He touched his hat visor and said, “Emergency call, Mrs. Gurney?”
“Gracious me, yes, but there’s no need to hurry.” Her S’s whistled through false teeth that had outgrown her shrinking gums. “I’m actually feeling a little better. If you’ll give me your arm, young man, and carry this . . .”
He took her red tin with the painting of a holiday wreath on top, and escorted her down the path to the squad car.
“I thought the doctors might enjoy a taste of my German butter cookies.” She said the same thing every year. “And, of course, you’re welcome to sample them yourself. My-oh-my . . .” She tried to look up at the sky but her osteoporosis wouldn’t allow it. “Isn’t this some heavenly night though? Do you suppose we can see the Star of Bethlehem?”
“I imagine we can, but I wouldn’t know which one it is. Would you?”
He stopped in the path to give her time. Again she tried to look up, bending her knees and angling her stiff old body. “No, I suppose not, but when I was a girl my papa taught me to find Cassiopeia and Orion and all the constellations. We lived on a farm near Ortonville, and my-y-y, those skies were big over the prairie. Have you ever been to Ortonville, young man?”
“No, ma’am, I haven’t.”
“It’s farm country. Goose country, too. Why, in the fall those honkers would fly over in battalions, so many of them they’d fair block out the sun. And when they landed in a cornfield you could hear their voices bellering like blow horns clear over to Montevideo. Papa always shot one for Thanksgiving, and one for Christmas, too.” They moved on toward the squad car, her hand on his arm, Christopher adjusting his stride to her baby steps while she told him about their Christmas dinners on the farm near Ortonville, her mother’s sauerkraut stuffing and precisely what her mother had put into her beets to make them sweet and sour both, and how she herself had never mastered beets like her mother.
At the squad car she needed help getting in, then swinging her legs to the front.
“Watch your purse,” he said, pushing it up so he could slam the door.
Inside, he reported his whereabouts and destination to the dispatcher, and Mrs. Gurney asked, “Would you like to sample my cookies?”
“I certainly would. I’m a bachelor, so I don’t get many homemade treats.”
“I use only real butter, and cardamom. Some people think it’s nutmeg, but it’s not, it’s cardamom. That’s my secret.” She had trouble opening the tin. Her fingers bent sharply from the end knuckle and her skin looked like mouse-spotted rice paper. “There we are,” she said, when the lid finally gave.
He ate three cookies on the way to Mercy Hospital and told her he’d never tasted anything so delicious in his life, which put a smile on her wizened old face.
At Mercy, in the glaring white lights of the ER, he watched Mrs. Gurney being rolled away in a wheelchair with the tin on her lap, telling a young nurse about the cardamom and real butter she’d used in the cookies she’d brought for the doctors.
Back in his squad car, Christopher felt unutterably sad. The taste of the spice with the strange name—cardamom—lingered in his mouth. The faint smell of mothballs seemed to linger in the car, too, and he had the thought that maybe Mrs. Gurney kept them in her bed to preserve her very body. Poor old thing. Poor lonely old thing. Yet in spite of her loneliness, she had a need to give on Christmas Eve. What was more pitiful than a person with no one to give to?
It made him think of his own parents, who had been given two children and had squandered them both. What were they doing tonight in their dreary little apartment over there at Jackson Estates? Was there a tree? A special supper? Gifts? Anything? And where was Jeannie? Still shacked up in L.A. with her drug-pusher? Still fat and greasy-haired and living the reflection of their parents’ lives? He imagined what it might be like if Jeannie had stayed around here, graduated from high school, gotten respectably married and had a couple of kids. What would it be like at her house tonight? Would he go there taking gifts to his nieces and nephews, and maybe help some brother-in-law put together toys for the kids’ stockings? He tried to imagine his parents as grandparents, but the image wouldn’t gel.
Lord, the city streets were so quiet on Christmas Eve. Cars at churches, but nowhere else. For once the bars were closed. Even the lighted Christmas decorations hanging from the lamp poles on Main Street looked forlorn.
He drove by Lee’s house, but saw no activity. They, too, were probably at church.
