Without Jenny

by Mark Gunther

  Her husband, a burly young man with a Marine haircut, gave her a protective squeeze. Joy saw him and Danny exchange a glance—an impromptu alliance of husbands babysitting their shattered wives. The honor and duty of men.

  Before the silence in the room got too deafening, Deborah said. “Nothing is wrong with you, it was just a terrible thing. It’s not your fault, it’s not Susie’s fault; no one knows why this kind of thing happens. You’re young, you still can have children.”

  “How do I know they won’t die too?” The young woman was sobbing.

  Deborah sidestepped the question. “I have referrals to good doctors. It would take time but you’ll find a way. You have friends in this room.”

  Is this what I have to look forward to? Two years and still shattered? Will I still be playing in her room? Going to the cemetery and saying Kaddish all the time?

  Instead of saying how the girl’s testimony had terrified her, Joy said, “It must be so hard to leave everything behind and be all by yourselves. I can’t imagine doing this without our parents and friends.”

  The girl looked as if Joy had just stabbed her.

  “That’s why we’re at a support group,” her husband said, patiently. “Some of us just aren’t as lucky as you are.”

  He shook his head at Danny. Honor and duty. Danny shrugged and pulled on Joy’s arm.

  Lucky, she thought. Lucky? Joy stopped listening as the sharing went around the room. Almost everyone spoke. Not Joy. A brief, nondenominational prayer concluded the meeting. Joy practically ran out of the room.

  “What just happened in there?” she said when Danny caught up. “I thought I was trying to talk to her.”

  “You said the obvious. You don’t like it when people ask how many children you have.”

  “I’m glad we don’t have to depend on this group.”

  “A little humility might not be so bad for you, you know.”

  She flared. “Like I haven’t eaten enough shit already?”

  “I meant the Other World thing. You think you’re wrestling with God, and she just wants to have another baby.”

  “Drop it, Danny, okay?”

  They walked to the car in noisy silence.

  “I liked telling my story,” Danny said. “I don’t really think I’ve ever told it so completely before.”

  “I never heard the whole thing, either, not like that. You remember it so concretely.”

  “Yes.”

  “You still haven’t told me what the car looked like.”

  “No.”

  It must really hurt, remembering that. Like I remember the dust.

  He gave her the space her prickliness demanded; but with Jake he was alive, vibrant, the man she had married. He’s the counterweight to my nuttiness. Joy couldn’t cry for Danny, yet she held onto him with all the strength she could muster. She had read that more than eighty percent of couples who lose a child break up. The pain was so often unbearable. Yet they bore it.

  “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

  “Okay,” he said. “You kind of got ambushed in there.”

  “You’re too nice to me. I was kind of a jerk. Would you like to go back?”

  “I think so. I can go without you.”

  “No, Danny, I will if you want to.”

  But they never did.

  18.

  “I WANT TO clean out her room,” Joy announced. She could not get Susie’s mom’s continuing devastation out of her mind.

  “When?” Danny asked.

  “On the weekend. You have to help me.”

  “Of course. What about Jake? He’ll want to help too.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “He could get upset. Or maybe he won’t want to get rid of anything.”

  “We can’t protect him, Joy. It’s his life, too. I’m going to ask him. Besides, he’s her heir.”

  That stopped her. Danny was right. It was embarrassing that she couldn’t think of Jake as having any agency in this change. When Joy was a little girl, her mom always was reorganizing Joy’s drawers or her closet and usually took out clothes that she thought Joy shouldn’t be wearing anymore, which had upset Joy once she got old enough to push back. This was kind of like the same thing. Probably she should be worried about that in her relationship with him. What do you think, Jenny? she wanted to ask, but the Other World was getting farther and farther away.

  When she went to tuck him in Jake was reading Goodnight, Moon. He finished that one and asked her which one she wanted him to read to her. She picked Sophie and Lou, which was romantic and didn’t have any children in it. When he finished, she roused herself.

  “Time to sleep now, Jake.” It was a lot easier without the singing.

