She wasn’t, actually.
He didn’t ask how it could be that she had no family to spend the holiday with, though some people—hearing this—might have concluded that Eleanor was a loser. He just asked if she’d like to come for Christmas dinner with him and his boys. It was a crazy idea, spending Christmas with a man she’d never met, and his two children.
She said okay.
He lived in a very small town in western Massachusetts, an hour and a half from Boston, not so different from where Eleanor had lived on her old farm. The directions Russell gave her were extremely thorough. Included in these directions, recited over the phone while she wrote it all down, was every landmark a person might look for at every turn in the road, as if he worried that one wrong turn might doom any possibility of a future for the two of them.
He wanted to know if she was allergic to any foods. He was not much of a baker, he said, but his grandmother had a great recipe for corn bread that he made every year. He wanted to know whether she liked marshmallows on her sweet potatoes or preferred them plain. His sons liked the marshmallow kind, but he was thinking of making a second, smaller pan without the topping.
That sounded good, she said. She had never been a marshmallow fan.
“I told the boys all about you,” he said. (What could he have said? He knew almost nothing about her. Same as she knew nothing of him.) “They’re so excited you’re coming.”
Even without children in the house she woke early on Christmas morning. Making her coffee, she thought about her three children—off at the farm, with Cam and Coco and Elijah and the grandparents. Drinking her coffee in her strangely quiet kitchen, she looked out at the snow. She could see, through the window of her neighbors’ house across the street, the blinking lights of their tree and her neighbor Mrs. Winstead in a bathrobe handing out gifts. In the house next door someone was playing the same Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas album they always used to put on Christmas morning, loud enough that even through the windows she could hear the Chipmunks’ rendition of “Up on the Housetop.”
She called Akersville. Her ex-father-in-law, Roger, answered. Odd how it worked: one year a person’s part of your family, the next, his voice sounds like some loan officer at a bank turning down your application. “I’ll put the kids on,” he said.
Al came on first. She had gotten a camera and a new winter jacket. Socks, books, another of the dresses Cam’s mother seemed determined to give her that she would never wear, and a pair of pink fuzzy slippers. Cam’s mother, Roberta, was always giving Al pink items, as if that might suddenly remind her she was a girl. Al turned these over to Ursula, just as now—as swiftly as possible—she handed over the phone.
Ursula was more talkative, though not as much as she used to be. Her good cheer, that Eleanor had always taken for granted, now carried an air of affectation.
She provided a list of her presents, which included a Walkman and a sweater she’d asked for and a pair of high boots. She offered up a recitation of their activities over the last few days—a cookie party with her old friends from softball days, a snow sculpture contest, caroling with Coco’s parents. Cousins, even! Their father’s brother had paid them a visit from Texas, with his three kids. Eleanor could hear, in her voice, the care Ursula was taking to make sure that nothing she said sounded too great, even though, to Eleanor, it did, and the truth was, this made her happy for Ursula more than sad for herself.
“There’s probably a lot going on there,” Eleanor said. “You should get back to the fun. Let me talk to your brother.”
Talking with Toby over the phone was always difficult. Maybe it was hard for him, not seeing a person’s face, to connect with the words she was saying, or offer any back.
“Coco made waffles,” he told her. “With syrup from our trees.”
Back to the Game Boy.
Sometime around midmorning Eleanor made the pie she’d promised to bring to the holiday dinner of Russell and his sons: apple.
She put on the Joan Baez Christmas album that her family used to play when she was growing up. After, she changed into a red dress she hadn’t worn in a very long time—a little out of fashion with its padded shoulders, but her hosts were unlikely to mind.
Russell’s directions got her to where he lived twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Eleanor pulled over a block away and sat with the motor running until it was three o’clock. It occurred to her that she should have brought something for his sons, but she didn’t even know their names.
