Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

David finished off his last sip of wine. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Aw, come on, David,’ I teased. ‘Didn’t you always want the store when you were kids? Wasn’t there a bit of sibling rivalry going on there? You know, Davy’s Market ?’

David’s face took on the colour of the pomegranates I’d set in a bowl on the counter. ‘What, when I was, like, five? I outgrew that obsession around the same time I quit wearing my Winnie-the-Pooh undies because Joe called them my Poo Pants.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll think about it. And I’ll need to see the financial information in black-and-white.’

You mean red? I almost asked, but didn’t.

The rest of the week, while I wrote fourteen measly checks accompanied by notes that promised I’d send more as soon as possible, I tried to think of ways to convince David that the picnic store was a good idea. Sure, it was a little touristy for Joe’s taste, but he’d mentioned how he wished he could somehow regain the original charm of Grandpa Sergio’s store. And Joe would appreciate the ode to our picnics.

I had to convince David that this was a way to pay homage to that history, keep the store running, and make it profitable too. I needed David. I could cook up a storm for my family, but he could take it to a whole other level, and I obviously had some things to learn about the money side of a business. I felt desperate, and I still hadn’t mentioned the life insurance problem, not to anyone.

I would definitely need the family to get on board. And that meant disclosing to everyone just how bad things were financially. I knew I should have already come clean, but it seemed like a betrayal. I needed to talk to Joe.

One night I picked up the phone and dialled the number at the store. I had done it before, many times, just to hear his voice, to hear him say, ‘Thanks for calling Capozzi’s Market. We’re tied up with customers right now. Leave a message and we’ll get back to you.’

But this was different. This time, I actually called to talk to him. Some part of me, my arm and fingers at least, momentarily forgot that Joe was dead, and picked up the phone and dialled his number so I could say, Honey, what should I do? Come home, have dinner — I made lentil soup — and we’ll figure this mess out. Oh, and can you bring some coffee?

When the answering machine picked up, his voice knocked me into the present. I hung up the phone, then checked it. The dial tone, flat and lifeless, droned through my ear, through my head, my throat, my heart. Changing the store would mean changing the answering-machine recording, something I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do.

The next week David, Lucy and I were out touring her vineyard, walking up the hill between the rows, the vines like outstretched arms greeting us in the late afternoon sun. Lucy was in love with this spot of earth and excited to share it in all its phases. She wore work boots and a broad-brimmed hat, tenderly touching the grapes and vines as she talked.

‘The pinot noir grapes are starting to change from green to purple. If you look closely enough, each grape displays a different intensity of colour. Aren’t they gorgeous?’ She told us the process was called verasion. This was also the time in the growing season for stripping away some of the leaves in order to control the canopy. ‘The more sun these lovelies get, the drier and more flavourful they’ll be. By fall they’ll be perfectly plump and ready for crush.’ She mentioned terroir, the big buzzword among vintners and winemakers that was constantly debated.

‘Terroir is that sense of place that you experience when you drink a glass of wine. This hillside has a history.’ Lucy held her hands out as if she were giving a blessing. ‘There is the climate, even the certain way the sunlight slants against this hill. And the geology — the layers upon layers of rock and volcanic ash from millions of years ago. The parent materials break down to make the soil what it is today, its mineralogy, the chemical balance.’

‘I have one of those,’ David said. ‘Oh, wait, mine is a chemical im balance. My mistake, go on.’

Lucy rolled her eyes. ‘As I was saying… terroir is the expression of the land the grapes come from. Others say terroir is about viticulture, the influence on the grape. It’s the way the vines are hand pruned, the type of barrels, the whole winemaking process as well. And some say it’s everything — from what occurred here throughout the ages to the moment the bottle is uncorked.’

‘I’ve always thought,’ I said, ‘this might sound strange — but Annie and Zach, this place, Elbow, permeates them. I always want to breathe them in. It must be their terroir.’

Lucy said, ‘The terroir of people? I can hear all the debating they’ll get out of this one. Do go on.’

‘It’s… I can smell the land, this place, in their hair, in the creases of their necks, and on their fingertips. This wonderful loamy scent mixed with wood smoke, the tanoak and redwoods, the rosemary, the lavender. And okay, a little garlic from being at Marcella’s… I don’t know. It sounds funny when I try to explain it.’

David patted my back. ‘Nothing a little bathing wouldn’t fix.’

‘Ha-ha. Very funny.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I actually get what you’re saying. And I could even take it a step further. I’ve been thinking about your idea for the store.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Grandpa Sergio died years ago, but that grocery store still smells like him when I walk in the door — it’s faint, but it’s always there. Especially up in the office. His cherry tobacco pipe smoke. And it’s mixed with Pop’s Old Spice.’

‘Nothing opening a window wouldn’t fix,’ Lucy said.

‘Touché.’ He shook his head. ‘But no, that wouldn’t get rid of it. Nothing will. Even changing the store, even remodelling it and turning it into a slightly different kind of store — it will still be Capozzi’s Market. You’ll still be able to feel the family history when you walk in. Maybe even more so with the big nod to the mother country, as Grandpa used to call it. That’s what’s important. If we don’t try Ella’s idea, we’re probably going to have to let the place go and lose everything my grandfather, my dad, and my brother worked for all these years.’

I was afraid to say anything. Some kind of spell seemed to be on us there on that symmetrically furrowed hillside, surrounded by old gnarled vines and young grapes.

‘Change can be good. You know, I always told Joe to quit fighting the tourist thing. To celebrate it. But I was just the baby of the family, not anyone who’d ever run the store. Grandpa made that clear,’ David finally said. ‘I still want to talk numbers. But I think you might be onto something, Ella. Let’s talk about what you would need from me. I think I want a place at this picnic.’

I grabbed the both of them and let out a victory holler. We ambled arm in arm down the hill to the small stone winery to celebrate. Despite the fact that now we had to talk numbers.

Lucy poured wine. We toasted to terroir, to Life’s a Picnic. I told them about my life insurance problem. I also explained just how bad I thought the store’s financial situation was. I could see them both not gasping as if their lives depended on it. Lucy poured more wine. David drummed his fingers and made a ticking sound with his tongue — a habit of his whenever he was thinking something through. I usually only noticed it when we were on the phone, but at that point in the evening David’s tongue ticking was the only sound in the room.

Finally he said, ‘Let me break the news gently to the folks, about the store and about the insurance. I know why Joe didn’t fess up to Dad.’ He seemed far away. ‘Because he was always trying to make him and Grandpa proud. We both were. Even me with my desperate lack of Italian machismo. My dad seems to still desperately need that… pride in the store, pride in his father, pride in us.’ His eyes filled and he stood up. ‘In his two sons.’