The Underside of Joy

by Seré Prince Halverson

  Paige took another deep breath. ‘Joe’s death has hit Ella hard, and I don’t think she’s been there for the children. After the funeral, I found her drinking and smoking in the garden. Since then, Annie calls me frequently. She told me that Ella almost got in a car accident and screamed and swore at the kids.’

  That again? Really? I shook my head.

  ‘After I had them for the weekend, I dropped them off at her house, and Ella, she seemed drugged or under the influence of something. She said she had the flu, but I wonder about her drug use.’

  Now I stared at Paige, but she kept her eyes on Janice Conner and continued.

  ‘Meanwhile, the children and I have got reacquainted, and I’m so relieved to know that our bond was never broken. You know this: how strong the bond is between a mother and her child.’ Paige smoothed her skirt. ‘Whenever I talk to Annie, she asks when she can come visit. Plus, the store wasn’t even making it three years ago and I wonder about Ella’s financial stability.’

  Janice Conner kept writing after Paige finally stopped talking, then glanced up at me, over her glasses. ‘Ella, I’d like to hear from you now. What would you like me to know?’

  My heart beat loudly in my ears. She knew the store was struggling three years ago? ‘Basically?’ I said. ‘That she’s not being truthful.’

  Janice Conner smiled patiently. ‘I know you have a different perspective, and now’s your opportunity to tell your side of the story.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ I remembered to say. ‘There were no letters. She never sent one letter, except for the one she left at the house, telling Joe she wanted out and that he made a great parent, but she couldn’t do it.’ That’s it. I didn’t tell them that I’d looked through the boxes of Joe’s things, just in case. But still, I’d found nothing.

  Paige shook her head. ‘I sent cards and letters. Many of them,’ she whined. She looked at me. ‘Where the hell were you?’

  Janice Conner cleared her throat. ‘I need to remind you both to keep your statements and questions directed at me. I do have a question for you, Paige. Did you ever send any of those cards and letters certified mail?’ The room fell quiet for the first time. I looked over at Paige, who shook her head slowly, barely, looking at her hands in her lap. ‘That’s unfortunate. Because then we wouldn’t be relying on a she-said’ – she smiled – ‘she-said scenario. Paige, do you think it’s possible that the letters were never sent?’

  Paige said no, but her face began to redden.

  Janice continued. ‘I’ve done that before, thought I sent something only to find it tucked in the bill drawer. You were on medications, going through a difficult time. Could you have given them to a nurse or orderly? Your psychiatrist? Or maybe stuck them in your suitcase to mail later? I’m not suggesting you didn’t write them, only that –’

  ‘No!’ Paige almost shouted. Her face was flushed a vivid pink. Then, quieter, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, she said, ‘You think they all tricked me?’

  ‘Clearly, whether or not the letters were sent is not something we can resolve here today. So I’d like to steer the discussion back to Ella. Ella, what can you tell me about why Annie and Zach should remain in your care?’

  I swallowed, thinking of Annie and Zach standing on stools making meatballs that morning with Marcella, apron strings doubled around their small frames. ‘Because I’m the only mother they’ve known. Because we have a home, and a large, caring family around us. And a loving community, with lots of friends. It’s great they might go to Paige’s for a weekend and have a blast, but the truth is, they’re sad. At my home, they’re allowed to be sad, because I’m sad too. I don’t see their father’s death as some kind of sick opportunity.

  ‘Yes, I’ve had a few bad days. But I’m grieving. I’m not going crazy. We’re nothing alike. Nothing.’

  I looked up at Janice, who was not writing as she had been when Paige talked. She flipped a page back. ‘Can you explain the behaviour Paige described, her concern about drug use?’

  I told her how the doctor prescribed Xanax, that I’d never taken anything like that before and took a few too many one day. ‘But I haven’t taken any since. I threw them away.’ Though God knew I could have used one right that minute.

  ‘Are you sure? Can you verify this with a letter from your doctor? Co-workers?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. I’ve never been addicted to anything.’ I explained, too, about the almost-car-accident, and why I’d yelled. ‘These are things Paige has never experienced because she left.’

