The Underside of Joy

by Seré Prince Halverson

  Each day, I walked Callie for hours, exploring different neighbourhoods where we might find an apartment, lingering in any slip of green offered up in the new and small manicured parks. The wind blew dust and debris, rolling tumbleweeds of Big Gulp cups, crushed cigarette boxes, plastic grocery bags. The sun beat down on us, forcing us to take frequent water breaks. I ached for Elbow, for the garden and the chickens, the cool river and the picnic store – but ached much more for Annie and Zach.

  The court documents listed Paige’s address, and I drove by. It was in a suburban neighbourhood in a new development with one tiny birch tree staked in each yard. The house was a new, huge stucco wedged into a minuscule lot, surrounded by similar houses in alternating A, B, C, and D models. As much as the red door – so feng shui – beckoned for me to knock on it, I didn’t. Visitation was less than two weeks away, and I didn’t want to sabotage the kids’ visit to my place.

  I wrote in my notebook: Who is Paige? How can I convince her to talk to me? I wrote: Why did Joe even agree to take on the store in the first place? Didn’t he want to be a photographer? Since he was eleven? I wrote: Annie’s laugh. Zach’s toes. Us cutting lavender, hanging it in the barn. Annie’s bee sting. Her crying and saying, ‘At least that son of a gun makes honey too.’

  I focused on finding a place, staying positive. I would show strength and tenacity, and if Paige didn’t respond, perhaps a judge would acknowledge and reward my efforts.

  I left more messages for Paige. ‘I’ll have an apartment soon. I’d like to talk with you. Please let the kids know I called and that I love them.’ I also sent letters. I hoped she would not keep those from the kids.

  Finally, I found an affordable apartment that allowed a dog and had a pool. Those were its three only features worth mentioning. Paige had a pool, and I wanted the kids to be able to cool off at my house too. Plus, Zach needed to get over his combined fear and fascination of water and just learn how to swim.

  I sat on my sleeping bag in the empty apartment, the walls bare except for the map of Las Vegas that Clem had given me, tacked on one wall, and the Life’s a Picnic map tacked on another.

  David called one night and said the store was doing better than it had, but not quite good enough – yet. The rain hadn’t let up in weeks. He needed to run an ad playing up the fireplace and the greenhouse in back. He was thinking about bringing in a musician, someone who would play just for tips. Gina was talking about moving away, and she might not be around long to fill in at the store. Still, his spirits were up.

  ‘You are so in your element,’ I said. I wasn’t quite ready to tell him about the apartment, especially since he was in a good mood.

  ‘That I am. Let the man swim in Bolognese sauce and he’s happy.’

  ‘I don’t understand this, David. Why did the store go to Joe? He didn’t want it. He wanted to be a photographer. But you wanted it, didn’t you? Since you were a little boy. Joe outgrew the whole Joey’s store/Davy’s store rivalry, but you never did, did you?’

  He sighed. ‘No. I never outgrew it. That was just a lie to cover up my utter disappointment and rampant feelings of total rejection. Oh God. We could do an entire Oprah show on this one, El, and I’ve got a little catering gig tonight.’

  ‘You’re catering now too?’

  ‘This is the first try, but hey, whatever pays the bills . . .’ He promised me we’d finish the conversation later.

  I sat outside on my balcony, remembering how Joe and I used to sit on the porch in Elbow. On mornings when the fog lay thick among the tops of redwoods, their trunks so tall that even the peaks of them looked like full-size trees growing out of a carpet of clouds, I’d imagine our house, warm as bread, was perched in heaven with the jubilant blue sky above us while those under the fog line were living that same moment in grey deprivation. And then a twinge of guilt rose up that our little place on the hill was anointed in light, blessed, lucky, above – it had felt that way sometimes.

  Now I sat in the hot night, my skin going from green to blue under the flashing sign from the car lot across the street. I watched the herd of traffic one story below, snorting, fuming, waiting for the signal to change and set them free, until they reached the next stoplight a block away.

  David called again a few days later to ask if I’d be home for Thanksgiving, and that meant telling him I had taken an apartment.

  ‘You’re living in Vegas?’

