by M. E. Kerr
“Brenda Belle and I have something in common then,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“Well, I never knew my mother, either.” I could see it made him uncomfortable to bring up the subject of my mother again, so I babbled on. “It’s harder for a girl, I guess. I feel sorry for her living with those two old ladies.”
“Don’t let that be the only reason you want to see a girl,” my grandfather told me. “When you pity someone, sometimes all it means is you wish someone would pity you.”
I was thinking that one over while the news continued on television.
Suddenly the subject was dropped. The reason was what came across our television screen then. It was my father getting out of a helicopter on the White House lawn. The Vice-President was waiting to meet him.
“Your old man’s put on weight,” my grandfather said. “I saw pictures when he was in Moscow and he was a lot thinner.”
“Yeah,” I answered, watching my father, all smiles, shaking hands with the Veep.
“I didn’t know he was heading for Washington,” my grandfather said.
“Neither did I,” I said. “I thought he was still in Paris.”
“Maybe you’ll see him at Christmas after all,” my grandfather said. “Maybe he’ll be sending for you.”
I said, “I doubt it.”
“Oh well, he’s a busy man,” my grandfather said.
“I haven’t been with him the last two Christmases anyway,” I said. “I spent them with Billie Kay.”
“Did you want to spend them with him?”
“No,” I lied. “Christmas is a commercial holiday. All the original meaning has gone out of Christmas.” I’d gotten that line from some preacher at chapel.
“I never liked the original meaning to begin with,” Grandpa Blessing said. “We shouldn’t celebrate the day someone is born, or the day someone dies. You can’t help being born, or dying; everyone’s born and everyone dies. We should celebrate accomplishments.”
“I never thought of that,” I said.
“I’d like to find out the day beer was invented,” my grandfather said. “I’d celebrate that day, all right.”
The White House scene was off the screen and there was a story about a train wreck being televised. My grandfather went into the kitchen for another beer. I sat there watching the train wreck without really seeing it. I was thinking about my father. I wondered what my father said to people like the President and the Vice-President. I wondered if he ever interrupted them by saying, “Hell, that’s manifest knowledge, don’t bore me with it,” as he often said to me; or, “Don’t mouth other people’s opinions. Form your own!”
When the telephone rang, I made no effort to answer it. A lot of people in Storm pestered my grandfather by calling him up to recite the symptoms of their cats and dogs. That way they decided whether or not the symptoms were serious enough to warrant a visit to Dr. Cutler. My grandfather was always polite and helpful, but I think it hurt him a lot. He never blamed Cutler outright for anything; he never said Cutler had stolen his practice, though that was the rumor in Storm. Marlon Fredenberg had told me that much the first week I was there. All my grandfather ever said about Cutler was that he had his reasons for not wanting anything to do with Cutler, and that included talking about Cutler. Marlon Fredenberg said the least Cutler could have done was ask my grandfather to assist him, but Cutler just bought him out; that ended that.
“Phone’s for you!” my grandfather called from the kitchen.
I went out to answer it, figuring that if it was my father asking me to guess where he was calling from, I’d just say, “I suppose you’re at Buckingham Palace, or the Kremlin, or the White House,” to sort of take the wind out of his sails. I don’t know why I wanted to do that, particularly. I just did. I wasn’t much of a loving son. I should have been glad he’d call me at all.
“A.J.? How would you like a visitor for Christmas?” It wasn’t my father. It was Billie Kay calling from New York City.
“You mean you’d come here?” I said. I was really glad to hear her voice, but in a way I couldn’t picture Billie Kay in Storm. She liked luxury too much. I couldn’t see her in my grandfather’s house.
“I’ll stay at the hotel,” she said. “Will you and your grandfather invite me for Christmas dinner?”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” I said. I knew Billie Kay would expect this gala feast; she was very big on holidays and celebrating. I didn’t see how I could ask my grandfather to spend the money on a turkey and all the trimmings, and my own allowance was too small. Then too, I remembered my grandfather’s last call to Late Night Larry. He’d told Late Night Larry Christmas wasn’t even celebrated in the early days in New England, because it was a feast day of the Church of England, against which the Pilgrims and Puritans were in rebellion. In 1659 a law was passed imposing a fine on anyone celebrating Christmas. (“You don’t say!” Late Night Larry had responded. My grandfather had said, “I do say! Thanksgiving was the important day! Not this phony Christmas!”)
“Let me talk to my grandfather,” I told Billie Kay. I put my hand over the mouthpiece so she wouldn’t hear our conversation.
