The Far End of Happy

by Kathryn Craft

  There was a pause on the line. “Guess that’s it. Sorry to leave such a long message. I’m glad you have one of those services because if this were a machine, it would have beeped me off four times already. And maybe you don’t want to hear this today. But then I kept thinking, maybe you would. Know that we’re watching here and praying. Hope to see you tomorrow.”

  Fifteen dollars. What the heck was that about, when he’d left twelve hundred on the table that morning?

  But July 19. The significance finally struck her. It was weeks before the vacation where she had met and started interviewing Kevin and more than a month before the notion that she might leave her husband first gnawed on her bones.

  Whatever torment Jeff had been keeping private had already started to swell within him, pulling him apart at the seams, and she hadn’t seen it. Amber’s information had damned and redeemed Ronnie, all at once.

  The rest of the messages would have to wait. A familiar male voice shouted from the other room.

  ronnie

  It was Rob White, Ronnie realized, when she entered the banquet hall and found her mother turning down the volume. He was saying that parents were to pick up Hitchman Elementary School students, that bus service had been cancelled, and that they should bring ID as an added precaution. The SERT troops, the state helicopter, the people who weren’t allowed home from work, those standing at the barricade or glued to their televisions, feeling powerless to continue daily life, and now the hundreds of working parents who would have to figure out a way to pick up their children… If Jeff was thinking his life had come to nothing, she wished he could see the widespread effect his actions were having today.

  Her mother turned off the TV. Ronnie watched as the image of New Hope Farms faded to black.

  Beverly’s troubled expression begged a question and Ronnie wasn’t sure she wanted an answer.

  “Did something bad happen at the farm?”

  Beverly shook her head. Like her mother, Ronnie looked to the blank screen, as if it might come alive and offer answers.

  “What did Janet end up saying to him?”

  “I couldn’t really hear.”

  “Do you think he saw her?”

  Her mother shrugged. Her mouth quivered; she was breathing in spurts.

  Dread constricted Ronnie’s bones. Her mother was not a crier. “What is it?”

  “There was this loud bang and then all this debris and… God, Ronnie, I think he shot at her.”

  Her mother’s words sucked the air from the room. Ronnie needed fresher air. She turned to…to whom? To do what? Go where? There was no escape from this goddamn day. “And Janet?”

  “They put her in a police car. I assume she’s on the way back.”

  The words had sounded steadier. Ronnie studied her mother. “You okay?”

  “This isn’t some madman doing this,” her mother whispered, her hand twisting the ring on her finger. “This is Jeff.”

  Ronnie nodded. Took her bearings. Beverly here, safe if rattled. The boys with Beth. Playing, probably. Janet on her way back. And Jeff…

  Ronnie pulled out a chair and sank into it.

  Jeff was the madman.

  beverly

  The sound of that gun.

  Horror pounded in Beverly’s skull. Freeze-dried her stomach. Frazzled her nerves. She felt fried in that high voltage moment, as powerless to leave as a woman strapped to an electric chair.

  Dom. Beverly had never really let him go. She’d measured all others against him, as if to will him back into her life, completely setting aside his inability to deal with the fact that he was going to be a father. Ignoring that even though they had spoken in his last days, he at the Jersey shore and she in Pennsylvania, he had never revealed his fear. Had never, it now seemed, truly exposed his heart.

  Beverly put her hand to her abdomen, as if still protecting her baby. For years she berated herself for going back to Bartlesville and finishing high school rather than staying with Dom. She should have been there for him. He’d needed to hold her, and Ronnie within her, to make tangible the love she’d promised. Love that would have healed him. Saved him.

  If Ronnie hadn’t called her—if Beverly had seen the Bartlesville standoff on television and realized it was Jeff—she would have wanted to crawl right into the set to see how it went. This was what had tortured her the most all these years, that she hadn’t been there for Dom. What had he gone through in those final hours? Beverly only hoped that a lifetime of wishing to know this hadn’t shifted enough energy to bring on today’s terrible events. Ronnie may think she only read style magazines, but Beverly read Oprah too. She knew intention was powerful.

  But if she had been with Dom that night… After what she just saw on the television, who knew if she and Ronnie would still be here today? This was some bad shit going down.

  Something was changing within Beverly at that very moment. Her hands tingled as if Dom’s spirit were there, holding them. Not his broken spirit, but Dom, fully restored.

  Beverly closed her eyes, curled her hands around his, and told him what she’d wanted to say for the last thirty-five years. Thank you, Dom, for giving me Ronnie.

  The tingling ended.

  Beverly opened her hands and let him go. She opened her eyes and set them firmly on the future.

  Looking at her daughter, with her head down on the table, her eyes closed—no doubt trying to preserve every scrap of energy she could find for what might still come on this godforsaken day—Beverly realized she was done looking to the dead and missing for love.

