The Underside of Joy (23 page)
What had I expected from Paige? Overflowing gratitude? Forgiveness? A certain willingness to work things out? Yes, yes, and yes. I had told Gwen Alterman that I didn’t believe Paige should be shut out of Annie’s and Zach’s lives. I thought Paige would believe the same about me. I had mistaken her for the Paige who wrote the letters three years ago – a desperate, vulnerable, hurting mother. But even Lizzie had noticed, there was an old Paige, and now this new Paige: who believed in the order of things and their placement, who seemed convinced that the placement of Annie and Zach should be in her home, with none of my personal chi flowing through the door, or even through the phone wires. She’d cleaned out the clutter of having me as their stepmother
. (Who needs two when one will do the job? Decide which box – Give Away or Throw Away, and then don’t look back.)
I called Gwen, who told me to let the dust settle. I doubted Paige
had
any dust. She reminded me that Paige still had to allow for visitation in a month. If she refused, she would be in contempt, and then we’d actually have grounds to do something.
‘A month?’ was all I could say. ‘In one month I’ll get to see them for two days? Today’s Annie’s seventh birthday and I haven’t even got to talk with her.’
‘There’s nothing fair about this. But it sounds like she’s off to a rocky start. So. Keep track of every conversation, but don’t badger or harass. This could go completely in our direction. You just have to be patient.’
Lucy let herself in that night. She found me in the kids’ room sitting on the floor amid neatly arranged stuffed animals and dolls, having a tea party. I’d packed presents in Annie’s suitcase, but I couldn’t stand not being able to see her open them, not making her favourite carrot cake.
I’d tied a bonnet on Callie, the way Annie sometimes did. I was pushing Buzz Lightyear’s button over and over, so he kept repeating, ‘To infinity, and beyond!’ Without saying a word, Lucy walked into the kitchen, came back with an open bottle of petite sirah, from which she poured enough to fill two of the pink-and-white miniature china cups. ‘Sorry, Elmo, you’re underage,’ she said. She turned to me. ‘Hey, it’s going to take a helluva long time to get drunk this way.’ She held her cup out for me to toast. ‘Ella, oh my God, honey, your eyes. You look like shit.’
I shook my head. She hugged me, rubbed my back, ‘I know, El. I know.’ It wasn’t long before we moved out to the back porch, exchanging our teacups for big-girl glasses. She tried to get me to eat something, but I couldn’t. I did bum cigarettes off her, though, and for the first time in my life, smoked them without guilt or regret.
Lucy gently suggested I start taking the antidepressant that Dr Boyle had recommended. I told her no, and also said no to her offer of more wine. I knew I needed to feel this, no matter how much it hurt.
She offered to come over again the next day, but I told her I wanted some alone time and she grudgingly complied.
Knowing now that no one – absolutely no one – would stop by, I dragged out the boxes I’d moved to our garage from the storage closet at the store. The ones with all the photos of Annie, Zach, Joe, and Paige, the extended Capozzi family. I told myself I wanted to see pictures of the kids, but there was still a part of me that was trying to understand the story of Joe and Paige, what that meant to the story of Joe and me, the story of Annie and Zach and me . . . and Paige. And the question still, what had Paige revealed to Joe that day when she turned around?
I pulled a box in by one of its cardboard flaps, pulled it down the hallway until it sat in the middle of the not-so-great room. I took out stacks of photos, placing them in a mosaic-like pattern on the floor around me. At first Thing One and Thing Two kept batting at the pictures and sliding across them, but then they got bored and snuggled up with Callie on the couch.
Here were Paige and Joe at Marcella’s for Christmas; Paige wore huge red ball Christmas ornaments in her ears and Joe had a bow stuck to his forehead. They were laughing. Another picture: Paige and Joe’s wedding day. So different from ours, with my short halter sundress and sweet peas picked from the yard. But theirs was like Henry’s and mine: the elaborate white gown, Paige’s high necked and beaded, the regiment of bridesmaids and groomsmen, the ring bearer, the flower girl, the perfectly round bouquets, the exhausted and completely overwhelmed smiles.
