by A J Grayson
Crap enough that he’d come to love a bottle better than Kate, the woman he’d had the misfortune to marry back when she’d told him she was pregnant. She hadn’t even been a good lay. A quickie up in the hills after half a case of beer. Definitely not the prom queen. The next day he’d thought her name was Karen, and had sent her packing as soon as he caught his first look at her in bright daylight. A cow of a woman. Absolutely no redeeming qualities. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he’d gone after her, but skirt’s skirt. Sometimes, with enough booze, that’s all the explanation a guy needs.
Andy stops himself. He’s being unfair. He’d had a drink in the old truck on his way home from work, not his first of the afternoon – that’s why he’s thinking like this. His thoughts are too harsh. Kate isn’t a cow, and there are some redeeming qualities in there. He knows he should be more understanding. When she cleans up she’s got a pretty face, in a homely sort of way. And she’s never tried to cheat on him. Not every man can say that, not with women the way they are these days. He’s got more friends at work who’ve been cheated on than who haven’t, and there’s a certain pride to be had in not falling into their ranks.
Andy is tired from a long day’s work, worn out in body and soul. He’s prone to being harsh when the day gets towards its close.
Still, she’d got herself pregnant, back on that first night. Five years ago, it was now, almost six. That was a hard sin to overlook. Women were supposed to take precautions against that sort of thing, but he’d been forced to recognize that he couldn’t expect that kind of common sense from a woman as thick-headed as Karen. Kate.
No, we were both drunk. Andy stiffens at the troubling collision of thoughts. Something inside compels him to accept some responsibility for their actions, for the pregnancy and the birth of their child; but he’d been raised firmly, and if there was one thing his old man had been clear on, it was that it’s the woman’s job to be watchful about that sort of thing. The responsibility Andy feels gets pushed aside. It wasn’t his fault. None of this is my fault. She should have been paying more attention.
She’d offered to get rid of it, the baby, once the doctor confirmed the home test. That still enraged Andy. You want to kill my kid?! he asked her. That had been the first time he’d struck her, and not one inch of him had felt bad about it. Not then, not now. You don’t threaten to butcher a man’s kid in the womb and not expect to have the idiot nonsense beat out of you.
Not that he ever enjoyed the beatings. No one did. Not in the receiving, not in the giving. But certain things are necessary. That had been a lesson learned early, too, and learned well.
He’d married Kate without a ring, and the kid had come.
And now there is a Christmas tree in the corner. It stares at Andy through the window, accusing him for his thoughts. Cry me up a river, it taunts. You’ve got the kid now. You’d better get a damned gift to put under here.
That’s the way Christmas works. That’s what it is. Obligations. Obligations on a life that couldn’t fulfil them if it wanted to.
Andy feels like bursting through the door, picking up the tree by its scrawny trunk and flinging the whole sorry sight out into the snow – cancelling the season, banishing the sense of guilt that haunts him. As if getting rid of the decoration would abolish the reminder it bore of all that had gone wrong in his life. As if what were left would be better.
But it’s been a long day, and Andy’s not a fool. The disappointment doesn’t go away when Christmas ends each year and the next fake holiday begins. That’s not the way a broken life works.
He looks down from the window. There’s grease on his hands from the shop, and what he really wants, more than revenge or release or the absence of the season, is another beer. And if there’s one thing in this house that’s never in short supply, it’s beer.
35
The Kitchen
The soup on the back burner is leftovers: two days’ worth, blended in with a few spices and a fistful of herbs from the garden. But the steaks in the frying pan are new – a special surprise. She’d found them on sale three days ago and hidden them in the freezer when she got home. Back behind the frozen peas where no one would ever look. Hidden so they could come out today and make for a Friday treat.
