The Last Noel (6 page)

“Hang on!”

Then Kaye pushed hard, running forward as fast as he could. Noni felt his shoulder against her back, and suddenly her body remembered the sharp feel of his bone as he'd raced her down the hill on the red sled so long ago.

Now he was running all the way beneath her swing, pushing her as hard as he could when he ducked beneath. She arced skyward, legs pumping, laughing, free.

In the wide front hall of Heaven's Hill there were willow baskets of poinsettias lining the parquet floor and holly wreaths with plaid bows on the doors. Christmas cards hung from swags of white pine on the banister. Presents from guests had piled up on the green leather bench and on the cherry console. Chocolates in gold boxes, champagne in silver boxes, a camellia in red foil. Noni placed Kaye's candies among the gifts between the little pear tree and the blue antique Chinese jar.

As they moved together toward the living room, Kaye felt himself pulling inward, making himself completely still in the way he had always tried to do whenever confronted with something he wasn't sure of. He felt Noni sense this tightening as she took his arm. At first he resisted her, but then his muscles relaxed beneath her hand.

Gently she squeezed his arm. “Don't worry about it if you don't know anybody. They're mostly jerks anyhow.”

He mugged in his cocky way. “You're the worrier. You're the one hid under the covers the night I met you.”

“I did not.”

“You're the one was scared to sled down the hill.”

She smiled, happy to feel close to him again in their old joking way. “I was not. You wanted to quit before I did.”

Kaye looked into the living room of Heaven's Hill, smoky and crowded with white people, mostly middle-aged. He wagged his eyebrows, grinning, and spoke again with the bravado of that alien Philadelphia “street” voice. “Hey, long as they don't sic their dogs on me, long as they don't call in the Fuzz, they don't worry me at all.”

“Most people aren't like you say.” She felt she had to protest. “My parents' friends aren't like you say.”

“Sure they are.”

Swarming out of the living room with its tall windows and old Persian rugs rushed a loud hum of laughing voices. Two small children sat at the grand piano banging on the keys until a woman in taffeta bell-bottom pants ran over, slapped them on the hands, and pulled them crying away. Another woman sat down and with one finger began to play “Scarborough Fair.” A man with a plate of little biscuits leaned over and sang in her face, “Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.” His red tie said, “Ho Ho Ho,” all over it.

Another man in a shiny plaid jacket ran at a woman shouting, “Here come the judge!”

Kaye noticed that the red velvet wings on the angel atop the fourteen-foot Christmas tree were the same color as Mrs. Tilden's dress. He noticed that hanging from the mantel above the fireplace were five now empty red stockings, five—even though Gordon had been dead for almost a year. He wondered if they had filled Gordon's stocking this year, and if so, who had taken out all his gifts?

Behind a table with curved legs stood Noni's father with his handsome blond head and his son Gordon's soft sweet smile. He sang, “God rest you merry, gentlemen!” and called out “Peace on Earth, Ladies!” over and over as he poured eggnog from a huge scalloped silver bowl into small silver cups and handed them to the men and women buzzing around him. He wore a beautiful dark green jacket, and the color of the
jacket matched his soft silk tie. Kaye noticed that Mr. Tilden filled his own cup with bourbon whenever he added more to the punch bowl.

“Hey there, Princess. It's been a hard day's night.”

“I know, Daddy.”

Noni's father pulled her under his arm and kissed her hair as he reached to shake Kaye's hand. “Hey there, Kaye! Peace and brotherhood, man.”

“Peace and brotherhood, Mr. T.” The boy noticed the beautiful gold wristwatch Tilden always wore and then saw a swollen scab on his wrist; there was a red streak running from the sore up under his shirt cuff. Kaye pointed at it. “Something looks bad on your hand.”

Laughing, Noni's father pulled up his cuff and showed a red streak following the veins of his arm. “Unscrewing a light bulb and it broke off.” He handed eggnog to a tall thin homely faced man in a pearl gray Nehru jacket listening to their conversation with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. “Hey, Jack, let me light your fire.”