I found cards too – anniversary, birthday, Valentine’s Day – all declaring unfaltering love and adoration.
I’ll love you forever,
as if they were trying to ward off any curses or uncertainty, the evil spell that loomed on the periphery.
I placed the cards down along with all the photos, even the nude ones, arranging and rearranging until I got the sequence right along with the order.
How feng shui of me,
I thought. When I got to the bottom of one box, I spotted a pink edge stuck between the cardboard flaps. I unfolded them and out popped what looked like a pink passport, maybe something of Annie’s. But it was stamped with the words
Enemy Alien.
Inside, a picture of Grandpa Sergio in his forties, the typed words:
Sergio Giuseppe Capozzi,
his address in Elbow – the same as our address – along with his date of birth, August 1, 1901, his fingerprints.
Those words struck me harder than the tiny bits and pieces of the story I’d heard. The fear. The paranoia. Enemy? Alien? Grandpa Sergio? Who loved this country, owned a little market. Who built this cottage . . . had his family ripped apart, as Marcella had yelled. It struck me how easily paranoia sets in during times of war, and I knew that my own fear of Paige – the whole family’s fear of Paige – wasn’t exactly fair, either. Still, what we’d all feared most had now happened, and my attempt to be fair had landed us here.
I set the ID down too, along with pictures of Sergio and Rosemary standing in front of their new house, now our old house, and I felt connected to them in a way I hadn’t before. Their family had filled this house with its noise too – its laughter and arguments. Rosemary had walked these very rooms, filled with the vacancy of Sergio’s absence. She, too, knew the way an expanding emptiness pressed on the walls, the ceilings, the floors.
I pulled out another box; it turned out to be the box with Paige’s robe. The robe Joe had covered her secret with, the robe she’d hidden in all those months of depression. I put it on, over my clothes. Embarrassing to admit now, but I guess I saw it as a necessary piece of the puzzle. I pulled out more boxes until I’d covered the floor in the living area, and started in the kitchen, then down the hall. I left curving paths that spiralled out from the centre of the room, reminiscent of the labyrinth Joe and I had once walked at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco the New Year’s after we met. We’d walked in silence, each holding a question in our minds. When we finished, we stood at the centre and Joe asked me if I would marry him. It turned out we’d both come to the labyrinth with the same question and had received the same answer while we walked it: Yes.
I’d covered the not-so-great room and kitchen, part of the hallway, and half of Annie and Zach’s room when I ran out of pictures. I pulled out our own photos, the ones taken after I came into the picture, so to speak. And my shoebox of pictures of my own childhood, my mom and me clam digging, my dad and me posing on a rock, arms folded, wearing our birding binoculars. I lined more photos along the floor in the kids’ room and worked down the hallway and into our bedroom, finishing the path off on top of our bed because of the lack of floor space.
I worked with a welcomed detachment from my present life, or even the lives represented in the pictures – completely absorbed in the structure of my creation, the pieces of the puzzle. It was all a bit crazy, but craziness made perfect sense right then. By the time I finished, the room had dimmed dark.
I must have lain down then to sleep. The next morning I woke in a sea of pictures, staring at Annie holding up a salmon almost as big as she was. Pictures were stuck to my arms, my hands, my cheek.
I climbed out of the bed, took it all in. I know how strange this sounds now, but I was intrigued with what I’d done. There was order, purpose. I felt I was on to something. So I made coffee, careful not to disturb the layout on the floor, and attended to my life’s current responsibilities: Callie, chickens, kittens, vegetables. I forced myself to eat some toast. I played with the kittens on the porch, then put them in their crate for a rest. And then I walked my labyrinth. And walked. And walked. Callie stared at me through the French doors, giving me her saddest face, and at one time, I swore she shook her head at me,
What? You can’t even take me for a measly little walk and here you are walking in circles all pickin’
day?
