The Underside of Joy

It had been morning, the bed was messy, our hair was messy. Joe had set up the tripod and climbed in. Annie hit him with a pillow just as the camera clicked.
    Outside, the clouds broke open all at once, and rain pounded the gravel, battered the porch. I was on my fourth round of the path and had left my third message to Paige when someone knocked on the front door. On the other side of the door’s window, Clem Silver held up his hand. Clem Silver at my house. Clem Silver never visited people at their homes, even when he was invited. But now that the question of my emotional and mental health was displayed in paths of photographs winding from room to room, there he was, first in line to bear witness. I opened the door.
    He had one of those seventies clear bubble umbrellas, which he collapsed and set on the porch. ‘I heard,’ he said. ‘And . . . well, I’m sorry.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    ‘And I brought you this.’ He waved a green garbage bag. I held the door open.
    ‘Ignore the, ah, mess.’
    He stepped inside, but there was nowhere to walk, so we stood close to each other in the hallway by the door. He smelled of his cigarettes and turpentine. He stared at his shoes. ‘I had – have – two daughters.’
    ‘Really?’
    He nodded. ‘When my wife left, I was so mad, and she was so mad. She went to Florida, and I can’t think of a place I’d hate more to live, except, maybe . . .’ He looked up and gave me a little smile. ‘Las Vegas. So I stayed put and she talked bad about me and those girls grew up without me. And I don’t feel good about that. Tears me up just about every day. I love it here, you know that. But I acted like a barnacle and I wish I’d been a bird.’
    I kept nodding, trying to picture shy Clem surrounded by a houseful of females.
    ‘It’s none of my business. I’m not trying to tell you what to do. Or maybe I am. But I thought, if you ever decide to – well, you’ll have it. And if you don’t need it, that’s okay too.’
    ‘Do you want me to open it?’
    ‘I’m gonna go now. And then you can if you want. And then we’ll just see.’ He started to pat me on the shoulder but I hugged him, and then he was gone.
    I looked in the bag and saw a roll of paper. I unrolled it. It was another map, hand painted, more tans and browns than greens, but still a work of art. It was a map of Las Vegas.

Chapter Thirty-one
    The phone finally rang. I made a run back along the path, Hold on, kids, to catch the phone just before the answering machine got it.
    But it was David. ‘Ella? Thank God you picked up. Listen. Remember when I told you Real Simple magazine wanted to do a story – a big spread – on you and the store?’
    ‘Sort of . . . I thought it was Sunset. ’
    ‘Well, they might too. But this is more about you and the store. A human interest thing. Anyway. I can’t believe this got by me, we’d confirmed last week, but with everything that’s been going on, they called again yesterday, but I forgot to check the messages on the store –’
    ‘What got by you?’
    ‘They’re here.’
    ‘Here?’
    ‘At the store. They love it. Totally gaga over every inch of it. We need you down here pronto. They want to interview and take pictures of you and the – Hey, can we get the kids back for a day or two?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Listen, I need you to pull through for me. I can’t tell you how important this is, what an op-por-tun-i- ty. We need this, Ella. You’re the one who got me into this thing in the first place, remember. I can’t hold them off any longer. They like the angle of a woman rising above her pain, the lemonade out of lemons, which fits with the whole grocery-store-into-picnic theme. Do that cool thing with your hair. See you in a few minutes.’
    ‘David!’ But he’d hung up. ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’
    I don’t think I’d ever felt worse. Or looked worse. I peered in the mirror. I still had Paige’s robe on over my clothes. Eyes still swollen. Hair matted like some ridiculous new invention. Carrot-flavoured cotton candy. Not exactly the strong woman rising above her pain.
    I wanted to curl up with my pictures and wait for my phone to ring, to hear, ‘Hi, Mommy.’ But David needed me. It was the least I could do after I’d screwed up everyone’s life. I changed into my sage green flowered dress, the one Joe always loved; he’d called me ‘flower child’ when I wore it. I spritzed water on my carrot cotton candy and pulled it