Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

I checked on the kids, still playing hide-and-seek with the kittens. I walked out to the garden and admired its rows set in a quilt-like pattern, the abundant order of it. This was mine. This was what I brought to the picture. The only thing.

I looked back at the house. Joe and I had called its quirkiness Funk Factor. I loved it the first time I stepped inside it, and still did. The slightly sunken imperfection of it, the porch that wrapped around it like a hug. It was no longer Paige’s house. In fact, it had never been the kind of home to her that it had been to me and was to me still. A set of flatware, some dishes and appliances, washed linens? So what. Joe and I and the kids had been happy here. Despite all the sadness she’d left in her wake.

How had it all fit me so perfectly? I had lived in a house in San Diego for years, had picked out every dish, every rug, and never felt at home.

I had happened upon this town, a man and his children, this house, these trees. I’d stumbled upon someone’s lost treasure. No, abandoned treasure, left behind.

I hadn’t stolen it, but I didn’t want to return it, either. What had been the reasoning of my subconscious at the time? Your loss, lady, my gain? How much did I know at some level, below the surface, what I’d refused to bring up with a simple question? Because I had my own fears. I’d feared honest but complex answers other than the convenient shrugged simplicity of ‘She left and she’s never coming back.’

No. I couldn’t distract myself with who might be the rightful owner of discarded forks and spoons and land and trees, a building, a garden.

I could no longer simply claim my children as my own. They had another mother who loved them too. A woman who may not have been treated fairly. I looked at the house and tried to imagine it without Annie and Zach. The earth tilted sharply. I grabbed the garden gatepost and hung on for my dear sweet life.

Lizzie picked up the kids. I got dressed to go to court. I kept putting the packet of letters in my purse, then pulling it out. I had already taken out the unopened letters to Annie and Zach and put them in my dresser drawer. No matter what, those belonged to them, not the court. Paige had subpoenaed the letters from her to Joe. She had neglected to specify the cards to Annie and Zach.

I made one last call, this time to my mom, and told her what I’d read in Paige’s letters. She said, ‘You shouldn’t have to deal with all this right now. You want to know my opinion? Like my own grandmother, every woman needs to have a trapdoor under her kitchen rug, Ella.’

‘Are you saying I should have my own moonshine business?’

‘I’m saying that you do what you have to do for your kids. Even if it means breaking the law.’

‘Mom. I don’t want Annie and Zach to grow up thinking their mother didn’t want them. If I don’t turn over those letters to the court, then what? I live a lie. Even if I do show them someday, they’ll know that I withheld evidence that showed their mother wanted custody. If I turn over the letters, I don’t think the judge will change his mind. Their life is here with me and the Capozzi family.’

‘You think… but you don’t know. ’

‘Here’s what I do know. You want me to “protect” them by lying, by keeping information from them that helps them understand that none of this was their fault ? That they have no reason to feel blame or shame?’

‘Who are we talking about here?’ She paused. ‘Jelly, I understand why you’re upset.’

When I didn’t reply she said, ‘I’m going to catch a plane down.’ I told her to wait, that I might need her more later.

I made it out to the Jeep without the packet, but then ran back up the porch steps and down the hall and grabbed it off the kitchen table, knocking over the pepper grinder. It rolled off the table and fell onto the floor with a thud. I picked it up and set it back on the table, watching it for a moment. Joe’s favourite pepper grinder. Was he trying to tell me something? Now he was speaking up? I waited, but it stayed put. I shook my head, trying to shake at least a shred of logic into place.

I almost got out the door with the letters, but every step down the hallway echoed with the shouts and laughter and cries, the wondrous chaos of Annie and Zach, and I decided I wouldn’t be able to do the honest thing, the right thing, after all. As much as I wanted to, I simply couldn’t. I shoved the letters in the nightstand drawer, and this time Joe’s picture flopped over. ‘Stop it,’ I said aloud. ‘Don’t do this,’ and I rushed outside and to the car before I could change my mind again.

I passed the vineyard that had been all yellow light a few weeks before — now the leaves had turned to blazing reds and oranges. A man stood with his back to the road, hands in pockets, staring out at the fields as if he himself had set it on fire and was simply watching it burn.

At the courthouse, when I saw the security X-ray machine, I was glad I’d left the letters at home. But they were letters, not a gun. Still, if I’d kept them in my bag, I would have been concealing a powerful weapon.

I sat at the end of a row of chairs outside of the courtroom, waiting. Gwen Alterman bustled down the hall towards me, seemingly impatient with her own short legs, thighs rubbing together in their maroon pant-suit casing. She said, ‘I’ve already spoken to Paige’s attorney. As I’ve told you, they’d like to work out a deal today with limited visitation with the possibility of increasing visitation as the children get older.’

‘How much visitation?’ I asked.

She slipped on her reading glasses and scanned the document. ‘Four times a year for weekends. Two weeks in the summer. One week during Christmas vacation.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s it. She does want them to go to her house, though. She’s very adamant about that one — and is even willing to fly here to pick them up.’

Paige sat farther down along the wall, leaning towards her attorney, a tall, older man with a red bow tie and wire-framed glasses, who was talking to her.

Gwen went on. ‘Read the stipulation over and go ahead and sign it. And then we’ll go before the judge and tell him both parties have come to an agreement. We’ll read it in court; you’ll be asked if you consent. You’ll say yes, and we’ll be done and you’ll go home to your children.’ She added. ‘Not to mention, save a boatload of money.’

Paige had already signed it. Her signature looped across the line; I recognized that handwriting now. I signed the paper. A few minutes later, Gwen Alterman stuck her head outside the door of Courtroom J and motioned me inside. Along the back row sat Joe Sr, Marcella, and David. I wanted to believe they were there to support me, but I knew they were making sure I behaved.

Paige entered, walking straight, as if she held a book on her head. I recognized now that the familiar stance of hers was a brave front. Her eyes, void of makeup, gave her grief away. I knew all about No-Mascara Days.

When we were called, we sat at the dark veneer tables in front of the judge’s bench. Paige’s attorney read the agreement in a soothing, kind voice that seemed out of place in the courtroom and softened the edges of words like custody and petitioner and visitation — as if he were reading a fairy tale with the foreshadowing of a happy ending — and if I just kept my mouth shut, everyone could live happily ever after. I focused my gaze on the bored-looking court reporter who was taking down what the attorney read. There was nowhere else safe I could look. Not to Paige and her own watery eyes. Not to the judge, who might read my face and instinctively sense guilt. Not behind me to the appointed guards of the Family Capozzi.