The Underside of Joy (25 page)

Callie and I took a walk and ended up at the grocery store, where I bought a single serving of turkey in a plastic container, a single serving of mashed potatoes and gravy, single servings of stuffing and cranberries. I could not shake the feeling of despair. It was Thanks-giving and Paige hadn’t answered her phone. I had not talked to Annie and Zach since they’d left Elbow.

At the apartment, I called David, and he’d had a bad day too, a fight with Gil, a depressingly quiet dinner, with too many empty chairs around the Capozzi table, too many leftovers.

‘Basically,’ he said, ‘I’m lower than whale shit.’

‘Oh dear. Then I guess we can pick up where we left off last time – you were saying something about your rampant feelings of rejection?’

‘Wow. You’ve got a light touch.’

‘I’m sorry, David. But would you . . . do you feel like talking about what happened?’ I actually had my yellow notebook open, ready to take notes. I was getting rather obnoxious.

‘No. But I will. If you think it will help your cause.’

I told him I had multiple causes at the moment, but one of them was to better understand his older brother, especially if it would help me communicate with his ex-wife so I could see Annie and Zach, which was my number one cause.

David said, ‘Okay. It all happened at Grandpa Sergio’s, so that would be in your house, in your bedroom. The curtains were drawn, they were heavy, and olive green, so it was dim and stuffy, and godawful warm. Grandpa Sergio was in bed, and I was sitting in a chair next to him, holding his hand. He and I? We were really close. I loved that man. I was nineteen.’

‘Go on.’

‘My dad was there too. But Grandpa kept asking for Joe Jr. Joe was hurrying back from the university, trying to get there, and Grandpa was trying to hang on. In my mind, I was always Grandpa’s favourite, but he wasn’t so interested in talking to me at the moment.’

‘So what happened?’

‘So Joe finally arrived. And Grandpa told us
everything.
All the stuff he’d never talked about came barrelling out, about how he was afraid he might never see his wife and kids again when they took him away. How he and Grandma Rosemary didn’t have a stitch of savings, and the town pulled together to help Grandma and the store. He said, and I’ll never forget this, “The internment, it was based on fear. Fear of a person’s origins. Fear of the mother country. They ask me, who do you love more? Italy or America? I say, ask me who I love more, my mother or my wife? I love them both, but differently. One is my past and one is my future. I say, I love this country, it is my future. But do I worry about my new country bombing my relatives? I do worry, I told them. But that, it didn’t go over so well.”

‘Grandpa told us how much he loved both of us. But he said he built his home and his store for his family and its future generations. He said we owed it to Elbow to keep it going. Capozzi’s Market, he said, was this town’s symbol of hope for withstanding the hardest of times.’

‘But I still don’t understand why he handed it down to Joe.’

‘I’m getting there. That’s when he turned to me. There was a lot of coughing and wheezing. But then he said, clear as a bell, “Davy, I love you, my boy. I have some money I want to give you. But let’s face it. You’re not going to have any children.” Then he turned to Joe and said, “You promise me one thing, Joe Jr, you promise me you’ll take the store, and you’ll do good by me, you’ll do good by the Capozzi name so no one will ever question our family again. And one day, you’ll hand that store down to your
bambinos.
Promise me.” That room fell absolutely quiet. Grandpa even stopped wheezing. I kept thinking,
Don’t say you’ll do it; all you’ve ever wanted was to be a photojournalist, travelling every corner of the planet.
But Grandpa’s eyes were filled with tears, begging him. And Joe finally told him, “Yes, Nonno. I promise.”’ David’s voice broke, but he kept going. ‘And Grandpa smiled. He’d never gone by that Italian name for
grandfather
and now we’d understood why. And he said “Thank you, Joey,” and he closed his eyes, and when he did, the tears ran down his cheeks, towards his ears. I remember Joe wiping the streaks away with his thumbs. But Joe? He was crying too, so
his
tears were falling on Grandpa anyway. Within a few minutes Grandpa was gone.’

A full minute went by, maybe more. ‘David. That must have been so hard.’