  ‘Well, I’m not dying here. Not quite. They have me on a breathing machine. Which helps combat the effects of all the secondhand smoke.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘It’s not exactly home, no. But I’m staying longer than I thought. Paige isn’t quite speaking to me . . . yet. I’ve got to figure out a way to get through to her, but she’s still too angry. So I’m buying time. And it helps my psyche, just knowing I’m within fourteen minutes of Annie and Zach.’

  David said to take my time, that he’d figured it would take a while. I asked about Marcella and Joe Sr, but he just said, ‘Oh, you know . . . waiting.’

  I missed them. I missed their oversize dinners and long hugs, Marcella’s loud singing and Joe Sr’s loud swearing, the way their faces opened when the kids walked into the room.

  And I missed Elbow. The wild turkeys would be gobbling into town. It wasn’t unusual to see one sitting on the rooftop of the car in the morning, or to see them flaunting themselves down the middle of the street, the males spreading their huge fantails, prouder even than peacocks. I used to ask them, ‘Guys? Isn’t this the time of year when you should be, you know, hiding?’

  I missed the kids most of all. On Thanksgiving, I called my mom, but she had a houseful of people, her ‘homeless waif‘ dinners she always held, inviting all the people she knew that didn’t have family living in the area. She’d offered to come down or for me to fly up, but I’d declined. Part of me, a ridiculously optimistic part of me, had hoped that somehow Paige would call, or at least would pick up when I called, that she’d see the light and invite me over.

  Callie and I took a walk and ended up at the grocery store, where I bought a single serving of turkey in a plastic container, a single serving of mashed potatoes and gravy, single servings of stuffing and cranberries. I could not shake the feeling of despair. It was Thanks-giving and Paige hadn’t answered her phone. I had not talked to Annie and Zach since they’d left Elbow.

  At the apartment, I called David, and he’d had a bad day too, a fight with Gil, a depressingly quiet dinner, with too many empty chairs around the Capozzi table, too many leftovers.

  ‘Basically,’ he said, ‘I’m lower than whale shit.’

  ‘Oh dear. Then I guess we can pick up where we left off last time – you were saying something about your rampant feelings of rejection?’

  ‘Wow. You’ve got a light touch.’

  ‘I’m sorry, David. But would you . . . do you feel like talking about what happened?’ I actually had my yellow notebook open, ready to take notes. I was getting rather obnoxious.

  ‘No. But I will. If you think it will help your cause.’

  I told him I had multiple causes at the moment, but one of them was to better understand his older brother, especially if it would help me communicate with his ex-wife so I could see Annie and Zach, which was my number one cause.

  David said, ‘Okay. It all happened at Grandpa Sergio’s, so that would be in your house, in your bedroom. The curtains were drawn, they were heavy, and olive green, so it was dim and stuffy, and godawful warm. Grandpa Sergio was in bed, and I was sitting in a chair next to him, holding his hand. He and I? We were really close. I loved that man. I was nineteen.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘My dad was there too. But Grandpa kept asking for Joe Jr. Joe was hurrying back from the university, trying to get there, and Grandpa was trying to hang on. In my mind, I was always Grandpa’s favourite, but he wasn’t so interested in talking to me at the moment.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘So Joe fina
lly arrived. And Grandpa told us everything. All the stuff he’d never talked about came barrelling out, about how he was afraid he might never see his wife and kids again when they took him away. How he and Grandma Rosemary didn’t have a stitch of savings, and the town pulled together to help Grandma and the store. He said, and I’ll never forget this, “The internment, it was based on fear. Fear of a person’s origins. Fear of the mother country. They ask me, who do you love more? Italy or America? I say, ask me who I love more, my mother or my wife? I love them both, but differently. One is my past and one is my future. I say, I love this country, it is my future. But do I worry about my new country bombing my relatives? I do worry, I told them. But that, it didn’t go over so well.”

  ‘Grandpa told us how much he loved both of us. But he said he built his home and his store for his family and its future generations. He said we owed it to Elbow to keep it going. Capozzi’s Market, he said, was this town’s symbol of hope for withstanding the hardest of times.’

  ‘But I still don’t understand why he handed it down to Joe.’

