Fag Hag (Robert Rodi Essentials) (35 page)

S
ANDY
S
TATHIS WAS
unsentimental by nature. She didn’t coo over babies, cry at weddings, or comment on how peaceful the deceased look at funerals. She didn’t like public shows of affection, parades, or people who prayed at the dinner table. She preferred
Pride and Prejudice
to
Wuthering Heights,
and looked objectively at proposed solutions to Third World hunger. It wasn’t that she was an unfeeling woman; merely that her feelings were more refined, and thus less likely to be triggered by the obvious or the overwrought.

She had her blind spots, however. Her late husband, Max, was one of them; she got positively drippy at the thought of him.

And then there was Christmas.

Every year, on December 2, she would begin signing her holiday cards (purchased the previous January for one-third off), including in each a personal greeting of three or four lines. This would invariably render her nostalgic, which would ruin her for days.

Then she would undertake her shopping and, although normally oblivious to such vulgar blandishments, would become hypnotized by the treacly encouragements to buy, buy, buy that screamed from every Yuletide window. She’d fall under the sway of the music and the merriment and the mercenary glee with which shopkeepers lured her into their clutches.

Around December 14 she would have a tree delivered to the house, and bring out her boxes of holiday ornaments, wreaths, and garlands, some of which had been in her family for generations, and which she cherished. And while, during the year, a visitor would find nothing more recent or more syncopated than Tchaikovsky on her turntable, during high December they would be greeted by syrupy carols sung by Perry Como and Johnny Mathis and Burl Ives. She would sing along with these, in a high and merry voice that was uncannily like the shriek of an arctic seal being clubbed to death.

This year, she was worse than ever. After all, she’d spent the previous Christmas alone, since Natalie had refused to see her, and Calvin and Vera had gone skiing with Vera’s parents in Aspen. But this year she would have a full table, and the sheer, Dickensian magnitude of the holiday feast ahead of her rendered her incapable of resisting even the hokiest seasonal cliché.

“…seven, eight, nine,
ten,”
she said aloud, counting the place settings. “Good, good.” It had been almost twenty years since she’d used so much of her Wedgwood china. She rubbed her hands together and danced back to the kitchen. In the background, John Gary sang “The Little Drummer Boy,” and she accompanied him:
“The ox and lamb kept time, pa-rum-pum-pum-pum.”
When Natalie was a girl, her mother’s duet with John Gary on this tune could tempt her frighteningly close to second-degree murder.

In the kitchen, Darnita sprinkled nutmeg across a punch bowl filled with plain eggnog. (Sandy would stand a bottle of Myers’s next to it on the serving table, for those who wanted to spike their own mugs.) “Not too much, dear,” Sandy cautioned her.

“I’m makin’ a picture of Santa,” Darnita replied. When Sandy went over to examine the girl’s artistry, she saw only an amorphous blob of nutmeg shavings drifting around the bowl.

“Beautiful, dear,” she said, putting her hand on Darnita’s shoulder. “Let’s put it out for our guests to admire, now, shall we?”

“I’m not finish wif his beard yet!”

“Don’t be silly, it’s a
perfect
beard.” She picked up the bowl and carried it into the dining room while Darnita shrieked in protest behind her.

Twenty minutes later, Calvin and Vera arrived. Sandy submitted to being pecked on the cheek by each of them, then took their coats and ushered them in for some drinks and fresh-baked Christmas cookies.

“Natalie here yet?” Calvin asked.

Sandy shook her head. “Expecting her soon.”

Vera, now several months pregnant, lowered herself into the most comfortable chair in the house and immediately started issuing commands. “Get me some eggnog,” she ordered Calvin. “And a plate of cookies and whatever else is ready. Change the goddamn record before I lose my mind.”

Shortly thereafter, Quentin pulled up with Lawanda and the baby in a shiny new car that Sandy thought looked like the ballistic weapons they used to tow in front of the Kremlin on May Day. It was so red it hurt her eyes.

Lawanda had dressed prettily for the occasion, and had wrapped the baby in beautiful Christmas lace; but Quentin wore leopard-print Lycra tights, gargantuan black Nike Air sneakers, and a T-shirt that read U R JOHN GALT in glitter letters. As usual, he would not remove his sunglasses.

“How very festive,” said Sandy, eyeing his outfit.

