“And don’t worry about the divorce. I’ll take care of it. I’m sure there’s no reason for you to be involved.”
“What?”
“I’ll talk to Silvano. I think we understand each other.”
Boris shut the car door and waved for the driver to leave.
“Don’t go anywhere,” I said. I rolled down the window. “I don’t want you talking to Silvano.”
“Is that your choice?”
“And what’s this about me not being involved in my own divorce?”
“Katherine, I am only protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From yourself.”
“Oh. From myself.” I lit a cigarette, despite the no smoking sign. The driver took a quick look at me in the rear view mirror and lit one too. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should stop being involved in everything about me. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the only thing wrong with me is me. Maybe you should take care of that too.”
“You are not making sense.” Boris looked down at his gray felt slippers and shook his head. “Can’t we part civilly?”
“Go. Go, go, go,” I said to the driver. I looked at Boris briefly through the rear view window. He had already turned to go back into the building. “Can you believe that guy?” I asked the cab driver.
“He is really an asshole, that man.”
“Yes he is.”
“You are with him for money?”
“God, I wish it was that simple.”
“Isn’t it that simple?”
The cab driver was African and reminded me of one of the wise kings from the Little Drummer Boy. He looked like that and had the same reassuring, supremely civilized voice. I gave him a twenty-dollar tip when we got to Newark.
“Merry Christmas for you and your family,” he said.
“The same to you,” I replied and meant it.
It was getting near Christmas. I’d somehow missed Thanksgiving while in Mexico, which was no big deal, even though I liked Thanksgiving. How could one not like a holiday devoted to food? But Christmas was fun too. Johnny would be back in New Mexico by then. Arthur and I could get a tree, decorate it. We could wrap socks and scarves and hats in gold paper, fill stockings with Baci and biscuits and fancy coffee in little tins. There would be lights blink-blinking away. For the holidays we’d drink bourbon in eggnog and Zinfandel, smoke Export A’s and Nat Shermans, eat and eat and eat, then sleep in sweet sweaty lumps beneath the covers. Many houses already had their wreaths on the door and more than one illuminable, unmeltable Frosty waved, broom in hand, from the front lawn. A few pillars on the larger houses had spruce garlands snaking up in a spiral. It was good to be back in Maine, good to be—dare I say it?—home.
Christmas was the highlight of my year when I was growing up. I attended a Catholic grade school and Advent pretty much brought a stop to any scholarly pursuits. We were herded every morning into the school hall and drilled through a number of Christmas carols. And there was the yearly Christmas play. In the first grade, I played a narrating angel, not because I was particularly angelic, far from it, but I could memorize lines and that was rare in a six-year-old. In the second grade, I again held a starring role—that of Noah’s wife. I’m not exactly sure what Noah had to do with Christmas, but there was some musical based on Noah’s life and as Noah’s wife I had a song all to myself and much time standing at the center of the stage flanked by pairs of animals. When the dove sent to scout for dry land returned, I had the line, “Look, an olive branch! We are saved!” The dove was played by Penelope Cornwall, whose costume was outrageous, rows of feathers sewn painstakingly onto wings that really flapped and a pair of yellow bird feet. But her only line was a steady croo, croo, croo that didn’t project very well and was hardly heard by the audience. In the third grade, I somehow fell from grace and found myself standing two rows back from the manger, as a sheep. I was bitterly disappointed by this and blamed my teacher, Ms. Balfour, who was in thrall to the Cornwall family. I remember my Christmas gift—a scented candle—sitting on the classroom piano next to Penelope’s gift—fancy looking skin-products in a large basket bound up in red cellophane and gold ribbon. Penelope was the angel Gabriel—who should have been a boy anyway—but Penelope got the role and as I watched her lisp her way through her lines, her sweet manner and ineptitude eliciting all sorts of ooh’s and ahh’s from parents in the audience, I felt a rare and precious anger rising within me. Penelope was wearing her first communion dress, a gorgeous satin thing, pure white (my first communion dress had been pale blue because my mother thought that dressing little girls like brides was an act of unmistakable perversion) and her wings—wings again—were huge cardboard appendages stuck all over with crumpled opalescent cellophane, dusted with gold glitter. I, however, was wearing an old fleece car seat cover, belted at the waist, and pair of ears made from my father’s gym socks. On leaving the house, my mother had said, “Don’t you look cute.”
The play was performed in the dimly lit hall. All the parents had been given candles with little paper collars and the little flames winked and failed and were relit deep into the darker recesses of the building. My mother was up near the front. I could see her face lit up by the candle and the expression which had gone from a settled bored look to a deeper, pure malice.
Penelope sang, “Do you thee what I thee?”
And I sang in response (and to the same tune) “Baa baa baa baa baa baa.”
After the song was finally over, we were to file out of the hall past the parents and reassemble outside, then we were to go back in for cider, donuts, and cookies. Penelope led the way. We were all singing. I saw her pass my mother and my mother’s tilting candle, and then whoosh! Penelope transformed from Gabriel to Lucifer.
Penelope wasn’t injured. My father pulled the wings off rather quickly, burning his hand. He stamped out the flames while Penelope looked on, her big blue eyes blinking in an unintelligent, uncomprehending way. My father was a hero. As various parents massed around him and Penelope, I sneaked outside. My mother was illumined by a much smaller flame, her cigarette, and seemed quiet enough. I went up to her and held her hand.
“Are you mad at me?” she said. And I could see that she was genuinely worried, that somehow she felt she had failed me.
“No, Mommy, no,” I said. And I felt more love for her at that moment than I’d felt for anyone before. More love than I thought was possible. I was grateful that she’d made it out of the hospital for the play, but as I held her hand in mine, I had a surging sadness: the hospital would always be there, threatening her, threatening me, and all our moments of joy were just brief flares of light in an otherwise uninterrupted gloom.
As the cab pulled up to the cottage, Arthur and Johnny came running out of the house. Johnny was in a T-shirt and Arthur in his socks, despite the fact that it was twenty degrees outside. The driver slammed on the brakes. Johnny rolled onto the hood of the car, as if he’d been hit, and Arthur pulled me out of the car. He hugged and kissed me warmly and Johnny came over and hugged us both. It was eleven A.M., the guys were already wasted, and I was so happy I thought I might start crying.
“Come inside,” said Arthur. Johnny was paying the driver. “We have a surprise for you.”
The house was decorated, but not for Christmas. There were streamers everywhere, balloons on the floor, taped to the beams. I could see a cake on the table, and most surprisingly of all, a white dog lying on the couch wearing a foil party hat.