by Mark Gunther
Rachel was Joy’s friend and the club yogini. Joy had worked with her privately and in classes for the past year, using yoga to balance the effects to cycling. Rachel wasn’t Jewish, but she’d come to the house every shiva day.
Joy ducked under John’s arm and hugged her.
“Hey, Rachel. Got any time now?”
“I do, actually.”
She nodded apologetically at John, who said, “I just wanted to say hello. If there ever is anything we can do, please let us know. Give my best to Danny.” He headed off to the weight room.
“You okay?” Rachel asked.
“Yeah. Thanks, though.”
“No problem. We try to reduce to a minimum the amount of shit women get in this club.”
Joy chuckled. “That wasn’t shit. He’s a friend, I guess. Doing his best, anyway. I’m sorry I never finished the poster.”
“No worries. Something else happened to you.”
Joy valued the unadorned acknowledgement.
Rachel said. “We used your design anyway. I got the studio open.”
“Congratulations.” It was nice for Joy that she meant it.
Rachel took Joy to the yoga alcove behind the water fountain.
They spread a couple of mats and began their asanas. Joy felt something she remembered, a yielding to gravity that led to the center of the earth—not to the other world. Maybe, she thought, I can have more of these moments again, ordinary moments in my life. She exhaled deeply and felt trust in this woman who spent her life in the palpable world of gravity and touch and feeling. Maybe Joy could touch and feel in that way too; it was a good choice to come to the gym today. I’ll have to tell Danny, she thought. He’ll be relieved.
They were sitting in the Twist when Rachel said, “I have a confession. I just told my kids about Jenny yesterday.”
Rachel had two daughters, both younger than Jake.
“What?” Joy looked at her uncomprehendingly.
Rachel untwisted herself. “When it first happened, I didn’t know what to do. Even though they didn’t know Jenny that well, they looked up to her. I didn’t know what to think or how to talk about it. I want to protect my kids from pain, and I was just afraid that there would be nothing to say. So I said nothing. Please forgive me.”
Joy wanted to be mad at her, but what she felt was compassion.
So she said, “That’s all right, there’s nothing to really forgive. It’s hard.”
“I was thinking about myself, actually,” Rachel said, “not them. I didn’t want to have to tell them why it happened. I don’t know why it happened. I guess I thought I’d figure it out with time, but I didn’t.”
“There was no reason it happened. It was an accident. I left her in the car and boom. It doesn’t fit in the world at all. It just happened. It could happen to anyone.”
“That’s what I was afraid of saying to them. Anyway, I’m sorry. Hearing this now must be a drag.”
“No, it’s a relief, actually. Hardly anyone is honest with me. At least you didn’t ask me how I can do it.”
“No one can do it,” Rachel said.
“No.” Joy moved to the next asana.
“Here,” Rachel said, “twist your foot a bit to the left. Lower yourself into that hip. Good. Don’t overdo it. Now five long breaths.”
They finished the routine.
“Coming here has got to be weird,” Rachel said. “Why don’t you come to my home studio instead? No charge.”
“That’s very kind, but I’m fine.”
“No, Joy, I mean it. It’s a lot nicer than the gym. Let’s make a plan. Invite a friend if you want. Thursday mornings?”
“That’s very kind. Thursdays work, thanks.” Joy remembered gratitude. She tried to seek out John and apologize. But he was gone already.
My job in everyone’s life is to threaten their children with annihilation. But maybe they’ll survive if they just pretend it’s okay. The Angel of Death will overlook them. When the Bay Bridge collapses again in the next earthquake, they won’t be on it. When that tree falls down, it will hit someone else’s car. Their parents will die peacefully in bed and someone else’s will live with Alzheimer’s for twenty years. But then they see me and I’m just like them, with a family just like theirs. Rachel’s giving me yoga because her kids are alive. An outcome of Jenny’s death: A deeper friendship with Rachel.
