The Underside of Joy

She actually found him! He’d drunk away everything he’d earned. Penniless, sleeping around, and worse, violent. So she kicked him back out and, ironically, set up a moonshine business during Prohibition, and raised those two kids – my mom and Aunt Lily – with a trapdoor covered by a braided rug under the kitchen table. It’s the same kitchen table I still have.’
    I didn’t say anything. I was trying to figure out what part of the story she and I could relate to. Not the secret trapdoor. Not the moonshine business. Not the tiny mother with the two kids on the ship. Not the sneaky drunk husband. Callie barked and I turned to see the squirrel dive for the trunk of an oak and disappear.
    ‘Ella.’ My mother held my shoulders. ‘We come from a line of strong women. I see that strength in you.’
    ‘Thanks,’ I said, our faces only inches away, almost too close to each other, too close to all the unspoken. I could have asked more right then, but I knew better; I’d learned my lesson long ago. I stepped back and picked up my wine, and she did the same. ‘Hey, does that mean I get the old pine table? I love that table.’
    She raised her glass. ‘Not while I’m still breathing you don’t.’ We clinked our glasses. A wordless toast to another success: once again, we’d talked about my dad without talking about my dad.

Chapter Eight
    The next morning I dropped my mom off at the airport shuttle bus, but not before she offered to postpone leaving and get someone else to cover for her at work.
    I didn’t want her to go. But I knew postponing her departure wasn’t going to help us all get to the other side, or wherever the hell we were headed.
    And so we drove her to the DoubleTree Inn, where she stepped onto the shuttle bus to the San Francisco airport and I pulled out cookies and juice to distract Zach, who otherwise would have definitely run up and grabbed her. We all waved, and I felt inspired by the fact that Zach’s tantrums from the previous day had vanished. I buckled the kids into their car seats and headed home. At a stoplight, I turned to them and said, ‘I’m sorry I yelled in the car yesterday. That wasn’t a nice way to tell you to stop fighting. I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?’
    Zach nodded big exaggerated nods and said, ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.’ I’d never heard him do that before.
    Annie said, ‘Of course we forgive you, silly. But if you need a break, now might be a good time for us to visit Mama in Lost Vegas.’
    The person in the car behind us honked, and I just made the light as it turned yellow again. Need a break? That was an odd thing for Annie to say, I thought, but the kids started singing ‘I’ve Got Sixpence’ and seemed almost happy. I didn’t want to ruin the moment by drilling her. I just said, ‘Annie, believe me, I don’t need a break . Being around you and Zach is what I love most in this world.’ But the thought niggled at me. Either Paige was asking Annie to visit, or perhaps Annie had come up with the idea all on her own. I wondered what Paige wanted, but I wondered more what Annie wanted. It made sense that she might want to spend time with Paige. But what if Paige built up something with the kids and then pulled her disappearing act again?
    We drove up the driveway, past Joe’s truck parked in its spot; the empty, hollow house waited, hungry, ready to swallow us whole.
    Callie trotted up wagging her tail, but I felt as if we walked on a movie set, and everything was an illusion, and once I got closer and looked and prodded a bit, I’d have to face the truth. Maybe the cute, cosy house was just a cardboard façade. The vibrant garden, plastic and dusty silk. Word had got out that the director had abandoned the film and the studio was pulling out of the financing and there the three of us were, standing outside the pretend door without a script. I unlocked the door anyway, and we went inside.
    The screen door slammed behind us. ‘Well,’ I said. Annie and Zach stood in the not-so-great room and looked at me, expectantly. ‘Are you hungry?’ I asked. They shook their heads. It was only nine thirty a.m. and my mom had fed us breakfast before she left. The house still smelled of toast and coffee. ‘You want to go out and play?’ They shook their heads again. Outside, the sun made everything sparkly and phony. The birds sang praises. The birds needed to give it a rest.
    ‘Well,’ I said again. I went to the armoire and pulled open the