by Ann Hood
He frowned when he saw her.
“You look like you were having a late afternoon tryst in there.” He laughed nervously.
“What are you doing?” she said. “Spying on me? This is my house, you know.”
Willie took two steps backward.
“I’m not—”
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” She threw the sweater at his feet, weakly. It landed at her feet, sprawled out, arms extended.
“Daisy,” he said. His voice was low. “Is someone in there with you?”
“Yeah,” she said. She banged on Sam’s bedroom door. “Better jump out the window,” she said, “he’s back. Don’t forget your pants in there.”
“Look,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She looked into his eyes. Sam would be home tomorrow and she had to figure something out.
“I’ve got to do something,” Daisy said.
“What?”
She climbed over her sweater and went into the kitchen. What? she thought as she poured a new glass of wine. When she walked into the living room, Willie was standing in the middle of the room. On the floor was a Christmas tree, still bundled, tied in red string.
Daisy knelt beside the tree and breathed in the smell of pine. She thought of the Porters, their majestic tree and the rituals they had for decorating it. Cal always hung the icicles, one by one, and Alexander placed the star on top, a chipped gold one with one point glued on. Mackenzie photographed it. One year she made a book full of the pictures of their trees from year to year. In one, Sam slept underneath it, nestled among the packages. Grammie always said, “What can we do with Daisy? Maybe she can just watch.”
“I thought we needed a Christmas tree,” Willie said.
“We do,” Daisy said, unknotting the ropes.
“All right,” Mackenzie said, “in no time you’ll be back at home. Playing with Brandy. Seeing your mom. What else? Maybe you’ll even be able to build a snowman.”
The apartments along the road all looked the same, row after row of fake colonials. Mackenzie remembered the last apartment Daisy and Alexander had shared, a skinny townhouse in Georgetown, the bricks painted white and steep steps leading down to it. In the back was an English garden. “Built in 1890,” Alexander had told her. He had pointed out the moldings around the ceilings, the wide-planked oak floors. “The ceilings are too low,” Daisy had complained. “The floors slant.”
In Boston, Mackenzie never saw her brother’s apartment until after he had died. A policeman escorted her there to pack his things. The apartment had been recently restored. It had exposed brick walls and skylights. In the bedroom, the imprint of his body was still on the bed, the crease of his head in the pillow, the long shape of him in the blanket. The pillowcase had had black stains, like gunpowder. From the electricity, the policeman had explained.
“How do you know which one of these is yours?” Mackenzie said.
Sam shrugged.
Mackenzie looked at the directions she had taped to the visor above the windshield. The last ones Daisy had given her got her lost and so Mackenzie had thrown them away. For two days she had been calling Daisy and leaving messages on her answering machine. Finally, this morning, she’d reached her. Mackenzie had called from a phone booth at the Molly Pitcher rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. Daisy had whispered the directions into the phone and Mackenzie had to keep shouting, “What? What?” over the sounds of trucks passing. “Can’t you speak up?” Mackenzie had said. “No,” Daisy told her.
Mackenzie gestured toward a group of brick and wooden buildings.
“Does this look familiar?” she said.
Sam frowned, his eyes searching the apartment complex.
They drove around traffic circles planted with shrubs strung in red and green Christmas lights.
Sam pressed his face against the window. His breath made a small steamy spot on the glass. He started to point to something, then shook his head.
“Wait,” Mackenzie said, backing up. She stopped under a street sign. “Pierce, right?” The streets were named after presidents. She thought of Daisy’s whisper this morning, “Straight on Buchanan ’til Filmore, then right, then another right on Pierce.”
Sam pointed to Daisy’s pink Cadillac in the parking lot.
“I don’t believe it,” Mackenzie said.
She turned off the car. It smelled of french fries and dry heat.
“Well,” she said.
Sam pulled his mittens on, tugged at the thumbs.
