"What's your major?"
"Premed. My parents are furious. They're leaning on me to give it up for adoption."
"Don't they like Mark?"
"They've never even met Mark, it's not that, they're just afraid I won't go to medical school and it will all be a big waste." The front door opens and the skiers have returned. A gust of cold air makes it all the way across the living room and blows over us. It feels good, and I realize that I am being roasted like Nell's turkey by the fire here. "What time is dinner?" I ask Sharon.
"Seven, but last night we had drinks in here first. Mark had just told his mom and dad, and they weren't exactly throwing their arms around me. I mean, they were nice, you know, how people can be nice but be mean at the same time? I mean, you'd think I got pregnant all by myself and Mark had nothing to do with it--"
I'm glad when Clare comes in. She's wearing a funny peaked green cap with a big tassel hanging off it and an ugly yellow skiing sweater over blue jeans. She's flushed from the cold and smiling. Her hair is wet and I see as she walks ebulliently across the enormous Persian carpet in her stocking feet toward me that she does belong here, she's not an aberration, she has simply chosen another kind of life, and I'm glad. I stand up and she throws her arms around me and then just as quickly she turns to Sharon and says, "I just heard! Congratulations!" and Clare embraces Sharon, who looks at me over Clare's shoulder, startled but smiling. Later Sharon tells me, "I think you've got the only nice one." I shake my head but I know what she means.
CLARE: There's an hour before dinner and no one will notice if we're gone. "Come on," I tell Henry. "Let's go outside." He groans.
"Must we?"
"I want to show you something."
We put on our coats and boots and hats and gloves and tromp through the house and out the back door. The sky is clear ultramarine blue and the snow over the meadow reflects it back lighter and the two blues meet in the dark line of trees that is the beginning of the woods. It's too early for stars but there's an airplane blinking its way across space. I imagine our house as a tiny dot of light seen from the plane, like a star.
"This way." The path to the clearing is under six inches of snow. I think of all the times I have stomped over bare footprints so no one would see them running down the path toward the house. Now there are deer tracks, and the prints of a large dog.
The stubble of dead plants under snow, wind, the sound of our boots. The clearing is a smooth bowl of blue snow; the rock is an island with a mushroom top. "This is it."
Henry stands with his hands in his coat pockets. He swivels around, looking. "So this is it," he says. I search his face for a trace of recognition. Nothing. "Do you ever have deja vu?" I ask him.
Henry sighs. "My whole life is one long deja vu."
We turn and walk over our own tracks, back to the house.
Later:
I have warned Henry that we dress for dinner on Christmas Eve and so when I meet him in the hall he is resplendent in a black suit, white shirt, maroon tie with a mother-of-pearl tie clasp. "Goodness," I say. "You've shined your shoes!"
"I have," he admits. "Pathetic, isn't it?"
"You look perfect; a Nice Young Man."
"When in fact, I am the Punk Librarian Deluxe. Parents, beware."
"They'll adore you."
"I adore you. Come here." Henry and I stand before the full-length mirror at the top of the stairs, admiring ourselves. I am wearing a pale green silk strapless dress which belonged to my grandmother. I have a photograph of her wearing it on New Year's Eve, 1941. She's laughing. Her lips are dark with lipstick and she's holding a cigarette. The man in the photograph is her brother Teddy, who was killed in France six months later. He's laughing, too. Henry puts his hands on my waist and expresses surprise at all the boning and corsetry under the silk. I tell him about Grandma. "She was smaller than me. It only hurts when I sit down; the ends of the steel thingies poke into my hips." Henry is kissing my neck when someone coughs and we spring apart. Mark and Sharon stand in the door of Mark's room, which Mama and Daddy have reluctantly agreed there is no point in their not sharing.
"None of that, now," Mark says in his annoyed schoolmarm voice. "Haven't you learned anything from the painful example of your elders, boys and girls?"
"Yes," replies Henry. "Be prepared." He pats his pants pocket (which is actually empty) with a smile and we sail down the stairs as Sharon giggles.
