The Underside of Joy

fall in love with her. God, I think every one of us was in love with her. The boys and the girls.’ More words that escaped the editor in my brain. ‘I’m sorry . . . God, I’m really sorry I just said that.’ Then another memory that I had the decency to keep to myself: When I wasn’t feeling guilty, I was fantasizing about Miss McKenna marrying my dad and becoming my mother – all light and perfume and pink lipstick and exclamation points in comparison to my own mother, who at the time, now understandably, was morose and prone to sitting alone out in our parked station wagon for extended periods at night.
    ‘I’d filed papers for divorce three days before he died.’ Her voice broke. ‘I always felt responsible, like those papers must have prompted the heart attack.’
    ‘No, Mom. It was me. It was my fault he died.’
    And then I told her the story, the light and shadowed images, fully developed, always waiting for me to finally pluck them up and hang them out on the line between us.
    Months before my father died, Leslie Penberthy had pointed out Miss McKenna’s house to me, and one Saturday afternoon, when I was walking my dog, Barkley, I’d gathered up my courage to knock on her door. I was going to tell her that I just wanted to say hello but thought that perhaps she would invite Barkley and me inside, offer me blue Kool-Aid and Rice Krispies Treats, show me picture albums of her own childhood, the one in Iowa that she’d told our class about.
    Miss McKenna answered the door in her robe, seemed very surprised to see me, blushed, and said she was just going to take a nap, that she felt a cold coming on and needed to get some rest but that it was so nice of me to stop by. I didn’t notice my father’s blue truck parked on the street, one house down, until I walked past it and Barkley jumped at the door. In the truck bed, I saw more pickets for the quaint front-yard fence he was erecting. I never asked him why his truck was parked on Miss McKenna’s street that Saturday, or the next. Or why we never went camping anymore, just the two of us traipsing along the Olympic Peninsula, writing down the names of plants and birds and insects we’d see. Now on the weekends, whenever he said he was heading to the hardware store, I made it my habit to walk Barkley, carrying my Harriet the Spy notepad, his birding binoculars around my neck. And though my father always came home with hastily purchased supplies for a new fix-it project, I knew something besides our house was in need of repair.
    And then one Saturday, his truck in its spot down the street from her house, I quietly opened the side gate to Miss McKenna’s backyard and peeked in an open window, and then another, until I saw my father sitting up in bed, a sheet up to his waist, reading the paper and smoking a cigarette.
    ‘Dolly?’ my father called. ‘Can you get a poor fellow another cup of your fabulous coffee?’ And then Barkley did what dogs do, especially dogs named Barkley.
    ‘What the hell? Barkley? Jelly Bean? What the hell? ’
    Our eyes caught each other, and I realized, as I was telling my mom the story, that my father’s eyes, at that moment in time, had forever been locked on me; the panic, the terror, the sadness, the shame of that single moment had never left me.
    ‘Jelly, wait . . . wait . . . ’ But I was already fumbling with the gate that swam behind my tears. I ran, pulling Barkley instead of the other way around; I ran until I couldn’t, then walked and walked and walked until dark, when I finally made my way up our porch steps, my mother waiting on the swing, her cigarette glowing and reflected in the front window, as if there were two cigarettes, hers and my father’s, instead of just hers alone. She jumped up and asked me where I’d been, that she’d been so worried, that she’d called the police, and I shrugged and said, ‘Nowhere.’ She held me in her arms. She tucked my hair behind my ear. She told me my father had gone to heaven.
    ‘So,’ I said to my mother across the phone line, between sobs, ‘it was me. Snooping around. That gave him a heart attack. That literally scared him, scared him to death.’
    ‘Ella,’ my mom said. I could almost see her herding her thoughts. ‘I’m so sorry that’s what you’ve thought. All these years. Honey, you’re a scientist. Look at the evidence: The man smoked over two packs of cigarettes a day, worshipped butter and bacon and cream, and apparently was