  Paige uncrossed her legs, squared her shoulders. ‘Fortunately,’ she said, ‘that was not the end of my story. It took a lot of hard work to pull myself up from that, and there was only one source for me to pull from: my love for my children. I am their mother. A mother who made mistakes, but also still thinks I made the right decision to leave when I did . . . Because I loved them then and I love them now. I can now give them a better financially and more emotionally stable environment than she can, and I am their mother. They should be with me.’

  Janice was writing down everything Paige said.

  ‘You’re writing down everything she says, but it’s not true.’ My voice was on the rise. I took a breath, forced myself to speak calmly. ‘Paige is someone new in the kids’ lives. She buys them things. They have no strong emotional bond with her. Zach doesn’t even know her! She’s preying on Annie because Annie is extremely vulnerable. I’m worried what would happen to them if they were moved away from their home right now. Their mother left when they were very, very young. They’ve lost their dad. For good. And now, if they lose me too . . . and their grandparents, uncle, everyone. Annie and Zach will be devastated.’

  She turned to Paige. ‘What, exactly, does a home stager do?’

  ‘Well, I interview –’

  ‘She takes out all the personal memories and treasures that make a house a home and puts in a few pieces of carefully placed trendy furniture to make it look like someone else lives there, possibly even the potential buyer. She fakes it. She fakes home. And she’s good at it.’

  ‘At least I don’t expect the children to live in a tiny, cluttered shack.’

  ‘Ha. A shack. Right. You make it sound like it’s tar papered.’ I looked at Janice and took another deep breath. ‘It’s actually a lovely, 1930s remodelled cottage the kids’ great-grandpa built.’ I went on about Elbow, their relatives, their friends, their pets – anything I could think of, rambling now.

  Janice Conner held the clipboard up in the air, like a stop sign. ‘Okay. Well. I can see that we’re not going to come to any kind of agreement between you today. Now it’s my turn: I want you to both listen to me. I want you, for the sake of those two children who have already been through so much, to stop this bickering. You cannot demean the other person in front of the kids. It will hurt them profoundly.’ She looked at Paige, then at me. ‘This is a tough one. Is there any chance either of you might be willing to move?’

  ‘No,’ we both said in unison. It was the one thing we could agree on.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I sat in the Jeep in the courthouse parking lot, talking to Gwen Alterman on my cell phone, blotting the black rivers on my face with balled-up tissue. Gwen assured me I was not the first person to insult the opposing party in mediation. ‘Mediators are used to it. They hear it every day.’

  ‘But you said –’

  ‘That was the ideal. It would have been great if you could have stayed on course one hundred percent, but it sounds like you didn’t do as badly as you’re thinking.’

  ‘No. I did. I was terrible. I wouldn’t grant custody to me.’

  ‘Look. Go home. Be with your kids. Make that store a success. We won’t know anything for a week or two. Try not to think about it.’

  But I thought about it, and thought about it. I thought about the fact that Joe had told Paige, or Paige had instinctively known the way wives do, that the store was struggling. I thought about how Paige had said she’d requested to s
ee the kids. ‘Where the hell were you?’ she’d asked. I wondered about that, at least regarding the store. I was sure she was lying about the letters. I would have seen them, would have heard snippets of phone conversations, something. Joe wouldn’t have been able to hide that too.

  I hadn’t been much of a praying woman, but I prayed, and prayed, and prayed. Please, somehow, make Janice Conner see that the kids should be with me. Please, please don’t take them away. And if Paige lost her marbles again? That wouldn’t be entirely a bad thing . . . I knew that praying for someone to go crazy couldn’t be winning me any heavenly points, or karmic points, or points on my own side of mental health, but I felt desperate. I cringed whenever I thought of the mediation, of my own stabs at Paige and my incompetent explanation of my ‘bad days’. Of Paige’s words, ‘Instead, he met her.’ Instead of what? Reconciliation? A different ending? A change from the direction that ultimately led to Joe’s death?

  If it wasn’t for all the activity at the store, I would have been the one losing my marbles. Things were busy, and I needed to be there, helping David and Marcella. David managed to get more write-ups in the Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, and the Bohemian, which all raved about the food and the off-the-beaten-track picnic map (one reporter called it worthy of framing and hanging in your home – or the Metropolitan, which made Clem chuckle in delight). The reporters appreciated the whole concept of the store. ‘They have even included a quaint glassed-in back porch amidst the trees, for those days when the weather doesn’t cooperate.’ Joe Sr read from one of the folded papers, then waved all the reviews at me. ‘This idea of yours . . . Hot damn! It might just work.’

