The Far End of Happy (7 page)

Two policemen got out of the car, Ronnie keenly aware of the peaceable scene they’d happened upon: a man and woman enjoying a spot of night air before bed. Ronnie stood and acknowledged that she had placed the call. She could feel the heat of Jeff’s presence behind her. One officer asked to speak with her in the house; the other said to Jeff, “I hear you’re not doing too well tonight, Mr. Farnham.”

Inside, Ronnie’s officer explained that separating them was standard procedure in domestic situations. Ronnie told him what had happened that evening and showed him the suicide note.

The officer said they’d take it into evidence. He passed the note through the door to his colleague. The other officer asked, “Is this your handwriting, Mr. Farnham?” She heard Jeff say yes. The officers conferred for a bit, their voices muffled behind the door, before the one assigned to Ronnie returned.

Jeff did not repeat the threat of suicide in front of the other officer, he said, so unless Ronnie was willing to get involved, their hands were tied.

“What do you mean, ‘get involved’?”

“Your husband does not want our help, but that suicide note will allow you to commit him to the psychiatric ward against his will for up to five days. To do that, you’ll have to come down to the hospital and sign papers.”

“Okay. I’ll head over first thing in the morning.”

“It’ll have to be now if you want help from us tonight. Otherwise, we’ll have to leave your husband here—”

“No.” That much was unthinkable. “But I have two children asleep upstairs.”

He shrugged. Not his problem.

Ronnie’s mind raced. It was past midnight; she wouldn’t be able to get anyone to come over now to stay with the boys.

The officer shifted his weight. Jeff watched her through the door.

“I’ll go wake them.”

The officers called an ambulance from the squad car and gave Ronnie directions to the hospital. She shivered; the night had cooled, the fog had thickened, and she had never put on a sweater. Within a few minutes, she saw flashing lights refracting through millions of water droplets hanging in the air down by the road.

“We’ll walk him down so the driver doesn’t have to turn around up here,” an officer said.

Ronnie then took in an image so incongruous she could only stare: Jeff, in handcuffs. He didn’t look at her as they led him away.

In the attic Ronnie dressed the boys, explaining that their dad was sick. The ambulance had taken him to the hospital, and they had to go make sure he’d be okay.

The boys quickly fell back asleep in the car. Ronnie’s thoughts flitted back to when Andrew was in first grade and had learned that some of the kids in his class were in a club called Banana Splits, which Ronnie knew to be a support group for kids from broken families. When at the end of the school year they got to have a banana split party with all the fixings, Andrew was jealous. He was a big lover of ice cream. One night, at a rare family dinner in which both Ronnie and Jeff were present, he said, “I think that next year I’d like to join Banana Splits.”

Jeff had laughed along with Ronnie, who believed that those circumstances would never arise within their loving family. Ronnie had told Andrew, “You wouldn’t want to pay the cost of membership.”

The fog wasn’t as prevalent closer to Reading, and Ronnie found the hospital. It was going on two a.m. and the emergency room was empty. The boys sprawled out on plastic seats in the waiting room, CNN droning on the television above them. She’d hoped they’d fall asleep, but they couldn’t get comfortable. They wanted to know what was wrong with their dad. It only occurred to Ronnie then that despite Jeff’s consumption of filterless cigarettes and alcohol, the boys had never seen him sick. Maybe the farm store vegetables helped, although he ate that way for frugality more than health, so he could eat in maturation what he paid for in seed.

Time dragged while Jeff was assessed. The boys whined and wanted to know when they could go home. Ronnie told them the doctors were trying to figure that out.

At long last, the social worker called her into a small office.

“Your husband’s feeling pretty good right now.”
Feeling
good?
Was Jeff putting on some kind of act? And was the act for Ronnie’s benefit or theirs? “His blood alcohol is 0.20. We can’t do a psych evaluation until that comes down.”

This wasn’t drinking to numb—this was drinking toward coma. How on earth could he have consumed so much?

