Christmas in Austin

by Benjamin Markovits

  She had to go back inside to let them through, she had to start cooking, and for the next half hour, as she peeled and sliced potatoes at the kitchen sink, chopped onions, opened and heated up a carton of stock, she was dimly aware of things going on around her. Some of the kids were in the TV room next door—Willy and Margot had spent much of the afternoon in front of the box, glotzing, as her father would say. Staring at the screen. Meanwhile everyone else came in and out. Jean was introducing Henrik, Liesel thought she sounded louder than usual, just a little, as if she were presenting something in public. She heard her say, “What are you guys watching?” And then, “Okay, okay,” good-humoredly, as the kids shooed them out.

  Nathan walked through the kitchen and said, “What are we eating?”

  “Potato soup. There’s some sausage in the fridge, to go with it.”

  “Fantastic.” And then, “How old is the sausage?”

  Henrik and Jean were standing around, too. Nathan was laughing; he was talking to Jean, but for Henrik’s benefit. He was showing off somehow but Liesel couldn’t figure out how.

  “If you don’t want to eat it,” she said, “you don’t have to eat it.”

  At dinner there were fifteen people sitting down. Only Bill was absent. They had to bring in the extra table from the shed—Paul carried it, and set it down heavily against the back window. If you were stuck on the far side, just to go to the toilet, you had to scrape past the chairs against the wall and escape through the TV room.

  She missed Bill. He rarely talked much at dinner but he balanced things out; he was a counterweight and put Liesel somewhere in the middle between him and the kids. Also she could never understand what anyone was talking about. She needed a lot of explanation. Her hearing was poor, and with fifteen people at the table, many of them speaking at once, some of them children, she found it difficult to follow the conversation. This made her indignant. And Bill would have been somebody she could talk to about Henrik later, when the meal was over and cleared away, pots dripping on the tiled kitchen counter. She could have shared impressions.

  At one point the question came up of whether people wanted to go out afterward and where they should go. Liesel finally intervened. “Henrik must be exhausted, it’s two o’clock in the morning in England. He should go to bed.”

  “He can go to bed if he wants to go to bed,” Paul said.

  And Jean rubbed her boyfriend’s neck. “I like him when he’s like this. He’s too tired to talk back.”

  Henrik looked at Liesel. “I am okay. I slept on the plane and if I want to close my eyes, I will close my eyes.”

  Almost to her surprise, she liked him. She thought, he’s like my brothers; he seemed somehow familiar. They were all good travelers, curious, competent, good with their hands, opinionated but also reserved. He was recognizably Northern European—in his looks, too. She had seen his face in old Dutch paintings, farmers in the field or peasants drinking beer or fishers steering their skiff to shore. But she also thought, he’s hard to read, too. He is somebody who will do what he wants.

  Jean said, “We have to go to Mike’s Donuts.”

  “Why?” Henrik asked. “Are they very delicious?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Is it a nice place to sit?”

  “It is the opposite of a nice place to sit.”

  “So why should we go?”

  “Because they’re always open,” Jean said, “and you can walk there from here.”

  And, in fact, after supper, a certain subset made arrangements to go out. Liesel said to Henrik, “Sag mal. Dies ist verrückt. Du musst ins Bett.” This is crazy, you have to go to bed. For some reason, she couldn’t figure out why, the idea of dragging this tired, middle-aged man along upset her. She wanted to say, I’m on your side, against these children (my children included). It was a concession, speaking to him in German. But he responded: “I am really very happy to be here. I am happy to see your daughter, and I am very good at sleeping sitting down. This is something I have learned.”

  “Well, I’m going to bed,” she told him, in English, but she poured herself a glass of wine and hung around.

  Her children cleared up, mostly Jean and Paul. Susie and David had an argument about going out. It was eight o’clock at night and past May’s bedtime. She had eaten a little potato soup, testing it first on her tongue, and Susie liked to sit at dinner with a baby on her lap. She wanted May to feel like part of the family, in spite of the age gap, to participate in … whatever was going on, but now it was bedtime and David had asked her for a “pink slip.” This was his phrase for it, a hall pass; he wanted to join the others at Mike’s and then wherever else they ended up.

