The Secret of Joy

by Melissa Senate

  “I see us married one day, Rebecca. I see us in that three-floor Perry Street brownstone we always used to talk about. I know we have to work things out. But we both know how to accomplish that. That’s what we do.”

  She sat back down. “We don’t see eye to eye on some very important issues, Michael.”

  “About your inheritance?”

  “About that, about Joy and what she means to me, about my being here.”

  “I assume you didn’t get the DNA results back yet?”

  She shook her head. “I can start checking online the day after tomorrow to see if the results are listed.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “From your perspective. And if she’s your sister, it would be very generous if you gave her ten thousand.”

  Was he kidding? “Ten thousand? That doesn’t even begin to add up to child support, based on my father’s income, for ages one day through eighteen. That doesn’t come close to paying off her student loans, either.”

  “Okay, so twenty-five thousand. Fifty thousand, even. That would be very generous, Rebecca.”

  Generous, her ass. “I’m not interested in generous. I’m interested in appropriate. I’m giving her half.”

  He shook his head as though this was his decision to make. “Half is our future, Rebecca. It’s the down payment on our brownstone. It’s our children’s college education. It’s the summer house in Montauk that we used to talk about. We could even rent a ski house up here.”

  She didn’t ski. She didn’t particularly want to ski.

  “Anyway, why are we arguing about this now?” he said, leaning closer to take both of her hands in his. “Let’s talk about this when the results come in. Fly back with me tomorrow morning. You can check the results online at home.”

  She pulled her hands away. “You haven’t really listened to one thing I’ve said. You don’t hear me at all.”

  “Rebecca, I hear you loud and clear. I just think you’re making a mistake and I’m trying to stop you from doing it. Once you throw away the money, it’s gone.”

  He was infuriating. Was this the way things always were between them? His way was the only way? His thoughts and beliefs the right ones? “I don’t think I’m making a mistake at all. And I’m done discussing it with you.”

  He let out a frustrated breath. “Why are you so fucking stubborn?”

  “Did you fly up here to curse at me? To call me names?”

  “I flew up here to talk some sense into you.”

  She stared at him, then sat back down. “Michael, what’s the one thing you want me to know—most of all.”

  He looked annoyed. “That you’re making a big mistake, that’s what.”

  “By giving Joy the money? By not coming home? Which one?”

  “Both. They’re connected, aren’t they?”

  She looked at him, at this man she’d been with for two years, who’d comforted her through her father’s death, who’d made the funeral arrangements, who’d held her for those nights when she’d just cried and been unable to speak.

  “Do you love me?” she asked.

  He stared at her. “Do you love me?”

  She was tempted to say “I asked you first,” but she suddenly knew what the problem was between her and Michael. The real problem, the problem of all problems: They didn’t love each other anymore. They had once, and there was still feeling there. Fondness. Tenderness. But not love. And certainly not the kind of love that made for marriage. He cared about her and he wasn’t ready to let her go, just like she hadn’t been ready to let him go. He wanted the money for the vague future, so it would be there like a concrete thing for them. But he didn’t love her, and she wasn’t so sure the mighty, smart, insightful Michael Whitman even knew it.

  He held her gaze. “I care very much about you, Rebecca. And I think we can work things out. I want to work things out.”

  He did know. He knew and he wasn’t ready for it. She felt another surge of emotion for him. A purge of emotion, maybe. She was ready to let go.

  “I care about you, too, Michael. And I think we did love each other in the beginning, but somewhere along the way we stopped, but we’re both too something—I don’t know what, exactly—to acknowledge it, so we just forged ahead, living together, working together, our lives entwined. We care about each other, but we don’t love each other.”

  He stared at her, then let out a harsh breath and kicked one of Charlie’s rubber chew toys against the wall. He closed his eyes and dropped down on the sofa, his head in his hands. “I do care about you, Rebecca. More than you think, maybe.”

  “It’s the same for me, Michael.”

  “So this is it?” he said, glancing up at her. “This is the end? Just like that?”

  “It’s not ‘just like that,’ though, is it? We’ve been heading to this for a while,” she said gently.

