Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

I only packed a few large suitcases and two boxes of the kids’ clothes and toys and the unopened letters to Annie and Zach. I stuck those in the glove compartment of the Jeep. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be gone — I figured two weeks at the most. I had no plan other than to drive to Las Vegas and call Paige once I arrived. She couldn’t turn me away once I got there.

Lizzie had agreed to keep the chickens in her coop, and David and Gil had promised they’d watch Thing One and Thing Two. As I was slipping the boxes into the backseat, David came walking up the road, carrying a bunch of cornflowers from the photo shoot that never happened and a picnic basket — my favourite picnic basket — from the store, and he handed it all to me. ‘Look inside,’ he said. It was full of the things I loved: a jar of Marcella’s minestrone, her jam — made from blackberries the kids and Joe and I had picked last summer — one of her pesto and chicken salad sandwiches, and a lamb shank for Callie.

‘Does she know you’re giving me all this?’

‘She helped me pack it. I’m so sorry about the interview thing. I should have never thrown that on you. And I’m sorry about not standing by you. I’ve been an idiot… so bent on trying to help turn the store around, be the saviour, keep the kids here. It took Gil to point out that I’ve had the sensitivity of a rhinoceros.’

I pulled out a list and handed it to David. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s a helluva lot, I know.’

‘The thing is, El, I love it. I love the store. I love everything about it. You were right. I did want to be the one who took it over. I was jealous of Joe. Of how he got handed this thing on a silver platter, something he hadn’t really wanted, at least not since he was a little kid, while I was practically jumping up and down saying, “Pick me, pick me!” If it weren’t for you and your idea for Life’s a Picnic, I’d be a very bored person married to a very fat man.’

I laughed. ‘Gil was starting to look a little plump when you were shovelling all that food down him.’

‘For that reason, and many more, we are eternally grateful to you. And that’s why we’ve decided to give you this.’ He handed me an envelope. Inside was cash. A thick wedge of hundred-dollar bills.

‘David. I can’t take this. I’ll get a temp job when I get there.’

‘No. You need to focus on talking to Paige, not filling out job apps. This money was Gil’s idea, and it’s absolutely the right thing. We love you and we want to help. Do what you need to do to at least get her to talk to you. Take your time. I’ll take care of the store.’

‘I don’t know what to say.’

Callie came running up then, carrying what looked like a small snaggled tree stump. But as she got closer I could see it wasn’t a tree, but some kind of animal skull. I took it from her and stared into the hollow eyes, the remaining yellowed teeth, the empty, dusty dryness of it.

‘Oh God,’ David said after a minute. ‘That could be Max.’

‘Max…?’

‘Joe’s dog when we were kids.’ David nodded, then shook his head. ‘Grandpa Sergio buried him in the redwood grove when I was about nine. You should have seen him in his glory days. A huge golden retriever. Max owned Elbow. He’d walk down the street from house to house. Everyone knew him. He was like the town mascot. I thought he’d live forever. Poor Max.’ David fell silent, his mind turning over memories.

‘What happened to him?’

‘Oh, that’s a sad story. Joe never told —’ He stopped himself.

‘Nope. Add it to the list, I guess.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll tell you. But not right now. You’ve got some miles to cover.’

The breeze kicked up and we both stood there, staring at the skull, taking in the warm sun, the stirring air that carried the scent of the bay trees and rosemary bushes, the Douglas fir from the ridge.

‘Come here.’ He wrapped me in one of his real hugs. ‘Things will be better again. Just hang in there. We’ll be here waiting. I’ll be here, you know, trying to figure out what else wasn’t said at dinner all those years. How much of the stifling in that room was about me being gay, and how much was really about Grandpa Sergio and Grandpa Dante… Internment camps. Shit. I feel another identity crisis coming on… You better go, before I climb in with you.’

On my way out of Elbow, I turned and headed up to the cemetery. I reached back and pulled up the bunch of cornflowers and let Callie scramble out, though I kept an eye on her. I certainly didn’t want her digging there. She circled around tombstones and started to squat by one, but I shooed her over to the trees. ‘Callie! Have you no respect?’ I laid the flowers along Joe’s tombstone, and I whispered, ‘Remember these? I had some just like them in my car when we met? Centaurea cyanus. I brought them into your kitchen and you filled a vase with water? Remember?’ I knelt there, sitting back on my heels, waiting to feel him. Wherever he was, he wasn’t hanging out there. ‘The truth is, I still can’t believe it,’ I said. ‘There’s a part of me that keeps thinking you’ll show up somewhere. Isn’t that weird?

‘There’s so much I didn’t know about you, honey. I’m sorry. I wish we could talk… I’m going to try to fix things. To fix the mess we made for Annie and Zach.’ I traced the letters on the stone. Joseph Anthony Capozzi Junior. The same letters he said were spelled in freckles on my arm. ‘I love you, honey. I was mad about some things. But I love you. And I’m going to bring them back.’ I took two of the cornflowers back to the Jeep with me and stuck them in the visor. Callie sniffed them. ‘Please Don’t Eat the Cornflowers,’ I said. And she didn’t touch them again, not the whole way to Las Vegas.

I drove and I drove, and I thought about those cornflowers. After I’d had my fifth miscarriage, my doctor had suggested walking. It didn’t help much. But I walked, anyway. Henry and I had agreed to divorce. I hadn’t known what to do next, where to go, who to be. And so I walked.

One day, as I passed the massive flower fields in Encinitas, I noticed a migrant worker who had stopped cutting. He was watching me. He ventured out to the edge, close to the sidewalk, ahead of me. When I approached, he said, ‘Wait, miss,’ and bent down, then stood back up, holding an armful of blue flowers. He pushed them towards me and smiled. ‘For you, you take.’ I stopped, my mouth gaping. ‘No, I…’

‘ Por favor. Every day, you’re sad. Triste. Beautiful flowers, sí? Esperanza. How you say in English? Hope? They mean this hope.’

I took the flowers. They filled my arms like a child. I couldn’t help but smile. The next day all the migrant workers, including my friend, were gone. North, I imagined. And suddenly, I wanted to be with them, losing myself in fields of flowers by day, chatting around a camp-fire by night, always moving. A hard life, but one with camaraderie. That’s when I started packing my Jeep. I wasn’t really going to track down the sweet migrant worker, the only person who had instinctively known how to ease my sorrow. But I’d taken it as a sign, the way desperate people do, to do something. To head north, to find my true north. Maybe a job tracking juvenile salmon in Alaska. And that crazy impulse had led me to Elbow, to Joe, to Annie and Zach. Just as I’d hoped my crazy impulse to go to Las Vegas would somehow lead me to Annie and Zach once again.

I drove through dark desert and lonely straight roads, my eyes often drawn towards the brilliantly lit night sky; falling stars streaked across it, like the thoughts of Joe and the kids and the Capozzis and Paige that kept streaking across my mind.