  3:00 p.m.

  ronnie

  Jeff. Shooting at his mother.

  When Ronnie lifted her head, her vision started to swirl. She stood and touched the end of each table to steady herself as she made her way to the restroom at the back of the fire hall.

  Once inside the stall she pressed her cheek against its painted metal door. When these bouts hit, blurring her edges, the cool helped reinforce the limits of her skin. This is where Ronnie ends; this is where the rest of the world begins.

  What a fucked up world it was.

  She closed her eyes and again retreated, first to a world where she was defined by her talents instead of her relationship to Jeff, and then to one where the ocean’s lullaby assured her that everything would be all right.

  • • •

  The last weekend in September, Ronnie had left the boys alone with Jeff. The timing was questionable at best, only a few weeks after Jeff’s commitment, but Ronnie couldn’t take living under the same roof with him any longer. She needed a retreat, and a Facebook post offered a way to do so while exploring new income streams. A friend from college, Dodie, had posted a link to a three-day conference in Manhattan that could help Ronnie find additional freelance writing assignments. Its price would be reasonable if she skipped the conference hotel and stayed with Dodie in Brooklyn.

  Ronnie took every precaution. Should Jeff be unable to withstand the rigors of a weekend of solo parenting, Beverly could provide backup. Janet would be home as well. Her lawyer assured her that, unless there was evidence of her having an affair, her custody was secure; Pennsylvania courts were not overly fond of alcoholic fathers. She’d kissed her sons good-bye and forced herself not to look back.

  The seminar was exhilarating for someone who had spent so many years locked away renovating a farmhouse. Perhaps overly so: by the end of the third day, exhaustion had caught up with her. Rather than risk driving three hours on Sunday night while she was so tired, she called Jeff to say she’d make sure to get extra rest Monday morning, then come straight home.

  She lied.

  The next day, Ronnie headed over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge before the morning sun was high enough to warm her shoulders. But she couldn’t relinquish her freedom. Not yet, when it was barely tasted. So instead of heading west, toward the farm, she headed sou
th on the Garden State Parkway toward the only home that had never demanded a thing from her.

  When she emerged from the car across from her father’s house—Kevin’s house—the warmer air greeted her. The ocean had a long memory and stored the summer’s warmth well into autumn. This was the first time she’d been here off-season, and the silence stunned her into a new depth of reverence for the place.

  As always, Ronnie headed straight to the beach. She felt so free walking out to it, without a thought to arranging child care, without reporting to Jeff why she was going out and then defending it three times, without leashing Max.

  Max. Her thoughts snagged on her little dog and the night Jeff had left him out all night. When Ronnie had opened the front door the next morning, he’d rushed inside, shivering.

  Later, when she woke Jeff to confront him, Jeff said the dog had followed him out for his last smoke. “Guess he never came back,” he said thickly. “A simple mistake. Anyone could make it.” She swallowed her anger, unsure who she was in this scenario: someone who deserved to defend her principles or a class-A bitch? But when Ronnie went into the bathroom to wash up, it was hard not to notice that she’d showered three times since she’d last washed the towels, and Jeff’s still lay on the shelf, unfolded.

  She’d been Max’s sole caretaker of late, and the feeling that she had abandoned him seized her. But as Ronnie trudged through the loose, deep sand, she pushed thoughts of Max out of her mind. That rabbit hole would lead her to the boys. For just a half hour or so, she wanted what peace this setting could offer. Her footsteps eased as she reached the sand tamped by the ocean.

  At the water’s edge, Ronnie dipped her fingers and pressed them to her forehead and lips. Gone were the motorboats and wave runners that crashed through the August waters. The ocean was free to swell its strength again and again without the need to hold anyone else afloat. Today Ronnie needed a similar chance.

  Standing there for some time, Ronnie realized she no longer felt hopelessly adrift, as she had before she met Jeff. His love had encouraged her to grow in ways neither of them would have predicted, and now Ronnie had no choice but to leave him. A tragedy, to be sure, but another she would survive.

  A gust whipped sand across her face and into her hair. Before it could fully claim her as part of the setting, she ran back to the house and up the steps until her heart was thundering like the surf.

  Ronnie ran her hand across the nicks in the door frame, feeling a notch taller in this unencumbered state than she’d been just months ago, and knocked on the door. No answer. Kevin must be at work.

  Relieved, Ronnie sat on the deck in a patch of sun. She put her feet on the railing, lifted her face to the sky, and—her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. It took several rings for her to process the intrusion. But she refused to disturb her hard-won feeling of peace and—God help her—when she pulled out the phone and saw the picture of the tractor she used as Jeff’s avatar, she shut off the phone. He had to learn to get by without her. It was no less than the divorce court would demand of him.

  She settled back into the chair to listen to the surf and soak up what remained of the summer sun.

  “Look what the waves washed in. Sleeping Beauty.”