Early the next morning Joy put on her bike clothes and took a cup of coffee down to the basement. Before she took her road bike off the hook she cleaned and waxed the frame. Then she took it down and wiped off the saddle. She lubed the chain and checked the brakes, spun the wheels and pumped the tires. She found the tire tools and pump and attached them to the bike. She put on her shoes and her helmet and glasses and went with the bike out the basement door and around Danny’s car on the parking pad, just like a thousand other mornings, before. She mounted and pushed off the curb and rolled slowly down the street, clicking in to each pedal separately, running up to a big gear and standing to push the pedals slowly but strongly across the first street. She thought she probably shouldn’t be too ambitious for her first day back, so she rode ten miles to the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge and back.
What her legs and her breath remembered made it really familiar but she felt displaced; those feelings belonged to someone else. Have I lost this, too, she wondered, until she crossed the top of the bridge’s arc and found space to ride a good cadence in the right gear for only two minutes. My heart can be broken and pump hard at the same time. Not exhilarating, but effective.
Back at the house, Danny toasted her with his insulated travel mug. “To the Common World, perhaps,” he said, and kissed her cheek on his way out the door.
14.
THIS TIME HIRAM brought Danny’s mother with him.
“Joy,” Hiram said, “you need to proceed with the insurance claim. However you feel, you can’t turn your back on this money.”
“It won’t bring her back, Daddy. I’m not going to sit there in court and tell the whole story again while some attorney argues that my negligence killed my daughter.”
“For God’s sake, Joy, this is not going to end up in court. Or even arbitration.”
“If I hadn’t left my car there she’d still be alive. If I’d brought her in to the store with me she’d still be alive. If I made her wait five minutes until we got downtown she’d still be alive. If I parked on the other side of the street she’d still be alive. If I asked her about it before we left the school she’d still be alive.”
“And if you never had her in the first place she wouldn’t be dead either!” Hiram snapped. “Would you have given up the years you did have?”
Of course not. No. Even with this.
“Hiram, control yourself.” Elaine’s face was tear streaked.
It’s hard for her, too. She touched Elaine’s arm.
“Honey,” she said to Joy, “think about the money being for Jake. You don’t have to spend a penny on yourselves. Danny’s business is doing great. You can work as much as you want to. The process will mostly be pro-forma: those guys are going to want to settle. You told me Bob has called you? Talk to him.” Bob Davidson had been a high school classmate of Danny’s and was a well-established personal injury lawyer.
“Call him, Joy,” Hiram said. “You’re an athlete. A little pain for a lot of good. Suck it up.”
The disability insurance that came with their credit card allowed for a payment in case of the death of a child. Danny had told her about it and made a copy of Jenny’s death certificate to send to them. The payment was equivalent to the payment for losing a finger on your non-dominant hand; less than the funeral had cost. After just a few weeks there was a check. Joy opened the envelope but she couldn’t stand looking at the check with the memo line: Re: the death of Jennifer H. Rosenberg. She had tossed it into a drawer in the kitchen. Danny had found it a couple of days later. He opened the envelope and held the check up in the light and asked with his eyes. She
just said, “Oops,” but still wouldn’t touch the check. He had to deposit it.
After the parents left Danny found her in her office. He squeezed her shoulder and she squeezed his hand and he said, “Was that hard?”
“You knew they were coming,” Joy said.
He nodded. Joy thought she should be angry about that.
“The only way I could get Hiram off this would be to shoot him. At least I got him to wait a few weeks and to do it with my mom.”
“Thanks, I guess. Dad can be blunt. You want me to do it?”
“Yes. I want you to do it. The money is for Jake. It’s only a deposition. Just tell the story.”
Joy nodded. They’re right. The world actually is a very dangerous place. It was much more obvious, likely even, they would suffer some other loss soon, that one of them would be disabled, the Big One would trash their house, or Danny’s business would go south, or something, but they would still be responsible for Jake.
