The New Yorker Stories (60 page)

I sit in one of the kitchen chairs to drink the tea. The chair seems to stick to me, even though I have on thermal long johns and a long flannel nightgown. The chairs are plastic, very nineteen-fifties, patterned with shapes that look sometimes geometric, sometimes almost human. Little things like malformed hands reach out toward triangles and squares. I asked. Howard and Kate got the kitchen set at an auction, for thirty dollars. They thought it was funny. The house itself is not funny. It has four fireplaces, wide-board floors, and high, dusty ceilings. They bought it with his share of an inheritance that came to us when our grandfather died. Kate’s contribution to restoring the house has been transforming the baseboards into faux marbre. How effective this is has to do with how stoned she is when she starts. Sometimes the baseboards look like clotted versions of the kitchen-chair pattern, instead of marble. Kate considers what she calls “parenting” to be a full-time job. When they first moved to Saratoga, she used to give piano lessons. Now she ignores the children and paints the baseboards.

And who am I to stand in judgment? I am a thirty-eight-year-old woman, out of a job, on tenuous enough footing with her sometime lover that she can imagine crashing emotionally as easily as she did on the ice. It may be true, as my lover, Frank, says, that having money is not good for the soul. Money that is given to you, that is. He is a lawyer who also has money, but it is money he earned and parlayed into more money by investing in real estate. An herb farm is part of this real estate. Boxes of herbs keep turning up at Frank’s office—herbs in foil, herbs in plastic bags, dried herbs wrapped in cones of newspaper. He crumbles them over omelets, roasts, vegetables. He is opposed to salt. He insists herbs are more healthful.

And who am I to claim to love a man when I am skeptical even about his use of herbs? I am embarrassed to be unemployed. I am insecure enough to stay with someone because of the look that sometimes comes into his eyes when he makes love to me. I am a person who secretly shakes on salt in the kitchen, then comes out with her plate, smiling, as basil is crumbled over the tomatoes.

Sometimes, in our bed, his fingers smell of rosemary or tarragon. Strong smells. Sour smells. Whatever Shakespeare says, or whatever is written in
Culpeper’s Complete Herbal
, I cannot imagine that herbs have anything to do with love. But many brides-to-be come to the herb farm and buy branches of herbs to stick in their bouquets. They anoint their wrists with herbal extracts, to smell mysterious. They believe that herbs bring them luck. These days, they want tubs of rosemary in their houses, not ficus trees. “I got in right on the cusp of the new world,” Frank says. He isn’t kidding.

For the Christmas party tonight, there are cherry tomatoes halved and stuffed with peaks of cheese, mushrooms stuffed with puréed tomatoes, tomatoes stuffed with chopped mushrooms, and mushrooms stuffed with cheese. Kate is laughing in the kitchen. “No one’s going to notice,” she mutters. “No one’s going to say anything.”

“Why don’t we put out some nuts?” Howard says.

“Nuts are so conventional. This is funny,” Kate says, squirting more soft cheese out of a pastry tube.

“Last year we had mistletoe and mulled cider.”

“Last year we lost our sense of humor. What happened that we got all hyped up? We even ran out on Christmas Eve to cut a tree—”

“The kids,” Howard says.

“That’s right,” she says. “The kids were crying. They were feeling competitive with the other kids, or something.”

“Becky was crying. Todd was too young to cry about that,” Howard says.

“Why are we talking about tears?” Kate says. “We can talk about tears when it’s not the season to be jolly. Everybody’s going to come in tonight and love the wreaths on the picture hooks and think this food is so
festive
.”

“We invited a new Indian guy from the Philosophy Department,” Howard says. “American Indian—not an Indian from India.”

“If we want, we can watch the tapes of
Jewel in the Crown,
” Kate says.

“I’m feeling really depressed,” Howard says, backing up to the counter and sliding down until he rests on his elbows. His tennis shoes are wet. He never takes off his wet shoes, and he never gets colds.

“Try one of those mushrooms,” Kate says. “They’ll be better when they’re cooked, though.”

“What’s wrong with me?” Howard says. It’s almost the first time he’s looked at me since I arrived. I’ve been trying not to register my boredom and my frustration with Kate’s prattle.

“Maybe we should get a tree,” I say.

“I don’t think it’s Christmas that’s making me feel this way,” Howard says.

