“Oh?” Ronnie snapped to attention as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. Her body was flush with lingering feelings of intoxicating curiosity and—she hated to admit it, even to herself—desire. Things only Jeff used to make her feel. Had Jeff seen this change in her? Is that what had him so scared?
“You may want to file a protection from abuse order. After what happened at your house today, you’d qualify.”
“So after today, you suspect this will still be an issue?” Ronnie said. “Nothing will be solved?”
“I’m suggesting you prepare for all possibilities.”
Ronnie trudged back down the hall to the firehouse office. The men stepped out of the room. She called the Reading Courthouse only to learn she had to appear in person to file. Though Ronnie suspected this formality offered no hope. The order might ensure that Jeff would live somewhere else, but with the state police so far away, if he really wanted to hurt them—or try to hurt himself again, on the property—he’d have ample opportunity to do so before help could arrive.
Alone in the office this time, she allowed herself a moment to relish its windows. For the first time all morning, Ronnie looked up at the sky. That blue, so brilliant you could sense its depth; was there any color more beautiful? Wanting to be closer to it, she turned a handle and tipped open the window. She allowed a long draft of fresh air to make full contact with her lungs. This was her very favorite kind of fall day, with air so crisp it made her think of biting into a sweet-tart apple. With the sun smiling down on customers coming and going from Perlmutter’s General Store across the street, it was hard to believe any sort of tragedy could possibly be unfolding.
Ronnie returned to the social hall tables somewhat refreshed, certain she must have left hope for her family’s future lying around on one of these surfaces. All she found was the pile of keys, which opened cars blocked in by the police.
“Did you get through to someone at the courthouse?” Corporal McNichol said.
“For what it’s worth.” She thought of her sons’ arms, so vulnerably thin, their legs not yet muscled enough to make a run for their lives. How could she keep them safe?
Ronnie was wringing her hands again. She shoved them in her pockets. She’d worked too hard to purge the anxiety that had set in when they got home from the shore. She would not let it get the better of her now.
• • •
While absorbed in the endless list of catch-up chores that accumulated on the farm every time they went away, Ronnie couldn’t stop thinking about Kevin. During early morning sessions with her journal, she tried to explain away this fascination as false intimacy created by hearing him talk about his beloved grandfather in the home that had belonged to her father. The way he took command of his situation, even while surrendering to circumstance beyond his control.
The way he seemed to be the man she wished Jeff had turned out to be.
She tackled her chores each day with unusual enthusiasm so she could get back to her journal. Her thoughts were ordering themselves on its pages as if the words painted a new portrait of her. One she was afraid to see, yet whose colors would not be ignored.
She tried to memorialize the perspective that while she and Jeff were so busy it seemed they led separate lives, what kept them together was the lifestyle they loved with the boys on the farm. She tried to convince herself that was all she needed.
Of course she would like more attention from Jeff. It had been nine months since they’d last had sex. In recent years, Jeff had relied on Ronnie to marshal efforts and morning erections to do half the work. She still yearned for his touch and the emotional fusion their lovemaking had once been, but these days, with his pillowcase stained nicotine yellow from not washing up at night and his breath sour, she wasn’t sure it was worth the effort.
She wrote in her journal:
What are my needs?
Does a mother have needs? If one of the chops was overdone, Ronnie, as cook, always took it. If there was no hot water left after everyone else’s showers, she was the one who’d go unclean until the water heater recharged; after all, she worked from home. She was flexible. If she was tired and needed a nap, she’d squeeze one in right after she met her deadlines or shuffled the boys to all their activities or made dinner—or, more likely, she’d just drink more coffee.
I don’t know what my needs are, but my conversations with Kevin excite me. They taste like camaraderie, laughter, and emotional language—and I want more of it.
And if more were ever offered, I don’t know how the hell I’d resist.
Over the next two weeks in August, at odd moments throughout the day, Ronnie would be waylaid by crying jags that had no discernible cause. She felt like someone was scratching on the chalkboard of her bones. She set out one day to take Max for one of their three-mile walks and realized, when she got home, that she’d forgotten to bring the dog. And her hands were sore and red; she’d been wringing them the whole way.
One day, Jeff came down to her office and found her sitting at her computer, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“What’s the matter?” he said, his voice full of concern.
“I wish I knew,” she said.
“Maybe you should go to the doctor.”
“I don’t think it’s physical,” she said. “It’s more like something welling up inside of me that has to get out. I think I need to see a therapist.”
Jeff braced himself against the doorway. “You’re going to leave me.”
Why the hell would he say that? Is my inner turmoil so insignificant that he had to add his to it?
Then again, maybe he knew her better than she’d given him credit for. Three therapy appointments later, things looked a whole lot clearer.
She may be powerless to improve the quality of her marriage, but she was not powerless to affect the quality of her life.
ronnie
The corporal stood across from Ronnie, the table between them a neutral expanse, her face expressionless. As if ready to accept her confession.
“He’s doing this because I wanted a divorce.”
“Divorce is tough, there’s no getting around that.” Corporal McNichol shrugged. “Yet people get through it every day without ending up in a suicide standoff. Humans—healthy humans, anyway—are remarkably adaptive beings.”
