The Christmas Letters

by Lee Smith

  “Mary?” Sandy said.

  “Oh shit,” Dovie Birmingham said. She had a smudge of red lipstick all over one of her big front teeth.

  “Excuse me,” I said, shutting the door. I was terribly embarrassed, and felt somehow guilty, as if it were all my fault. I walked back around the pool carefully, noticing the interesting dark blotchy shadows on the bottom created by those plastic lily pads. The pool was ostentatious, I decided. Still barefooted, I walked straight through the party and out the front door of the Birminghams’ house and two blocks through the neighborhood to my own house, where I surprised Melanie and two of her friends smoking marijuana in the portico. Normally this would have “thrown me for a loop.” But I didn’t even mention it. I merely said I had a headache and went upstairs and lay down, soon to be followed by my ashen and contrite Sandy, carrying my shoes in his hand, full of apology and explanation. He said it had never happened before, that he didn’t know what had come over him, or them, actually—he didn’t know what had gotten into them, though he blamed himself, of course. Dovie Birmingham was not in any way to blame. Sandy had had too much to drink, that’s all. It would never happen again, that was for damn sure! Damn sure!

  “Now come over here, honey,” he said, “and forgive this bad old man.”

  Well, I did.

  And if you are surprised by that, then you don’t have a clue about who I was during all those years. Of course I forgave him. I was dying to forgive him, feeling, as I said, that it was my fault anyhow. I decided I had gotten too wrapped up in the kids, had neglected the marriage. (Now I believe that whenever you start thinking about “the marriage” like it’s a needy third person, you’re in trouble anyway.)

  So Sandy and I “made up.” We “worked it out.”

  This lasted for about ten days, until John Birmingham paid a call on us one evening right after supper. I remember that he telephoned first. Sandy and I went to the front door and watched him walk straight across our yard, right through our underground sprinkler system like he didn’t even notice all the sprinklers going at once, and I don’t believe he did notice them. Clearly, here was a man with something on his mind. Once inside, John Birmingham refused to sit down, and got right to the point.

  “Sandy,” he said, “Dovie tells me that you and she are in love, and that you plan to get married. She says this has been going on for over a year.”

  John Birmingham is an aging preppie who went to Carolina for both his undergraduate and law degrees, and looks like it. This was not supposed to happen in his life. He did not even so much as glance at me. Nor did my husband.

  “Mary,” Sandy said, “why don’t you go check on the children, honey?”

  Which was exactly what I had been thinking. But they were all gone at that moment—mercifully, thankfully— James playing tennis at the club, the girls off Lord know where, and Andrew away at school, of course. After I made sure that the house was empty, I came back down the stairs to find the entrance hall empty too, except for a little puddle of water where John Birmingham had been standing. The door to the study was closed, and remained closed for over an hour. I waited there uncertainly for a while, and then went back to the kitchen and washed the dishes and listened to NPR. (This is what we do, isn’t it? We listen to NPR while the whole world crashes down around our ears, it’s the only thing we can think of to do.) Finally I heard the front door close, and then Sandy came into the kitchen and stood behind me and put his hands on my shoulders.

  “John was mistaken,” he said.

  “But Sandy—” I started crying.

  “John was mistaken,” Sandy said again, “and that’s the end of it.”

  Only it wasn’t, of course. Dovie Birmingham immediately moved back to Dallas, where she was from, taking their only child, a little girl (“one of those puny late-life babies,” Mama had said once, about this child), with her. John moved into an apartment and put their house on the market. At first it was priced too high, and didn’t sell. I kept tabs on this, for some reason, driving past it at least twice a day. Once, during this period, I stopped my car on impulse, got out and entered the Birminghams’ back yard through the side gate, and went out to stand by the pool. It was September, but hot. I had been to a bridal luncheon at the club. All of a sudden I stripped down to my underwear and jumped into the pool. It felt great! I swam a number of laps and then treaded water for a long time, enjoying the musical sound of the little fountain. The ends of my fingers had gotten all wrinkled up by the time I got out and went home.

