Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners

by Gretchen Anthony

  Always a pleasant face.

  Somehow, thankfully, Violet had made it this far with her own family intact. Dear Edward retiring at the pinnacle of his career, Cerise grown and happy. Her family was stable. Responsible. Reliable. Barb was unexpected, yes, though Violet had to admit she invited little fanfare. Most people didn’t ask, and their closest friends didn’t need to—people in the Baumgartner orbit were smart enough to piece together the Cerise and Barb picture for themselves. And anyway, whatever news Violet chose to share about her daughter, it certainly would never have included a discussion of her bedroom life. That sort of business was no one’s business.

  Of course she would have loved grandchildren, but that was an emotional hurdle for another day. At least Cerise would never experience the pain she’d experienced on the road to parenthood. That journey had nearly gotten the best of her.

  She shuddered and pushed back against the dark. No sense in getting ugly.

  “A little birdie tells me that the two of you aren’t likely to be bored during retirement.”

  Violet snapped from her thoughts. Oh, for—Weather girl could not have possibly moved from jokes about clown flatulence to the subject of one’s postretirement sex life. Enough of Rhonda’s indiscretion. There would be no more talk of clowns or sexual shenanigans or what in the world she and Edward were planning to do in the privacy of their own bedroom.

  She opened her mouth to say as much but quickly thought the better of it. Let Rhonda Nelson be her own most embarrassing moment.

  “Because before my fiancé, Kyle, and I even have the chance to tie the knot...you two are going to be busy grandparents!” She would, most certainly, however, speak to Cerise first thing tomorrow morning. Her daughter’s best friend was about to marry a woman with absolutely no boundaries. No, Violet had raised her daughter better. Cerise would never have stood in front of Minnesota’s greatest minds and made jokes about...

  Grandbabies.

  Oh, for gracious’ sake.

  Cerise is pregnant?

  Cerise is pregnant!

  Cerise is pregnant.

  Part Two

  Christmas 1990

  Dearest loved ones, far and near—

  Evergreen Tidings from the Baumgartners!

  1990. What a year of blessings this has been! I hope you feel the same. This morning I rose early, managing not to wake dear Ed or our little Cerise in the process, simply to find a quiet moment in which to share some of the highlights of our year with you. Sit with me, and I promise to do my best to honor the timeless traditions of the family Christmas letter.

  Our dear Ed is working as diligently as ever on his medical research into the cause and treatment of gastrointestinal disorders. His team has been on the verge of a breakthrough for months, a new fiber-optic scope and laser combination (please excuse my unsophisticated explanation, as I am hardly a scientific or medical professional!). When finally put to use, the new tool will allow patients to avoid painful and costly surgery. I am so wonderfully proud of my husband.

  Needless to say, there have been many, many days when little Cerise and I don’t see him at all—coming home after we’ve gone to sleep and rising before we wake. I worry about his long hours. When we do see him, he’s so very tired. I even considered buying him a pillow and blanket to keep in his laboratory, but I feared that would only keep him away from us longer. A man should sleep in his own bed.

  But I am vigilant against the temptation to nag, whine or fuss about his job. I will not become that sort of wife. After all, it is Ed who is sacrificing his time and energies. The least I can do is to make a home for him where he feels warm, and happy, and rested.

  All those years ago, when dear Ed asked me to marry him, I said “Yes!” without hesitation, secure in the knowledge that he was a man of integrity, a man who would never turn his back on God or family or responsibility. So, even though little Cerise and I miss him dearly, I know that the hours he spends away from us are hours he’s giving to a greater good, to improving lives. He is putting to use the remarkable skills the Good Lord gave him. I could not be more blessed.

  Even the weighty responsibilities of dear Ed’s work, however, cannot erase the joy little Cerise brings to our lives. She is three years old now, as bright and as quick a young girl as I’ve ever seen. I predict that she will be an early reader, as she’s already picking out letters of the alphabet and repeating their sounds. Just recently, she piped up from the back seat of the car and said, “Look, Mommy! That red sign has an S on it. S says ssssssssss, like a ssssssnake.” It’s a good thing we were stopped at that stop sign, or I would have driven off the road in my shock! I went straight home to call dear Ed and tell him all about it.