Everyone's already had a few drinks when we arrive in the living room. Alicia makes our private hand signal: Watch out for Mama, she's messed up. Mama is sitting on the couch looking harmless, her hair all piled up into a chignon, wearing her pearls and her peach velvet dress with the lace sleeves. She looks pleased when Mark goes over and sits down next to her, laughs when he makes some little joke for her, and I wonder for a moment if Alicia is mistaken. But then I see how Daddy is watching Mama and I realize that she must have said something awful just before we came in. Daddy is standing by the drinks cart and he turns to me, relieved, and pours me a Coke and hands Mark a beer and a glass. He asks Sharon and Henry what they'll have. Sharon asks for La Croix. Henry, after pondering for a moment, asks for Scotch and water. My father mixes drinks with a heavy hand, and his eyes bug out a little when Henry knocks back the Scotch effortlessly.
"Another?"
"No, thank you." I know by now that Henry would like to simply take the bottle and a glass and curl up in bed with a book, and that he is refusing seconds because he would then feel no compunction about thirds and fourths. Sharon hovers at Henry's elbow and I abandon them, crossing the room to sit by Aunt Dulcie in the window seat.
"Oh, child, how lovely--I haven't seen that dress since Elizabeth wore it to the party the Lichts had at the Planetarium..." Alicia joins us; she is wearing a navy blue turtleneck with a tiny hole where the sleeve is separating from the bodice and an old bedraggled kilt with wool stockings that bag around her ankles like an old lady's. I know she's doing it to bug Daddy, but still.
"What's wrong with Mama?" I ask her.
Alicia shrugs. "She's pissed off about Sharon."
"What's wrong with Sharon?" inquires Dulcie, reading our lips. "She seems very nice. Nicer than Mark, if you ask me."
"She's pregnant," I tell Dulcie. "They're getting married. Mama thinks she's white trash because she's the first person in her family to go to college."
Dulcie looks at me sharply, and sees that I know what she knows. "Lucille, of all people, ought to be a little understanding of that young girl." Alicia is about to ask Dulcie what she means when the dinner bell rings and we rise, Pavlovian, and file toward the dining room. I whisper to Alicia, "Is she drunk?" and Alicia whispers back, "I think she was drinking in her room before dinner." I squeeze Alicia's hand and Henry hangs back and we go into the dining room and find our places, Daddy and Mama at the head and foot of the table, Dulcie and Sharon and Mark on one side with Mark next to Mama, and Alicia and Henry and me, with Alicia next to Daddy. The room is full of candles, and little flowers floating in cut-glass bowls, and Etta has laid out all the silver and china on Grandma's embroidered tablecloth from the nuns in Provence. In short, it is Christmas Eve, exactly like every Christmas Eve I can remember, except that Henry is at my side sheepishly bowing his head as my father says grace.
"Heavenly Father, we give thanks on this holy night for your mercy and for your benevolence, for another year of health and happiness, for the comfort of family, and for new friends. We thank you for sending your Son to guide us and redeem us in the form of a helpless infant, and we thank you for the baby Mark and Sharon will be bringing into our family. We beg to be more perfect in our love and patience with each other. Amen." Uh-oh, I think. Now he's done it. I dart a glance at Mama and she is seething. You would never know it if you didn't know Mama: she is very still, and she stares at her plate. The kitchen door opens and Etta comes in with the soup and sets a small bowl in front of each of us. I catch Mark's eye and he inclines his head slightly toward Mama and raises hi
s eyebrows and I just nod a tiny nod. He asks her a question about this year's apple harvest, and she answers. Alicia and I relax a little bit. Sharon is watching me and I wink at her. The soup is chestnut and parsnip, which seems like a bad idea until you taste Nell's. "Wow," Henry says, and we all laugh, and eat up our soup. Etta clears away the soup bowls and Nell brings in the turkey. It is golden and steaming and huge, and we all applaud enthusiastically, as we do every year. Nell beams and says, "Well, now" as she does every year. "Oh, Nell, it's perfect," my mother says with tears in her eyes. Nell looks at her sharply and then at Daddy, and says, "Thank you, Miz Lucille." Etta serves us stuffing, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes, and lemon curd, and we pass our plates to Daddy, who heaps them with turkey. I watch Henry as he takes his first bite of Nell's turkey: surprise, then bliss. "I have seen my future," he announces, and I stiffen. "I am going to give up librarianing and come and live in your kitchen and worship at Nell's feet. Or perhaps I will just marry her."
