The Underside of Joy (4 page)

‘Why don’t you sit down?’ I said, then started to take the spray bottle from her hand. ‘Rest. Let me pour you a cup of coffee.’

She pulled it back. ‘No. This is what I do. This is all I can do. Resting, it makes it worse for me.’

I nodded, hugged her again. ‘Of course.’ Marcella always believed in the clarity of Windex.

The next morning, I slid my black dress from its dry-cleaning bag and lifted my arms and felt the cool lining slip over my head. I considered slipping into the plastic instead, letting it tighten against my nostrils and mouth, and letting them lay me in the same dark hole with Joe. It was the thought of the kids that helped me push my feet into the black slings my best friend, Lucy, bought me –’You cannot wear Birkenstocks to a funeral, my dear, even in Northern California’ – and find both of the silver and aquamarine drop earrings Joe gave me our first Christmas together.

At the church, thirty-six people spoke. We cried, but we laughed too. Most of the stories went back to the time before I knew Joe. It seemed odd that almost everyone in the church had known him much longer than I had. I was the newcomer among them, but I found a certain comfort in telling myself that they didn’t know Joe the way I did.

Afterwards, I remembered having conversations I couldn’t quite hear and receiving hugs I couldn’t quite feel – as if I’d wrapped myself in plastic after all. The only thing I could feel was Annie’s and Zach’s hands slipping into mine, the solidity of their palms, the pressings of their small fingers, as we walked out of the church, as we stood at the grave site on the hill, as we walked down towards the car. And then Annie’s hand pulled out of mine. She walked up to a striking blonde woman I didn’t know, standing at the edge of the cemetery.
Perhaps one of Joe’s old classmates,
I thought. The woman bent down and Annie reached out, lightly touched her shoulder.

‘Annie?’ I called. I smiled at the woman. ‘She doesn’t have a shy bone in her body.’

The woman took Annie’s other hand in both of hers, whispered in her ear, and then spoke to me over her shoulder. ‘Believe me, I know that. But Annie knows who I am, don’t you, sweet pea?’

Annie nodded without pulling her hand away or looking up. She said,
‘Mama?’

Chapter Four

Annie had called her
Mama.
She and Zach called me
Mom
and
Mommy.
But not
Mama.
Never
Mama.
I’d never questioned it, or really even thought of it, but the distinction rang out in that cemetery:
Mama
is the first-word-ever-uttered variety of
mother.
The murmur of a satisfied baby at the breast.

I recognized Paige then. I’d once found a picture of her, gloriously pregnant, that had been stuck in a book on photography entitled
Capturing the Light
– it was the one photo Joe had forgotten, or maybe had intended to keep, when he purged the house of her. I was astounded at her beauty and said so. He’d shrugged and said, ‘It’s a good picture.’

Now I could see that Joe liked his wives tall. She was taller than I, maybe five-eleven, and I wasn’t used to being shorter than other women. I had what some people referred to as great hair, those who happened to like wild, red and unmanageable. But Paige had universally great hair. Long, blonde, straight, silky, shampoo-commercial hair. Computer-enhanced hair. Women comfort themselves when they look at magazines, saying, ‘That photo’s been all touched up. No one really has hair like that, or skin like that, or a body like that.’ Paige had
all that,
along with Jackie O sunglasses, the single accessory our culture associates with style, mystery and a strong, grieving widow and mother . . . or in her case, mama.

Annie called her
Mama.

These thoughts bungee jumped through my mind in the eight seconds it took her to rise gracefully on her heels, holding Annie in her arms, and walk towards me, extending her hand. ‘Hi. I’m Paige Capozzi. Zach and Annie’s mother.’

Mother?
Define
mother.
And her name was still Capozzi.
Capozzi?
Joe Capozzi. Annie Capozzi. Zach Capozzi. Paige Capozzi. And Ella Beene.
One of these things is not like the others; one of these things doesn’t belong.

Zach hid behind me, still holding on to my hand.

‘Hey, Zach. You’ve grown so big.’

I heard Marcella mutter next to me, ‘Yeah. Children grow quite a bit in three years, lady.’

Joe Sr said, ‘What’s she – Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ He reached his arm over Marcella’s shoulders as they turned and walked away.

I thought about telling Paige my name.
Hi,
I’m
Ella, Zach and Annie’s mother.
Like we were contestants on
What’s My Line?
I said nothing. People gathered. Joe’s relatives, excluding his parents, all took their turns saying reserved, polite hellos to her, but you’d think it was a family of Brits, not Italians. David stood next to me and said, ‘Why, nice to finally see you, Paige. You’re looking quite radiant . . . ,’ and then under his breath, he whispered to me, ‘for a
funeral.
’

Aunt Kat, who always acted like an entire welcoming committee bound up in one tiny woman, did manage to say, ‘Come to the house. We’re all going to the house.’ Everyone turned to me.

David said, ‘How hospitable of you, Aunt Kat, to invite Paige to Ella’s home for her.’

