Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

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Set against the backdrop of Redwood forests and shimmering vineyards, Seré Prince Halverson’s compelling debut tells the story of two women, bound by an unspeakable loss, who each claims to be the mother of the same two children. To Ella Beene, happiness means living in the northern California river town of Elbow with her husband, Joe, and his two young children. Yet one summer day Joe breaks his own rule—
—and a sleeper wave strikes him down, drowning not only the man but his many secrets.
For three years, Ella has been the only mother the kids have known and has believed that their biological mother, Paige, abandoned them. But when Paige shows up at the funeral, intent on reclaiming the children, Ella soon realizes there may be more to Paige and Joe’s story. “Ella’s the best thing that’s happened to this family,” say her close-knit Italian-American in-laws, for generations the proprietors of a local market. But their devotion quickly falters when the custody fight between mother and stepmother urgently and powerfully collides with Ella’s quest for truth.
The Underside of Joy Weaving a rich fictional tapestry abundantly alive with the glorious natural beauty of the novel’s setting, Halverson is a captivating guide through the flora and fauna of human emotion-grief and anger, shame and forgiveness, happiness and its shadow complement… the underside of joy.
Review “The Underside of Joy” covers the transforming experiences of most of our lives — marriage, parenthood and death — with maturity, understanding and grace… the book offers a lot to think about. I suspect it will be a book club favorite.”
—M.L. Johnson, Associated Press “[An] exquisite debut… moving and hopeful”
—People Style Watch “Seré Prince Halverson’s debut novel is a faultless exploration of sadness and shame, anger and forgiveness; a story well told about people we would like to know.”
—Shelf Awareness “Halverson’s gloriously down-to-earth novel is so pitch perfect that as readers reluctantly reach the last page, wanting more, they will have to take it on faith that this really is her first fiction.”
—Library Journal, Starred Review “…As she mines the family secrets her characters hold close and how those affect their relationships with one another, Halverson proves she’s a wordsmith and a storyteller to keep an eye on.”
—Bookpage, Fiction Top Pick “A poignant debut about mothers, secrets and sacrifices…Halverson avoids sentimentality, aiming for higher ground in this lucid and graceful examination of the dangers and blessings of familial bonds.”
—Kirkus Reviews “Halverson paints a lovely picture of small-town life and intimate family drama…Nuanced characters and lack of cliché make for a winning debut.”
—Publishers Weekly “Halverson’s debut novel marks her as a strong new voice in women’s fiction…this would make an excellent book-club choice.”
— From the Back Cover “The writing in The Underside of Joy is as purely beautiful as the story is emotionally complex. When Ella Beene is wrenched from a state of unexamined happiness into confusion and grief, she finds that her only hope of emerging whole is to face searing and long-buried truths. Ella embarks on a difficult journey, both morally and materially, one that requires her to risk losing everything she most loves. I cheered (sometimes through tears) her every step.”
— “Searingly smart and exquisitely written, Halverson’s knockout debut limns family, marriage and a custody battle in a way that gets under your skin and leaves you changed. To say I loved this book would be an understatement.”
—New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You Caroline Leavitt

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Annie stood on a stool, cracking eggs. Joe’s mom was going at my fridge with a spray bottle, the garbage can full of old food. I went over and hugged Annie from the back. The yolks floated in the bowl, four bright, perfect suns. She broke them with a stab of the whisk and stirred them with concentrated vigour.

She turned to me and said, ‘Mommy? You’re not going to die, are you?’

There it was. I touched my forehead to hers. ‘Honey, someday I will. Everyone does. But first, I’m planning on being around for a long, long time.’

She nodded, kept nodding while our foreheads bobbed up and down. Then she turned back to her eggs and said, ‘Are you, you know, planning on leaving anytime soon?’

I knew exactly what she was thinking. Whom she was thinking about. I turned her back around. ‘Oh, Banannie. No. I will never leave you. I promise. Okay?’

‘You promise? You pinkie promise?’ She held out her pinkie and I looped mine in hers.

‘I more than pinkie promise. I promise you with my pinkie and my whole big entire self.’

She wiped her eyes and nodded again. She went back to whisking.

People kept arriving and fixing things: the unhinged door on the chicken coop, the fence post that went down in a storm months before; someone was changing the oil in the truck. Who had driven it home from Bodega Bay? Who had put Joe’s jacket back on the hook, and the blanket back on our bed, and when? The drill started going again. The house smelled like an Italian restaurant. How could anyone eat? David, the writer in the family, who was also one helluva cook, was working on the eulogy out on the garden bench he’d given us for our wedding, while some of his culinary masterpieces graced the table. Everyone seemed to be doing something constructive except me. I kept telling myself that I had to be strong for the kids, but I didn’t feel strong.

My mom, who’d arrived from Seattle, hadn’t let Zach out of her sight and was digging in the dirt with him and his convoy of Tonka trucks and action figures. Joe’s mom and Annie kept busy cleaning, stopping to wipe each other’s tears, then going back to wiping any surface they could find. I found myself wandering back and forth between Annie and Zach, drawing them in for a hug, a sigh, until they would slip down off my lap and back into their activities.

