The Underside of Joy (19 page)
I had felt the same sharp burn on my cheek only once before. The day of my father’s funeral, my grandma Beene and I were in her dark, cool basement getting a few jars of homemade pickles for the company. I had been carrying around a question for days. I knew better than to ask my mother. Grandma Beene had always been easy to talk to, laughing when I made childish blunders that seemed to irritate other adults. My question was part of a puzzle I was piecing together in my head, based on fragments of conversations I’d heard and episodes of
As the World Turns
that Grandma secretly allowed me to watch with her, unbeknownst to my mother. I felt I was on the verge of understanding an important concept, and it seemed the quiet moment in the cellar pantry was right, and so I asked her, ‘Grandma? Did God make Daddy die because he loved Miss McKenna and took naps with her?’
The slap came fast then too. My grandmother spoke to me in a voice I’d never heard. ‘Don’t you ever,
ever
say that again, or anything like it! Your father was a wonderful man. And don’t you forget it, young lady. Shame on you!
Shame.
On.
You.
’
She turned and stomped up the stairs, her thick-heeled shoes clunking heavily on each wooden step.
I stood, staring at the jars of raspberry jam, apricot preserves, green beans that bore the label beene’s beans, the rows and rows of pickles for which she was locally famous. Bread-and-butters, sweets, hot dills, extra-hot-pepper dills, and mild dills. Grandma Beene was a hallmark of efficiency and productivity, yet she moved and spoke with a calm gentleness and patience that usually evaded the extremely pragmatic.
For her to have responded so out of character . . . I knew my question was horribly wrong. Or maybe, I thought, she was referring to my spying, the
Shame on you
was because she somehow knew I’d scared my dad so much his heart had stopped. My hands felt sweaty and I wiped them on my plaid skirt, over the large golden pin that held the overflap in place and sometimes snagged the lining of my winter coat. The piece about my daddy’s heart stopping seemed to fit with the piece no one else knew about – that I had scared him and made him yell. I knew my own heart was pounding from my grandma’s slap. Maybe my own heart would stop too. I prayed that it wouldn’t and I prayed that my daddy wasn’t scowling at me from his satin-lined box in the ground.
There was more. Grandma Beene wasn’t done teaching me the lesson. But I had things to think about other than my own old sad stories, and I needed to focus on those letters.
Early the next morning as I swept crumbs out from under the deli counter, Frank walked in, started pouring himself a cup of coffee. ‘This old-lady tweaker who lives just over the bridge, she’s stoned out of her mind, nothing new. So she decides it’s a nifty idea to take her kayak out on the river. Only problem is, she doesn’t come home. So old-man tweaker calls us. We’ve gotta do the whole search and rescue, the helicopter, the whole bit, because grandma’s so stoned she doesn’t realize she’s paddling in circles.’ He held up his cup of coffee as if to toast me. ‘And that, ladies and gentleman, is where your mighty tax dollars are going.’
‘I wonder what happened to her.’
‘Absolutely nothing. That’s the point, El. We found her enjoying the moonlight out past Edwards’ Mill, just after midnight. In la-la land.’ He shook his head, took a swig of coffee.
I had meant that I wondered what happened to her before then, long ago, but I didn’t feel like explaining that to Frank, explaining that I’d recently concluded that everyone had their reasons, whether they knew it or not. That even Paige had her reasons, and I intended to find them out.
‘More coffee?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll get it. This one is to go. Gotta go save a meth addict or two, civil servant that I am.’
‘Frank?’
‘Yeah?’
I didn’t want to tell him about the letters in case he had some sort of civic duty to report me.
‘Do you think Lizzie would talk to me? About Paige?’
‘Lizzie won’t talk to
me
about Paige.’ He stared at me, waiting, as if to say,
Why can’t you talk to
me
?
Frank missed Joe too. I could always see it in his eyes; they didn’t match up with his cocky stance. He shrugged. ‘But what the hell? What have you got to lose?’
I knew Lizzie was home even before I opened the white picket gate. It was a sharp blue day, and wafts of spearmint, rosemary, lavender, lemon, and cocoa butter fragranced the air. She worked in their converted barn out back, after Molly left for school each morning. The old me would have been nervous to approach Lizzie, to walk around to the barn and lean my head through the Dutch door. But I was pretty sure nothing she could say to me would make things any worse. All I was after now was the truth so I could decide what to do about the letters. I stood there for almost a minute, blind, until my eyes adjusted and I saw Lizzie, long tables with pots, and walls of supplies.
Her blonde curly hair was clipped up away from her forehead, and she was humming while she poured olive oil into one of five huge saucepans. Two Mexican women weighed cups of palm and coconut oil. Lizzie looked up. ‘Oh! Frank’s not here.’
‘I’d like to talk to you. If you have a minute. Actually, more than a minute.’
‘Oh? Well, okay . . . I just . . . I can’t really leave right now. Can we talk here?’
I looked over at the two women, who were both watching us.
