Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

‘ 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.

A cemetery was quickly established on a pretty, peaceful spot not too far from the edge of town, but not far enough from the edge of the river. The flood of 1879 revealed the error. The river overflowed, uprooting gardens, trees, carriages, a couple of horses, six cabins, and a dozen coffins. The coffins bobbed down the river, along with the logs, towards the mill. That which had been laid to rest for eternity had become restless.

The townspeople grabbed their rowboats, their fishing nets, their ropes, and set off to catch the coffins and pull them back to dry land, which they did. Though it was true that no one died in that flood, not even the horses, the newspaper reported that twelve bodies were found in the river, which was also true. The coffins that still remained in the ground were dug up, and the cemetery was immediately moved up to the sunny hill, where Joe was buried.

The burial blunder was celebrated every year with the Elbow Bobbing for Coffins Parade. People decorated their rowboats, canoes, and kayaks like floats. Life-size (or perhaps I should say death-size) plastic coffins were tied in between the ‘row floats’. Tiki lamps lighted up each float and coffin. Tradition called for utter silence while the parade was in progress, and amazingly, everyone acquiesced, as the boats and coffins quietly moved downriver, the flames reflecting off the water, a silent dance.

I closed Lucy’s trunk and said, ‘Wow. Bobbing for Coffins. Why have I not seen how utterly morbid that is?’

Lucy smiled. ‘Of course it’s morbid. It’s Halloween.’

‘Do you think Annie and Zach will be okay with it? I mean… they did just see their drowned dad’s coffin placed into the ground. I talked to them about it, and they both seem excited about the parade. But still…’

‘I’m guessing they’ll be okay. Besides, you’ll be watching their every expression, and if it’s suddenly not okay, you’ll be there. El, it’s Halloween. And they’re kids. Amped up over candy. Who love the parade.’

That night, down at Life’s a Picnic, we unveiled our costumes to hoots and applause from Lucy, David, Gil, Marcella, and Joe Sr.

‘Hey, Boo-Boo?’ David said to Gil. ‘It looks like we might have ourselves a pic-i-nic basket… And a giant, ferocious… ant.’

‘I’m a formica ,’ Zach said.

Gil said, ‘You know the Latin? Your mom must be the famous entomologist, Ella Beene. Hey, where’s Bubby?’ Zach pulled Bubby out of his plastic jack-o’-lantern, like a rabbit from a hat. ‘And look at our beautiful Miss Pocahontas.’

‘Ella,’ Lucy said, ‘I think you’ve outdone yourself this time.’

I’d taken our wicker laundry basket and cut most of the bottom out of it and harnessed it over my shoulders with a couple of Joe’s old leather belts. I had covered my jeans with material from red-and-white-checked tablecloths. I wore a wild fruit-basket hat and had stuffed the laundry basket with newspapers, covered those with more tablecloths, and stuck in a bottle of wine, a hunk of cheese, a loaf of bread, a rubber chicken. I was, indeed, a picnic basket.

‘No cracks about me being a basket case, please.’

‘Oh, that would be too easy,’ David said.

He had agreed to cover the store so I could take the kids to the parade and then meet Frank and Molly for trick-or-treating. I had to step out of the laundry basket in order to fit in the canoe, so I carefully did that, leaving the bulk of my costume at the store so we could run down to the river. I buckled their life jackets and we climbed into the canoe. Zach pointed to the plastic coffins. ‘Those are pretend,’ he reminded himself. A good reminder for all of us, really.

‘Yes, Zach, those are pretend.’

There was a harvest moon, low and big and orange. ‘A pumpkin moon,’ he whispered. He was tucked in next to me, his red antennae poking me in the cheek, my head heavy with plastic fruit. Annie sat in front of us, dipping the oar in to guide the canoe. We were tied to the coffin in front of us and the coffin behind us, and the boats ahead pulled us along, but Annie sat at the helm, taking her role seriously. I watched them both; they were solemn but didn’t seem scared. Zach watched the reflections of the moon and the tiki flames illuminated on the river, which slapped at the bottom of our canoe. Annie turned around. ‘I’m tired,’ she whispered. I scooted even closer to Zach and patted the seat.

‘Careful.’

She climbed back to me, and I put my arms around both of them. We sat in the silence. Three peas in a pod.

No longer four.

The moment hung in the night like the moon. Peaceful, eerie, weighted. We reached the end just ahead of the last float and coffin, and then all mayhem broke loose. The music started. The kids went wild. Halloween officially began.

After I retrieved the rest of my costume from the store, Molly ran up to us, dressed up in her Disney Belle costume. Lizzie — not Frank — followed behind. ‘Frank got called into work,’ she explained without saying hello. ‘Wow, look at you…,’ she said, looking me up and down. ‘Cute.’

‘I can take the kids if you want.’

‘No, that’s okay. I left the bowl of candy on the porch. When it’s gone, it’s gone.’ She was only about five feet tall, but she walked with the grace of a gazelle. She’d grown up in Elbow, the high school home-coming queen, the valedictorian, and the class president. She’d gone to Stanford, had some high-level exec job for a while, but she’d grown disillusioned with the corporate world, came back, and married Frank, her high school sweetheart. Now she had Molly and ran her own business making the most incredible-smelling soaps on the planet. Lizzie’s Lathers product line was so good, people were willing to drop $7 for a bar of soap, and the Press Democrat had run a full-page article with the headline: homemade soap company really cleans up. Everyone knew her and adored her, stopping to talk to her as we walked along — she so much more animated and warm with them than she’d ever been with me, me relieved when it was someone I knew, and they would direct the conversation to both of us. Usually it was to say that they liked my costume or to wish me good luck and tell me they were pulling for me with — and here is where they’d lower their voices — the ridiculous custody thing.