They’re sizzling now, and Kate Warrick’s nostrils draw in a long, full lung of the scent. She can’t remember the last time she cooked steak. They hadn’t been able to afford it in … well, she honestly couldn’t remember. That’s what had made the sale such a surprise. Genuine steak, at almost the cost of chuck beef. She’d even asked the Safeway butcher if the pricing label was a misprint, sure that her luck couldn’t be this good. He’d smiled politely and assured her, ‘Just a little special offer for the season.’ And she’d felt real Christmas joy in that moment. The spirit of giving, of goodwill: all of it. Bound up in butcher’s paper and a price tag a third of what it should be.
Her husband would be so happy with this. Kate wasn’t often able to surprise Andy, but he would be genuinely pleased tonight. She knew he’d had a long week at the garage, that he always got depressed at this time of year. His spirits weren’t where she wanted them. But then this little gift came along, an unexpected blessing in the Fresh Meats refrigerator, and she had been soaring with the thought that she could do something to change that. She could be the Good Wife, bringing joy to her husband. And she meant to do it well.
Kate was cooking the steak just the way she remembered he liked it, from back when they’d had such things a little more often. Sautéed in a little of the bacon fat she always kept in a coffee can in the refrigerator, a tradition she’d learned from her mother, sprinkled with pepper and Lays Seasoning Salt. She’d never cared for the red combo-seasoning herself – a little too tangy for her liking – but she knew he favoured it above just about any other spices that money could buy. The fact that it was half the price of anything else didn’t hurt, either. So she added it liberally, watching it soak into the fat and oils and turn a crusty brown from the heat.
Just before she served the meal she’d drop a pat of cold butter on top of each steak. That was the real trick. Your magic touch, babe, Andy had once called it. Kate smiles at the memory. Some memories – the good ones – feel a thousand years old, as if they’re part of the very fabric of her existence. This sentiment of ‘the good old days’ is a fable, she knows. She and Andy haven’t been together that long. It’s been just almost six years. Since before Tom was born, a little after he was conceived. But the memory of how he likes his favourite food makes Kate feel centuries old, looking back on days of real happiness.
Suddenly, a thought pries open eyes that had been closed with the pleasant memories. Will this be Tom’s first time having steak? It’s not quite a nonsense question, and for some reason it makes Kate doubly excited. It might well have been a few years since they’d last eaten this rare treat, and their son would have been too young then. Still on mashed vegetables and puréed chicken out of jars. Not that a boy’s first steak is generally considered a milestone in a growing life, but still. A first is a first.
Kate’s smile deepens. This is an unexpected source of happiness. To please her husband, to treat her son. The day is getting better with each thought.
Beyond the kitchen door the Christmas tree is in the front room, and knowledge of its proud place in the corner reassures her further. Andy took Tom out and got it last week, just as he’d said he would. There hadn’t been any dramatics. They’d gone out in the snow, bundled in as many warm clothes as they had, Andy with an axe in his hand and Tom filled with excitement and a well-defined vision in his head of what the perfect tree would look like. He’d narrated its dimensions to her the night before: the way its branches would angle to their point, the colour its needles would have, the amount of space that would linger between branches, allowing room for decorations. He had it all worked out. And they’d found just the right one. Tom had pronounced it ‘perfect in every way’ as he’d followed Andy back into th
e house later that evening, snowflakes falling from its needles onto the threadbare floor. Her son had been positively beaming. Even Andy had looked content.
Kate had decorated the tree the next day as best as she could. It took some creativity to make something out of nothing. They weren’t the sort of family that had an enormous cardboard box of Christmas ornaments down in the basement. But she had paper, scissors, string and imagination, and she’d decorated this tree the way she’d decorated each they’d shared over the past six years. And it was all perfect.
There are some moments in even the worst life when happiness forces its way through the grief, where paper angels are perfect ornaments and the scents of sizzling steak tantalize even a raw nose.
36
The Living Room
The day had been blissful and playful. As a boy, Tom Warrick supposes this is the way all days are supposed to be – the natural state of a twenty-four-hour period. He knows they’re not, and he’s had plenty which weren’t, but this one was. Every dimension of it had been just the way he wanted.