“Tonight I’ll be all the way across the country,” Mackenzie said, trying to explain. She felt by leaving him that she was losing Alexander all over again. “San Francisco. In California. But way up north. There aren’t palm trees there. They have a lot of fog, like just before it rains. And big hills. I’ll get Grandma and bring her home and then we’ll all get together in Rhode Island for a special turkey dinner.”
Sam looked away from her, out the window. The thumbs on his mittens stood at attention, empty.
“Jams puts apricots in the stuffing, and oranges. Maybe,” she added, “we’ll be there New Year’s. One week from now.”
He looked at her, finally, his face wrinkled as if he might cry. But he looked too as if he were expecting something from her.
“Hey,” Mackenzie said, “maybe your mom will come too. We’ll be in the old house. There’s a lace tablecloth that my Grammie got for her wedding as a present and we’ll put that on the table. And the family china.”
Mackenzie imagined it all there, the dining room smelling of lemon wax, the silver polished, the ivory lace of the tablecloth forming delicate bells over the dark oak table. The pattern on the china was three salmon-colored flowers, off center, the edges trimmed in silver. One plate had a chip, like a bite had been taken from it. The chip got there one Thanksgiving when Alexander tried to spin the dish like a top. A few pieces had fine gray hairline cracks across them, from age and use.
In the rearview mirror Mackenzie watched Daisy wobble toward them in high-heeled white boots. Her arms were full of bags. She wore a white bunny fur coat, a piece of shocking pink knit showing a few inches below it.
“Here’s your mommy,” Mackenzie said.
Daisy’s hair in the winter light looked very yellow.
They got out of the car and waited for her, Sam kicking the hard snow with his toes.
“It’s so icy,” Daisy said when she reached them.
She put all the bags on the roof of the car and opened her arms wide, kneeling.
“Come here, Mr. Sam Porter,” she said.
He moved, almost in slow motion, into Daisy’s embrace.
“Don’t knock me over,” she laughed.
Someone had thrown tinsel into the bare trees above them and Mackenzie watched as it sparkled and shimmered silver against the gray sky. They looked like some kind of high-tech icicles. She thought of real icicles, of breaking them off trees and eating them like lollipops.
“So,” Daisy said.
She straightened and glanced back toward her condominium.
“Have I got a wonderful Christmas surprise for you,” she said.
Something in her voice made Mackenzie flinch.
Daisy reached into one of the bags and pulled out a flat package wrapped in silver paper with metallic blue snowflakes.
“For me?” Mackenzie said.
She tore the paper off. It floated to the ground, the blue snowflakes settling against the pavement like neon snow.
“Airline tickets?” Mackenzie said.
“Yes,” Daisy said. She laughed nervously. “For you and Sam to go together to San Francisco.” She grabbed Mackenzie’s arm. “They’re business class,” she said.
“But I have a reservation.”
“This is better though. I mean, you wanted Sam with you for the holidays, right? And you’ll all come back together. You and Sam and your mother. Maybe I can meet you in Rhode Island. I could use a little break.” She knelt beside Sam again. “You’re going to
have a real adventure, Sam.”
Sam crumpled the discarded paper into an awkward shape.
“But I don’t know how long this will take,” Mackenzie said.
Daisy stood again, rubbed a small spot off the cuff of her boot.
“Well, Mackenzie, if you don’t want Sam with you just say so.”
“It isn’t that,” Mackenzie said.
Sam looked up at her, eager. It was Alexander’s face. And eyes.
Daisy glanced back over her shoulder, and Mackenzie followed her gaze. In the distance, a little girl moved across the parking lot, clutching a big box.
“Shit,” Daisy said.
Then, “Look, I have some clothes for him in here. And a few presents. I wrapped a bottle of perfume for Cal. And a belt for Iris. I thought maybe you’d get to see Iris. It’s leopard.” She lifted a present from the bag. “This is for you. An engagement book,” she said. “It’s terrible the way I always tell. There’s pictures by a famous photographer in it.” Her eyes met Mackenzie’s and held there. “Ansel Adams,” she said.