  He nodded and leaned back against the sofa, staring up at the ceiling. “Well, it sucks.”

  She bit her lip. It did suck, but it was the truth. Black and white, no gray areas.

  “Okay, Rebecca,” he said, getting up. “Good luck with everything,” he added, and then walked out the door.

  She was not free and clear, not really. As she lay in her bed, Charlie’s warm body beside her, she longed for Theo, longed to be wrapped in his arms, longed to be underneath him, on top of him, to be fused with him. And she longed to just look at him, to have those intense dark brown eyes warm and sweet on her. But he wanted her free and clear, and she wasn’t either.

  Because Michael was a part of it, but not all of it.

  Regardless of the results of the DNA test, perhaps she should go back to New York and see how things felt there, how she felt. That was her home, wasn’t it? Where she was born, where she was from, where she and her family had lived intact before Wiscasset and a woman named Pia Jayhawk had entered their lives, without two of them knowing it.

  But in the past few weeks, Rebecca had made Wiscasset her home.

  What do you want most of all? she asked herself.

  She wanted to know where she belonged. And she wanted the results of the DNA test—if Joy was definitely her sister—to mean something to Joy. She wanted the word sister to be backed up with sisterhood.

  And if she wanted Joy to be her sister in the ways that mattered, she needed to let her go, too. Let the relationship settle some, give Joy space, time. And the freedom to make the choice to come to Rebecca.

  Two days passed, and Rebecca had heard from no one. She could be dead in her kitchen, having slipped on her freshly mopped floor (she was in a cleaning frenzy again from the angst of waiting—waiting for the DNA results, waiting to be free and clear, waiting to understand something), and they’d find her with poor, starving Charlie resting his head on her chest.

  Great, now she was sounding like her late grandmother Mildred.

  She hadn’t heard a word from Joy or Harry about how things were going, if they wanted another mediation session, if they needed one. She hadn’t heard from Ellie or Maggie. She hadn’t heard from Theo, of course. And it would be a while before Michael would contact her about packing up the stuff she’d left behind. She’d call his mother once some time had passed and say she would have otherwise loved to wear her beautiful wedding gown, and that some other woman would be lucky to walk down the aisle in it.

  She’d thought about calling Joy and telling her about what happened with Theo and then with Michael, how suddenly she went from two boyfriends to none. But she felt like she’d be pushing herself on Joy at the wrong time, demanding she be her sister and bring over a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and a box of tissues.

  She would just love that.

  “It’s just you and me, Charlie,” she said. She glanced at the clock. It was eleven thirty at night. She’d take Charlie out for his last walk and then she’d try to go to bed, but she knew she wouldn’t sleep.

  She put on a sweater and let Charlie lead the way along the path of the beach. This was Charlie
’s favorite walk, and if she happened to run into a gorgeous man named Theo Granger, well, that was life in a small town. And when Charlie began tugging on his leash to get away, his tail wagging, she knew his best friend, Spock, was close by.

  As Charlie pulled her around the dark curve of the evergreens, her heart started beating like crazy. And then there was Spock with his pointy ears. A moment later, Theo appeared in the shadows. He looked so handsome, so … conflicted, she thought. Or maybe he was just pissed off that she’d engineered this possible run-in down by his end of the beach.

  She barely got the opportunity to say hello when her cell phone rang. Theo nodded at her and began walking away. “C’mon, Spock,” she heard him say, but of course Spock wouldn’t budge; he was busy chasing Charlie’s tail.

  Maggie’s name appeared in the tiny screen. At almost midnight? “Maggie?”

  “Rebecca, you’ve got to come! I’m at Ellie’s—maybe you can talk to her. She says she’s going to kill herself. She locked herself in her bathroom. She’s drunk off her ass.”

  What? Oh God. “Theo!” she shouted, her voice shrill in the still night air. “Maggie says Ellie’s in trouble, that she’s drunk and threatening to kill herself.” She said into the phone, “Maggie, we’ll be right there.”