“Natalie here?” he asked.

“Not yet. May I get you an eggnog?”

“Well, that depend.”

“Depends on what?”

“On what the hell a eggnog is.”

A few minutes later, Hank Bixby rang the doorbell. He carried a large gift box with a sheet over one side, and before Sandy could invite him in, he bolted past her, then turned and said, “Would you shut the door, please?”

“Why—I—yes, yes I will,” she said, a bit stunned.

“Sorry,” he said as Sandy closed the door behind him, “I don’t mean to be rude, but your present’s in this box, and it can’t be in the cold too long or it’ll get—uh—ruined.”

“How mysterious!” she said, delighted. “I can’t
wait
to see what it is!”

He carefully lowered the box and slipped off his coat. “Natalie get here?”

“Any moment.”

A half hour passed before the bell rang again. Sandy opened the door and welcomed Jennifer Jerrold and her handsome husband, Kyle.

“Mrs. Stathis, it is uncommonly kind of you to have us,” she said, letting her silver fox drop from her shoulders as if counting on Kyle to catch it—which he did.

“Natalie insisted. You really have her to thank.” She kept sneaking disbelieving glances at Jennifer’s astonishingly dramatic makeup.

“Has the dear girl made her entrance?” Jennifer asked, placing her purse on a chair she passed in the hall. (“Kyle, remember where I left that,” she commanded.)

“Not yet,” said Sandy. They’d reached the living room, where the rest of the party had gathered.

“Unforgivable of her,” said Jennifer. “She knows I always like to be the last to arrive.”

Sandy smiled perfunctorily, and made the round of complicated introductions. Jennifer shook hands with Vera and, looking at the girl’s protruding stomach, said, “Bad case of sperm poisoning you’ve got there.” Vera went white.

Then Kyle shook hands with Calvin, and Calvin cried,
“Hey,”
and yanked his hand away, as if it had been stung.

Jennifer turned and hit Kyle on the shoulder. “You leave that young man alone!” she scolded him. “It’s Christmas, for God’s sake!” Then she turned and made a beeline for Quentin, her hand outstretched. “Mr. Butler,” she said, “I can truly say I’ve
long
been looking forward to meeting
you.”

Sandy, sensing impending disaster, rushed over to the stereo and turned up the volume.

After ten excruciating minutes of the Jim Nabors Christmas album, played at a decibel level that not only prevented conversation but threatened to snap the delicate bones in everyone’s inner ear, Natalie entered the room.

“I let myself in,” she shouted, dangling her keys from her forefinger. “Can we turn that down, please?”

Sandy gave the volume knob a twist and then rushed to join her guests, all of whom had assembled around Natalie.

“How are you?” “You feeling okay?” “So glad to see you!” “Thanks so much for inviting us, sweet girl.” “You look fantastic.” “Sit by me at the table.” The barrage of affection seemed to stun Natalie; she took a step back and smiled luminously.

Dinner began about twenty minutes later. The tone for the meal was set by Hank, who, when Calvin pulled his sister’s chair out for her, leapt forth and grabbed it from his hands with a surprisingly fierce, “Let
me.”
It was the beginning of a seemingly endless stream of embarrassing attentions to Natalie, attentions that caused her to redden perceptibly, like an apple ripening in time-lapse photography.

“Everything okay?” Hank asked her.

“Mm-hm,” she said, nodding. She’d just filled her mouth with wine.

“I mean,
really
okay?”

“Chill,
fool,” snarled Quentin. “If she say it’s okay, it’s okay.”

“We’re naming the baby Dolores if it’s a girl,” Calvin told Natalie. “Maxwell if it’s a boy. After Dad.”

“Nice,” said Natalie, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “He’d’ve liked that.”

Darnita, her eyes wide, looked straight at Natalie and said, “Did you really was in jail, Natalie?”

An appalled silence followed; all at the table busied themselves by moving their knives and forks either closer together or farther apart.

“Not jail exactly, honey,” Natalie said, feeling the aversion of everyone’s eyes as keenly as she’d felt their stress a moment earlier. “A different kind of place—a place to get better.”

“That’s enough, dear,” said a badly rattled Sandy. “Have some mashed potatoes.” She started scooping these onto Darnita’s plate in quantities far beyond the girl’s capacity to consume, even if she kept eating till New Year’s. Her little eyes widened in increasing horror, as Sandy said, in a voice brittle as hardtack, “Natalie’s just
fine
now, Darnita. So we don’t need to know anything more, do we? Of course we don’t.”

