William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice (27 page)

Suddenly she became gay; she stretched out her arm, arched her wrist, and said in the tones of Tallulah Bankhead: “Richard, dawling, my coat if you please!” “Peyton—” Loftis began, and reached out for her with something like desperation. But she was gone before he knew it and he found himself standing alone in the hallway with the touch of her last light kiss upon his cheek, young laughter—in a way not really heartfelt at all—hovering in the air around him, as he blinked stupidly at the chill black night, the open door, the lopsided wreath, still trembling.

Pity had him shackled in frail impotence; he felt bound by threads of affection—or was it merely habit?—too thin to break. Even then, in the monstrous blush of pity which verged close to despair, he somehow knew that his vast pity for Helen was only a form of self-pity, and he cursed himself for an unmerry Christmas, for Peyton’s unhappiness and his own bleak inertia. Perhaps, he later thought, he would have been justified at that moment in having a showdown with Helen, but it was Peyton who would suffer the most if there were a fight, and he knew that the longed-for phrase (mentally practiced with stern fury and gestures)—“I’m leaving now, Helen. Period”—would still only be a threat. Pity had him enthralled. Bemused by his
Weltschmerz,
he telephoned Dolly, but there was no answer. He nibbled on some turkey that Ella had left in the kitchen. Finally he went back to the living room and drank with Edward, and because he was lonely and full of pity he even warmed a little to the man’s deplorable egotism, and they talked until past midnight when, to the faint sound of carols far down the street, they wobbled upstairs to bed.

So Christmas Day was ghastly. Pure hell. Waking with a headache, he knew by the sunlight that it was late, and by some dark residual sense of gloom that the day would have to be a cautious one, full of perils. The house was completely still; there were no festive shouts or excited murmurings—only silence. It felt like a house in which someone was lying gravely ill, and he got out of bed with a foul taste in his mouth. He looked at his watch. Helen and Maudie would be at church. Outside, the bay was partly frozen, but the exposed blue water was dazzling; the blues and the whites together were stark and monumental, like a day painted on a calendar, with no subtle colors anywhere. But far off in the north, clouds were gathering, promising more snow. He made a ticklish shave and dressed and tiptoed into the room where Peyton lay sleeping. He sat down on the bed beside her and roused her with a kiss. She stirred, stretched and pressed her head down into the pillow.

“God, I’ve got a hangover,” she said.

He punched her in the ribs, gently, and leaned down and kissed her again. “Baby,” he murmured, “what did you say?”

She opened one eye and then the other, wide, and, blushing, covered her head with the pillow. “Didn’t know it was you” came the muffled voice.

He spanked her across the bottom. “Merry Christmas!”

“Ow!” She sat up, hair falling across her face.

“Who do you love?” he asked.

“Me.”

“No,” he persisted, “who do you love? Who’s your sugar baby?”

She frowned, squinting into the light. Then she rested her head on his shoulder, and said sleepily: “Bunny. Anyway, it’s ‘whom’ do you love. I think.”

“Spell it.”

“J-A-C-K-A-S-S.”

“That’s not right, but it’ll do. Since you’ve got a hangover. When did you start hitting the bottle that hard? I thought
I
was the family disgrace.”

“Oh, darling, I have the vastest capacity ever,” she asserted, in a new sprightly voice, “I go with the KA’s, you know. You should know. You’re a KA yourself. I have really an enormous capacity. It’s good for you. It clears the mind and allows the entry there of things of the in-tell-ect. I also have lots of other vices.”

“What do you know about intellect? Or vices?”

“That’s what Dick said.”

“He’s a nice boy. Do you like him?”

“Mmm. He’s nice enough, I guess. He’s in love with me,” she said serenely.

A curious sinking sensation came over him. “Where is he now?” he said. “I thought he was going to stay here.”

“He was, but when we came in this morning at the glorious hour of three-thirty he and Chuck Barlow just had to go to Chuck’s house to finish drinking. Chuck’s a KA too, you know—the Barlows live down in Hampton. So I told him to go on, it was all right with me, and I’d see him tonight.” She paused, thoughtfully; her brow went up in tiny wrinkles. “I was a little scared, though. The roads are full of ice, you know, and everyone was most gloriously drunk. Bunny, you should have heard them singing—all the old songs—it was lovely. Oh, give me a cigarette, Bunny.”

Now he would ask her. He held out a pack of cigarettes, saying, “Baby, aren’t you going to stay until New Year’s?”

She lit the cigarette, pushing the hair back from her eyes, and gazed toward the bay. “Are you?” he repeated, adding irrelevantly, as if he didn’t want at all to hear her answer: “You’ve got to come down and open your presents.”

