The Underside of Joy

by Seré Prince Halverson

  Frank walked in carrying a basket of handmade soaps. Lizzie had her own very successful soap-making business she operated from their old barn. ‘Lizzie couldn’t make it,’ he said. ‘But she sent these.’

  I took the basket. ‘That’s nice.’ We both knew that she could easily have made it to the opening, but what she couldn’t do was be my friend. ‘Tell Lizzie I said thank you.’ Frank hugged me and set off to overload his plate.

  Annie wore an outfit similar to mine that she’d picked out, clogs with leggings, a long peasanty top. She’d asked me to pull all her hair back into a French braid, so her perfect pearl of a face glowed as she said to one of her friends from school, ‘You would not believe how long it took to get these tablecloths arranged just right.’

  I went over to her and said, ‘You’ve done a great job with the place.’ She beamed even brighter. Zach whizzed through with Batman and Robin and a trail of little boys following him. I opened the door. ‘The fresh air is calling.’ They ran out.

  Lucy sat on the front porch. ‘Don’t worry, I’m still watching him. They just made a beeline before I could lay my body down in front of the door.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I looked around. ‘Seen anyone jotting down notes, maybe carrying a microcassette recorder?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not yet.’

  I shrugged, then started setting up glasses, filling them with champagne and apple cider, and passing them out. I gathered everyone outside, in front of the porch like they had been on every Fourth of July. I stood on the porch like Joe always had and raised my glass. ‘To get this done? In just a couple of months? A downright miracle. You are people who not only show up, but work harder and longer than humanly possible. Who even bring food! Who babysit! I know I didn’t grow up here in Elbow. But I hope you consider me one of yours. Because I sure do. Here’s to you, Elbow, California. Here’s to Grandma Rosemary and Grandpa Sergio, who planted the seeds, Marcella and Joe Sr, who nourished with their blood, sweat, and tears. And finally, to Joe, who loved picnicking, loved this place, loved all of you. Thank you.’ We hung his apron and the photo of Joe, his dad, and his grandfather, and toasted to the great success of Life’s a Picnic.

  Walking home, with the kids’ hands in mine, I felt both giddy and bone tired. Everyone – with the exception of Ray Longobardi – had raved about the food, the store, the map, and how this was going to boost business for the restaurants, the canoe and kayak rentals, and the Elbow Inn. The only disappointment had been the lack of any press coverage, but I realized opening a picnic store wasn’t page-one news. Just then a young, slightly overweight man bustled towards us. He wore slacks and skater shoes, a windbreaker. ‘Ella? Ella Beene?’ he asked.

  He had reporter written all over him. Finally! ‘Yes, that’s me. And yes, I am the owner, or I should say, one of the owners. But the original idea came to me when I –’

  ‘So you’re Ella Beene? I need to give you these.’ He unzipped his windbreaker and pulled out a manila envelope. ‘Sorry. It’s just my job,’ he said, in an awkward attempt to sound friendly. He turned and jiggled back across the street, crouched into his Hyundai, and drove off.

  I stared at the envelope. It had my name handwritten on it, with my address and the address of the store, nothing else. I knew what it was.

  Annie tugged on my arm. ‘Mommy? Was that the man with the news?’

  Chapter Fifteen

  I settled the kids into bed and fired up the woodstove. I plopped down on the couch, braced my feet on the trunk, told myself the envelope held something other than what I feared most.

  Maybe just another loose end of Joe’s, more financial bad news. Let it be that. I can deal with that. The tirade I had in the garden when I’d first realized how deep the money problems ran seemed silly now. I considered not opening the envelope, set it down, picked it back up. The fire popped and I jumped. Taking a deep breath, I pulled out the papers and began reading the petitioner’s, Paige Capozzi’s, declaration:

  I am the mother of two children, Annie Capozzi, age six, and Zach Capozzi, age three. Their father, Joseph Capozzi, was recently killed in a drowning accident. I am asking that the children be allowed to live with me, their mother, and that full custody be granted to me.

