by Mark Gunther
“I do. They got into your closet and put on a fashion show.”
“I remember how happy I was, that she had these friends, like me and Lizzie, that she could have her whole life. When I see them at the school now I can’t even recognize them as the same girls.”
“Girls change fast at this age,” he said.
“I don’t want to lose these boys, too.”
“Joy. Do not go there. It is statistically almost impossible that these boys will do anything other than outlive us.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course not, but for the purposes of this conversation? Yes. You can commit to them.” He stood and extended his hand to her. “Come outside. Pin the tail on the donkey.”
She had to, then. Jake, dressed in his buckskin tunic and jeans, with a feather in his cap, came running over and threw his arms around her. That had been a wonderful surprise, and she wondered why it was surprising at all. Jake is such a sweet boy. I guess I have been pretty good with him recently. I just keep forgetting. Danny’s so steady, she thought, he’s good for me.
Jake dragged her into the center of the circle. “It’s my mom’s turn now!”
Carly tied on the eyeshade and got Joy spinning. Blindfolded and dizzy, she stumbled, but Danny caught her, both of them laughing.
“Nope, go that way!” He whispered, “It’s fun, isn’t it?”
She had to admit it was. The boys were screaming, “More left! More right!” She ran into the donkey and took off her mask; she had pinned the tail a little too low and angled to the front.
Danny laughed and Carly leaned over and whispered, “See? Your subconscious is talking! You can’t postpone it forever!”
Joy laughed too, whispering back, “Maybe Danny will get lucky tonight!”
He did, and he was full of endearments. Joy liked that, and she liked wrapping herself around him, and after, she was able to stay in his arms for a pretty long while before rolling away.
When she thought about it the next day she thought that love really was mysterious, because that night she dreamed that she went to the cemetery and lay down on the grave to reach out for Jenny’s spirit like she always did. She floated up and in the sky she saw Jenny with the impossible-to-imagine undrawable eyes. In that funny way people can analyze a dream while they’re having it, she thought she should be afraid, but she felt at home there, floating in the air with Dead Jenny beside her.
24.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING before she got on the bike, Joy took her coffee into the office and found the drawing, which looked just like she’d imagined in the dream, but nothing like Jenny had ever looked or probably even would look if she’d ever gotten to grow up. She wondered why she thought only of the-absence-of-Jenny, or what-Jake-had-lost, or her never-to-be-born grandchildren.
Jenny doesn’t even live in my imagination. At least my heart still beats on the bike.
These days, along with the dust and the screaming, what she remembered from the accident was the moment before the crashing; how proud she had been to stand at the cash register and buy water for her daughter. Proud that she got to take care of her. When she told that to Rabbi he had said that she was nobly pursuing Jenny’s welfare that day, and what happened can’t be understood. What happened was both brutally simple and beyond our comprehension, he had said, and that she needed to find some way of holding it that she could accept.
I only left Jenny in the car. Doesn’t seem so bad. Was that my sin?
The wind blowing in from the Golden Gate had its hand on her chest as she pedaled straight into it. Portraying her intentions as noble seemed like a really overblown way to talk about shopping for shoes. She didn’t know how noble she actually was, because as much as consequences followed the moment, consequences of other moments led up to it too.
Maybe arrogance was my sin, she thought, But I’m not arrogant anymore.
No, agreed Dead Jenny, you’re not arrogant anymore.
It seemed perfectly normal to hear that voice in her head. She wanted it to be Jenny, but it spoke in Joy’s own voice. The road spun her into a right turn. Parking barriers swept by on her right, white dashes and blank spaces against the green backdrop of the field.
Maybe the shopping trip wasn’t about what Jenny needed, but about what Joy needed, like Rose needing to control Joy’s wardrobe when Joy was a little girl. Joy could still summon the rage she felt when her mother had been through her dresser again. Maybe my mistake was that I made Jenny too independent of that inheritance, and she had to die because I wasn’t faithful to my mother and my sin was making her different.