  It was the week before Halloween, which couldn’t have been a better time for me to focus on other things besides mediation and the upcoming custody hearing and Paige. I loved Halloween. Elbow was the perfect place for it. No need to haul the kids to a mall for ‘safe’ trick-or-treating. Everyone in Elbow knew one another, we were short on traffic and long on kids, and Life’s a Picnic stood right in the centre of it all. I had big plans.

  I’d made the kids’ costumes every year since I’d been there, and this year would be no different. Yes, there was the gentle tug at the corner of all those big plans, reminding me that next year might be starkly different. And all the years after that. But I tugged back hard and set to work.

  ‘Mommy, what are you up to?’ Annie asked. ‘Besides five foot ten, that is.’ She cracked herself up.

  I burrowed in the back of our closet like one of the gophers Callie kept digging up. I still hadn’t moved out Joe’s clothes. It was one of those things I kept writing down on my lists but never crossing off. ‘I’m looking for the . . . here it is.’ I yanked and pulled out my heavy plastic Singer sewing machine case. ‘Ta-da! It’s that time of year.’

  Annie looked at her foot, twisting her toe into the rug. ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.’

  ‘What about, Banannie?’ Last year she’d been a tree. She wore brown cord pants and, on her torso, over a brown long-sleeve shirt, a big green pillowcase that I’d hot glue gunned with a ton of silk green leaves and stuffed with newspapers. We rigged up a little tree swing with rope and a small board, hung it from her arm, and stuck a stuffed bear on it. On her head, she wore a cap that we topped with a little bird’s nest and a fake robin. Joe had even put a couple of little fake eggs in it. She’d won first prize at the Elbow Boo Fest. ‘Have you thought about what you want to be?’

  ‘Yes. I’d like to be Pocahontas.’

  Not exactly original, but okay. ‘Okay! So I’ll need to find some suede. Oh, I know, we can make a bunch of beaded necklaces. Maybe we can rig up the canoe so we can pull you on the wagon . . .’

  ‘Mommy? I was thinking . . . I think I’d prefer to, you know, buy a Pocahontas costume this year. You’re busy, and they have them completely done, so I’ll look perfectly, exactly like the real Pocahontas in the movie.’

  ‘You mean the real Disney Pocahontas?’

  ‘Exactly! I’ll look fabulous. And Molly is going to dress up as Belle.’ Frank and Lizzie’s daughter was in Annie’s class, and they’d grown even closer. Frank would be the one to take her trick-or-treating with us, definitely not Lizzie with her oath to Avoid Ella Whenever Possible.

  ‘Fabulous . . . ,’ I said. She had got taller. She looped her hair behind her ear and smiled. She’d always loved my homemade costumes, loved helping with the creation, the attention she always got. Certainly she didn’t want to fade into the masses. Maybe she simply wanted to decide what she was going to wear, on her own. This was just the beginning of the beginning – I knew that. I wanted to be around for every one of the future mom-defying moments. Tummy-baring tops, piercings, tattoos. Gothic black from head to toenails. Or perhaps she’d target her defiance precisely at me, become a hairswinging cheerleader or a glittery mall rat. Or refuse to eat anything but McDonald’s. But for now she just wanted a store-bought Halloween costume. One I couldn’t afford right then. Those Disney Store costumes ran well over fifty bucks.

  As if she could read my mind, she said, ‘Mama said they have a Disney Store in Lost Vegas. She said she could pick up one and send it right away. But to ask you first.’

  I nodded. Had the whole thing been Paige’s suggestion? Or Annie’s idea? Either way, it felt personal, even though the better part of me knew I needed to slough it off.

  ‘Okay, Mommy?’ She had her fingers woven together in a prayerful plea. Her eyebrows arched high on her forehead, her smile a bit forced, as if pretending I’d already said yes would help her cause. But how could I deny her this one request?

  ‘Okay. Fabulous, even.’

  She hugged me around my waist. ‘I knew you’d say yes! I’m calling Mama right away! Thank you tons!’

