The Far End of Happy

by Kathryn Craft

  “Kevin.”

  “Jeff.” She stood to leave. “We are not having this conversation.”

  “Please,” he said. “I want to talk.”

  He’d stolen her line. She was the one who usually wanted to talk.

  Ronnie heard her therapist: Go get some sleep. Heard the hospital psychiatrist warn: This will do no good.

  She sighed. “Let me get a jacket.”

  “I don’t understand how you could leave our home,” he said when she’d returned. “We’ve worked so hard.”

  “This home is a thing, Jeff. Yes, we’ve made every single room exactly the way I wanted it, but in the end, it’s just a house.” A house that, so far, she hadn’t found an affordable way to leave. “It would be much easier if you would move, at least for the time being, since my move will be more complex.”

  “Move?”

  “Yes. I met with my lawyer again last week. These are the steps you take when you are getting a divorce.”

  That last word nicked her on its way out. Jeff looked like she had stabbed him afresh.

  “Why do you want me, Jeff? I know you’re sick of me judging you, and I don’t want to do it anymore. You have the right to happiness too. To spend time with someone who shares your values.” And she wanted that for herself.

  “Don’t go yet,” Jeff said. “Give me some time. I’ll figure something out.”

  “There’s only one solution at this point,” Ronnie said, standing. She opened the door to go back into the house.

  “I read your journals while you were gone.”

  Ronnie braced against fury that threatened to consume her. Now, after all this time, he would try to steal the intimacy he’d refused her?

  It had humiliated her to stand in the cold for so many years, knocking at her husband’s door, begging his attention. That made her feel like more of a whore than fantasizing about someone new. A man who mirrored back her curiosity and passion for life and who had infiltrated her dreams; a man she’d written of in a place she deemed safe from the prying eyes of a husband who had only ever displayed indifference toward her journaling. By this time, she had filled half a dozen thick spiral notebooks. If he’d read them all in one weekend, he must have ignored their children.

  When she was able to bring her breathing back to normal, Ronnie said, “And what did you find?”

  “Hope.”

  ronnie

  Ronnie bent over the sink and splashed cold water on her face.

  “Are you okay?” Her mother’s head peeked around the bathroom door. “You’ve been in here a long time.”

  Ronnie lifted her face and her mother handed her a length of paper towel. It smelled like newsprint and felt like a sympathy card and was probably all the tenderness she deserved. “Look, I came in here to pull myself together.” Before her mother could say anything else she added, “Alone.”

  “Fine,” Beverly said, turning back to the door.

  “But since you’re here, can I borrow your phone?”

  Beverly slipped the phone from her purse and swiped her thumb back and forth over its surface. Finally she punched in the code and handed her the phone. “Just wish you could keep your focus on Jeff today, that’s all.”

  “But Jeff is closing off. Thinking about dying. I want to connect, Mom. I am trying to live.”

  Beverly slipped the phone to Ronnie gently, as if it were a weapon of mass destruction. “Please be considerate. Janet should be back any minute.”

  “Who do you think I’m trying to call?”

  “Kevin.”

  “Why on earth?”

  “All this divorce talk started when you began interviewing him for that article.”

  Ronnie leaned back against the sink. “And where did you get that information?”

  Beverly shifted her weight a few times. “All right. Jeff told me. He called me while you were in New York City to see if I knew the number of where you were staying.”

  “Mom. I’m trying to call Teddy. He’s been trying to reach you all day.” She opened the phone app and showed her mother the list of missed calls.

  “Oh. Well.”

  Ronnie hit the number and put the phone on speaker.

  “Mom, thank goodness. I’ve been going nuts here. Is Ronnie okay?”

  “Teddy, it’s me. I have you on speaker. Mom’s here too.”

  “And Jeff?”

  “He’s…he’s…” Ronnie pushed the phone toward her mother.

  “He’s okay, honey, as far as we know,” Beverly said. “How did you know?”

  “An online news service alerted me on my phone. Ronnie, are you still there?”