“I understand he threatened suicide and that you want to commit him, so I’ve drawn up the paperwork.”

The social worker slid the papers toward her. Handed her a pen. Ronnie’s stomach quivered.

She tried to hold her voice steady when she asked what would happen to him if she committed him.

“Tomorrow they’ll want to reassess him. Until then, we’ll make him comfortable so he can sleep it off.”

Ronnie remembered the words Jeff had hissed at her:
I
will
never
forgive
you
for
this.
Saw again the disgust on his face as he was led away in handcuffs. The signature line on the commitment paper undulated. The consequences of this decision seemed too massive to pin down.

Then she thought of Andrew and Will, out in the lobby, held hostage by CNN in bucket chairs when they needed to be sleeping in their beds.

The line solidified, bold and clear.

Ronnie took a deep breath and signed.

A police officer strode into the fire hall and handed Corporal McNichol a piece of paper. She took some time to look it over.

“What is it?” Ronnie said.

“A list of reporters wanting an interview. Two requests for Janet, and a whole lot more for you.”

“Like who?”

“The
Morning
Call
in Allentown, the
Reading
Eagle
, the
Potts
Forge
Times
, Channel 69, Maura Riley from
Action
News
, and it goes on. Maybe a half dozen more television news reporters.”

Corporal McNichol handed Ronnie the paper. “You’re free to do what you want, but I worry about the effect that more choppers and vehicles might have on Jeff.”

There was a time when Ronnie thought her name would be on such a list. She’d planned to be a journalist, not an interview subject. They’d likely ask, “How do you feel?” In answer, the blank space in her morning journal came to mind. She only knew that extricating herself from Jeff had suddenly become a more complex and wretched story than she could comprehend. And despite a safe physical remove, she was still trapped within it.

It was hard to believe any of them belonged here. How had this happened, when slipping into Jeff’s life had been so sweet and easy?

• • •

The first morning she awoke at the farm, a few months after she and Jeff had started dating, Ronnie was thinking it was a good thing she’d entered under the cover of darkness or the loud clash between the green sheets, purple blanket, and vivid yellow-and-blue-flowered wallpaper peeling beside her would not have allowed rest. She picked up her clothes from the unfinished floor planks, tiptoed past the kerosene heater in the hallway, and headed for the bathroom.

Protected by the bliss of physical intimacy, she breezed over the orange shag carpeting pieced together on the bathroom floor and got in the shower. Once cold water slapped her awake—it took a few moments of fiddling to realize the hot and cold taps were reversed—she couldn’t help but notice the walls’ plastic gray tiles and mildewed paint.

When she left the bathroom, Jeff was dressed. “So, this is your house,” she said. “Guess I was a little too distracted to see it last night.”

He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her passionately. “And I aim to distract you again.” He gave her an impish grin. “Come on. I need to show you something.”

After crossing the rough subfloor of an empty room, he led her up a charming staircase with pine treads worn from centuries of use. Up ahead, however, she expected bats and squirrels. Before he reached the top, he pointed to the floorboards, now level with their eyes. “When my mother gave me the keys so I could take a look at the place, for some odd reason this floor was completely covered with tar. Even so, I was able to see what you see right now.”

Ronnie ran her finger over the exposed edges. “Some of these boards must be eighteen, twenty inches wide.”

“I’d never seen flooring like this before. Not outside of preserved historic homes anyway. It made me curious about this house’s potential. So I bought it and got to work.” He took her hand. “This was the result.”

He led her the rest of the way up the stairs and into a handsomely renovated, painted, and completely empty attic.

“Wow.” Ronnie took in the fresh sheetrock on the peaked ceiling, the exposed beams. “Why don’t you use this as your bedroom?”

“I finished this for Fay, but she still couldn’t see the potential in the house.” Again, that impish smile. “I thought she could hang upside down from the beams.”

The room offered an impressive endorsement of Jeff’s handiwork. Into the low vertical walls on one side, he’d inserted and painted plywood cupboards and cubbies; on the other side, he’d built in the drawers and shelves of a bedroom suite. He had even crafted a clever hinged hamper and a closet that fit beneath the eaves.