Maybe everyone was right and it wouldn’t be too bad. Maybe the lawyers would feel sorry for her, dragging her back out on the street again. Maybe she’d remember some detail she had forgotten the last 5,000 times the memory had replayed itself in her head. Maybe that would be okay. Maybe it would be worse. Maybe reliving it over and over, day after day, was her purgatory, round and round in an endless loop for the rest of her damned life.
Probably won’t make a goddamn bit of difference anyway. I’ll always be the one who left her in the car. Of course, what do I know? I can’t even set the table.
15.
JOY WAS CLEANING up noisily from a multi-pot dinner when Danny came downstairs after putting Jake to bed.
“Hey Joy,” Danny said, “Keep it down. Jake’s going to sleep.”
She slowed down.
“Why do they always want to know how I can do it?”
“Who?”
“Everyone who hasn’t talked to me yet.”
“Prurience, I suppose.”
“Well, I’m sick of it.”
“You don’t have to tell them the truth.”
She shook her head. “Sometimes I do.”
“Only just enough of it. Not everything.”
“I can never remember the clichés when I need them.”
“Let’s make a list.”
He went into Joy’s office, coming back with a small drawing pad and a selection of Joy’s art pens.
“You give great pen,” he said.
“Wives with benefits,” she said. “You’re in a good mood.”
“Nothing like doing a cooperative activity with your spouse to strengthen a marriage.”
“Thanks, Dr. Phil.”
“Good place to start,” Danny said. “Here’s one.”
Danny wrote the number one on the top of the page and followed that with: I didn’t get to die, so I have to live. Then he wrote: 2. You live with the hand you’re dealt.
“Pap,” Joy said. “And it sounds so bitter.”
“We are bitter. But I guess the goal is to deflect further questioning.” He wrote: 3. Oh, you develop a certain grace.
“I’ve got one,” Joy said. She took the pen and wrote: 4. I have to be here for Danny and Jake; we still have a life to live.
Danny said, “Yecch.”
“The question I hate is how many children do you have?”
“I used to ask that all the time,” he said. “Now I never do.”
Joy remembered asking that question herself, when pride dominated her narrative. Now it looked like arrogance. Her family’s new life was an experience impossible to share. “If I lie I deny Jenny. If I tell the truth they feel bad. Then I have to soothe them, so they can run home to cuddle their live children and I get to feel guilty about disrupting their perfect little life.”
“You aren’t responsible for how they feel, Joy.”
“Of course I am. I have the dead child. I don’t feel that nice anymore. I want to tell them to fuck off, it’s none of their goddam business.”
“Whoa,” Danny said. “Getting serious now.”
He went to the freezer and brought out the vodka and two shot glasses. He poured.
“Nasdrovya.”
They knocked them back and clunked the glasses on the table. He wrote: 5. Fuck off, it’s none of your goddam business.
Joy smiled. “Okay, that one stays.”
Danny wrote: 6. I have a six-year-old son.
“Shit, Danny, really?”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Not the whole truth.”
“We can’t deny it.” He refilled their glasses.
I can’t admit it, either.
“Nasdrovya.” The glasses hit the table.
She took the pen: 7. I have two children, a ten-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy.
“Oh man, this one is dangerous,” Danny said. “They’re going to ask me about her soccer matches.”
“But don’t you ever imagine—”
“No. I can’t. She’ll never get any older. Then Jake will get older than her.”
She felt a little dizzy. “That’s going to be very weird. So how do we tell the truth?”
The bottle was on the move again.
“Nasdrovya.” Clunk.
He wrote: 8. I have one child, a seven-year-old boy. We lost our daughter last year.
“No way I’m ever saying that.”
She wrote: 8b. I have two children. My son is seven; we lost our daughter last year.
“I hate this so much,” he said.
Joy hated it too. “This is the one we have to live with now, I guess.”
“I don’t know that. Nasdrovya.” Clunk.
He wrote: 9. My daughter is dead. She took the pen and added: You’d better be nice to me.
