Seré Halverson - The Underside of Joy

Tears were running again, down both our faces, snot running from our noses, and we each let out a little laugh — embarrassed, a bit shy — as Paige reached into her purse for more Kleenex and handed me several. ‘So you see. Joe did have a lot to be scared of.’

‘And you were scared.’

She nodded, and when she spoke, her voice squeaked, high and tight. ‘It wasn’t the same as my mother, but I was afraid it was… when I got sick. And then when he didn’t respond to my letters? I didn’t know how much he told the kids. I thought that maybe it was easier just to tell them I was dead. So I was afraid that I would scare them also.’

I nodded. ‘But still…’

‘Still, both he and I could have done better. ‘

‘And me. I could have done better.’ I reached into my bag and felt for the letters, then pressed them into her hand.

She saw what they were, then held them up to cover her face. And then we leaned over the bed, over Zach, and hugged, not tentatively or suspiciously, as we had that first night after the funeral, but leaning into each other, holding each other up, heaving out sobs, clinging to each other and Zach like we were clinging to a rock.

We finally pulled away to blow our noses. We each took long, stammering breaths. As I slipped my hand around his swollen fingers, I remembered him back on that morning when he and Annie and I were playing Ship, how he jumped onto the bed and pulled the sheet up, how he laughed so loudly, not knowing yet that his daddy had died. Now I imagined he was sitting on Joe’s lap somewhere in a parallel universe, and I silently asked Joe to please tell Zach it was time to come back to us, that I needed him, and that Paige needed him too.

In the earliest hours of the morning, we watched in wonder as Zach’s heart rate and oxygen levels rose steadily, his skin turned pink with the dawn, his eyes opened. He flung his arms, trying to remove the ventilator tube, but Paige and I reassured him while the doctors removed the tube from his throat. He smiled. He spoke; he complained that his throat hurt. He said, ‘Mommy.’ He said, ‘Mama.’

Dr Markowitz said, ‘I want to keep him here for another day or two, keep monitoring him. He seems like he’s made a full recovery. But there are some things we won’t know for years, as far as a diagnosis of brain damage. There may not be any. He’s a tough little guy, and he’s already shown great resilience. In the meantime’ — she smiled, stuck her hands in her lab coat — ‘celebrate.’

My mom, Gil, Lucy, Lizzie and Frank, Aunt Bernie — everyone came to welcome back Zach, an ongoing parade of balloons and teddy bears and dinosaurs and action figures in tow. Clem Silver sent a beautiful illustration of our cottage, with our garden billowing over the foreground and the redwood grove stoic in the background. Zach pointed to it and said, ‘Let’s go home.’

The room fell quiet. Paige and I shared a look. I said, ‘Let’s concentrate on getting better.’

Joe Sr, Marcella, Bernie, Paige, and I ended up going together to the cafeteria. I took a bite of a tuna fish sandwich, thinking about how strange this all was, sitting with ‘our’ in-laws, actually chatting, actually laughing. Bernie excused herself, said she needed to get back to her office, offered to walk Callie later. She was so polished and efficient; you’d never guess that back at home she lived among piles of silly things she couldn’t part with.

Paige looked at me, then took a deep breath. ‘So when I said I suppose you have everything you need now that this happened… to Zach. To persuade a judge to change the court order in your favour…’ I kept my eyes steady on hers. ‘I told you and I meant it. We are both responsible in our own ways. But Paige, Annie and Zach, they said they want both of us.’

Her eyes filled. ‘They really said that? They told you that?’

I nodded.

She covered her eyes with her hand. ‘You didn’t have to tell me.’ And then, ‘Thank you for telling me.’

I leaned over and said, ‘Paige? Would you ever consider coming back to Elbow?’

Marcella shook out her white embroidered handkerchief and blew her nose.

We waited. I took another bite of sandwich and chewed long after I could have swallowed it, afraid to move my hands again or change expression or do anything that might negatively affect the outcome of that moment threaded between the four of us, connecting us, tugging at our souls. All the hurtful things that had passed between us all hung there too, hooks we’d need to untie, one by one, with time.

Paige didn’t answer, just kept her hand locked over her eyes while her shoulders shuddered. Joe Sr reached out and put his hand on Paige’s other hand. I covered his with mine, and then Marcella extended her own hand, and we sat there, quiet, while the lunch crowd cleared, until all that was left was the circle of us.

The next afternoon, Dr Markowitz told us, ‘Go home. And don’t come back.’ She went over things to look for, but she said she had high hopes that Zach was going to be fine. ‘I’ve never seen a kid put away that much macaroni and cheese.’

When we left the hospital that day, Annie, Paige, and I packed up Zach’s things. David and Gil took armfuls of toys down to their car. A mural of Noah’s Ark adorned the wall leading to the lobby. Annie said, as she walked along, patting the picture, ‘Two giraffes, two monkeys, two lions.’ And then she stopped, letting us walk ahead of her, me pushing Zach in the regulation wheelchair, Paige carrying his balloons and suitcase. Annie gave us each a pat on our butts. When we turned, she grinned at us. She said, ‘Two moms.’

The magazine did end up running a four-page story, and while there was a line about lemons and lemonade, the article focused on the internment of Grandpa Sergio and Marcella’s father, Grandpa Dante, and wove in the family history and perseverance with the store’s transformations. Other magazine features have followed over the past five years. Time even did a short article. The story of the Italian internment during World War II caught the public’s attention, and many descendants of the interned — Italian, but also Japanese and German — have found their way to Elbow, and to the store, to enter the name of their relative in the book we keep open, to see the display Marcella and Joe Sr helped us arrange on the back wall — of Sergio’s and others’ Enemy Alien IDs and photos, the popular posters of the time with specific directions not to speak the enemy language, along with other memorabilia people have contributed.

There are also the hordes of foodies and wine connoisseurs that flock here because of the other, purely decadent write-ups in Bon Appétit, Travel + Leisure, Gourmet. David is making quite a name for himself as a chef, and I am making a name for myself as the person who does all the other stuff. Which is just fine with me.

As a way of singing the praises of the natural beauty of the area without having to actually sing, I work as a guide for Fish and Wild-life a few times a month. The other day, as I led a hike along the river, someone complained about the squawking crows. I gave my spiel about how smart they are, how adaptable. I told the story about how they drop nuts at a busy intersection in China, then wait for the cars to run over and crack them, then stand patiently on the corner, until the light changes, so they can eat the cracked nuts without getting crushed by traffic. Usually, that gets people smiling. But this one woman was an exceptionally tough nut to crack, so to speak. ‘I still don’t like them,’ she huffed. ‘They remind me of death.’