“Gramma,”
Darnita squealed at last, “stop putting potatoes on me!”

The tension, tight as a violin string, broke, and was followed by much more laughter than the girl’s admonition really warranted. Jennifer took the opportunity to rescue Natalie from any further scrutiny by stepping into the spotlight; she began a running narrative, lasting almost to the dessert course, about her experiences in Chicago theatre, filled with anecdotes both hilarious and star-studded. It was also unrelievedly bawdy. Sandy found herself having to continually reach over and cover Darnita’s ears.

“So finally I had to tell him,” Jennifer said of one ex-leading man, “Tommy, if you insist on picking at it,
of course
it’s going to bleed!”

Vera said,
“Eww,”
and everyone at the table laughed except Sandy, who said, “Oh, my word. Oh, my goodness,” and poured herself another glass of wine.

After dinner they all gathered in the living room to pass out the presents that had been piled beneath the tree. Everyone had a gift for Natalie. Sandy gave her a silver bracelet from Cartier; Calvin and Vera a world atlas (Natalie had no idea what they’d been thinking); Quentin and Lawanda gave her a Sony Walkman; and Jennifer and Kyle gave her a black bra and panties. (“You’ll be amazed how confident you’ll feel in them,” Jennifer explained, “even if no one knows you have them on. I’m wearing mine right now, and I feel
invincible.”)

Hank Bixby handed his gift to Natalie. “This is from me,” he said rather redundantly.

She opened it.
“The Complete Works of William Butler Yeats,”
she said. “Thank you, Hank.”

“I’ve marked some of the poems I think you’ll like best,” he said, clearly nervous.

She opened the book to a Post-It-marked page and read a few lines aloud: “Earth in beauty dressed/Awaits returning spring./All true love must die,/Alter at the best/Into some lesser thing./
Prove that I lie.”
She closed the book and said, “That’s lovely.”

“I like to think it’s possible to prove he’s lying,” said Hank. “I like to think you can spend a lifetime proving it.”

She looked into his eyes and saw something unrecognizable—something that momentarily gripped her, and made her feel like the only other human being in the room—hell, on the planet. In spite of herself, she caught her breath. Was this the look that Jennifer had spoken of?

“Hank, I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t get you anything. Honestly, I didn’t even know you’d be here.”

He shrugged. “It was a last-minute thing. My folks are divorcing, and they were kind of using me as a weapon to get at each other—you know, ‘Who gets Hank at Christmas?’ My mom’s in San Francisco visiting my sister Josie, my dad’s at his cabin in Wisconsin, and rather than choose between them I decided to stay neutral and stay right here. Then your mom invited me to join all of you, and it seemed like a nice alternative to dining on Dinty Moore all by my lonesome. She’s a great lady.”

As if on cue, Sandy stuck her head in from the hallway and said, “Natalie, call for you.”

“I’ll read these, I mean it,” Natalie said, putting down the book as she rose to her feet.

When she turned the corner her mother mouthed the words,
It’s Peter,
and handed her the phone.

She took off an earring and put the receiver to her ear. “Merry Christmas,” she said.

“Merry Christmas to you.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Sweet of you to call,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Lloyd’s parents’ house. It’s the first time I’ve met them.”

“Are they fun?”

“Are they ever! They’re socialists! We went caroling before dinner, and his dad insisted on singing the Internationale at every third house. Lloyd is so embarrassed, he’s ready to stick his head in the oven. Plenty of room there—no turkey. They’re vegans, too!”

“Oh, poor you.”

“No, seriously, I’m having a
great
time. My face actually hurts from laughing.”

“Well, give Lloyd my best.”

“I will. How are
you
doing?”

“Better. Making lots of progress. I think I’m pretty much like everyone else, now. You know, not a disaster, just a contained mess.”

“You’ll do fine.”

“I’m
doing
fine. Everyone’s been so supportive. Tonight has been good for my ego.”

“I’m glad.”

“Hank Bixby’s treating me like some kind of goddess.”

“Hank Bixby? The geek from your brother’s wedding?”

She felt a flash of anger, surprising herself. “He’s very sweet and sensitive. He gave me a book of poetry.”