You won’t even let me in? Who is this person you’ve become?
But I turned back to my task, took another step, studied another photo. See Paige and Annie in matching Easter dresses. See Joe sleeping. I wanted to crawl in next to him, but I wasn’t the one who’d taken the picture. It was taken before I knew Joe existed. When he loved Paige and Paige loved him. She loved him enough to want to capture him sleeping peacefully, his lips parted, his hair flattened on one side; looking the same way he had on mornings when I had watched him sleeping and loved him too.
But see this: Annie, Zach, Joe, and me, in that very bed. It had been morning, the bed was messy, our hair was messy. Joe had set up the tripod and climbed in. Annie hit him with a pillow just as the camera clicked.
Outside, the clouds broke open all at once, and rain pounded the gravel, battered the porch. I was on my fourth round of the path and had left my third message to Paige when someone knocked on the front door. On the other side of the door’s window, Clem Silver held up his hand. Clem Silver at my house. Clem Silver never visited people at their homes, even when he was invited. But now that the question of my emotional and mental health was displayed in paths of photographs winding from room to room, there he was, first in line to bear witness. I opened the door.
He had one of those seventies clear bubble umbrellas, which he collapsed and set on the porch. ‘I heard,’ he said. ‘And . . . well, I’m sorry.’
‘Thanks.’
‘And I brought you this.’ He waved a green garbage bag. I held the door open.
‘Ignore the, ah, mess.’
He stepped inside, but there was nowhere to walk, so we stood close to each other in the hallway by the door. He smelled of his cigarettes and turpentine. He stared at his shoes. ‘I had – have – two daughters.’
‘Really?’
He nodded. ‘When my wife left, I was so mad, and she was so mad. She went to Florida, and I can’t think of a place I’d hate more to live, except, maybe . . .’ He looked up and gave me a little smile. ‘Las Vegas. So I stayed put and she talked bad about me and those girls grew up without me. And I don’t feel good about that. Tears me up just about every day. I love it here, you know that. But I acted like a barnacle and I wish I’d been a bird.’
I kept nodding, trying to picture shy Clem surrounded by a houseful of females.
‘It’s none of my business. I’m not trying to tell you what to do. Or maybe I am. But I thought, if you ever decide to – well, you’ll have it. And if you don’t need it, that’s okay too.’
‘Do you want me to open it?’
‘I’m gonna go now. And then you can if you want. And then we’ll just see.’ He started to pat me on the shoulder but I hugged him, and then he was gone.
I looked in the bag and saw a roll of paper. I unrolled it. It was another map, hand painted, more tans and browns than greens, but still a work of art. It was a map of Las Vegas.
The phone finally rang. I made a run back along the path,
Hold on, kids,
to catch the phone just before the answering machine got it.
But it was David. ‘Ella? Thank God you picked up. Listen. Remember when I told you
Real Simple
magazine wanted to do a story – a big spread – on you and the store?’
‘Sort of . . . I thought it was
Sunset.
’
‘Well, they might too. But this is more about
you
and the store. A human interest thing. Anyway. I can’t believe this got by me, we’d confirmed last week, but with everything that’s been going on, they called again yesterday, but I forgot to check the messages on the store –’
‘What got by you?’
‘They’re here.’
‘Here?’
‘At the store. They love it. Totally gaga over every inch of it. We need you down here pronto. They want to interview and take pictures of you and the – Hey, can we get the kids back for a day or two?’
‘What?’
‘Listen, I need you to pull through for me. I can’t tell you how important this is, what an op-por-tun-i-
ty.
We need this, Ella. You’re the one who got me into this thing in the first place, remember. I can’t hold them off any longer. They like the angle of a woman rising above her pain, the lemonade out of lemons, which fits with the whole grocery-store-into-picnic theme. Do that cool thing with your hair. See you in a few minutes.’