  You know most of the rest of the story.

  A year later, Mama died and I went back to college. Then Sandy had the heart operation. Now I believe that “the marriage” never recovered from this operation. It was as if “the marriage” had had its own heart attack, and died on the spot. Sandy and I were still alive, of course, never more fit and healthy due to that follow-up program at the Life Center. This is also when we first went to the marriage counselor (never go to a “marriage counselor,” just get a divorce!).

  Our marriage counselor, whom I hate, is named Peter Waterford, a mellow little guy with a goatee he loves to finger. (I saw him just the other day, in traffic, driving a new Lexus. I know we paid for that Lexus, so I certainly hope he’s enjoying it!) Anyway, at the marriage counselor’s urging, we went to Scotland, a nice trip which staved off the inevitable. Sandy played golf, I read. We both enjoyed ourselves. (It was somewhat like “parallel play,” which I mentioned in one of my very first Christmas letters when Andrew was a baby.) We avoided all serious discussions, all dangerous topics, as if they were water hazards on one of those gorgeous Scottish golf courses. Then we came back from Scotland and threw ourselves into our work: I, into my senior thesis; Sandy, into “Plantation,” his development down on the coast.

  Though we were necessarily apart a good bit that year, I remained hopeful. In fact we both remained hopeful, I believe, and endlessly solicitous of each other, conducting nightly telephone conversations whenever we were apart (“How was your day?”—“Fine, dear, how was your day?” etc.) like nurses who keep on giving artificial respiration to a patient who has died.

  This phase lasted until that girl’s mother called from down at the coast, looking for her. Her grandfather had had a stroke, and she should come home immediately. “She’s not here,” I kept saying, though the woman insisted, politely, that she was. “Isn’t that funny?” she said before she hung up. “I’ve got the name written down right here.”

  I hung up and telephoned Sandy in Wilmington, where I got his answering machine. I could have stopped right there, never mentioning the incident to Sandy, but I did not. I could not. This time I had to push forward, to know. It gets pretty trite and sordid from here on out. I confronted him; he lied to me; I just couldn’t believe him, though I wanted to—oh, how I wanted to!

  We went back to the marriage counselor, Peter Waterford, for that session I will never forget. We were all sitting around a gleaming mahogany table, kind of a conference table, in Peter Waterford’s lovely office way up in a high-rise building which overlooked north Raleigh. I could see I-40 and the Crabtree Valley Mall, far below. Peter Water-ford made a little tent of his fingers, leaned back in his chair, and looked at us in a gentle shrink-like way.

  “I think it’s time to put all the cards out on the table,” he said. “Honesty may be painful at first, but it is ultimately healing, creative.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I looked at Sandy.

  Sandy knew exactly what he meant. Sandy kept running his hand through his thinning red hair, sort of patting his scalp, in an odd gesture I had never seen before.

  “Sandy?” Peter Waterford pressed.

  “You mean you want me to come right out and—”

  “Yes,” Peter Waterford said ever so gently.

  This is when Sandy told me that he had slept with over a dozen women who “didn’t count,” plus Dovie Birmingham, who did.

  I seized upon this phrase. “What do you mean, ‘don’
t count’?” It drove me wild.

  “Oh, Mary, they didn’t mean anything to me, I’ve always loved you, you know that. I still love you. These were just girls at conventions, like that meeting I have to go to in Houston every year. You know it gets real old, real fast, being in a hotel room by yourself. . . .” Sandy went on and on, once he got started, pouring out a whole litany of transgressions which I can’t really remember now because it was just at that point that my mind began to wander. I can’t account for this, but it is true. I was trying to pay attention, I really was, but I kept thinking about other things, other times.

  Sandy talked for a long time, and then finally he stopped talking.

  I sat there.

  “Mary,” Peter Waterford said.

  “What?” I said.

  Peter Waterford is one of those people who says your name too much, I suppose he thinks it establishes intimacy or something. “Mary, in spite of his obvious pain and embarrassment, Sandy has been totally honest with you. He wants to make a clean sweep of the past, Mary. He wants to establish a brand new relationship with you. He wants to begin again, Mary.”

