Comfort and Joy (16 page)

Ellen Burley rose early on the fifty-fifth Christmas morning of her life. She washed her face in the large bathroomat the end of the trailer, removing the two strips of tape which she placed on the side curls of her hairdo before sleep each evening. As always, she was careful to close the door to keep from waking Ray. Once upon a time in their marriage Ray had risen with her, but since his second heart attack he had begun to lay abed longer thanshe, sometimes anhour or more.

She had a fondness for the peace of early hours, begun in her first marriage when early morning had been her refuge. As long as she rose out of bed in time to wander in the silent house before children or husband awakened, she gained precious minutes ofprivacy. This was a time she could trust, whatever had happened the day before. The habit of solitary mornings carried itself forward fromthe storms of her first marriage to the relative peace of her second; she habitually rose close to dawn to make coffee, sit inher kitchen, and sip fromthe warmcup, in company withherself.

To her surprise, then, this morning she found her kitchen already smelling of coffee. Buttoning her housecoat, she reached for a clean cup fromthe cabinet. Tasting. She carried the cup to the outer room, where she bund Ford standing at the windows beside the Christmas tree. Hearingher, he turned, smiling. "Good morning," he said. "I got up early and helped myself. I hope you don't mind."

"No, I don't mind." Ellen seated herself in her own recliner. "I think I'll leave the heat alone a few minutes. Ray has that blanket turned up like a toaster."

He sat on the couch. Not a stranger anymore. She examined him as he wrapped his robe more closely around his knees, his dark hair in need of a comb, the strong bones of his face shaded by morning beard. They peacefully sat together watching the Christmas tree, colors dulled in the pale of morning. She sipped her coffee slowly, counting the layers of light in the sky, opening as the sun rose, clouds appearing beyond the windows. "I feel like I ought to know you, Ford, we talk so much on the phone. But I guess now that you're here I'mshy."

