The Underside of Joy

built in. We’re staying at the Hilton in Santa Rosa.’ She turned to the kids. ‘Did you two pack your suits?’ They nodded.
    Annie said, ‘And quite a few dresses.’
    ‘Excellent.’ Paige looked at her watch.
    I said, ‘What a long day for you . . .’
    ‘Oh, I don’t mind. I’m thrilled to be able to see them. Okay, Annie, Zach, say good-bye to Ella.’
    Ella? Nice try. And she didn’t need to tell my kids to say good-bye to me.
    Zach said, ‘I wanna stay here.’
    I bent down and smoothed his hair back. ‘You can call me anytime. And Annie will be with you. And Bubby. And you’ll be back tomorrow.’ He started hitting the ground with Bubby. ‘Okay, honey?’
    He looked at Paige and slowly nodded. Annie took his other hand, and the three of us followed Paige down the porch steps. I knelt down and hugged them both maybe a little too long, and willed the tears to wait.
    ‘Bye, Mommy!’ they shouted from the car, waving as she drove them away. I watched until they disappeared around the bend, then watched the dust from the gravel dissipate in the morning air.
    I slipped on Joe’s jacket, and Callie and I went down to the chicken coop, Callie zigzagging in front of me. We had four hens, Bernice, Gilda, Harriet and Mildred. When I reached under them, they’d each left me an egg, except for Mildred. She hadn’t been laying as much. I wondered if she was in mourning too. I slipped the three warm eggs in the pockets of Joe’s jacket and followed Callie back to the house.
    I had a plan to keep occupied, to look for the documents Paige had requested. Gwen had said, ‘You’ll need to be able to tell the court that you’ve conducted a diligent search and you did not find the letters.’ I would go through the boxes and files in Joe’s office so I could sign off on that and be done with it.
    I sat in his old office at Life’s a Picnic and went through the files, flipped through the books, and pulled up tax records I’d once blindly signed without even reviewing. The signs of financial doom flashed from documents I’d never bothered to look at. Like some kind of fifties housewife, I’d stayed out of the finances and spent my days tending to the children. It naturally happened that way; it hadn’t been a decision. It seemed to work for us then, but now I could see that it really wasn’t working at all. Joe hadn’t told me the truth, but some part of me clearly preferred it that way.
    The door behind the file cabinet led to a storage area. The cabinet was too heavy to move, but I didn’t want to ask David for help, so I emptied out the drawers and then pushed and shimmied the shell until I could open the door. I pulled the string to turn on the bare lightbulb that hung from the rafter. The air smelled of mould – and memories. Stacked boxes, a few pieces of old dusty furniture; a mirrored dresser and a secretary’s desk that probably belonged to Joe’s grandparents. If there were any letters, I’d find them there.
    I started going through boxes. Not the marked ones that said things like Joey’s Baseball Trophies or Davy’s Schoolwork. But the unmarked boxes in the corner. In the first one I opened, I found the paisley robe.
    I recognized it immediately, the swirls of teal, of honey and periwinkle, and now I could see how it would highlight Paige’s eyes and complexion – even if she did wear it every day, all day, she still had looked amazing. Joe had saved it that evening after we met. He’d taken it from the hook on the back of the bathroom door, but he hadn’t thrown it out or given it away or even sent it to Paige. He’d kept it. Because he missed her? Because he hoped for her return? Had he locked his office door as I had just done, and moved the file cabinet and opened the box to take out the robe and inhale her perfume the way I’d inhaled every one of his shirts?
    Or maybe he had just stuck it back there with some of her other belongings, not wanting to deal with any of it. Maybe he’d forgotten about it all.
    There were other things that I could bet he didn’t care about. Old bottles of makeup. A box of tampons. A worn copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. Some loose change and a brush still tangled with golden hair.
    No, this was not a shrine. This was a box packed in haste, stuck away, forgotten.
    I should have stopped then and closed up the closet, returned the cabinet to the wall, the drawers to the cabinet. But I didn’t. I opened another box. And