“We will bicker,” Emily huffed now, “if we need to. Like every Christmas, I’m stressed and overworked…”
“Honey, I’ve tried to help you,” Thomas’s mother pleaded, “but you won’t let me. You take on too much, and—”
“Mom, you make the eggnog too eggy, and you don’t clean the dishes properly—”
“How can I mess up the eggnog, when I follow your recipe exactly? And as far as dishes go, why, Jean Copeland can clean a pan, I’ll tell you that much—”
And so it began. The men stood there, listening to the back and forth. (It should be noted that none of them now looked senatorial.) Finally, the miniature hurricanes blustered into the kitchen, leaving behind an awkward silence.
“The same every year,” Thomas finally grumbled.
“Yes,” Dan said carefully. “But it’s sort of a tradition by now, isn’t it? It would seem odd if Emily and Jean didn’t clash.”
“It would seem like a normal family Christmas,” Thomas replied, “not a pointless frenzy.”
“Something the matter, son?” Frank Copeland asked, ever probing for chinks in his son’s armor.
“Nothing. Just work stuff.”
“Well, don’t let it poison the mood,” his father admonished. “This is one of the few times we get together…”
“I’ve never known Thomas to poison anything,” Dan said. “I’m sure his work problems aren’t that major.”
Frank Copeland looked at him malevolently, and Dan Dowling’s station sank from that of an already-low footman to a stable boy. He considered saying something caustic, something about how he was a lawyer of no small account, and that Frank was in his house — but he knew it would accomplish nothing, and Emily would get angry with him for befouling the mood, so he stilled his tongue.
Instead he took a few sips of his eggnog, as if nothing in the world irked him or would ever irk him, and then excused himself: “I’m going to go check my e-mail real quick. Important work stuff, got to keep on top of it.” This left father and son standing by each other. Both men looked outside intently, instead of at each other, as if something engrossing could be seen, but there was nothing besides the skittering of a few leaves across the road.
“How’s Florida?” Thomas finally asked.
“Fine.”
A leaf pirouetted, then flopped back onto the pavement like it was exhausted.
“What have you been doing lately?” Thomas tried. This was a good question to ask, as it could potentially keep his father talking for minutes (or at least seconds) at a time, therefore relieving Thomas of the responsibility of maintaining a conversation.
Frank Copeland hadn’t had many hobbies during his working life, but now that he was retired he’d filled up the free hours with tons of them. Except they weren’t really hobbies, as his father attacked them with ornery zeal. “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well,” Frank Copeland always said. For example, he couldn’t take a lazy birding strolclass="underline" he had to bring along his $999.99 pair of binoculars; his water-, fire-, and acid-proof field journal, in which he kept precise data on all bird sightings; two or three birding guides he could consult if he came across an unknown species (which was extremely unlikely, because Frank Copeland knew his birds); and more photographic gear than a red-carpet premiere.
“I’ve taken up painting,” Frank Copeland replied.
“Really?” Thomas thought back. Yes, his mother had mentioned this in several e-mails. “How’s it going so far?”
“Fine,” his father said dourly. “Making progress. Most of my stuff looks like blobs of gunk now, but in time, I think I’ll have something worth presenting.” In truth, this was standard Frank Copeland false humility, which went hand-in-hand, somewhat paradoxically, with his “worth doing well” philosophy. If he hiked up Mt. Everest unaided, at the summit he would curse himself for tripping once a few thousand feet down instead of celebrating.
“Is mom helping you?” Thomas asked, though he knew the answer. Even if his mother hadn’t mentioned it in her e-mail, he would’ve been able to guess it.
“No. I don’t think your mother and I would get along as instructor and student.”
Thomas smirked. He could imagine the scene: Jean gushing that “you’re improving so much, and, oh, look at how real that tree looks! Your style reminds me of someone… who was it… yes, Caiden Willis, who I knew back in Morehead City. You know he moved away, became a graphic designer somewhere, believe it was Chicago, don’t know what he’s doing now…” and Frank replying that “this overdone praise doesn’t help me. I want to paint, dammit. And please stop going off on a tangent about old friends.” It was like this for every hobby, which was why they tried to keep their interests separate.
“I’m taking an Adult Learning class at the community college,” his father continued, “but it’s too slow for me.” This did not surprise Thomas. He could picture the instructor driven to frustration by his father’s hectoring questions, and the fluffy housewives intimidated by the way he attacked a canvas. This mental picture bore a strong resemblance to reality.
“Sounds good,” Thomas said. “Gotta keep active in your retirement, right?”
“I’ll always be active,” Frank Copeland stated. “The rolling stone gathers no moss.”
“Rolling stone… huh, that reminds me of Sisyphus. You know that myth?”
“No,” was the gruff response. Frank Copeland hated not knowing something, and he especially hated it when his son was the one who pointed out his ignorance.
“Well, it’s an interesting myth.”
A pause as long as a winter’s night.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Thomas said, as a way to escape. “By the way, where’s Dennis?”
“In his room. Playing those video games, I expect.”
To Frank Copeland, video games were the biggest time-wasters ever conceived. He didn’t know why supposedly smart people killed their brain cells shooting up characters on a screen when they could be improving themselves. His own son had been passionate about video games when he was a kid, something that still rankled him.
Thomas was recalling this passion himself. He remembered vividly when the original Nintendo console came out, way back when he was in elementary school. He’d played it at a friend’s house, and immediately had to have it. He’d never experienced anything like it. He’d heard of something called “Atari” at some point, but he didn’t exactly know what it was. The Nintendo, however — even in his schoolboy brain, stuffed with state capitals and “in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” he knew that it was Huge.
But his father swore he’d never buy such a thing for Thomas. His mother was more receptive — mainly because other mothers told her the Nintendo kept their children engaged for hours, instead of tearing through the house like they usually did — but in this matter Frank Copeland would not budge a millimeter.
“If you want this thing, buy it yourself,” he told his son.
At the time, Thomas and Emily were paid $10 per week, which they earned by washing dishes after supper, picking up pine cones, and sweeping up pine straw in the yard, all of which had to be done according to their father’s exacting standards. Frank Copeland wasn’t going to just hand his kids money; they would have to earn it.