Such Happiness as This

by Laina Villeneuve

  They mucked out both stalls and had moved to grooming Taj when Kristine returned.

  “You’re an angel,” she said when she saw the stall mucked. “I don’t know how to repay you.”

  Robyn didn’t know how to tell her how much she valued their currency of love. She didn’t want to scare her by admitting how very much she needed it. “I’m pleased it worked out,” she said. “And I hope you’ll be around to help me again, young man. I’m an old lady and could sure use it.”

  Caemon laughed. “Mama, you old lady, too?”

  “Sometimes I feel like it, mister. But I’m no old lady yet, and neither is our friend Robyn. She’s just happy to have such a good helper.”

  As they left, Kristine stopped to run her hand along Taj’s neck, and Robyn knew she was thinking about Penelope. She felt a pang of guilt that the shift in her life was connected to the accident and wondered if there was any change and whether Kristine ever visited her. The crazy idea of visiting Penelope herself flashed through her mind, but she discarded it. What would she say, that this new lightness she felt, a first inkling of hope, was like coming out of a coma herself? That hardly seemed appropriate. Still, it felt like she owed the young woman a thank-you, one she had no idea how to deliver.

  Chapter Seven

  Tears

  An empty house shouldn’t have felt any different. Robyn was used to Barb working late hours at the university where she booked acts for the theater, especially on a night there was a show. Yet in the week since Barb had walked out the door with a duffel full of her essentials, Robyn had spent more hours at the barn or out in her shop avoiding the house.

  When Barb had first moved in, the newness of her presence had thrilled Robyn, sounds of her showering, drying her hair and putting on makeup, talking to herself about things she needed to not forget. The jackets that hung next to hers in the front hall closet. Her books shuffled in with Robyn’s in the living room.

  The sweet smell of the coffee she brewed. Her hazelnut grounds still sat tucked into the door of the freezer, mocking Robyn every time she opened the door. Now the shop was a safe haven where she would not uncover another item of Barb’s and wonder if and when she was going to come retrieve it.

  Her hands spun the almost-finished bowl she’d been sanding, feeling for any uneven surfaces. Worked with the finest grade of sandpaper, it was nearly ready for rubbing with mineral oil to reveal the true character of the grain. The nice chunk of walnut had given her many bowls, so she could anticipate the rich hue. She ran her thumb along the base of the bowl. She’d given it a new flare that Isabel had admired when she’d pored over the work in various stages of completion.

  If she asked, Isabel would be on the next flight down to help her face life as a single woman, but she hesitated. Isabel would want to know all that had happened, details like whose idea it had been and whether Barb had left her for Poem Boy.

  Robyn didn’t want to report how well Barb had taken it. She’d tiptoed around their failing relationship for years, scared to trigger a breakdown, yet after Isabel’s visit when she finally asked about the poem, she’d been floored by Barb’s response. The way she sat and leveled her gaze at Robyn had told her they were over, that they had been for some time, and that she had simply been treading water until the time to leave was right for her.

  She had her own questions but had been unable to ask them. Like why Barb hadn’t just said it was over whenever it was she had stopped trying and how much of her deciding not to try any more had to do with Daniel? Was he leaving his wife? Was she going to live with one of her friends, or was she going to get a place with him? What had happened to her being a lesbian?

  Barb hadn’t fought for them. Not once did she talk about them working things out. Barb’s tearful responses to earlier attempts to discuss their relationship had kept Robyn from broaching the subject later. But something had shifted between them, and now Robyn realized that it was someone who had made it possible for Barb to leave. It hurt to realize that Barb had just been marking time until something better came along.

  She heard in Barb’s voice what she had already felt, We’ve been roommates for a while. Robyn was still flabbergasted that Barb had neutralized the end of their relationship and treated that last night like a tenant deciding to leave. Robyn had felt like demanding months of past rent or threatening to keep the deposit for the emotional damage she had caused.

