I wondered what Seth saw now when he closed his eyes. It was a tormenting thought that kept me awake until Christmas morning dawned blue and clear and scoffing in its beauty.
We all tried—even Kellen—to salvage some joy as we opened our presents, but nobody’s acting skills were up to the challenge. Finally, midway through the pile that Mama had added to for a week, perhaps in the hope of filling in the gaping hole in the festivities, I broke down.
“I’m so sorry,” I told them. “I’ve ruined everything and I’m sorry.”
Heads shook, except for Kellen’s, and there were murmurs of “no” and “stop” and “we’ll be okay.”
“There’s always next year, sugar,” Daddy said. “And who knows what will happen between now and then?”
“Good things,” Mama said. “All good things.”
Those could start anytime they wanted to.
Fritzie’s arrival around noon improved the atmosphere. She joined Mama and me in the kitchen, arms full of containers of her usual odd cookie concoctions and homemade salsa that was probably hotter than the surface of the sun and a black-bean-and-rice casserole flecked with red pepper. She always brought something that clashed with Mama’s Christmas dinner menu, but my mother was too gracious to tell her. We would all “bless her heart” over it when she was gone.
Well, maybe not all of us. If Kellen was giving me the cold shoulder, the one he turned to Fritzie was of glacial proportions. He barely looked at her when he passed through the kitchen to refill a bowl of Chex Mix for him and Daddy.
“Merry Christmas to you too, buddy,” Fritzie said when he’d gone back to the family room. “What’s his damage?”
“We’re all a little on edge this year.” Mama’s teetering voice offered proof.
“I’m here to fix that. What we need is some eggnog.” Fritzie wiggled the eyebrows she’d stopped plucking several years ago and which reached toward each other over her nose like baby spiders.
“I didn’t pick up any,” Mama said. “I don’t think there are any stores open today, do you?”
“Mama Faulkner, this is me you’re talking to,” Fritzie said. “I brought the fixin’s. This is going to be the real deal.”
She proceeded to unload a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, and enough whipping cream to top half the pies in the historic district. While Mama and I tried to mash potatoes and make gravy and squeeze the green-bean casserole into the oven next to Fritzie’s beans and rice, she took up one whole counter with her mixer and a bowl the size of a washing machine. I’d never seen someone whip for that long.
“When are we drinking this, Fritzie?” Mama said, eyeing the growing tub of foam.
Daddy was carving the turkey and simultaneously batting away droplets of nog that spattered his way. Kellen and I were ferrying dishes to the table in the dining room. Fritzie was still whipping with no sign of stopping.
“Anytime we want,” she said.
And then as we all stared she unscrewed the cap from a fifth of Jim Beam and poured the entire thing into the mix.
“This,” she said, “is exactly what this family needs.”
The look on Daddy’s face brought a chortle out of me that quickly morphed into uncontrollable laughter. If his eyebrows had gone up any farther they would have met in the back of his head. Mama tried to smother a giggle but was unsuccessful. Even Kellen gave up a grin.
“What?” Fritzie said, eyes wide.
“I’m getting a buzz just looking at it,” Daddy said. “Let’s eat.”
Nobody drank any eggnog with dinner, but the conversation sounded like we’d all put our entire heads into the bowl and come out snockered. Mama couldn’t put two words together and giggled at every outrageous thing Fritzie said, and since Fritzie pretty much didn’t stop talking through the entire meal, Mama’s husky laughter was constant from the lobster bisque to the coffee and mints. Daddy egged Fritzie on—pardon the pun—to recount her escapades with the families she’d nannied. I spewed cranberry sauce or gravy more than once when she delivered a punch line, and although Kellen didn’t actually join in, he at least didn’t leave the table until Fritzie finally leaned back in her chair and groaned and said, “Why did y’all make me eat so much? You’re cruel.”
She did, however, pour herself a tumbler of the nog while Mama, Daddy, and Kellen cleared the table. Then she dragged me by the sleeve out to the sunroom and plopped herself down onto the bright green canvas cushion on one of the curved-cane chairs, splashing the white stuff onto one hand even as she motioned for me to sit with the other one. I feared for the table tree with its plaid ribbons and antique Santas.