Tilden reached toward him with his silver lighter but the skinny man brushed it aside, then took the swollen hand and pulled it close to his face. Tilden winced when he poked at the sore and told him, “Bud, this kid's right. You got blood poisoning here that'll be headed straight for your heart if you don't look after it. I'm giving you a prescription for antibiotics. Start taking them tomorrow.”

“Oh sure.”

The homely man turned to Noni. “And you, kid, you're anemic. Eat more spinach.” Grinning, he pulled forward a tall, well-built teenaged boy standing bored beside him in a blue blazer and striped tie. “And will you tell my son the jock here to treat me with a little more respect? I'm a doctor, for Christ sake!”

Noni smiled shyly at the older teenager. “Hi, Roland.”

“Tell him,” nudged the thin man.

“Treat your dad with a little more respect. He's a doctor.”

The handsome boy grinned, brushing back his black curls, looking her over. “Sure thing, whatever you say, Noni.”

Noni explained as she and Kaye moved on through the crowd. “That was my godfather, Jack Hurd.”

“And his son the jock.”

“Roland's okay. Doctor Jack delivered me. He calls himself my ‘Deliverer.' He's nice. He runs OB/GYN at the medical school.”

Kaye wasn't precisely sure what the letters OB/GYN stood for, and would be certain to check them out later. “Infections can go straight to your heart,” he told her. “Your daddy better be careful.”

“I know.” Noni led Kaye into the crowd. “My mom met Doctor Jack in college before she met my dad. She said Doctor Jack wasn't her type. He was a Roanoke Scholar; that's the best thing you can be at that university. They pay
everything
for you.”

“Who, your dad?”

“No, Doctor Jack. My dad played basketball. That's the
real
best thing you can be. You're not tall, or you could try it.”

“I'm planning to be tall, lot taller than you,” he told her. “But not so I can jump around swatting at orange rubber balls.” Kaye took a handful of peanuts from a silver bowl. “I'm not gonna sing, I'm not gonna jump, run, grin, Watusi, I'm not gonna jive.”

A girl near them said, “Right on. Me either.”

Noni introduced Kaye to the girl, her school friend Bunny Breckenridge, plump and colorful in a yellow muumuu with six strings of bright beads around her neck and ostrich feathers hanging awkwardly from her wild frizzy light brown hair. Bunny felt the braid on Kaye's embroidered vest. “Holy shit, Jimi Hendrix, hunh? Cool.”

“You too,” Kaye pointed at the girl's feathers, thinking she looked a little like Mama Cass and that she had smart eyes and
that she at least had recognized a Jimi Hendrix record cover when she met one. “Bunny, hunh? Is that your real name?”

“I know, isn't it stupid? But my real name is Bernice and that's not any better. So, Kaye, Noni talks about you all the time.”

“I do not!'

While the three stood there, Kaye saw his Aunt Yolanda in a white uniform making her way through the room, holding out to guests her tray of deviled eggs with their tiny Christmasy bits of red and green peppers on top. Yolanda noticed but did not acknowledge Kaye. Embarrassed for them both, he led Noni away from Bunny, across the room toward the blazing lights of the extravagant tree.

Some of the guests, he saw, were looking askance at a black youngster moving through the crowd with his Afro and red embroidered vest, arm in arm with Noni Tilden. But most were too busy trying to talk to each other over the noise to pay much attention. Their conversations floated past him.