  Sadly, there were frightening moments in our year, as well. On February 27th at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, I was putting little Cerise’s nap time to good use cleaning the kitchen (a mother gets so little free time!) when I heard the most alarming crash from above. Needless to say, I rushed upstairs to find little Cerise hysterical, a wounded bundle on her bedroom floor, blood veritably rushing from a gash in her head.

  There was no time to ask questions. I grabbed a baby blanket to staunch the bleeding, and rushed our little girl to the hospital.

  I regret to say that the doctors on duty (and may I be so brazen as to call out the hospital by name: Swedish General) were less than appropriately alarmed by the injury or its cause, electing to shortcut the care owed to our daughter. They attempted to proceed with nothing more than stitches. I stopped them before a single needle could be threaded.

  After all, had they even considered the cause of the accident? Our little Cerise had never fallen from her bed once in her life. In fact, she’d hardly fallen, ever (she was sturdy even as an early walker). I demanded a CT scan. They resisted, attempting to assure me that any child of any age can roll out of bed in the midst of a dream. I, in turn, advised them that our daughter, Cerise, was hardly any child.

  I proceeded to list my concerns: skull fracture, hematoma, brain bleed or (heaven forbid) a tumor. Had they considered any of these possibilities? Yes, they said, of course they had. But little Cerise was cheerful and happy and, ultimately, only in need of stitches.

  At 6:45 p.m. that evening, our daughter, Cerise, walked out of the imaging lab, happy as a lark, bearing CT scans as clear as the sky on the day she was born. (To be safe, you can imagine that I requested a follow-up MRI, which, despite my obvious objection, they patently refused.)

  I called dear Ed immediately at the lab to share the good news with him.

  My husband and I have said many prayers of thanks for the guardian angels the dear Lord sent little Cerise that day. We are truly blessed. And I hope, in turn, that our trauma serves as a reminder to each of you, however young or old, to listen to your fears, to never take no for an answer and to always look out for the ones you hold so dear.

  Christmas blessings to each and every one of you,

  Ed and Violet Baumgartner

  7

  Richard

  NOW THAT WAS one hell of a party.

  Sure, Richard felt sorry that Violet had to be rushed to the hospital. From the sound of it, she took a pretty decent crack to the head. Everyone, including him, grabbed their own skulls as soon she hit the floor, a sort of mass commiseration. It was a scene, all right.

  She took a fair bit of crystal and china with her on the way down, too—must have grabbed for the head table, only to end up pulling the tablecloth and everything on it to the floor. From where he’d stood, all anybody could see was Violet, lying in a jumble of broken glass, spilled Champagne and blood.

  What a mess. What a bloody, expensive mess.

  He really felt sorry for Ed. It was his retirement party, after all. The guy worked his ass off for thirty-some years and just when he’s ready to celebrate, he gets stuck with a bill for damages and an ambulance. The i
nsurance deductibles alone were going to be less fun than a prostate exam.

  According to Eldris, Violet was still in the hospital. She’d been over to visit three or four times at least, even though the party had only been two days ago. She brought flowers the first time, but apparently the smell aggravated Violet’s headache, so she brought them home again along with half a dozen other bouquets from Baumgartner sympathizers. Now the whole damn house smelled like a funeral home.

  Then Eldris made a huge batch of Richard’s favorite chicken tortilla soup but wouldn’t let him have any of it, saying it was for Violet and Ed. Apparently Violet was refusing the hospital food and Ed hadn’t eaten since popping shrimp cakes at the party. How this became Richard’s problem, he’d never understand. But according to Eldris, he was supposed to keep his greedy, grubby self away from the pot.