“It’s Billie Kay,” I said. “She wants to make a big deal over Christmas, but I’d just as soon tell her we don’t go in for phony holidays.”
“We don’t go in for fancy holidays,” my grandfather said, “but we’ll cook up a meal she won’t forget. Tell her to come, A.J.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Is the Pope Catholic?” he said.
“Billie Kay,” I said, “we’d love to have you.”
“Great, A.J. I’m bringing Janice. I hope you don’t have any dogs there?”
“You can bring Janice,” I said. “I’ll make a reservation at the hotel.”
After I finished talking with her, my grandfather brought his beer into the living room and sat down opposite me. “So we’re going to have two dinner guests, huh?” he said.
“Janice is just a Siamese cat,” I said.
“You know, A.J.,” he said, “Christmas wasn’t even celebrated in the early days in New England.”
“Is that right?” I said. I didn’t want to tell him that I’d been sitting right beside him when he’d gone into all that with Late Night Larry. I knew he’d blacked out, the same way Billie Kay sometimes did when she drank too much. I let him finish. Then I said, “I’m sorry I got you into this, Grandpa.”
“What are you talking about?” he said. “Times change. It isn’t 1659 anymore.”
“But I know you never even liked the original meaning of Christmas,” I said.
“The original meaning has gone out of Christmas,” he answered. “You said that yourself just a short while ago. Where’s your memory, A.J.? It can mean anything we want it to mean!”
I laughed. “It’ll mean a lot of work for you.”
“I like to cook,” he said. “Remember, you’re talking to Chuck From Vermont. . . . I’ll tell you something else, A.J.”
“What’s that?”
“I think we ought to have a tree. I think we ought to fix this place up so it looks a little more like Christmas!”
“Do we have the money?” I asked.
“No, we don’t have the money,” he said.
“I could wire my father for some,” I said.
“Not on your sweet little behind,” my grandfather said. “I’ve got a turkey in the deep freeze.”
“But we shouldn’t buy a tree.”
“We won’t. And we won’t cut one down for our own selfish purposes, either. We’ll make a tree from pine branches,” my grandfather said. “And we’ll decorate it ourselves.”
“What’ll we use for decorations?” I said.
“What do we have the most of around here, A.J.?” I looked at him, puzzled.
“Beer cans, A.J.!” my grandfather laughed. “Empty beer cans!”
Christmas was a week away.
Notes for a Novel by B.B.B.
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br /> “Where have you been?” Adam asked me a few days before Christmas. “Have you been sick?”
I was standing by my locker, getting out of my parka. I grabbed my wool muffler and draped it across my face like a veil. “I was asked to join the sheik’s harem,” I said. My Hairgo scab was gradually disappearing, but it was still there. I had covered it with pancake makeup, but on very close inspection there was a thin scar mustache.
“Seriously,” Adam smiled, “how come you missed school this past week?”
It was all thanks to Aunt Faith, who’d persuaded my mother that the humiliation of going to school in that condition would far outweigh any damage done by missing five days of classes. Reluctantly my mother wrote an excuse for me, declaring I had been felled by flu. I studied my lessons daily in our sun parlor, nursing my wound with skin creams and making dozens of promises to my mother that I would never fool with a depilatory again.
“Go away,” I told Adam as I kept my muffler across my face. “The sheik is a jealous lover. Even now his spies are observing me.”
The only person observing me, besides Adam Blessing, was Christine Cutler. Her locker was a few doors from mine.
“Hi, Brenda Belle!” she called over. “How are you?”
Since when had she cared how I was?
“Okay,” I answered.
Adam was still standing there.
I told him, “If you must communicate with me, do so by telephone this evening. I cannot risk the sheik’s disapproval.”
He laughed and sauntered away, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll see you in Science.”
Then Christine Cutler came up behind me and said, “Do you want to be my partner in Science?”
I kept my face turned from hers. “Why do I need a partner?”
“You’ve been absent,” she said. “We’re working on experiments for the principle of conservation of mass.”
“I don’t like to work as a team,” I said. Any other time I would have given my right arm to be her partner, but not in the condition I was in.
“We have to work as partners,” she said. “How about it?”
“Okay,” I said giving up. “O-kay.” I took off my muffler and faced her.
She didn’t blink an eye; she didn’t notice anything different about my face.
“Don’t forget,” she said. “We’re partners. See you after Homeroom.”
I mumbled something back and purposely headed in the opposite direction, toward the drinking fountain. I heard about six male voices shout out, “Hey, Christine, wait for me!” and over my shoulder I saw them scrambling forward to walk with her.