They lived in an old house that had been converted to apartments—theirs on the second floor. Climbing the steps, she thought, momentarily, about Timmy Pouliot. He’d be with his big French Canadian family, of course. His brother, his brother’s daughter, who she remembered from softball, his three sisters and his mother, whom she’d never met, but knew from the photograph Timmy Pouliot kept next to his bed.
The bed, she knew.
Russell’s sons answered the door. The older one wore thick glasses, and the kind of haircut a boy gets when his father, economizing, tries to cut it himself—a bowl cut. He was very thin, his pants held up, but just barely, by a fake leather belt. He was wearing a clip-on Christmas tie that lit up when you pushed a button, which he did.
The smaller brother was only slightly less thin. No glasses, but when he stepped forward to greet her she saw that he had some form of cerebral palsy. Mild, but recognizable.
“I’m Arthur,” the older one told her. “This is my brother, Benny. His umbilical cord was tangled up around his neck when he was born. That’s why he walks a little funny. He’s not retarded or anything.”
This was old news to Benny. He paid no attention to the health report. “We bought a turkey,” he said. “Usually we go to the Ramada for Christmas but my dad said since we were having company we’d make a feast at home.”
“We got two kinds of dip,” Arthur added.
Someone had decorated the entrance with a “Merry Christmas” sign and a cutout of Santa in a disco outfit. Eleanor would not have noticed if the older brother, Arthur, hadn’t pointed this out, but they had hung a bunch of mistletoe from the ceiling.
“Stand here, okay?” Benny said. “That means my dad gets to kiss you.” His speech was a little difficult to understand, but Eleanor figured out what he was saying. Until now, she had not actually laid eyes on her host, but now she saw him, standing a little uneasily a few feet behind his sons—a pale man of average height and narrow, sloping shoulders wearing a red-and-green sweater with a reindeer on the front and a bow tie. He had a regretful air about him, as if he already knew he was a disappointment, but maybe his sons would win her over.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I wasn’t going to do anything like that. The boys are just excited you’re here.”
Benny led her in—the picture coming to mind of Ricardo Montalban’s small sidekick, Tattoo, on Fantasy Island, escorting that week’s guest stars off the plane and down the plank leading to the island.
Russell was no Ricardo Montalban, but he had clearly worked hard to set the stage for her arrival. There were carnations on the table, and though it was daylight out, candles already lit. He had a record playing, the Carpenters’ Christmas Portrait.
Russell asked how her drive had gone. Arthur asked what kind of car she had, and concealed his disappointment when she told him Subaru.
“My brother really loves Dodge Chargers,” Benny told her. “He was hoping you had one. But that’s okay.”
Russell had bought wine, and now he poured her a glass. Red, a little sweet. “I’m not really much of a drinker,” he said. “But it’s a special occasion.” Eleanor handed Russell the pie. The boys gathered around to admire it, as if what she had brought were a rare and exotic treasure. This may have been their first homemade pie.
“You’re pretty,” Benny said. “We were talking about it before you got here, since we didn’t know what you look like. Arthur said the important part is if you’re nice but it’s an extra bonus when someone
’s pretty.”
He turned to Arthur. “Doesn’t Eleanor look like that girl on the commercial for Diet Coke? The one with the brown hair?” He spoke her name. Not everyone you met did that.
Arthur gave Benny a look. “Don’t mind my brother,” he said. “He’s a little crazy.”
“Not really,” Russell said. Maybe he was worried she’d believe this. Also, he didn’t want to hurt Benny’s feelings.
She had only been in their apartment five minutes, but already she understood this: Russell was looking for a wife. Even more, Russell’s sons wanted a mother, and he would do what he could to find them one. If she were up for it, the two of them could be married by Valentine’s Day probably.
“Do you have kids?” Benny asked.
“Three. They’re with their father today.”
A worried look came over Benny. Maybe she was another one of those mothers, like his own, who had left. “We haven’t seen our mom since I was a baby,” he said. “It turned out we weren’t her cup of tea. She wanted to ride around listening to the Grateful Dead.”
