The Underside of Joy

lucky.’
    Henry’s meeting must have been just as dismal, because we both agreed to call off the lawyers and conquered the dividing on our own. I hadn’t remembered that lawyer’s words, how much they’d stung me then, and now they stung me again – for opposite reasons.
    Gwen Alterman’s offices took up most of the third floor of a brick building in downtown Santa Rosa. She was older than she sounded on the phone, maybe in her early fifties, and larger than I’d pictured her. Photos of her and her husband and their three kids caught my eye. I wanted to ask her if she was a stepmom or their natural mother, but I didn’t. While she ate a Burger King chicken sandwich I told her my story. She handed me a box of Kleenex, which I gratefully took. I was on the clock, so I kept talking through the tears, apologizing, blowing my nose, telling her everything I could think of, even the fact that I was broke. She wrote notes and nodded, and once reached across her massive desk to pat my hand.
    ‘So,’ she said after I’d handed over the court documents and Joe’s divorce papers. ‘You’ve been hit. And hard. Let me ask you, were you ever appointed the children’s legal guardian? In case something did happen to your husband?’
    ‘No . . . no. We’d talked about it, but we never got around to it. Because it would require giving notice to Paige . . . and it didn’t look like she was ever coming back, anyway.’
    ‘I see. Well, that’s too bad. But even so, if there’s a God in this world, that woman shouldn’t have a chance. Judges usually look harshly on abandonment cases.’ She lifted her chained glasses from her matronly chest and set them on her face and began poring over the papers. I looked at the family photos and saw the unmistakable resemblance of both her and her husband to all three of their kids. No broken-blended family there.
    Now Gwen Alterman looked at me over the top of her glasses and cleared her throat. ‘She claims to have attempted contact numerous times? That puts a different slant on things.’
    ‘Yes, but she’s lying,’ I said.
    ‘Do you know for a fact that she didn’t try to contact the children or their father? Because we’ve received a subpoena for those letters. If you have them, you have to turn them over.’
    I shook my head. ‘I’ve been there since shortly after she left. I’ve never seen a trace of her.’ Except in Annie’s and Zach’s blue eyes and silky blonde hair, I thought. The one picture of her glowing and pregnant that I found in Joe’s Capturing the Light book. The paisley robe that Joe got rid of after the first night we were together.
    ‘What about your husband’s family? Have they had contact with her?’
    ‘No. They’re angry at her for leaving.’
    ‘Why, exactly, did she leave? Depression? A little funk and she leaves her kids for three years?’
    ‘That’s all I really know,’ I admitted. Gwen waited, peering at me over her glasses. ‘You’ve gotta know Joe’s family. No one really talks about this kind of thing. They’re warm, loving people. But they don’t like to talk about . . . you know . . . difficulties.’
    ‘Such as?’
    I sighed. ‘Well, for example, I know Joe’s grandfather was sent to an internment camp during World War II, but no one talks about that. And our store was going under and Joe never told anyone how bad it was.’
    ‘Was Joe’s grandfather Japanese?’
    I smiled. ‘No. But that’s what I thought when Joe mentioned it. Italians were sent too, just not nearly as many.’
    She shook her head. ‘I had no idea . . . Really?’ Her phone buzzed once. She told her receptionist that she’d need another few minutes. ‘Tell me, did it ever occur to you to ask Joe about the details concerning why she left?’
    I stared at her. ‘Um. No.’ I didn’t tell her how much I still, deep down, didn’t want to know any of those details. ‘Does she have a chance?’
    ‘There’s always a chance. But’ – she glanced over one of the divorce papers – ‘it looks like Joe’s request for custody was completely uncontested. She signed off on everything without any fight. Do your children even know who she is?’
    ‘Well, yeah – Annie remembers her. Zach doesn’t, but he’s certainly not afraid of her. He seems to like her. She’s very . . . pretty . . . and she’s okay with them, I guess.’
    ‘Pretty is as pretty does, honey, and leaving your babies is never pretty. Or okay. The children