  I sat there. I was thinking about a time years and years ago when Joe and I were little, making Easter baskets in the dime store with Mama and Daddy and all the women who worked there. I have no idea why this particular day came so vividly into my mind at that moment.

  “It’s time to put all your cards out on the table now, Mary,” Peter Waterford was saying.

  I shook my head, unable to speak.

  Sandy was staring at me.

  “Just play the hand you’ve got, Mary,” Peter Waterford said.

  Suddenly the whole card-game metaphor struck me as unbelievable, a ridiculous way for grown-up people to act.

  I grinned at them both. “I fold,” I said.

  Sandy lurched forward in his chair. “Mary,” he started.

  I stood up. “I’m not playing this game anymore,” I said, and left before either of them could stop me. Having never actually slept with poor Gerald Ruffin, I had nothing to put out on the table anyway, but I wasn’t about to admit it. Anyway, I was sure—I am sure—that there was more love, more concern and care and feeling, in my relationship with Gerald Ruffin than in all of Sandy’s affairs put together. This is the truth. It is my story, and it is true, too. Lots of things are true: that I loved Sandy with all my heart and gave him my pretty years, that he loved me as well, that I am the only person in the whole world who knows or ever will know many things about him, large and small, such as that he runs down his shoes in the back and does not ever read books and is terrified of cats and will buy that horrible chocolate cereal and eat it if left in a house by himself. I know he cried all night when Andrew told us he was gay but since that time has done his very best to adjust to it, going so far as to blow up at Johnny Cook who once asked Sandy if he thought he’d ever be able to “forgive” Andrew. “Forgive him, hell!” Sandy exploded. “What are you talking about? What have I got to forgive him for?” an attitude which would surprise most people who know him. Sandy looks like a stereotype but he’s not. Maybe nobody’s a stereotype once you really get to know them, but this gets harder and harder the older we get, it seems to me. Too much ground to cover, too much to learn.

  I’m probably a stereotype myself, come to think of it, one of those women you see on every college campus these days, those fiftyish women with half-frame reading glasses and denim skirts and Aerosole shoes, streaked hair pulled back in a ponytail, kicking along through the leaves, on fire with Woolf or whoever.

  That’s me.

  I’m a stereotype too.

  But at least I’m not a fat stereotype any longer, having magically dropped those 20 pounds of “divorce weight,” as Marybeth calls it. I have emerged with cheekbones to die for, not that anybody cares . . . oh, that sounded bitter. I am not bitter, actually. I truly believe that Sandy is doing the best he can. We all do, don’t we? We do the very best we can. We “keep on keeping on,” as Mama used to say.

  In fact I am having a little group of my women friends from school over for lunch tomorrow, just something really simple (shrimp salad). They have been such an endless source of support for me, as have you all.

  Now I want to end this nearly endless Christmas letter by sharing something with you. I want to tell you what came into my mind at that moment in the marriage counselor’s office, the moment when I did not put any cards on the table, the moment before I walked out. It was a little memory, that’s all, an image from my childhood.

  It is a cold dark Sunday afternoon, several weeks before Easter. Mama and Daddy have taken Joe and me to the dime store with them, to “help make the Easter baskets.” All the women who work in the store are there too, and lots of toys, and lots of candy. The women form themselves into an informal assembly line, laughing and gossiping among themselves. They’re wearing slacks and tennis shoes. They’re drinking coffee. It’s almost a party atmosphere. As “helpers,” Joe and I don’t last long. We stuff ourselves with candy and then crawl into a big open cardboard box of pink cellophane straw where we sleep all afternoon while the straw shifts and settles around us, eventually covering us entirely, so that no one can find us when it’s time to go. I wake up with Joe’s warm breath in my ear, his heavy little leg thrown over mine.