‘We never talked about me being gay. I hadn’t even come out to my parents. But Grandpa knew. He never said anything. He was never anything but kind to me. But he wanted that store to go down through the generations, and I wasn’t his best bet for making that happen. The thing is? As hard as it was for me, it was harder for Joe. That promise was a chain around that poor guy’s neck.’

‘He never told me how it all came to be. He just said your grandpa wanted him to run the store, but he didn’t say it went down quite like that.’

‘Joe never complained; he just took it on as his duty. But that’s why he couldn’t ask for help, either.’

I hadn’t taken a single note while David was talking, but after we hung up I wrote: Internment comes from fear. Fear of someone’s origins. Fear of someone’s mother country. Paige was afraid of her origins, of her mother. So she took herself away. She said in her letter Joe was afraid of her background too. But what were they afraid of, exactly? And how do I find out? David’s told me so much about Joe. But who can tell me about Paige?

Chapter Thirty-three

As the day approached when I’d have the kids with me, I bought the three of us beds. I thought about having our stuff shipped out but figured it would cost more to do that than buy replacements. Plus, I didn’t know what I was doing, really. Was I staying? I couldn’t quite fathom it, but I couldn’t fathom leaving without them, either.

I hunted every thrift shop I could, passed over the same Crock-Pots and waffle makers, the sixties’ teak hors d’oeuvres platters and Corning Ware bowls, and then stumbled across a find that actually made me smile. A Buzz Lightyear lamp for Zach. A little yellow desk for Annie. Shelves. At Target I found a dinosaur comforter and a green seersucker bedspread. Coordinating sheets and oversize pillows. I took my purchases back to the apartment, excited to set them up, and as soon as I stepped back to survey, I thought of their rooms at Paige’s – bigger than our not-so-great room in Elbow, a
castle bed,
no less – and thick lead settled in my chest. We headed back out, and Callie waited, tied up in a strip of shade outside while I searched for that One Cool but Cheap Item that would thrill them. And then, right in the display window at the hospice store: a bright red trike for Zach. A shiny pink bike for Annie, complete with a white basket adorned with purple flowers. Together they cost me forty dollars. I couldn’t believe my luck. Maybe the tide was changing, after all.

Just before the kids arrived, I set to work filling the apartment with delicious smells from the kitchen. Even though I’d blown my budget on all the little extras, the apartment would still not pass Paige’s standards. But at least she’d know by the aromas coming from the kitchen that the kids would be well nourished.

At exactly five o’clock, they rang the doorbell. My heart blammed in my ears. I turned down the stove and opened the door and fell down on my knees to hug them. They knocked me over. Callie dove into our pile and we all laughed.

All except Paige. The corner of her mouth twitched as she held her smile.

‘Would you like to come in?’ I offered, still lying on my back. ‘No. But thanks. I’ve got to run. Annie, Zach, can I have a hug?’

Zach looked at me, then, along with Annie, got up and hugged Paige.

She said, ‘See you Sunday,’ and she was gone.

‘Look at you, look at you! Oh, I missed you guys so much!’ I kept hugging them, kissing them, smelling their hair, their necks, their hands. They smelled different, like new carpeting and air-conditioning and the Macy’s interpretation of jasmine and citrus. Their
terroir
had changed. ‘Tell me how you’re doing! Tell me everything!’

First, they wanted a tour of the apartment, which took about seventy-five seconds. I opened the door to their room, and as soon as they saw the bike and trike, they whooped and hollered, jumping up and down so fiercely that I had to remind them about the neighbours living below us. Evidently, Paige hadn’t bought them wheels yet. Good. I promised them they could ride after dinner.

While we were eating, I said, ‘Tell me about your new home, your new friends.’

Annie said, ‘As I’ve mentioned, our house is spectacular. It’s very big. And very nice. But.’ She threw her hands up in the air, out to the sides. ‘There’s no yard. No garden. No trees. Except for three very small ones.’

‘No chickens or eggs!’ Zach chimed in.

‘But there is a lovely pool,’ Annie reminded him.