  Susie said, “I’ve had the kids all day. You went out for brunch already and got drunk.”

  “I don’t think I …” but he changed tack. “You go out, I’ll put the kids to bed.”

  “You can’t put May to bed, she won’t go down. I have to nurse her.”

  “What can I do about that?”

  “Nothing, there’s nothing you can do.”

  “It’s your family, you see them one week a year. You should go out.”

  “I don’t want to go out, I want to go to bed.”

  “So let me go out,” David said, and Susie said, “Fine, just go.”

  Liesel sat with her glass of wine in the TV room, watching the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. She could hear some of what was going on but not all of it. Nathan and Clémence had disappeared into the back apartment. When she came into the kitchen, to put away her glass of wine, Dana was there, filling a sippy cup with water at the sink.

  “He looks much better,” Liesel said.

  “He is much better. He had a nice day.”

  “Are you going out?”

  “I’m tired, I’m going to put him to bed and then probably go to bed myself.”

  “I can put him to bed, if you want me to,” Paul said. He had been reading to Cal in the living room and walked in with the boy in his arms—Cal had his hands around his father’s neck, he was long enough to rest against his hip.

  “You go,” Dana said. “Jean wants to see you. She wants you to spend time with Henrik.”

  “We can put him to bed and then both of us can go. Liesel can listen out for him.”

  “I don’t mind,” Liesel offered. She could sense the delicacy of these negotiations, and the tenderness behind the delicacy. Where there has been miscommunication and hurt, it’s sometimes a good idea to be polite, even at the risk of being formal. “I can put him to bed, too. I’ve done it before. He doesn’t mind.”

  “That’s sweet of you, but I’m really very happy to stay in.”

  Then Jean came down, wearing her old suede jacket over her dress. Henrik was with her, he looked a little pale. “Come on, let’s go,” Jean said. “I don’t know how long this guy’s going to last.”

  “He should go to bed.” Liesel was still indignant.

  “Mom, he’s a grown-up. He goes to bed when he wants to.”

  “He wants to go to bed.”

  And Henrik smiled at her. “I want to eat bad donuts in an unpleasant place,” he said. Then David came in, cheerfully, with a brown wooly sweater rumpled up against his belly. “Are we going?” he said. “Let’s go,” and Clémence walked in from the backyard, the screen door clattered behind her. She had put on a long brown raincoat, with a wool trim, the kind with a belt that you tie around your waist. My sons’ wives are very fashionable, Liesel thought. Clémence wore a scarf or shawl loosely around her head. It was getting colder, you could feel the cold air blowing in when she opened the door. Nathan isn’t coming, she said, he wants to stay with the kids; and they all went out through the back, into the yard, into the dark, Jean and Paul, Henrik, David, and Clémence. Liesel watched them go.

  Afterward she walked through the quiet house to her study and sat at her desk. She opened the computer and started to read over the day’s work. There wasn’t much, Liesel wrote slowly, a few sentences an ho
ur. She had the sense she was putting something off or waiting for something. It’s not that she couldn’t concentrate, but her attention had a way of spreading out … maybe she couldn’t concentrate.

  Susie appeared in her nightgown in the doorway. She said, “I don’t know if you heard what happened last night.”

  “About what?”

  “About Julie.”

  “She thought someone was throwing stones at the playhouse, so she ran inside.”

  “It was Ben, Ben threw the stones. He wanted to scare her.”

  “Ich versteh nicht.” I don’t understand.

  “He said to me it was just a joke.”

  Liesel didn’t say anything for a moment. Susie was always a worrier. As a little girl, she felt things strongly, and because she felt them, you had to feel them, too—she wanted you to feel them. And so you started putting up a little resistance, against what she felt, just to get by. It was too tiring not to. You pretended to listen to her but she sensed this and suffered more and more, until you gave in. This is how it happened, how she got her way. Liesel always thought, it’s not good for her, it makes her need to feel, it’s like a drug.

