In the centre of the store, Peruvian and Guatemalan picnic baskets of different shapes and sizes were on display. Blankets and tablecloths hung from hooks down the sides. Retro board games of all kinds – Sorry!, Scrabble, checkers, and more – were set out to play; new ones were available to buy. There were four half aisles between the eating area and the deli counter, stocked with wines, crackers, and speciality food items. Behind those were the glass-doored refrigerator cases, stocked with beer, soft drinks, juices, and twelve different kinds of water. Bottled Cokes cooled on ice in the newly restored old-fashioned Coke machine, which I’d unburied from a corner of Marcella and Joe Sr’s barn. Joe had always intended to restore it and use it at the market but hadn’t got around to it. With my new appreciation for not putting things off until ‘someday’, I’d called a place in Santa Rosa called Retro Refresh.
We’d painted the walls a pale goldenrod that took three tries to get right, but as I stood in the middle of the store the day before we opened, the sun-washed plaster was warm and cheerful and actually made me smile. I stood in the middle of it all, aware that the corners of my mouth both turned up; there I was, a smiling fool of a woman about to open a store called Life’s a Picnic only a few months after her husband had died. Life’s a trip was more like it.
We’d sent out press releases to every publication and radio and even TV station within California. Just in case, David had said, it was the slowest news day in history and someone wanted to do a story on us.
The only thing missing was the map of the picnic sites. Clem Silver, who was a nationally recognized illustrator and painter, had said he’d have it ready, but we were opening in less than twenty-four hours, and no one had heard from Clem. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that Clem never answered his phone. When I’d questioned him on that one, he’d said, ‘What kind of town recluse answers his phone?’ He had a point. Clem was known to keep to himself. He lived up in the forest, in the dark shade of the redwoods. He had long white hair he wore in a ponytail, he had long fingernails stained with paint, and he smoked long ladies’ cigarettes – Virginia Slims menthol. Apparently, he also took a long time getting his work done.
The door chimed and David and Gil came in carrying boxes and bags with Annie and Zach dragging in metal buckets of kindling to set by the woodstove. Marcella followed with armfuls of hydrangeas. Lucy brought more wine.
I said, ‘Lucy, I’ve got to track down Clem Silver. I know he lives up in the shadies, but I don’t know where exactly.’
‘Just follow Spiral Road all the way, past the sign that says beware of artist. It’s the last house, about a quarter mile past what you’ll think is the last house.’ She pointed to the door. ‘You’re doing great. I’ve got the kids and everything here covered. Go.’
‘Are you sure? You’re dealing with harvest.’
‘Crush will go on without me. And I needed a break from jeans and boots and purple stains. Go. And, El? Take your time. Take a break. Please.’
Lucy straightened her cream velvet hat, turned around with a swirl of her long paisley skirt, and called Annie and Zach to help with the tablecloths.
I ducked out the front door, glad to get away for a walk. I headed up the street, passed the tiny postage stamp-size post office and the two restaurants and the Elbow Inn, passed the Nardinis’ house and the Longobardis’ and the McCants’, then crossed the busier road that divided the town of Elbow from the forest.
I walked the steep single-lane Spiral Road, which did, indeed, spiral the hill. The founders of this town had certainly been literal with some of their names. But it was the Southern Pomo Indians who had first referred to this area as the Shady Place. They would set up only temporary camps in the dark redwoods; they preferred to live in the sun-drenched oak-studded hills. The Kashaya Pomo even called themselves ‘the People from the Top of the Land’, as if to boast, ‘We live in the nice, sunny neighbourhood.’
Then the whites started moving in to lumber. After they built the railroad, San Franciscans began taking the train up to fish and play along the river. Some of them built summer homes in the forest, but few lived there yearlong, and that was still true. A lot of people who had houses in the shadies fled to places like Palm Springs for the winter.
I kept walking, taking the hairpin turns and pausing now and then to catch my breath. The houses sat farther and farther apart, the higher I went.