‘David!’
But he’d hung up. ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
I don’t think I’d ever felt worse. Or looked worse. I peered in the mirror. I still had Paige’s robe on over my clothes. Eyes still swollen. Hair matted like some ridiculous new invention. Carrot-flavoured cotton candy. Not exactly the strong woman rising above her pain.
I wanted to curl up with my pictures and wait for my phone to ring, to hear, ‘Hi, Mommy.’ But David needed me. It was the least I could do after I’d screwed up everyone’s life. I changed into my sage green flowered dress, the one Joe always loved; he’d called me ‘flower child’ when I wore it. I spritzed water on my carrot cotton candy and pulled it up into the pretty clip the kids gave me the previous Mother’s Day. I washed my face and even put on makeup and silver and jade earrings.
As I stepped gingerly over the photos, cutting from path to path, Sergio’s booklet caught my eye. I stuck it in my pocket.
The rain had stopped as quickly as it started, and the sun was already working on drying out the store’s puddled parking lot, which swarmed with activity. A woman with short, dark hair, dressed in cream slacks and a crisp white blouse, a couple of guys with camera equipment, a younger woman in jeans carrying two oversize vases of flowers, all filed up the porch steps. I followed them in. David introduced me to the photographers, who reminded me of Joe, the way they carried their cameras and lights with such confidence.
David mentioned to the dark-haired woman, ‘Ella, this is Blaire Markham. She’s writing the article for
Real Simple.
’
Blaire smiled and extended her hand, which felt cool in my clammy one. ‘You have quite an inspiring story. I am so sorry about the loss of your husband.’
‘Thanks.’ I felt sweat beads breaking on my upper lip.
‘We like to feature women who defy odds, who carve out a unique life for themselves that truly reflects their personality. That’s why we’ve chosen to write about you.’
I nodded, kept nodding, kept myself from letting out a big, fat
HA!
Joe Sr and Marcella walked in, wearing their church clothes. They stood back by the board games, Marcella’s arms folded across her chest, her black patent leather purse hanging from the crook of her elbow.
David introduced them to Blaire.
‘Great!’ she said. ‘I’d love to get a multigenerational shot in front of the store, so we could lay it out next to this one.’ She walked over and tapped the frame of the photo of Joe and Joe Sr and Sergio that hung on the wall by Joe’s apron. ‘Where are your children? We like to include lots of pictures of the family in the spreads we do at
Real Simple,
since they’re always a central part of the story.’
‘It’s not that simple,’ I say. ‘In fact, it’s Real
Complicated.
’ I let out a nervous laugh. The room fell silent, and while Blaire waited for me to explain, Marcella said, ‘Multigenerational, my foot. Ella’s not my daughter. And she’s not my grandchildren’s mother.’
David said, ‘Ma. That’s not fair.’
‘It may not be fair, but it’s the truth. What is she even doing here? This store is for my grandchildren, who no longer belong to her. For a woman who’s so bent on telling the truth all of a sudden, she forgot a few very important details. If you ask me.’
‘Which, as I recall, no one did.’ David was the one laughing nervously now. The timer went off, and he called out, ‘Saved by the bell! Snickerdoodles for everyone,’ and went to pull them from the oven. He set them down on a table, poured mugs of coffee, and said, ‘Ma, Pop, sit. Ella, get busy in the kitchen.’ He placed a basket of lemons and a pitcher on the counter. ‘And we can even get a lemonade-out-of-lemons shot. Here, hold the knife.’
I took the knife from him. The lemon felt slippery in my grip. The photographers adjusted lights, changing positions, angles. Trying to make me look my best.
‘I can’t do this,’ I said.
‘Oh, my mistake.’ David handed me another knife. ‘Much sharper.’
‘No, David, I mean
this.