  She was saying: “He is turning into somebody who is mean, and I don’t know how to stop it. I’ve been arguing with him like this for over a year.”

  “He’s not mean. He’s just a twelve-year-old boy.”

  “This is what David says, he thinks it’s just schoolboy stuff. But that’s because he’s English, he went to boarding school, he thinks it’s normal for kids to do this kind of thing. It’s not normal.”

  “David is probably right. I think sometimes in this family we worry too much about right and wrong.”

  “Of course we worry,” Susie said, “but I don’t know what to do.” She didn’t move, she wasn’t talked out yet. “I think it’s my fault.”

  “For going to England?”

  “Maybe he sees too much of me, I’m at home too much. I’ve been trying to talk to David about finding me some teaching at Oxford. He says that’s not how it works, you have to get there first. You can’t ask for things as an outsider, you can’t turn it into an official conversation. But when you’re on the inside, people offer them, you don’t even have to ask. This is how he puts me off. So I’m expected to follow him there and wait for something to turn up. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe David is right,” Liesel said.

  “I feel like I’m fighting all the time with him, too. I feel like Ben is just acting out this fight.”

  “Not everything is your fault.”

  “No, it’s mostly David’s fault,” she said and laughed, like a woman among women. “He does what he wants, he’s always done what he wants. He’s friendly and everybody likes him and he does what he wants. He’s sly and Ben is turning into his father.”

  “He’s a twelve-year-old boy.”

  “We were mean to each other when we were kids but we were never mean like that.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t remember. Everybody loved each other so it didn’t matter.”

  “I feel like some kind of breach has been made,” Susie said.

  Liesel sat with her hands on her lap. Her chair could swivel, and she had turned to face her daughter. Her desk lamp was behind her, and so her back blocked some of its glow—Susie was partly in shadow. There was the concentration of intimacy you feel in a dark room around the source of light. “I think tonight I should turn on the heating for an hour,” she said. “It must be cold upstairs.”

  “It’s a little cold.”

  “Is Willy all right?”

  “I gave him some Nyquil. He’s old enough now I can give him the stuff that works.”

  “What’s Ben doing?”

  “I said he could read in my bed until I came up. I should probably go.”

  “It’s not easy, these visits, on anyone,” Liesel said. “I remember when you guys were kids and we went to Flensburg in the summer.”

  “Yes.”

  “I fought with Mutti, I fought with Bill. Everyone annoyed me. Nathan and my brother got into arguments, which I found upsetting. It doesn’t always mean very much.”

  “Yes.”

  They were talked out now, Liesel knew it. Susie had made her confession; she might feel better. They could talk a little about something else.

  “What do you think of Henrik?”

  “Very Danish,” Susie said. “Jean seems happy.”

  “I thought she looked very happy, she was very natural. He seems very fond of her.”

  “He seems very jet-lagged. Have you talked to Bill?”

  “No. Is it too late to call?”

  “They’re an hour ahead. Maybe it’s a little too late.”

  After Susie left, Liesel turned on the heating—the switch was in the hall, next to the stairs. Then she went back to her desk and stared at the sentences on her computer. What she thought was, the power comes from fertility. Her great-grandmother had five children, her grandmother had four. She had four herself. Susie had the boys and she had May; she would be okay. If you look down the family tree, the power comes from fertility. Some of the children make money, they buy houses and land, the land passes on, and the next generation grows up with certain expectations. But she worried about Jean. Henrik had children already, he was almost fifty … stepmothering is hard work, I don’t want it to replace … She worried about Cal, too. An only child concentrates a lot of anxiety. It puts pressure on them later, when their parents get old.

