Ordinary People (12 page)

She looks down at her hands, flushing. “What a dull conversation. I’m sure there must be things you’d like to talk about.”

He laughs, reaching into his back pocket. “Sure. I carry a list around with me. Here. Pick a subject.”

She looks up, then, and smiles at him. “Why is this always so hard? The first time you talk to somebody—”

He calculates quickly. The first time. A second time. Other times—and the tension within him dissolves. They talk: about movies, about books, about his classes, her classes, what she likes, what they both don’t like, about being new to a school and having to start over, making friends....

She glances at her watch. “Oh, I’ve got to go. He has fits if I’m late.”

He walks her to the railroad tracks, where they stand and talk some more. It is snowing again, and she buttons her coat up to the neck, tucking her hair inside the collar.

“I told my mother to give him his own key. She works until six, and she doesn’t like to leave the house open all day. He’s eleven, but he’s sort of a scatterbrain. She’s afraid he’ll just lose it. Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“No,” he says. “No, I don’t.”

She makes a face. “You’re lucky. Anyway, thanks for the Coke. And thanks for walking me.”

The huge, airy flakes sizzle away to nothing on his suède jacket.

He watches her as she runs across the street. On the other side, she waves to him. He waves back and heads down Western, against the snow, keeping his head bent, staying close to the buildings. He would like to run, only the street is crowded with people. They would stare at him, wondering what the hell he was doing, was he trying to stir up trouble? So many people in the world, so few behavior tracks, you can’t even run any more without attracting attention to yourself, and he turns his head as he passes the window of a travel agency. He stops: goes back to get a closer look.

In the window a model airplane sleek and silver-green shearing off between two papier-mâché mountain peaks. Held up by a thin shaft of wire from below somewhere. Fastened to its body. Behind it a travel poster:
Ski the Laurentians!

He hangs on now, pressing his hand lightly against the wall, below the window, waiting for the familiar arrow of pain. Only there is none. An oddly pleasant swell of memory, a wave of warmth flooding over him, sliding back, slowly. It is a first.

He looks around: the street behind him, the shoppers, the dull-gray parking meters near the edge of the sidewalk. Everything in place; as it was before. Obscured at once by his awareness of it, the moment blurs. He cannot reach beyond it. He does not need to. At peace with himself, he walks home through the falling snow.

The Christmas-tree lot has a sign over it: FIRS BY LENNIE. From two loudspeakers mounted on the pay booth, canned music blares forth “Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful,” and Cal clenches his gloveless hands together against the cold, stamping his feet.

“How’s this one?”

The lot man lifts a tree from its hole, shaking the snow from its branches.

“No. Not tall enough,” Conrad says.

The man looks at Cal. “Tall as you are, sonny,” he says, dropping the tree back into its hole. “You want taller? I got taller, over here. Come on.”

He is built like a lumberjack (Lennie himself?), with a red-and-black-checked lumberjack shirt tucked into mud-colored overalls, his forehead and ears banded by a purple knit ski-shield. They follow him, Cal stepping carefully on the path of bark and pine needles, trying to keep the mud off of his shoes. He eyes the lot man’s thick rubber boots with longing.

“How about this?”

“No,” Conrad says. “Too scrawny.”

The man gives Cal a faintly patronizing smile, showing him what he thinks of fathers who let their sons run things. He points out a huge blue spruce, dense and full. “Okay, how’s that one?”

“That’s terrific,” Conrad says. “Hey, that’s it.”

Cal issues a feeble protest: “Con, it’s twelve feet tall!”

“You guys live in a church, or what?”

Conrad is busy surveying it from all sides, a smile on his face.

Cal reaches for his-wallet. “Okay, how much?”

“Twenty bucks.”

He whistles. “Thought this was a buyer’s market.”

“Not this year.” The lot man is cheerful, forgiving. “Pay at the booth. Me and sonny here’ll tie it on your car. You guys be sure and let me know when the services are, ya hear?”