Before him the Christmas tree is idyllic. Mother had produced the most exquisite of all angels and snowflakes and stars from ordinary sheets of white paper, and with her sewing needle and a bit of thread had fashioned loops to hang them from its branches. Each one looked like it belonged precisely where she’d placed it, like the tree had been incomplete until just that snowflake was hung from just that branch, over and again until the ideal tree had found its ideal form. Tom sits in his favourite corner of the little living room and gazes at it with awed wonder. My tree is the way all trees should be. It is the tree by which all others should be judged.
My tree. The words comfort him. He’d gone up the hill with Father and helped pick it out, just a few days ago. Of all the trees in the forest, they’d found this one. It wasn’t big, but it was just the right size for them. It met the very specific requirements that Tom had formulated. It was the shape of the kind of longish triangle that he associated with a slice of pizza – not too fat, but not too skinny and tall. And it was the green of the finger paint that they used at school, if you mixed just a little yellow in. A bright and sunny green, even out in the snow. He liked the darker green of some of the other trees, too – the kind of green with some blue or even black in it – but they didn’t shine the way his tree did. There hadn’t been any question. This was the one.
Father had approved, even said, ‘Yeah, that ain’t bad, kid, not bad at all,’ and then Tom had been certain it was the tree for them. (Father had also said ‘Just call me Dad, or Pops’, as he’d done many times before; but Tom had heard the titles ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ in a story at school, and had been told these were ‘cultured’ words, and loved the sound of them – so that’s who they had become. They would just have to live with it.)
The snow had been fresh that afternoon as they’d hiked. The whole morning it had fallen in small, blue-white flakes; the kind that are almost like powder, that come when the weather is really cold. The kind that crunch under your shoes. It had made the afternoon magical. The sun had finally come out by the time Father came home, and when he and Tom had hiked into the woods it was like entering into a fairy tale.
Tom is truly happy, now, all these memories swirling like a happy fog in his mind. This is my tree. A boy feels real pride in a tree he’s brought into the house with his own two hands. There is a sense of genuine possession, and not the selfish kind (not being selfish is something being stressed very much in school these days). This tree had once been lonely and cold in the snow. Tom and Father had rescued it and brought it into a home, dressed it in lovely adornments (thanks to Mother’s help, of course), and made it part of the family. Being proud of that isn’t selfish. Being proud of that is kind.
In Tom’s hands now is a small book, and his attention falls back to its stiff pages. He’d swiped this one from the Blessing Box at school two days ago. The Blessing Box is a big yellow bin brought in each year by a local charity, and people are supposed to put things into it, not take them out. Toys, food, clothes. Whatever. Then the charity – a group that looked after the poor – would give the things to people who didn’t have anything.
Tom feels a little bad that he’s stolen the book from the Blessing Box, but he’ll put it back before Christmas. There aren’t really any books around his house, and the school library doesn’t start lending until students are in the fourth grade. And besides, people sometimes call him poor, so maybe the box is really for him anyway.
His love for books has always been strong. He loved the picture ones when he was smaller – the kind with unbendable cardboard pages and glossy cartoons that didn’t get ruined if you spilled milk or juice on them – and he still likes them. But he’s been learning to read, almost two years ahead of schedule, the teachers say, and he’s soaking up everything he can get his hands on. He read a book last week (also taken from the box, and since returned) about a cat with boots. Tom had enjoyed the sounds of the words, and there were some funny illustrations (though the pages were thinner, made from paper and not cardboard, and while the illustrations were still colourful he noted that they looked like they would be ruined if he spilled anything on them; this seems to be a trend with more grown-up books, and so he’s especially careful with them). The story itself, however, had struck him as a bit absurd. The cat’s adventures weren’t the issue. They were fascinating and interesting. But the author, which is what people who write books are called, had got one important detail very wrong. Every boy knows that a cat wears socks or mittens, not boots.