  And why in the hell do you think anyone would let that happen? Why you? The whole town of Elbow knows Annie and Zach better than you do.

  I suffered severe postpartum depression after the births of both of my children. When Zach was an infant, I became unable to function as a mother, and, although it was extremely painful for me, I felt it was in the best interest of my children to leave them in the care of their father in order for me to get the medical and psychological treatment I desperately needed.

  My condition was temporary, but months later, when I attempted to resume contact with my children and their father, I was ignored. I wrote numerous letters, both to the children and to the father, but only the first few were answered.

  Letters? Right, lady. You abandoned your children and your husband because you had a little case of the baby blues? And now you’re so desperate, you’re willing to lie?

  I was recovering from illness and did not fully understand my rights with respect to custody, nor did I have the financial means or physical and mental stamina to fight the father for custody when he asked for a divorce. I concentrated on rebuilding my life with the intention of eventually reclaiming my right as the children’s mother. I have become a successful home stager. My job is lucrative, my schedule flexible. I have an office set up in my home and so am in the position to provide financially and emotionally for Annie and Zach. Although their stepmother has done an adequate job as a caregiver, Annie and Zach are suffering the loss of their father and need to be with their only living parent. I can give them the depth of love and support that only a real mother is capable of.

  Oh, do not even get me started on what makes a real mother. Adequate? And let’s talk about exactly what it was that you were capable of doing, what you did to Annie and Zach, the one thing that no mother in her right mind would do to her children.

  I am asking that they be allowed to live with me in Las Vegas, where I own a beautiful home in a neighbourhood full of young children, and that full custody be granted to me.

  I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.

  A mediation date was set for October 1; an order to show cause hearing, whatever that was, was set for November 3. And a demand for some documents, including the fictitious letters.

  Joe hadn’t let on about just how much the store was struggling. I was shocked by that, but I could almost understand how it might happen; the store was Joe’s business, literally. He’d thought he could turn it around and no one – even me – would have to know how bad things had become. I hadn’t been involved in the day-to-day operations of the store. But the kids – that was different. When it came to Annie and Zach, Joe and I told each other every single thing. We went to their doctor’s appointments together, took Annie to her first day of kindergarten together, shared each of Zach’s new words – including the most colourful. Joe would have told me if Paige had tried to correspond with the kids. And I knew without question that Joe wasn’t cruel.

  I threw the packet as hard as I could, but it wiggled feebly three feet in the air before slumping to the ground.

  I think I slept twenty minutes that night. The next morning, as soon as I got back from taking the kids to school, I called the troops – all of Joe’s family, Lucy, my mom, Frank – and told them Paige had filed for custody. No one let on that they were worried. ‘No judge in his right mind would give custody to that woman,’ Marcella assured me.

  Joe had handled the paperwork for his divorce without a lawyer, but I knew I needed one. Frank recommended someone, and I called her as soon as I hung up. She could squeeze me in during her lunch hour – could I make it? I left the kids with Marcella and made sure David and Gina could cover the store.

  Driving in, I remembered the las
t time I’d gone to see a lawyer. It was when Henry and I decided to divorce. Henry, who had once, long ago, turned up as my cute lab partner in my Protists as Cells and Organisms class, said my name reminded him of L.L.Bean. He said he could picture me on a page from the catalogue, on the front porch of a cabin in Vermont, wearing a down vest and jeans and fishing boots, living a simple life. A couple of acres, a couple of kids. Sounded like a plan, and I was all for it.

  But after Henry and I married, great jobs in the biotech industry lured us to San Diego and we moved into a peach stucco palace with easy freeway access amid hundreds of other peach stucco palaces. The joke around the Olympic-size pool in our gated community was that the houses stood so close together, when you wanted to borrow a cup of margarita salt, your neighbour could pass it to you through the bathroom windows.