‘And stairs!’ Zach said, who thought a second floor in a house was as noteworthy as a pool. I smiled, thinking of Zach writing a real estate listing:
Your dream home awaits you. Enjoy daily walks up your very own staircase!

I laughed a lot that evening and the next day. How sullen I’d been since Joe’s death, even before the kids left, but much more so since then. Now that they were there with me, I revelled in their every observation and gesture, their mispronunciations and new vocabulary, all the nuances of their evolving personalities. I wanted to film them and hit replay when they were away from me. But we were the only young family I knew without a video camera. Surprisingly, Joe hadn’t wanted one. He said it was bad enough that he spent so much time behind his still camera.

‘Well,’ I’d said, ‘I’ll man the video camera.’

‘Then we’ll both be observing life. Who’s going to
live
it?’

I thought about what he’d said and vowed to try to stay in the moment, safekeeping it all in my head and my heart. Remember this: Remember the way Annie keeps snapping her fingers. Remember Zach’s quiet fascination with his boogers. Remember the way he dances with Callie, wiggling his hips like some kind of Chippendales dancer. And where in the hell did he learn to do that! Whenever my mind lurched forward, to when they’d be gone, I had to nudge it back to the here and now.

That night Zach wet the bed. Zach hadn’t wet the bed since he was potty trained more than a year before. Annie said, ‘He does it at Mama’s house all the time. Even during the day! Pee-yew!’

Zach hung his head, sighed, and said, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

He was standing there in his Barney underwear; his torso looked longer and leaner than it had been just a month before. His haircut made him look older too. He
was
older. Joe’s death, and now this huge change, had aged all of us. And yet there was Zach, embarrassed, feeling like a baby. I told him, ‘Honey, it’s just an accident. Sometimes lots of changes can cause accidents like this. Don’t worry about it.’

Zach asked me, ‘When are we going home?’ At first I thought he meant to Paige’s house, and that lead-in-the-chest feeling hit me again, but then he said, ‘I miss Nonna and Nonno.’

I hugged him. ‘I don’t know, honey. Right now this is our home.’ He looked around the room and sighed again, and again he said,

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

We spent a lot of Saturday in the pool, with breaks for them to ride their bikes. Zach wanted to ride his trike around the pool patio, but I told him that would be breaking the rules, that the bikes were for outside the fenced area, not on the patio. Still, he swung his leg over the seat.

‘Zach. We’ll ride after our swim.’

‘But I won’t ride on the patio.’

‘Where, then?’

‘In the
POOL.
Like my very own
SUBMARINE.
’ He laughed. ‘I’m going to drive it all the way to Daddy!’ I wanted to stop him right there, remind him, once again, that he couldn’t ride his trike to his Daddy, that Daddy didn’t live underwater. But Zach seemed so happy and carefree in the moment, I let it go. I figured, so some people swear heaven is above the clouds, but Zach has decided it’s underwater. At least the kid can think for himself.

‘Okay. Get off the trike, Captain. As in now.’

I knew Zach was just talking big. Annie told me he still wouldn’t even go in the pool at Paige’s, so I wanted to resume coaxing him back to his love of being in the water and work with him like I had those days at the river. I’d even bought him plastic water wings to wear on his arms to help him feel more secure. By the end of the day, he was jumping off the side, flapping his arms, then splashing into the water, where I would scoop him up in my embrace.

That afternoon, after they rode bikes, they wanted to do crafts, but all I’d brought from Elbow were crayons and colouring books, and they quickly tired of those. Annie suggested we make bookmarks from ironing crayon shavings in sheets of wax paper. But I didn’t even have wax paper, so we went down to the store, them riding their bikes alongside me. When we got back, I plugged in my travel iron, while Annie carved the crayons with the scissors and Zach made a mess of the shavings. Annie said, ‘We can’t do this at Mama’s.’

I asked, ‘Oh? Too messy?’

‘No. She doesn’t have an iron.’

‘Oh, I’m sure she does . . .’

‘No. She doesn’t.’

Paige could probably afford to send her laundry out. ‘Do you have a washer and dryer?’

