The Underside of Joy

‘I think we should wear our costumes, Mommy.’
    ‘I thought you didn’t want to, Banannie.’
    ‘I didn’t. But now I do. And I bet Zach does too.’
    Zach nodded and did his uh-huh thing while he threw Batman into the cucumbers. Since Joe had been the town crier who led the songs and read from the Declaration of Independence, the four of us had dressed up in period costumes every Fourth. Annie and I wore long dresses and bonnets; Zach and Joe had pantaloons and vests and black hats.
    David was going to take over the emceeing, so he had already picked up Joe’s costume.
    ‘Okay, then,’ I said.
    ‘Okay, then.’ Annie hopped off Callie. ‘Let’s get this show on the road, people.’ And she led us up to the house to get changed.
    A year ago, I had swayed in the front row, holding Zach on my hip, blowing a plastic kazoo, while my husband stood on the front porch of Capozzi’s Market and led the crowd in ‘You’re a Grand Old Flag’ and ‘America the Beautiful’ and ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’. When he got to the line ‘I’ve got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart, she’s my Yankee Doodle joy,’ he’d pulled Annie and me and Zach all up onto the porch and twirled us around and around while the crowd cheered and the patched-together band played on. The whole day was one ultra-corny, amateur ode to nostalgia, and I’d loved every minute of it. Can you see me? I was the one leading the march to the beach barbeque as if I were leading a top-university marching band, my happiness twirling up in the treetops and landing obediently in the solid grip of my hand.
    None of us could have imagined then that the jovial man who’d sung out, holding his hat to his heart in front of his grandpa Sergio’s store, would soon be a part of the history we celebrated. Or that he’d been dancing on the front porch of his hidden failure. Now I languished towards the back, sweating in my long, heavy dress, nodding and smiling to those who offered hugs or squeezed my arm; there was nothing left for any of us to say. I got through the moment of silence held in Joe’s honour, and ‘Yankee Doodle’, but it was when David started us in on ‘This Land Is Your Land’, and we got to the line, ‘From the redwood forest to the river’s waters’ – those last lyrics Joe had changed to fit Elbow – that tears ran down my cheeks. Lucy handed me a tissue. The tears weren’t all sadness, though. Joe was gone. But his land was my land, his town was my town, his kids were my kids. I really had found home when I’d found Joe, and it was my home still.
    ‘I’m scared,’ I told Lucy later, while we sat on a rock watching Annie and Zach build a sand castle that looked more like a sand Quonset hut, the crowd dispersing to head upriver for the fireworks. Across the river, hungry cries echoed from the large osprey nest on top of a dead tree that Joe had photographed less than a month before. ‘I suddenly feel constantly aware of how much I can lose.’
    She put her arm around me. ‘Most people in your circumstances can’t even see anything past what they’ve already lost.’
    ‘Yeah. But not everyone has them.’ I jutted my chin towards the kids. ‘I never let myself think like this before. It all feels ridiculously fragile.’
    ‘You were kind of la-tee-da,’ Lucy admitted. ‘I mean, no one’s life is quite that carefree.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    Lucy blushed. ‘I didn’t mean . . . well, you know. Nothing. Too much wine and too much sun make me blabber nonsense.’
    It stung. La-tee-da? But I didn’t want to ask. Maybe Frank had told her about the store. Frank could be a blabbermouth, with or without wine and sun. While Annie and Zach scooped river water into their plastic pails, Callie and a border collie raced down the beach towards the water. ‘No!’ I called out. But it was too late. They landed smack-dab on top of the kids’ sand creation and flattened it.
    If Elbow was still my town, Capozzi’s Market was now my store, and the bills were now my bills. Julie Langer, one of the school moms, insisted on taking the kids for a play date that Saturday, and so I was left to worry about finances while I dug in my garden.
    If only my garden were a true reflection of the workings of my inner soul. All that rich, fertile abundance in precise and ordered rows! No wasted space, no shrivelled stems. And that life-affirming fragrance of clean dirt. I loved the paradox and truth of those two words: Clean. Dirt.
    I set