  Her mind returned to the stuff of their shared life. The enormity of the task ahead of pulling their lives apart overwhelmed her. She’d have to call credit card companies, the bank, the utilities, figure out how to get herself removed from the title of Barb’s car. She would have to call Barb.

  She wanted to be free of it, free of everything. For months, ever since she’d begun riding, she’d felt that the relationship was about to crash. She’d known that it was over and just didn’t have the energy to confront the emotional wreckage. Barb had moved them from the abstract of negotiating their failing relationship to the concrete of dismantling it but true to form did not want to contribute to the hands-on work. Robyn eyed the light blue two-story house and felt the weight of clearing up the debris of their past life together. Yet she was also ready to have it feel like her place again. Once she was completely free of Barb, she would be able to admire it again, seeing the original frame as well as her grandfather’s various additions instead of the “shipwreck” image that Barb had imposed on her.

  Robyn set down the bowl. This she could do.

  She stopped at the shed where she stored the items she picked up at estate sales and out of the garbage at the end of the college semesters, desks stacked top to top, boxes of kitchen accoutrements, lamps and other small electronics college students discarded rather than fix. She kept it all for the yard sale she held when they returned en masse before the fall semester desperate to furnish their off-campus apartments. She grabbed a few empty boxes.

  The first ones she parked on the table, filling them with Barb’s kitchen utensils, fancy coffee press and the serving dishes she had insisted on buying when she’d been happy nesting. As Robyn wrapped these items in old newspaper, it occurred to her that she could feel thankful that Barb had never agreed to registering as domestic partners. One less thing to put on the list, she thought pragmatically. Before carrying out the first full boxes, she pulled the hazelnut coffee from the freezer and deposited it in the garbage.

  Room by room she reclaimed her space. At the bottom of the stairs, she regarded the downstairs living room, her office desk tucked in one corner. Barb kept nothing there or in the bathroom. Robyn rented the one bedroom on the first floor to a university student, one of three she housed to supplement her retirement income. Her work awaited her at the top of the stairs.

  The upstairs hallway had three doors. Her childhood room to the left, a renter’s room to the right and straight in front of her the master bedroom. Two large picture windows filled the western wall, showcasing the evening’s red and orange sunset. The eastern side of the room had an enclosed porch that served as a private small living room since Barb hated sharing space with the renters. She paused at the door she had made especially for Barb, running her hands over the smooth glass she had inlayed to pull down the stars for her lover. How often had it been closed between them when she slept in her loft while Barbara slept diagonally in the king bed down below?

  As day eased to night, Robyn weeded out Barb’s books and CDs, deciding which movies to keep and which to pack. What would flash through Barb’s mind when she found Kissing Jessica Stein in her box? She imagined her watching the movie with Daniel, the two of them satisfied with Jessica’s renewed interest in her old boyfriend at the movie’s closing.

  They’d talk intellectually throughout the movie, analyzing the difficulties Jessica had being lesbian. They’d discuss whether the two women flirting in front of men at the bar was hot. Who was she fooling? By the time Jessica and Helen sleep together, the movie would be long forgotten, Daniel and Barb…She did not
need to be spending time thinking about her ex tangled up in sheets with a man. She quickly buried Jessica Stein with every subtitled film she’d suffered through.

  Once she started, she could not stop, always picking up an empty box from the shed after she deposited a full one, working straight through dinner into the night. Her heart caught when she heard the door open. Intellectually, she knew it was one of her tenants returning, but her body was still conditioned to expect Barb. She sunk down on the stairs that led to her loft and curled into herself, elbows on knees and head in hands, suddenly exhausted.

  As a child, her room had been the smallest in the house, barely big enough to hold a single bed, her simple pine dresser and the shelves that held treasures she had collected throughout the summers spent with her grandparents. Since both of her parents worked full-time, once summer hit, Robyn and her older brother, Jeff, lived with their grandparents who were happy to spend days combing beaches and hiking in the redwoods. After three summers of complaining that Jeff got the bigger room, her grandfather surprised her by creating a loft to give her a private play space. She’d surprised him by insisting that they move her mattress up to the attic room, arguing that she wanted to sleep in the room that held her toys.