Except you really were different, weren’t you, Jenny?
I’m not Jenny, said Dead Jenny. You made me up.
Joy knew that to be true. The bay crashed against the rocks at Fort Point as Joy squeezed the last bit of distance out of the available road. Sweeping through the 180-degree turn at its end, she rose out of the saddle and sprinted back the way she came, back up to speed.
Jenny had devoted many hours to decorating and loving her sneakers, but they had holes. They really needed to be replaced. Otherwise her arches would fall and then she’d have flat feet and a sore lower back and probably bunions and a lifetime of podiatry visits.
You were the mommy, Dead Jenny said, so you could have done it anytime.
I could have. But I wanted her to feel agency.
But maybe the worst thing was telling Jenny they needed to buy some boots, which was true, because Jenny had outgrown the ones she had and winter was coming, and there would be Thanksgiving, and year-end events at school and holiday parties, and maybe even some rainy days. Joy had hoped that while they were shopping for boots they could find the exact same sneakers that Jenny loved and get her to replace them.
Sneaky. Was that the lie?
Everyone lies about something, said Dead Jenny.
Joy deftly avoided a drain grate. But really, she didn’t know what Jenny wanted that day, even though Jenny liked going shopping with her. Maybe the whole plan was the sin and she should have left her at school with the crappy sneakers.
I’m sorry. I wish it had been me.
You don’t get to be dead, said Dead Jenny. I’m dead.
What did you have to go and die for?
I’ve always been dead.
Joy lifted the bike onto its storage hook in the basement. She heard the front door close as the boys left. Body heat flooded her face as she reached down and opened the clicklocks on her shoes; she wished Jake still wanted to do it. He’s going to grow up, hopefully. Sweat dripped from her headband onto the chair, Jenny’s tiny red folding chair that came with the little Ikea art table Danny bought for his sweet girl. She placed her shoes and helmet on the cabinet, Jenny’s former credenza. Maybe Jenny died so Mommy could have some bike room furniture.
Joy wondered if she should be worried about having this person in her head, but it seemed just fine to her. She had always been dead. What does that even mean? I guess a mystery voice in the Common World is closer to reality than slaying dragons in the Other World, she thought, even though she was psychologically sophisticated enough to know that whatever it was came from her. She heard the car start and drive away. She looked at her watch. Jake would get to school on time.
It’s Monday, she reminded herself. The chart of Danny’s schedule tacked prominently to the wall said he had to visit the Danville office. The schedule had appeared during the first winter, when she forgot she had promised to pick Jake up and they’d had to pay an extra hundred bucks because the school charged five dollars a minute for every minute after six. Danny said he didn’t care about the money, but Jake had gotten worried, which was the last thing he needed. He had unveiled the schedule the next day. It was kind of embarrassing and Joy had tried to have a fight with him about it, but her heart wasn’t really in it.
I should make him stop. I’m not a zombie now.
You just used it, said Dead Jenny. You should be grateful.
Am I a di
sorder in his world?
Joy peeled off her sweaty clothes right there in the basement and left them on the washer. Barefoot and wrapped in an old beach towel she detoured through the kitchen, poured some juice and Recoverite into her water bottle, and went upstairs.
Danny had put the Hawaii anniversary photos back on her dresser. Did he mean to seduce or mock her? Impulsively she opened the top drawer of the dresser and took out Danny’s Kama Sutra. When they came back from Hawaii, she had made him give her the memory card with the photos. “Ask me if you want to see them,” she said. “I’ll let you. I just don’t want it to be a secret.”
He did ask her twice, even though it shamed him, and the third time she looked at the pictures with him. She saw how happy he was to own that memory so she learned some bookbinding skills and surprised him with a top-rate, richly bound book for his fortieth birthday. It was exactly what he had imagined, and he quickened rapidly as the pages went by. Joy, wearing his favorite little nothing under her terrycloth bathrobe, had been ready and welcoming.