I mean pretending like everything’s lemonade and snickerdoodles when at this particular moment, it’s horrible and rotten. I mean not talking about what’s really going on, so people can see only what they want to see.’ Blaire took her pen and notebook out, clicked her tape recorder on, like we were celebrities and she was writing for the
National Enquirer,
as if anyone would care about our little family’s heartbreak.
‘Ella? Now? Really?’ David tilted his head.
‘Yeah. Really.’ I turned to Blaire. ‘Marcella’s right. I’m not Annie and Zach’s mother. I’m their stepmother. Their real mother just won custody of them and moved them to Las Vegas. My husband drowned. And this store? It was drowning in debt. We took a huge risk and remodelled it, and we’re trying to bring it back to life because we can’t bring him back to life. And that sign out there? Life’s a Picnic? Yeah, sometimes. Other times you’ve got to lay out your blanket in a barbed-wire internment camp.’ I pulled out Sergio’s ID and waved it. ‘Because the man who built this store? The sweet, hardworking, America-loving Italian immigrant who moved here to start a new life? They called him an “Enemy Alien” and he was sent away to an internment camp during World War II. Yep. Apparently, it wasn’t just the Japanese who were victims of that disgraceful human rights violation. But no one knows about it because no one
talks
about it!’
Joe Sr got up. He shook a finger at Blaire Markham. ‘You turn that thing off.’ She nodded and obeyed. He came to me with his eyes filled and reached for the ID. ‘Where did you find that?’
‘In one of the boxes way in the back of the attic at the store.’
‘I’ve never seen it before.’ He took it, sat back down, and opened it, and in doing so, seemed to open doors that had been shut for both him and Marcella for almost sixty years. They both stared at the pages, tears running down their faces.
I said, ‘He’s gone now. His story . . . It should be told.’
‘What do you care about this family?’ Marcella asked.
‘Marcella? This family
is
my family. You know that. You both do.’
They stared at me. David came up and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear, then placed both of his hands on my shoulders. ‘Ella’s the best thing that’s happened to this family. You’ve said it yourself, Ma.’
Marcella nodded while she held her hankie to her eyes. Finally she said, ‘February 21, 1942. They took both our fathers. They took my papa in his slippers! They didn’t even let him go inside to put on his shoes.’ Now I understood their admonishment about Zach wearing his slippers.
Blaire held her pen to the paper but asked Marcella, ‘May I?’ Marcella looked at Joe Sr and said, ‘Not today. Maybe later. But I want to say this. I still remember a sign at the post office. I had just learned to read at school. It said, don’t speak the enemy language! speak american! That’s when we all had to learn English. Even at home, we stopped speaking Italian. We felt guilty.’
Joe Sr told us that more than six hundred thousand Italian immigrants were under regulations. Many of their homes were raided. ‘They had to stay within five miles of their homes and had an eight p.m. curfew. Like they were children.’ He said that thousands of Italian American coastal residents were relocated and had to find new places to live. The government said they couldn’t be trusted along our coastline. Fishermen lost their livelihood. Some of them came to Elbow.
‘Did both your fathers come home unharmed?’ Blaire asked.
‘Yes and no,’ Joe Sr said. ‘Papa returned after twenty-three months. But he had lost his bravado. He was quiet. He worked even harder than before. But he never wanted to talk about it.’
‘My papa,’ Marcella said, dabbing her already puffy eyes with her handkerchief again. ‘He carried home a heavy shame. Our family was changed for ever. He had once been so proud. Proud of Italia, proud of America. And Joe Sr and I?’ Marcella put her hand on his back and leaned towards us. ‘When we were children, the first words I spoke to him at school were’ – she lowered her voice to a whisper – ‘“Did they take your papa, too?” And he nodded. And that was it. We never talked about it, either. But it’ – she linked her fingers together – ‘it bound us together. Our secret. But now our secret is our curse.’
‘My brother,’ Joe Sr said, ‘he died in that war. A man gives his son, but he’s treated like the enemy. And you know what my father did? The Fourth of July, after he was released, he threw the biggest celebration this town had ever seen. That’s what started Elbow’s tradition. He said, “Let them try to call me an enemy. I’ll be the best goddamn patriot this country has ever seen.”’
