The Underside of Joy. Seré Prince Halverson
not a past-due kind of guy. He was a fanatic about paying his bills on time. If there had been a religious cult called Pay for Your Sins on Time, he would have been appointed their pope, or at least a most honourable guru.
But there it was, right in front of me. Evidence of slack. I leafed through the invoices. He hadn’t paid Ben Aston for three months? Ben Aston had been his main produce supplier for years. He was a friend. Ben had scrawled across the bottom of the most recent bill, Hey, Joey, Can we take care of this? The amount due was highlighted: $2,563.47. The bakery bill said Last Notice before Termination of Service. In two weeks, the electricity would be shut off if a payment of $1,269 wasn’t made. We owed Teaberry’s Ranch, Donaldson’s Dairy, the beer and wine supplier, and the telephone company. I started sweating. I needed to get outside.
I walked down to the garden and started pulling weeds, but not the way I usually did. Not carefully digging up the root. No. I clawed at them, wildly tearing them, and threw them in a pile. What in the hell? You die on me? You up and die on me? On Annie? On Zach? And you fail to tell me what a god-awful mess you’ve gotten yourself into? ‘You’ve gotten us into?’ I stomped on the pile, releasing droves of dandelion and sour-grass seeds to spread in the wind and multiply all over our land. Let them take over. Why should I care? ‘Oh! And Paige shows up? Really? Now? After three years of, uh, let’s see . . . that would be nothing? “Hi, I’m Annie and Zach’s mother”. What in the hell is that about?’
A car door slammed. Over my hissy fit I hadn’t heard Marcella’s Acura pull into the drive. I took deep breaths to calm myself down while Callie cocked her head at me, held her ears back, and asked with her eyes if I’d gone raving mad. I wondered if Marcella had seen my tirade, as I watched her take careful steps down the path. Everything about Marcella was big: her meals, her zest for cleanliness and order, her body, her voice, her faith, her heart, her love for her family, and – everyone knew it – especially her love for her sons. So now it was sadness that was the biggest part of her, and it showed in her slower walk and, as she got closer, in her face. She’d tried putting on lipstick, but it looked as futile as a painted-on smile – too bright and artificial against the pale sorrow of her skin.
‘Ella, honey . . . I’m sorry about Paige. I tried to call you. Did you get my message?’
I shook my head. Elbow was the Bermuda Triangle of cell phone reception.
She took a deep breath. ‘Auntie Sophia had one of her episodes. I didn’t know what to do. Paige offered and I –’
‘It’s okay.’ I shrugged. ‘It’s okay.’
‘She – Paige – seems so different now.’
‘Different how?’
‘So . . . capable. She was whiny. Spoiled. She drove me crazy. She was no mother at all – all she did was whine and complain and mope around. Certainly no wife to Joseph.’
His name came out like a squeak. She said, ‘Oh no. I wasn’t going to do this. I’m sorry, honey. You have your own tears.’
I put my arm around her. ‘You,’ I said, ‘of all people, are entitled to cry. We’re going to get through this. Come on. Let’s eat.’
She patted my hand. ‘You sound so Italian when you say that.’
Marcella had brought minestrone and I made a salad with the lettuce from our garden – one thing I’d picked and managed not to trample into the ground. Joe’s dad came over too, carrying a warm loaf of cheese bread from the bakery in Freestone. When the subject of the store came up, I got busy putting ice in Zach’s soup.
‘One thing about our son,’ Joe said. ‘We were proud of the way he carried on that store. In this day and age, it’s not easy. Those big-box stores. Everybody’s gotta have fifty rolls of toilet paper just because it’s cheaper? Then they gotta build bigger houses to hold all that toilet paper? All those tree huggers living in these parts should know better. They put solar panels on their goddamn mansions.’
‘Joseph. Your grandchildren.’
‘It’s craziness. But Capozzi’s lives on.’ He poured more wine. ‘Not many years after my father opened, we almost lost his store.’ He and Marcella shared a long look. I knew exactly what he was referring to. The unspoken internment camp. ‘But we persevere. I was worried that Joey didn’t have what it takes. When he was younger, always off snapping pictures, head in the clouds.’ He thumped his chest. ‘But he did the right thing. That boy loved my father. He honoured his grandfather’s name. Joey made us proud.’ Marcella dabbed her eyes with her napkin, and Joe Sr changed the subject, asking Annie what she’d done all day.
Annie looked at me before saying, ‘I played with Mama.’
Joe Sr asked, ‘In the garden?’
‘No . . . not Mommy. Mama.’
‘Mama, Mommy. What’s the difference. Mamma mia, that’s what I say.’
‘No, Grandpa. This is Mommy.’ She poked my shoulder. ‘But the other lady is Mama. You know what I mean, silly.’
As much as I loved Marcella’s soups, especially her minestrone, each bite sizzled in my stomach, threatening anarchy. And the bread would not go down. Fear had parked itself in the middle of my digestive system.
Marcella said, ‘Paige came by today, Grandpa.’
‘What the hell for? Oh, for Christ’s sake, that woman, if you can even call her –’
‘Joseph Capozzi. Stop.’
‘Well? That’s what he got for marrying a non-Italian.’
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘I’m not Italian, either.’
‘Honey, the way you cook and garden and heap love on your kids, you’re an honorary Italian. Which is just as good. Almost.’ He tore off his bread and chewed, his eyes on me. He reached out and put his rough, calloused hand gently over mine.
After Joe Sr and Marcella left, I put the kids to bed and told my mom I wanted to check on something at the store. The parking lot was still almost full from the two restaurants in town. I wanted to get into the store without seeing or talking to anyone, so I went around back and climbed the stairs before turning on any lights.
I opened and shut the desk drawers, ran my finger over the carved words on the underside of what had then been his father’s desk, when Joe and David were bored nine- and seven-year-olds, waiting for their father to quit talking to a customer and close the store for the evening. Joe had shown me the carvings with a penlight, laughing as he told the story. He had used his pocketknife – a recently received Christmas present from their parents that David coveted but had been denied due to his younger status. Joe had carved Joey’s Market. Two days later, David had got hold of the knife, drawn a line through Joe’s name, and carved Davy’s. And so it went, back and forth numerous times, a lopsided column forming, until they got distracted and started fighting about something else. If tenacity had been the indicator of whose market Capozzi’s would become – according to the carvings, at least – the store would have been David’s, the last name without a line carved through it.
At first, going through the books was like trying to read Russian, but eventually the message was clear in any language: The store was in worse trouble than I’d thought. It wasn’t just the recently unpaid bills I’d found in the files. How could I not know this? Joe had refinanced and pulled money out right before we got married. The store was in deep, deep trouble. The last few months had been the most brutal. No wonder he hadn’t sent in the application for the new insurance policy.
I knew things had been tough. Joe had discussed some of it with me. But he hadn’t told me the whole story. The store was losing money every day and had been for who knew how long? His parents didn’t know – I was sure of that. But maybe Joe had told his best friend.
I dialled Frank and Lizzie’s number, hoping Lizzie wouldn’t answer. Lizzie, of course, answered and, in the middle of my apology, handed the phone to Frank. Frank mumbled a hello.