The Far End of Happy (17 page)

As the day wore on, Ronnie thought more and more about the distressed horses. “Is there any chance the police could throw the horses a few flakes of hay?” Ronnie said. “There’s a bale inside the door on the first floor of the barn.”

“I’m sorry,” said Corporal McNichol. “We can’t be feeding your animals.”

“Horses have delicate systems. They need to eat regularly or they’ll colic.”

“They’re right outside Jeff’s window. It’s too dangerous.”

“But it’s inhumane!” Ronnie paced in a circle and talked herself down: today was about nothing if not surrender. She couldn’t control a goddamn thing. They say they won’t feed the horses, the horses won’t be fed. Period.

Ronnie walked until her sarcasm dissipated, her thoughts circling along with her steps. She passed Beverly and Janet, talking quietly, and wondered if and when her mother would finish the story of Dominic Gallagher, a name that always made Ronnie think of the rise and fall of her mother’s laugh. She wondered if the boys had eaten lunch. If they’d been able to go outside and enjoy the glorious weather. If, like her, Mr. Eshbach was going stir-crazy.

And the poor animals. She and Jeff were so different in the way they responded to the animals. He loved them in an all-consuming, emotionally sloppy way. If a horse went lame, he’d be the one with his arms around its neck, whispering in its ear, while Ronnie would be the one out by the hydrant, morning and night, cold hosing its leg and bandaging. And when end-of-life choices had to be made, those choices always fell to Ronnie.

Ronnie recalled a time, before they were married, when Jeff had cut short a hot date so they could get home to feed the horses. How could he now watch Camelot, Daydream, and poor lame Horsey Patch through the office windows, tearing up that barren paddock, and tolerate their cries for attention? Jeff had clearly detached himself from the boys, and it made sense if he no longer cared anything for Ronnie. After all, she was going to leave him.

But the horses?

Ronnie returned to Corporal McNichol’s table.

“Jeff loves animals. Probably more than he loves me.”

“Okay.”

A pit in Ronnie’s stomach grew. She could feel the horses’ hunger—and Jeff’s. “He can see how upset they are. Why hasn’t he come out to feed them?”

“He’s drunk?”

“He was drunk. But that was hours ago. Why isn’t he sobering up and responding to their needs?”

The question hung in the air, because the only person who could answer it had cut himself off from the world.

An officer came into the room and handed Corporal McNichol a piece of paper. Her brow furrowed as she read.

Ronnie looked up at Corporal McNichol. “Is it Jeff?”

“No. Your son called. I’m going to quote here, because I’m pretty sure he was speaking in code and I want to get this right: ‘Princess Zartan didn’t break a sweat climbing to the fifth level with the gold trunk, even though the ninja dragons tried to toast her.’”

It was in code, all right. Ronnie smiled. May they all meet adversity with the aplomb of Andrew’s video game characters.

Apparently the boys were doing just fine. “Thanks,” Ronnie said.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to hold a strategy meeting with my men. I’d like to see if we can’t bring this standoff to a close.”

A new strategy, tenuous hope—that’s how Ronnie had felt in February when Jeff came to her with his proposal.

“I’ve come up with the solution we’ve been looking for,” Jeff had said, peeking his head into Ronnie’s office.

Ronnie pulled her mind from where it had been happily absorbed in online research on healthy free-range practices for chicken farmers and looked at him over the top of her computer. Had they been seeking a solution? She finally, finally felt settled.

She now had this space devoted to her use, everything within easy reach. The first thing she’d done in her new office, when it was completed just a month ago: with her reference books lined up on shelves behind her as witness, Ronnie had rolled her chair across the carpet protector, from typing to reaching for the phone to switching on her new digital recorder, all in one graceful swoop. Of course Will had to try the rolling chair too.

And she could breathe again. There were times, while air-hammering the crumbling plaster to expose the stone walls in this basement office, when she and Jeff had worked just twelve feet apart but couldn’t see each other for all the airborne mess. She was just starting to discover what normal dusting was like.

Organic
Gardening
PA
magazine was now sending her assignments, resulting in steadier work.

What solution did they need?

Jeff took a deep breath. “I think we should open a farm stand.”

“In our spare time?” Ronnie almost laughed out loud but was glad she hadn’t when she caught the look of boyish enthusiasm on her husband’s face. This Jeff—the one with the bright eyes and energized voice, whose dreams were precious to her—this was the man she’d married. She rolled her chair away from the computer. “I’m listening.”

“It makes sense. Like all our interests are meant to converge. My food service experience and business degree with your knowledge of the organic food craze and connections in the farming community. Your eye for design, my construction know-how. I think we could do it.”

