Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

Later that night, after I’d read stories and put Annie and Zach to bed, Callie barked. I walked down the hall and saw Marcella through the glass. I opened the door. We stood facing each other, not saying a word. Her face bore the ravages of those past months, and I wanted to say something — anything — to ease her pain, to ease mine too.

Her eyes held tears. Finally she spoke. ‘I’ve loved you like a daughter… but you won’t listen! That store you call Life’s a Picnic? That store is for Annie and Zach. You remember that. We helped you because of our grandchildren. Because we trusted you with their future! Ella, those letters. Burn them. Don’t read them.’

‘I have to read them. I have to know.’

‘No.’ She kept her dark sad eyes on mine, lifted her hand, and slapped me, hard, across the face. She covered her mouth, her eyes wide.

The sting spread like hot needle points. My eyes watered, in more of a physical reaction than an emotional one; I was too shocked to cry. She turned, walked, wringing her hands, down the steps, got into her car, and sped off.

I had felt the same sharp burn on my cheek only once before. The day of my father’s funeral, my grandma Beene and I were in her dark, cool basement getting a few jars of homemade pickles for the company. I had been carrying around a question for days. I knew better than to ask my mother. Grandma Beene had always been easy to talk to, laughing when I made childish blunders that seemed to irritate other adults. My question was part of a puzzle I was piecing together in my head, based on fragments of conversations I’d heard and episodes of As the World Turns that Grandma secretly allowed me to watch with her, unbeknownst to my mother. I felt I was on the verge of understanding an important concept, and it seemed the quiet moment in the cellar pantry was right, and so I asked her, ‘Grandma? Did God make Daddy die because he loved Miss McKenna and took naps with her?’

The slap came fast then too. My grandmother spoke to me in a voice I’d never heard. ‘Don’t you ever, ever say that again, or anything like it! Your father was a wonderful man. And don’t you forget it, young lady. Shame on you! Shame. On. You. ’

She turned and stomped up the stairs, her thick-heeled shoes clunking heavily on each wooden step.

I stood, staring at the jars of raspberry jam, apricot preserves, green beans that bore the label beene’s beans, the rows and rows of pickles for which she was locally famous. Bread-and-butters, sweets, hot dills, extra-hot-pepper dills, and mild dills. Grandma Beene was a hallmark of efficiency and productivity, yet she moved and spoke with a calm gentleness and patience that usually evaded the extremely pragmatic.

For her to have responded so out of character… I knew my question was horribly wrong. Or maybe, I thought, she was referring to my spying, the Shame on you was because she somehow knew I’d scared my dad so much his heart had stopped. My hands felt sweaty and I wiped them on my plaid skirt, over the large golden pin that held the overflap in place and sometimes snagged the lining of my winter coat. The piece about my daddy’s heart stopping seemed to fit with the piece no one else knew about — that I had scared him and made him yell. I knew my own heart was pounding from my grandma’s slap. Maybe my own heart would stop too. I prayed that it wouldn’t and I prayed that my daddy wasn’t scowling at me from his satin-lined box in the ground.

There was more. Grandma Beene wasn’t done teaching me the lesson. But I had things to think about other than my own old sad stories, and I needed to focus on those letters.

Early the next morning as I swept crumbs out from under the deli counter, Frank walked in, started pouring himself a cup of coffee. ‘This old-lady tweaker who lives just over the bridge, she’s stoned out of her mind, nothing new. So she decides it’s a nifty idea to take her kayak out on the river. Only problem is, she doesn’t come home. So old-man tweaker calls us. We’ve gotta do the whole search and rescue, the helicopter, the whole bit, because grandma’s so stoned she doesn’t realize she’s paddling in circles.’ He held up his cup of coffee as if to toast me. ‘And that, ladies and gentleman, is where your mighty tax dollars are going.’

‘I wonder what happened to her.’

‘Absolutely nothing. That’s the point, El. We found her enjoying the moonlight out past Edwards’ Mill, just after midnight. In la-la land.’ He shook his head, took a swig of coffee.

I had meant that I wondered what happened to her before then, long ago, but I didn’t feel like explaining that to Frank, explaining that I’d recently concluded that everyone had their reasons, whether they knew it or not. That even Paige had her reasons, and I intended to find them out.

‘More coffee?’

He nodded. ‘I’ll get it. This one is to go. Gotta go save a meth addict or two, civil servant that I am.’

‘Frank?’

‘Yeah?’

I didn’t want to tell him about the letters in case he had some sort of civic duty to report me.

‘Do you think Lizzie would talk to me? About Paige?’

‘Lizzie won’t talk to me about Paige.’ He stared at me, waiting, as if to say, Why can’t you talk to me? Frank missed Joe too. I could always see it in his eyes; they didn’t match up with his cocky stance. He shrugged. ‘But what the hell? What have you got to lose?’

I knew Lizzie was home even before I opened the white picket gate. It was a sharp blue day, and wafts of spearmint, rosemary, lavender, lemon, and cocoa butter fragranced the air. She worked in their converted barn out back, after Molly left for school each morning. The old me would have been nervous to approach Lizzie, to walk around to the barn and lean my head through the Dutch door. But I was pretty sure nothing she could say to me would make things any worse. All I was after now was the truth so I could decide what to do about the letters. I stood there for almost a minute, blind, until my eyes adjusted and I saw Lizzie, long tables with pots, and walls of supplies.

Her blonde curly hair was clipped up away from her forehead, and she was humming while she poured olive oil into one of five huge saucepans. Two Mexican women weighed cups of palm and coconut oil. Lizzie looked up. ‘Oh! Frank’s not here.’

‘I’d like to talk to you. If you have a minute. Actually, more than a minute.’

‘Oh? Well, okay… I just… I can’t really leave right now. Can we talk here?’

I looked over at the two women, who were both watching us.

‘Very limited English, mostly having to do with soap. If you’d like to discuss another topic, your privacy is pretty much guaranteed.’ She said something to them in Spanish, they both smiled and nodded as she introduced us, and then she said to me, ‘Anyway, while this is melting, I do need to add the lye to the pots outside. Come on.’

We walked out to a table where three more pots were cooling. ‘You need to step way back,’ she explained. ‘Lye is nasty stuff. You don’t want to breathe it in.’ She turned her head while she poured it into a measuring cup, instructing me to move back even farther. ‘Now, this will bring the temperature way up, and then we need to let it cool to a hundred and ten degrees.’ She pointed to yet another table. ‘Those should be ready for us to start stirring. Grab a seat and a spoon. We need to stir those babies until they thicken. Think fondue.’ I recognized her demonstration voice from the Elbow Christmas Bazaar — friendly, efficient, in charge.

We both took seats and spoons and began stirring. I said, ‘Lizzie, I know you and Paige are friends…’