Too Much Happiness

herself, by weeping and howling and even banging her head on the floor, chanting, “It’s not true, it’s not true, it’s not true” over and over. Finally he would back down. He would say, “Okay, okay. I’ll believe you. Honey, be quiet. Think of the kids. I’ll believe you, honest. Just stop.”
    But tonight she had pulled herself together just as she was about to start that performance. She had put on her coat and walked out the door, with him calling after her, “Don’t do this. I warn you!”
    Maggie’s husband had gone to bed, not looking any better pleased about things, while Doree kept saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, barging in on you at this time of night.”
    “Oh, shut up,” Maggie said, kind and businesslike. “Do you want a glass of wine?”
    “I don’t drink.”
    “Then you’d better not start now. I’ll get you some tea. It’s very soothing. Raspberry-chamomile. It’s not the kids, is it?”
    “No.”
    Maggie took her coat and handed her a wad of Kleenex for her eyes and nose. “Don’t tell me anything yet. We’ll soon get you settled down.”
    Even when she was partly settled down, Doree didn’t want to blurt out the whole truth and let Maggie know that she herself was at the heart of the problem. More than that, she didn’t want to have to explain Lloyd. No matter how worn out she got with him, he was still the closest person in the world to her, and she felt that everything would collapse if she were to bring herself to tell someone exactly how he was, if she were to be entirely disloyal.
    She said that she and Lloyd had got into an old argument and she was so sick and tired of it that all she’d wanted was to get out. But she would get over it, she said. They would.
    “Happens to every couple sometime,” Maggie said.
    The phone rang then, and Maggie answered.
    “Yes. She’s okay. She just needed to walk something out of her system. Fine. Okay then, I’ll deliver her home in the morning. No trouble. Okay. Good night.
    “That was him,” she said. “I guess you heard.”
    “How did he sound? Did he sound normal?”
    Maggie laughed. “Well, I don’t know how he sounds when he’s normal, do I? He didn’t sound drunk.”
    “He doesn’t drink either. We don’t even have coffee in the house.”
    “Want some toast?”

· · ·

    In the morning, early, Maggie drove her home. Maggie’s husband hadn’t left for work yet, and he stayed with the boys.
    Maggie was in a hurry to get back, so she just said, “Bye-bye. Phone me if you need to talk,” as she turned the minivan around in the yard.
    It was a cold morning in early spring, snow still on the ground, but there was Lloyd sitting on the steps without a jacket on.
    “Good morning,” he said, in a loud, sarcastically polite voice. And she said good morning, in a voice that pretended not to notice his.
    He did not move aside to let her up the steps.
    “You can’t go in there,” he said.
    She decided to take this lightly.
    “Not even if I say please? Please.”
    He looked at her but did not answer. He smiled with his lips held together.
    “Lloyd?” she said. “Lloyd?”
    “You better not go in.”
    “I didn’t tell her anything, Lloyd. I’m sorry I walked out. I just needed a breathing space, I guess.”
    “Better not go in.”
    “What’s the matter with you? Where are the kids?”
    He shook his head, as he did when she said something he didn’t like to hear. Something mildly rude, like “holy shit.”
    “Lloyd
. Where are the kids?”
    He shifted just a little, so that she could pass if she liked.
    Dimitri still in his crib, lying sideways. Barbara Ann on the floor beside her bed, as if she’d got out or been pulled out. Sasha by the kitchen door-he had tried to get away. He was the only one with bruises on his throat. The pillow had done for the others.
    “When I phoned last night?” Lloyd said. “When I phoned, it had already happened.
    “You brought it all on yourself,” he said.
    The verdict was that he was insane, he couldn’t be tried. He was criminally insane-he had to be put in a secure institution.
    Doree had run out of the house and was stumbling around the yard, holding her arms tight across her stomach as if she had been sliced open and was trying to keep herself together. This was the scene that Maggie saw, when she came back. She had had a premonition, and had turned the van around in the road. Her first thought was that Doree had been hit or kicked in the stomach