Tinsel and Temptation

by Eileen Rendahl

  There’s a gentle tap at my door before Justin pushes his head through the crack. He looks noticeably different, his face longer, his shoulders fuller, even after a few short months. His reddish blonde hair, a color that traces from Mom’s lineage, is recently shaved, so that only a tiny bit of fuzz shades his scalp.

  “Tweet, tweet. Hey, jailbird.” His voice is taunting, and his sly smile twists me up. He gave me that nickname last summer. Of course it infuriates me, but the last thing I’ll do is show it. “Welcome home. Can I come in?”

  “Whatever, jackass.” I watch him struggle as he pushes open the door, knocking over my giant suitcase with a loud thump on the carpet as he enters the room. He pulls out my desk chair and sits down, crossing one ankle over the other knee, picks at a toenail.

  “So… you’re back. Interesting start.” He looks up at me, his face blooming with mischief.

  “Seriously? Off me. Mom and Dad are enough.”

  “Yeah but no show last night? Big move.” He chuckles. “I’m glad you’re home, Halley. Things are boring around here without you. Just didn’t think you’d go for broke on your first night.”

  I stare at him and gesture toward the door.

  He doesn’t leave but rather settles in, leans back, all awkward elbows and knees. He looks like a daddy longlegs spider. “I’ll bet you’re raging at school, right? I can’t wait to hear — two more years here, but then I’m out, just like you. You’re free.”

  “Nope,” I say, “it’s not like that. I’m busting ass. I’ve never worked this hard before. I’m telling you, college is a different league.”

  “Dah. Save the ‘studying’ bullshit for Mom and Dad. I know you, Halley. You’re an animal. You can tell me.”

  I stare at him and viscerally remember what it was like when I first got my license at sixteen, when I had that first taste of freedom. How I left the house at any chance. I snuck out late at night, I lied about my whereabouts. I let go of the rules, just to prove I could. But that joyride, those thirty minutes that Risa and I were behind that noisy, rumbling Nova engine, sitting airily on the grey leather bench seat, completely enthralled by our gall, our buoyancy, the windows rolled down and freedom whipping through our hair, we knew only the thrill of our racing pulses and trembling adrenaline; we forgot that it was all temporary. That freedom was a right, a privilege, that was generously granted but could be swiftly lost, or worse. Taken.

  “Justin, you may not believe this, but I’m done with that. Last summer changed me. These kids at my school? Every one was top of their class. They’re all used to winning, every time.” I shrug. “I’ve been knocked down a peg, but I needed it. I’m telling you, I’m different.”

  “You look a little different, I can see it in your eyes,” he says, standing and heading toward the door. “But you don’t smell different. Take a shower, Jailbird.”

  I’m parked down the street from her house watching the usual chaos — cars parked on her lawn and driveway, neglected front door standing open despite the brisk Pennsylvania air. You can hear the chatter from a few houses down, pulsing, and I wonder if their emphatic, Italian hands are actually pushing the sound waves out that open front door.

  I stand by the car for a moment where I know nobody can see me. Risa and I were separated, wrenched apart really, after the arrest. My father forbade me to talk to her until after the trial. For two weeks she still called, and her parents even drove over and suggested on our doorstep that our families needed to be together, to help each other, during this difficult time. They had no idea that the Jordan view of family had firmer limits than the Puccinelli’s.

  But for those same reasons, they’re a part of me. I grew up with them. Risa and I befriended way back in second grade, badged and bonded together as Brownies; sisters that neither of us had at home. She was simply always near me, for as long as I remember. And so my loss feels more than just losing my ally, my sister — there’s a piece of me, a good piece, that’s imbedded in her and her family. Us adrift, not talking or laughing or crying through the whole mess, was probably more troubling than my parents shipping me off in shame. I know the rhythms of my family’s love, but escaping the Puccinelli’s, walking away like a refugee who abandons a miserable country, wasn’t right. I have to know; have to rip open this barely sutured wound that’s healed horribly, oozing with malfeasance and fault. This absence of us, incomplete and neglected, is not our ending. As I start walking toward Risa’s house, I know it’s time to break us back open and start a new recovery, one way or the other.