  ‘I’m getting there. That’s when he turned to me. There was a lot of coughing and wheezing. But then he said, clear as a bell, “Davy, I love you, my boy. I have some money I want to give you. But let’s face it. You’re not going to have any children.” Then he turned to Joe and said, “You promise me one thing, Joe Jr, you promise me you’ll take the store, and you’ll do good by me, you’ll do good by the Capozzi name so no one will ever question our family again. And one day, you’ll hand that store down to your bambinos. Promise me.” That room fell absolutely quiet. Grandpa even stopped wheezing. I kept thinking, Don’t say you’ll do it; all you’ve ever wanted was to be a photojournalist, travelling every corner of the planet. But Grandpa’s eyes were filled with tears, begging him. And Joe finally told him, “Yes, Nonno. I promise.”’ David’s voice broke, but he kept going. ‘And Grandpa smiled. He’d never gone by that Italian name for grandfather and now we’d understood why. And he said “Thank you, Joey,” and he closed his eyes, and when he did, the tears ran down his cheeks, towards his ears. I remember Joe wiping the streaks away with his thumbs. But Joe? He was crying too, so his tears were falling on Grandpa anyway. Within a few minutes Grandpa was gone.’

  A full minute went by, maybe more. ‘David. That must have been so hard.’

  ‘We never talked about me being gay. I hadn’t even come out to my parents. But Grandpa knew. He never said anything. He was never anything but kind to me. But he wanted that store to go down through the generations, and I wasn’t his best bet for making that happen. The thing is? As hard as it was for me, it was harder for Joe. That promise was a chain around that poor guy’s neck.’

  ‘He never told me how it all came to be. He just said your grandpa wanted him to run the store, but he didn’t say it went down quite like that.’

  ‘Joe never complained; he just took it on as his duty. But that’s why he couldn’t ask for help, either.’

  I hadn’t taken a single note while David was talking, but after we hung up I wrote: Internment comes from fear. Fear of someone’s origins. Fear of someone’s mother country. Paige was afraid of her origins, of her mother. So she took herself away. She said in her letter Joe was afraid of her background too. But what were they afraid of, exactly? And how do I find out? David’s told me so much about Joe. But who can tell me about Paige?

  Chapter Thirty-three

  As the day approached when I’d have the kids with me, I bought the three of us beds. I thought about having our stuff shipped out but figured it would cost more to do that than buy replacements. Plus, I didn’t know what I was doing, really. Was I staying? I couldn’t quite fathom it, but I couldn’t fathom leaving without them, either.

  I hunted every thrift shop I could, passed over the same Crock-Pots and waffle makers, the sixties’ teak hors d’oeuvres platters and Corning Ware bowls, and then stumbled across a find that actually made me smile. A Buzz Lightyear lamp for Zach. A little yellow desk for Annie. Shelves. At Target I found a dinosaur comforter and a green seersucker bedspread. Coordinating sheets and oversize pillows. I took my purchases back to the apartment, excited to set them up, and as soon as I stepped back to survey, I thought of their rooms at Paige’s – bigger than our not-so-great room in Elbow, a castle bed, no less – and thick lead settled in my chest. We headed back out, and Callie waited, tied up in a strip of shade outside while I searched for that One Cool but Cheap Item that would thrill them. And then, right in the display window at the hospice store: a bright red trike for Zach. A shiny pink bike for Annie, complete with a white basket adorned with purple flowers. Together they cost me forty dollars. I couldn’t believe my luck. Maybe the tide was changing, after all.

  Just before the kids arrived, I set to work filling the apartment with delicious smells from the kitchen. Even though I’d blown my budget on all the little extras, the apartment would still not pass Paige’s standards. But at least she’d know by the aromas coming from the kitchen that the kids would be well nourished.

  At exactly five o’clock, they rang the doorbell. My heart blammed in my ears. I turned down the stove and opened the door and fell down on my knees to hug them. They knocked me over. Callie dove into our pile and we all laughed.

  All except Paige. The corner of her mouth twitched as she held her smile.

  ‘Would you like to come in?’ I offered, still lying on my back. ‘No. But thanks. I’ve got to run. Annie, Zach, can I have a hug?’