—Who
is
that boy with Noni? —

—His folks work here. You know, Judy's Aunt Ma?—

—The one that does those pretty things with the sunflowers? I love those.—

 

—Don't let Bud Tilden tell you anything except how to make a good martini.—

 

—God rest you merry, gentlemen!—

 

Talk on the silk couches and brocaded chairs drifted by:

—Judy's doing it. It's called aerobics.—

—Well, that little Bunny Breckenridge ought to
try it. How can her mother let her eat those eclairs, look at her! Is it the same as jogging?—

—Sort of, but you don't go anywhere.—

—Oh, with this Weight Watchers you go to meetings and they clap for you.—

 

—Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.—

 

And around the Sheraton breakfront:

 

—Well, if Judy doesn't hide that bourbon bottle from her husband, he'll be headfirst into whatever's next to him and I hope it's me.—

—Becky!—

—Frankly, Bud Tilden, you just be my guest!—

—Becky! You are bad! Isn't Bud your cousin?!—

—Oh good lord no. Judy's my cousin.—

 

—Here come the judge, here come the judge.—

 

—Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.—

 

Kaye stood listening as Noni showed him her favorite ornaments from her childhood on the huge twinkling tree. “So what'd you get for Christmas? A Thunderbird?”

“No, I got that for my birthday,” she grinned, looking at him. “For Christmas I got my own private jet.”

“Ho ho.”

“Ha ha.” She held up the gold watch that she'd received “from Santa,” and noticed that he still wore the flat black plastic watch he'd proudly displayed that night in her room back when they were seven.

Kaye examined her new watch dismissively. But she held onto his hand to study the handmade ring of silver coils that
he now wore. “Where'd you get that?”

“A friend in Philly gave it to me.”

“A girl?”

“Yeah, a black girl. That's the only kind I'm ever going to date. You think a boy gave me a ring?”

“What girl was it?”

“What's it to you?” Actually Kaye had bought the ring for himself on South Street and he wasn't sure why he had told Noni a girl had given it to him.

“Nothing. It's a nice ring.”

Suddenly he became aware of her hand holding his. In a strange and oddly heightened way, he could feel the skin and bones of her fingers as they touched his. He looked curiously into her eyes and when he did she blushed.

Noni was still holding his hand when, glancing away from her, he saw her mother threading her way toward them with her unhappy smile.

“Montgomery, may I help you?” asked Mrs. Tilden, her voice pleasant as a breeze, her eyes desperate. “Is there some problem at Clayhome?”

Noni's face tightened, flushed. “Mom, I invited him.”

Mrs. Tilden stared at her daughter, then she smiled her unhappy smile a little more rigidly. “Oh, you did, sweetheart? Well, that's very nice. Are you ready to play for our guests?”

“Please, please, do I have to?”

“Noni, are you ready to play for our guests? Excuse us, Montgomery.”

From his place by the over-laden tree, Kaye watched Mrs. Tilden thread her way back with Noni to Bud Tilden, who shrugged sadly as he embraced his daughter. Her mother then clapped for attention and announced that Noni would play for them the Chopin Etude in C Minor, after which she would take their requests for Christmas carols.

Noni's father pulled back the embroidered bench for her at the long shining black piano. Its top was up; to Kaye it looked like a big black curving wing shadowing Noni, blocking the winter light from the window. The guests started shushing each other until the room was quiet. Seated at the bench, Noni ran her fingertips back and forth over the gold letters of the piano's name, like a blind person trying to read. She held her hands above the keys, took them away, put them back, and looked up for her father who kept smiling at her his sweet helpless smile. Then, finally, Noni struck the first chords of the etude and then she kept going, the cascade of notes beautiful to Kaye. He watched the red flush spreading from her face to her neck, her hands dead white and shaking.

He hadn't known she could play so well. He found the music sad; it gave him strangely the same tight feeling in his chest to which thoughts of his mother gave rise. It was a feeling like a big wave that could knock you down, and that power made it seem very dangerous. Kaye wanted to feel only what he could stand up to, only what he could turn his back on and walk safely away from.

When Noni finished the Chopin, everyone clapped and Bud Tilden shouted, “Brava brava brava!” Then the woman in the red taffeta bell-bottoms yelled out, “Joy to the World!” Hurrying over, Noni's mother placed the book of carols on the piano in front of her daughter.