The testimony was there on the pages, flirting with his camera on the beach, partial nudes taken in found moments of privacy, purposefully erotic poses from their forest walks, and the explicit record of their last couple of nights, beach to jungle to hotel, dressed to undressed, him in her mouth, his head between her legs, her legs draped over his shoulders as he folded her in two. His favorite took a full page—she in his lap, both of them facing the camera, clutching each other’s hands, penetration obscenely visible, their faces transformed. She saw his face, hard with passion and soft with love, and her face, alive, so alive. A soft puff of air caressed her hand as the cover closed.
Naked then, naked now. Out of the shower Joy stood, dripping, staring back at herself from the mirror. Danny lusted after her from his photo on her vanity, jaunty in a fedora. She imagined how he actually felt about her: Anger, empathy, desire, sorrow: lover, partner, troubled friend. She called him.
“Hi, Danny. I was just thinking about you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Heard you come in when we were leaving.”
“Yeah, I didn’t quite get back in time.”
“Jake looked for you this morning.”
“Danny, I’ve been out in the mornings since he was a little boy.”
“He’s angry about it now, I think.”
Did he really want the conversation to go there? “It’s got to be okay, Danny. Help me out here. Maybe I’ll take him to the movies later.”
More kindly he said, “He’d like that. I can meet you for dinner after.”
“Maybe just pick something up. It’ll be too late for him otherwise.” Joy paused, wondering if she should try to talk to him now.
“When I was on the bike this morning,” she said, “I was thinking about that day again and how I might have lied to Jenny about the shoes.”
“You’ve talked about that.”
She couldn’t tell him about Dead Jenny yet. She promised herself she would, soon.
“I felt different this time. I didn’t beat myself up so much.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Then I came in the house and looked at your book.”
“Our book,” he said. “Maybe you want to be the woman in the book.”
“Oh, no.” she said. “I’m not that woman now.”
Her voice sounded peculiar to her own ears, reed-like, plaintive, mournful, like the high register of an oboe.
“I can’t really have this conversation now, I’m on the freeway.” He sounded broken too; his words grated, like a hangnail catching repeatedly on a sock. “Jenny’s dead, but everyone else is alive.”
“You’re angry.”
“I guess, some, but that’s not all of it. Are you okay for today?”
The dismissal in his voice hurt her. “Sure, fine. Got some work. One day at a time.”
“Okay. Love you.” He hung up.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!” Joy threw the phone at her pillow. I lose my girl and my son wants what he can’t have and my husband wants what he once had and now I’m having conversations with a ghost.
I’m not a ghost, said Dead Jenny. You made me up.
That’s a relief, I guess.
Dead Jenny rolled her empty eyes.
Everyone tries so hard to be good. I try hard to be good. This is not good. Maybe I should try something really, really different, like moving to Patagonia or studying for the rabbinate.
Instead she got dressed and went to the office and for a few hours just put it all on hold. It engaged her enough that she left Jake in afterschool and asked Danny to pick him up like usual.
At home Danny was gentle and attentive, cooking and cleaning up and letting her play games with Jake. They put him to bed together. He was kind, and it was enough, but then when she came out of the bathroom he said he had been thinking about something else ever since they talked on the phone. Would she . . . and he took out the book. She said, “Okay, sure, I can look at that with you,” and they got onto the bed. When he moved his hand down between her legs she said, for no particular reason that she could name, “No, not for me tonight, but I’ll do you.” So he lay back, and she kept her hand slippery, and it was nice to get him off while they looked at the book together.
25.
THE GRANDSTAND CREAKED and moaned when Joy stepped onto it. She had seen the thin tubes of steel making a framework under the splintery wooden benches: scaffolding. Joy remembered how hot her chest had felt when good and evil were raging there. She missed it. Maybe I’ll feel that again when I die, she thought. Joy found a seat next to her dad.