“But selling tomatoes and peppers down on the road will not support us,” she said. “Or do you mean for the boys to do it, like the Amish?”

“I’m thinking bigger—of building a real store.”

“You’ve stayed at the hotel so long I thought you’d given up on starting a business.”

Last year, when Jeff was upset about the sale of his hotel to a new chain but unwilling to tell her why, Ronnie had stopped in to see for herself—and was greeted by large flat-screen TVs blasting from every corner, as well as the flashing lights and intrusive sounds of amusements placed along the walls. The classy lounge over which Jeff had reigned for decades from his spot behind the bar had devolved into an arcade.

Ronnie could hardly take seeing him in that environment. Ablaze with the inner fire that comes from following her passion, she resolved to talk to Jeff about a change in career.

She was hardly qualified as an adviser. She was a thirty-three-year-old with a master’s degree who had never fulfilled her career potential and who had only recently figured out what she wanted to be when she grew up. But if she could discover enough purpose on her journal pages to reenergize her life, Jeff could too. So she arranged for a sleepover for the boys, fixed Jeff a nice dinner, then asked him the questions she’d asked of herself in her journal.

Ronnie:
“What gets you up in the morning?”

Jeff:
“My bladder.”

Ronnie:
“What are your goals in life?”

Jeff:
“I just want to get done what needs to be done. Mowing, renovating, things like that.”

Ronnie:
“Don’t you hope that when you die, you’ll have left the world a better place in some small way?”

Jeff:
“It probably isn’t good, but I’ve never thought about making any sort of contribution to society.”

Ronnie:
“I must not be phrasing this right. When your time on earth is through, what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind?”

Jeff had simply said, “You and the boys.”

So if Jeff was finally starting to think along a more productive track, she could hardly dismiss him.

Jeff walked around the desktop to her chair and swiveled it to face him. “You once said I should be doing work I love. And it finally hit me—there’s nothing I love more than you and this farm. Eventually we can quit our other jobs and work together the rest of our lives. If I invest in anything, I want it to be this land. We can let it provide for us.”

“But I love my writing.”

“Which is good, because we’ll have to work all our jobs until we start making money at the store. It will be tough for a while. But it would be fun to start another construction project together.”

Fun? At least one of them thought so. Ronnie had already left that phase of their lives behind.

Ronnie felt detached from Jeff’s proposal but couldn’t deny that she was the one who had instigated this line of thought. She was proud of him for thinking this through, and it was hard to deny the fire in his eyes, missing for so long.

“But we can’t grow enough produce to stock a whole store with only six acres. Are you thinking we would purchase food wholesale and then resell it?”

“It would be a mix, adding in more and more of our own goods as we can. I’m sure my mother wouldn’t mind if we pushed onto her land a bit. It’s not like she’s using it.”

“But we’d need capital. Where would we get the money?” Ronnie’s fears about their debt flared again. “Or are you looking to your mother for that too?”

“You think I need a handout. That I can’t do this.” He turned and went to the window. “I’d rather die than ask her.”

“It’s not like you’ve come clean about the finances, Jeff. I don’t even know what kind of debt we’re in here. You tell me how we can do this.”

Ronnie wanted Jeff to have this chance to live a happier life. Every night he came home with new horror stories from the hotel, and Ronnie hadn’t thought they could get worse than his decade-old story about the kitchen employee who reheated a prime rib for a late-starting wedding by running it through a soapless dishwasher. She didn’t know how much longer he could hold out there.

Thinking aloud, Ronnie said, “We’ve worked hard on this house, so it’s probably worth a lot more than it was when you bought it. And you have so many bills to pay each month. Maybe we should apply for a home equity line of credit, pay off the credit cards, and use what’s left to build the store.”

Jeff turned to her, the emotion he always kept at bay now rising like sunshine on his face. “That’s a great idea. Let’s do it tomorrow.”

She joined him at the window. “So you’d want to build it right down the hill here, between the house and the road? The horses might not be too happy, with you eating up part of their pasture.”

“They’ll get over it.” Jeff stood behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and laid his chin on her shoulder. “This is going to be good for us.”

“I’m not saying yes yet. We’ll see what the loan officer says. And I won’t give up my writing. I’ve made a lot of promises I intend to keep, and I like what I’m doing.” Maybe she could compromise and make calls from the farm store when it wasn’t busy. “And I don’t want to give up our week at the shore. It’s the only family heritage I have to share with the boys. So if we have to hire help to cover while we’re gone, then that goes in the budget.”

“Aye-aye, captain.”