“Playing the dead child card,” he said.
In a different time they would have laughed at that. They stared at the list for a while. There was nothing else to add. She tore off the page and copied the list neatly into her sketchbook. Danny kept the original; he said he would put it in his briefcase. When the silence got too thick he took her hand and led her up the stairs.
She came to their bed naked. He saw, and took off his pajamas. His arms came around her, seeking her breasts, but she took his hands and pulled them to her waist, in a hug. She arched her back toward him and he found his place. They fucked quietly, in their bed. He might have come. The earth did not move. The next morning, even though he was asleep, she kissed him right on the lips.
16.
JOY’S REFLECTION STARED back at her from the polished door of the stainless steel elevator: smart black suit, white shirt, black hose, black shoes, but no jewelry, no makeup. Just the look her attorney had ordered. Her hair hung in wet strands. Hollow eyes sunk deep into her face, mouth turned down, like a Disney hag who’s been found out at the end of the story.
Davidson had filed claims with the various companies. He told Joy the other side had been expecting a claim and were happy to agree to arbitration, but that he did not think it would come to that; they would be motivated to settle. And he was aware of Joy’s desire to get it over with. He filed a brief, with her sworn affidavit, but the attorneys for the other side wanted to depose her anyway.
The law had established protocols for valuing the loss of children. “You’d be surprised how often kids are killed in accidents,” Bob said. Joy wasn’t, of course. The cases generally were decided on an economic basis. The lifetime loss of the comfort and succor of a living child was impossible to value because the adult capacities of any given child were unpredictable. Each family, too, was different.
Because of Joy and Danny’s education, Jenny’s life was given a higher value. The assumption was that she’d be educated as well, therefore generating more income over the course of her life and yielding a higher net present value for the settlement. Additional discounts were applied for the delayed start of her earning years due to graduate school and estimated time off for pregnancy. Actuaries used charts that wou
ld determine the net present value of her lifetime accrued earnings at a range of estimated inflation-based discounts.
“We might have been able to ask for more,” Bob told them, “if Jenny was older with a career earnings path already established. We’ll add in your loss of earnings due to bereavement, therapy costs, funeral, all the extra expenses, whatever you can estimate.”
“Documented?” Danny asked.
“Nope. At this stage it just has to be reasonable,” Bob said. “They want it over with, too.”
“We’ve had a lot pain and suffering,” said Joy.
“Can’t get paid for that, but I will be bringing it up,” Bob said, “very emphatically.”
Bob’s firm’s entry lounge was beautifully appointed with modern art on the walls, dense pile carpeting, carefully placed easy chairs and couches, today’s newspapers arranged neatly on the coffee tables. She picked a chair by a large tree, sheltered from the door. A few minutes later what must be her interlocutors came bustling in, overcoats flapping open, briefcases dangling from leather-gloved hands. The receptionist led them away.
A chorus to witness my public stoning.
Joy was the only witness. Bob came to get her.
“Why are there three of them?” she asked.
“One each from the contractor, the property owner, and the scaffolding company. Only one of them will ask the questions, though. Remember, tell the truth, but only answer the questions you are asked. If you can only say yes or no, do that. Don’t offer opinions. Just like we practiced. Leave your backpack with the receptionist.”
The little lost waif.
In the conference room, the lawyers’ faces were lost in the glare from the wall of glass behind them. Joy took a chair opposite the middle one. A spotlight from the ceiling revealed his face. He looked about fourteen. Davidson sat next to her. A tape recorder sat in the middle of the table. An older woman sat at one end, fingers poised over a stenotype machine. Out the window it was a bluebird day. Joy could see the Campanile on the Berkeley campus, miles away across the water. She remembered young lovers walking up Strawberry Canyon, behind the campus, and for a moment she felt Danny’s hand in hers. She forced her attention to the faces. The middle guy’s name was Stephen Duckworth. He introduced the others and went over the procedures.