  “Mommy, what’s going to happen with Jenny’s things?”

  “We’ll look at everything. Some things we’ll give away, some we’ll keep, some we’ll save. I don’t know, exactly.”

  “I haven’t been in her room in a long time. It’s weird.”

  Joy had never seen him go into Jenny’s room after she died. If he wanted something, he would ask Joy to get it.

  “It’s good to change it now,” Joy said. For me, too. She’d played all the games and read all the books and had completely run out of conversation topics relevant to Jenny’s dolls.

  “I want to help you, Mommy. I want to show Teddy Jenny’s things,” Jake explained, “because if he wants to keep something I want him to have it.”

  Joy got worried she’d have to fight with Teddy over everything, but maybe what she really was afraid of was Jake handling it well—or seeing her handle it poorly.

  “Maybe a few things, honey.”

  “I’m still sad, Mommy.”

  “Me too, Jacob, me too. But it’s better to remember than to forget, don’t you think so?”

  Jake tucked Teddy into bed before letting Joy do it to him.

  “Mommy, will Jenny know what we’re doing? Will she be mad at us?”

  “When she was alive we gave away clothes and stuff she didn’t wear or use anymore, so she’s used to that. We won’t throw away anything that you want to keep.”

  “I just don’t want her to be mad. Can we put more things downstairs?”

  “We’ll see,” she said. She leaned over to kiss him. Jake rolled over and pulled the covers up. Joy kissed the top of his head.

  What a brave boy.

  On Saturday, Joy said Kaddish like on every Shabbat. The week’s Torah portion was deep in Numbers, Bamidbar, with its repetitive descriptions of the Mishkaan, the temple to be built to house the tablets of the law, deep in the innermost Holy of Holies. The room could be occupied for only a few minutes once a year, and only by the high priest, who faced sudden death if he screwed up the observance or wore the wrong thing. A place of unforgiving power. Aaron’s sons died in there.

  Really, though, how much holiness do you need? Do it every day and it isn’t holy anymore, it’s ordinary. She’d been looking for something that she destroyed by looking for it. Maybe I’m an apostate for taking apart my holy place, she thought, but Jenny never had been there. It’s good for it to be a room again. Besides, there’s still the cemetery.

  The next morning, Danny didn’t make waffles. He had more than one heavy duty, black, self-closing thirty-three-gallon garbage bag on hand for either trash or the things they would just run down to Goodwill tomorrow. He had some file boxes. Joy brought a whisk broom and the Dustbuster. When they were ready, Joy opened the door.

  “Pretty clean in here,” Danny noted.

  “I’ve been keeping it up,” said Joy.

  Danny photographed everything from every angle, embalming Jenny’s history—the blue pastel bedroom set with the little dolphin cutouts, each wall as it stood, each detail as it now was: the top of the dresser, the desk, the candle shelf, the pile of dolls, arranged just as Joy imagined Jenny would have her things if she still could have her things with her, where she was.

 
Clothes first. They started a trash bag and a giveaway bag. No bras. Joy was both pained and relieved. Joy lifted Jenny’s rainbow knee socks with the toes.

  “I remember those!” Jake said. “Jenny would slide around on the floor and then pick things up with her toes. I want them!”

  Danny got one of the storage bins. “Here, Jake, things we want to keep we’ll put in here.”

  “I want them in my room! My things here!”

  He put the socks next to him on the bed.

  “Okay, honey,” Joy said. Maybe he’d keep less without a box.

  T-shirts. Five school walkathons, Giants and Cal teams, Amanda’s eighth birthday, vacations . . . Joy examined each one before putting it into giveaway or trash, keeping only the Giant ones that soon would fit Jake. He’d have his own walkathons. Danny saved the Presidio Golf Club polo shirt he bought Jenny the second and last time they went. He looked at Joy wistfully, shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and dropped it into the save bin.

