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For Joyce, Bob Newby dies twice. Once, eviscerated before her eyes. Then later, after she returns from the boiling exorcism of her son, having blocked out the first half of the night, when it occurs her to finally ask “What do I tell Bob about this?”
She remembers.
Of the two, the second is worse. Because she has time to think about it.
***
Dustin Henderson put a monster in her refrigerator, and it's the only thing about this catastrophe that aggravates her. Many thing sorrow her, many things rip her soul apart, but this is the only one that aggravates her. It's almost a pleasant distraction, that way.
The thing dissolves into foul black sludge. She makes Dustin and the new kid, Steve Harrington, clean it up.
***
Will is all right.
It's like when he would get a fever when he was little. A few bad days and it would break and he'd be back on his feet, good as ever. Granted, he does have a third degree burn on his hip. That gives him a bit of a limp.
But he's well. He's free, really free, now.
***
Jonathan and Nancy want to talk. The three of them sit around the kitchen table. Joyce notices their arms and hands are intertwined, and she figures she knows what's coming.
“Mom, Nancy and I have two things to tell you. The first is that we're together. We're...boyfriend and girlfriend.”
Jonathan blushes like a stop light. Nancy looks at him with a gaze of utter adoration and gives a little giggle. It's so sweet.
“The other thing is where we were last week. What we did.”
Five minutes later, she's literally ready to knock their heads together.
“Are you both INSANE? You could be DEAD! You know what kind of people they have at the Lab! You could have gone in there and never come out and I NEVER WOULD HAVE KNOWN WHAT HAPPENED!”
She stalks around the house, continuing to rant. Jonathan gets up and follows her, blubbing apologies. Joyce circles, refocuses on Nancy, who has not moved.
“And you, little miss--”
Nancy cuts her off. “We had to.”
“You did not--”
“We had to,” she repeats, raising her voice only slightly, yet adding a razor blade of intensity. “There wasn't going to be any accountability for what they did, unless we made them accountable. For what they're responsible for. For the lives they destroyed. For Barb Holland. For Will. For Eleven.”
Nancy's glare never wavers.
“And for Bob Newby.”
Joyce halts. She's known Nancy since the girl was in Holly Hobbie dresses. Where did this steel come from? Where did she get the strength to heft a rifle and plunge a poker into human flesh?
“We covered our tracks, Mom. Our names won't be anywhere on it.”
Joyce sinks back into her chair.
Once she calms down, she has to admit: she's proud of them. Still horrified, but proud.
***
The week after the kids' story about Barb makes the papers, Lonnie calls. Says he heard there's a class action suit being put together and is she sure that Will being sick didn't have something to do with this?
She hangs up on him
***
Will seems to glow. He's drawing ships in the sky and dragons again, not monsters hovering over the landscape.
He draws a picture of Bob as a superhero. Joyce puts it on the fridge. It's the finest monument she can imagine.
***
Some nights Will has the Party over and Jonathan's hanging out with Nancy. There's two stereos blaring and a mess is being made and lots of laughter and screaming. On those nights, she feels best.
But sometimes Will is at Wheelers', and Jonathan is either off with Nancy or at work. On those nights the house is quiet, so quiet, quieter than Joyce ever knew was possible. A quiet that could swallow you up.
***
The opening bars of “Islands In The Stream” come on the radio. Joyce can't snap it off fast enough.
***
Now that Nancy is spending so much time with them, Joyce is more aware of how ratty their furniture is, and how chilly the house can get at night. Joyce suspects they don't eat Hamburger Helper as often at the Wheelers'.
Nancy doesn't seem to care. Joyce appreciates that.
***
“Joyce, I need some help."
Hopper decides to allow Eleven to go to the annual Snow Ball. Mike Wheeler apparently promised her he'd take her, the previous year. El wants to go like someone might want to go to Heaven. Hopper, naturally, doesn't know anything about dresses, shoes or makeup. Joyce hustles around town picking up the necessary elements. It's another pleasant distraction.
Over dinner, she casually asks Will “So, is everyone getting excited for the Snow Ball?”
“I guess. Lucas and Dustin, definitely. Mike's not going, though.”
“What? Why not?”
“Eleven's not going to be there. There's no reason for him to go.”
Two days later she's picking Will up at the Sinclairs'. Mike is waiting for his ride.
“So, Mike,” Joyce says coyly. “Are we going to the Snow Ball?”