Finally, ahead, a sign that said, sure enough, beware of artist. Farther up I could see a house, but it was not the house I’d expected, not that of a man who rarely cut his hair or his fingernails.
This was a house that had been built with care and concern for every planed piece of wood, for every river rock fitted perfectly in the massive chimney and foundation. It was positioned so that it was never going anywhere. The hill could slide in an avalanche of mud and trunks, but the destruction would likely divide into two forks to go around this house, leaving it untouched. The front door held panes of stained glass and greened copper detailing and was flanked with pots of tiny white flowers trimmed in red, called lipstick salvia. A row of different sized and shaped chimes seemed to stir in their sleep, then settled back into the quiet. I knocked and set off waves of barking from somewhere deep inside.
A raspy voice said, ‘Petunia! Pipe down, girl. No need to get your britches in a bunch, Jerry.’ He opened the door and took a long look at me. He had on an old Cal sweatshirt, covered in paint stains, a pair of grey baggy sweats. His ponytail was draped over his shoulder and lay like a skinny mink stole down his chest. ‘Oh! Ella Beene! Come in, come in.’ He turned and scuffed down the hallway in lambskin slippers. The dogs, who had stopped barking, took an inventory of me too, then, seemingly unimpressed, turned to follow Clem. I stepped inside.
It was warm and golden with lamplight. ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘I love your place.’
He turned, pleased. ‘Why, thank you. I like it too.’
‘It’s beautiful here in the forest.’
He nodded, kept nodding. ‘Yes, yes! Makes you understand how this was all under the sea three hundred million years ago.’ He smiled. ‘Wait, I should offer you tea. Or coffee?’
I opted for tea, and while he fixed it, he talked. ‘People think I live up here to get away from the river, because of the flooding and what I went through as a child.’
‘What was that?’ I asked.
‘Oh . . . I forget you’re not from around here . . . It’s an old story. Old, old story. But actually’ – he pulled down a box of tea bags – ‘because of what happened to Joe Jr . . .’ He looked at me, nodding. ‘Yes, I think you might like this story.’
So Clem Silver told me about the flood of ’37, back when he was a toddler. His family had lived on the river, three houses down from where Marcella and Joe Sr lived, where the Palomarinos lived now. Clem wandered off and no one could find him. Everyone evacuated except for his mother and father, who were frantically looking for him. The river rose, and just as his mother picked him up from his study of a spiderweb behind the woodpile, a surge of water broke through and tore him from her arms, passed him downriver, out of her reach, then out of her sight.
‘I remember hearing my mother’s screams and being afraid, and then my ears and eyes and mouth filled with churning, followed by a beautiful quiet, like I’d never heard before. And up above me, this beautiful beam of light.
‘Now, you hear people talk about their near-death experiences, about going towards “the light” and all that. But in my case, being down in that dark river water, the light was all I saw, all I needed to see, and it led me to the surface, to air, to more years of life – not some heavenly encounter – which suits me just fine.
‘But, Ella Beene? I’ve gotta tell you this: I almost drowned that day, and it was the most peaceful feeling I’ve ever had. I’ve been looking for that feeling ever since. And I think that in some peculiar way – and let’s face it, I’m peculiar in every way – that’s why I settled in this forest. It’s the closest thing I can come
to being at the bottom of that river.’
‘You felt peaceful down there?’
‘Yes.’ He crossed his arms. ‘I know it seems strange, but yes, I did.’
I stared at his grey whiskered chin, his pale moist eyes. ‘Thank you for telling me that story,’ I said, looking away, glancing around the room, trying to keep from blubbering. ‘And this definitely feels peaceful here.’
He said his ex-wife couldn’t take the darkness. ‘“You’re an artist,” she kept after me. “Don’t you need a light-filled studio?” I guess I was just as stubborn about staying put, a barnacle on a rock. But I appreciate the light that has to push its way through. The contrasts are what interest me the most. I notice the light more here, how it pours down like an elixir. Darkness forces our focus on the relevant, while the irrelevant fades away. How’s that for artsy-fartsy talk? Here, Ella Beene, let me show you your map. I imagine this is what you came all this way for.’