“But I’m his whole world.” It sounded at once idiotic and true. She felt heat rise to her face as she pushed her drawing across the table.
Corporal McNichol eased herself into the chair, as if not wanting to add any further stimulation to Ronnie’s overwrought mind, and contemplated her drawing of the property. “You can’t make a man kill himself,” she said. “Even if I pointed a gun at his child and said, ‘Kill yourself or he’s dead.’ A healthy mind will try to figure another way out. The instinct to survive is too strong.”
The thought was comforting—until Ronnie considered the corollary. “And if a man really wants to kill himself, nobody can stop him.” The words drifted into the quiet without rebuttal.
Corporal McNichol said, “We couldn’t stop my father.”
“Oh,” Ronnie said.
Suicide was no longer a vague, impossible notion. It had moved right into the room with them.
Until then, Ronnie had thought of Corporal McNichol as a tough cop who got her kicks ordering around a bunch of snipers, like on TV. Someone with a function: to reach Jeff and support Ronnie. Now she saw a woman with wavy hair and hips. A mom sitting alone at a PTA meeting; a mom with a secret.
“I’m sorry,” Ronnie said. “Were you close?”
Corporal McNichol smiled. “He’s the reason I became a cop. When I entered the academy, he was the chief of police in Lancaster. I wanted so badly to make him proud. Instead I watched him fade away.”
“What happened? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“He saw too mu
ch.” She paused for a moment. “That’s my best guess, anyway. A pregnant preteen strung out on dope. A school shooting. His first partner succumbing to ALS. We can only guess at the final tipping point.”
“He didn’t leave a note?”
Corporal McNichol shook her head. “Guess he didn’t have anything left to say.”
“He shot himself?” Ronnie said quietly.
Corporal McNichol let out a long breath. “I had to cut him down from the rafters in our garage.”
Ronnie could only imagine the concrete horror of seeing your father hanging lifeless. Her own father was dead, but she hadn’t seen him that way. At the beach, it was easy to imagine him forever young. She marveled at Corporal McNichol’s ability to not only live through such a thing, but also somehow protect a place in her heart still capable of offering compassion to others in a similar situation.
They sat in silence for a moment. Finally Corporal McNichol said, “The sad truth is, not everyone can make it in this world.”
“Sorry, but I refuse to accept that. And I can’t believe they put you in charge of the SERT troops. The assignment seems cruel.”
“I applied for it.” The corporal’s gaze was steady.
“How could you—why would you willingly enter a suicide standoff? Especially knowing you might fail?”
Corporal McNichol opened Jeff’s file and patted its growing stack of its papers. “Because I can’t stop trying. And because sometimes, I can make a difference. Like today.”
Ronnie got up and walked over to the wall before turning back toward Corporal McNichol. She needed distance, perspective. The helicopter, this SERT team, all the ammunition—it was costing so much money. “I can’t put this whole police action together with the Jeff I’ve known who was so gentle. Could he have changed so much?”
Corporal McNichol was quiet for a moment. “I’m not so sure we change. I think that extreme pressure reveals us.”
Ronnie considered the debt and how she would have consulted a credit counselor and arranged for payments, while Jeff pushed it off on his mother.
“But I have to deal in facts,” Corporal McNichol said. “Right now Jeff is armed and intoxicated. That’s a lethal combination. On top of that, he told you he would kill himself.”
“He just said that to pressure me into—”
“Hear me on this, Ronnie,” Corporal McNichol said. “Once a person has lost respect for the sanctity of his own life, it isn’t much of a stretch to lose respect for all life.”
Ronnie picked at some dry skin on her thumb. Hangnails always arrived with the cooler weather, like chapped lips. As if she were molting. Soon she had a tough quarter-inch of skin hanging off her finger. She gave it a good tug and watched blood fill the gap. “You think he’ll do it.”
Corporal McNichol spread the papers in front of her and examined them as if they were tea leaves. “I don’t know. I really don’t. But he threatened suicide once, with a note detailing his burial wishes, and six weeks later, it’s all going down again. I think he’s been trying to work up the courage to carry out his plan. The unknown variable is whether we can intervene in time.”
“Oh god.” It all suddenly felt so hopeless. “What do I do?”
“Just love your boys. Fixing this is not your responsibility.”
“Really? Then who the hell’s is it?” Ronnie pushed off from the wall where she’d been leaning. “If Jeff lives through the day, then what is my life going to look like? He’s still my sons’ father. And if he dies, who do you think will inherit that mess? No matter how you define ‘fixing,’ it’s all on me.”
Corporal McNichol picked up the drawing again and said, “I think this diagram needs some fixing too.” She pushed it back across the table to Ronnie.
“You probably can’t tell what a damn thing is. I should have labeled the buildings—”
“It just looks too empty. You’ll feel better if you add some living beings to it.” Corporal McNichol smiled. “Hang on to this, Ronnie: suicidal men will often kill their wives and children too. Today worked out well for us. We were lucky to get you out of there alive.”
Ronnie was grateful for their safety. Of course she was.
