The Underside of Joy

Buongiorno! Bellisima! ’ Lucy, just back from a winery in Italy, called up to me.
    ‘I’d come down to hug you, but I’m a little tied up at the moment,’ I said.
    ‘Oh, what tangled webs you weave.’ She set down her basket. ‘I brought wine. Italy! Italy is fantastic. I need to live in Italy.’
    ‘You practically do. Sonoma County is Italy. Without the accent.’
    ‘And the centuries-old buildings and the incredible art and cobbled streets and the melody of Italiano being spoken everywhere and all those lusty men.’
    ‘But they’re not George Clooney . . .’
    ‘No, but this one guy, Stefano, could make me forget George’ – she smiled – ‘and I just bumped into Stefano. Again and again and again . . .’
    ‘ Stefano? Sex? I think I remember sex. Pray tell.’
    ‘He’s young. And gorgeous. And Oh. My. God.’
    Marcella came out from the kitchen. Lucy mouthed, ‘Later.’
    Marcella put her hands on her hips, craned her neck, and said, ‘Oh my word. I guess I should have just left the real cobwebs up there.’
    ‘She’s Charlotte,’ Lucy said. ‘She’s going to spell something if we give her enough spinning time.’
    ‘I wish it were that easy. I could write something, like “Ella. Some Mom”. Just like Charlotte wrote “Some Pig”. And the press would come, declare a miracle, and we would be saved, just like Wilbur.’
    ‘Ella,’ Lucy said. ‘No one needs a miracle to see that you’re Some Mom. Now, come down from there and help me unload.’
    Lucy filled my arms with wine, tablecloths, lovely Venetian blown-glass vases; she filled my ears with stories of long, hot afternoons with Stefano.
    We could see the Bobbing for Coffins Parade committee heading towards the river to start setting up. This was an Elbow tradition, based on a big goof-up of the town’s founding fathers. Back in the 1870s, lumber mills were cropping up much faster than the trees would ever be able to, and thousand -year-old redwoods were being sawed down in the prime of their lives – then came the trains, and then came the tourists, and Elbow was born. A prime location, a sandy beach – it was a town mostly built on the tourist trade rather than the logging industry, but the logs rolled by, just the same, on their way to Edwards’ Mill a mile or so downriver. Most of the men of Elbow who weren’t in the tourist business or summer homeowners worked in the lumber industry. Felling trees three hundred feet tall and as wide as twenty men standing side by side at the base is dangerous business, and many of them died doing it.
    A cemetery was quickly established on a pretty, peaceful spot not too far from the edge of town, but not far enough from the edge of the river. The flood of 1879 revealed the error. The river overflowed, uprooting gardens, trees, carriages, a couple of horses, six cabins, and a dozen coffins. The coffins bobbed down the river, along with the logs, towards the mill. That which had been laid to rest for eternity had become restless.
    The townspeople grabbed their rowboats, their fishing nets, their ropes, and set off to catch the coffins and pull them back to dry land, which they did. Though it was true that no one died in that flood, not even the horses, the newspaper reported that twelve bodies were found in the river, which was also true. The coffins that still remained in the ground were dug up, and the cemetery was immediately moved up to the sunny hill, where Joe was buried.
    The burial blunder was celebrated every year with the Elbow Bobbing for Coffins Parade. People decorated their rowboats, canoes, and kayaks like floats. Life-size (or perhaps I should say death-size) plastic coffins were tied in between the ‘row floats’. Tiki lamps lighted up each float and coffin. Tradition called for utter silence while the parade was in progress, and amazingly, everyone acquiesced, as the boats and coffins quietly moved downriver, the flames reflecting off the water, a silent dance.
    I closed Lucy’s trunk and said, ‘Wow. Bobbing for Coffins. Why have I not seen how utterly morbid that is?’
    Lucy smiled. ‘Of course it’s morbid. It’s Halloween.’
    ‘Do you think Annie and Zach will be okay with it? I mean . . . they did just see their drowned dad’s coffin placed into the ground. I talked to them about it, and they both seem excited about the parade. But still . . .’
    ‘I’m guessing they’ll be okay. Besides, you’ll be watching their every expression, and