The Underside of Joy

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