by Karin Cook
It wasn’t long before Lainey DeWitt was in on the discussion. “I think what Frances needs is an overhaul, top to bottom,” she said. “Everyone could chip in, give her a little something to get the ball moving.”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked.
“A makeover,” Lainey said, “you know, a manicure, facial, the works …”
“Won’t that hurt her feelings?” Nick asked.
“No way,” Lainey said. “Every woman wants to look her best. Besides, who wouldn’t want a little push?”
Elizabeth loved the idea. “See, that’s what I mean,” she said, “I just think someone should be doing something.”
Lainey offered to coordinate the gifts, making sure that no two people had the same idea or were planning to give the same thing. We could go to her for suggestions or to talk through our ideas. We had to have our present to Lainey a day before Christmas so that the whole gift could be wrapped together as one.
“You are planning to have a tree?” Lainey said to Nick.
“Uncle Rand can handle that,” Nick said. “Tilden, you go with him, okay? But let’s have one with roots so we can plant it outside after … as a symbol.”
I balked.
“Okay?” Nick pressed. “I want to be able to look out in this yard and see a tree standing there in honor of your mama beating this thing.”
I hadn’t done anything alone with Uncle Rand since the spell-off. I’d timed my activities around the sounds of him in the house and gone to bed long before he made his way upstairs. Mostly, I avoided looking him in the eye, afraid to see in his face an acknowledgment, not so much of what had happened that night but of what had been lost since.
I couldn’t stop remembering the way he’d touched me, his thick fingers, his hot mouth on my skin. Those words and letters mixing with the slightly stale smell of him. But what lingered most was where the touching had taken us. At first, Uncle Rand had seemed needy, his whole body trembling and open. Something in all that urgency made me feel that I mattered, even if it was in the wrong way. Then, when it was over, a wall came down between us. Night after night he continued on, alone in his own room, where I could hear him. I couldn’t help but imagine myself there even though I knew it was wrong. I wanted to be more important to someone than I was.
The next day when I got home from school, Uncle Rand was waiting in the station wagon at the end of the driveway.
“You all set?” he asked, rolling down the window, and poking his face into the cold air. “We’re going tree hunting.”
“Shouldn’t Elizabeth come too?”
“I thought maybe just you and I could go.”
He rolled up the window and waited while I put my books in the house. I dreaded the thought of conversation. Not the talking so much as the quiet between talking. What did he want from me?
In the car, I did my best to avoid a lull, started in about my tests and assignments, my friends and their plans for the holidays. Libbie Gorin’s family was going on a ski trip over New Year’s. Jill Switt’s and Christy Diamo’s families planned to go caroling before Midnight Mass. Samantha’s family celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas. I stared out the window while reciting this information. The icy trees hovered, their dark branches pointing like gnarled fingers. Everything I said felt stupid. By the time I finished talking, we were turning into the tree farm.
“What do you want?” Uncle Rand asked after he had turned off the engine.
“Huh?”
“For Christmas?”
“Me?”
The entire parking lot was filled with trees, lined up by kind and tagged with plastic markers. The cut trees were stacked upright against sawhorses. Behind them, the live trees stood on their own, their roots balled in burlap and tied with string. I saw the one I wanted right away, but went through the exercise of going down each aisle. Uncle Rand did the same, stopping to roll each kind in his hand, feeling the needles, and bringing his fingers up to his nose. Every once in a while he would step back and take in a whole tree, eyeing its width and height, checking for balance. When he caught up with me, I was standing next to a blue spruce, turning the tag over to check the price.
“Homely little tree,” he said, snapping the end of a branch with his bare hand and holding it up to his nose. “Smells nice though.”
He started to walk on to the next one.
“This is the one I want,” I said.
“Why?” he asked. “Look at how sparse it is.” He latched his fingers together and bent them back, cracking all his knuckles at once.
“I don’t care.” I crossed my arms. “This is the one I want.”