This book, the one in his hands now, is about trains. Tom can’t make out all the words, but he can at least get the sounds of them if he goes back and forth over the letters a few times. And a lot of the words he knows, and they make sense when he strings them together and thinks about them, and when he uses the pictures to help.
This story isn’t as funny as the one with the booted cat. It’s more serious, but he likes what he’s able to make out. He knows there’s a big hill in this story, and the main train engine is scared. There’s a big hill in front of him, big like the sky, and he doesn’t think he can make it over that hill. It’s impossible. It’s too steep for such a little train. But then he changes his mind. He thinks he can. He thinks he can …
37
The Kitchen
The scents of the pending meal are swirling together now in almost magical combination. The outside of the steaks are just starting to turn the darker red that signals the approach to medium-well, which is how Andy likes them. The fat around the edges is changing to the caramel-gold that even looks smooth and buttery and wonderful. The soup is simmering away, its herbs fragrant in the air. Kate has tossed a few handfuls of the frozen peas into a saucepan with a bit of oil and some salt and they’ve started to wrinkle with the heat and warm to the right temperature. The three pats of cold butter to go atop the finished steaks have already been cut, and she’s set them on a plate in the refrigerator to keep them solid until the moment is right.
She’s timed everything perfectly. Andy gets off work at 6.00 p.m. and always stays behind at the garage for a beer with his friends. Maybe two. But he’s always home by 7.00, since ‘Supper’s always at seven, ever since I was a kid.’ Andy doesn’t have many childhood traditions he’s keen to maintain, but a seven o’clock supper is an inviolable one.
It’s 6.58 now, and by her estimation the steaks need another three minutes to be at their perfect point of readiness. As Andy will be home any second, she’s delighted that everything is in order for his surprise. She’s laid the table already. Put out the good tablecloth to cover up the scratched surface of the wooden table, then set three places with a fork and a steak knife over a folded paper towel that serves quite nicely as a napkin. She’s pre-filled their glasses with cold water and two ice cubes each, and she’s even picked a handful of flowers from the hill out back and used another glass as a vase to decorate the centre of the table. It really will be a wonderful meal.
She looks down at herself. She’s wearing a simple frock, like most days, and the old apron over the top of it is covered in grease and handprints. Some of the grease has splashed up onto her rose-coloured sleeves and some has fallen below the hem of the apron onto the lower inches of the dress. She wonders for a moment whether she ought to go change into something else. She could even get out her Sunday clothes – but those were packed away in plastic at the back of their closet. It had been so long since they’d gone out together, or since Sunday had actually meant going into church and being seen by others. No, it would take too much time. And it didn’t matter, really. It was the meal that was meant to be the surprise, not her clothes.
Kate runs her fingers through her hair, straightening her appearance. She hears a creaking from outside, from the porch. The time has come. Andy is home. In a moment she’ll welcome him and Tom into …
She stops herself. Tom. She’d almost forgotten. Where was he now? She probably should have called him a few minutes ago, told him to go wash his hands and tidy himself up from whatever outdoor adventures he’d been up to during the afternoon. She’d want him looking nice when his father saw him.
And then a moment of brief panic overtakes her. Tom hasn’t been outside. She remembers, just now, that he’d asked her earlier if he could stay inside instead of going out to play.
‘Why inside, hon?’ she’d asked him. ‘What are you going to do kept up in here?’
‘I’ve got a book, Mother,’ he’d answered. He’d produced a thin book from his backpack and shown it to her. She didn’t ask where he’d got it from. She suspected he swiped books from the school now and then, but she also knew he was honest enough to return them, and since she and Andy couldn’t afford to buy him books of his own, she chose to turn a blind eye to the minor transgression. It was good that he had the interest, which his teacher said was a sign of a creative intellect. This was the only real way it could be fostered.