"I know it was hard for you when Danny asked you if I could come."
"Danny was right unpleasant about it. He was so sure I was going to say no." Another moment of silence. "How is his health?"
"He's fine." Ford looked her in the eye. "His cell counts are fine."
"That means he's not anyworse thanbefore."
"It means his immune system is still functioning really well and that he's not likely to get sick any time soon." He answered calmly. But there was, in his face, so much of heartache, she could not meet his eye without feeling the same wrenching within herself. Rising, she reached for his empty cup. She found when she was near him that she had grown fond of him, and she touched the top ofhis head whenshe came back.
He smiled, settling back against the couch. Looking around the comfortable, close room. "I like your house. It feels like you."
She set the coffee on her side table, placed precisely where she liked it, and reclined in the chair. "When I was young I used to dream about owning a house, just about any house, that I could keep clean, like I wanted it. My mama was a bad housekeeper." She felt momentarily uncomfortable, until she looked at Ford again and noted the interest with which he listened. "We did own one for a while, too; my first husband and me, I mean. Danny's father. A little tiny house. But you'd have thought it was a mansion from the way we acted about it." She laughed softly.
"Dannydoesn't talk about his daddymuch."
"I don't imagine so."
"Why?"
"None of us talk about my first husband very often. I don't know ifthat's good or not."
Ford appeared to ponder that; then he looked her in the eye again. His face was veryclear; she could read everythought init. "On the way here Danny took me to a house. It was the only place we stopped."
She asked, a hush around her voice, "Where was it, do you know?"
"Near a crossroads,"Ford said, "a little white house ina field," and stopped, lookingat her.
"HarveyCrossroads."
"That sounds right."
She looked out the window, beyond the little scrap of front yard across the Christmas graves to the mausoleum, framed against apple trees. "I like to go for a walk on Christmas morning. Would youlike to come withme?Allyouneed to do is throw ona coat, we're not goingthat far."
The coats waited on the stand in the office; she tied a scarf around her hair too. When Ford buttoned the dark draping over his pajamas, she saw the presence of a younger boy in him, suddenly afraid to have awakened on Christmas morning in such suddenly afraid to have awakened on Christmas morning in such a strange place. She waited till he was close and opened the door. They were met face-on by a blast of winter. "You might want a hat," she said, opening the stormdoor and stepping onto the graveloutside.
He produced a cap fromthe pocket of the coat and put it on. Ellen slipped her hands in her pockets and ambled along the edge of the parking spaces, in the shadow of the sycamore and pecan trees. Biting wind swept across the foil-wrapped pots of poinsettias, ripping leaves from plants, sending them tumbling across the rough grass. Ford looked around, at the curve of road, the mausoleum and statue of Jesus. They headed for the far corner ofthe cemetery.
She asked, "What did Dannytellyouabout that house?"
"Not much,"Ford said. "We walked around inside."
She could hear his hesitation. From his reticence, his air of vague fear, she gathered he lived with Danny in uneasy truce, and this thought disturbed her. For the first time, onthe walk, she studied his anxious expression. "He wouldn't tell me anything about the place, except that his father killed a dogthere."
Striding to the edge of the narrow ditch that separated the Gardens of Calvary from the apple orchard, she reached for Ford's hand. He supported her as she took the longstep.
They walked in silence across the sparse, brown grass, along the soft mulch of rotting leaves and occasional apple husks, shadows tracing their faces. She felt himwaiting for her to go on talking, and chose her words carefully. "Danny was eight years old when we lived in that house. We didn't live there long. But I guess he would remember it pretty strong." Pause. "That was one of the worst times for fighting. My husband, Danny's daddy, hadn't been drinking for a while but he started up again. And around Thanksgiving we had a big fight, him and me." Near the center of the orchard, she pulled the coat close against her. Letting him know, by her hesitation, that she wished to refrain fromstatingthe cause ofthe fight. "It was a bad fight, and it went on for three or four days, and Bobjay started drinking again. And inthe middle ofit he chased me out into the woods. He was And inthe middle ofit he chased me out into the woods. He was so drunk he couldn't follow me. This was at night, and all the children had run out after me too. I think it had snowed. Anyway," shoving her arms to the bottom of the coat, "he couldn't get to me but this dog come up to himand he killed the dog. It was a mongrelthe children had taken up, I couldn't stand the mutt myself. But he killed it."
She saw by Ford's face that this was enough, that this story explained the house to his satisfaction, and she paused. Powerfullytempted to sayno more.
"How did he killit?"
"He had a butcher knife," she said, matter-of-factly. "He was chasingme withit."
"And your kids were right there."
"Oh, yes."
Shock registered onhis face. Againshe felt convinced that she could stop the story here if she wished. The rest would be hard to get out. But Ford's earnestness, and the discomfort she had felt, when she wondered whether Ford would stay with Danny, made her pause. She asked, "Are you and Danny having a hard time?"
The question surprised them both, Ellen more than Ford, when she heard its echo and realized how easily it had crossed her lips.
He considered his answer, and they wandered toward the edge of the orchard, a field which had once been farmland but which recently had been sold to a large corporation. Soybean remains rattled. Eachmoment the skybecame a fiercer blue.
"There's some way he's afraid of me that I don't understand. Like in that house, the one he took me to see. When I found him in that bedroom, crying. And he wouldn't say why, and I was scared to ask."
"Which bedroom?" she asked, finally facing the moment, her voice suddenlysmall.
"The one at the front. The floor's fallenthroughnow." "The one at the front. The floor's fallenthroughnow."
She gazed across the bare field, almost seeing the house herself, like an island under a canopy of trees within the sea of plowed ground, and the small figure of her son, her oldest boy, at the edge ofthe trees, vanishingtoward the river.
"A bad thing happened to Danny in that room," she began, and then fellsilent again. Ford waited. She said, "Maybe he'lltell youabout it one ofthese days."
"What happened?"
She shook her head, and said nothing else. She stepped toward the interior ofthe orchard as ifreachingfor the protection ofthe trees. She heard the sound ofhis footsteps. She refused to look at his face.
They walked slowly through the orchard, and Ford slid his armaround her shoulders. She found herselfcuriouslyglad ofthe touch; though she was also glad, a few moments later, when he knew to withdraw the embrace.

