The Underside of Joy

revved up on kittens, screeched around corners from bathroom to kitchen to bedroom and back again until I yelled, ‘Knock it off!’ which set Annie on a round of knock-knock jokes, which she recited while jumping on her bed.
    ‘Please! Just stop,’ I said, my voice cracking.
    ‘What’s wrong, Mommy?’ Annie asked, falling to her butt, still bouncing a bit on the mattress. ‘Don’t you like the kitties?’
    ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I’m just tired.’ Read them The Cat in the Hat, then hug and kiss them, sitting on the edges of Zach’s bed, then Annie’s. Smooth back their hair off their foreheads, a bit sweaty from all their racing around. Wonder if they’ll want them cut again, or if they’ll want to grow them out. Watch fluttering eyelashes, butterflies kissing dreams, until they finally fall asleep. Lift the kittens from their arms and place them into the crate, their soft mews reminding you that this was their first night away from their mother. Stick an old stuffed bear from the toy box and a small clock behind it in the crate, a poor substitute for their mother’s beating heart.
    I lay in bed, but there may as well have been elephants tucked below my mattress. I turned on the light, retrieved the packets. They were sorted by postmark. Some were addressed to Joe, some were to Annie and Zach, all in a neat and angular script, though the first were shaky, then shakier, until gradually getting smoother through to the last. Only the five envelopes bearing the earlier postmarks had been opened.
    I made a cup of tea, staring at the water until it boiled, dunking the bag in over and over until it turned the water almost black, then climbed back in, patting the bed for Callie to join me. I wanted to read every word, but I didn’t want to know.
    I did not want to know. My life, as I’d imagined it, depended on me not knowing.
    I shoved the letters in my nightstand drawer, turned facedown the picture of Joe on the nightstand, and tried to turn down the high hum coursing through my veins, like the hum of an intercom that precedes the crackling announcement: Prepare for imminent disaster.

Chapter Twenty-two
    All day I picked up the phone, then set it back down. My mom? No. Lucy? No. David? Definitely no. Marcella? Heavens no. Gwen Alterman? Hell no.
    They would all freak out about the letters. Like David, they might tell me to burn them. Or they might tell me to take them out to Bodega and throw them into the ocean.
    Early the next morning I dropped Annie and Zach and the crate of kittens off at Marcella’s, but instead of heading to the store, I drove out to Bodega Head. I took the letters with me. I wanted to think, to come to a decision on my own. I passed the cemetery, but I didn’t stop.
    Mine was the only car in the gravel parking lot. Like the Green Hornet had been when Frank and I left it, that first horrible day of summer. Now the fog bank lay thick, obscuring the view. A great egret stood in the ice plant, along the cliff, its white neck curved in a question mark. Joe had once pointed to one and said, ‘I have but one great egret.’ I’d smiled, and instead of asking him if he really did have one great regret, and if so, what it might be, I said, ‘ Casmerodius albus. ’
    I held the packets of letters in my hand, snapping the rubber bands in a steady rhythm. I did not know what to do. I wanted to do the right thing, but mostly, to do the right thing for Annie and Zach. Paige had cared more than I’d thought. Cared at least enough to write twenty-six times. I tried to push away the selfish fact that I couldn’t imagine my life without Annie and Zach. But how do you push a fact like that away?
    I got out of the Jeep and headed towards the cliff, letters in hand. I stood and watched the waves, steady, predictable, calming, even – but the locals knew better. And Joe had known better. ‘Never turn your back on the ocean,’ he’d told the kids and me over and over. Then he’d gone and done exactly that, focusing all his attention on the way the cliff stood against that morning’s light, totally disregarding the way something could sneak up from behind and knock a person clear to kingdom come.
    A black Ford Explorer pulled into the lot and parked; a man and a woman, their four children tucked into the backseat. The woman was screaming; I couldn’t hear what she was saying through their closed windows but could see her contorted face, her hitting the dashboard.
    The man got out of the