“Well, snap out of it,” Kate says. “You can open one of your presents early, if you want to.”

“No, no,” Howard says, “it isn’t Christmas.” He hands a plate to Kate, who has begun to stack the dishwasher. “I’ve been worrying that you’re in a lot of pain and you just aren’t saying so,” he says to me.

“It’s just uncomfortable,” I say.

“I know, but do you keep going over what happened, in your mind? When you fell, or in the emergency room, or anything?”

“I had a dream last night about the ballerinas at Victoria Pool,” I say. “It was like Victoria Pool was a stage set instead of a real place, and tall, thin ballerinas kept parading in and twirling and pirouetting. I was envying their being able to touch their fingertips together over their heads.”

Howard opens the top level of the dishwasher and Kate begins to hand him the rinsed glasses.

“You just told a little story,” Howard says. “You didn’t really answer the question.”

“I don’t keep going over it in my mind,” I say.

“So you’re repressing it,” he says.

“Mom,” Becky says, walking into the kitchen, “is it O.K. if Deirdre comes to the party tonight if her dad doesn’t drive here to pick her up this weekend?”

“I thought her father was in the hospital,” Kate says.

“Yeah, he was. But he got out. He called and said that it was going to snow up north, though, so he wasn’t sure if he could come.”

“Of course she can come,” Kate says.

“And you know what?” Becky says.

“Say hello to people when you come into a room,” Kate says. “At least make eye contact or smile or something.”

“I’m not Miss America on the runway, Mom. I’m just walking into the kitchen.”

“You have to acknowledge people’s existence,” Kate says. “Haven’t we talked about this?”

“Oh, hel-lo,” Becky says, curtsying by pulling out the sides of an imaginary skirt. She has on purple sweatpants. She turns toward me and pulls the fabric away from her hipbones. “Oh, hello, as if we’ve never met,” she says.

“Your aunt here doesn’t want to be in the middle of this,” Howard says. “She’s got enough trouble.”

“Get back on track,” Kate says to Becky. “What did you want to say to me?”

“You know what you do, Mom?” Becky says. “You make an issue of something and then it’s like when I speak it’s a big thing. Everybody’s listening to me.”

Kate closes the door to the dishwasher.

“Did you want to speak to me privately?” she says.

“Nooo,” Becky says, sitting in the chair across from me and sighing. “I was just going to say—and now it’s a big deal—I was going to say that Deirdre just found out that that guy she was writing all year is in
prison
. He was in prison all the time, but she didn’t know what the P.O. box meant.”

“What’s she going to do?” Howard says.

“She’s going to write and ask him all about prison,” Becky says.

“That’s good,” Howard says. “That cheers me up to hear that. The guy probably agonized about whether to tell her or not. He probably thought she’d hot-potato him.”

“Lots of decent people go to prison,” Becky says.

“That’s ridiculous,” Kate says. “You can’t generalize about convicts any more than you can generalize about the rest of humanity.”

“So?” Becky says. “If somebody in the rest of humanity had something to hide, he’d hide it, too, wouldn’t he?”

“Let’s go get a tree,” Howard says. “We’ll get a tree.”

“Somebody got hit on the highway carrying a tree home,” Becky says. “Really.”

“You really do have your ear to the ground in this town,” Kate says. “You kids could be the town crier. I know everything before the paper comes.”

“It happened yesterday,” Becky says.

“Christ,” Howard says. “We’re talking about crying, we’re talking about death.” He is leaning against the counter again.

“We are not,” Kate says, walking in front of him to open the refrigerator door. She puts a plate of stuffed tomatoes inside. “In your typical fashion, you’ve singled out two observations out of a lot that have been made, and—”

“I woke up thinking about Dennis Bidou last night,” Howard says to me. “Remember Dennis Bidou, who used to taunt you? Dad put me up to having it out with him, and he backed down after that. But I was always afraid he’d come after me. I went around for years pretending not to cringe when he came near me. And then, you know, one time I was out on a date and we ran out of gas, and as I was walking to get a can of gas a car pulled up alongside me and Dennis Bidou leaned out the window. He was surprised that it was me and I was surprised that it was him. He asked me what happened and I said I ran out of gas. He said, ‘Tough shit, I guess,’ but a girl was driving and she gave him a hard time. She stopped the car and insisted that I get in the back and they’d take me to the gas station. He didn’t say one word to me the whole way there. I remembered the way he looked in the car when I found out he was killed in Nam—the back of his head on that ramrod-straight body, and a black collar or some dark-colored collar pulled up to his hairline.” Howard makes a horizontal motion with four fingers, thumb folded under, in the air beside his ear.

