The Underside of Joy

down my hand weeder and picked up the compost bucket and headed over to the bins. Our compost was the secret to our garden. And the secret to our compost was keeping the moisture down, giving it enough nitrogen and just the right amount of stirring. This batch was heating up nicely and soon would be ready to spread on the garden. I stirred in the coffee grounds, the egg shells, and the rest of the kitchen waste, along with some magical chicken manure. I added dry leaves I’d saved from the fall. Leaves Joe had raked.
    The store, the store. What to do about the store? I didn’t want to just let it die too. It had been so clear to me on the Fourth that along with being the family’s legacy, the store was the heart of our town. Albeit a heart with badly clogged arteries. The tiny town of Elbow could no longer support its own store, and Capozzi’s wasn’t snazzy enough to bring in the wine connoisseurs and the foodies. But the ever-expanding wine country surrounded us, and tourists flocked. Joe had been bugged that everyone in Sebastopol was chopping down their apple trees and putting in grapes, but after living down south, I’d told him, ‘Hey, vineyards beat the heck out of strip malls.’ Still it was a change he didn’t welcome; he called wine country whine country.
    I turned the compost, dark as coffee. What did I know about running a store? Absolutely nothing. I could go on with my plan to start working in the fall as a guide. I’d just have to see if they could hire me full-time instead of part-time. Did they even hire full-time guides? And then I’d need to hire a babysitter for Annie and Zach, when they got home in the afternoons. But what would become of Capozzi’s Market? A vacant, cobweb-infested eyesore, the retro sign hanging by its corner, the screen door banging off its hinges while children dared each other to run up to touch the front step, scared by tales of lurking ghosts? If we could somehow save it . . . with the family’s help . . . maybe Gina could keep filling in . . . David and Marcella might be able to work some hours . . . then I’d have more flexibility. Annie and Zach could hang out sometimes in the afternoons, do their homework in the office and help when they got a little older, like Joe and David had. I added more leaves. But hello? The store was not making it. It was as withered as the oak leaves I stirred into the compost.
    Joe’s meal scraps were in there too, decomposing and reincarnating. The last bagel, the last banana peel. The scraps from our last picnic together. I turned the shovel, full of compost. God, he loved those picnics.
    He used to say that he wanted to bring back the picnic, that this area was founded on the pleasure of picnics.
    That wasn’t how it happened, exactly, but I liked the sound of it, and there was some truth to it: Whites first came to the region not to lay out a blanket under the redwoods but to chop them down. And yet, a hundred or so years ago, San Franciscans started building summer cabins and houses by the river so they could come up to picnic and swim.
    There was an old photograph at the Elbow Inn of a group, the women wearing high-necked dresses with long skirts, the men wearing hats and suspenders and trousers, everyone relaxing on a huge blanket – or looking like they were trying to relax as much as possible in those getups – with a spread of food out before them.
    The store had once offered ‘Everything Italia’ . . . before the wartime paranoia set in. But now, all these decades later, everyone adored Italian everything – art, food, wine, lifestyle. Dining alfresco, outdoors. Using the freshest ingredients. Growing your own garden. Slow food as opposed to fast food. The whole slower food and farm-to-table way of eating that I believed in had even sprung from Italy, jumped an ocean and a continent, and landed in Sonoma County. I knew the rest of the country would eventually catch on, but so many people in Elbow, and the surrounding communities like Sebastopol, which people referred to as Berkeley North, already ate organic foods and supported local farmers.
    And then I saw it. I saw the store, the same, but different, and wholly formed. I could even hear the bell on the creaky door, ringing on and on, as a steady line of customers came and left with full arms, full baskets, the chiming becoming incessant, like blessed church bells, clamouring on about resurrection and new life.
    ‘Holy shit!’ I shouted. That