  It feels strange to knock, since the door is totally ajar, and one year ago I would march in and greet the extended relatives on my own. So I ring the bell and wait awkwardly as it reverberates through the household, escalating shouts throughout. I hear Risa’s brother, Matteo, three years older than us, shouting “I got it!” as he approaches the half-closed door.

  “Woah, Halley. What are you doing here?” He steps outside and pulls the door closed behind him.

  I’m so nervous my thoughts are completely scrambled. “Oh Matteo I’m happy it’s you, I wanted to see Risa and all of you and I probably should have called but I was afraid you’d say no and I seriously can’t imagine being home for the holidays and not seeing you guys and I feel so rotten and empty. I just really want to talk to Risa.” I choke this out, my mouth dry and tactile like sandpaper.

  Matteo jerks his head over his shoulder toward the door, oddly, several times, like a nervous tick, before I realize he hears activity inside the house. As he opens his mouth to respond, the door flies open again, and Nonna Puccinelli stands in the doorway, her green apron hanging loosely from her neck, her hair, dyed between red and purple, dusted with white flour.

  “Halley?” She cries out, as the front of the house suddenly hushes.

  “Nonna,” I falter, “It’s so good to see you. I’m so sorry about everything.” My head hangs down and tears flood my eyes. “Is Risa free? Can I see her?”

  Her forehead bends in half, eyebrows tilting outward, her entire face wracked with grief. “Ah Halley.” She calls me her daughter in Italian as she pushes Matteo out of the way — she cups her hand to my cheek and gives it a gentle slap, and it stings but she holds it there. Then she grapples with my sweater and reaches around me for a hug, pressing me into her arms and chest, owning me for the moment. I’m off balance for a second, as though falling, stunned but relieved to be here again. She pulls back and whispers horsely in my ear, “Risa loves you. All is not right, but does not have to be so wrong. Go to her. Tell her what you feel, she needs to know.” She releases me and gives me a gentle shove. “Go, she’s downstairs.”

  I walk through the house, feeling shamed and raw, like I’d stepped in nude. The aunties are in the parlor across from the stairs, quietly staring. I cross through the hallway, with the family’s framed photos watching me across generations, and step through the doorway that leads to the basement. The air is very cold. I can hear Risa’s father and uncles chatting down below and I realize they’re making their holiday sausages. Risa always works the back of the line with a barbaric-looking device, a wooden dowel with nails driven through it, which they cleverly call the poker, as it aerates the sausages to allow them to dry, to release the pressure. I’d done it alongside her for many years.

  There are bright fluorescent lights hanging from the low ceiling, and the back wall is draped with links of reddish sausages, dangling from rows of nails. As I descend, all eyes turn to watch the newcomer. I continue and the sound of my footsteps bounces off the concrete walls.

  Risa’s father Lucca steps forward. From the back of the room Risa calls out, “It’s okay, Dad,” and makes her way around the assembly table covered with white butcher paper, crowded with piles of freshly ground meat and long, translucent casings; she walks behind the staggered row of her uncles who have stopped their grinding and stuffing, who watch her silently as she crosses; she reaches the base of the steps and looks up at me. She’s wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt wi
th a centaur print on the front, and she seems smaller, though it’s hard to tell if she’s lost weight or I’m just intimidated by the room. Her hair is tangled in a messy bun.

  “Hi Sonrisa,” I say. It comes out without even thinking. It’s an old nickname I gave her, meaning smile in Spanish. I stammer. “It’s, I hope it’s okay I’m here, that I stopped by. I just…hoped to see you for a minute.”

  She turns past me and heads up the stairs. I follow. She heads directly out the front door, away from all the watching eyes, and says finally on the front driveway, “You drove right? Let’s take a spin.”

  We climb into the car and as I’m closing my door a thought hits me — the last time we were alone in a car, things went horribly wrong. I turn to her, “Where do you want to go?”

  “Anywhere,” she says, “away from here.”

