But I didn’t have the energy, and I didn’t want to see anyone in town.

  I walked through the house, holding the sleeping kittens like babies in the crooks of my arms, and everything I saw stabbed me. The pictures of the kids, their toys, their art projects. The clay vase I kept on the bookshelves. Annie had made it for me in preschool. It had said Happy Mother’s Day in macaroni letters, and I’d always loved it. The M had fallen off and left an indent soon after she brought it home, but only then, on that day after they’d gone, did I notice that without the M it read, Happy other’s Day.

  The refrigerator kicked in humming, the clock ticked, a log fell in the woodstove. I sat on the couch and channel surfed for hours until I happened upon TV Land – solely devoted to old shows from the sixties and seventies. I watched The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Room 222. These were the shows I’d watched religiously after my father had died, wondering why my mom couldn’t be more like Shirley Partridge, why my parents hadn’t had more children so that I’d have a group of siblings I could start a rock band with too.

  I let out Callie and thought about calling the kids again, but it was nine o’clock. They were fast asleep in their new rooms, their first day without me, and we hadn’t talked. I had to wait until morning. I let Callie back in and she lay on the floor next to the couch. I fell asleep with the TV on – Mister Ed – and woke in the morning to I Dream of Jeannie.

  I repeated my short list of chores, thought about cleaning the house, but, really, why? The day stretched before me: Room 222, Gilligan’s Island, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Green Acres, That Girl, Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. When Callie was a puppy, still chewing up everything in sight, Joe and I decided our life was less Please Don’t Eat the Daisies and more Please Don’t Eat the Porch.

  I tried the kids again. Still no one answered. Finally Paige called, wanting to let me know they’d got home late last night, that their plane had been delayed.

  ‘Can I talk to the kids?’ I said.

  ‘I know this is hard for you. It’s also really hard for them.’

  Zach was crying in the background, ‘I . . . want . . . my . . . mommy! I . . . want . . . my . . . mommy!’

  ‘Ella, I really don’t think it would be a good idea to talk to them right now. Give us a little time to adjust. They miss you, and talking to them will just make it worse. We need to work through this, the three of us.’

  ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ I said. ‘Let me talk to him. I can help him feel better.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Paige said. ‘Look. What you did in that courtroom was noble. It took courage. But now I’m asking you to give us some space.’

  ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’

  ‘I know who I am . . . I’m their mother.’ And she hung up.

  ‘Bitch!’ I screamed into the phone, to no one, and hurled it at the wall.

  It wasn’t enough. I felt as frantic as a cat on acid. What could I do? Zach was crying! Joe’s tripod was still propped up in the corner of the not-so-great room as some kind of makeshift memorial. I grabbed it and headed outside, still in my pyjamas. I swung the tripod in the air like it was a bat and I was next up. I walked over to Joe’s truck. His beloved Green Hornet. I planted my feet. I swung as hard as I could, smashing the windshield, smashing it into oblivion.

  Chapter Thirty

  What had I expected from Paige? Overflowing gratitude? Forgiveness? A certain willingness to work things out? Yes, yes, and yes. I had told Gwen Alterman that I didn’t believe Paige should be shut out of Annie’s and Zach’s lives. I thought Paige would believe the same about me. I had mistaken her for the Paige who wrote the letters three years ago – a desperate, vulnerable, hurting mother. But even Lizzie had noticed, there was an old Paige, and now this new Paige: who believed in the order of things and their placement, who seemed convinced that the placement of Annie and Zach should be in her home, with none of my personal chi flowing through the door, or even through the phone wires. She’d cleaned out the clutter of having me as their stepmother. (Who needs two when one will do the job? Decide which box – Give Away or Throw Away, and then don’t look back.)

  I called Gwen, who told me to let the dust settle. I doubted Paige had any dust. She reminded me that Paige still had to allow for visitation in a month. If she refused, she would be in contempt, and then we’d actually have grounds to do something.

  ‘A month?’ was all I could say. ‘In one month I’ll get to see them for two days? Today’s Annie’s seventh birthday and I haven’t even got to talk with her.’

  ‘There’s nothing fair about this. But it sounds like she’s off to a rocky start. So. Keep track of every conversation, but don’t badger or harass. This could go completely in our direction. You just have to be patient.’

  Lucy let herself in that night. She foun
d me in the kids’ room sitting on the floor amid neatly arranged stuffed animals and dolls, having a tea party. I’d packed presents in Annie’s suitcase, but I couldn’t stand not being able to see her open them, not making her favourite carrot cake.

  I’d tied a bonnet on Callie, the way Annie sometimes did. I was pushing Buzz Lightyear’s button over and over, so he kept repeating, ‘To infinity, and beyond!’ Without saying a word, Lucy walked into the kitchen, came back with an open bottle of petite sirah, from which she poured enough to fill two of the pink-and-white miniature china cups. ‘Sorry, Elmo, you’re underage,’ she said. She turned to me. ‘Hey, it’s going to take a helluva long time to get drunk this way.’ She held her cup out for me to toast. ‘Ella, oh my God, honey, your eyes. You look like shit.’

  I shook my head. She hugged me, rubbed my back, ‘I know, El. I know.’ It wasn’t long before we moved out to the back porch, exchanging our teacups for big-girl glasses. She tried to get me to eat something, but I couldn’t. I did bum cigarettes off her, though, and for the first time in my life, smoked them without guilt or regret.

  Lucy gently suggested I start taking the antidepressant that Dr Boyle had recommended. I told her no, and also said no to her offer of more wine. I knew I needed to feel this, no matter how much it hurt.