  She nodded. Somehow this validation from her brother was causing a meltdown. She was used to fighting for her perspective. Demanding to be heard.

  “She’s here, doll.”

  “I’m so sorry, Ronnie. I should have taken you more seriously. I feel like hell. How are the boys?”

  Ronnie wet a paper towel with cold water and held it against the back of her neck. “Okay for now,” she was able to say. “But what will it be like for them tomorrow? Either way this turns out? I can barely stand to think about it.”

  “What can I do?”

  Ronnie started to cry.

  “Mom, what can I do?”

  Beverly looked right into Ronnie’s eyes as she said, “I’m pretty sure what we can do for Jeff is at an end.”

  Ronnie sobbed even harder. And her mother, holding their connection to Teddy in one hand, slipped the other into one of Ronnie’s.

  “Call me, Ronnie. Let me know, okay? Call me.”

  All Ronnie could do was nod.

  “She says she will, doll. Thanks for calling. And I never thought I’d be the one saying this to you, because church was more your father’s thing, but maybe a prayer or two wouldn’t hurt.”

  • • •

  Back in the social hall, they found Janet leaning heavily on Corporal McNichol, her hair windblown into a lopsided corona, her eyes all but erased. Relief washed through Ronnie that she had come to no bodily harm.

  Ronnie and her mother rushed over.

  “Jeff…” Her son’s name seemed to be all Janet could manage.

  “I saw on the TV,” Beverly said, throwing her arms around her friend.

  When she pulled back, Ronnie also gave Janet a hug. She hadn’t done so since Jerry died, and her arms told her what her eyes hadn’t seen: despite those Tai Chi classes her mother had bought Janet, her mother-in-law had grown frailer. “I’m sorry you had to go through that. You did what you could,” Ronnie said, knowing full well how little that could possibly be.

  “Has anything else happened at the farm?” Beverly asked Corporal McNichol.

  “No, things seem to have calmed back down. My men weren’t too happy about that shot, but everyone was out of harm’s way. Listen, Ronnie, we have another caller for you. She refused to tell us anything but her name so I thought I’d better check.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Fay Sickler.”

  Ronnie looked at Jeff’s mother. The name reanimated Janet’s face and she lifted her eyebrows.

  Crazy Fay—Jeff’s first wife.

  ronnie

  Ronnie picked up the receiver with equal measures of curiosity and dread.

  “Hello, Veronica?”

  “This is Ronnie.”

  “My name is Fay Sickler. You may not know me—”

  “I know who you are.” Ronnie tried to keep her voice neutral.

  “Listen, I hate what you’re going through. I live in Florida now, but I heard from a friend back home that it’s all over the television.”

  “Yes, it is.” Not wanting to add any of Fay’s melodrama to her day, Ronnie pushed things along. “Why are you calling?”

  “I’d heard that yo
u and Jeff had sons. I know Janet thinks the Hoyers are the be-all and end-all, but I have something you’ll want to know about the black sheep side of the family.”

  “You mean Jerry’s? He’s gone now, you know.”

  “I know. My mother and I adored that man. If he wasn’t so tied to that basketball team of his, I would have stolen him right off to Florida with me.”

  Even Crazy Fay deserved the truth. “He still had a picture of you in his wallet when he died.”

  There was a moment of silence. “Thank you for telling me,” she said softly. “I wondered if you knew Jerry received electroshock treatments for depression?”

  “Really.” Ronnie wondered whether to believe her. After all, this was Crazy Fay.

  “Jerry’s mother did too. I figured you wouldn’t know. For some reason, that family clamped down on its stories something fierce.”

  “Janet told me an office fire had destroyed their medical records, so that’s good to know. Our mothers are close friends, but there’s a limit to what an autopsy can—”

  “Wait, you’re Beverly Saylor’s daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “The loon always dragging Janet and Jerry off into the great unknown?”

  The loon? She was one to talk. “Why does it matter?”

  “If you’re partial to Janet, you might discount everything I say, is all. I wouldn’t even have married into the family if it weren’t for all Jeff’s weeping when I tried to break up with him. But his tears seemed to prove utter devotion, and being on the rebound, I found loyalty appealing.”