‘Of course, silly.’ Annie cracked up, like that was the funniest question she’d ever heard.

On Sunday afternoon, they asked if they could take their bikes back to Paige’s. I hadn’t planned to let them, wanted those bikes to be special perks at my place, our thing. But I knew I might not see them for a while and that the way they were growing, they’d hardly be able to ride them before they outgrew them. Besides, playing that kind of game would punish only them, not Paige. I had to take the top off the Jeep in order to fit the bikes in the back. Zach asked if he could take his water wings too, and I told him sure, felt that jealous twinge, and let it pass.

I drove them back in a silent car. Then Annie said, ‘This all feels like we’re playing pretend.’

‘What do you mean, Banannie?’

‘You know. This place. Everything. It feels like playing makebelieve and we just keep playing it and playing it. I want
both
of you. And I want Uncle David and Gil and Nonna and Nonno and everyone.’

‘I want
BOTH
of you too,’ Zach said. ‘And everyone!’

‘I know it’s hard. We’ve been through a lot of change.’

Annie said, ‘Change sucks.’

‘Um . . .’ She was right. I thought about pointing out her word choice but didn’t. She couldn’t have said it better.

When we pulled onto Paige’s street and started up the hill, Zach started to whimper, saying, ‘I don’t wanna go without you to the mama lady,’ and by the time we parked in the driveway, he was screaming, ‘I wanna stay with my mommy!’ Annie kept uncharacteristically quiet, then tried to smooth back Zach’s hair.

‘Zachosaurus. It’s gonna be okay,’ she said.

Paige came out, her arms open wide. I did not want to hand him back over to her. How ’bout we just get back in the car, guys? How ’bout we drive away and never come back?

She didn’t try to take him, though. She rubbed his back and let him cry. Finally she said, ‘I know you had a good time, and you’ll have a good time with your mommy again, soon.’

Not soon enough.

As he laid his head on my shoulder, she kept stroking his back until he started to calm down, his stuttered breaths taking over for the sobs, until he was almost asleep, and he let her lift him from my arms. With his eyes closed, he pointed to the Jeep and said, ‘Bike.’

‘They wanted to keep their bikes with them. If that’s okay.’

‘Well, there’s really nowhere to ride them here with the hill, except a little bit of patio out back, but of course, that’s fine, that’s really nice of you. We can ride at the park. I’ll open the garage.’

I lifted the bikes out and watched the door slowly rise. Inside her immaculate garage was a Suburban – so soccer mom of her. I wheeled the bikes in and parked them along the back wall. The door to the house was closed. I wanted to walk in, to draw their baths, to wash their hair and have them tell me the story of their day, of our day.

I drove west towards the sunset, which looked like the gods had been throwing cantaloupes at each other, cracking them open across the sky. I pulled out my cell phone and called Paige.

‘So, do you really think I can see them again soon? I mean, you told Zach “soon”.’

‘You’ll have them after Christmas, which is just a few weeks away. And then in three months after that. I’m comfortable with the court’s decision.’

‘Three months is a long time.’

‘Try three years.’ She hung up.

I needed to find a way to talk to Paige. Every time we spoke, hostility cut through the line – hers, and mine, too. I pulled into my parking stall at the apartment and reached over and opened the glove compartment. I’d stuck Paige’s cards and letters to Annie and Zach in there.

How could I get through to her? I still had the cards she’d sent the kids. But she’d wonder why I hadn’t given these to the court with the others in the first place, and she wouldn’t believe I intended for the kids to someday open them themselves. She also knew I was desperate and would do anything to see the kids. And she still believed I’d known about all the letters from the beginning. This was clearly my one and only chance to make it better between us, and I did not want to blow it.

I had to figure out a way to make this stack of cards and letters work in the kids’ favour.

It had been there all along, winking at me, saying,
Hello?
Paige’s return address on Annie’s and Zach’s envelopes. Some were from a hospital. But some weren’t. I had to guess they were from Aunt Bernie’s, when Paige had been living there. That night I wrote:
Maybe, just maybe, Aunt Bernie can help?