  So he’d have an egg salad sandwich. Tomatoes gave him heartburn lately, anyway.

  In the meantime, Kyle was pacing their house like a bored lion at the zoo. Going on and on to his mother about how she had to convince Violet that Rhonda didn’t know Cerise hadn’t told her parents about the baby—on and on about how could they not know? And really, Richard had to agree with the kid. It wasn’t normal for a woman her age to suddenly grow boobs. He’d noticed—sure. She’d looked like a skinned cat in that tight red dress.

  And, yes, he knew there was surgery for that kind of thing. God, of course he knew that. But those boobs weren’t surgery kinds of boobs. They were normal lady-with-boobs sort of boobs. Plus, lesbians—were they even into that artificial sort of thing? He sure as hell didn’t know.

  Which, of course, brought up the question of how Cerise got pregnant in the first place. And who the hell got her that way? (Someone at the party asked him who he thought had knocked her up, but Cerise struck Richard as too nice a girl to deserve that kind of visual and he ignored the damn fool.)

  He could pretty much guarantee that Eldris hadn’t dared ask Violet about the father. And he damn well wasn’t about to ask Ed. Their conversational bandwidth ended at quarterbacks and the PGA. When their kids were graduating high school, maybe they talked about paying for college, but those checks were cashed long ago—thank god. No, to ask Ed that question, that was like taking a dump in another man’s toilet.

  Definitely not.

  This was the Baumgartners’ own damn mystery, anyway. He had bigger issues—money and a job and figuring out how the hell to keep thirty years of his life and career from pissing away down the toilet.

  He’d had lunch yesterday with his former Peter+son colleague, Bill Benson, who told him, while eating a salad, no less—a god-awful fig and crap-something salad—that the agency had dismantled most of his accounts and handed them out to junior execs like bubble gum at a birthday party.

  “Chad Handlers took BiolTech.”

  “Handlers! He’s a goddamn twelve-year old.” In fact, Richard had hired the kid no more than—what was it? “I hired the damn kid in 2007.”

  Benson shrugged. “That was years ago. Plus, he came over from across town at Olson. Even then he was hardly a baby.”

  Justice. Richard suddenly very much liked the sound of that word.

  “What else? Who got the new Vikings stadium?” If Richard had ever had a baby, this was it. The Minnesota Vikings, the NFL and the City of Minneapolis—along with a scattering of citizen advocacy groups—had been in negotiations for years to replace the Metrodome with a new, state-of-the-art football stadium. These weren’t million-dollar conversations, but billion-dollar ones. With a B.

  Needless to say, he wasn’t the only guy who wanted in. You could pick them out wherever you went—tight clusters of men in suits in the darkest corner of every restaurant in town, spending their Account Development dollars on guys who offered potential, but no promise. It was anyone’s guess back then which way the wind would blow, and Richard wanted a farmer in every field.

  He wormed his way into the negotiating scrum all the way back in 2007, gaining an invite to a closed-door session on the recently completed land-use feasibility study, thanks to his buddy in the state legislature, Dan Higgs. From there on out it was nothing but lunches and golf and drinks with the shifting list of names that meant anything and everything to the deal.

  And he’d done it, goddamn it. He’d won the advertising contracts on the whole damn stadium. The money would start flowing in the very day the quarterback threw his first pass.

  That was March. Just three months before they gave him his walking papers.

  “Who got it? Who got the new stadium account?”

  Benson dropped his napkin to his bowl and fell back in his chair. “No one. The stadium canceled the whole damn contract. Took it across town to Olson.”

  Richard felt a bitter aftertaste rise in his mouth. Not just today’s lunch, but the taste of so many lunches, so many martinis, so many asses kissed. That was it, was it? Everything he’d ever accomplished in his entire career amounted to no more than slips of paper, traded about, one exec, one peon, one agency to another. All the energy he’d invested. All the sleep he’d lost. And the hair—he’d gone both bald and gray landing the goddamn stadium deal. All of it, now nothing more than figures on a page in some other guy’s book.