Sam had spotted the little girl too now. He began to wave his arms to her.
“Sam,” she called.
“It’s really wonderful,” Mackenzie said.
It was. But something was very wrong. She studied Daisy’s face. A pulse beat, rapidly, below one eye.
The little girl stopped in front of them. She wore an old suede jacket with long fringe on the arms. She smelled of mothballs and old cigarettes.
“This is Brandy,” Daisy said.
“My mother says are you coming to the party or not.”
Sam pet her hair softly.
“I’ll go over there now,” Daisy said, “and discuss it with her. I’ll walk you back.”
“I want to see Sam open his present first,” Brandy said.
He untied the ribbon and bow slowly.
“You don’t have to be so neat,” Daisy said. “Give it a good tear.”
Sam gently lifted the tape from the paper and it fell open like a woman’s coat.
“Wait,” Brandy said. “See all the elves?”
She pointed to the wrapping paper, covered in busy elves, hammering and painting and stacking toys.
Sam smiled, traced an elf.
“Honey,” Daisy said, “I’m going over there now. Come on.”
“What’s going on?” Mackenzie said. “What’s the rush?”
Daisy smiled.
“No rush,” she said.
Brandy helped Sam open the box and pull out a big stuffed bear.
“Watch,” she said.
She squeezed the bear’s nose and spoke close to his face.
“Hello, Sam,” she said.
She let go of the nose.
“Hello, Sam,” the bear said in Brandy’s voice.
Sam’s eyes widened.
“Merry Christmas,” Brandy said into the bear’s face.
“That’s wonderful,” Daisy said. “You can take it with you on the plane.”
“Merry Christmas,” the bear said. Then, “That’s wonderful. You can—”
Brandy laughed.
“Why don’t you give Brandy a big hug before you go?” Daisy said.
The two children wrapped their arms around each other and moved together in a waltz.
“Isn’t that sweet?” Daisy said. “Now come give Mommy a hug good-bye.”
The children kept dancing. Brandy hummed “The Blue Danube,” softly and off key.
Mackenzie said, “Are you sure—”
“Absolutely. Yes. Yes.”
A man and woman pulled up beside them in a brown Yugo.
“Thirty-seven miles to the gallon,” the man said as he got out. “In town.”
“I don’t care,” the woman said. “They’re still Communists.”
“Do you drink Stoli?” he said. “Don’t tell me you don’t because I know you do.”
“Listen,” Daisy said. She touched Mackenzie’s arm. “I met a guy. He’s really nice.”
Mackenzie pulled her arm away. She thought of Alexander and Daisy together. The way he held her feet in his lap at night. And then she thought of Carmen Havana, sitting alone at a picnic in the woods, away from the rest of the family, making origami birds and trees out of colored paper.
“I just wanted you to know,” Daisy said. “When Sam meets him, it’ll be fine. They’ll be crazy about each other.”
What about Alexander? Mackenzie thought. She felt mixed up. They hadn’t even really been together when he died. In fact, the last time she had spoken to him he’d told her he’d met someone interesting. “Her name is Lydia,” he’d said. “She’s a resident at Mass General. We’ve only had a few dates but I like her.” “Take it slow, Alexander,” Mackenzie had said. “You always jump in feet first.” “Heart first,” he’d laughed.
A piece of tinsel fell from the tree and floated down between them.
Daisy separated Sam and Brandy.
“Come on,” she’d said. “Give Mommy a hug.”
Brandy held the weather indicator Sam had given to her. The bonnet had turned pink.
“Snow,” she read.
They got into the car.
“What an adventure, Sam,” Daisy said.
She and Brandy waved as the car backed out.
Sam pressed the bear’s nose, then released it. The hum of the car played back. And faraway voices.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“WHAT ABOUT THIS WIFE of yours?” Ursula asked Jams.
They sat together in a new Mexican restaurant, on top of high stools, their food and drinks crowded onto the small round tiled table. It was happy hour, and their plates were heaped with cheese-soaked chips and soggy miniature tacos.