“So why was there tar on the floor?”

“I keep wondering that myself. The place had stood empty for a while. Maybe because there was only plastic over the window holes when I bought it?”

“How on earth did you remove it?”

“What worked best was a blow-dryer. Once the tar was warm, I could scrape it off.”

“That sounds like so much work.”

“It did take a while,” he said. He pointed to a few places where tar still streaked the wood, which Ronnie would have taken for natural markings.

Ronnie squatted by one of the end windows and looked out over the rolling landscape. Jeff explained that most of the land she could see belonged to his parents, whose house was beyond view on the side of the next hill.

“You told me it’s been what, six or seven years since your wife left?” Ronnie said, standing. “Not that the place doesn’t have a certain…charm, but if you’re capable of doing work like this, why didn’t you keep going?”

Jeff pulled Ronnie into one of his soul-enveloping hugs and whispered, “I was waiting to find the person I’d be doing it for. Turns out I may have known her for quite some time.”

A shopping excursion that day left each of them proud new owners: he of a matching bed set, she of a little calico kitten Jeff bought her at the pet shop. Later, she tucked the kitten, Cupcake, into the collar of her shirt. She and Jeff lay back on the hammock in the yard, side by side, looking up at the stars through the branches above.

“You think you’ll stay in bartending?” Ronnie said. “No other plans?”

“I’d like to start a business someday,” Jeff said. “I love tools. Maybe I’ll open a rental shop.”

“Or maybe we should combine our skills and open a restaurant,” Ronnie said.

“There’s nothing better than an exquisite meal and fine wine.” Jeff pulled her into a deep kiss. “Except maybe this.”

“You do know how to keep a customer happy,” she said, smiling.

“Or maybe we don’t need jobs at all,” Jeff said. “We could hole up here and homestead. Milk goats, chop wood, raise food, avoid the tax man.” Ronnie laughed. He kissed her again and touched her on the end of her nose. “I feel like I could do anything with you by my side.”

“This dreaming is fun, but I got a journalism degree for a reason,” Ronnie said, although while looking into Jeff’s eyes, and with his fingers tracing her ribs, that reason would not fully form. “Those jobs are drying up. I won’t find one near here. I have applications out in New York City I’m still waiting to hear about, and one in Boston that sounds promising.”

Jeff dug his foot into the ground to stop their swinging. “You do?”

“Don’t worry,” she said, reaching into her shirt to pet Cupcake. “Kitty cats can live in New York.”

“But what about the horse?”

“I do believe they have laws about apartment horses—”

“Ronnie, I’m serious.” He sat up; his voice grew urgent. “Please. Don’t take those jobs. Let me call the
Inquirer
tomorrow. We’ll find you something you can commute to.”

He sounded serious all right, almost desperate. “Jeff, we’ve only been dating a few months.”

“But I adore you, and I can’t just up and leave.” Jeff looked around. “This is my home. Where I belong.”

How easy for him, to know where he belonged. Tagging along through her mother’s marriages hadn’t instilled the same confidence in Ronnie.

The light from the front porch light glinted off Jeff’s face. When Ronnie touched it, her fingers came away damp. “Jeff, are you crying?”

“I love you, Ronnie. I love you and I can’t imagine my life without you. Stay here. Marry me. We’ll renovate the house however you want it, and we’ll create a little piece of heaven here. Together.”

Ronnie had never before inspired anyone’s tears. She’d never even seen her own distractible mother cry. She hadn’t realized how very much she mattered to Jeff. But it had taken all of a moment for her youthful crush to blaze again the night her mother took her to the hotel to see him. And he was so settled, with a home and a life she could slip right into.

Maybe Jeff was right. Maybe this was exactly where she belonged.

Janet was tired of accepting fate and wanted to rail against it. Determined to punish something, she slapped the table.