The mausoleum itself rose about as high as Ford's shoulders, faced with turquoise-veined marble. Christ knelt in prayer on the top. The structure gave an impression of compactness and starkness, with its backdrop of leafless trees and vases full of Christmas flowers.

Onthe lowest grave, near whichEllenknelt, a smallChristmas tree rested in the bronze flower stand, a perfect miniature fir with tiny decorations. She touched the tree lovingly, glad to see that the wind had spared it anydamage.

When she looked up at Ford, he was reading the name on the bronze marker, and she watched as the realization penetrated bronze marker, and she watched as the realization penetrated himslowly. Grover Douglas Crell.

"This was your youngest son."
She answered, without rancor, "He stillis."
"I'msorry. Yes." He met her eye. "I guess I never stopped to

She kept her voice in a gentle range of tones, though as always, when she knelt near this particular spot, her head was fullofscreaming. "I couldn't put himinthe ground."Standing, she smoothed her coat again. "This is why I go for a walk on Christmas morning,"she continued. "I onlystayfor a minute."

She had kept controlofher breathingand now sighed, deeply. Linking arms with Ford, feeling sudden affection, they headed inside.

In the house they were greeted by the rush of air through the furnace. Ray stirred in the kitchen. Ellen, untying the scarf, peered at him. "We were out at the mausoleum."

"I saw you," Ray said, in a morning voice, "I got up after you went out."
"I wanted youto stayinbed."
Ray shuffled into the living room in his slippers, passing Ellen, kissingher cheek dryly. "This is good coffee. MerryChristmas."
"Merry Christmas," Ford said. "You should have got up and walked withus."
"It's too cold to be walking around. And Ellen is so stingy she won't turnup the heat inthe morning, so I got to spare myselfthe best I can."
"That's right. I like to keep him with a little bit of a chill on him."Laughing, she moved into her kitchen.
him."Laughing, she moved into her kitchen.
A moment later, the bedroom door opened, and Danny emerged, scratching his head. He said good morning and kissed her cheek in much the same manner as Ray had. She felt his reticence and thought of what Ford had told her, directly and indirectly.
"Youguys have beenup for a while."
"Ford and me already went for a walk."She set a cup in front ofhim.
"That's fine, as long as you don't try to drag me out there in this cold, not this time ofday."
Ford loomed in the doorway. "Listen to him, like a little bit of cold would shrivel him up. What are you doing out of bed so early, old man?"
Danny reddened slightly. "Have we heard fromAmy yet? Is Jasonawake?"
They drove to Wickham to see. Amy lived in a small apartment at the back of a large house on the outskirts of town, a neighborhood called Piney. Winter-wrapped children played in brown yards, a tiny girl in a blue parka on a bike with training wheels, a teenage boy with a kite and no wind, a father and son with walkie-talkies, antennae shivering. Amy met them at the door, her own pink, quilted housecoat buttoned to the neck. Cigarette waving she said, "I didn't even call you, I knew you'd be showingup over here prettysoon."
Ellenlaughed. "Is he awake?"
"Lord, yes. He's been up about an hour, and he's about to bust. Hey, Ford. Hey, Danny. MerryChristmas."
Jason, still rubbing his eyes, gazed solemnly as they entered. Whenhe saw Ellen, he announced, "Nanna, I got everything."
They headed to the other room, where Jason steered his electric race car on its first lap around the track. Ellen arranged herself comfortably on the couch, sweater riding her shoulders, and she became the grandmother, fondly watching her daughter, her son, her daughter's son. Her son's friend. Out loud, she appreciated Jason's talent as a race car driver; she occasionally received a "Look, Nanna," and dutifully looked. Danny held Jason in his lap, patiently teaching him the ins and outs of steering, as Jason raced his red car against Ford's black one. She found she had sat on one of his toys, a superhero doll, and when she asked him what it was he said, "Kattermarroons," or some word that sounded to her like "Kattermarroons," and so she was allowed to nod in that slightly bewildered way; she was the grandma, she was supposed to ask what it was, she was supposed to be bewildered. And she was, most of all, by her son, who could hardlylook his friend inthe eye.