  ‘We can always retire in Montana,’ Henry said. While I floundered, then withered as a research assistant, aching to be wearing that down vest in the woods instead of a white coat in the lab, Henry thrived. He loved his job as a biochemist, loved the vast array of beaches and the non-array of weather, loved the sparsely furnished peach palace and our virgin SUV that never once ventured off the pavement to climb a mountain. It never even hauled kids to soccer games.

  Then came all the miscarriages, all the misery that left us staring at each other on opposite ends of an empty, long dining room table. At Henry’s insistence, we each talked to lawyers. One said to me, ‘At least you don’t have children.’ I stared at her. I watched her flick a pea of lint off the sleeve of her expensive-looking jacket and fold her arms on the desk. ‘You’d be tied to him forever. You’d have to deal with him and then the stepmother, if he should remarry . . . which they always do. Immediately. Men want to be saved from single parenting and women want to save them.’ She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow, her own Arc de Triomphe. ‘It’s a nightmare. The most you could hope for is someone who tolerates the kids.’ She shrugged. ‘Few people can really love a child the way a natural parent does. Consider yourself lucky.’

  Henry’s meeting must have been just as dismal, because we both agreed to call off the lawyers and conquered the dividing on our own. I hadn’t remembered that lawyer’s words, how much they’d stung me then, and now they stung me again – for opposite reasons.

  Gwen Alterman’s offices took up most of the third floor of a brick building in downtown Santa Rosa. She was older than she sounded on the phone, maybe in her early fifties, and larger than I’d pictured her. Photos of her and her husband and their three kids caught my eye. I wanted to ask her if she was a stepmom or their natural mother, but I didn’t. While she ate a Burger King chicken sandwich I told her my story. She handed me a box of Kleenex, which I gratefully took. I was on the clock, so I kept talking through the tears, apologizing, blowing my nose, telling her everything I could think of, even the fact that I was broke. She wrote notes and nodded, and once reached across her massive desk to pat my hand.

  ‘So,’ she said after I’d handed over the court documents and Joe’s divorce papers. ‘You’ve been hit. And hard. Let me ask you, were you ever appointed the children’s legal guardian? In case something did happen to your husband?’

  ‘No . . . no. We’d talked about it, but we never got around to it. Because it would require giving notice to Paige . . . and it didn’t look like she was ever coming back, anyway.’

  ‘I see. Well, that’s too bad. But even so, if there’s a God in this world, that woman shouldn’t have a chance. Judges usually look harshly on abandonment cases.’ She lifted her chained glasses from her matronly chest and set them on her face and began poring over the papers. I looked at the family photos and saw the unmistakable resemblance of both her and her husband to all three of their kids. No broken-blended family there.

  Now Gwen Alterman looked at me over the top of her glasses and cleared her throat. ‘She claims to have attempted contact numerous times? That puts a different slant on things.’

  ‘Yes, but she’s lying,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know for a fact that she didn’t try to contact the children or their father? Because we’ve received a subpoena for those letters. If you have them, you have to turn them over.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve been there since shortly after she left. I’ve never seen a trace of her.’ Except in Annie’s and Zach’s blue eyes and silky blonde hair, I thought. The one picture of her glowing and pregnant that I found in Joe’s Capturing the Light book. The paisley robe that Joe got rid of after the first night we were together.

  ‘What about your husband’s family? Have they had contact with her?’

  ‘No. They’re angry at her for leaving.’

  ‘Why, exactly, did she leave? Depression? A little funk and she leaves her kids for three years?’

  ‘That’s all I really know,’ I admitted. Gwen waited, peering at me over her glasses. ‘You’ve gotta know Joe’s family. No one really talks about this kind of thing. They’re warm, loving people. But they don’t like to talk about . . . you know . . . difficulties.’

  ‘Such as?’

  I sighed. ‘Well, for example, I know Joe’s grandfather was sent to an internment camp during World War II, but no one talks about that. And our store was going under and Joe never told anyone how bad it was.’

  ‘Was Joe’s grandfather Japanese?’

  I smiled. ‘No. But that’s what I thought when Joe mentioned it. Italians were sent too, just not nearly as many.’