“There was probably more to it than that, Benny,” Russell said. “Your mother loved you. She just had some problems being a mom.”
“Do you have problems being a mom?” Benny asked Eleanor.
She told him she didn’t. She could have said more, but this was not the moment.
They arranged themselves at the table. Benny made sure Eleanor was sitting next to his father. Arthur held her chair out for her.
“You taught your boys good manners,” Eleanor said.
“Eagle Scout,” he told her.
Russell carried in the turkey. From the silver plastic platter on which the meat was arranged, it appeared to have been purchased, precooked and presliced, along with disposable plastic bowls of cranberry sauce and gravy.
“I found this great place that makes everything ready to go,” Russell said. But he’d made the sweet potatoes and corn bread from scratch.
“It’s called Stop & Shop,” Arthur pointed out.
They loved her pie. They loved everything about her. Over the course of the meal, the things Benny complimented Eleanor on included her hair, her necklace, her shoes, her baking, her appetite, and—when he showed her a patch he’d recently earned at Cub Scouts and asked if she could stitch it on his shirt for him—her sewing ability along with (related to this) good eyesight, as proven by her ease in threading the needle.
She was sitting at the table sewing on the patch when it came to her what this reminded her of: Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. She was Wendy.
A wave of terrible sadness came over her then. These were children without a mother, and she was a mother without children. It should be perfect.
More than anything—more even than a man who loved her—Eleanor wanted this back: the life of taking care of children the way she used to, living in a family, sharing meals like this. (Well, not like this one, but other meals. The good kind.) But it was not something you could find in the pages of the classifieds, this family life. She wanted it with her own children, not the two sweet, pale strangers who sat across the table from her, their eyes full of unconcealed longing. And in the seat next to her, the sweet, gentle Eagle Scout who would probably love her forever, if she gave him the opportunity, which she would not.
She had planned to leave as soon as she had stitched on the patch, but when she handed the shirt back to Benny he said they had a surprise for her.
“Let’s do our act for Eleanor,” he said to Arthur. They had worked up a scene from the Three Amigos movie.
His brother looked uneasy. “I don’t think so, Benny. She probably doesn’t want to see it, and anyway, it’s kind of lame.”
“Artie’s just saying that,” Benny told her. “You should see my brother’s Steve Martin imitation. My dad does the Chevy Chase part. I’m Martin Short.”
Now Russell was the one looking embarrassed. “I only do this because they need a third person,” he told Eleanor. “I’m not very good at being funny. When I make people laugh, it’s usually unintentional.”
“Come on,” Benny said. With that odd, slightly spastic gait of his, he was clearing a space in the middle of the living room now, his floppy puppet arms flailing. Arthur got up out of his chair to join him.
“You too, Dad,” Benny said.
The three of them stood before her then, taking their positions, their best imitation of three men doing their best imitation of cowboys.
Benny started it off. “Hey, you slime-eating dogs,” he said, facing the invisible desperados.
“Hey, you scum-sucking pigs.” This was Russell’s line. He delivered it with unexpected feeling.
“You sons of a motherless goat.” Arthur now. His Steve Martin impersonation was more impressive than Eleanor would have anticipated. He even executed a dance step, more or less.
For a second there, Benny stepped out of character, addressing Eleanor. “Here’s the part where one of the bad guys says, ‘And who are you?’ You can be him. You can do that part.”
“And who are you?” Eleanor asked them.
“Wherever there is injustice, you will find us,” Benny said as Martin Short, the hero mariachi. “Wherever there is suffering, we’ll be there.”
The next line was delivered in unison. Clearly they’d done this before. Though if Eleanor had to guess, she would say this might have been the first time they had an audience. The first time they performed it for a woman, anyway.
“You will find the three amigos!”
They took a bow. Eleanor clapped. If this had been an audition—and in some ways it was—you would have to admit they’d done a good job.