He turned around in the circle at the end of Benton Street and cruised past her house once more, anxious for his shift to end so he could come back.
All the way back uptown his radio was still. At the west end of Main he kept going, right out onto the highway toward his apartment. Making sure his radio was on his belt, he went inside to his own refrigerator, opened the door and stood a long time contemplating the ham. It was wrapped in a mesh bag, must have weighed eighteen pounds, and one like it had been given in gratitude to every person on the staff who had responded to a call and saved the life of some rich people’s son after he’d fallen into a swimming pool last summer.
There sat the ham.
Over at Jackson Estates sat his parents.
Reaching for the piece of meat he realized he wasn’t so much different from Inez Gurney.
ATJackson Estates the hall smelled like stale cooked vegetables. Its walls were crosshatched with black marks. The corners of the woodwork were worn white. Some doors had been patched where boots had kicked through them. Three candy wrappers and a rusty tricycle sat halfway along the dingy corridor. He knocked at number six and waited. The Wise Men must have made it to Bethlehem faster than his mother made it to the door. “Hi, Mavis,” he said when she opened it.
“What do you want?”
“Just came to wish you Merry Christmas, that’s all.”
From inside, a gravelly voice yelled, “Who is it, Mavis? And hurry up and shut that goddamned door, will you? This place is built like a goddamn chicken coop!”
“Yeah, yeah!” she bellowed in a coarse whiskey-voice, “quit your bellyachin’, you old sonofabitch.” To Chris she said, “Well, come on in then, don’t stand there in the hall while the old man chews my ass.”
As he walked inside he heard his father coughing. The old man was sitting in a dilapidated chair with a metal TV tray beside him. A whiskey bottle and a shot glass shared the tray with a jar of Vicks, the TV Guide, a box of corn plasters and an empty metal plate from a TV dinner. Between the old man’s throne and a similar arrangement four feet away, an artificial Christmas tree about a foot and a half high leaned like the Tower of Pisa, its permanently affixed lights looking hazy through the smoke from Mavis’s cigarette, which still burned in an ashtray. She, too, was armed with a bottle and a shot glass. Her chosen libation, however, was peppermint schnapps. The room smelled of it, and the Vicks and the smoke, and the Salisbury steak gravy that congealed on the bottoms of their foil dishes.
“What do you say, Old Man?” Christopher said as he entered the sickening room and thumped the ham down on the adjacent kitchen table.
“Don’t say nothin’. Got me a sonovabitch of a cold. What brings you around here all gussied up in your cop uniform? You wanna impress your ma and pa with how important you are?”
“Now, Ed, leave the boy alone,” Mavis said, then burst into a fit of crackly coughing measuring about two packs a day on the nico-Richter scale.
“I brought you a ham,” Chris told them.
“A ham . . . well, say, that’s nice,” said Mavis. “Here, have a drink.”
“I’m on duty.”
“Oh, that’s right. Well, what the hell . . . just a little one. It’s Christmas.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Oh, that’s right.”
“He don’t drink, Mavis,” the old man sneered. “Our holierthanthou, gun-totin’ upstanding citizen cop don’t touch the stuff to his lips, do you, officer?”
Why had he come here again? Why had he set himsel
f up for the hurt these occasional breakdowns in common sense always brought?
“You ought to think about drying out,” he said to Ed. “I’ll help you anytime you want.”
“Come here to deliver your Christmas sermon, did you? I dry out when I want to dry out! I’ve told you that before! Think you can bring a goddamn ham in here and drop it on the table and start preaching, well, just get your ass out!”
“Now, Ed,” Mavis said. “Chris, sit down.”
“I can’t stay. There are still emergency calls coming in even though it’s Christmas Eve. I just thought . . .”
What had he thought? That they’d changed? Magically changed while marinating away here day after day in their self-made alcoholic stew?
Jesus, they were so foul and pathetic.
“Have you heard from Jeannie?” he asked.
“Not a word,” replied Mavis. “You’d think she’d have the decency to send a card to her mother and dad at Christmastime, but no, not even that.”