  Jean would say, of course if you look at the family tree, what you’re testing for is fertility, it doesn’t mean anything. If that’s how you want to measure … whatever it is that matters, you should have lots of kids. But it’s tautological, you’re arguing in circles. Her children sometimes looked down on her, they grew exasperated. She wanted to say: I know it’s circular, that’s what I mean, these things get passed on.

  Bill called before she went to bed. There was a phone on her bedside table, and it rang very loudly. “What time is it by you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, eleven o’clock.” Then he said: “Eleven thirty.”

  Judith’s ex-husband had decided not to fly in. He had too much work, he couldn’t get away from the hospital. So Mikey wasn’t coming—Judith was very upset. Anyway, it meant that the funeral could be held on Thursday. The graveside service was scheduled for twelve o’clock. There was no point delaying it. Judith wanted to get back to her son, she would fly to Chicago on Friday afternoon. They could drive to the airport together; Bill had booked his flight, too. He might have to come back again to deal with the house but for now there was nothing to do. He could go home.

  “Oh, I’m pleased,” Liesel said. “Everyone will be pleased. Especially Jean—you can meet Henrik.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Susie says he’s very Danish. They’re out now, with Paul and some of the others. I told him to go to bed, but Jean wanted to go out. He seems very fond of her. She seems very happy, she seems like herself.”

  “Who else should she be like? Rita Hayworth?”

  “How are you doing?” Liesel asked.

  “It’s a little depressing, staying in this house. I’m okay.”

  Turning off her bedside light, Liesel thought, when we were little, in the summer, we used to go down to the sea early in the morning. We collected jellyfish from the water and laid them along the beach, and covered them in sand. So that anyone walking past would step on them; the jellyfish made a mess against their shoes. We used to tie string to pieces of money, then hide in the bushes and leave the money on the path. When somebody bent down to pick up a coin, we pulled it away. But she didn’t know if what Ben had done was like any of those things.

  * * *

  The clouds were low in the sky, you could hear the wind in the trees. Henrik was grateful for the cold, because it kept him awake. He had only a dim sense of what was around him. The yard, in the dark; a patio and picnic table, the back of a white clapboard house, then st
iff grass underfoot and the shade of a large tree. Jean held his hand and he let her for a while and then let go. He didn’t want the others to feel embarrassed. Paul was next to them and pushed open a gate. They were in the street and walked in the middle of the tarmac.

  They stopped first at the Spider House and sat outside, in spite of the cold. Big fires were lit, burning logs on metal bowls, which gave off more smoke than heat, but they huddled their chairs around the fire and turned their heads away when the wind blew the smoke in their faces. Jean had a hot chocolate; Henrik had a beer. David bummed a cigarette from a group of twenty-something girls who were sitting at the next table. He seemed determined to enjoy himself; maybe this was a sign of unhappiness. Henrik was aware of experiencing time in a slightly random way, he moved in and out of focus, he was really very tired, and then lucid, and then tired again. It was really too cold; Jean leaned against him, awkwardly, with her arm around him.

  “I thought I was coming to Texas?” Henrik said.

  The courtyard was full of mismatched metal furniture, some of it rusty, with peeling paint. Christmas lights had been strung between trees and fences, the music from the bar leaked out. David said to Clémence, “I think Susie wants me to apologize, on behalf of the family,” and Henrik heard the whole story, which Paul didn’t know anything about. Clémence kept checking her phone, and a few minutes later somebody joined them—a producer from KUT, the local affiliate of NPR. He was Canadian originally, clean-shaven, fair-haired, youngish, named Kurt. He smoked, too, and Clémence turned down a cigarette. They were supposed to interview someone in the morning. Henrik tried to listen.

  But the girls at the next table were talking loudly. One of them said, “So I called my dad, and he said, okay, where are you, I’m coming to get you … and I was like, hold on, let me check my phone. I mean, I had no idea …”

  Paul said, “What did Nathan say?”

  “My phone just kept loading and I was like, I’m a bubble in the middle of a grid, that’s where I am, I’m kind of pulsing, if that helps … and then my phone went dead.”