“All right, child,” she said. “Let’s talk about Seth.”
“Do we have to?” I said. “I was actually having a good time.”
“We don’t have to . . .” Fritzie poked a finger into the glass and pulled out a dollop of foam that she deposited into her mouth.
The pause to savor, eyes closed, gave me a chance to line up how I was going to handle this. Of all the people I’d grown up with, Fritzie was the one most likely to pry me open and coax out the truth. She was the one who got me to confess my suspicions about Santa at age five. At age six, she was the only one I told that I wasn’t sure Jesus loved me because I sometimes picked my nose in private. At eight I sobbed when she left us to go to Jesup and take care of some other family’s kids. And she was the first one I called and told that I was determined to marry Seth Grissom. I was fifteen, and she didn’t laugh.
So, no, I didn’t have to talk to her about him now. But if I did, if I told her the truth, I knew I could trust her.
“Do you want me to start?” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
She took another long swallow from the nog and set it next to the Christmas tree. “You found out about him, didn’t you?”
I was glad I wasn’t drinking or I would have choked.
Fritzie nodded knowingly. “I know good guys are hard to find, but . . . and this could just be me . . . he’s just a little too squeaky clean. Bordering on puritanical.”
All right, so she obviously didn’t know about the porn. Only because this was a new take on the situation did I not stop her.
Fritzie flipped her mass of greying, drying, fading hair over her shoulder. “Don’t get me wrong. I know you’re pure as the driven snow, whatever that actually means, but you still have some sensuality to you.”
“Thanks?” I said.
“I don’t know, though . . . Seth seems sort of asexual to me. Not that I have any evidence.”
“For what?”
“For him being all hung up about sex.”
I stopped breathing. If I didn’t end this conversation right now, I might never start again.
“I changed my mind,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about Seth.”
Fritzie deflated. “I’m sorry, sweet thing,” she said. “I think I’ve been around the block one too many times. I’ve gotten bitter about men.” She picked up the almost-empty tumbler and stared down into the dissolving foam. “I loved all you kids. You know that.”
“I do.”
“But you . . . you were always my favorite. You were the reason I stayed even after the boys got to be teenagers and your parents didn’t really need me that much anymore.”
She breathed in sharply through her nose. Fritzie the Jaded was turning back into Fritzie the Vulnerable, and I watched her struggle to turn that around.
“I know you still love me,” I said.
“I do, and that’s why I can’t keep my mouth shut about this.”
But please do, I wanted to say . . . so desperately I almost did.
“I don’t know what went down between you two and you’re obviously not going to tell me . . .”
“Please don’t be hurt, Fritz,” I said. “I’m not telling anybody.”
Pain did pinch at her face, but she nodded. “I have to say this, though. You might have dodged a bullet.”
I opened my mouth, but she
put up a many-ringed hand. “You are a woman of passion. Untapped, maybe, but it’s in there. And I don’t think you’ll find it with Seth. Just sayin’. That’s all . . . I’m just sayin’.”
“Okay,” I said. And yet it wasn’t. At all.
Whatever Christmas cheer we’d managed to stir up settled back down to the bottom after that, and Fritzie left not much later. It was back to the four of us, and we gathered somewhat listlessly in the breakfast nook where Mama served us pie.
“I still get a kick out of her,” Daddy said. “But she pushes the envelope, doesn’t she?”
Mama squirted a ribbon of whipped cream from the can onto the rim of his wedge of mincemeat. “I think she’s just lonely.”
“There’s a really good reason for that,” Kellen said. “Like nobody can stand to be around her.”
“Kellen!” Mama said.
Daddy chewed thoughtfully. “You kids used to love her.”
“I still do,” I said. “But she’s definitely changed.”
Kellen grunted. “Not that much.”
I suspected there was an explanation behind that, but he wasn’t giving it. Mama sat down with her pie and picked up her fork.
