Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

After Joe Sr and Marcella left, I put the kids to bed and told my mom I wanted to check on something at the store. The parking lot was still almost full from the two restaurants in town. I wanted to get into the store without seeing or talking to anyone, so I went around back and climbed the stairs before turning on any lights.

I opened and shut the desk drawers, ran my finger over the carved words on the underside of what had then been his father’s desk, when Joe and David were bored nine- and seven-year-olds, waiting for their father to quit talking to a customer and close the store for the evening. Joe had shown me the carvings with a penlight, laughing as he told the story. He had used his pocketknife — a recently received Christmas present from their parents that David coveted but had been denied due to his younger status. Joe had carved Joey’s Market. Two days later, David had got hold of the knife, drawn a line through Joe’s name, and carved Davy’s. And so it went, back and forth numerous times, a lopsided column forming, until they got distracted and started fighting about something else. If tenacity had been the indicator of whose market Capozzi’s would become — according to the carvings, at least — the store would have been David’s, the last name without a line carved through it.

At first, going through the books was like trying to read Russian, but eventually the message was clear in any language: The store was in worse trouble than I’d thought. It wasn’t just the recently unpaid bills I’d found in the files. How could I not know this? Joe had refinanced and pulled money out right before we got married. The store was in deep, deep trouble. The last few months had been the most brutal. No wonder he hadn’t sent in the application for the new insurance policy.

I knew things had been tough. Joe had discussed some of it with me. But he hadn’t told me the whole story. The store was losing money every day and had been for who knew how long? His parents didn’t know — I was sure of that. But maybe Joe had told his best friend.

I dialled Frank and Lizzie’s number, hoping Lizzie wouldn’t answer. Lizzie, of course, answered and, in the middle of my apology, handed the phone to Frank. Frank mumbled a hello.

‘Did you know about this?’

‘Ella? Do you know what time —’

‘Did you? Know about the store?’

‘Where are you?’

‘Here. At the store.’

‘I’ll be there. Give me a few minutes.’

I made coffee. The coffeepot said three a.m., and I’d thought it was still only ten or eleven. I tried to think: Frank’s face when I’d told him I planned to keep the store. Had he changed the subject? Yes. I remembered. I’d thought it was too difficult for him to picture the store going on without Joe. He’d looked away, asked if Annie was getting excited about starting school, said that Molly had already picked out her Pocahontas lunch box.

I unlocked the front door and let Frank in. He’d pulled on a Giants sweatshirt and his jeans and Uggs. I poured him a cup of coffee.

My teeth chattered, though I wasn’t cold. ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Did you know about this?’

‘What this are we talking about?’

‘How many thises are there?’ My voice shook while I tried to keep it low, keep it from screeching.

‘Look. Back up, Ella. I know you have everything in the world to be upset about. But which exact thing are you talking about?’

I took a breath. ‘The store, Frank. The fact that it’s going under, and has been. Way under.’

‘He kept thinking it would turn around, that it was just a slump.’

‘Why didn’t he tell me how bad it was?’

‘Look. Calm down.’

I leaned towards him. ‘Do not,’ I said, ‘tell me to calm down.’

‘Financially, you’ll be —’

‘It’s not about the money!’ I slumped into the chair. ‘He was struggling all alone. I thought that recently the store had hit a slump — but he never told me how bad it was — unless I just had my head too far up my own ass to see it.’ I got up and paced. There was that time he flipped out over Callie’s vet bill. That hadn’t seemed like him, but I’d shrugged it off. And it was true he’d recently let me in on concerns over the store, but it had been struggling for years. ‘How could I have not seen this? I loved this man. I talked to him every day, Frank. And his whole business and livelihood is barrelling down the tubes?’

Frank set down his coffee and pulled me into a hug. His chin moved against my shoulder as he spoke, just like when he came to tell me they’d found Joe’s body.

‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘He didn’t want to bring that shit home. He felt optimistic that it would turn around. “People will get tired of driving to Costco,” he said. I told him that was the beauty of Costco; you only had to drive there once a month and you could load up with every little thing you could ever want for at least a month, if not six. He thought business would turn around any day. He didn’t want it to interfere with what you guys had at home. He wanted your marriage to be different… than, you know, what it was like for him and Paige. Look, don’t be mad at Joe. There was a lot of pressure on him to keep that store going.’

Joe had told me that before Grandpa Sergio died, he willed the store to Joe. Sergio said the store would be Joe’s to run, and eventually he would also inherit the land it was on when his parents were gone. Joe quit college and his dream of travelling the world as a photojournalist, and returned home to help his dad run the store. Several years later, he bought the cottage that had once been Sergio’s and Rosemary’s — at a family-discounted price — and married Paige.

‘I’m mostly mad at me, for not seeing it. I mean, I have to admit, I got upset when he did try to talk to me about money. I just had no idea how much he wasn’t saying.’

He shrugged. ‘Everyone’s different, I guess. Lizzie would have been on my ass about it every day.’ That didn’t help. I must have flinched, because then he said, ‘But that’s just Lizzie. Financially, you’ll be fine. My dad’s guy Hank fixed Joe up with a sweet life insurance policy. You need to go home and get some sleep.’

I nodded, pressed my lips together. I didn’t tell him that sweet policy never quite happened. ‘Frank? Thank you. I’m sorry I woke you up and then dumped this all on you.’

‘No worries. Come on, I’ll walk out with you.’

‘You go ahead. I’m going to put stuff away upstairs, and then I’ll head home.’

‘Promise?’

‘Yeah.’

But I went back upstairs and looked through every file again and again. Everything was exactly where it should be; it was just that there were numerous payables files. I drove back home in early morning light and finally felt like I could sleep. I would figure out something.

When I walked into the kitchen, Annie sat on the kitchen counter talking on the phone, clicking her feet together, pink fuzzy socks ricocheting off each other. She giggled. Callie sat alert at my feet, thumping her tail on the floor, hoping doggy treats were in the grocery bags I carried, but they held only the store’s books. Joe had always remembered Callie’s treats.

Annie said into the phone, ‘Okay. I love you too. Bye.’

She hung up. I picked her up off the counter and held her. Her soft tangles of hair tickled my neck. She smelled like the peach girly powder she’d talked me into buying her at Target. My angel of mercy in SpongeBob SquarePants jammies. ‘Morning, Glory.’

‘Morning, Mommy.’

‘Was that Nonna?’

‘No.’

‘Lucy?’

She shook her head.