"You're too late," says Mark. "Nell is already married."
"Oh, well. It will have to be her feet, then. Why don't all of you weigh 300 pounds?"
"I'm working on it," my father says, patting his paunch.
"I'm going to weigh 300 pounds when I'm old and I don't have to drag my cello around anymore," Alicia tells Henry. "I'm going to live in Paris and eat nothing but chocolate and I'm going to smoke cigars and shoot heroin and listen to nothing but Jimi Hendrix and the Doors. Right, Mama?"
"I'll join you," Mama says grandly. "But I would rather listen to Johnny Mathis."
"If you shoot heroin you won't want to eat much of anything," Henry informs Alicia, who regards him speculatively. "Try marijuana instead." Daddy frowns. Mark changes the subject: "I heard on the radio that it's supposed to snow eight inches tonight."
"Eight!" we chorus.
"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...," Sharon ventures without conviction.
"I hope it doesn't all dump on us while we're in church," Alicia says grumpily. "I get so sleepy after Mass." We chatter on about snowstorms we have known. Dulcie tells about being caught in the Big Blizzard of 1967, in Chicago. "I had to leave my car on Lake Shore Drive and walk all the way from Adams to Belmont."
"I got stuck in that one," says Henry. "I almost froze; I ended up in the rectory of the Fourth Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue."
"How old were you?" asks Daddy, and Henry hesitates and replies, "Three." He glances at me and I realize he's talking about an experience he had while time traveling and he adds, "I was with my father." It seems transparently obvious to me that he's lying but no one seems to notice. Etta comes in and clears our dishes and sets out dessert plates. After a slight delay Nell comes in with the flaming plum pudding. "Oompa!" says Henry. She sets the pudding down in front of Mama, and the flames turn Mama's pale hair copper red, like mine, for a moment before they die out. Daddy opens the champagne (under a dish towel, so the cork won't put out anybody's eyeball). We all pass our glasses to him and he fills them and we pass them back. Mama cuts thin slices of plum pudding and Etta serves everyone. There are two extra glasses, one for Etta and one for Nell, and we all stand up for the toasts.
My father begins: "To family."
"To Nell and Etta, who are like family, who work so hard and make our home and have so many talents," my mother says, breathless and soft.
"To peace and justice," says Dulcie.
"To family," says Etta.
"To beginnings," says Mark, toasting Sharon.
"To chance" she replies.
It's my turn. I look at Henry. "To happiness. To here and now."
Henry gravely replies, "To world enough and time," and my heart skips and I wonder how he knows, but then I realize that Marvell's one of his favorite poets and he's not referring to anything but the future.
"To snow and Jesus and Mama and Daddy and catgut and sugar and my new red Converse High Tops," says Alicia, and we all laugh.
"To love," says Nell, looking right at me, smiling her vast smile. "And to Morton Thompson, inventor of the best eatin' turkey on the Planet Earth."
HENRY: All through dinner Lucille has been careening wildly from sadness to elation to despair. Her entire family has been carefully navigating her mood, driving her into neutral territory again and again, buffering her, protecting her. But as we sit down and begin to eat dessert, she breaks down and sobs silently, her shoulders shaking, her head turned away as though she's going to tuck it under her wing like a sleeping bird. At first I am the only person who notices this, and I sit, horrified, unsure what to do. Then Philip sees her, and then the whole table falls quiet. He's on his feet, by her side. "Lucy?" he whispers. "Lucy, what is it?" Clare hurries to her, saying "Come on, Mama, it's okay, Mama..." Lucille is shaking her head, No, no, no, and wringing her hands. Philip backs off; Clare says, "Hush," and Lucille is speaking urgently but not very clearly: I hear a rush of unintelligableness, then "All wrong," and then "Ruin his chances," and finally "I am just utterly disregarded in this family," and "Hypocritical," and then sobs. To my surprise it's Great Aunt Dulcie who breaks the stunned stillness. "Child, if anybody's a hypocrite here it's you. You did the exact same thing and I don't see that it ruined Philip's chances one bit. Improved them, if you ask me." Lucille stops crying and looks at her aunt, shocked into silence. Mark looks at his father, who nods, once, and then at Sharon, who is smiling as though she's won at bingo. I look at Clare, who doesn't seem particularly astonished, and I wonder how she knew if Mark didn't, and I wonder what else she knows that she hasn't mentioned, and then it is borne in on me that Clare knows everything, our future, our past, everything, and I shiver in the warm room. Etta brings coffee. We don't linger over it.