“I have one question,” she said.
Daddy smiled at her. “What’s that, darlin’?”
“What on earth are we going to do with all that eggnog?”
I could almost hear Kellen’s face crack into a smile. I thought we’d saved a smidgeon of Christmas, until my cell phone rang and I looked at the screen.
“It’s Paul Grissom,” I said.
“You don’t have to take that,” Mama said.
“Don’t,” Daddy said.
“I’ll talk to him,” Kellen said.
I shook my head at all of them and answered.
“Tara?” Paul’s voice was grim. “You need to come over.”
“Now?” I said.
“If you can. Yes, now.”
“Okay,” I said. I ended the call and looked at my family, who had all pushed their pie away and with it the last hope that we could save a slice of Christmas Day.
“I’ve been summoned,” I said.
They all offered to go with me—Mama with less enthusiasm than Daddy or Kellen—but I went alone so I could rehearse all the way across Whitaker Street.
TARA: If you’re going to tell me again that Seth’s suicide attempt was my fault, I have nothing to say that will make you change your minds.
RANDI: You got that right.
PAUL: Come on, now, let’s reason together.
SETH: . . .
I couldn’t fill in for Seth anymore. I wasn’t sure he would even be there. No one had told me if he’d come home, and he hadn’t tried to contact me. I’d made it pretty clear to him before the suicide attempt that I didn’t want to talk, but couldn’t somebody at least have told me if he was okay?
Paul jerked open the heavy front door with its beveled-glass window and set the lush evergreen wreath swinging on its hook. Even in the half-light of the foyer his face was pasty-white and his eyes were shot with red. He looked even worse than he did the night at the hospital.
“Thanks for coming over,” he said as he led me down the long entryway toward the great room, as they called it.
Randi’s Fiest ancestors glared at me from their overbearing ornate frames as I passed, as if to say that they certainly hadn’t invited me. Seth and Kellen had given them names as kids, all along the lines of Pickle Face and Bulldog. And those were for the women. I avoided their eyes because at the moment they all reminded me of Randi, accusing me with every glance.
They made me say to Paul, “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
He stopped just before the wide great room doorway and looked sadly down at me. “In a way, I hope you can’t,” he said.
The spiny ball of anxiety came back to life in my gut. The sight of Randi Grissom curled up in the oversized chair by the fireplace did nothing to lessen that. She was, of course, dressed in black ankle pants and a slim-fitting red tunic and her hair had been freshly highlighted and was brushed back severely from her face. That was all the same as always. But in twenty-five years I had never seen Seth’s mother cry.
I looked around the room but Seth wasn’t there. Evelyn was, however. She stood behind her mother, arms folded, looking strangely smug. I couldn’t have dreamed this up if I was Steven Spielberg.
“You want to sit down, Tara?” Paul said.
Evelyn didn’t give me a chance to. “I’ll start,” she said. “Did you know Seth was seeing prostitutes?”
All feeling left my body.
Despite her gasping sobs Randi was still able to get out, “Your claim is unsubstantiated, Evelyn. You don’t know that.”
I tried to look at Evelyn but even my gaze was paralyzed.
“The night after you and I talked,” she said to me, “I waited outside the townhouse, and when he came out, around ten o’clock, I followed him. Right down to Montgomery Street.” She glared at the top of her mother’s head. “I saw him meet up with a hooker and go with her—”
“You have no way of knowing she was a hooker,” Randi said.
“Mother. Really? Skirt up to her butt. Shirt down to her navel. Nosebleed heels. Hand inside his shirt before they exchanged hellos. Do you want me to go on?”
“No, we don’t,” Paul said.
“Merry Christmas, Mother,” Randi said.
I could almost taste her bitterness. I would have agreed with her that Evelyn’s timing was cruel, but the gloat disappeared from Evelyn’s eyes as she looked at me again.
