Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

She looked at me for a long minute before she said, ‘ Are is a strong word. Were isn’t quite accurate, though, either. We don’t talk anymore, but I still think of her as my friend. And I miss her. I miss the old Paige. I don’t really know the new Paige.’

‘No one in Joe’s family has anything nice to say about either Paige — old or new…’

Lizzie directed her eyes to my pot of liquid. ‘Keep stirring. You want to feel it starting to thicken.’

‘But I have a strong feeling… there’s more to the story.’

‘Look, Ella. If you’re trying to dig up dirt on Paige in order to build your custody case, you can take your shovel somewhere else.’

I knew I was one sentence away from being led out the front gate. ‘I know it seems that way. But at this point, I want to understand Paige. To understand Joe. I’m beginning to believe… that Joe… he may not have treated her fairly.’

Lizzie’s head jerked up. Her face reddened, her eyes and mouth opened wide, her fist hit the table. And then it was as if a cork blew. ‘No shit! But try telling my husband that! Or anyone else in this town.’

‘I live in this town. I want to know the truth.’

‘ Now you do…’

‘Yes. I do.’

‘To better serve your purposes…’

‘No, believe me. My purposes — as far as custody — would be better served by not asking, not knowing, just as I have always done. I’m trying to do it differently now. But I could use your help.’

She stared at me, sizing me up as she stirred, stirred more. Finally, she said, ‘Paige seemed like the perfect golden girl. When she started to struggle and show signs of slipping away, no one could deal.’ She stuck her chest out, rocked her shoulders back and forth, pursed her lips. ‘It wasn’t allowed in the Family Capozzi.’

‘What was she like before this happened?’

‘She was always beautiful — but, you know, real. Her house was picked up, but there was no Paige the Stager. No feng shui, flung shit, or whatever. She was always guarded, or shy, but kind. I liked her a lot.’

I concentrated on my figure eights. It was hard to hear anything good about Paige.

Lizzie said, ‘I’ve gotta say, I was shocked that Joe moved on so quickly.’

My face felt hot. I kept stirring.

‘Joe and Paige were crazy about each other from day one. But then, right after Annie was born, Paige stopped being crazy for Joe and went just plain crazy.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘First she stopped returning my calls. Then, when I’d stop by, I’d see her hair was greasy. She wore her robe all day.’

The paisley robe.

‘She had been excited during her pregnancy, but then she wasn’t interested in Annie at all. It was weird. She started asking me to watch Annie. Joe was beside himself. Of course, Marcella to the rescue, and all that. Paige kept telling me what a terrible mother she was. That she should have never had a baby. She cried all the time. She looked at Annie like she was nothing more than an odd-shaped lamp. To Joe’s credit, he started coming home from the store every chance he got. He’d hold Annie and sing to her.’

While Lizzie prepared the moulds, she told me more. When Annie was about four months old, Paige seemed better. Now it seems obvious she had some kind of postpartum depression. But six years before — in 1993 — no one talked about it, much less understood it. Paige emerged, but somewhat changed. She was even more guarded. She was still a good friend to Lizzie, and a good mother to Annie. Paige and Joe seemed to regain their footing. But then she got pregnant with Zach. She told Lizzie it was a mistake and that she was terrified. She didn’t want to go back to that dark place. She never mentioned abortion, but Lizzie said she had the feeling Paige was considering it — out of nothing but desperation. Paige talked to her doctor, but he wasn’t adequately concerned. No one was. ‘No one in the family, including Joe, wanted to talk about Paige’s depression, as if talking about it would bring it back. But I could see in his eyes, Joe was terrified.’

I was listening so intently to Lizzie that I’d stopped stirring, and she pointed to the wooden spoon. ‘Oh, sorry,’ I said, resuming my figure eights. I didn’t want to ask, but I forced myself to say, ‘Is there more?’

Her eyes searched mine before she spoke again. ‘I haven’t talked about any of this with anyone. Ever. But maybe this will finally help Paige. And you.’ Lizzie sighed, kept her eyes on the liquid. ‘But of course the depression came back anyway, and this time it was worse. The doctor finally prescribed an antidepressant, but Paige flushed them, which scared Joe even more. She was afraid they would be bad for Zach. The one thing she could do was breast-feed, but she did it with this… I don’t know… detached determination. She had him on a strict schedule. But when he nursed, she barely looked at him or engaged him. One day I told Joe, “She needs to be hospitalized.” He looked at me, shocked. He was so in the thick of it, he was no longer seeing clearly. And he said, “No, she’ll be fine — we just have to get through the first four months like with Annie.” And I said, “This is different. ” Soon after that she told me she shouldn’t be near Annie or Zach. It was a Saturday, I remember, and I took the kids home with me and kept them until the store closed and Joe could pick them up. When he did, I told him what she’d said, and that time, he heard me. But the next day, she was gone.’

‘Did you hear from her after she left?’

She shook her head. ‘Just once. I sent her cards, tried to keep in touch after that, but she never replied.’

She took a deep breath. ‘Wow, I guess I needed to talk about this.’ She looked up to the rafters, started to say something else but hesitated. Finally she said, ‘Frank did tell me, just since Joe died, that he’d told Frank that Paige had written letters he’d never opened. The mother of his children was trying to contact him, but he ignored her. Right before he died, Joe told Frank that Paige had called him. That Paige wanted a custody arrangement. That Joe was going to have to talk to you — and he was dreading it.’

I let go of the spoon, held my head in my hands. Remembering. We never had the conversation that night, because after we’d made love for the last time, I had waved off his request to talk, floating in my contentment, wanting to wait until the following day. ‘Tomorrow, then,’ he’d said, and touched my nose.

Tomorrow…

Lizzie touched my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’ She smiled. ‘But I still need you to stir. You can’t quit on me now.’ The colour of the liquid had lightened from dark gold to cream, and the consistency did remind me of fondue. We lugged the pots back into the barn, my eyes trying to adjust again while Lizzie went ahead and set her pot down. ‘Over here,’ she called. I made my way to another workstation, where rows of small bottles and jars filled an old glass-doored cabinet. ‘Now the fun begins.’ We added oats and powdered milk and cocoa butter to one batch, pear essential oil and dried calendula to another. Rosemary essential oils and lavender petals went into my pot. We kept adding fragrance and sniffing, then adding more.

After we poured the liquid into the moulds, Lizzie turned to me. ‘There’s something else I want to say. Joe and I shared some harsh words. Me and my tough talk. But Joe was a good person. I think he was just scared. He got hurt. He wanted to protect the kids and himself… and you. But had he had more time —’ She looked away, then back at me. ‘I think he would have made it right. With time.’

‘Certainly you don’t think he would have just handed over the kids to Paige?’