“But it lacks balance.” His voice, low and quiet, reverberated with disappointment.
“I like it,” I said.
“Don’t you want to look around some more?”
“Nope.”
We had reached an impasse, the tree standing between us like a squat referee. Uncle Rand grabbed for the price tag. “It even costs more,” he said, trying to appeal to my practical side.
“This is what I want for Christmas,” I said.
Uncle Rand looked at me long and hard, searching my face. For what, I didn’t know. Perhaps he expected more loyalty from me. I stared past him, unmoved. He let out a snort of frustration and then signaled to the nursery owner. Together, they slipped a net over the top to hold the branches close to the trunk. The base bulged around a heavy twine. I sat in the car and waited while Uncle Rand lifted the tree onto the rack on top and secured it with cord.
Driving toward home, I stared out the window and tried to name the various evergreen and fir trees along the road. We’d bought the tree that no one else wanted. It felt like a rescue. I had never disagreed with Uncle Rand before. He drove quietly with only one hand on the steering wheel. The afternoon light was low and bleak. When he finally spoke, his voice surprised me.
“I’ll sure be glad when this whole thing with your mama is over,” he said. “I’ll tell you one thing, Tilden, honey. If I could trade places with her I would.”
I couldn’t speak. I tried to picture Mama and Uncle Rand as children—Randy a full ten years younger, always struggling to keep up, weaving pins through his teeth when Mama got braces, packing himself in the car when she went to college. I wished that he would stop talking. I wanted to know her better than he did.
“We’re a lot alike,” he said, “me and you.” He placed one hand on my knee. “You’re responsible, Tilden, more mature than your sister, you know that? You can handle more than she can.” His face was inches away from mine; I watched every vein and whisker, waiting as if he might at any moment confide in me. “So if I rely on you more, that’s why. It’s because I trust you can handle it.”
Route 25A took us past the Long Island Sound, so frozen with ice and windblown drifts of snow, that it seemed possible to walk from one side to the other. I rested my cheek against the cold window. Somewhere underneath the black and white of winter, there was a blue and green world. Something was waiting just below the surface.
Elizabeth was pissy before we even took the netting off. “It’s not real,” she said, refering to the dusty silver color as Uncle Rand and Nick lifted the tree into the house.
“A blue spruce,” Nick said, looking back and forth between the tree and its spot in the yard. “That’ll look real nice.” He gave me a wink and began sawing at the netting with his pocket knife.
“I don’t know why you let her choose.” Elizabeth glared at me and then ran upstairs.
Uncle Rand tossed the car keys into a basket by the back door and climbed after her, two steps at a time.
“What’s with them?” Nick asked.
I shrugged. “She’s moody.”
Later, Nick covered the tree with lights, securing each bulb in place, while Mama went through her address book and wrote out holiday notes on boxed cards. I had never seen her do that before.
“Who are they for?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, her voice high
and a little spacey, “just old friends.”
I sewed strands of popcorn and cranberries, making some pure and mixing others, and then looped them in even scallops around the tree. When I finished, I stepped back and squinted, creating my own kaleidoscope of blurred lights.
“It looks beautiful,” Mama said.
Nick set up his tripod and called Elizabeth and Uncle Rand to come downstairs for a picture.
“It smells like a movie theater in here,” Uncle Rand said, inspecting my garlands.
Nick arranged us around the tree and pulled up a chair in the center for Mama. He set the timer and jumped in behind her. He did this four times, switching sides and rotating each of us closer to Mama.
“Why am I in the hot seat?” she joked. She slid her wig forward on her scalp, giving herself longer bangs, and checked her hair in the reflection from the TV screen.
“How come there’s no angel on top?” Elizabeth asked after we had disassembled.
“We’re not finished,” I snapped back.
“Just asking,” Elizabeth said, “you don’t have to be such a …”
“Please,” Mama said, “I can’t take a fight tonight.”