  Ronnie startled awake and saw Kevin standing beside her, holding a bag of groceries.

  “Oh my god. What time is it?”

  “Eleven.”

  She’d been sleeping for twenty minutes. “I’ve got to go.”

  “But you didn’t tell me why you’re here yet. Pretty sure you didn’t even say hi.”

  Ronnie smiled. “Sorry, I did knock, but you weren’t home, so… Hi, Kevin.”

  “Hi, Ronnie. Well, don’t keep me in suspense. Where is it?”

  “What?”

  “I assume you’re here to show me the magazine?”

  “Oh, no.” She waved her hand. “Long lead time for print. That won’t be out for a few more months. I’m just stopping in on my way home from New York.”

  He laughed. “You are not a poster child for energy conservation. That’s quite a detour.”

  “I just needed escape, I think. And peace. And my car pointed here.” Ronnie stood. “I wasn’t trying to trespass or anything.”

  “I’ll tell you whether I believe you or not after I count the flatware.” He unlocked the door. “Come on in. I finished up a project this morning, and before I start the next, I thought I’d grab an early lunch…”

  His voice receded as he entered the house. Ronnie lingered outside the doorway until he poked his head back through. “That was an invitation to join me.”

  The beach house felt at once welcoming and dangerous. As he threw some burgers on the grill, Ronnie sat on the leather couch, sank back into its bulk, imagined its arms around her. She knew so intimately this woven rug beneath her feet; she’d sponged from its surface many a sippy cup spill. She knew the dishes Kevin was setting out to serve this meal and that one of them had chipped when she overfilled the dishwasher so she and the boys could squeeze in a bike ride before sunset. She’d slept on his bed.

  “Almost ready,” Kevin said.

  Ronnie moved to the table, laced her fingers, and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to go home. Heaven help her, she wanted to stay right here. Dad. If you could be here for me just this once. I need your strength.

  She heard the plates as Kevin set them on the table.

  “Saying grace?”

  Ronnie tried to smile. “Something like that.”

  “I’m Catholic. Got this covered.” He took her hands and offered the blessing.

  His halting search for the words, his cheery domesticity, the surprise of his touch—it was all too much. Out poured the anxiety she’d been holding back for so many months: for the sake of her kids, and for the sake of the husband who’d promised to move out soon, and for the sake of those who cared for all of them, and for her own sake, because God knew she was scared shitless that she couldn’t handle supporting two boys on her own while caring for a farm and two businesses and dealing with an alcoholic ex.

  She placed her forehead on their clasped hands as she sobbed. Kevin waited without moving until the storm had passed.

  “Sorry,” she said at last.

  “Hey.” He jiggled her hands and waited for their eyes to meet. “I’ve witnessed this reaction to my cooking before.”

  Ronnie’s laugh was a gulp for air. “Guess I’m not used to saying grace. It kind of—I don’t know—cracked me open.”

  “Grace will do that,” he said, grabbing a potato chip off his plate. “That’s kind of how I felt when I found my grandpa’s steering wheel. I just wanted to hug it and weep. Sometimes it seems like we expect the bad things to happen, but when something good happens, we fall to pieces.”

  “Wisdom from the School of Hard Knocks?”

  “Nah, a paragraph on page 139 of the self-help book I’m reading.”

  Ronnie smiled and took a bite of her burger.

  “So, is this about what’s going on with you and your husband?”

  Ronnie snapped a large chip in two. “That obvious?”

  “Even a casual observer can see you deserve more.”

  She had to look away from the sincerity in his green eyes. The word deserve plucked at her taut nerves. What does anyone deserve? A chance at life, maybe, but the rest is navigation. She had some serious course-setting ahead, and she only hoped she could maneuver past whatever met her when she got home.

  • • •

  When the Suburban made it to the top of the drive, Will burst from the house to hug her. She wrapped her arms around him and lifted him into the air, spinning, awash in relief and joy. Of all the different Ronnies inside her, this one—the mother—was the one she had never, ever compromised on, and reconnecting to her made this dreaded return feel like a homecoming after all.

  Jeff and Max
weren’t far behind. Ronnie dealt with the wriggling pup first, letting him jump into her arms for a kiss, then turned to Jeff.

  The sight of his widespread arms embarrassed her. “Come on, Jeff.”

  “We’re so glad you’re back,” he said, voice trembling.

  “Did you have a good time, Will?”

  “Dad made up a soccer game with me, and we played in the side yard. It was great!”

  “Good for you,” she said, looking at Will and then Jeff.

  Ronnie found Andrew inside on the Xbox and kissed him hello. “I want to hear about New York, Mom, but not now. I’m not at a good save point.”

  After the boys were in bed that night, Jeff asked if they could talk. On the porch, so he could have the comfort of his nicotine addiction. It didn’t take him long to get to the point.

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “Who?”