I felt my mouth turn up in a smile; I heard myself say to Paige, ‘Yes, of course, please do.’ By then she’d set down Annie, who stood between us looking back and forth, like a net judge in a tennis match. My heels sank into the grass.

Paige said, ‘That would be lovely. My flight doesn’t leave until tomorrow. Thank you.’

I didn’t want to know anything about Paige – not where her flight was returning her to, not what she did for a living, not if she had more children, and if so, not if she would hang around this time to help raise them. But okay. She was leaving. She would stop by the house for an hour at most to pay her respects to a man she had clearly not respected while he was
alive,
and then she would drive off, and by tomorrow she would fly far, far away, back to the Land of Mothers Who Left.

Gil and David drove the kids and me home. David turned around to say something, then looked at Annie and Zach leaning into my sides and evidently decided to shut up and face front. I stared at the oval scar on the back of Gil’s domed head, wondering how long it had been hiding under his hair before he’d shaved it all off. Was the scar from a childhood wound, from a bike accident in his teens, or had it happened more recently? A quarrel with a crazy lover, before he’d found David?

Annie sighed and said, ‘She’s pretty!’

Annie was three when Paige left. How much could she possibly remember? I asked her, ‘Do you remember her, Banannie?’

Annie nodded. ‘She still smells good too.’

She remembered her scent. Of course. I’d inhaled every one of Joe’s recently worn T-shirts, grateful now for my tendency to let laundry pile up. I sunk my face into his robe every time I walked by where it hung in the bathroom, dabbed his aftershave on my wrists. Of course Annie remembered.

At the house I kept my distance from Paige. It was easy to tell where she went, because the floor seemed to tilt in her direction, as if we were on a raft and I was made of feathers and she was made of gold. Annie came up and leaned against me, and I smoothed back her hair, ran my fingers through her ponytail. Then she was off, taking Paige by the hand, leading her into the kids’ room. My fiercest ally, Lucy, whispered in my ear, ‘That woman’s got nerve,’ but no one else broached the subject. At funerals, it seems most people leave old grudges at home.

And yet. I certainly didn’t want to chat it up with Joe’s ex-wife on the day of his funeral, or any other day. What did she want? Why was she here? Annie kept dividing her time between the two of us, as if she felt some sort of obligation when she should have been thinking of no one other than her six-year-old self and her daddy. Zach wore his path between Marcella, my mom, and me.

Once I walked around a corner to find Paige and Frank’s wife, Lizzie, embracing, crying. My face went hot, and I whirled back around to the crowd in the kitchen. Even though Frank had been Joe’s best friend since eighth grade, I had been in Frank and Lizzie’s house only a handful of times. She and Paige had been close friends. And so, she’d explained to me the first time I met her, she and I would not be. When I’d reached out to shake her hand, she held mine in both of hers and said, ‘You seem like a nice person. But Paige is my best bud. I hope you understand.’ And then she’d turned and walked away, joining in another conversation. Since then, we’d greeted each other, made a few stabs at small talk about the kids, but never once had a real conversation. Joe and I had never so much as had dinner with Frank and Lizzie, always just Frank. Everyone else in Elbow had welcomed me, but Lizzie’s rejection reared at times, chaffing, a sharp pebble in a perfectly fitting shoe.

I fixed Annie and Zach paper plates of food, but it wasn’t long before they started showing signs of utter fatigue; Zach lay across my lap, sucking his thumb, holding his Bubby, his name for his beloved turquoise bunny that had long lost all its stuffing, and Annie was amped up, running in circles, which she frequently did right before she passed out. ‘Come on, you two. Tell everyone good night and I’ll tuck you in.’

‘No!’ Annie whined. ‘I’m not tired.’

‘Honey, you’re exhausted.’

‘Excuse me? Are you me or am
I
me?’ She had her hand on her jutted hip, and the other finger pointed to her chest. Paige peeked around the corner.

I took a deep breath. Annie could sometimes act like a six-year-old adolescent. The truth was, we were all exhausted. ‘You are you. And I am me. And me is Mommy. As in Mom.’ And I pointed to my own chest. ‘Me.’ I stood up. ‘And what Mom-
me
says,
you
do.’

She laughed. I sighed relief. ‘Good one!’ she said, delighted. ‘
You
got
me
on that one.’ I looked over to see Paige turning away. The kids made their good-night rounds, Paige hugging each of them and crouching down, talking to them. God, it was weird to see her there, in our house, chatting with our people, holding our children.

In the old rocker in their room, the kids climbed onto my lap and I read to them and stayed until they fell asleep, which was only about five minutes. I noticed a crate of old books that I’d stuck in the back of the closet, now sitting by the rocker. Had the kids dragged that out, looking for something? Most of them were books they’d outgrown or just got bored with, but maybe they seemed new to them again. Or maybe Annie had shown them to Paige.

I slipped out, quietly closing the door. David handed me a shot of Jack Daniel’s and whispered, ‘She left. She’s outta here.’