I followed him, Petunia and Jerry out to his studio, which was more of the dishevelled shack I’d pictured him living in. There, on his table scattered with paints, old Orange Crush cans, and stuffed ashtrays, was the map.
I held it out before me: a fairy-tale-style treasure map to magical places, in colours and textures that were both natural and luxuriant. ‘This is it. This is going to make the whole concept of Life’s a Picnic work.’
‘So you like it, then?’ He chuckled. ‘I can go ahead and make the copies?’
‘I love it.’ I hugged him, this old wizard who smelled of stale cigarettes and turpentine and knew enough alchemy to get inside my head and put on paper what I had blindly been working towards, who’d told me a story that had somehow made me feel better.
I left the golden warmth of Clem’s house, and my mind slowed to absorb the cool, still quiet, to feel and see it fully, as I hadn’t on the hasty walk up. Rusty pine needles carpeted the narrow road, muting my steps. The sloped land was a tangle of thick ivy, sword ferns, elk clover, redwood sorrel, blackberries, and poison oak. Bay trees and Douglas fir and tanbark oak looked more like bushes than trees next to the redwoods, which grew so high, I had to crane my neck back just to see the blue patch of sky floating at the top of this shadow world. Some of the houses were hobbit-like, clinging to the hill, glowing light from tiny windows in the noon darkness. Two shacks had slid with part of the hill, probably years ago; they had ivy growing through the siding, staking its claim. One house was recently burned hollow, charred black inside like the burned-out stumps of redwoods that still stood from fires long ago. Some of the places were lovely – older summer homes built at the turn of the century that had been kept up, while others were more modern, with lots of windows and skylights to let in the few shafts of filtered light.
Vines of ivy climbed and hung from the trees, almost like seaweed. It was dark and so quiet.
Like being underwater.
It had been almost three months. Three months! How was it possible? That I would never see him again, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand in the garden, grinning – or pointing his camera, his body curved like a comma as if to say Pause here and see this moment? Or juggling oranges at the market? Did we have oranges at the new store? Did I forget the oranges? Joe would have remembered the oranges.
There was the way he’d pick up Annie and Zach in one fell swoop, one in each arm, their laughter, their delighted Daddy Daddy Daddys. The way he’d swing them around the room and trot them on his knees, saying Grandpa Sergio’s old ditty: Giddy-up, pony, We’re on our way to Leonis, To pick up some macaroni, So don’t give me any baloney, Just giddy-up, pony . . . giddy-up! and right at that point, launch them into the air.
Was he somewhere, watching? Did he know about the store? Did he approve? Was he happy, relieved, pissed off ? Had I freed him to go on to be reincarnated or reach nirvana or become an angel or whatever it was he was supposed to go do?
There in those woods, I understood why enchanted so often preceded forest. There is a sense of the mystical, of the otherworldly, when you’re surrounded by ancient living grandeur. When one beam of particled light looks celestial and another looks like it might be the product of a sorcerer’s experiment. The air smelled of bay leaves, of loam, of wood fires and pine needles and mist – even though it was a warm, sunny day out there . . . and way, way up there. I remembered reading that in the redwood canopy, scientists had discovered copepods – crustaceans that were part of the diet of grazing baleen whales. No one knew exactly how they got there, but anyone could imagine. The sparrows that flew by could have been a school of minnows. It was that kind of dreamy place; I could be walking on a sea-floor; Joe could come swimming by.
How long had it been since I’d passed a house? Where was I? I was fantasizing about my dead husband swimming through the forest, and I had a store full of food and relatives depending on my return, not to mention my sound mental health. I didn’t want to be the woman who got lost on her way back from picking up a map. But what was all this about, really? I’d spent months remodelling the store, a new beginning that was also trying to save some part of Joe. It had felt good to have a project, to be so busy, so distracted. To act the part of a redwood, towering above, reaching for the sun.
But some part of me wanted to hide here under the fern fronds. To sleep with the slugs.