‘Very limited English, mostly having to do with soap. If you’d like to discuss another topic, your privacy is pretty much guaranteed.’ She said something to them in Spanish, they both smiled and nodded as she introduced us, and then she said to me, ‘Anyway, while this is melting, I do need to add the lye to the pots outside. Come on.’
We walked out to a table where three more pots were cooling. ‘You need to step way back,’ she explained. ‘Lye is nasty stuff. You don’t want to breathe it in.’ She turned her head while she poured it into a measuring cup, instructing me to move back even farther. ‘Now, this will bring the temperature way up, and then we need to let it cool to a hundred and ten degrees.’ She pointed to yet another table. ‘Those should be ready for us to start stirring. Grab a seat and a spoon. We need to stir those babies until they thicken. Think fondue.’ I recognized her demonstration voice from the Elbow Christmas Bazaar – friendly, efficient, in charge.
We both took seats and spoons and began stirring. I said, ‘Lizzie, I know you and Paige are friends . . .’
She looked at me for a long minute before she said, ‘
Are
is a strong word.
Were
isn’t quite accurate, though, either. We don’t talk anymore, but I still think of her as my friend. And I miss her. I miss the old Paige. I don’t really know the new Paige.’
‘No one in Joe’s family has anything nice to say about either Paige – old or new . . .’
Lizzie directed her eyes to my pot of liquid. ‘Keep stirring. You want to feel it starting to thicken.’
‘But I have a strong feeling . . . there’s more to the story.’
‘Look, Ella. If you’re trying to dig up dirt on Paige in order to build your custody case, you can take your shovel somewhere else.’
I knew I was one sentence away from being led out the front gate. ‘I know it seems that way. But at this point, I want to understand Paige. To understand Joe. I’m beginning to believe . . . that Joe . . . he may not have treated her fairly.’
Lizzie’s head jerked up. Her face reddened, her eyes and mouth opened wide, her fist hit the table. And then it was as if a cork blew. ‘No shit! But try telling my husband that! Or anyone else in this town.’
‘I live in this town. I want to know the truth.’
‘
Now
you do . . .’
‘Yes. I do.’
‘To better serve your purposes . . .’
‘No, believe me. My purposes – as far as custody – would be better served by not asking, not knowing, just as I have always done. I’m trying to do it differently now. But I could use your help.’
She stared at me, sizing me up as she stirred, stirred more. Finally, she said, ‘Paige seemed like the perfect golden girl. When she started to struggle and show signs of slipping away, no one could deal.’ She stuck her chest out, rocked her shoulders back and forth, pursed her lips. ‘It wasn’t
allowed
in the Family Capozzi.’
‘What was she like before this happened?’
‘She was always beautiful – but, you know, real. Her house was picked up, but there was no Paige the Stager. No feng shui, flung shit, or whatever. She was always guarded, or shy, but kind. I liked her a lot.’
I concentrated on my figure eights. It was hard to hear anything good about Paige.
Lizzie said, ‘I’ve gotta say, I was shocked that Joe moved on so quickly.’
My face felt hot. I kept stirring.
‘Joe and Paige were crazy about each other from day one. But then, right after Annie was born, Paige stopped being crazy for Joe and went just plain crazy.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘First she stopped returning my calls. Then, when I’d stop by, I’d see her hair was greasy. She wore her robe all day.’
The paisley robe.
‘She had been excited during her pregnancy, but then she wasn’t interested in Annie at all. It was weird. She started asking me to watch Annie. Joe was beside himself. Of course, Marcella to the rescue, and all that. Paige kept telling me what a terrible mother she was. That she should have never had a baby. She cried all the time. She looked at Annie like she was nothing more than an odd-shaped lamp. To Joe’s credit, he started coming home from the store every chance he got. He’d hold Annie and sing to her.’
While Lizzie prepared the moulds, she told me more. When Annie was about four months old, Paige seemed better. Now it seems obvious she had some kind of postpartum depression. But six years before – in 1993 – no one talked about it, much less understood it. Paige emerged, but somewhat changed. She was even more guarded. She was still a good friend to Lizzie, and a good mother to Annie. Paige and Joe seemed to regain their footing. But then she got pregnant with Zach. She told Lizzie it was a mistake and that she was terrified. She didn’t want to go back to that dark place. She never mentioned abortion, but Lizzie said she had the feeling Paige was considering it – out of nothing but desperation. Paige talked to her doctor, but he wasn’t adequately concerned. No one was. ‘No one in the family, including Joe, wanted to talk about Paige’s depression, as if talking about it would bring it back. But I could see in his eyes, Joe was terrified.’
I was listening so intently to Lizzie that I’d stopped stirring, and she pointed to the wooden spoon. ‘Oh, sorry,’ I said, resuming my figure eights. I didn’t want to ask, but I forced myself to say, ‘Is there more?’