  God, maybe it wasn’t the tomatoes giving him heartburn.

  Where was the justice in it all? He was growing increasingly fond of that word—justice. There sure as hell wasn’t any justice in his little corner of the world. No, those blowhards up in Washington could talk all they wanted about bringing America back. It was all just noise, just a distraction to keep us deaf to what was really going on. But he knew—he knew they took money from whatever dirty, grubby hand would feed them. Who cared about little guys like him? Mr. and Mrs. American, be damned. Republicans touting entitlements reform nonsense to banquet rooms full of millionaire cronies—as if Richard had ever taken a handout in his life. Not that the Democrat fools were much better. They were so busy pretending to understand the poor guy’s troubles they kept forgetting not to have their picture taken on their favorite yacht.

  The latest election was finally over, but did he expect anything to change? Of course not. When had it ever? They were still fighting the same wars that the last guy started, still drinking tax dollars through a straw and burping injured soldiers up in return. Poor bastards.

  No, the world had no sense of justice anymore. If you didn’t believe him, just ask Ed Baumgartner.

  8

  Violet

  TREACLE TART. THE words emerged, sticky but resonate, from a gauzy haze. They drifted. She drifted. How fun. How lovely.

  She wanted to know them. The words, treacle tart. There they were, there, just in front of her.

  They wanted her to know them.

  She had, at one time, known them. Treacle tart. Such lovely sounding words, all soft and generously curvy. No sharp corners in the words treacle tart. No, they would be just fine. She’d like the feel of them on her lips. She’d like the taste of them falling from her mouth.

  Treacle. Tart.

  She thought she ought to at least try.

  She opened her mouth.

  “Oh, you’re awake, are you?” Ed’s voice tore into her head like a seam ripper. Ripped the quiet right in two. Like pants, the pants she’d been mending. Had she been mending pants?

  No. At least, she didn’t think so. She’d been—

  What?

  “Another bouquet, love.”

  Ed was here. They were both here. Yes, she and Ed were both here.

  “From the Heritage Council at church. Nice of them.”

  “Don’t—” Violet held up a hand. It felt only remotely connected to her body. “My head.” Her voice was hoarse. She felt it on the way up. Heard it on the way out.

  “Right. I’ll bring them down to the nurses’ station. See if anyone else on the floor needs the cheering u
p.”

  Ed. Wonderful Ed.

  * * *

  WHY WAS HE WHISPERING?

  “Been in and out all day. Doctors say that’s a good sign—means she’s healing. Not nearly as agitated as she was when they first saw her. All that shouting. Terribly agitated.”

  Agitated. That was sort of a lovely word, wasn’t it? Soft but strong. Like the sound of a sneeze... Aaaaa-jeh!

  On second thought.

  * * *

  “WE’VE BEEN REDUCING the sedatives for twenty-four hours now.”

  Oh, dear. This was not a voice she liked. No, this voice needed to blow its nose or take a warm shower. Flush everything out. Seek medical help if all else failed.

  “Now that she’s resting on her own, we’ll watch her. I imagine she’ll start to perk up within the next several hours.”

  Why was this voice in charge? This voice needed to see a doctor. Where was Ed? She ought to tell Ed to advise the voice about a good saltwater gargle.

  “The scans are clear, so once she passes her balance test, you’ll be free to take her home.”

  Home. This voice ought not to be coming home with them.

  “Salt, Ed. Tell him about the salt.”

  Then Ed’s hand was on hers.

  “It’s the sedatives wearing off,” said the voice. “That should clear as she perks up. Like I said, next few hours.”

  * * *

  “MOM?”

  Little Cerise. Lovely, little Cerise.

  “How are you feeling?”

  That was sweet of her to ask, wasn’t it? Little Cerise playing make-believe, a child caring for her parent.

  Warm. She was comfortably warm. But her neck ached. This pillow was awful. And her head...

  “My head is splitting.”