Weightless with joy he watches while his son assumes the burden of this small decision. At dinner tonight, Conrad had told him of his plans for the kind of Christmas they should have this year. “Just greens and pine cones, nothing fancy. Lights on the tree, but no ornaments. Popcorn, cranberries, maybe a few candy canes, how does that sound to you?”

“Sounds great,” Cal had said. A few deft strokes and the picture had been painted, as easily, as confidently as Con had scanned the menu and ordered: “Hamburger. Onion rings. Chocolate malt. Banana cream pie.”

Just last summer, Cal had sat with him at a lunch counter near the hospital. He had stared at the single-sheet bill of fare, enclosed in plastic. After ten minutes, he had passed it over to Cal with a weary sigh. “You order, okay? I can’t decide.”

 

 

They drive through Evanston, decked out in all its Christmas finery: fake garlands of pine, wrapped around lampposts and colored lights strung across the intersections. It does not have the air of fantasy, of fairyland, that covers Lake Forest. It is too big a city for that; its streets are too dirty, its buildings too coarsely utilitarian. Yet, there is a confidence and completeness about this town that Cal loves.

Too many places he has been seem tainted with that anxious atmosphere of unreality; a one-sidedness of conception. Too perfect to be believed. Aspen. Indian-wood. Florida. Exotic and comfortless, like movie sets.

“I tried to let you pick it out,” Conrad says. “We would have ended up with the worst one on the lot. You always want to buy some tree you feel sorry for.”

“Never mind,
sonny,”
Cal says. “When we’re stringing popcorn and cranberries till our fingers fall off, you remember who did the picking.”

Heat curls about their ankles, as thick as water.

 

 

It goes up easily, fitting easily under the cathedral ceiling in the family room, dominating the space before the window. Crisp, blue-green lace splashes across the snow-white of the draperies.

“I think it’s silly,” Beth had said that morning. “We’ve got a perfectly good artificial one in the basement. The needles will absolutely
imbed
themselves in that white shag, Cal.”

“It’s probably flat and limp as hell. We haven’t used it for five years—do you realize it’s been that long since we’ve had a tree? We’re always on our way to somewhere a week before Christmas.”

She had shrugged, turning away. “Do what you want.”

She had had a meeting tonight anyway, so when Conrad met him at the office after his session Cal had suggested dinner out instead of the TV dinners waiting for them at home, and the tree-shopping expedition. Now he lies on his back as he gives the screws in the stand a final tightening. Conrad holds on to the trunk.

“Some of the lights have burned out. I’ll pick up some extra bulbs on my way home tomorrow,” Conrad says.

The front door opens and a gust of cold air greets them. Moments later, she joins them.

“How do you like it?” Cal asks. He looks up through the branches at her: a splash of orange skirt and paler orange blouse. Those graceful, pretty legs.

“I like it,” she says. “It’s lovely.”

He feels a sudden rush of love for her; gets to his feet, floating and weightless again. “How was your meeting?”

“It was interesting,” she says. She goes to the bar at the opposite end of the room. “I think I want a drink. How about you?”

“Sure. Here, I’ll make them.”

“We’ve got popcorn and cranberries to string,” Conrad says to her. “You want to help?”

She looks at him for a long moment. “Of course.”

“So what happened that was so interesting?” Cal hands her the glass. Scotch she likes in the evening, short, and no ice.

She swirls the oily liquid, looking down into it. “Not what happened,” she says. “What I heard.”

“From whom?”

“From Carole Lazenby.”

Something is wrong. The lunch that day? He should have told her, probably, but he hadn’t thought anything about it. Just a lunch. Nothing to tell.

“It’s not my news,” she says, “it’s Conrad’s. Maybe he should tell it.”

“Tell what?” Cal asks.

Conrad is looking at her warily.

“It was rather embarrassing,” she says, not looking at either of them. “Carole thought I knew. After all, why wouldn’t I know? It happened over a month ago.”