Jams’s stool wobbled slightly, and he thought of rolling up a matchbook and sticking it under the short leg to balance it. Instead, he stirred his margarita with his finger.
Ursula’s bruises were almost all gone now. He thought her face was one of those that would always look young, like a child’s. Perhaps it was all those freckles, or the round Betty Boop eyes. Cal’s face had lines around her eyes and mouth, and her hair was streaked with gray that she rinsed every month to a reddish brown. It was a face of character, whereas Ursula’s was malleable. She could stretch it into a wide smile or pull it all forward into a frown, as if it were made of Silly Putty.
“Cal was always ahead of the times,” Jams said. “Years ago, before anyone had even heard of Mexican food, she was making it. Burritos and guacamole. All of it.”
“So,” Ursula said, relaxing her face slightly, “she was a good cook.”
She waited for him to answer, but he didn’t say anything else.
What about this wife of yours? he thought. What about her?
Jams would never forget the first time he saw her. It was before he’d opened his own store in Rhode Island, while he was still learning the liquor business from his uncle in a store outside of Boston. He didn’t really know liquor back then, and he’d get confused when people asked for wine suggestions, or when they wanted to know which brand of Scotch was best. His own father had owned hardware stores back in Pennsylvania and that’s what Jams knew. Hardware. Bolts and screws and nails. But his brother had a wife and a family and it was only right that he stayed and took over the business. Moving to New England and starting a business with his uncle had seemed like an adventure. “I’d do it,” his brother had said, “in a minute.”
Cal had come in that first time with a thin pale man named Matthew. His hair was somewhere between red and blonde, but not clearly either color, and thinning in the front. He had very deepset eyes, sunken way into his head.
“We need a wine,” Cal said to Jams.
Her hair was long and loose, full of natural waves, not cut or set into any real style. She reminded him of a colt—chestnut hair with a widow’s peak, tall spindly legs, and a long face with big teeth.
“Something Spanish, maybe?” she’d said to Matthew.
“No,” he sai
d. “Not Spain.”
Her eyes were a clear brown, with big flecks of yellow and green, like an abstract mosaic tile.
“All right,” she said. “Not Spain.”
She turned to Jams.
“What, then?” she asked him. “What non-Spanish wine can you recommend?”
He cleared his throat.
“Is it for meat or poultry?” he asked her.
She laughed. Around her neck she wore a single strand of pearls, the color of oyster shells.
“Red,” Matthew said. “And inexpensive.”
Jams looked down at him. The man was barely Cal’s height and Jams stood well over six feet tall.
“Red. Inexpensive. Not Spanish,” he said.
He handed them a simple bottle of French table wine from the sale rack.
Cal paid.
“He’s leaving for a mission in Guatemala,” she whispered at the cash register. “He wants me to marry him and go there too. To convert Indians. What do you think about that?”
She glanced at the name sewn onto the pocket of his shirt. It was someone else’s shirt, a former employee who had left long ago.
“What should I do, Bob?”
“Well,” Jams said, “it sounds like a noble cause.”
She laughed again, showing all of her horse teeth.
He thought she was an outrageous woman, bold and unusual.
For a while, after they were married, Matthew sent her hand-woven blankets in vivid blues and purples from Guatemala. And hand-carved birds, the national symbol there, a bird that died if it was kept in captivity. She kept these things in a box in her closet until one day, after one of their times at Cape Cod, she threw them all out, violently and tearfully, smashing the wooden birds.
Cal came back to the store a week or two later with a different man. This one had very black curly hair and eyes so dark that Jams couldn’t distinguish the pupil from the iris. It was almost frightening to look into those eyes.
She didn’t laugh so much this time. The man kept his hand on her arm and asked for a wine, a specific type and year. Jams fumbled around, looking for it. He wanted to ask her if she had decided to go to Guatemala or not. But he didn’t get the chance.