  He rushed over to her. “My car is closer. Let’s go.” They ran to his house, a quarter of a mile away, her legs a rubbery mess, her heart thudding. He put the dogs in the yard, then they jumped into his car, and within seconds they were at Ellie’s house.

  Maggie had left the door open for them. She stood, hands braced against the bathroom door, ashen-faced and red-eyed. “Ellie, honey, please, just let me in.” She turned around when she heard Rebecca and Theo enter. “She’s been in there for a half hour. I’m getting really scared.”

  Maggie whispered the story. Ellie had signed the divorce papers and had brought the envelope over to Tim’s mother’s garage apartment, where he was living. Apparently, Tim signed the papers right then and there with an “I guess it’s for the best” and handed the document back to Ellie, then said, “So, you wanna do it one last time?” Ellie got all nostalgic and misty, but Tim had been unable to “perform,” and so Ellie had gotten on her knees, but that hadn’t worked, either. And then Tim said, “I guess you don’t do it for me anymore, babe. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. In fact, I guess it means we should be.”

  Ellie had punched him hard in the stomach, and because Tim hadn’t been expecting it, he tripped over some beer bottles and fell and hit his head on the corner of his dresser, and there was blood, and then his mother came in to see what the commotion was, and accused Ellie of trying to murder her “precious boy.”

  “At least she thought to grab the signed divorce papers,” Maggie whispered.

  And so there had been an emergency meeting of the Bitter Exes Club, and Ellie had been very down. After a few hours of talking and crying and eating, Lucy and Darren reluctantly left, Maggie assuring them she’d stay the night with Ellie. But then Ellie began drinking heavily, downing shots of tequila despite Maggie’s insistence that she stop and have coffee instead. Ellie started crying and couldn’t stop, and when Maggie went to make a pot of strong coffee, Ellie disappeared. Maggie discovered she had locked herself in the bathroom. And then Ellie said she wouldn’t come out and stopped answering. Until she finally called out, “Maggie?”

  Maggie, who’d been sitting by the door, jumped up. “Yes, sweetie? Honey, open up so we can talk face to face?”

  “Mags, do you think my pink razor would be sharp enough to do the job? Or should I just use the little scissors in the medicine cabinet? That’s so gross,” she slurred. “Tim used to use those to cut his nose hairs. Maggie, can you call Darren and ask if he knows if Rite Aid brand razors are sharp enough? I was trying to save money so I bought the generic kind, but I’ll bet Bic or whatever is sharper.”

  Maggie had raced for the phone and called Rebecca.

  “I could just swallow all these pills,” Ellie said now on a wail. “Between the Tylenol and the Midol, there’s enough.”

  Rebecca and Theo and Maggie stared at one another, all of them going white.

  Theo knocked on the door. “Ellie, it’s Theo. Will you open up? I really want to talk to you. Give you the guy’s perspective, okay?”

  Yes, that was good. That would likely work. Ellie was obsessed with the guy’s perspective. According to Maggie, she’d taken armfuls of books out of the library this past week, from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus to How to Heal a Broken Heart In 30 Days to Divorce Is Not the Answer.

  Hurting yourself wasn’t either.

  “Men suck shit,” Ellie slurred. “You all suck. I hate you.”

  “She’s so drunk,” Maggie whispered.

  Theo sat down against the wall next to the bathroom door. “See what you can do,” he whispered to Rebecca.

  She sent a silent prayer up to the ceiling and pressed her hands against the door. “Ellie? It’s Rebecca. Honey, please open the door. Please. Let me talk to you.”

  “Hi, Berecca.” She laughed. “Hey, did I say that backward?” She started to cry, loud sobs, then stopped suddenly. “I’m so drunk.”

  “That’s okay, Ellie. Sometimes you just need to get smashed. But you’ve got three people out here who care about you, and we want you to come out and talk to us. You’ve been so strong, Ellie. Come on out, okay?”

  “I’m so comfy, though,” she said. “Well, not that comfy.” She laughed, then wailed again. “I’m so tired. Did you hear I killed Tim?”

  Rebecca’s heart squeezed in her chest. “Theo saw him going into Mama’s an hour ago with a Band-Aid on his temple. He’s alive and eating pizza.”