“What
happened?” he asks.

“Dad,” Conrad says, “I quit the swim team.”

“Quit? Why?” And then it hits him: the nights he sat waiting for six-thirty, the newspaper in front of him, unconcerned. He knew exactly where his kid was. At practice. Riding home with Joe in the car
. A month ago.
And another picture, of Mr. Knight and Mr. Hellwarth at the meeting. They suggest that he call the counselor’s office on Fridays, for a “progress report.” “Just so we stay on top of things, Mr. Jarrett.” He had rejected that plan immediately. No, it was too much like spying.
A month ago.

“Where have you been every night?” he asks.

“Nowhere,” Conrad says. “Around. The library, mostly.”

“I don’t get it,” he says flatly. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I was going to. I’ve been meaning to—”

“I’m sure you would have told us before the first meet,” Beth says. “When is it, next Thursday?”

“I’m sure I would have told you,” Conrad says, “if I thought you gave a damn!”

And the wellspring of anger erupts, engulfing them all.

“What the hell does that mean?” Cal demands.

“Never mind,” she says. “It’s meant for me. Isn’t it? I wish I knew, Conrad, why it is still so important for you to try to hurt me!”

“Hurt you? Me hurt you! Listen, you’re the one who’s trying to hurt me!”

“And how did I do that? By making you look like a fool in front of a roomful of people? Did you have to sit there, getting those looks? Poor Mrs. Jarrett, oh the poor woman, she has no idea what her son is up to, he lies and lies and she believes every word of it—”

“I didn’t lie—”

“You did! You lied every night that you came into this house at six-thirty. What do you mean, you didn’t lie?” She presses her hands tight to her head. “I can’t stand this, I really can’t! If it’s starting all over again, the lying and the disappearing for hours, the covering up—I won’t stand it!”

“Don’t, then!” he snarls. “Go to Europe, why don’t you? Go to hell!”

“Con—”

But he backs away from Cal’s hand. “Listen, don’t give me that, the only reason you care, the only reason you give a
fuck
about it is because someone else knew about it first! You never wanted to know anything I was doing, or anything I
wasn’t
doing; you just wanted me to leave you alone! Well, I left you alone, didn’t I? I could have told you lots of things! Like, up at the hospital there were rats! Big ones, up on three, with the hopeless nuts! But that’s okay; see, I was down on two, with the heads and the unsuccessfuls—”

“Con, shut up, stop it—”

“Damn it!” he says. “Tell
her
to stop it! You never tell her a
goddamn thing
! Listen, I know why she never came out there, not once!
I know!
Hell, she was going to goddamn
Spain
and goddamn
Portugal,
why should she care if I was hung up by the
goddamn balls
out there—”

“Christ! That’s enough!”

He takes a swift, sobbing breath, fixing them both with a look of utter fury. And then he is gone, his feet pounding up the stairs. Moments later, the shattering slam of his bedroom door.

Beth has her back to Cal, her hands clutching at her head. “I won‘t, I won’t!”

He goes to her; puts his arms around her. Her body is stiff. She is trembling, but she does not relax against him.

“What happened?” he asks. “What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know!”

“Somebody’d better go up there.”

“Go!” she says. “Go ahead, that’s the pattern, isn’t it? Let him walk all over us, then go up there and apologize to him!”

“I’m not going up to apologize.”

“Yes, you are! You always do! You’ve been apologizing to him ever since he came home!”

“Ah, Beth, crissake, lay off, will you? I feel like I’ve been at a goddamn tennis match tonight! Back and forth, back and forth—”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” She twists violently away from him. “Don’t talk to me like he talks to you!”

He grabs her, holds her, his cheek colliding with her skull, hard. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry, let’s not fight....” He rocks her in his arms, gently, and her hands are up between them, clenched into fists on his chest. She lets him hold her, but only for a moment.