  “Mary!” I hear them calling. “Joe!” Their voices sound far, far away. The overhead lights in the dime store glow down pink through the cellophane straw. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

  “Mary! Joe!” It’s Mama, then Daddy calling. Joe makes a sleepy little noise in my ear. “Mary! Joe!” I know I have to answer them soon but I hold the moment as long as I can, me and Joe all safe and secure in our own bright world, sought by those who love us. I am thinking, I will remember this. I will always remember this.

  I have, too. And it is my Christmas gift to you tonight, this perfect moment, as real as the psychological strip poker game in the marriage counselor’s office with which it coexisted, another story, yet both of them happening and happening and happening forever at the very same time, and both of them true.

  Merry Christmas.

  Love,

  Mary

  Happy New Year 1995 to my Invaluable Friends!

  After delivering myself of that interminable epistle last year, I had decided not to write this year—a decision in line with my decision not to “do Christmas” in a big way either, as Sandy chose to remarry on Christmas Eve (she’s 21 years younger!) and all the kids except Andrew were involved in that. Andrew wasn’t able to get here in time due to prior commitments.

  Anyway, Sandy’s wedding was in that big Episcopal Church downtown, six bridesmaids including Melanie and Claire, the whole bit. The bride wore a long white dress, and why not? It’s her first wedding, poor thing. I rented some good videos (The Dead and that wonderful Canadian thing about the old women on the bus), then took a cold lovely walk around the block (big stars, clouds of breath). All the houses I passed either had a full-bore Christmas tableau visible in the windows (family, tree) or nothing at all—dark, locked up. I was trying to manage something in between, which is hard here in America, I suppose. I came home half frozen, brewed a pot of tea, and talked to some of you on the phone.

  Near midnight, just as I was turning off the lights, here they came! “dressed to the nines” and looking wonderful. First to arrive were Melanie and her friend Bruce, Melanie in her red satin bridesmaid’s dress, something she would never choose to wear though it was very becoming, I must say, and Bruce in a tuxedo (beyond belief, he plays in an alternative rock band named Steel Wool) though I did think Bruce could have shaved a little better. (But they like a little stubble, don’t they? I guess it’s “in” now.) Anyway, I really enjoyed this, as it has been years since I have seen Melanie dressed up! She always wears black. For the wedding, she had pulled all that long curly red hair up into a knot on the top of her head. She looked positively pre-Raphaelite! Of course she got back into her jeans in short orde
r. Even though it was so late, she just couldn’t wait to show me a literary magazine containing her first published poem. The magazine is named Bitteroot and the poem is named “Evening Light, Pawley’s Island.” I’m no judge, but I think it’s wonderful. (It doesn’t rhyme, of course.)

  Then here came Claire, Don, and Don’s adorable little girls, ages 8 and 5 (they remind me of you and me, Ruthie). The girls were so tired, they were practically sleepwalking. I had planned for them to sleep on the futon in my own bedroom, so Claire and Don could have some privacy. Plus, I knew I would enjoy waking up with those little girls on Christmas morning. I was struck by Claire and Don’s efficiency, putting the girls to bed, putting out their “Santa Claus” in the living room—it’s as if they have already become an old married couple, without the honeymoon. I feel like I’m more interested in their “romance” than they are!

  Next appeared James with yet another girlfriend, this one tall and languid, from South Carolina. (New rule: I’m not going to “get to know” each one until she’s been around at least 3 months.) But of course, she’s adorable. They’re all adorable, they all fall in love with James, and I don’t blame them. He has become a very impressive young man. I can’t imagine him ever settling down—but they all stay single a lot longer now, don’t they? It seems to me that adolescence extends to age 30 at least! (But maybe that’s better, I don’t know: it’s certainly true that many of our own decisions were disastrous.. . .)

  Anyway, we all met Adrienne, James’s new girlfriend, who turns out to be a psychologist-in-the-making, a really interesting young woman—maybe she’ll be the one. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. (Whoops—there I go again! Getting involved. It’s hard, isn’t it? Whoever thought it would be so hard? As a child, I thought adults were, by definition, wiser than we were—now I realize that they were just older, and that wisdom is not something that will descend upon us at a certain age, that it will not descend upon us at all, in fact.)