“I only told them tonight because yet again the conversation had turned to how you were responsible for the breakup and it was your fault Seth tried to off himself. I’m sick of it. You’ve always been decent to me—you’re practically the only one who has—and I can’t stand around listening to that anymore.” Her face stiffened. “It’s not like I ruined Christmas. Seth pretty much took care of that when he swallowed a bottle of downers.”
“Shut up, Evelyn,” Randi said. “Just shut. Up.”
Evelyn flopped onto the love seat on the other side of the room next to the Christmas tree, pristine with white angels and silver stars and twinkling lights that tried their tiny hardest to enchant the room. They failed.
Paul nodded at the chair across from Randi and I took it. He sat on the arm of hers.
“Did you know this?” Randi’s eyes, bloated though they were, could still bore into me. “Did you ever have any indication that something like this might be going on?”
Something like this? No. A wild-maned woman on a screen was one thing. This? No. No, Evelyn had to be wrong.
“What does not answering mean?” Randi said.
I shook my head. “I never suspected this, no.” But why not? Was it such a leap from cybersex? Wasn’t this just acting out what he couldn’t do on the Internet? How long could that be satisfying?
If I’d been home, I would have thrown up.
“Evelyn, get Tara a glass of water,” Paul said.
“You get it.” Evelyn was halfway to the door, and she stopped to fry her mother with her eyes. “You wouldn’t believe me if I had video to prove it. You think I’m making this up because I despise my brother. But I don’t hate Tara. I’m doing this for her sake. Except . . . why did I even bother? You’re not going to take my word for it.”
The old house shivered as she stomped down the hall and slammed out the front door. I was doing a fair amount of shivering myself, and it wasn’t all from the draft that settled over the room.
“I don’t know if she’s telling the truth or not,” Paul said.
Randi slapped the other arm of the chair. “Of course she isn’t. When have we ever been able to trust her?”
“Maybe you can,” I said. And I only spoke my next words because I couldn’t stand the injustice playing out in front of me. “It isn’t out of the realm of possibility that Seth went to a prostitute.”
Randi came up sharpl
y in the chair. “Why would you even say that?”
“Because your son is addicted to pornography. I’ve seen him.”
I watched two strong, in-control people shrivel before my eyes. Paul sagged on the arm of the chair until his chin grazed the front of his sweater. Randi’s hands went to her face. The Grissoms were a portrait of crushing disappointment, and for a fleeting moment I was sorry I’d told them.
But only for a moment. Before an apology could even reach my lips, Paul got up and rubbed the back of his head.
“All right,” he said. “I’ve talked to men about this. Just because someone looks at porn doesn’t make him an addict. We overuse that word.”
“He’s an addict,” I said.
“If he is, then he’ll have to deal with it. We’ll get him help.”
“Stop.” Randi’s hands were now pressed to her temples as she bored in on me. “When did you see this?”
“I walked in on him,” I said. “He was sitting in front of a computer watching a woman on top of some guy and he was masturbating. I saw it. I heard it. He admitted it. Or don’t you believe me either?”
Paul was motionless. Randi’s always-in-control face blanched as if she were about to be sick right there on the Persian rug. She’d demanded it of me, and I gave it to her.
But I felt cruel.
“I can’t make any decisions about this right now,” she said finally. “I’m too—I’m too stunned.”
“You’re right,” Paul said.
Once again my sympathy for them evaporated. They were making the decision? What about Seth? Why wasn’t he here in this room having this conversation with us?
“Where is Seth?” I said.
“He’s still in the hospital,” Paul said. “He’s not doing as well as they’d hoped—” “He’s doing as well as can be expected.” Randi was throwing darts at me again and, like Evelyn, I was sick of it.
“Can’t you see now why I couldn’t marry him?” I said. “But I didn’t out him, did I? I haven’t told a single person because I knew what it would do to him.” Randi’s mouth slit open but I plowed on. “And you want to know why I didn’t help him? He won’t help himself. Every suggestion is, ‘No, that won’t work,’ and ‘No, I can’t do that.’ So enough with the blaming me, Randi. This is Seth’s responsibility and nobody else’s.”
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