She didn’t see it, didn’t see any of it, not how unlovable they were, how undeserving of any consideration from their children. It took more than starting a child in a womb and spewing it forth to make a person deserving of the title “parent.”
He felt himself growing physically sick, looking at them.
“Well, listen . . . enjoy the ham. I’ve got to go.”
Mavis came to show him out; he wished she’d have remained in her chair where he need not smell the stale schnapps and smoke on her breath, or let her filthy garments brush his, or see her nicotinestained fingers on the doorknob.
Thankfully, she didn’t touch him or—worse—kiss his cheek as she sometimes remembered to do.
When the door closed behind him he bolted for fresh air, for the blameless, clear, star-studded night where somewhere people prayed in churches and gave each other gifts and sang carols around pianos.
And he thought, Lee, please, be up when I get there at eleven.
THEHillier Christmas tradition held that Orrin and Peg spend Christmas Eve at Lee’s house and Christmas Day at Sylvia’s. Lloyd came every year around noon of Christmas Eve day and stayed overnight so he’d be there in the morning for the opening of gifts. Janice, of course, was home from college, and to Lee’s amazement, little Sandy Parker dropped in on Christmas Eve afternoon for about an hour, too. Though Lee was genuinely friendly to the girl, she found herself studying the fuzzy-haired, sloe-eyed brunette as the person with whom her son had recently begun practicing the rudiments of necking, and possibly—probably—petting. The young people—dear, thoughtful hearts that they were— knew that this holiday would have a great, sad hole at its heart where Greg had once been, and they stopped over, too—Nolan, Sandy, Jane and Kim.
Candlelight church service was held at six, and afterward Lee fed everyone oyster stew and cranberry cake with hot brandied sauce, their traditional Christmas Eve fare.
They opened their gifts from Orrin and Peg but kept the rest for Christmas morning. They watched Pavarotti perform from some immense gothic temple with a 120-voice choir behind him. They missed Greg so terribly each of them went away to shed private tears at one time or another.
At ten o’clock, Orrin and Peg said they were going home.
Lee said, “Oh, can’t you stay a little longer? Christopher gets off at eleven and he’s coming over then.”
“I’m sorry, honey, we can’t. We’ll be up fairly early to go over to Sylvia’s and open gifts with them.”
Janice said, “I didn’t know Chris was coming over tonight. I thought he was coming in the morning.”
“Poor guy had to work three to eleven on Christmas Eve, so I told him I’d save some oyster stew and cake for him and he could drop by for a midnight snack.”
Peg said, “Wish him Merry Christmas from us. We might stop by tomorrow, or if you feel like it, come over to Sylvia’s later on in the day.”
“We might, but you know how it is. Everybody always likes to hang around here on Christmas Day. Play with their new toys.”
When Orrin and Peg were gone, Lee said, “Time to stuff stockings.” They had never given up the tradition. Each of them went to their rooms and found sacks of tiny gifts they’d squirreled away during the past few weeks, even Lloyd. The stocking that last year had said Greg, this year said Chris.
“I hope none of you mind my including Chris this year,” Lee said.
Joey said, “Naw. Chris is neat.”
Lloyd said, “Since when have any of us minded including Chris?”
Janice said, “I got something special for Chris’s stocking.”
“What?” her brother asked.
“None of your business. I got something special for you, too.”
“What?”
She poked a tissue-wrapped ingot into his sock.
“Lemme see!”
“Get away, nosy!”
The two of them started tussling on the living room floor, and Lloyd smiled broadly at their antics.
They were all still up at 11:15 when Christopher got there. The tree was lit, the television was rerunning an old James Galway Christmas concert, and the stockings were hung from the arms of a dining room chair that had been set beside the tree and pressed into use as a substitute chimney for as long as it had been in the family.
When Christopher stepped in, still in uniform, he held a stack of gifts. The family surrounded him, exclaiming over the packages, taking his jacket, his hat, and wishing him Merry Christmas. Then Janice took his hand and led him into the living room.
“Come and see what’s in here for you.”
When he saw the stocking with his name on it, a powerful welling seemed to happen in his heart. He stared, battling the sting in his eyes, wondering how he’d managed to get so lucky as to have this family adopt him as they had. As one mesmerized, he reached . . .
