Once everyone was seated, Ed stood at the head of the table and cut the meat while Matt poured the wine. The first time Matt had met his in-laws, he’d been so nervous he’d brought multiple bottles as a kind of peace offering, and since then it had evolved into a family tradition. He always came well supplied and they always drank up and maybe it was taking the easy way out but after a few drinks all the tension went away and the thing he’d done didn’t seem to matter anymore: Ed would slap his back like they were brothers and Crystal would lean close and tell him things, heartfelt emotional things about life and family.
“So, tell me, Matt, how are your parents?” Crystal asked, as they passed the dishes around the table. She always asked about his parents, even though she’d only met them once, at the wedding.
“They’re good. Really good. My Dad’s got the RV down in New Mexico with Ginger . . .”
“Did I meet . . ?”
“No, that was Kathy.”
Crystal nodded, her eyes wide and earnest.
“And my mother’s doing really well,” he jumped in quickly. “Fantastic really. She and Al went down to Florida to do Christmas on the beach. One of his kids has a condo there.”
Jen leaned over and cut Jacob’s meat. The knife scraped against the plate.
“Well good for her! I’ve always wanted to do that. Spend Christmas somewhere warm,” Crystal smiled warmly and took a sip of her wine.
They ate. Matt watched the levels in the glasses. He asked Jeremy what he was working on and Jeremy told them about one of his plays, a weird plot about lesbians trapped in a flooded city after the apocalypse.
“Neat,” Matt offered. Jeremy winced.
“And what about you, Jenny? What have you been up to?” Crystal asked brightly.
“Keeping busy,” Jen said without looking. She held a piece of meat in front of Jacob, a tiny square suspended on the silver tines and suddenly they were all watching it. There was a kind of breathless waiting as the piece of meat hung in the air.
“Open up now, Jakey,” Jen said. Jacob opened his mouth. “I started a yoga class,” she said, then trailed off. “Okay, Jakey, chew, chew, chew.”
“Sounds exhausting,” Jeremy said dryly.
Jen blushed, ever so slightly. She held the fork in the air, her attention trained upon it.
“Jen’s been doing a lot of work on the house,” Matt jumped in. “She’s doing all kinds of renos, figuring everything out all by herself. It’s incredible. The job she’s done. She just finished the floors in the basement and they look awesome.” He was talking too fast and he knew it but couldn’t seem to stop. “I’d say she’s added $30,000 to the value of the house. At least. Probably more.”
“You could work for me,” Ed said, and put his gnarled hand gently on Jen’s shoulder but she didn’t respond. The fork hovered. They all looked at the fork.
“She totally could. She does really nice work. Super good,” Matt said.
“Do you ever think about going back to school, Jenny? You could go and finish your degree, start writing again and . . . We could help you . . .” Crystal asked with her wide imploring eyes.
“Mom. Don’t,” Jen snapped.
There was silence. There was the fork hovering. There was the memory of their first meeting hanging over the table: Jen on the couch, crying, saying my life is over my life is over and him pouring glass after glass, promising to make it right. He got up suddenly, went to the counter then came back with another bottle. He stood like he used to stand at the bar with the label outwards, his hands swift and definite as he opened it. Everyone stopped watching the meat and watched his hands. It was like a magic trick. It was forgiveness in a bottle. He pulled the cork out with an air of ceremony.
Crystal flushed and said, “Oh, I really shouldn’t,” and held out her glass.
Ed smiled, his ruddy cheeks like polished apples and slid his glass silently towards Matt.
“I don’t need it,” Jeremy said. Matt stood over him and filled his glass.
“What about you, Jeremy?” Matt asked as he looked down at his brother in-law. “Are you all ready for Christmas?”
Jeremy sniffed, though his eyes sparked for he’d caught the irony. He was smart if nothing else. A smart, sour little rat. “I can’t say I’m really that into the Christmas thing, Matt. I’ll do turkey but other than that . . .”