Her eyes searched mine before she spoke again. ‘I haven’t talked about any of this with anyone. Ever. But maybe this will finally help Paige. And you.’ Lizzie sighed, kept her eyes on the liquid. ‘But of course the depression came back anyway, and this time it was worse. The doctor finally prescribed an antidepressant, but Paige flushed them, which scared Joe even more. She was afraid they would be bad for Zach. The one thing she could do was breast-feed, but she did it with this . . . I don’t know . . . detached determination. She had him on a strict schedule. But when he nursed, she barely looked at him or engaged him. One day I told Joe, “She needs to be hospitalized.” He looked at me, shocked. He was so in the thick of it, he was no longer seeing clearly. And he said, “No, she’ll be fine – we just have to get through the first four months like with Annie.” And I said, “This is
different.
” Soon after that she told me she shouldn’t be near Annie or Zach. It was a Saturday, I remember, and I took the kids home with me and kept them until the store closed and Joe could pick them up. When he did, I told him what she’d said, and that time, he heard me. But the next day, she was gone.’
‘Did you hear from her after she left?’
She shook her head. ‘Just once. I sent her cards, tried to keep in touch after that, but she never replied.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Wow, I guess I needed to talk about this.’ She looked up to the rafters, started to say something else but hesitated. Finally she said, ‘Frank did tell me, just since Joe died, that he’d told Frank that Paige had written letters he’d never opened. The mother of his children was trying to contact him, but he ignored her. Right before he died, Joe told Frank that Paige had called him. That Paige wanted a custody arrangement. That Joe was going to have to talk to you – and he was dreading it.’
I let go of the spoon, held my head in my hands. Remembering. We never had the conversation that night, because after we’d made love for the last time, I had waved off his request to talk, floating in my contentment, wanting to wait until the following day. ‘Tomorrow, then,’ he’d said, and touched my nose.
Tomorrow . . .
Lizzie touched my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’ She smiled. ‘But I still need you to stir. You can’t quit on me now.’ The colour of the liquid had lightened from dark gold to cream, and the consistency did remind me of fondue. We lugged the pots back into the barn, my eyes trying to adjust again while Lizzie went ahead and set her pot down. ‘Over here,’ she called. I made my way to another workstation, where rows of small bottles and jars filled an old glass-doored cabinet. ‘Now the fun begins.’ We added oats and powdered milk and cocoa butter to one batch, pear essential oil and dried calendula to another. Rosemary essential oils and lavender petals went into my pot. We kept adding fragrance and sniffing, then adding more.
After we poured the liquid into the moulds, Lizzie turned to me. ‘There’s something else I want to say. Joe and I shared some harsh words. Me and my tough talk. But Joe was a good person. I think he was just scared. He got hurt. He wanted to protect the kids and himself . . . and you. But had he had more time –’ She looked away, then back at me. ‘I think he would have made it right. With time.’
‘Certainly you don’t think he would have just handed over the kids to Paige?’
‘No. I don’t. But I like to think he was on his way to a more . . . I mean, as Joe was building a life with you, he was getting over his anger at Paige. If Joe had lived, I’m certain he would have seen that shutting Paige out completely wasn’t good for Annie and Zach. You know? It was the most convenient thing at first. Actually, it was his only choice at first because that’s what she told him she wanted. I get that. And I feel for you, Ella, left with all the fallout. I do not envy you.’
Before I left, Lizzie gave me a box of soap, including two bars from her children’s line, Milk & Honey Bunny, and a bottle of bubble bath called Here Comes Bubble, to take home for the kids. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is not your mother’s soap.’
I walked home, waving at the cars that honked hello without lifting my head to see who it was. Someday Annie and Zach would have questions about why Paige left. Because they were kids, they would feel that somehow it was their fault. Annie probably already felt it, a thorn of blame she couldn’t quite identify, like a tiny thistle woven into her sock. Those letters might tell them the real story. If I didn’t give them to the court, but let the kids read them when they were older? They would know I’d withheld evidence in order to prevent Paige from having custody. But if I did hand the letters over to the court, if I did the right thing? The judge could very well still rule in my favour. In Annie and Zach’s favour. I believed he would still think that staying with me was in their best interest . . . no matter what the letters said.
Still. I would be risking everything.
I held a bar of soap up to my nose and sniffed. Not my mother’s soap. Not my grandmother’s, either. There was yet another layer to the lesson she’d taught me that day.
I don’t know how long I’d hid in my grandmother’s basement after her slap, but eventually hunger overtook my disgrace, forcing me upstairs to her kitchen. Neighbours were putting out plates of ham sandwiches with bowls of potato and macaroni salad. Grandma walked in carrying a tray of peanut butter cookies. When she saw me, she set down the tray, took me by the arm, and marched me back down to the basement. She pulled me over to the utility sink, picked up an orange bar of Dial soap, and held it under the running water. ‘I hate to do this, dear, but you have got to learn that certain things are inappropriate for a young lady to say. This is the only way I know of that will make you remember. It’s unpleasant, but a valuable lesson, all the same. Now, open your mouth.’ I pressed my lips tight, but she forced the soap through them. It scraped against my teeth while I gagged, eyes tearing, the waxy fire of it searing my throat and my mind too. The burning taste seemed to go on forever, but not nearly as long as the burning shame. Afterwards, she handed me an enamel cup of water and a pink towel from the dryer. ‘Now. That’s done. Do you understand why I needed to do that?’