CLARE: Etta and I have put Mama to bed. She kept apologizing, the way she always does, and trying to convince us that she was well enough to go to Mass, but we finally got her to lie down and almost immediately she was asleep. Etta says that she will stay home in case Mama wakes up, and I tell her not to be silly, I'll stay, but Etta is obstinate and so I leave her sitting by the bed, reading St. Matthew. I walk down the hall and peek into Henry's room, but it's dark. When I open my door I find Henry supine on my bed reading A Wrinkle in Time. I lock the door and join him on the bed.
"What's wrong with your mom?" he asks as I carefully arrange myself next to him, trying not to get stabbed by my dress.
"She's manic-depressive."
"Has she always been?"
"She was better when I was little. She had a baby that died, when I was seven, and that was bad. She tried to kill herself. I found her." I remember the blood, everywhere, the bathtub full of bloody water, the towels soaked with it. Screaming for help and nobody was home. Henry doesn't say anything, and I crane my neck and he is staring at the ceiling.
"Clare," he finally says.
"What?"
"How come you didn't tell me? I mean, there's kind of a lot of stuff going on with your family that it would have been good to know ahead of time."
"But you knew..." I trail off. He didn't know. How could he know? "I'm sorry. It's just--I told you when it happened, and I forget that now is before then, and so I think you know all about it..."
Henry pauses, and then says, "Well, I've sort of emptied the bag, as far as my family is concerned; all the closets and skeletons have been displayed for your inspection, and I was just surprised... I don't know."
"But you haven't introduced me to him." I'm dying to meet Henry's dad, but I've been afraid to bring it up.
"No. I haven't."
"Are you going to?"
"Eventually."
"When?" I expect Henry to tell me I'm pushing my luck, like he always used to when I asked too many questions, but instead he sits up and swings his legs off the side of the bed. The back of his shirt is all wrinkled.
"I don't know, Clare. When I can stand it, I guess."
I hear footsteps outside the door that stop, and the doorknob jiggles back and forth. "Clare?" my father says. "Why
is the door locked?" I get up and open the door. Daddy opens his mouth and then sees Henry and beckons me into the hall.
"Clare, you know your mother and I don't approve of you inviting your friend into your bedroom," he says quietly. "There are plenty of rooms in this house--"
"We were just talking--"
"You can talk in the living room."
"I was telling him about Mama and I didn't want to talk about it in the living room, okay?"
"Honey, I really don't think it's necessary to tell him about your mother--"
"After the performance she just gave what am I supposed to do? Henry can see for himself that she's wacko, he isn't stupid--" my voice is rising and Alicia opens her door and puts her finger to her lips.
"Your mother is not 'wacko'," my father says sternly.
"Yeah, she is," Alicia affirms, joining the fray.
"Now stay out of this--"
"The hell I will--"
"Alicia!" Daddy's face is dark red and his eyes are protruding and his voice is very loud. Etta opens Mama's door and looks at the three of us with exasperation. "Go downstairs, if you want to yell," she hisses, and closes the door. We look at each other, abashed.
"Later," I tell Daddy. "Give me a hard time later." Henry has been sitting on my bed this whole time, trying to pretend he's not here. "Come on, Henry. Let's go sit in some other room." Henry, docile as a small rebuked boy, stands and follows me downstairs. Alicia galumphs after us. At the bottom of the stairs I look up and see Daddy looking down at us helplessly. He turns and walks over to Mama's door and knocks.
"Hey, let's watch It's a Wonderful Life," Alicia says, looking at her watch. "It's on Channel 60 in five minutes."
"Again? Haven't you seen it, like, two hundred times already?" Alicia has a thing for Jimmy Stewart.
"I've never seen it," says Henry.
Alicia affects shock. "Never? How come?"
"I don't have a television."
Now Alicia really is shocked. "Did yours break or something?"
Henry laughs. "No. I just hate them. They give me headaches." They make him time travel. It's the flickering quality of the picture.
Alicia is disappointed. "So you don't want to watch?"