Ronnie followed Jeff’s eyes down the hill and tried to imagine another barnlike structure where the horses grazed. With a deep breath, she fought the fleeting suffocation: the way the store would obscure the house from the road and further sequester their family life. She hoped the greater interaction with their community would counter it. “I’ll have to file for a business name.”

“Already got that covered.” Jeff kissed her cheek. “New Hope Farms.”

“Look. It’s starting to snow.” They watched together as tender snowflakes rested on the backs of the horses before melting.

An early spring thaw convinced Jeff that four to six weeks was too long to wait for an answer from the bank. So they’d be ready to go when the home equity line came through, it wouldn’t hurt anything for him to level the site for the farm store, build the frame for the floor, and bring in a cement mixer to pour the slab. “We’ll need to open by Memorial Day at the latest so we don’t miss out on all the sales at the beginning of the growing season,” he said.

“What would we sell?” Ronnie said. “We won’t even have any produce yet.”

“We may have strawberries by then. And I’ve ordered a bunch of seed packets from Burpee. We could sell flats of plants and some starter vegetables.”

Ronnie grew increasingly nervous. Twice she followed up with the bank for an answer, but their loan officer said she was waiting for more information from the credit reporting agencies. It would take a little while longer. Meanwhile, Jeff racked up the credit cards and convinced her to help frame out the walls of the new building.

Finally, at the beginning of April, Ronnie received the call she’d been awaiting. She rolled her office chair back and picked up the receiver. “Ronnie Farnham,” she said, her voice buoyed by the enthusiasm her work inspired. “May I help you?”

It was the broker with whom they’d filed the home equity loan application. “I’m afraid your application was declined.”

Ronnie was confused. “Why would it be declined? We’ve improved our house. It must be worth a lot more than what we paid for it.”

“You may have improved it on the inside, but appraisals are done from the outside.” Ronnie cringed, recalling how happy Jeff had once been at their deceptively low assessment, the affordable taxes. “But besides that, do you have any idea what your credit report looks like?”

“Not exactly, but I know we can still get credit.” Her fears of impending financial doom had been alleviated last fall when their old car died. Ronnie had sat beside Jeff at the dealership when he applied for a loan to buy a new Nissan Altima. Ronnie had fidgeted, unsure of what they’d find; when approval came through, Jeff seemed to swell with the power of this new credit. If they were in deep debt, they wouldn’t have extended them even more credit, would they?

“Listen to this,” the woman said.

She began a laundry list of creditors and amounts owed. Instinctively Ronnie flipped on her digital voice recorder. “…Sears, $8,432…”
How
could
they
owe
Sears
that
much
money? All she knew was that Jeff had bought a used garden tractor for $400 and that she charged about a hundred dollars of clothes for the boys on that card each fall.
“…Sunoco, $12,129…”
Wasn’t Sunoco a gas card? How could it have that much on it?
“…Texaco, $5,078…”
She
didn’t know they still had a Texaco card. There weren’t any Texaco stations around here!
“…Diner’s Club, $6,854…” and on and on.

After Ronnie hung up, she sat there for a moment, stunned. She felt as betrayed as if the broker were Jeff’s mistress, calling to detail all the times he had cheated on her.

Looking back, the sheer number of catalogs that came to their house should have tipped her off to the credit card purchases accumulating. Jeff had never let her recycle the catalogs without him looking first, “to see what I need,” he would say, a running gag early in their marriage. Ronnie would laugh and say, “If you needed it, I would think you would know that before you saw it in a catalog.” She’d lovingly dubbed him “Captain Consumer.”

It was no longer funny.

Jeff walked into her office wearing his black and white work outfit, his kiss good-bye delayed when he registered the look on her face. “What’s the matter?”

“I just got a call about our home equity loan. We’ve been turned down.”

“That’s odd.”

“Sit down,” Ronnie said, rewinding the recorder. “I have something you need to hear.”

He looked at his watch. “I don’t have time for this. I have to get to work.”

“Not this time, Jeff.” He had left her alone during both her miscarriages because he had to work. “You are not the freaking president of the United States! Be late for once. You are going to sit here and live through this like I had to.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“You will not put me off one moment longer.”

“We’ll talk when I get home.” He pulled his car keys from his pocket and walked away.

“You know damn well I’ll be asleep when you get home.”

“Then we’ll talk in the morning,” he said, already on the stairs.

Sure. The morning—when he’d be impossible to rouse.

His steps crossed the floor above her, and she heard the kitchen door open and close. Once again, Ronnie was left with a jumble of feelings she needed a partner to untangle. She checked the time on her computer—a half hour until the bus dropped off the boys. Desperate to engage in meaningful communication, she headed up to the guest room and pulled her journals out from underneath her bed.

She didn’t bother uncapping her pen.

This time, she read.