A twig snapped and my head jerked up. Above the road, a black-tailed doe stared me down with her huge ink-puddle eyes. Another snap, and I saw her two fawns below me, their spots fading in the early autumn, their legs still as fragile as wineglass stems. I stayed very still while the mama deer held my gaze. I know how you feel, I wanted to tell her. We are one, you and I. But I realized she saw me as the intruder, the one in between her and her babes. I didn’t move. She must have finally signalled to them, because the fawns pranced across the road, right in front of me, so close I could have reached out to touch them, before the three of them bounded up the hill, disappearing into the forest.
I ran the rest of the way back to the store. Back to Annie and Zach.
Chapter Fourteen
The next morning, I lay in bed thinking about Clem’s story, when I felt Zach climb under the covers and let out one of his long, meandering exhales until I opened my eyes. He rubbed his cheek with Bubby’s ear and stared at the ceiling.
‘I miss Batman. And Robin. I want them to come to the big, big party but they CAN’T. And Daddy CAN’T. And I’m all ALONE.’
‘I’ll be there, and Annie will be there.’
‘I mean boys.’
‘Uncle David? All your buddies?’
He sighed again. It seemed cruel that his favourite toys lay unnecessarily buried behind the coop when he needed them more than ever.
‘Well?’ I was winging it as I went. ‘Daddy died for real, so he can’t come. But Batman and Robin are pretend, so maybe, just maybe, they didn’t really drown.’
He jumped up, eyes wide. ‘Really?’ I nodded. He said, ‘But we sawed them. They were drowned for real.’ He fell back on the bed and buried his head in Joe’s pillow.
‘Well? Yesterday? I heard an amazing story that a wise old man told me.’
‘A true story? Or a pretending story?’
‘True. Absolutely. When he was a little boy, even littler than you, he almost drowned.’
Zach gasped, and for a minute I was afraid the whole thing would backfire. ‘Did he die like Daddy?’
‘Well, no, he didn’t. He almost died. He was under a lot of water. And he said he felt happy, even though he was almost drowned. But then he came to the top of the water and breathed in air and he lived.’
‘Did a mermaid save him?’
‘No. Remember? True story.’
‘Oh.’
‘So I was thinking . . . Maybe Batman and Robin only almost drowned.’
‘And Catwoman? And the Joker too?’
‘Every plastic being you can think of.’
Now he was jumping up and down on the bed, whooping and hollering. We raced outside, sti
ll in pyjamas, the dewy meadow grass licking our feet. I grabbed the shovel, with Callie joining in the digging once she saw what we were up to, and we had our own little action-figure Easter celebration, as we dug up one mud-caked plastic body after the other – the heroes and even the villains – redeemed now from their sins, born again the very morning that Capozzi’s Market would experience its own joyous and miraculous rebirth.
Most of the town of Elbow turned out for the opening. They filled the store, spilling out onto the porch and the street, and even Clem Silver walked down to sign maps. The owners of the Elbow Inn brought their large historical photo of the picnickers on the river, framed and tied with a bow, to hang on the wall. I was glad and appreciative to see everyone, but I also knew that Life’s a Picnic was not going to survive on neighbourly goodwill alone. For one thing, each one of them could go home and pack their own picnics at a fraction of the cost. We needed hungry tourists. We needed wealthy out-of-towners.
We needed a boatload of publicity.
I grabbed David’s arm. ‘So where are the hordes of press?’
He patted my hand. ‘Oh, don’t worry. They’ll trickle in over the next few weeks. But I’m expecting someone will show up today. Isn’t it marvellous? Everyone loves it!’
‘I heard Ray Longobardi talking about how he might need to take out another mortgage so he can go on a frickin’ picnic.’
‘Ray Longobardi is hardly our target market. Don’t pay attention to him. His idea of a picnic is a Spam sandwich on Wonderbread with an Old Milwaukee. I heard Franny Palomarino raving about the luscious raspberry-painted porch furniture, and that this was the best chicken curry salad she’d ever tasted in her entire life. Do your lurking by Franny and maybe you’ll calm down.’
The Underside of Joy Page 10