  “Each thing brings something back that I just have to let go again,” he said. “Do you remember, in one of those dead child books someone had taken all of the things that made them have a memory like that and put them all into a special dresser? Then they walked by it every day for twenty years and never looked at anything.”

  “Let’s not have a dresser then,” she said.

  Joy said hello to Jenny’s favorite doll, her confidante, Belle/Beauty. “I remember sitting in the hall outside her room, eavesdropping on Jenny’s long talks with Beauty. She taught Beauty how to read.”

  “Jenny would read to me and Beauty at the same time,” Jake said.

  “Do you want Beauty in your room?”

  “No, Mom.” He cuddled Teddy tightly.

  She looked for Danny, but he was holding the top hat from Jenny’s tap show.

  “Maybe I’ll keep Beauty in my office,” she said. “It seems disrespectful to put her in the basement.”

  Jake sat on the bed and watched. They lifted everything up so he could see it. Some things had a memory in them, but mostly he sat quietly on the bed, Teddy in his lap, watching them work. Joy felt relieved. He was like a little Buddha, serene. Maybe he was upset on the inside, but she didn’t believe it. He seemed to be aware of how much they were depending on him.

  They finished the dresser and started on the bookcase. Jenny had provided Jake with reviews of every title in her library. Jake told them which books he wanted. Danny picked up the stack of keepers and took them right to Jake’s room.

  Jenny had kept Things She Loved on the middle shelves where she could see and touch them every day. Things like the odd little juggling frogs Carly got her when she taught Jenny how to juggle. Surprisingly substantial, they were dirtier on the heavy side, the palm side. Joy sniffed them, but they just smelled old.

  Jake and Teddy bounced on the bed. “She gave us a show, me and Max and Bobby. She wore her funny socks and a clown nose and she juggled her frogs and made a penny vanish and then found it behind Bobby’s ear!”

  Joy laughed and said a thank you to Carly. “How did she do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Jake said. “We made her do it two more times and couldn’t figure it out!”

  “Then it must have been magic,” she said. “Your mysterious magical sister. Do you want to keep the frogs in your room?”

  Jake grew quiet. Danny squeezed her shoulder.

  The frogs went into the save bin.

  Shopping for candles was something she and Jenny had done together. Each candle was a repository of everything they had been doing and talking about and seeing on the day it was acquired. Disneyland, Yosemite, Marine World. Each candle was wrapped in paper and saved. When Jake went to the bathroom Danny whispered that they’d probably never even look at them, and that Jake was going to have to clean them out of the basement when they died. Joy wanted to scream, What the hell else can we do! at him; but she only shrugged as she wrapped up the next one and put it into the bin.

  Danny was holding the Coins for Kids Handbook. One day Jenny had started sorting Danny’s jar of pennies, pouring them out on the floor, stacking them by date or decade into paper cups she had run down to the kitchen to get. She had been amazed and happy when Danny showed up the next day with a stack of coin cards and the book. Her enthusiasm had infected him too.

  “She was amazed that numismatics existed. Then she had to find out everything,” he said. The shelf held a dozen coin cards, one for each decade from 1900. “I think I’ll take these to work.”

  Joy got afraid. Parts of her daughter were getting strewn all over town. But the coins were part of Danny’s story with Jenny. He deserved them. He would care for them. The top of the dresser had photographs of the family, of Jenny and Amanda, of Danny and Joy dressed up.

  That one Joy remembered. “She was proud of us that night.”

  “I think she just wanted to use the camera,” he replied.

  “Oh Danny, no, no.” She put her arm around his shoulders. “She was loving us to bits. Jakey, do you remember this?”

  “You look happy in that picture, Mom. I like it when you’re happy.”

  Joy’s sword hand twitched, but Danny kissed the top of her head just then and the clouds settled. He picked up the fancy little basket their artist friend had made for Jenny’s fourth birthday. The basket had a couple of shells and a redwood cone woven into it.

  “Maybe this should go on the shrine table,” he said.

  “We can put some of the loose things in it.” Joy wrapped another candle.