And got his hand playfully slapped.
“No, not yet!” Janice scolded. “You have to wait for morning, the same as the rest of us.”
“You don’t ask much, do you?” he teased in reply.
Janice was now holding the hand she’d slapped, her fingers threaded possessively between Christopher’s. “Come down here and look . . . there’s more.”
Indeed, there were gifts under the tree with his name on them. Several!
“Grampa and Joey and I talked it over, and we all decided you should stay here overnight, that way you’ll be here when we all wake up in the morning. Mom, that’s okay, isn’t it? If Chris stays overnight?”
Christopher began to object. “Hey, wait a minute, Janice, I don’t think—”
“Mom, that’s okay, isn’t it?” she repeated.
“Of course it’s okay.”
“Grampa sleeps in Greg’s room,” Janice explained, “and you can sleep on the sofa.”
“Janice, really . . . I’m still in my uniform and . . .”
“Joey’s got some baggy old sweats, haven’t you, Joe?”
The decision seemed to be taken out of Christopher’s hands. In short time, he had shucked off his tie, gun belt and bullet-proof vest, and was sitting on the living room floor with a bowl of oyster stew while the others lounged around with second pieces of cake. They turned the television off and kept only the tree lights on; he finished his stew and a piece of cake, and told them about Lola Gildress, Frank Tinker, Elda Minski and Inez Gurney.
He didn’t tell them about taking the ham to his folks.
He told Lee later on, when everyone had gone to their rooms and he’d been given a toothbrush, blankets and a pillow, and Joey’s sweats. She went down the hall, calling, “Goodnight, everyone,” snapping out the lights and tapping on doors. “Everybody wake everybody else in the morning, okay?”
“Okay,” they all replied, settling down in their rooms.
She made her way to the kitchen where one last light burned over the kitchen stove. “Joey-y-y-y,” she called, “you forgot the kitchen stove light again.” On her way past the living room, she called, “ ’N
ight, Christopher. Don’t fall asleep with those tree lights on.”
He said, “Lee, come here a minute, will you?”
She entered the room where he was lying stretched out on his back with his hands stacked beneath his head, covered to the chest with an old quilt of her mother’s.
She stood behind him and said quietly, “Yes?”
He reached a hand above his head. She put hers in it and he hauled her around to the side of the sofa where she knelt on the floor beside him.
He took her face in both his hands, studying what he could see of it with the tree lights behind her. He held it tenderly, his thumbs resting just beside her mouth, fanning softly over her skin.
“I love you, Lee,” he said.
She hadn’t expected it, not this soon, not this directly. She’d thought maybe, if they ever became intimate, he might say it someday. But this pure revelation, inspired not by some sexual tryst but by the spirit of Christmas, touched her as no passion-inspired words ever could. All within her strove toward a deeper relationship with him. She could no more withhold the words than she could keep from touching his face as she said them.
“I love you, too, Christopher.”
He didn’t kiss her, merely sighed and pulled her down so her head lay on his chest, her forehead against his chin.
“I want to tell you something. I need to tell you, okay?”
With her ear against his chest, she could hear him swallow.
“Of course,” she replied.
He waited several beats, as if gathering emotional equilibrium, before launching into it. “I went to see my parents tonight. I had taken Inez Gurney to the hospital and felt so damned sorry for her, all alone with nobody to be with on Christmas Eve. And after I got back in the squad car I started thinking about Mavis and Ed, and I suppose I identifled a lot with old Inez. Hell, it was Christmas . . . and they were living right across town . . . and I hadn’t seen them at all.” He paused ruminatively then started again as if pulling himself from some unwanted wool gathering. “Anyway . . .” He cleared his throat. “I went to see them. I went over to my apartment and got a ham some grateful citizen had given each one of us in the department—and I took it over there.” Again she heard him swallow thickly. “It was awful. The two of them, nothing but a pair of sick old drunks who really don’t give a shit about me or about themselves. They just sit there drinking their lives away. It’s just so damned pointless.”