  She shook her head. ‘I had no idea . . . Really?’ Her phone buzzed once. She told her receptionist that she’d need another few minutes. ‘Tell me, did it ever occur to you to ask Joe about the details concerning why she left?’

  I stared at her. ‘Um. No.’ I didn’t tell her how much I still, deep down, didn’t want to know any of those details. ‘Does she have a chance?’

  ‘There’s always a chance. But’ – she glanced over one of the divorce papers – ‘it looks like Joe’s request for custody was completely uncontested. She signed off on everything without any fight. Do your children even know who she is?’

  ‘Well, yeah – Annie remembers her. Zach doesn’t, but he’s certainly not afraid of her. He seems to like her. She’s very . . . pretty . . . and she’s okay with them, I guess.’

  ‘Pretty is as pretty does, honey, and leaving your babies is never pretty. Or okay. The children know you first and foremost as their mother. You’ve fed them and diapered them and been there for them for the past three years while she’s been God knows where? No. It is not in the best interest of the children for them to be taken away from their home, their loving stepmother, their relatives – I’ll need letters from every one of them, by the way – in order to live in a strange place with a stranger. Especially since they’re dealing with the trauma of losing their father. I think we have a strong case.’

  I took a deep, shaky breath. ‘You don’t know how good that is to hear.’

  She smiled again and took off her glasses. ‘So. Tell me. Are you sleeping? Eating?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not much sleep. Some food.’

  ‘Try yogurt. Milk shakes. Whatever you can, because, honey, you are going to need every ounce of your skinny self. And your kids are going to need you too.’

  I nodded.

  ‘I hate to lay this on you right now with everything else. But you’re going to have to find a source of income. And fast. It looks like she’s making bank – or at least she’s painting that picture. From what I’ve heard, that’s probably accurate if she’s involved in any aspect of real estate in Vegas right now. If your financial picture is as dismal as you’re saying it is, you might not appear able to support the children. If that new store of yours doesn’t start making money right away, you might have to come up with another plan. But I will say it shows initiative and pluck, and you’re preserving their family heritage, more than I can say for her.

  ‘And one more ugly detail: My retainer fee is five thousand dollars. I’ll need that to proceed. We should tr
y to avoid a trial because that gets expensive. Then they’d do an investigation, get a social worker involved, interview teachers, doctors, family, friends – even the kids. But I really don’t think we’ll need to take this that far.’

  I nodded again and tried not to look as hopeless as I felt. Why had I poured all my money into the store so soon? And my energy?

  I could barely drag myself to the Jeep. I sat in the parking lot with my forehead on the steering wheel, my eyes burning with lack of sleep, and made myself turn the key in the ignition.

  On the drive home the despair began rising. Not now. I needed a plan. I needed to eat. And sleep. I needed to take care of my kids. What were they feeling right now? I had a flash of memory: how confused and lost I felt after my own father died. That night after the Great America fiasco, my mom had reassured me, saying how she and I had made it through Dad’s death, and we had. But I remembered those first months, how much I wanted my mom, and how blank her eyes went when I tried to talk to her. The sound of her TV through my wall all night, and when I came home from third grade, the drapes still closed, the porch light still on, the newspaper still on the front step, and my mother still in her nightgown. I could not do that; I needed to get the kids through this.

  I needed to fight Paige. Make money. Stop sweating. Get my chest to stop hurting. Breathe. I wasn’t even doing that. Why was I sweating? Did I have a fever? My chest hurt. My arm hurt. I still couldn’t breathe.

  And then it all became clear: What I needed most was to get to a hospital.

  Memorial Hospital was just around two corners, but I was afraid to keep driving, afraid I might run my car off the road and hit a pedestrian. I parked and cut across the street, almost getting hit myself. The sweat continued pouring down my face, my chest crushed with pressure. I was a thirty-five-year-old skinny woman who ate a boatload of organic vegetables. I was also the daughter of a man who’d died at age forty of heart disease. I walked into the emergency room, up to the check-in desk.