But what would happen when Corporal McNichol and her troops went home?
1:00 p.m.
beverly
Beverly plopped a paper bag down on the table beside her daughter. “Here, Sunshine. You should eat.”
Ronnie waited until Janet walked down the aisle between tables toward the restroom. “Who paid for it?”
“Why on earth does that matter?” Beverly said. “We both love you.”
Ronnie looked Beverly in the eye. “Who paid for it?”
“We split it.”
“Your idea?”
“It was Jan’s, but I don’t see what difference—”
Ronnie unwrapped the hoagie, ripped the bun in half, and handed back the rewrapped portion.
“What’s gotten into you?”
“See if I have this right. While you watched, Janet counted out her pennies to pay for this.”
Apparently Beverly hadn’t done too well at disguising her expression. Ronnie was right on the money.
“Well, guess what, I still can’t be bought. I will not let a Farnham throw money at me again and let it stand in for love. She can keep her half of the damn sandwich.”
Ronnie bent over some sort of drawing.
“All those circles in the rectangle. What are they supposed to be?” Beverly said.
“They’re chickens in the barn, thank you.”
Beverly chuckled. “You don’t have to snap.”
“I’m sorry, Mother. My armed and dangerous husband is standing off against a shitload of police with sniper rifles and my horses are frantic because they haven’t eaten and my kids have been shipped off to a house deemed safer than their own home. Oh, never mind, that was the exact same situation an hour ago, when you went out for a spot of lunch.”
Beverly opened her mouth to speak, then caught her lip between her teeth.
“What?”
“I can’t go through this alone,” Beverly said.
“You can’t? Wow. This is truly a proud daughter moment.”
“Look, Ronnie. There are some things I need to tell you.” Beverly looked at Corporal McNichol. “Can I have a minute with my daughter?”
Corporal McNichol took the revised drawing from Ronnie. “I’ll go check in with my men.”
Beverly waited until the corporal had left the room. “You have his eyes, you know.”
Ronnie tensed.
“And that same determined set of jaw that frankly scares the crap out of me. But I like to believe you have a touch of my spunk too.”
Ronnie spread her hands on the table and looked at them for several painfully quiet moments. “Do you know how many times in my life I would have loved to hear more about my father?” she finally said. “And I’m not even talking about all the times I asked. I’m talking about when we left Teddy and Daryl. Or when Jeff and I married. Or when my sons were born, and I wondered if either of them looked like him. But instead you’d tell me now, when I will always associate his memory with this heartless room and Jeff’s suicide standoff?” She looked up at Beverly with that determined jaw in full display. “Why?”
“Well…” Beverly was not overly eager to dive right into that part. She had carried some things alone, for so long, she didn’t know if it was wise to share the burden. Yet her daughter was hurting in a way all too familiar, and Beverly knew Ronnie needed a scrap of something new to hang on to. “You have time on your hands, don’t you?”
Ronnie kicked out the chair across from her. Beverly took it.
Beverly had long imagined this moment, despite her inability to bring it to fruition. She’d hoped the sharing might be more companionable, but that was the way wit
h secrets, she supposed; the longer words stayed buried, the harder they clung to their grave. Was now the right time to exhume such a story?
Ronnie again looked at the table. “If he raped you, just tell me and I don’t need to hear any more.”
Beverly took in a sharp breath. “Is that what you think happened?”
“It’s crossed my mind. You’ve kept everything about him from me, as if he were some sort of a monster. As if you feared the part of me that might exhibit the same qualities.”
“For one thing,” Beverly said, twirling her small diamond, “you don’t wear a promise ring your whole life long from a man who raped you.”
Ronnie pulled her mother’s hand toward her and looked at the ring anew. “You told me it was just a trinket.”
“It is a trinket,” Janet said, joining them. “Look at the size.”
“Now, Janet, hush. It may be little, but it’s real.”
“So you’re expecting he still might come back?” Ronnie said. “You told me he was dead.”
Beverly sighed and shook her head. When she and Ronnie had left Tony in the Massachusetts woods, and Beverly was missing Dom something fierce and needed to talk about him, she’d told Ronnie that he had died of a stroke when she was two years old. When Ronnie was a teen and questioning how such a young man had died of a stroke, Beverly had changed it to an aneurysm. Janet had called Dom’s death the “ever-changing story.” And Beverly had learned to keep her mouth shut. “The end’s no good, so let me start at the beginning.”
Janet propped her chin in her hand. “Curious to hear this story.”
Beverly sank into her chair as if its metal surface had softened. This was going all wrong. She shouldn’t have said anything. Sharing Dom with anyone was fraught with complication, but if their own daughter rejected the idea of him—or rejected her because of him—the tender love she’d nourished all these years would wither and be gone.
Ronnie put up an open hand in surrender, then sat back to listen.
“You remember Grandpa Saylor, Ronnie, and how strict he was. He wouldn’t let me go down the shore with my friends on vacation because they were all seniors and I was only a junior. Well…I went anyway.” Beverly then filled in all the missing details in the story of how she met Ronnie’s father.
The Far End of Happy Page 16