Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

I called Gwen, who told me to let the dust settle. I doubted Paige had any dust. She reminded me that Paige still had to allow for visitation in a month. If she refused, she would be in contempt, and then we’d actually have grounds to do something.

‘A month?’ was all I could say. ‘In one month I’ll get to see them for two days? Today’s Annie’s seventh birthday and I haven’t even got to talk with her.’

‘There’s nothing fair about this. But it sounds like she’s off to a rocky start. So. Keep track of every conversation, but don’t badger or harass. This could go completely in our direction. You just have to be patient.’

Lucy let herself in that night. She found me in the kids’ room sitting on the floor amid neatly arranged stuffed animals and dolls, having a tea party. I’d packed presents in Annie’s suitcase, but I couldn’t stand not being able to see her open them, not making her favourite carrot cake.

I’d tied a bonnet on Callie, the way Annie sometimes did. I was pushing Buzz Lightyear’s button over and over, so he kept repeating, ‘To infinity, and beyond!’ Without saying a word, Lucy walked into the kitchen, came back with an open bottle of petite sirah, from which she poured enough to fill two of the pink-and-white miniature china cups. ‘Sorry, Elmo, you’re underage,’ she said. She turned to me. ‘Hey, it’s going to take a helluva long time to get drunk this way.’ She held her cup out for me to toast. ‘Ella, oh my God, honey, your eyes. You look like shit.’

I shook my head. She hugged me, rubbed my back, ‘I know, El. I know.’ It wasn’t long before we moved out to the back porch, exchanging our teacups for big-girl glasses. She tried to get me to eat something, but I couldn’t. I did bum cigarettes off her, though, and for the first time in my life, smoked them without guilt or regret.

Lucy gently suggested I start taking the antidepressant that Dr Boyle had recommended. I told her no, and also said no to her offer of more wine. I knew I needed to feel this, no matter how much it hurt.

She offered to come over again the next day, but I told her I wanted some alone time and she grudgingly complied.

Knowing now that no one — absolutely no one — would stop by, I dragged out the boxes I’d moved to our garage from the storage closet at the store. The ones with all the photos of Annie, Zach, Joe, and Paige, the extended Capozzi family. I told myself I wanted to see pictures of the kids, but there was still a part of me that was trying to understand the story of Joe and Paige, what that meant to the story of Joe and me, the story of Annie and Zach and me… and Paige. And the question still, what had Paige revealed to Joe that day when she turned around?

I pulled a box in by one of its cardboard flaps, pulled it down the hallway until it sat in the middle of the not-so-great room. I took out stacks of photos, placing them in a mosaic-like pattern on the floor around me. At first Thing One and Thing Two kept batting at the pictures and sliding across them, but then they got bored and snuggled up with Callie on the couch.

Here were Paige and Joe at Marcella’s for Christmas; Paige wore huge red ball Christmas ornaments in her ears and Joe had a bow stuck to his forehead. They were laughing. Another picture: Paige and Joe’s wedding day. So different from ours, with my short halter sundress and sweet peas picked from the yard. But theirs was like Henry’s and mine: the elaborate white gown, Paige’s high necked and beaded, the regiment of bridesmaids and groomsmen, the ring bearer, the flower girl, the perfectly round bouquets, the exhausted and completely overwhelmed smiles.

I found cards too — anniversary, birthday, Valentine’s Day — all declaring unfaltering love and adoration. I’ll love you forever, as if they were trying to ward off any curses or uncertainty, the evil spell that loomed on the periphery.

I placed the cards down along with all the photos, even the nude ones, arranging and rearranging until I got the sequence right along with the order. How feng shui of me, I thought. When I got to the bottom of one box, I spotted a pink edge stuck between the cardboard flaps. I unfolded them and out popped what looked like a pink passport, maybe something of Annie’s. But it was stamped with the words Enemy Alien. Inside, a picture of Grandpa Sergio in his forties, the typed words: Sergio Giuseppe Capozzi, his address in Elbow — the same as our address — along with his date of birth, August 1, 1901, his fingerprints.

Those words struck me harder than the tiny bits and pieces of the story I’d heard. The fear. The paranoia. Enemy? Alien? Grandpa Sergio? Who loved this country, owned a little market. Who built this cottage… had his family ripped apart, as Marcella had yelled. It struck me how easily paranoia sets in during times of war, and I knew that my own fear of Paige — the whole family’s fear of Paige — wasn’t exactly fair, either. Still, what we’d all feared most had now happened, and my attempt to be fair had landed us here.

I set the ID down too, along with pictures of Sergio and Rosemary standing in front of their new house, now our old house, and I felt connected to them in a way I hadn’t before. Their family had filled this house with its noise too — its laughter and arguments. Rosemary had walked these very rooms, filled with the vacancy of Sergio’s absence. She, too, knew the way an expanding emptiness pressed on the walls, the ceilings, the floors.

I pulled out another box; it turned out to be the box with Paige’s robe. The robe Joe had covered her secret with, the robe she’d hidden in all those months of depression. I put it on, over my clothes. Embarrassing to admit now, but I guess I saw it as a necessary piece of the puzzle. I pulled out more boxes until I’d covered the floor in the living area, and started in the kitchen, then down the hall. I left curving paths that spiralled out from the centre of the room, reminiscent of the labyrinth Joe and I had once walked at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco the New Year’s after we met. We’d walked in silence, each holding a question in our minds. When we finished, we stood at the centre and Joe asked me if I would marry him. It turned out we’d both come to the labyrinth with the same question and had received the same answer while we walked it: Yes.

I’d covered the not-so-great room and kitchen, part of the hallway, and half of Annie and Zach’s room when I ran out of pictures. I pulled out our own photos, the ones taken after I came into the picture, so to speak. And my shoebox of pictures of my own childhood, my mom and me clam digging, my dad and me posing on a rock, arms folded, wearing our birding binoculars. I lined more photos along the floor in the kids’ room and worked down the hallway and into our bedroom, finishing the path off on top of our bed because of the lack of floor space.

I worked with a welcomed detachment from my present life, or even the lives represented in the pictures — completely absorbed in the structure of my creation, the pieces of the puzzle. It was all a bit crazy, but craziness made perfect sense right then. By the time I finished, the room had dimmed dark.

I must have lain down then to sleep. The next morning I woke in a sea of pictures, staring at Annie holding up a salmon almost as big as she was. Pictures were stuck to my arms, my hands, my cheek.

I climbed out of the bed, took it all in. I know how strange this sounds now, but I was intrigued with what I’d done. There was order, purpose. I felt I was on to something. So I made coffee, careful not to disturb the layout on the floor, and attended to my life’s current responsibilities: Callie, chickens, kittens, vegetables. I forced myself to eat some toast. I played with the kittens on the porch, then put them in their crate for a rest. And then I walked my labyrinth. And walked. And walked. Callie stared at me through the French doors, giving me her saddest face, and at one time, I swore she shook her head at me, What? You can’t even take me for a measly little walk and here you are walking in circles all pickin’ day? You won’t even let me in? Who is this person you’ve become?