“I kind of like it plain,” Nick said, winking at me.
Elizabeth wrapped a red tablecloth around the metal tub and stood back to admire her contribution. “It looks a little empty down there,” she said, giving one final dig about the presents before turning on the TV to watch The Nutcracker.
Mama suggested that we cast ourselves in the production. She had once read that the New York City Ballet had open calls for certain roles. Elizabeth requested the dancing parts—after all she had taken ballet in Atlanta—and made a convincing case for her ability to change costumes and appear over and over again, not just as Snow and the Dew Drop in Flowers, but in the Marzipan and Chinese and Arabian dances as well. In addition, she wanted to be both Clara and the Sugar Plum Fairy.
“I want to be the Sugar Plum Fairy,” Mama said.
I was surprised. I would have cast her as the mother.
“Who do you want to be, Tilden?” Mama asked.
“Everything is taken,” I answered.
“Not Candy Cane,” Elizabeth said. “Or Dolls.”
The truth was that I had always liked Act I more than Act II. The busy preparation for the party, that peek into someone else’s house before they lift the scrims, the guests arriving in top hats with gifts, the champagne toast. I remember noticing that each stage family was fully intact and that the children all seemed to know each other and play together with abandon. I had never felt that kind of freedom. I imagined myself more like the French maid, the first to enter and the last to leave a room, taking capes at the door and snuffing candles at the end of each evening. She seemed to know everything just before it happened.
“Whatever,” I said. “I don’t care.”
Elizabeth cast Uncle Rand as Drosselmeyer, the mysterious relative who brings the Nutcracker and winds the clock.
Nick had never watched The Nutcracker before. “I’ll be anyone,” he said, “as long as I don’t have to wear tights.”
Elizabeth knew the music well enough to predict each change. She could tell who was up next and liked to call out the few positions and terms she could pronounce from her ballet class. Développé, Arabesque, Piqué, Grand Jeté …
It had once seemed magical, the simultaneous swaying and leaping of the corps. But suddenly with Elizabeth’s technical commentary, my eye caught only the mistakes: a stray snowflake fluttering from the rafters during the Spanish dance, one long white arm out of sync with the others in Flowers. I had loved the Polichanelles, who appear out from under their mother’s giant dress to dance in circles and do somersaults until they are called back between her legs—fourteen of them scampering to obey—except one who stays behind to show off. Now, I found them irritating and reckless.
Mama fell asleep in her chair before Clara and the Prince took off in their sled, the music booming and the Sugar Plum Fairy leading the entire cast in a skyward wave.
“The sled is suspended with wire,” Elizabeth announced. “See it?”
That night, after I had turned off my light, I looked out the window and saw Uncle Rand duck into the garage. It was after hours, past the time when TransAlt took its latest calls and there was no sign of drivers. The floodlight made the banked snow sparkle, even though in the day it was dingy with exhaust and traffic. The stars were cold in the sky. I watched for signs that would tell me what Uncle Rand might be up to. I imagined scenarios which alternately excused and implicated him. He was stealing, then sleepwalking. Through it all he was drinking. That much I knew. At night, he was always drinking. Although it was unclear to me whether to cast the drinking in terms of his guilt or innocence.
The screen door flapped in the wind until he pushed it tightly closed with his hip. His movements down the driveway were bulky, his body puffed out with purpose, the way younger guys advance onto a playing field or enter the boy’s room. It made me angry to see him move this way. Then, he dropped the keys and fumbled around in the darkness, sputtering and cursing, and I realized that he planned to take the station wagon. I felt the urge to stop him. Or perhaps I felt the expectation that I should want to stop him, but a larger, uglier part of me wanted to see him get in the car and keep going. The more I tried to blink this thought away, the stronger it surfaced.
This mix of feelings confused me; I had never before felt so many things about one person.