It had surprised Joy when Jake got mad at her for skipping his first Saturday morning Little League game. Danny went to the game with Hiram, but Joy went to the shul like she always did. But it was just a habit. He’s absolutely right that I should pick him over shul. She felt strange being out in the world on a Saturday again, displaced. This must be the feeling that Mom just couldn’t stand feeling anymore. Joy wondered if that would happen to her. Pretty ironic way of getting to know my mother better.
Maybe thirty people were in the stands. Joy was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a vintage Giants cap of Hiram’s. Her I’m a Little League Mom T-shirt showed a graphic of a little boy swinging a bat with a full-skirted, bobbed-haired generic Mom in the background, clapping. Irritating graphic; sexist message. Joy decided that she would design the shirt next year, but she had worn it today to help the other parents know she was qualified.
Boys’ voices ricocheted around the field. They were running and throwing and she enjoyed watching their bodies work. At Jake’s birthday last year she could barely even look at them.
Only Jenny had to die so Jake could end up playing baseball here today.
Whoa there, said Dead Jenny.
It was true, Joy thought grudgingly, that he was getting into baseball anyway.
After their warmups, the boys gathered in the dugout. The coach announced the lineups for the scorekeepers like Hiram, and the game got underway. After a few pitches came the dull pinging sound of aluminum on rawhide; a ball bounded through the infield for a single. Hiram noted it on the scorecard. Joy wondered if her attendance at every game was noted on a scorecard too.
When she first had asked Danny about skipping the Saturday game, he said, “Jake seems to be so disappointed in you. If it was me, I’d be showing up at everything.”
“I show up at a lot more things that you do.”
“That’s not the point. We’re talking about how Jake feels, not about how you feel. You are judged according to the special Mom scale.”
“It’s a moving target, Danny,” Joy had told him.
Jake’s at-bat—a ground out to shortstop—brought Joy back to the game. Hiram noted the put-out on the scorecard.
“You remember,” Joy said to him, “that Jake wanted to ride the bus to school by himself?”
“Of course. He’s been doing that on Fridays, right?”
Joy had thought
it was dangerous, but Danny was supportive and Hiram found statistics that said it was no more dangerous today than when Joy had done it at age eight. You’re more likely to have a car accident driving him, Hiram had said. Besides, anything that supported Jake’s experience of himself as an independent actor was great and no time was too early if that was the benefit.
“No one even lets kids be capable these days. I had a job when I was nine.”
“Dad,” Joy had said, “you cleaned up your father’s shop.”
“Still,” he said, “I did it. He paid me.”
So Joy had yielded, walking Jake to the stop and watching him get on the bus, and he made it to school every time. Joy’s anxiety was not salved at all.
“I’ve been walking with him, but yesterday he wanted to walk alone too.”
“Okay,” said Hiram. “That’s good. Did you let him?”
“Yes. But I followed him.” Spied on him.
She had shadowed him the four blocks to the bus stop, sneaking out of the house right behind him, running to the corner and peering around it, walking in the street next to the parked cars, ready to duck if Jake looked back her way, running across Chestnut Street against the light, in front of oncoming traffic.
“He stopped at every stop sign and made eye contact with the drivers and crossed with the light. He waited at the stop until the bus came, and he got on it.”
“That was it?”
“I called the school and he was there. Everything was fine.”
Following him is not the same as protecting him.
Hiram was nodding. “He’s got a hard road,” he said to Joy, “being so alone.”
Dust billowed in front of her, but it was only a kid sliding into third base. Sunlight stabbed through the cloud. “Daddy, stop. We have this conversation every week. I’m doing the best I can.”
He’s parenting his daughter, Dead Jenny said. Cut him some slack.
As parents do, Hiram stayed on point. “It’s obvious how much Jake loves you and you him, but he misses the old you. He tells me that. And he’s pissed, Joy. He tells me that, too.”