  Sobs from the bathroom. “I hate him so much. And I hate his stupid mother.”

  “Ellie, come on out, and you can lie down on the couch. We’ll stay with you, okay?”

  There was a moment of silence. Then another wail. And then some thudding sounds, then a click, then the thud again. Had she opened the door? Rebecca and Theo locked eyes, and Rebecca tried the doorknob. It turned. She let out a deep breath and gently opened the door. Ellie lay in the empty bathtub with a towel covering her up to her chin, mascara running and smeared all over her face. The empty bottle of tequila was on the bathroom floor. And Ellie had vomited near the toilet.

  “I just want him to love me,” Ellie said, pulling the towel over her head. Pieces of her straight dark hair were splayed against her mouth, and Rebecca pushed them aside. “Why doesn’t he love me? Why? Theo? Are you still here?”

  Theo came into the bathroom and sat down on the rim of the tub. “I’m here.”

  “Why doesn’t he love me?”

  He took her hand and held on to it. “I can’t answer that, Ellie. But I do know it’s not because you’re not beautiful. And it’s not because you’re not wonderful. It’s not because of you at all.”

  “Then I can’t do anything about it,” she said, and burst into tears again, pulling the towel over her face. Her sobs racked her slight body.

  Theo picked her up out of the tub and carried her to the black leather couch. He lay her down and covered her with a throw and stroked her hair. “Ellie, honey, it hurts like hell, but you’ve got family and friends who love you and who will see you through it.”

  Ellie cried and turned to face the back of the couch. Maggie stroked her hair, and in a few minutes, she was so quiet that they realized she’d fallen asleep.

  Maggie let out a very deep breath. “She’s going to have some headache tomorrow.”

  Theo slid down on the floor, his back against the couch, his face pale.

  Maggie handed him a cup of coffee. “This should help.” She headed back into the kitchen and brought another cup for Rebecca, her hand shaking. “I think she’ll see my therapist now. I couldn’t convince her to make an appointment before, but I bet she’ll go now. Thank you, guys, so much for coming. I was so scared. I’ll stay the night with her.”

&nb
sp; Rebecca rubbed Maggie’s shoulder. “I’ll stay here with you.”

  Theo downed his coffee, then headed into the kitchen. He returned a few minutes later with a bottle of Pine-Sol and Ellie’s Swiffer WetJet and a roll of paper towels and went into the bathroom. When he came out, he said, “Much cleaner in there now.” He put away the mop and cleaning supplies. “Okay, I’m gonna go. If you need me, call.” He locked eyes with Rebecca for a moment, then left.

  “He’s gold,” Maggie whispered. She turned out the lights and lay down on the floor, her head on one of the floor pillows.

  Rebecca found a linen closet near the bathroom and took out two cotton blankets. She covered Maggie with one, then lay down next to her and stared up at the sliver of moonlight on the ceiling for a long while before she finally fell asleep, the sachet-scented blanket no match for the smell of Pine-Sol.

  In the morning, Ellie did have a killer headache. She was also mortified. She swore she wasn’t serious about killing herself, that she’d hit rock bottom and had no where to go but up, right? She’d even called her mother, who’d called Ellie’s four aunts, who’d called their daughters and daughters-in-law, and they were all coming over at nine to take care of their girl.

  When the very loud group of women arrived—there were at least ten of them—talking over themselves, shrieking, grabbing Ellie into fierce hugs, “That lying, cheating loser of a wuss doesn’t know from blood!” was among the bits and pieces Rebecca was able to make out.

  Ellie had family. And she had friends. And they would all make sure she was okay.

  Once Rebecca and Maggie had Ellie’s sworn vow to call Maggie’s therapist that morning, Rebecca and Maggie finally left. The cool morning air was like a rejuvenating blast, but Rebecca still felt shell-shocked. And her back hurt like hell from sleeping on the floor.

  “I think she scared the bitter right out of herself,” Maggie said as they walked to her car. Maggie looked exhausted, dark circles and puffy bags under her usually alert hazel eyes.