“Uncle Eddie’s gone,” she said.

“What?” he exclaimed, surprised.

“When I came in he went out. They called him from camp. An emergency or something. He didn’t want to wake you up. God, he looked lit. Mother was downstairs in her bathrobe telling him good-by when I came in.”

“What would the war do without Edward?” he said, with a touch of malice and perhaps jealousy.

“What?” Peyton said, turning toward him.

“Nothing.” He took her hand. “Are you going to stay with me a little while?” His voice was light but there was sudden pleading in it, and in order to hide his anxiety he added with a laugh: “Baby’s got to quit running around the countryside all the time.” The squeeze he gave her hand betrayed him and she drew it away, saying in the impatient, grown-up tone: “Oh, I don’t know, Bunny. Now if you’ll just get out of here—” kissing him smack on the mouth—“I’ve got to get dressed. I’m just most violently opposed to men watching my soft young baw-dy. Now go on, sweetie.”

“O.K.” He got up. At the door he turned and said, “Did she say anything else to you last night? When you came in?”

“Oh, I’m hung over!” Hard noontime light filled the room; it was a light which, from where he stood, dazzled and blinded, yet it possessed a cold transparency, a frozen lemonade color that brought to his eyes, still puffy with sleep, all the familiar, forgotten configurations of the room: the bookcase in fading childish enamel, red and green; tatters of high-school pennants still clinging to the walls; and in one shady corner a locker colored in naive pink where still lay, for all he knew, in positions of blushing painted catalepsy, all the cast-off dolls, Here, framed in the sun’s bright rectangle, she was already undressing, and along the arch of her back were drawn, like marks from a lash, the slatted shadows of the open blinds. Fascinated and confused, he watched this woman: she was shivering a little from the chill, and there was a final swift wriggle as the pajama pants fell from her waist. “Well, are you going to stay honey?” he fairly shouted, in a broken voice, but she only called back over her shoulder, “Daddy, get out of here!” and, swallowing hard, he left the room.

The moment of excitement, confusion, whatever it was, lingered briefly but soon passed away, for when Helen arrived a few minutes later, pulling up the driveway with a sputter of tires on the hard-packed snow, the day began to gather quick momentum. Oddly, she put him off guard at first, not with a mere “Merry Christmas!” but with: “My, you should have seen the church, Milton. It was beautiful,” smiling at him in an equivocal way, which made him turn his eyes aside, as she took off her galoshes. Pleased at this amenity, but still cautious, he started to make a general reply—“Well, nice!” or even, “Splendid!”—but she had deposited Maudie on a stool beneath the Christmas tree and, because Ella had been granted leave of absence to attend church, hurried into the kitchen to fix dinner.

He was not aware of the moment when the sky became overcast. He poured himself a drink; a smell of cooking drifted in from the kitchen, and in boredom, waiting impatiently for Peyton to come downstairs, he sat on the floor beside Maudie and picked out tunes on a toy xylophone. His gifts had not been opened: there was a large square package, probably a dressing gown, from Helen, another, smaller one from Peyton. Neither Peyton nor Helen had opened their presents—only Maudie, early that morning—and he sat amid a litter of tinsel string and wrappings plunking aimless notes from the xylophone, which was chipped and nearly bare of paint, a perennial. “Listen, Maudie,” he said.

God knew how many Christmases ago Maudie had first seen it, uncomprehendingly pushed it aside, or how many Christmases, each Christmas, it had been revived by Helen to tie together the passing years, to perform its tinkling ritual of remembrance, regret and undying hope. Now, bending over him, Maudie inclined her head to one side and was pleased, perhaps, for she stared into space with brown rapt eyes which made him at least imagine she was pleased, as the hollow insipid knocking notes echoed plunk-plink-plunk around the room.
Si-lent night, ho-ly night.
There was an inept clashing of pots and pans in the kitchen, an undertone of furious, obsessed whisperings—was she talking to herself? “Helen!” he called dutifully, “can I help you?” No answer. He drank, looking up from the xylophone, and saw that the sun, like the day itself, passing with the merest unconscious flicker of a threat out of morning, had faded: a ghostly recessional of ocean-bound clouds hung over the bay, gray, portentous, billowing, enveloping the snow in an apron of dull dingy smoke.

Nor was he aware that Peyton had come downstairs, passing silently through the hallway, and was now standing in the door of the kitchen, saying, rather timidly: “Merry Christmas, Mother.”