David said, ‘You’ve gotta love that. I always thought you and Grandpa decorated for the Fourth with more flourish than
any
gay man ever has.’
Marcella leaned against Joe Sr, the tears and sobs taking over. ‘We’re cursed.’
He stroked her shoulder. ‘Joe Jr, and now Annie and Zach . . .’ Joe Sr’s voice trailed off. His eyes went moist.
I said, ‘Annie and Zach are not dead.’
He shook his head. ‘I know, honey. But they’re gone. Taken from us. They used the word
custody
with our fathers too,
taken into custody.
And now our government decides this too?’
We sat in silence. Blaire Markham stood. ‘Clearly, this was bad timing. As far as I’m concerned, everything said here was off the record. Unless’ – she looked directly at Joe Sr and Marcella – ‘you change your minds. Here’s my card if that’s the case. It’s an important story, and I hope you’ll consider telling it.’
After she and the photographers left, the four of us sat around the table, nibbling on the cookies, tired from it all but becoming more and more easy with one another. There were hugs and apologies, and I knew I had to tell them what I wanted to do.
I’d been holding a question as I’d walked my crazy labyrinth. Did the kids need Paige? My answer had come. It was yes. But I’d held another question too. Did the kids still need me, now that they had Paige? I knew that answer too. And so I said to David, ‘I don’t want to bail on you. But do you think you could cover things for a few weeks? I want to fix this. I want to go to Las Vegas.’
‘Of course I want you to bring Annie and Zach home. But Ella? Is there a chance in hell?’
‘Look.’ I turned to Marcella and Joe Sr. ‘You didn’t read her letters. She really did feel like she had to leave, that she had no choice. She didn’t
want
to walk out on Annie and Zach . . . or Joe, either. She was very ill. Her thinking was muddled. But she did what she thought was best. And then she was shut out. Shunned from her home. She couldn’t see her kids.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Not unlike your fathers.’
Joe Sr sat up. ‘Don’t you ever –’
‘Joseph. Stop. She’s right. This has all gone on long enough.’ She touched his rough cheek. ‘I just want my grandbabies back.’
I only packed a few large suitcases and two boxes of the kids’ clothes and toys and the unopened letters to Annie and Zach. I stuck those in the glove compartment of the Jeep. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be gone – I figured two weeks at the most. I had no plan other than to drive to Las Vegas and call Paige once I arrived. She couldn’t turn me away once I got there.
Lizzie had agreed to keep the chickens in her coop, and David and Gil had promised they’d watch Thing One and Thing Two. As I was slipping the boxes into the backseat, David came walking up the road, carrying a bunch of cornflowers from the photo shoot that never happened and a picnic basket – my favourite picnic basket – from the store, and he handed it all to me. ‘Look inside,’ he said. It was full of the things I loved: a jar of Marcella’s minestrone, her jam – made from blackberries the kids and Joe and I had picked last summer – one of her pesto and chicken salad sandwiches, and a lamb shank for Callie.
‘Does she know you’re giving me all this?’
‘She helped me pack it. I’m so sorry about the interview thing. I should have never thrown that on you. And I’m sorry about not standing by you. I’ve been an idiot . . . so bent on trying to help turn the store around, be the saviour, keep the kids here. It took Gil to point out that I’ve had the sensitivity of a rhinoceros.’
I pulled out a list and handed it to David. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s a helluva lot, I know.’
‘The thing is, El, I love it. I love the store. I love everything about it. You were right. I
did
want to be the one who took it over. I was jealous of Joe. Of how he got handed this thing on a silver platter, something he hadn’t really wanted, at least not since he was a little kid, while I was practically jumping up and down saying, “Pick me, pick me!” If it weren’t for you and your idea for Life’s a Picnic, I’d be a very bored person married to a very fat man.’