My hatred rose inside me, hot and slick, like a bulb of mercury, and then fell. The guilt of hating him was so overwhelming that I slid out of my bed and walked onto the landing in my socks with half a hope that he might see me there and stop. If something did happen to him, I would be the only one who might have been able to prevent it. With this knowledge, I watched him steer the car out of the driveway in a quick, snaking motion. Back in bed, I pushed my pillow up under me and held it there, my stomach tightening as I moved against it. Afterward, I felt alone—the room so quiet I was afraid to breathe.
The next morning, before dawn, I looked out the window and found Mama’s car back in its place. I could hear Uncle Rand snoring in his room. A feeling of dread and disgust came over me. I got up to close his door and found him, lying on top of his covers, his penis flopped over on his thigh. I couldn’t believe he could fall asleep like that, on his back without covers. I watched his chest go up and down, over and over, and tried to picture him still, not breathing at all. I don’t know how long I had been standing there, when Mama’s voice scared me up against the wall.
“What is going on here?” she said. “Get out of his room.”
Uncle Rand opened his eyes at me.
“What are you doing?” Mama continued. “Get to bed.”
I ran to my room and slammed the door.
“Calm down, Frances,” I heard him say. “She’s just curious. She’s at that age.”
I waited, pulse racing, with my pillow over my head for Mama to come to my room. It was my fault. I had been caught staring at his pink, eraser-shaped penis. Afraid that Mama would take his side, I considered all the bad things that he had done. He drank too much and then drove. There were times at night when he had watched me too. Even touched me. But now none of this seemed enough. She would blame me, I knew. When I heard the knock on my door, I froze.
“Tilden, I’m disappointed in you,” Mama started, “this isn’t at all like you. You have got to respect Uncle Rand’s privacy.”
I nodded.
“I want you to apologize first thing,” she said.
I could feel her lingering in the door, but refused to look up until I heard her walk away. I rested on my bed, waiting for the alarm clock to ring. There was a loyalty between them that went beyond common sense, preventing Mama from seeing his faults and from acting on them. For all her talk of privacy, I had none. No lock on my door, no window shades, not even a liner on the shower curtain.
I dressed, pulling on nylons firs
t, then long Johns, under my corduroys. Even with all the layers, I still felt naked.
Just before going downstairs, I knocked on Uncle Rand’s door.
“At your service,” he answered. He was wearing a bathrobe and sitting on the end of his bed.
“I’m sorry,” I said, leaning against the doorjamb.
Uncle Rand smiled, slid off the bed and walked over to me. He put his hand on my shoulder. “I shouldn’t be lounging around here like a lizard anyway.” He squeezed the fleshy part of my arm. “Don’t give it another thought,” he said.
I stayed like that as long as I could and then moved out from under his palm. When I got to the end of the hall, Elizabeth called me into her room.
“Look what Uncle Rand brought me,” she said, all excited.
There, under her window, was a miniature Christmas tree, cut fresh out of the woods and resting in a small bucket. He had decorated it with change—nickels, dimes, pennies, and even a silver dollar—each strung up with fishing line through a hole in the top.
“Isn’t he sweet?”
“I guess so.”
“What’s your problem?” Elizabeth asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’re just jealous.”
I ran down the stairs, grabbed my coat, and headed for the bus stop. It was the last day before break and I couldn’t imagine spending ten days at home. As I waited, Jamie pulled up next to me in his car. The back wheels of his Duster were larger than the front, causing the car to lean forward in a bow.
He rolled down the window. “I’d give you a ride, but …”
“Okay,” I said and looked around quickly before climbing in.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I don’t care what they think.”
My feet straddled the mess on the floor—plastic cassette holders, soda cans, and fast-food bags. Jamie drove off, the engine loud and rumbling, the seats shaking. He pushed a tape into the deck with the heel of his palm. “Bat Out of Hell,” by Meat Loaf blared from the speakers. He drove to Dunkin’ Donuts and bought a glazed cruller.