Finally the crowded kitchen countertops were fully loaded, covered with turkey and ham, hot dishes and creamed vegetables (which seemed a contradiction in nutrition), and potatoes of every variety in every form: whipped, mashed, stuffed and sliced.
People shuffled past to fill their plates and settled on any available seat to chow down.
Matt spotted a figure dressed in black like an aging gunfighter, and wasn't surprised when the corner of his eye caught it settling near him, wearing the twin to the formal black suit Matt still kept in his closet at the Circle Ritz.
The old man's eyes were the color of water, faded by age to near translucency, but his handshake was as punishing as ever. Matt recognized that grip as common priestly compensation: an intensity born of little physical contact with others except through these social rituals. Celibacy could be a lonely avocation, spreading beyond the avoidance of one gender to an alienation from everyone.
"Good to see you again, Father Slowik. Do you need anything more? Silverware? Napkins?"
"Only a memory update. But I recall you, Matthias. Quite a squaller at your baptism."
"Maybe I had something to protest."
Father Slowik might be losing his short-term memory, but his instincts were as honed as ever.
"I know you've left, young man. They told me just now. I grieve for you, whatever your reasons. It's hard to get in, hell to get out, and sheer purgatory to have been, and be no more. You haven't left the church, though?"
"Left the church? No. I was released from my vows, that's all."
"That was enough in my day." Father Slowik pushed his ebbing glasses back against the bridge of his nose. "From what I've heard you were a good enough priest, Michael. I hope you'll be a good whatever-else you choose. Your mother's glad to see you, I'm sure."
Matt wasn't sure, but he didn't say that, any more than he would point out the old man's mistake with his name. Matt had switched to coffee, and studied the brown liquid staining the inside of Mary Margaret's best china cups. The old habits had broken down with the old neighborhoods. Bo had married Irish.
"I'd like to visit you at the rectory, Father, before I leave."
"Me? No one wants to see me any more."
"I do. I have some questions about, oh, the old days. You might remember some things. About my . . . origins."
"Old days." He nodded almost happily. "Those I remember, and, believe me, Matthias, skirts were never as short as that, not even in the sixties, and I do remember them quite clearly."
Matt turned to catch Krys watching them. "Short skirts won't destroy the world; shortsightedness might."
"I've got that too. Well, ring me up. I'm almost always there, unless they let me out to give extreme unction. Don't trust me with the words and music any more, boy. Not even at mass."
"After Christmas Day, I will," Matt said. He stood to shake hands with the old man again, despite the risk of instant carpel-tunnel problems.
The priest's stiff, wrinkled hand brushed the forearm of Matt's sleeve. "Nice fabric."
So much nicer than a lifetime sentence of black serge. For a few moments, Matt watched the old man move stiffly from group to group, mangling names and hands, always welcomed but then ignored, like an aging family dog, a black Labrador retriever.
Finally it was time to begin the Christmas Eve present exchange.
Matt found memories of this event as blank as Father Slowik's mental notebook. Had he ever enjoyed Christmases here? He sat quietly on the sidelines as gifts were handed out and exclaimed over.
He and his mother were invisible, mere onlookers to the others' connections and interactions. He felt his anger growing like a cancer. Had his illegitimacy relegated them to the family fringes? He had always blamed Cliff Effinger for everything wrong with their lives, but now he saw a more benign enemy at work. Simple denial. A tacit group resolve to ignore the unsavory facts of Matt's birth that incidentally added up to ignoring Matt and his mother.
Matt vaguely remembered being in this house at Christmas, but the memories weren't vivid, weren't warm. The rage that had refused to tear Effinger limb from limb was building here, on this supposedly safe ground of family. He felt like Samson, eager to pull the pillars down on the Belofskis and Zabinskis and all their houses, not a blinded Samson seeking blind revenge, but a Samson blinded by an ugly truth he suddenly could see.
Then, his own name was called. Startled, he accepted a wrapped package.
Inside were a Chicago-warm muffler and gloves, and a card from Bo and Mary Margaret He nodded his thanks across the room, saw them mellow and beaming. Maybe keeping up traditions was a kind of safety net. Maybe they accepted him and wanted him back. Maybe they'd bought too many muffler/glove sets for too many children.
When his last name was called again, it was for his mother. Matt watched the blouse box pass from hand to hand to her lap. It caused quite a buzz. Apparently, she was seldom in attendance, and seldom remembered.
She opened the box delicately, ribbon and tape dismantled, not torn. When the lid lifted, everyone strained forward to see, even Matt, and he knew what was inside.
The color converted them all on first sight. Women sighed and men nodded. His mother actually held it up to her shoulders and stroked a silky sleeve. But would she ever wear it? There was no question about the earrings, which, being much smaller, were presented unheralded, although Krys hovered to make sure they worked.
"These are ... so expensive," his mother whispered. They lay in one open palm like Christmas candies too decorative to eat.
'Try them on," Krys urged. "I want to see. I helped pick them out.
"Oh, you did?" Mira glanced with open alarm at the pewter implements dangling from Krys's ears, but clipped first one, then the other earring on.
"I'm not used to having something stuck on my ears," she said.
Matt noticed that her every comment was an objection or a subtle criticism. This house reeked with people telling other people what to do, even if the only victim was themselves.
"You'll get used to that," Krys said. "And they look gorgeous with your eyes."
His mother cast those eyes down. Compliments were anathema, and "gorgeous" wasn't in her vocabulary. "Too expensive," she murmured.
But she didn't take them off.
Halfway through the present-opening, the giant box of Ethel M chocolates Matt had brought as a hostess gift was passed to them, half of the brown frilled paper cups empty. Too expensive, Matt thought ironically, mentally toting up his holiday spending spree.
His gift from his mother arrived in a medium-size jewelry box. Inside was a dress watch, department-store designer brand, with a sleek, fashionably unreadable dial and a black leather band.
"You talk about 'too expensive.' "His gentle chiding made her smile at their role reversal. Matt swiftly exchanged the new watch for the clunky twenty-dollar model he wore. "Looks much better than my old one. Thanks, Mom."
He put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her cheek. She smiled as shyly as a teenager, or as a teenager should in olden days, before purple lipstick made shy smiles an impossibility.
Matt wondered if the watch represented Christmases past, and time lost, or Christmases future and time yet to be squandered or savored.
Somehow, with the present-passing ritual, the news about him had become common species too. More people approached him, fascinated as much by what he would do now as by what he had done before.