Crystal scoffed and batted her hand at the air as if it were all nonsense. She leaned forward, her breasts swelling upwards as she pressed against the edge of the table. “Jeremy used to love Christmas. He’d be up at three, four, five in the morning on Christmas because he couldn’t wait.”
“I saw a documentary that said the average American spends $10,000 on Christmas. People go into debt each year. Does that not strike you as insane? People spending that much money to celebrate the birth of a dead Arab who may or may not have existed?”
“We used to call Jeremy the Christmas Kid,” Crystal continued. She was feeling the booze now, Matt could tell. It didn’t take much.
“It used to be a pagan festival before the Church co-opted it.”
“He used to sing like an angel. A beautiful little blonde angel with this crystal-clear voice.”
“It’s not even his real birthday,” Jeremy sniffed.
Jacob leaned forward with his eyes wide. He turned and stared at Uncle Jerry with open adulation. “An angel?”
“Oh yes!” Crystal turned to Jacob now, giving all her attention to her rapt little audience. She held the wine glass aloft at her side and rubies of light scattered across the table. “Uncle Jerry had a voice just like the sweetest of angels. People said he’d been sent from heaven.”
Jacob was beside himself with excitement for he, Jacob, was also a great singer of carols.
Now Crystal turned to Ed. “Do you remember the night we moved to the new Church? With the children’s choir?”
Ed was leaning back in his chair. He nodded slowly. “Hard to forget that,” he said. “Hard to forget.” He kept nodding.
“What happened?” Matt prodded. He was enjoying the pinched look on Jeremy’s sour, rat face. “Tell me what happened.”
“When we first moved to Anacortes, we used to go to Church. The old Lutheran Church was up the hill in this cute old-fashioned wooden building,” Crystal began. “It was one of these old-style Churches, you know, but tiny. Anyway, more and more young families were moving to the area and soon the Church was too small for the population. At Christmas Mass there was standing room only. People packed in on top of one another and the heat!” She fanned herself as if the mere memory warmed the air.
“Each year there were casualties,” Jen added, “You’d see them start to weave then bang! Down they’d go. The altar boys used to drop like flies.”
Jen could be so funny when she relaxed, he thought. It was easy to forget. He smiled to encourage her but she didn’t notice; she was absorbed in Crystal’s story.
Crystal continued, “So they built the new Church down the hill closer to town. It was needed but a lot of the older parishioners didn’t want it. They were sad, you see. They’d had their weddings, baptized their children in that old Church. Their parents, their grandparents were buried in the lot next door. It was important to them. Well, Reverend O’Donnell, he’s retired now and this new guy, we don’t even bother anymore, but Reverend O’Donnell was one of these people that just understood, you know? He just got people. Anyway, he organized a procession to carry the spirit of the old building and bring it into the new one. We walked at night on Christmas Eve. Each person carried a candle lit from the flames on the advent wreath in the old Church. The whole community came out.” She was far away now, lost somewhere in this magic past. Matt looked around the table to find that Jen and Ed and Jeremy were there too. He was filled with a kind of ache, a loneliness.
“It was cold, cold and clear and ther
e was snow on the trees and stars on the water and all the houses lit up for Christmas down the hill. We walked along the old road with the children’s choir leading the way. Then Jeremy did this solo of O Holy Night. We didn’t even know he was going to do it; it was a surprise . . .” Her eyes, which had been slowly filling with tears, brimmed over now.
Jeremy shook his head, “Jesus, Mom,” he groaned while Ed continued his long slow nodding with his arms folded over his chest.
But Jacob was on the edge of his seat, vibrating with excitement. “Sing it, Nana!” he commanded.
“Jakey, you don’t know that one. Uncle Jerry doesn’t like to sing anymore,” Jen said.
Crystal leaned over and looked Jacob in the eyes, “Oh Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining, this is the night of the dear Savior’s birth.” Her voice was surprisingly good, rich and full of emotion. She placed her hand over her heart.