There was no reply. Peyton set her mouth firmly and went on: “I said Merry Christmas, Mother.” Still there was no answer, only a flurry of mutterings that rose from the stove where Helen, her back to the door, was bending over a huge turkey. Helen’s elbow knocked a pan to the floor with a clatter. She turned without looking at the floor and faced Peyton.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose you’re satisfied.”

“What do you mean?” Peyton said.

“Are you
really
satisfied with yourself?”

“I well, I don’t know what you mean.”

Helen leaned down and picked up the pan, wiping it on her apron. “Your Uncle Edward. He came all the way down from Blackstone on special leave to see us. He wanted to see you especially.” She turned back to the stove, shaking her head. “Oh,” she said loudly and paused, and in the silence that sound hung like an enormous zero between them. “Oh,” she repeated, and turned again. “He was so shocked. Really, Peyton, he was so shocked. To see you coming in like that with that drunken boy. He wanted so much to see you before he left.” She went back to the turkey, and her hands were trembling as she began to baste the bird with a spoon. Part of the turkey had been burned a little. “Haven’t you got any self-respect, Peyton? Who taught you to act like that? To drink, to——”

“Shocked, my eye!” Peyton said.

Helen remained motionless, her back to Peyton still, the spoon suspended in mid-air, dripping grease. “Huh!” she said. It was almost like the first part of a laugh.

“Shocked, my eye!” Peyton repeated. “Uncle Eddie shocked! Why, dear, I’ve never seen anyone so polluted. Why don’t you come out and say what you really mean, Mother? Why don’t you? Why don’t you say it was you who was shocked? What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

Helen wheeled about, her mouth an oval, hovering on speech.

Peyton said, “Just a second. Don’t give me that ‘drunken boy’ routine. He’s my friend and I like him and what’s the matter with you, anyway, Mother? Good God, Mother!” Her face was red with anger and she stood in the doorway, trembling, the two of them trembling, voiceless, both ready to burst into tears. The kitchen was littered in amateur disarray; a sweetish smoke arose from the stove, something was burning. From the living room, in thin inconsequential slivers of sound, came a carol on the xylophone.

“I’ve tried——” Helen began hysterically.

“Oh, nuts!” Peyton said in a low voice. “What’s the matter with you, anyway?” She turned; the skirt of her bright red suit whirled about her knees; she stalked out of the room.

For half an hour they sat in the living room together—Peyton, Maudie and Loftis. No one said a word—except Maudie, who hobbled to her feet once and went to the window, remarking in low awed tones about the sky: the sun, what happened to the sun? The presents lay unopened. Peyton thumbed through a magazine; her face was still set in anger, and red, and she nervously crossed and uncrossed her legs. Outside, whirlpools of snow eddied down from the cedars; a fuzzy gray light filled the house. They waited. Wretched, and with another drink cupped in his hand, Loftis watched Helen’s shadow, a brief pale reflection in its passage from the kitchen to the dining room and back, pass the hallway mirror: she bore plates and dishes to the table like a reluctant acolyte, votive, long-suffering, and there was menace in her hurried tread, in those footsteps so quick and determined and ceremonial. Like the trampling feet of some penitent no longer in love with penitence, but only rather tired, yet bound to see it through. Finally, in a flat, spent voice, she called, “Dinner’s ready.”

They went in. Just as, inevitably, they were eating Christmas dinner under a fog of hostility, so, as inevitably, and as a not really very ironic sort of counterbalance to the tension, Helen surpassed herself: the meal, except for a small burned part of the turkey, was impeccable. Everything was present, accounted for: clams, cranberry sauce, oyster dressing, a handsome centerpiece of ivy and holly. Yet Loftis knew there was pain and martyrdom in the precision with which the salt cellars were filled, in the careful fold of the napkins. All without Ella, all by herself. All by herself. For Peyton, perhaps. For us. For the family. God rest you merry … The day grew quiet. There was little conversation, and what there was of it was stiff and unconvincing. Helen, calm now, talked serenely of the weather: it looks like more snow. Solemnly Maudie thanked everyone for the fourth or fifth time, with a gentle nod of her head, for the presents she had received: thank you, Papadaddy, thank you, Peyton dear. Peyton tried to tell Loftis a joke, tried to eat. Glancing at him with a look of disgust, she let her fork drop helplessly, her plate still half-filled. A terrible melancholy seized him; his mind trembled upon loss, upon the sounds of ancient forgotten Christmases—or were they sounds at all, those gay words without a voice ascending skyward, like notes from a tuneless xylophone, in rooms filled with smoke, laughter, harmless vanished faces? He looked up at Helen. Her plate was empty. She was smoking a cigarette, staring out at the bay.