  I pull away. She’s looking out the far window. Introspective. I drive out of her neighborhood, where the homes are packed closely together, separated by cracked, paved driveways and partially mowed lawns. I finally speak up. “Risa, I don’t even have words to tell you how sad and sorry I am.”

  “It’s really beautiful out tonight,” she says, tenderness in her voice. “I forgot how pretty this town is when everyone puts out their decorations. I guess I haven’t noticed it all tricked out.” She glances toward me. “Remember how we used to mix up the Santas from people’s yards? How mad they’d get when we’d swap them?” She laughs. “We never got caught. Man, that was funny.”

  “It was ridiculous.”

  “Yeah, I’ve thought a lot about the shit we used to do.”

  “I think about it too. God, I’m so sorry.”

  Her face brightens briefly under the streetlights, then goes back to shadow. “I’m not,” she says. “We made a lot of harmless trouble, we messed up once. Even then, it could have been much, much worse. This sounds crazy, but I’m okay it worked out the way it did. You got into a great school, and you got to go; I was going to Community College anyway. When you stop and think about it, nothing really changed.”

  I can’t wrap my head around what I’m hearing. Is it possible she doesn’t see me as a villain, a coward, a turncoat? That we’re still the same girls we’ve been for a decade, with new notches carved into our belts. That she just gets me. I notice the car is decelerating as I struggle for breath. I pull over into a 24 hr gas station parking lot, roll down the window and breathe deeply into the cold. My lungs only seem to fill to half capacity so I heave, over and over, trying to fill them.

  I wonder if this is the breakdown that I’ve been waiting for, if this is the moment when I fully crack from all of it: the trying, the reinventing, the persuading, the pushing, the hiding, the crying.

  Risa leans over and rubs my shoulder. “Slow down, Halley. Stop. You’re hyperventilating. You’re going to be okay.”

  “Are. We. Okay?” I blubber, gasping, unsure if she can even understand me.

  “This is us. What can I say? You and me, we live big. It’s sucked for a few months, don’t get me wrong, but it’ll settle.”

  She has a meek smile on her face. I weep.

  “My probation’s almost done. I was always going to work for my uncle anyway, right? See, it’s cool.” She points at me. “But don’t bail on me again. That was what really hurt.”

  I get out of the car and walk over to Risa’s side, where she opens up, climbs out, and we tangle in a hug, long and close, rocking a bit side to side to the holiday music piping from the outside speakers.

  CHAPTER 4

  Christmas Eve is always the night that tips Mom over the edge, the night she prepares the feast that Dad grew up with, the traditional Polish Wigilia. Because it has so many courses of seafood and then also the borscht, the pierogi, the poppyseed cakes — she fusses in the kitchen industriously for several days leading up to Christmas. Either that or she hovers in the laundry room over the ironing board heavily starching and pressing her own family’s traditional Irish lace. Either way, Christmas Eve is always the night when one small thing — a burned dish, a dripping gravy boat — sends her reeling. So we stay out of her way until she beckons.

  Normally I’m her number two, the one to whom she barks orders. But today she asked Justin to run to the store to do the last-minute shopping. She asked my father to pull down the platters from the top shelf of the pantry. She herself managed the timer, juggling which trays were in and out of the oven. I imagined that the family had just tightened up without me, the elastic cinched closer; but rather than feeling left out, I felt a bit of latitude, that I’d already served my round of duty and maybe was better suited elsewhere.

  I go out to sit with my relatives in the living room, on the cream sofas with a slight sheen to their floral pattern, a room normally neglected except for piano lessons or holidays. There my Grandmother Jordan, my father’s mother, a conservative former grammarian, sits with my Aunt Sue and Uncle Murray, my mother’s sister and brother-in-law, both childless and currently the proprietors of a small English Pub near Amish country, all discussing the weather predictions for Christmas Day. When I enter, the conversation tapers off.

  “So tell us, Halley, how’s that school of yours up in Boston?” Murray asks.

  “You liking it?” Sue says.

  “It’s going well, but so tough. Way harder than last year. I just finished finals.” I give a hopeful smile.