  After that, she had never complained again. Her room felt spacious and inviting. Barb had changed that when she moved in and claimed it as her office, filling her special shelves with unfinished projects and mountains of papers she had promised to organize someday. With all of that now crammed into trash bags, Robyn felt the room come back to her. She had hoped to reclaim the space with her collection of shells, but she was utterly spent. Even if she could convince one of the renters to lend a hand, there was no way she could move Barb’s hulking desk that night.

  A soft rap at the doorjamb pulled her upright. Jen stood in the hallway, home from her rehearsal with the community orchestra. The stylish youngster had rented the room across the hall since beginning her undergrad in music and through her master’s in education. She seemed to have spent those years in flannel pants and T-shirts. Since she had graduated and begun searching for a job teaching music, she’d started buying slacks and blouses.

  “You okay?” she asked, holding her long black curls up to unwind a scarf from her neck.

  “Super,” Robyn said, knowing that her tone suggested otherwise.

  “You and Mom are getting a divorce, aren’t you?”

  Robyn couldn’t help laughing. When Jen had come out to unenthusiastic parents in Tennessee, she had announced that she was adopting Robyn and Barb as her gay moms. “Mom’s playing for the other team, dear.”

  “Oh, ouch. Didn’t see that coming. I thought I was going to grow up and be just like you two.”

  “Don’t marry a straight girl. That’s my mom advice for you.”

  Jen laughed, but she looked concerned. “You seem to be taking it well.”

  Robyn gestured to the boxes, “I’ve been at this so long, I think I’m just crazy. Sorry.”

  “Have you eaten anything?”

  “I maybe forgot.”

  “Come on. I’ve got some yukki soba we can share.” She flung her scarf into her bedroom and bounded down the stairs.

  Touched by Jen’s motherly gesture, Robyn sighed and followed her down the stairs to the kitchen, a reminder that kids grow up and start taking care of their parents, payback for the years of exhaustion. She pictured how drained Kristine often looked but could project an adult Caemon caring for her someday. Eleanor would have enjoyed that with Penelope. She poured herself a glass of water and drank the whole thing. She hadn’t even realized she was thirsty. She filled the glass again, blinking back tears prompted by the sorrow she felt for what Eleanor had lost.

  “I need a beer. You just shattered my perception of happily ever after, you know.”

  “Sorry about that,” Robyn said, accepting a plate of soba noodles, tofu and vegetables.

  “Itadakimasu, right?” Jen said.

  “Yes, itadakimasu.” Robyn repeated the phrase her obaachan had taught her, knowing she would be pleased that they still voiced gratitude for each meal received. “How was rehearsal?” she asked, needing to deflect the conversation.

  “Okay. I wish it paid. My parents are right. I’m never going to get a job in education up here. But I just can’t imagine living anywhere else now.”

  “But you can’t imagine working at the hot tubs forever either?”

  “Exactly.” She sighed deeply, tucking another mouthful of noodles in with her chopsticks.

  “Why don’t you give lessons? You could start pulling in students when you’re not down at Café Mokka. Eventually, you could have enough to quit working down there, don’t you think?”

  “How many kids want violin lessons?”

  “You could teach more than violin, couldn’t you?”

  “I’d need some instruments.”

  “We’ve got a piano upstairs.”

  Jen furrowed her brow.

  “It’s in the master bedroom,” Robyn said. “Come see,” she said, carrying her bowl. Though her muscles ached from her long day, having an excuse to move out of the bedroom she’d shared with Barb energized her.

  Jen followed her up the stairs to what she had only known as Barb’s domain. Robyn and Jen stood in front of the upright piano.

  Taking a step closer to the piano to look at a portrait of a young blond woman Jen said, “She’s a hottie. Did you date her before Mom?”

  “That’s my mom,” Robyn corrected.

  “Seriously? She looks like the all-American cheerleader, nothing like you,” Jen observed, a guilty look crossing her face.