“Now you’re trying to depress everybody,” Kate says.

“I’m willing to cheer up. I’m going to cheer up before tonight. I’m going up to that Lions Club lot on Main Street and get a tree. Anybody coming with me?”

“I’m going over to Deirdre’s,” Becky says.

“I’ll come with you, if you think my advice is needed,” I say.

“For fun,” Howard says, bouncing on his toes. “For fun—not advice.”

He gets my red winter coat out of the closet, and I back into it, putting in my good arm. Then he takes a diaper pin off the lapel and pins the other side of the coat to the top of my shoulder, easing the pin through my sweater. Then he puts Kate’s poncho over my head. This is the system, because I am always cold. Actually, Kate devised the system. I stand there while Howard puts on his leather jacket. I feel like a bird with a cloth draped over its cage for the night. This makes me feel sorry for myself, and then I
do
think of my arm as a broken wing, and suddenly everything seems so sad that I feel my eyes well up with tears. I sniff a couple of times. And Howard faced down Dennis Bidou, for my sake! My brother! But he really did it because my father told him to. Whatever my father told him to do he did. He drew the line only at smothering my father in the hospital when he asked him to. That is the only time I know of that he ignored my father’s wishes.

“Get one that’s tall enough,” Kate says. “And don’t get one of those trees that look like a cactus. Get one with long needles that swoops.”

“Swoops?” Howard says, turning in the hallway.

“Something with some fluidity,” she says, bending her knees and making a sweeping motion with her arm. “You know—something beautiful.”

Before the guests arrive, a neighbor woman has brought Todd back from his play group and he is ready for bed, and the tree has been decorated with a few dozen Christmas balls and some stars cut out of typing paper, with paper-clip hangers stuck through one point. The smaller animals in the stuffed-toy menagerie—certainly not the bear—are under the tree, approximating the animals at the manger. The manger is a roasting pan, with a green dinosaur inside.

“How many of these people who’re coming do I know?” I say.

“You know . . . you know . . .” Howard is gnawing his lip. He takes another sip of wine, looks puzzled. “Well, you know Koenig,” he says. “Koenig got married. You’ll like his wife. They’re coming separately, because he’s coming straight from work. You know the Miners. You know—you’ll really like Lightfoot, the new guy in the Philosophy Department. Don’t rush to tell him that you’re tied up with somebody. He’s a nice guy, and he deserves a chance.”

“I don’t think I’m tied up with anybody,” I say.

“Have a drink—you’ll feel better,” Howard says. “Honest to God. I was getting depressed this afternoon. When the light starts to sink so early, I never can figure out what I’m responding to. I gray over, like the afternoon, you know?”

“O.K., I’ll have a drink,” I say.

“The very fat man who’s coming is in A.A.,” Howard says, taking a glass off the bookshelf and pouring some wine into it. “These were just washed yesterday,” he says. He hands me the glass of wine. “The fat guy’s name is Dwight Kule. The Jansons, who are also coming, introduced us to him. He’s a bachelor. Used to live in the Apple. Mystery man. Nobody knows. He’s got a computer terminal in his house that’s hooked up to some mysterious office in New York. Tells funny jokes. They come at him all day over the computer.”

“Who are the Jansons?”

“You met her. The woman whose lover broke into the house and did caricatures of her and her husband all over the walls after she broke off with him. One amazing artist, from what I heard. You know about that, right?”

“No,” I say, smiling. “What does she look like?”

“You met her at the races with us. Tall. Red hair.”

“Oh, that woman. Why didn’t you say so?”

“I told you about the lover, right?”

“I didn’t know she had a lover.”

“Well, fortunately she
had
told her husband, and they’d decided to patch it up, so when they came home and saw the walls—I mean, I get the idea that it was rather graphic. Not like stumbling upon hieroglyphics in a cave or something. Husband told it as a story on himself: going down to the paint store and buying the darkest can of blue paint they had to do the painting-over, because he wanted it done with—none of this three-coats stuff.” Howard has another sip of wine. “You haven’t met her husband,” he says. “He’s an anesthesiologist.”