  Tears? Oh my god.

  “Eventually I came to see all that laid-back swagger as Jeff’s way of hiding one heck of a wobbly ego. That became clear when I decided to split.”

  “He told me you two didn’t end up liking each other that well. That you were young, recognized your mistake, and divorced after a few years.”

  “Four long years. As for the mistake, well, at least one of us had the eyes to see it.” Fay laughed. “Jeff’s big plan was for us to live with his parents and pay them rent until we could afford to move out. They had a great setup for breeding horses, so hey, at first I didn’t mind. After a year, it dawned on my romance-addled brain that ‘temporary’ was a fib—and so was ‘rent.’ He couldn’t support a wife any more than he could support himself.”

  “Did you work?”

  “Not at first. Jeff was queer about that, like he wanted to keep me close. After two years, we seemed no closer to moving out, but Janet still wanted us to tithe to the church when we had no money for survival.”

  “Yeah, he gave up on that. Janet has been donating in his name to a church they’ve never attended.” Ronnie was too embarrassed to say how she knew this: she’d seen the name “Bartlesville Lutheran” while peeking at their tax records, where Jeff deducted the weekly contribution.

  “Buying her boy’s way into heaven—pure Janet. I finally told Jeff if he wanted to stay married, we’d have to get a place of our own. Janet must have realized I was serious because that’s when she had the swell idea to sell us that pathetic farmhouse, whereupon we moved all the way to the other side of the hill.”

  “It looks a lot better these days.”

  “I don’t know how you’d live there otherwise. Jeff put off working on it a whole year until he made some money. I got a job at the Reading airport to help make ends meet and tried to ignore all his suspicions about where I’d been. And then what does he do? He takes an entire year to fix up the attic, the only room we didn’t need to use! While I had to cook in a kitchen with cheap paneling, no counter space, and neon green cupboards.”

  Ronnie laughed. “That kitchen was ugly as sin.”

  “I only lasted in that hellhole another year. Didn’t want to prolong the stupidity. I started moving out, one carload at a time.”

  Ronnie thought of the oak cabinetry, the high-end appliances. No one would call that house a hellhole now. Yet she envied Fay’s decisiveness. Ronnie was a victim of her own stick-to-itiveness. Her marriage to Jeff was like walking deeper and deeper into a web so sticky that despite her growing resolve to change direction, it seemed she’d never be able to shake herself free.

  “You left behind a clock. A reproduction of an antique mantel clock with a pendulum, only it was electric. And plastic. It…got ruined.” Ronnie shuddered at the thought of the clock’s violent end. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it for another moment. Janet bought that for us at a flea market. Couldn’t have been any uglier. I’m surprised he kept it. Perhaps Jeff was clinging to Mommy Dearest.”

  Or perhaps Jeff had loved his mother more than he realized.

  Ronnie heard voices coming from the entrance to the social hall. “I’d better get going—”

  “But wait, here’s what I needed to tell you. The day I moved out, Jeff came into the bedroom and waved a gun around and threatened me.”

  “What?” That must have been more than fifteen years ago. “Had he been drinking?”

  “No, Jeff didn’t drink. He just went ape shit. Like an idiot, I called his bluff. That’s when he held the gun to his temple and threatened to kill himself.”

  The picture Ronnie had kept at bay this whole day crystallized: the cold barrel of a gun pressed up against Jeff’s warm, tender skin. It was no longer a stretch to imagine her husband storming through the house with a gun as the boys hid behind furniture. Ronnie propped her forehead with her hand. “This is so unbelievable.”

  “Jerry was in the driveway, helping to pack the car, when Jeff followed me from the house with the gun. I always wondered if he was torn between trying to talk sense into his son or jumping into my car and making a break for it.”

  “What happened with Jeff and the gun?”

