The Underside of Joy

with the words, You know how much I love you? And when I opened it the arms unfolded a foot on each side. This much! And so I’m sending you this bear hug. It was signed Mama.
    April 11, 1996
    Dear Joe,
    Please stop calling. I know you’re trying. This isn’t what I wanted, either. I cancelled my Dr’s appt. I can’t get up today. Something’s always pressing me down. Besides, it’s not like the doctor can do an exorcism on me and get rid of my mother. It’s not like he can go back and change my DNA.
    What if something had happened to Annie or Zach? Think about that, Joe. Look that in the face. It changes everything. I think I can live with leaving. But not if I’d hurt them. What if I’d done something like my mother did?
    ∼Paige
    July 2, 1996
    Dear Joe,
    I know for certain I can never go back. Not to that dark, depressing kitchen that was getting smaller and darker. Soon I would be crouched in a corner on the floor.
    Thank you for not calling again. I can’t be with Annie and Zach . . . and hearing about them is too hard right now.
    I have to say good-bye for good now. I’m sorry. I have an appointment with a doctor tomorrow. Aunt Bernie is taking good care of me. Someday, when Annie and Zach are old enough to understand, tell them their mama loves them.
    ∼Paige
    I wondered why Paige’s lawyer would subpoena these letters. How could they help her case?
    A card for Annie and Zach that said Some Bunny Loves You. There were more cards addressed to them, all unopened. But there were no letters to Joe for more than five months. The next one was still sealed, never opened. As were all the others that followed, even those addressed to the kids. I held the next one addressed to Joe, kept turning it over.
    It was postmarked October 15, 1996. Joe and Annie and I – with ‘help’ from crawling Zach – had just decorated the house for Halloween, I remembered; we’d strung orange lights and filled baskets with maple leaves the colour of fire, with Indian corn and gourds. We cut the pumpkins we’d grown in the garden and lugged them up to the porch. Joe had honoured Paige’s request. He had moved on. Even to the point of deciding not to open this letter that had come eight months after she had first left, insisting she wouldn’t return, five months after she’d said – for the last time – she would not write again, four months after Joe and I had fallen in love. I took a breath. I was tampering with evidence if I opened it. But what I once refused to know, I had to know. I pressed my thumbnail down under the sealed seam.
    October 15, 1996
    Dear Joe,
    Dr Zelwig says I need to start writing you again. I told him you haven’t called or written. He thinks that it’s more than you just abiding my requests. After this morning’s session, he thinks you’re probably afraid of me. That I wasn’t just scaring myself. That you’ve probably always been afraid of me.
    I told him about the big test I threw at you when we first met. He thought it might be good if I wrote you about what I was feeling, and what your reaction might have meant. I know how much you love psychobabble. But these days my life is nothing but, so bear with me.
    Anyway. I’d spent 20 years hiding. People kept telling me, ‘You should model.’ If they only knew. But I kept seeing you on campus with your camera clicking away. There was something about you, the way you looked at things. Patiently, beneath the surface, even. I’d see your name on the photo credits of the school newspaper. I asked you if you did portfolio shots just so I could meet you. You lied and said yes. You even ran out and bought that pretty robe and other clothes to hang on the shower rod to try to make your bathroom look like a model’s dressing room! So we both started with lies, even if they were just white ones.
    I guess I was ready for someone else to know. Someone besides Aunt Bernie to love me. All of me. It was an act of desperation, if there ever was one. From the beginning, I knew what I would do.
    Remember, Joe? Your clicking away. Your surprise at me shedding my clothes.
    And finally, for the first time in my adult life, I show someone the other side of my story. I turn around and the clicking stops. But there’s no gasp of disgust, no fleeing your apartment. I feel your gaze. Later, you’ll ask me how and why. But first you hold out the paisley robe, and I slip my arms through the sleeves. You turn me back around, tie the belt in front. And