I wasn’t much of a Jack Daniel’s drinker, but I raised the shot and gulped it, then grabbed Joe’s down jacket and went outside. The fog had unfurled, chilling the air and sending home everyone but the closest friends and family, who had crowded inside, looking at photo albums and getting drunk. Through the picture window I watched them, a portrait of a family enduring; the warm lamplight surrounded them like soft, old worn-in love.

I pulled on Joe’s jacket and headed for the garden. I wanted the company of tomatoes, of scallions, of kale. I craved lying down between their rows, burying my face in their fragrant, damp dirt. Maybe later I’d go down to the redwood circle and lie there, in the middle of that dark arboreal cathedral, Our Lady of
Sequoia sempervirens.
Joe had told me that the Pomo Indians believed that on a day in October, the forests could talk, that they would give answers to the people’s wishes. But October was still a long way off.

Lucy came running up behind me. ‘No wandering off alone.’

‘Pray tell, why not?’

‘You need a friend. And a good bottle of wine. Even better, a friend with her own vineyard.’ She held up a bottle of wine without a label; the designer was still working on it.

‘Okay, but let me bum a cigarette.’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t have any.’

‘Liar. You’re PMSing.’ I’d kicked a vicious habit fifteen years before in Advanced Biology at Boston U when they showed us a smoker’s lung. I’d transformed into a typical ex-smoker: a zealot who self-righteously preached about seeing the light of not lighting up. But that night a cigarette sounded like salvation. And Lucy was one of those rare breeds who could smoke a few cigarettes a few times a month when she was stressed, usually right before her period. I knew her cycle because it was the same as mine. Moon sisters. We’d met only when I’d moved to Elbow, but we immediately fell into an easy alignment that went way beyond our cycles. She had long black hair, but she said she should have been the redhead because her name was Lucy. Sometimes she called me Ella Mertz. She and David had become my closest friends. Besides Joe.

We ended up sitting on the bench by the garden, smoking without talking. The cigarette hurt my throat, made me light-headed. She handed me the bottle.

‘What, no glasses? Is this the latest craze in Sonoma wine tasting?’

‘Yeah, but usually we wrap it in a brown paper bag too.’

‘Distinguished.’
I tipped the bottle back and took a swig of pinot noir.

A voice came from behind us: ‘I just wanted to say good-bye.’ I jerked around to see Paige, who reached out her hand to me. I couldn’t extend my own because I was holding the bottle of wine in one hand and a Marlboro Light in the other. Class act if there ever was one.

‘Oh, sorry, here . . .’ I stamped out the cigarette and shoved the bottle back at Lucy. ‘I thought you left.’

‘I realized I hadn’t said a word to you since we got here, so I wanted to thank you for letting me come over. I know this must be a difficult time for you.’

I studied her, saw the origins of Annie’s eyes, Annie’s wilful chin, Zach’s noble forehead. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’ve done a good job with the children,’ she said, her voice cracking the slightest bit, a hairline fracture in the marble goddess. ‘I should be going.’

I stood. She raised her chin. I did not want a hug from her and figured she probably did not want a hug from me. But we had been hugging people all day – it was what you did at times like this – and so we gave each other stiff pats on the back, a stiff not-quite hug. She did smell good, much better than I did. Better than cigarette smoke and booze.

When I finally made it to bed, both kids had already left theirs and climbed into ours – mine – and were asleep. I was glad for their company. About two in the morning, Annie sprang up in bed and cried out, ‘Hi, Daddy!’ I jolted awake, expecting to see him standing over us, telling us it was time to get dressed and head out for a picnic.

Annie smiled in the foggy moonlight, her eyes still closed. I wanted to crawl inside her dream and stay there with her. Callie sighed and laid her head back down over my feet. Zach sucked noisily on his thumb while I tried to let the rhythm lull me back to sleep. Exhaustion had settled into my muscles, bones, and every organ – except my brain, which zigzagged incessantly through moments of my life with Joe. Now I tried to guide it to the few conversations we’d had about Paige, digging up the same information I’d once tossed into the No Need to Dwell pile. Back then, I didn’t want to live in the past, not his or mine. I didn’t ask the questions because I didn’t want to know the answers.

But I had wanted to make sure their ending was final, that there was no chance they could get back together. The last thing I wanted to be was a home wrecker.

At the house that first night I met Joe, the only evidence of Paige that I’d noticed was her bathrobe, and when I returned the next evening after a day of job hunting, the bathrobe was gone. Joe must have emptied the house of everything Paige, because I never found another indication that she existed, except for the one photograph of her pregnant.

‘Four months ago,’ Joe had said in his one offer of explanation soon after we met, ‘while the kids and I were at my mom’s for Sunday brunch, she packed up all her things.’ We had been lying in bed, a candle flame still creating moving shadows on the wall, long after our own shadows had stilled. ‘She took all her clothes except her bathrobe, which she’d practically been living in.’