There was one more thing they needed to do before she left, Benny told her. (It was always Benny taking the lead. Russell and Arthur were probably accustomed to this, and grateful for it. Without Benny as the emcee, this would have been an excruciatingly quiet gathering.)
“Do you want to see something really special?” he asked her. Who would say no?
He took her hand. A little unsteadily, he led her into a small, dark room at the end of the narrow hallway.
This was the bedroom of a man for whom a bedroom is nothing more than a place to sleep: a mattress on the floor with a faded spread pulled up over a single pillow. A pile of laundry waiting to be sorted at one end of the room. A plastic storage crate containing a great many white tube socks. On the bureau was a framed black-and-white picture of a geeky-looking wedding couple—the bride wearing glasses, with a broad bucktoothed smile, the groom bearing a strong resemblance to Russell, a younger, more hopeful one.
There was another picture—Russell with a crew cut, wearing a Boy Scout uniform. He was probably around fifteen at the time.
“You wouldn’t believe all the things our dad knows how to do,” Benny told her. “Astronomy. Leatherwork. Insect studies. Kayaking. Animal husbandry. Archery. Cooking. Any kind of knot you want to make, he can do it.”
For a moment then, crazily, Eleanor imagined herself in this bed with Russell—a place she would never be. She imagined his soft, pale, naked body on the mattress above her. Her hands extended behind her head as he demonstrated a particularly elaborate knot that left her powerless to resist him. Benny and Arthur asleep in the beds in the next room, happy in the knowledge they’d found themselves a mother.
Now Benny led her to a bookcase at the far end of the room, piled high with papers and folders, plastic bags full of receipts, an instrument case that suggested it housed a trombone, stacks of old comic books. More tube socks.
“We never showed this to anyone before,” Benny told her, taking down a wooden box. He set it on the bed as a person might some sacred possession. (A Fabergé egg. The last remaining copy of the Gutenberg Bible. A homemade apple pie, hers.) He opened it.
At first what she saw looked like a jumble of rocks, not so different from Toby’s, back at Cam’s house now, though his collection could not be contained in a single box, or even ten of them.
�
��They’re arrowheads,” Benny told her. His voice was hushed, as if someone might be listening in and, if so, might steal the precious box. “My dad found them in the woods all over Ohio when he was a kid. There’s two hundred and forty-six in here. My dad says some of the arrowheads in this box are probably five hundred years old.”
She sat there studying the contents of the box. Nothing she might have said at this moment seemed adequate.
“It’s okay to pick one up,” Benny told her. “Now he brings us along to look for more. Every weekend we go on an arrowhead-finding adventure. We never brought anybody along, before, but you could come.”
“That sounds like fun,” Eleanor said. There was no need to tell them, here, today, that she would not be joining those expeditions.
“Someday, our dad will probably donate our collection to a museum,” Benny told her. “The Smithsonian or someplace like that.”
He reached into the box. The arrowhead he chose to lift from the pile appeared to be familiar to him. He probably knew every one. He placed it in Eleanor’s hand.
She wrapped her fingers around it, letting herself take in the sharpness of the stone. She pressed it against her skin, hard enough that it almost hurt.
“There’s nobody else like our dad,” he said. “He’s the best.”
She studied his face. He could not have tried any harder to win her.
Later, driving home, it was the feeling of that arrowhead in her palm that she thought about, the sharpness of the point, every edge chiseled by someone who’d been dead for hundreds of years. Somewhere along the line—maybe after a battle, or a hunting expedition in the wilderness—that particular arrowhead had been buried in the dirt. A few hundred years later—what do you know?—along came Russell and his sons, with their trowels, to dig it up and bring it home and set it in the box with their other treasures.
“You know, some Indian brave killed a lot of deer with this arrowhead,” Benny had told her, with reverence in his voice. “All you have to do is shoot one of these straight into the heart of your prey, and he’s a goner.”
Count the Ways Page 33