  “I kept packing because no matter what, I was out of there. Jeff didn’t end up hurting anyone that day. But I’ve never seen anyone go berserk like that. I felt badly for him but not guilty. That’s why I’m calling. No matter what happens today, Ronnie, you aren’t guilty either. He was a miserable cuss even back then.”

  The air went silent for a minute.

  “Ronnie?”

  “I’m here. Just trying to process all of this.”

  “But even now, I don’t wish him ill. I’d hoped that you and your boys would give him the stability or whatever it was he needed. I’m sorry that doesn’t seem to be the case. My family has had a suicide. The pain goes on and on.”

  “Maybe it won’t turn out that way.”

  “So he’s still—”

  “Yes,” Ronnie said. “Hey. If you knew Jeff and I were living in that same farmhouse, why did you wait until now to tell me this?”

  Fay’s voice softened. “You were in love. Crusty as I am, even I haven’t forgotten what that felt like. If I’d told you any earlier, would you have believed me?”

  Of course not. She might not have believed her today if not for her mention of Jeff’s tears of devotion.

  “Good-bye, Fay. Thanks for calling.”

  “Good luck, Ronnie. My thoughts will be with you and your kids.”

  Ronnie hung up the phone and the officers returned to the room with their radios.

  Even as recently as May, when she and Jeff celebrated the grand opening of New Hope Farms, if anyone had predicted that before year’s end her husband would be holed up in its office contemplating suicide, she wouldn’t have believed them either.

  ronnie

  Janet and her mother were talking quietly when Ronnie returned to the social hall. Running her hand along the oak bar, her skin caught on a sticky spot. After what Fay told her, the day seemed destined to exist within a whole new story, one in which suicide may have been a constant threat. Had Ronnie and the boys been in danger all these years and never known it? And if not, what had pushed her peaceable Jeff over the line?

  Ronni
e wished she had a copy of last month’s suicide note so she could seek clues, but the police had taken it into evidence. She’d read it so quickly and in such a frazzled state with Jeff watching her so intently. She couldn’t recall much except that besides declaring his hate for Janet, Jeff had asked to be buried beside his father. As if hoping to sense, through the damp ground, the love and respect that his average stature and weak knees could never inspire from the beloved basketball coach.

  How unfortunate, Ronnie thought, to wait until death to try to share someone’s life. It had pained her to watch him squander what opportunity he had during his father’s final days.

  Five years ago, when Jerry had contracted pneumonia, Janet had called Ronnie and asked her to drive her and Jerry to the emergency room. Lisa Schulz was able to watch the boys. When Ronnie got to the house, she found Jerry hot, weak, and haggard-looking in a beard he’d grown that summer. He’d needed both Janet and Ronnie to help him to the car.

  A specialist found a spot on his lungs as well and admitted Jerry. Jeff stopped by the hospital after work for a brief visit and to take his mother home. Ronnie couldn’t believe they were going to leave.

  “He’s only sixty-three,” Jeff said. “It’s not like he’s going to die or anything.”

  “Look at him, Jeff.” Jerry lay on the bed, eyes closed, oxygen mask on his face, fluids and antibiotics flowing into him through tubes.

  Jeff gave him only a quick glance, took his mother’s arm, and left. When Jerry woke up on and off over the next few hours, it was Ronnie’s face he saw.

  When Ronnie called the hospital for an update the next morning, the nurse said Jerry was so disoriented they’d had to restrain him. Ronnie left for the hospital as soon as she dropped the boys at nursery school. She found the poor man sitting in the hallway in a geriatric chair, his hands bound so he wouldn’t pull out his IV. As soon as he saw Ronnie, he collapsed forward with relief. “I’m in one hell of a mess,” he said. “Where’s Janet?”

  Jerry rallied a bit after they drained fluid from his chest cavity, allowing his lungs to fully inflate. But as much as he seemed to want his wife by his side, Ronnie soon learned it was indeed better when Janet stayed home. She seemed to have no common sense for nursing, trying to shame him into getting better. One day he was so angry about the way she pushed food at him that he sat in bed before his untouched tray, twisting a napkin around and around his fingers, trying to rip it apart.