While she cleaned, Marcella sang. She always sang; she was proud of her voice, and rightly so. But she never sang Sinatra or songs from her generation; she sang songs from her kids’ generation. She loved Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper — you name a song from the eighties and she could sing it. Joe and David had told me that when they were teenagers, blaring stereos from their bedrooms, Marcella would shout up from the kitchen, ‘Kids! Turn that crap up !’

While she scoured the grimy tile grout in my kitchen with a toothbrush, she started singing in an aching soprano: ‘Like a virgin… for the very first time.’ I let out a strange, sharp laugh and she looked at me, shocked. ‘What, sweetie? You okay?’ She hadn’t intended to make a crack at my housekeeping, was so preoccupied with sadness that she didn’t even realize what she was singing. But I knew Joe would have got a kick out of it, that on another day, in another layer of time, we both would have pointed out the lyrics, laughed, and teased her. She would have responded by swaying her big bottom back and forth, adding, ‘Oh yeah? Take this: The kid is not my son…’ But instead she searched me for further signs of grief-stricken insanity to accompany my shriek of laughter. I shook my head and waved to say, Never mind. She took my face in her thick hands. ‘Thank God my grandchildren have you for their mother. I thank God every day for you, Ella Beene.’ I reached my arms around the massive trunk of her.

‘Why don’t you sit down?’ I said, then started to take the spray bottle from her hand. ‘Rest. Let me pour you a cup of coffee.’

She pulled it back. ‘No. This is what I do. This is all I can do. Resting, it makes it worse for me.’

I nodded, hugged her again. ‘Of course.’ Marcella always believed in the clarity of Windex.

The next morning, I slid my black dress from its dry-cleaning bag and lifted my arms and felt the cool lining slip over my head. I considered slipping into the plastic instead, letting it tighten against my nostrils and mouth, and letting them lay me in the same dark hole with Joe. It was the thought of the kids that helped me push my feet into the black slings my best friend, Lucy, bought me —’You cannot wear Birkenstocks to a funeral, my dear, even in Northern California’ — and find both of the silver and aquamarine drop earrings Joe gave me our first Christmas together.

At the church, thirty-six people spoke. We cried, but we laughed too. Most of the stories went back to the time before I knew Joe. It seemed odd that almost everyone in the church had known him much longer than I had. I was the newcomer among them, but I found a certain comfort in telling myself that they didn’t know Joe the way I did.

Afterwards, I remembered having conversations I couldn’t quite hear and receiving hugs I couldn’t quite feel — as if I’d wrapped myself in plastic after all. The only thing I could feel was Annie’s and Zach’s hands slipping into mine, the solidity of their palms, the pressings of their small fingers, as we walked out of the church, as we stood at the grave site on the hill, as we walked down towards the car. And then Annie’s hand pulled out of mine. She walked up to a striking blonde woman I didn’t know, standing at the edge of the cemetery. Perhaps one of Joe’s old classmates, I thought. The woman bent down and Annie reached out, lightly touched her shoulder.

‘Annie?’ I called. I smiled at the woman. ‘She doesn’t have a shy bone in her body.’

The woman took Annie’s other hand in both of hers, whispered in her ear, and then spoke to me over her shoulder. ‘Believe me, I know that. But Annie knows who I am, don’t you, sweet pea?’

Annie nodded without pulling her hand away or looking up. She said, ‘Mama?’

Chapter Four

Annie had called her Mama. She and Zach called me Mom and Mommy. But not Mama. Never Mama. I’d never questioned it, or really even thought of it, but the distinction rang out in that cemetery: Mama is the first-word-ever-uttered variety of mother. The murmur of a satisfied baby at the breast.

I recognized Paige then. I’d once found a picture of her, gloriously pregnant, that had been stuck in a book on photography entitled Capturing the Light — it was the one photo Joe had forgotten, or maybe had intended to keep, when he purged the house of her. I was astounded at her beauty and said so. He’d shrugged and said, ‘It’s a good picture.’

Now I could see that Joe liked his wives tall. She was taller than I, maybe five-eleven, and I wasn’t used to being shorter than other women. I had what some people referred to as great hair, those who happened to like wild, red and unmanageable. But Paige had universally great hair. Long, blonde, straight, silky, shampoo-commercial hair. Computer-enhanced hair. Women comfort themselves when they look at magazines, saying, ‘That photo’s been all touched up. No one really has hair like that, or skin like that, or a body like that.’ Paige had all that, along with Jackie O sunglasses, the single accessory our culture associates with style, mystery and a strong, grieving widow and mother… or in her case, mama.

Annie called her Mama.

These thoughts bungee jumped through my mind in the eight seconds it took her to rise gracefully on her heels, holding Annie in her arms, and walk towards me, extending her hand. ‘Hi. I’m Paige Capozzi. Zach and Annie’s mother.’

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