The Underside of Joy

that ran every which way from his nose and throat and arm and chest, and instead of the paramedics’ knowledgeable chants of numbers and letters, Zach’s vital signs now blipped and beeped on connected digital screens. Paige took hold of one of his hands and I took hold of the other. It occurred to me then, as we each gripped one of his hands, that we had both loved and lost the same man. We had both loved and lost the same children. We had both lost our footing, lost our way, lost ourselves. We had both touched down at the bottom, only to discover that the bottom was sinking sand. Hours before, we were heavy weights tied to Zach, dragging him under. He needed us to be his buoys.
    I saw every action I had taken, every choice I had made, lined up like squares on a board game, as if I had led us all to this moment, this tragedy, as if I alone had rolled the dice that would move us to this day, with my decision to stop in Elbow for a sandwich. I could have kept going, could have ended up in Oregon, or Seattle, maybe in a cabin on one of the San Juan Islands, alone on a driftwood-strewn beach, making my life’s work the study of tide pools, or working in a fish hatchery in Alaska, far, far away from these people whose lives were now destroyed. Everything would have been set in a different motion: Joe would have welcomed Paige back with open arms, they would have stayed a family, she would have known about the store and helped him turn it around long ago, and he wouldn’t have gone out to Bodega Head to take pictures that morning because they would have been on a family vacation to Disneyland or a second home in Tahoe. I would not have made my feeble, stupid attempt to try to make Zach feel better about Batman and Robin, confusing him about the permanence of drowning. Zach would not have ridden his red trike into a pool in Las Vegas; he would still be playing with his action figures under the butterfly bush. I promised God I would do everything and anything, even leave Zach and Annie in Paige’s care for good, if it only meant that Zach could live.
    Paige and I said little, just held on and willed Zach’s eyes to flutter open, to say Mama or Mommy, it didn’t matter which. It didn’t matter at all. Sometimes I would look up and she would look up, our gaze full of regret and fear and sadness and pain and good intentions and hope and mother love – all the things we shared, that had been there all along, that we hadn’t been able to see because we had seen each other only as a threat.
    I called David from my cell phone in the waiting room, and he showed up late that afternoon, with Marcella and Joe Sr. My mom was on her way down from Seattle. There was no room in the small dedicated space for feuds or awkwardness, and we took turns embracing, not merely as if our lives depended on it, but because Zach’s truly did. Marcella held me, her tears raining on my neck while Joe Sr hugged Paige, and then I was hugging David, Joe Sr. We stood in a circle around Zach, and I once again thought of the redwoods, how they formed their family circles, how they reached for the sun together and cast their long shadows together. A nurse named Lester came in and looked at Zach, looked at the blips on the screens, wrote something down on the chart, and when Joe Sr asked him what the prognosis was he said, ‘We really don’t know. We’ll see how he is in the morning.’ He kept nodding his head, even after he spoke, looking at each of us. ‘Only family members are allowed in the ICU. You all family?’ We nodded. ‘Lucky kid.’ Then he said, ‘If you haven’t eaten yet, now’s a good time. He’s stabilized.’ Eating was the last thing I felt like doing, but Marcella and Joe Sr and David went to get coffees.
    They opened the door to the rushing and crashing of carts and gurneys and doctors and nurses, of pages over the intercom and bright lights and the smell of distant Jell-O and macaroni and cheese. The door closed and the room fell quiet again, except for the hum and blip of the machines.
    ‘Paige.’ I looked across Zach. ‘I’m so sorry.’
    ‘No.’ She shook her head. She didn’t speak. I closed my eyes and continued my silent pleading with God to save Zach. Finally she said, ‘I went about this the wrong way. It was wrong of me. I should have never done this right now, not right when Joe died. I had started talking to the lawyer before, and he said it was time to move, but I knew better. I’d already