  On top of the dresser were things she’d made. Each one took the time it needed to be passed back and forth between them until its story was told. Joy searched each piece over carefully, looking at every side for the mark of finger or brush that said, “Jenny was here.” Jake would show it to Teddy; sometimes he would put his finger in the place where Jenny’s had been. Then one of them would carefully wrap it in paper and place it into the bin with the candles. The little blob of clay Jenny, age three (or was it two?), had insisted was a mouse. Her Hebrew name carefully hand-painted on a tile from the do-it-yourself pottery store. The wooden bookends she made in after-school one week. Joy thought that Jenny likely would have tossed some of this stuff this year, but she and Danny didn’t throw one of those things away.

  Outside, the sun was setting. The bookcase, credenza, dresser, closet, and nightstand were done. Jake had retreated to his room. Joy could hear him reading to Teddy. Danny pulled the file drawer out of the desk, and they sat on the floor with it. Neatly arranged by grade and subject was Jenny’s work product—homework study sheets, reports, drawings, stories, and poems. The file from the deposition was on top. Joy and Danny sat together, looking at each page, one by one, discarding the exercises, figuring out the drawings, reading each other Jenny’s second grade poetry and one-paragraph stories full of previously unrecognized meaning now that her story was complete. It amazed Joy how Jenny’s stories showed the arc of her life blooming and leading to its ending.

  “How could she have known?” she asked him.

  “She didn’t, but we do, so that’s how we see it,” Danny said as he passed her the box of sheet protectors. They fossilized the wisdom of their child inside a three-inch, D-ring dime store binder.

  Finally, they were done. The giveaways: four bags of clothes, one bag of dolls, some boxes of books and games. Three bags of garbage. Danny wanted to sell the furniture on eBay but Joy refused to have people in the house to see it. The credenza was going to Joy’s bike room, and Goodwill was coming for the rest. In the middle of the room were stacked four plastic storage bins with a single three-inch binder, half full, sitting mutely on top—the complete life output of a ten-year-old.

  That’s it. How did Jenny ever fill up this room?

  They gathered Jake and went for dinner to the neighborhood Italian place. After they ordered, Jake played a game on Jenny’s phone. His phone, Joy thought. Danny and Joy drank a bottle of wine before their food came. He ordere
d another one.

  “How do you feel?” he asked her.

  “Exhausted. Relieved. Intoxicated.” She waved her glass at the boys. “To fellow travelers.”

  “Maybe drinking is the right move,” he said, waving back. “At least we’re not driving.”

  They talked about what to do with the room. Joy thought it should be a guestroom/library. No TV. Danny agreed about the TV but said it would be nice if he could have a more permanent home office. Probably both of those things could be accommodated, they agreed. A guest room/library/office. He asked if she wanted to move her office there, but the idea filled her with dread. She told him it was because clients occasionally came to see her, but really she was afraid she’d never go downstairs again.

  Their pasta came. Jake took his earbuds out and Danny helped him get started on his food. Joy watched them. It felt like a normal moment. Then she saw the empty chair. Some restaurants must have tables for three.

  “Earth to Mom! Earth to Mom! Your food’s getting cold!”

  Indeed. Her plate was still full. She blushed though the haze of the wine.

  “Oops! Sorry, guys!” She took a bite. “Tastes good.” She took another bite. “What a thing to do today, huh?”

  “Yeah, Mom,” Jake said. “We’re really special. I bet everyone wants to be just like us. Not.”

  19.

  JOY HAD A hangover the next morning. She put on her bike clothes but kept finding other things to do. She ferried the bags and boxes down the stairs, then went back upstairs to view the deserted room. Danny can help me move the credenza, she thought, but she took out the shelves and rubber-banded its door handles together. She wiped down the rest of the furniture. After she closed the door she took the block J downstairs to the shrine table. Then she put the four boxes in the basement and the notebook in the den with their photo albums. She stacked the giveaway bags and boxes by the front door. She drank more coffee and read the paper, then went into her office.