Jacob frowned.
“You don’t know it, Jakey.”
“Long lay the world, in sin and error pining, until he appeared and the soul felt its worth,” Crystal continued, tears falling freely now.
Jeremy stared down at the table. “Okay, we get it, mother.”
It seemed for a moment that she was through. Her head drooped down and she rested her chin on her clavicle and just when Matt was sure it was over, she lifted her head and raised her eyebrows dramatically, “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices!” She was going all out now, hand gestures, trills.
“Okay.”
“For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!”
“Alright!”
“Fall . . .” she began but her voice broke on the high note and she settled back. “It was so beautiful when Jeremy sang it. I can’t even describe it. His beautiful voice and the candles and the stars.”
“People still talk about it,” Ed nodded, “Hard to forget.”
“Let’s do Rudolph!” Jacob cried.
“No Jakey, we’ll do Rudolph later. Not now.”
“Rudolph!” he insisted and began, “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, had a very shiny nose . . .” He looked anxiously from one face to another and there was a desperation in it, a franticness, as if he sensed seams in their togetherness that no one else could see.
“And if you ever saw it, you would even say it glows!”
“Like a light bulb!” Matt joined in for he couldn’t stand to see his son looking so anxious; yet his own voice, when he joined in, came out loud and honking and he felt singled out by it, stupid somehow: his loud honking voice in the wake of the stars and the candles and the cold, like a lightbulb in the wake of the weary souls rejoicing. And even though they all joined in and clapped their hands, even though Jeremy joined in in sourpuss monotone for “Like George Washington!” even though they knew all the words and continued on with Frosty the Snowman because Matt and Jacob didn’t know any of the religious songs, Matt’s own honking voice remained in his head.
Like a lightbulb.
Later, Matt was alone in the spare room with Jen. The house was quiet and he stood by the window watching the snow fall softly through the black shapes of the trees, a living curtain that made the world seem more still, more quiet by its motion.
“You never told me about any of that,” he said. “I didn’t even know that you used to go to Church.”
“Well we did,” she answered. She was already in bed, her nose in a book. “My parents were into the whole God thing for a while but not anymore. I guess the new minister is a real douchebag.”
He watched the snow for a moment longer. It landed soft and disappeared into the still wet Earth. There was so much unsaid between them, so many secrets, so many lies. He turned to look at her in the lamplight. It unsettled him that she’d never said anything, that he hadn’t known the story. They’d been together long enough. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“You never asked.” She didn’t look up. After a moment she added, “Anyway, it’s not like we were ever Bible Thumpers.”
Now the orange cat pushed its face through the crack in the door and its body slipped in after it. It sauntered over to the bed and hopped up beside her and her hand found it and stroked it, like she knew exactly how and where to pet it without looking. They circled round one another, the cat and the hand, while she continued to read the book, and he realized he’d never even asked whether she’d want a pet or not. He’d never even thought about it.
“I don’t know, Jen . . . I mean I think it’s important, that we try to be honest with each other . . . That we tell each other . . .”
She looked up. “What do you want to know?”
“I mean, your parents . . . Do they . . .” He paused, searching for the words. He didn’t know how to ask; his parents had never talked about God or spirit or anything like that at all. “Do they believe in God and all that?”
Now her face became dark and mocking in the way he remembered. “Crystal just likes to believe in things: God, angels, the perils of too much gluten, tarot cards, reiki, aliens. If there’s emotion to wrought from an experience, it’s good enough for her. Crystal’s a Believer and Ed just does whatever’s easiest.” Her hand continued stroking the cat, like they knew each other, yet it was a new cat, one he’d never seen before.
