The Underside of Joy

Frank’s cruiser. I wanted to leave the truck for Joe, so I unlocked it, replaced the keys under the mat. I slipped off his jacket and left that for him too, along with the blanket.
    I climbed in with Frank, quiet, as the dispatcher gave an address for a domestic dispute. I wanted to be with the kids but I didn’t want my face to let on, to drive a spike through their contented unknowing.
    Frank offered to keep Joe’s parents and extended family away at least until morning. I nodded. I couldn’t hear his parents or brother or anyone else cry, couldn’t hear anything that would acknowledge defeat. We needed to focus on finding him.
    Once home, I called the kids. ‘Are you having fun?’ I asked Annie.
    ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Lizzie let us take off all the cushions on all the furniture and build a house. And she said we can even sleep in it tonight.’
    ‘Too cool. So you want to spend the night?’
    ‘I think we better. Molly will only sleep out here if I’m with her. You know Molly.’
    ‘Yeah, then you better.’
    ‘Night, Mommy. Can I talk to Daddy?’
    I leaned over, pulled the lace on my boot, swallowed, forced my voice to sound light. ‘He’s not here yet, Banannie.’
    ‘Okay, well then, give him this.’ I knew she was hugging the phone. ‘And this one’s for you . . . Bye.’
    Zach got on the line just long enough to say, ‘I muchly love you.’ I hung up, kept sitting on the couch. Callie lay down at my feet and let out a long sigh. The hall light picked up objects in the dark room. I’d set up Joe’s tripod in the corner to welcome him. Its three legs, its absent camera now seemed a terrible omen. I stared at the Capozzi family clock ticking on the end table. Yes. No. Yes. No. I opened the glass. The swinging pendulum: this way. That way. I stuck my finger in to stop it. Silence. My fingertip steered the hour hand backward, back to that morning, when this time I felt Joe stretching awake, kissed the soft hair on his chest, grabbed his warm shoulder, said, ‘Stay. Don’t go. Stay here with us.’
    The next day a Swiss tourist found Joe’s body, bloated and wrapped in kelp, as if the sea had mummified him in some feeble attempt at apology. This time I opened the door for Frank and hugged him before he could speak. When he leaned back, he just shook his head. I opened my mouth to say No but the word sank, soundless.
    I insisted on seeing him. Alone. Frank drove me to McCready’s and stood beside me while a grey-haired woman with orange-tinted skin explained that Joe wasn’t really ready to be viewed.
    ‘Ready?’ A strange, high-pitched laugh eked past the lump in my throat.
    Frank tilted his head at me. ‘Ella . . .’
    ‘Well? Who the hell is ever ready ?’
    ‘Excuse me, young –’ But then she shook her head, reached out and took both my hands in hers, said, ‘Come this way, dear.’ She ushered me down a carpeted hallway, past the magnolia wallpaper and mahogany wainscoting, from the noble facade to the laboratorial back rooms, the hallway now flecked green linoleum, chipped in places, unworthy of its calling.
    How could this be? That he lay on a table in a cooled room that resembled an oversize stainless-steel kitchen? Someone had parted his hair on the wrong side and combed it, perhaps to hide the wound on his head, and they covered him up to his neck with a sheet – that was it. I took off my jacket and tucked it over his shoulders and chest, saying his name over and over.
    They had closed his eyes, but I could tell the way his lid sunk in that his right eye was missing.
    I used to tell him his eyes were satellite pictures of Earth – ocean blue with light green flecks. I joked that he had global vision, that I saw the world in his eyes. They could go from sorrow to teasing mischief in three seconds flat. They could pull me from chores to bed in even less time. Their sarcastic roll could piss me off, too, in no time at all.
    His amazing photographer’s eye with its unique take on things – where had it gone? Would Joe’s vision live on soaring in a gull or scampering sideways in a nearsighted rock crab?
    His hair felt stiff from the salt, not soft and curly through my fingers. I pushed it over to the right side. ‘There, honey,’ I said, wiping my nose on my sleeve. ‘There you go.’ His stubbled face, so cold. Joe had a baby face that he needed to shave only every three or four days, his Friday shadow. He said he couldn’t possibly be Italian; he must