“Nah,” mutters Mike, looking at the floor.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he says, a little testily.
“Maybe you should think about it.”
“I already did.” He's glaring now.
She gets right in his face and hisses. “Michael Wheeler, you need to go to the Snow Ball.”
He actually jumps a little.
That does the trick. All four boys in the Party attend the Snow Ball. Eleven has a lovely time.
***
Joyce and Bob were not dating at Christmas last year, so she has no memories of him in that context. She is very grateful for this.
***
Joyce knows she's sleeping a lot. She looks forward to it. A nice break from her troubles. Like a hobby. Twelve hours at a stretch, sometimes.
***
Joyce is on the evening shift the day the boys go back to school after Christmas break. Once they're off, she finds herself alone in the house again. The quiet, quiet house.
She sits down with a sheet of her stationary and writes a letter. It's either this or snap.
Dear Bob,
I'm sorry. I love you.
I'm sorry because we got you killed. I know, it wasn't our fault. But you shouldn't have been there. The only reason you were at the Lab was because you loved us, you loved me, you loved Will, and you wanted to help us.
But you were there. You saved us. You were a hero. I've never seen anyone do anything as brave as what you did. You deserve a medal. A ceremony on the town square. I wish I could be there and pin it on you.
You saved us. I hope you knew that at the end. But you saved so much more, because if you hadn't saved us, there would have been no one to meet Eleven and take her to close the gate. So you saved the whole town. You saved everyone.
(I never told you about Eleven, or everything that happened last year. I'm sorry for that, too. I should have told you. I was scared something might happen to you if I did. But something happened anyway, didn't it? So I should have told you.)
I love you. Something else I should have told you. I thought we had more time. So I'm telling you now: Bob, I love you. I want to run away with you, get out of Hawkins with the boys and go to Maine. I want to go to the ocean with you and stand under a lighthouse in the moonlight and kiss you. I want you to offer me a ring and I want to say yes to that ring. I love you.
Good-bye. I won't forget you.
-Your darling Joyce.
She takes the letter out back. Behind the shed she makes a little firepit, stamping down the snow and forming rocks into a circle. Then she burns the letter, burns it to ash, burns the ash.
The word-smoke drifts into the sky. If anything can reach Bob Newby, this is it.
Writing the letter doesn't make her happy, but it changes something. Something lifts off her that day, lifts with the smoke, off into the clouds.
***
Joyce knows there's a lot of hanky-panky going on in her house, right under her nose. Many people might consider her a bad mother for letting it continue, but she can't bring herself to forbid it.
Just so long as Nancy doesn't get pregnant. That's all she asks.
***
Will is lighthearted, flitting about the world like an elf. Jonathan is blossoming, expanding. The happiness of her sons buoys her. Like food to a starving man.
***
Hopper's beginning to ask certain questions.
With her eyes, with the inflections of her voice, she replies I need a little more time.
With his eyes, with the inflections of his voice, he lets her know he can wait.
She knows she'll go to him someday. But not yet.
***
One evening in the spring, she drives out to the little beach on Lovers' Lake. When she was in high school, she came here to party. When the boys were young, she brought them here to wade and skip stones.
Now she's here, at sunset, and she looks out at the light on the water.
Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy
Sunshine in my eyes can make me cry
Sunshine on the water looks so lovely
Sunshine almost always makes me high
In 1974, that song came out. She looks at the lake and it's 1974, it's 1962, it's 1971, it's 1985. In the beauty of the light on the lake, all times become one.
For that moment, she is at peace.
***
At the end of the school year she decides to throw a dinner party for their little group. She makes beef stroganoff, her go-to dish for special occasions. Nancy, Steve Harrington, Dustin and Lucas and Max and Mike, all of them come. Hopper even agrees to bring Eleven.
At one point she's scanning the room, their faces, and it's like they're all her kids, her little ones, and she needs to keep them all safe, finds herself praying Dear God, let them have a future. Don't let them die in a war we can't even talk about...
She feels a hand on her shoulder, turns, and Hopper is standing there.
“Hey. They're strong. They're gonna be OK.”
She whispers back “Thank you.”
***
Jonathan got an internship at the Post, working alongside Nancy. Will will hang out and play Dungeons and Dragons with the Party.
Joyce finds herself looking forward to the summer. They'll go to the Fun Fair, have a good time. Maybe she and Hopper can go out some evening.
A season of rejuvenation. A season of new life.
Joyce can't wait.