He remembered the first time he’d ever seen her. Some of the kitchen guys were having their free beer after shift and were talking at the bar about earthquakes. They were talking about the Big One and what they’d do if it ever happened and she’d been standing at the waitress station waiting for the drinks, this new, very young, very beautiful girl, a summer hire in her first year of University. One of the guys asked, “What do you think, new girl, are you scared of the Big One?” And she’d looked right at him until he stopped smirking, then she’d narrowed her eyes and said, “I think Gaia’s going to shake her tectonic plates and cast us all into the sea and that we’ll probably deserve it,” then she’d flounced away in her little tartan skirt and they’d all stared after her as she smiled sweetly at the customers as if nothing had even happened. He’d been smitten. He’d wanted to know her then, to find out all about her. He looked at her now in the lamplight. So much had happened since. He tried again. “I just, you know, I know it hasn’t been easy but sometimes I feel like I hardly know you . . .”
“Well. It’s not like we spent much time getting to know one another,” she snapped and there was such dry and sudden anger in her voice that he recoiled as if he’d been slapped. Immediately, she began to lavish attention on the cat, picking it up and kissing its face while he stood alone at the window, watching.
“Good Kitty. What a nice kitty, you are,” she cooed.
He turned away and looked back at the black and silent forest and he was filled with a sudden anger. A rage of frustration, like pounding on a locked door.
“Ssssss sssss, ssssss” she whispered into the cat’s ear.
And he found himself thinking about his own secrets, piling them up in his mind against her refusal with a kind of bitter pleasure. He stood alone at the window and the name he’d wanted to forget slashed suddenly through his mind: Annika. Annika. Annika.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Annika woke and lay perfectly still. Feeling. Assessing. She half-expected to find the pain and tiredness had returned but instead she felt a bit stronger than the day before, a bit more alive. I am dying, I am dying, I am dying, she reminded herself; yet there was an excited tingle deep inside her, a bubbling up of possibility that came on each new breath.
She went downstairs, lit the fire, then made herself a coffee and took it out onto the porch where she sat wrapped in a blanket in an old Adirondack chair, staring out at the humped blue shapes of the islands on the horizon. Dying, dying, dying, this is it, the end, it’s over, she told herself and still the grey jays came swooping down through the branches of the nearby trees where they flitted about, soft and silent and cur
ious, and the squirrels chattered and chased one another, and the sea mist prickled on her skin.
A month passed, then another. Her strength returned day by day.
Sasha’s visits were reduced to once every three days now, in the afternoons, when they’d go walking with Sasha’s dogs. The walks were short at first, just to the end of the drive, then they ventured further out along the road, passed houses and cottages that were nestled into the hills and dips of the island’s shoreline. On each of these walks Annika felt a small thrill of discovery: a creek chuckling through the waxy clumps of sword ferns, an elaborate gate at the end of a long drive, a great arbutus spanning the road. She felt as if she’d woken up from a terrible dream to find herself transported to a strange and magical landscape. Then she’d remind herself: I am dying.
Unlike most of the people Annika knew, Sasha was not afraid to talk about death. For several years before starting her nursing practice in Saltery Bay, Sasha had travelled the world, volunteering at hospices in different countries, learning how different cultures dealt with death. “There’s this beautiful realignment of priorities that happens before the end,” she explained one day after Annika had, once again, brought the conversation back to death. They were walking along the gravel road towards town, a low grey blanket of cloud hanging above them. “Things that used to matter don’t matter anymore. Old hurts. Old angers. I know you don’t believe me now, but I’ve seen a lot of deaths and it’s often quite peaceful.”
Annika considered this. She watched the dogs as they bounded back and forth between the road and the woods, rustling in the salal. There was a black lab and a goofy white mutt about the same size. Max and Kia. Now they stopped and pricked their ears forward, their noses quivering as they searched the air, and she found herself listening and quivering also, noticing things she wouldn’t normally see. She drank the cool, spring air in great, eager gulps, then, remembering, looked down at her feet on the gravel. “What about accidents though?” she asked. “What about people who die suddenly?”
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