  “My paternal grandmother was Japanese.” Robyn pulled a photograph of her grandparents from the bookshelf behind her, a sturdy Midwestern man in his naval uniform and his petite bride in front of the house now Robyn’s.

  “You got their house? That’s awesome!”

  “It has a lot of history. Since I spent every summer of my childhood here, they left the house to me and my brother, Jeff. He lives in Japan, so he was happy to sell me his share.”

  “Was the piano theirs too?”

  “No. I bought it for Barb, not that she ever played it. I had it tuned once. Does it need it again?” she asked, motioning Jen to the keyboard.

  Jen set her bowl down beside her on the bench and tapped out a simple tune.

  “Even I can tell that it needs tuning,” Robyn said, apologetically. “But if you get it tuned, you have a piano. I can keep an eye out for instruments at estate sales if you want others to offer students. But it seems to me that if a parent wants their kid playing any other instrument, the kid will come with it, wouldn’t they?” She couldn’t help feeling excited at the prospect of helping Jen realize her dream.

  Jen nodded, assessing the space again. “It’s got a nice high ceiling, no carpet. This is a perfect studio space. She chewed on her lip. “How much would you want for it?”

  “What do you mean?” Robyn asked.

  “Rent.”

  Robyn waved dismissively. “You already pay rent.”

  “But you could put another tenant in here and charge twice as much as what you charge me. That’s not fair.”

  “I’m making enough with the three tenants I have and don’t feel like interviewing to fill up another room. You’d be doing me a favor.” She smiled.

  “How am I suddenly the one doing you a favor?” Jen asked.

  Robyn had only taken over her grandparents’ space as the master bedroom at Barbara’s insistence and reflected on how uncomfortable she had always felt there. “You’re helping me redefine the room. It isn’t the master bedroom anymore. It’s your studio. It’s your music school. I can’t wait to hear you teach.” Robyn felt new energy coming into her home, a breath of new life.

  “Maybe we should put that in writing before you’re exposed to hours of kids sawing away out of tune.”

  “And you’ll teach them to sound like you.” She rubbed her hands together. “I’ll
pull the pictures off the walls, and then it’s all yours.”

  “I’m sorry about the divorce, Mom.”

  Robyn paused, acknowledging Jen’s words with a sad nod. “Me too.”

  Jen took their bowls and disappeared down the stairs. Robyn took down Barb’s prints and carried them to her room. She and Barb smiled at her from the cover of a photo album in the open box. Robyn folded the edges of the box over and carried it out to the shed, the evidence of that life now stowed and ready for Barb to pick up.

  Closing the door to the shed, she felt the satisfaction of truly moving forward with her life.

  Chapter Eight

  Patience

  “Did she come to get her shit yet?”

  True to character, Isabel didn’t say hello. “No. It’s still out in the shed.”

  “Are you kidding me,” Isabel exploded. “How many weeks ago did you pack it all up? Did she even thank you for sorting it all out?”

  “Three, and no.”

  “That is it. I am coming down there to kick her ass.”

  “That’s not why I called you.”

  “I’m sorry. What is it?”

  “I was just looking for a pep talk.”

  “Is it raining?”

  “I’m in Arcata. Winter is right around the corner. Of course it’s raining.”

  “You should come inland get away from the gloom. You know here in Spokane, we actually see the sun. Come see and spend some time with my house of crazy, and you will go home happy to have your peace and quiet.”

  Robyn sat in her too-quiet house, consumed by dark thoughts and loneliness. Breathing felt like an effort, so much so that she pushed her breath out as slowly as possible, wondering what it would be like if she could order her body to simply not inhale again. She wouldn’t have to deal with a single thing ever again. Only when her body screamed at her did she fill her lungs again, accepting with it the sadness she couldn’t escape.

  “Ah. I get it. You want crazy,” Isabel concluded. “You want one of the twins? You pick. You want the white one or the brown one? Might as well take the white one—everyone thinks I am his nanny anyway. I will pop him in the mail first thing in the morning.”