  The rejection hit me like a sucker punch, and after Annie skipped out I slumped down in the closet. Joe’s old shirts and jackets hanging from the bottom rod seemed to part for me, then embrace me. I needed the real Joe, his real hug, but I sat there anyway, accepting what felt like some sort of understanding from his 49ers jacket, his periwinkle oxford that brought out the blue in his eyes.

  Annie had been gracious, and I was glad I’d said yes. Couldn’t I share with Paige the privilege of making Annie happy? I could try.

  I got busy planning Zach’s and my costumes. I knew exactly what I would be, but Zach was still deliberating between various types of insects. A praying mantis? A luna moth? A centipede? He pondered the possibilities.

  Late October. The weather conducted its symphony of falling, twirling leaves – golds and reds and oranges against the huge evergreen backdrop – with skies that sustained a deep, clear blue. Many of the vineyards had turned to shimmering yellow, like lakes of captured sunlight pooling between the dark, forested hills. The bell on the store’s screen door kept chiming, the phone kept ringing, the old cash register kept clanging, Hallelujah! Underneath all that, I listened and heard, when I’d hold them or sit in their room while they slept, the low, steady drumbeat of our hearts, Annie’s, Zach’s, mine, and the rhythm of the clock, counting days, hours, minutes.

  I stood on a ladder, stringing cotton webbing from the store’s rafters. The previous Christmas, Joe had stood on the same ladder, in the same spot, while I’d handed him strings of white lights. When he stepped down I said we needed mistletoe. He grabbed me. ‘We don’t need no stinkin’ mistletoe,’ he whispered, then kissed me. The door chimed and he kept kissing me while Mrs Tagnoli said, ‘Ooh la la.’ In less than a year, I’d gone from glitter and twinkling lights and kissing to cobwebs and ghosts and regrets.

  ‘Buongiorno! Bellisima!’ Lucy, just back from a winery in Italy, called up to me.

  ‘I’d come down to hug you, but I’m a little tied up at the moment,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, what tangled webs you weave.’ She set down her basket. ‘I brought wine. Italy! Italy is fantastic. I need to live in Italy.’

  ‘You practically do. Sonoma County is Italy. Without the acc
ent.’

  ‘And the centuries-old buildings and the incredible art and cobbled streets and the melody of Italiano being spoken everywhere and all those lusty men.’

  ‘But they’re not George Clooney . . .’

  ‘No, but this one guy, Stefano, could make me forget George’ – she smiled – ‘and I just bumped into Stefano. Again and again and again . . .’

  ‘Stefano? Sex? I think I remember sex. Pray tell.’

  ‘He’s young. And gorgeous. And Oh. My. God.’

  Marcella came out from the kitchen. Lucy mouthed, ‘Later.’

  Marcella put her hands on her hips, craned her neck, and said, ‘Oh my word. I guess I should have just left the real cobwebs up there.’

  ‘She’s Charlotte,’ Lucy said. ‘She’s going to spell something if we give her enough spinning time.’

  ‘I wish it were that easy. I could write something, like “Ella. Some Mom”. Just like Charlotte wrote “Some Pig”. And the press would come, declare a miracle, and we would be saved, just like Wilbur.’

  ‘Ella,’ Lucy said. ‘No one needs a miracle to see that you’re Some Mom. Now, come down from there and help me unload.’

  Lucy filled my arms with wine, tablecloths, lovely Venetian blown-glass vases; she filled my ears with stories of long, hot afternoons with Stefano.

  We could see the Bobbing for Coffins Parade committee heading towards the river to start setting up. This was an Elbow tradition, based on a big goof-up of the town’s founding fathers. Back in the 1870s, lumber mills were cropping up much faster than the trees would ever be able to, and thousand-year-old redwoods were being sawed down in the prime of their lives – then came the trains, and then came the tourists, and Elbow was born. A prime location, a sandy beach – it was a town mostly built on the tourist trade rather than the logging industry, but the logs rolled by, just the same, on their way to Edwards’ Mill a mile or so downriver. Most of the men of Elbow who weren’t in the tourist business or summer homeowners worked in the lumber industry. Felling trees three hundred feet tall and as wide as twenty men standing side by side at the base is dangerous business, and many of them died doing it.