  Zach looked at me, then, along with Annie, got up and hugged Paige.

  She said, ‘See you Sunday,’ and she was gone.

  ‘Look at you, look at you! Oh, I missed you guys so much!’ I kept hugging them, kissing them, smelling their hair, their necks, their hands. They smelled different, like new carpeting and air-conditioning and the Macy’s interpretation of jasmine and citrus. Their terroir had changed. ‘Tell me how you’re doing! Tell me everything!’

  First, they wanted a tour of the apartment, which took about seventy-five seconds. I opened the door to their room, and as soon as they saw the bike and trike, they whooped and hollered, jumping up and down so fiercely that I had to remind them about the neighbours living below us. Evidently, Paige hadn’t bought them wheels yet. Good. I promised them they could ride after dinner.

  While we were eating, I said, ‘Tell me about your new home, your new friends.’

  Annie said, ‘As I’ve mentioned, our house is spectacular. It’s very big. And very nice. But.’ She threw her hands up in the air, out to the sides. ‘There’s no yard. No garden. No trees. Except for three very small ones.’

  ‘No chickens or eggs!’ Zach chimed in.

  ‘But there is a lovely pool,’ Annie reminded him.

  ‘And stairs!’ Zach said, who thought a second floor in a house was as noteworthy as a pool. I smiled, thinking of Zach writing a real estate listing: Your dream home awaits you. Enjoy daily walks up your very own staircase!

  I laughed a lot that evening and the next day. How sullen I’d been since Joe’s death, even before the kids left, but much more so since then. Now that they were there with me, I revelled in their every observation and gesture, their mispronunciations and new vocabulary, all the nuances of their evolving personalities. I wanted to film them and hit replay when they were away from me. But we were the only young family I knew without a video camera. Surprisingly, Joe hadn’t wanted one. He said it was bad enough that he spent so much time behind his still camera.

  ‘Well,’ I’d said, ‘I’ll man the video camera.’

  ‘Then we’ll both be observing life. Who’s going to live it?’

  I thought about what he’d said and vowed to try to stay in the moment, safekeeping it all in my head and my heart. Remember this: Remember the way Annie keeps snapping her fingers. Remember Zach’s quiet fascination with his boogers. Remember the way he dances with Callie, wiggling his hips like some kind of Chippendales dancer. And where in the hell did he learn to do that!
Whenever my mind lurched forward, to when they’d be gone, I had to nudge it back to the here and now.

  That night Zach wet the bed. Zach hadn’t wet the bed since he was potty trained more than a year before. Annie said, ‘He does it at Mama’s house all the time. Even during the day! Pee-yew!’

  Zach hung his head, sighed, and said, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

  He was standing there in his Barney underwear; his torso looked longer and leaner than it had been just a month before. His haircut made him look older too. He was older. Joe’s death, and now this huge change, had aged all of us. And yet there was Zach, embarrassed, feeling like a baby. I told him, ‘Honey, it’s just an accident. Sometimes lots of changes can cause accidents like this. Don’t worry about it.’

  Zach asked me, ‘When are we going home?’ At first I thought he meant to Paige’s house, and that lead-in-the-chest feeling hit me again, but then he said, ‘I miss Nonna and Nonno.’

  I hugged him. ‘I don’t know, honey. Right now this is our home.’ He looked around the room and sighed again, and again he said,

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

  We spent a lot of Saturday in the pool, with breaks for them to ride their bikes. Zach wanted to ride his trike around the pool patio, but I told him that would be breaking the rules, that the bikes were for outside the fenced area, not on the patio. Still, he swung his leg over the seat.

  ‘Zach. We’ll ride after our swim.’

  ‘But I won’t ride on the patio.’

  ‘Where, then?’

  ‘In the POOL. Like my very own SUBMARINE.’ He laughed. ‘I’m going to drive it all the way to Daddy!’ I wanted to stop him right there, remind him, once again, that he couldn’t ride his trike to his Daddy, that Daddy didn’t live underwater. But Zach seemed so happy and carefree in the moment, I let it go. I figured, so some people swear heaven is above the clouds, but Zach has decided it’s underwater. At least the kid can think for himself.