  “Well, surely that’s not saying much.” Grandmother’s face is tipped up, challenging me, the loose flesh forming a wattle on the front her neck; she’s crowing like a rooster.

  “I’m sorry, what was that, Grandmother?”

  “Hmph, Halley, you heard me. A young lady such as yourself does not change her ways, she merely changes direction. I believe that may apply here.”

  “Now I don’t think that’s fair,” Sue interrupts. “Halley…”

  Murray pipes up, “I agree, she was cleared from all that. We have to give her a chance.”

  I think about what they may have said about me when I was not in the room. That I was impetuous, out of control, a familial risk. And yet. There’s more in me that I’ve unearthed over this last semester, more substance, more depth, which I know now from sitting amongst the best, and feeling scared but not lost, knowing that I had something to offer. That I was more than the fun.

  “I own it.” I say, my voice a little loud in the low-ceilinged, formal room. “I fucked things up last summer, and I’ve taken responsibility for it.” I look to my Grandmother, “I’m sorry, but it’s how I feel. I made a small, dumb move, but I learned something too. I learned that it’s not enough to push against nothing. You have to have something real in this world that you accomplish, that you love. That’s what I’m finding now. And it doesn’t matter what you think.”

  “You can’t address me with that tone or that language, young lady. I told your father the same thing when he was your age.”

  And that’s when I realize. All this time, I felt like I had to carve out my own territory to be noticed, to fit neatly in this ecosystem in which I felt unsubstantial, like I was the air, clawing for my own space and density. But in reality they needed me for every breath. I just had to be myself.

  “You don’t deserve that, Grandmother, you’re right. But I am who I am, and I keep getting better. That’s what I’ve come to know. Maybe Dad and I aren’t so far apart after all.”

  We’ve missed each other’s calls over the past few days, but the wires have been hot between Luís and I. He’s been sending me funny text messages; nothing too naughty, but just zesty enough that I keep my phone on me at all times. It’s been good to have an entertaining sidebar.

  My phone rings just as I’ve set the table in the dining room. Everyone else is either in the kitchen or sitting in the front room, so I steal away to the family room in the back of the house. I keep the lights off.

  “Luís, hi, I’m here!” I whisper-speak.

  “Guapa!” His voice booms. He’s clearly had a few mojitos with the relatives dow
n in Miami.

  “Hey there.” I wag my hands for him to keep the volume down, as if he could see me. I actually wish Luís could see me. My face is cracked open into a smile. I can’t help it. “Happy Christmas Eve! What are you up to?”

  “Ahhh, querida,” he shouts over music in the background, “we are enjoying life! I’m wishing you were here as my dance partner, we would paint this town red and green.” He laughs hilariously at himself.

  I reach over to the bookshelf and pull down a framed picture. It’s Risa and I, probably about nine years old. We are perky in short-shorts, giant grins misshapen by jagged teeth, arms wrapped possessively over each other’s shoulders. That was what optimism looked like. But Luís’s laughter over this phone is what optimism feels like now. It’s confident, and hopeful, it’s accepting but demanding; it seeks to make others happy but knows that happiness really starts inside your deepest kernel, the part of you that’s half light and half dark, where all the potential lives.

  “Merry Christmas, Luís. I’ll see you in a week.”

  “A week! Dios mío, it’s too long.”

  I chuckle. “You’ll blink and we’ll be back. Go outside and look for me in the stars.”

  “I see you, Halley. I’m outside and you are everywhere. Merry Christmas.”

  Plates are being cleared from the table and Mom is organizing the washing and drying stations in the kitchen for her china. The meal ultimately was lovely, and the conversation returned to benign chatter about mass tomorrow and the Eagles, both of which elicited many opinions around the table. There was a delightful sense of predictability to it — a delicious feast that was graciously received; some shared words and reflections to commemorate the year that had passed since the last Wigilia; and the tumult that accompanied the disassembly of the annual tradition. I felt sated.

  I slipped out the sliding doors onto the deck and was surprised to see Dad out there in the far corner, fiddling with the telescope, which had been sitting, covered and dusty, in the garage for several years.