“If she hadn’t committed him last month,” she said, tipping her head toward Ronnie, “none of this would be happening. Now my son is surrounded by police. Look at all the trouble she caused.”

Her tirade was cut short when a uniformed police officer came into the room. They all watched as he sat at another table to fill out paperwork.

“We don’t act based on past behavior, Mrs. Farnham,” Corporal McNichol said. “This is about what’s happening today.”

“Jeff’s upset,” Janet said. “Our families are so close, and Ronnie wants to divorce him. He’s beside himself, that’s all.”

“I understand that you love your son and feel protective of him,” Corporal McNichol said. “But do you see the officer at the table over there? The man who just walked in? He’s currently charging your son with reckless endangerment and aggravated assault for turning his weapon on the police. This is a serious matter.”

“I’ve heard enough,” Janet said, rising.

“Don’t you want him to get the help he needs?” Ronnie said.

“Listen,” Corporal McNichol said. “We understand that there are extenuating circumstances. And Jeff has no criminal record. The main reason we’re charging him is to force him into rehab. If he doesn’t agree to it, he’ll face jail time.”

Janet looked down at the floor around her chair, as if to collect her things, but she had nothing other than the purse already hanging from her arm.

The corporal added something to her notes. If she were writing about Jeff, or her, Janet wouldn’t know—the notes were either in shorthand, a foreign language, or chicken scratch worse than Jeff’s.

“So this commitment—does Jeff have a history of mental illness?”

“No,” Janet said. She looked straight at Corporal McNichol, wondering whether Ronnie or Beverly would challenge her.

“Does he take medication?”

Janet had finally felt she had this interview under control. It bothered her that she had to look to Ronnie for the answer to this question.

Ronnie shook her head. “His psychiatrist prescribed detox. But Jeff wouldn’t go.”

“He’s worked at that hotel for twenty years,” Janet said, directing her comment to Ronnie. “These days, that’s as loyal as they come. Why would you go around calling him an alcoholic?”

“Because it’s the truth. Someone has to face this problem.”

Oh, Janet saw the problem all right. Her son had no way to decompress from all his wife’s nagging.

“The only alcoholic I ever knew was a homeless person who’d sleep in the gutters near campus when I was in college,” Janet said. “Jeff’s not like that. He’s made a good home for you and the boys.”

“You’ve met more alcoholics than you know, Mrs. Farnham,” Corporal McNichol said. “Probably a third of the people in our country suffer from alcohol disorders.”

“I didn’t want to believe it was all that bad either,” Ronnie said, softening. “I thought we were having interpersonal problems. An inability to communicate. But then he had a really hard time with the changes at the hotel, and there were health problems, and—”

“Goodness, Ronnie, everyone strains their back from time to time,” Janet said. “Let it go.”

“You must have noticed he’s lost weight. He was 165 when we married, and when we went to the doctor about his back, he weighed 135. And the periodontal disease—”

“What’s that?”

“He goes to bed every night with booze on his breath. He’s in danger of losing his teeth.” The potential loss of that adorable gap-toothed smile to a set of perfect dentures still threatened her composure. “But he won’t use the rinse or have the recommended procedure or even brush his teeth before he goes to bed.”

“I suppose you think I never taught him to brush his teeth.”

“Jeff’s a grown man, Janet. I’m talking about him, not you. And I understand you cut a check so you know all too well about the debt. But I took a look around the farm. You might be surprised at what I found.”

“You’d find a beautiful house he fixed up for you,” Janet said. “Horses he keeps for you and the boys. A farm store he built so you two could work side by side. A cornfield for the maze you dreamed up that’s half on my land.”

“That’s what I’d always seen too,” Ronnie said. “Until I started digging, and found items that were a lot more menacing.”

“Like what?” Janet said.

“He’d been stockpiling booze.”

Ronnie paused dramatically, as if it might come as a shock to Janet that a bartender would keep a supply of liquor. Janet refused to reward her little performance with a show of emotion.

That’s when Ronnie added, “And guns.”

Janet bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep her pain from showing.