I began to wonder why she was suddenly interested in me. All through Homeroom, I feared the worst. Was it possible that Christine Cutler sensed some dreadful change taking place in my body? Since she was never known to show any interest in females, was it possible she was picking up weird vibrations?
Our Science teacher was named Ella Early. She always made me uncomfortable because I sometimes thought I’d wind up exactly like her. She was the kind of person it didn’t matter how old she was, she was old, if you know what I mean: She was never young. She never wore colors, just black. She always had chalk dust on her dresses, and she wore her hair back in a bun, and her face looked as if it would break if she ever smiled, which she never did. You just knew that no one had ever said to her, “Ella, I love you,” and that no one ever waited for her to come, or cared if she wasn’t there. She lived by herself in a room at Miss Jameson’s boarding house, and noons she ate at a table by herself in the cafeteria. She was the type you could never imagine having a father or mother or sisters or brothers. She was cranky and mean, and she was the only teacher who never put up decorations in her classroom at Christmas time. There were lots of nicknames for her: “The Robot,” “Ella Late Who Has No Fate” and “E.E., The Worker Bee.”
She was an example of what can happen to a person who nobody cares about, and I could see myself ending up that way after my mother and my aunt disowned me for never marrying. I’d probably get a job teaching in New York City where nobody knew me, and when I wasn’t in school, I’d wander around the streets of the city talking to myself like a crazy.
Ella Early instructed us to place copper and sulphur in a sealed test tube; then we were supposed to weigh the mixture. I was concentrating on the assignment when Christine Cutler said to me, “Adam Blessing is certainly trying to get your attention, Brenda Belle.”
Every time I looked up, he was grinning at me across the room.
“I can’t help that,” I said.
“You’re not like I thought you were,” she said.
I blushed with apprehension and fear. I was afraid of what she would say next. (“Brenda Belle, have you had a sex change?”)
“What did you think I was like, anyway?” I muttered as we heated the copper and sulphur.
“I didn’t think you were very cool,” Christine said.
“Am I?” I said, trying to raise my voice an octave.
“Yeah,” she answered in her best breathless tone. She was busy tossing back her long yellow hair and watching Adam watch me. He just kept watching me that way, and it began to make me nervous. I figured that he’d probably never get it out of his head that he’d witnessed me buying the Hairgo. Christine was sort of smiling in his direction, smiling at him smiling at me, and I began to imagine that she knew about the Hairgo, too, that while I was absent they’d laughed about it together.
“We’re supposed to weigh this stuff now,” I said.
“You weigh it,” she said.
“I thought we were partners,” I said.
“We are. I’ll record the weight.”
“You can’t record the weight while you’re looking across the room,” I said.
“He’s different from Storm boys, isn’t he?” she said.
“Is he?”
“Not just his clothes,” she said.
“What about his clothes?”
“He wears really nice clothes,” she said. “Expensive clothes.”
“He does?” I said. His clothes didn’t look all that special to me; in fact, I’d never noticed his clothes.
“He has a certain self-assurance,” she said.
“Miss Early is watching us,” I said.
After we’d recorded the weight, while we were waiting for Miss Early to tell us how to graph the results, Christine Cutler said, “What are you doing Christmas Eve, Brenda Belle?”
“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” I said.
“I’m having a small party,” she said. “Why don’t you ask Adam Blessing to come to it with you?”
“I didn’t know I was invited.”
“I’m inviting you now.”
“I’ll try to make it,” I said. That was the understatement of the year. I had never been invited to the Cutlers’. I wondered if she’d been afraid to invite me because I might not be able to think of anyone to ask. Her crowd was always paired off. I supposed she thought Adam and I were a pair.
‘“Come about eight o’clock,” she said.
“No talking about anything but the assignment!” Ella Early said. “This isn’t a social hour!”
After the bell rang, Adam was waiting for me just outside the door of Science class.
I decided that if Christine Cutler couldn’t see anything wrong with my face, chances were that Adam Blessing wouldn’t, either.
It was a wrong decision.
As I glanced up at him, full face, and smiled, he said, “Is that what that stuff did to your face? I was wondering why you were trying to hide it.”
“Lower your voice, creep!” I said angrily.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’re really stupid about some things,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I didn’t know you were sensitive about it.”
“You’ve been going to all-boy schools too long,” I said. I was close to tears, but I wasn’t going to let him know that. I thought of M
arilyn Pepper’s pimples, Sue Ellen Chayka’s broken nose, and Diane Wattley’s bowlegs—anything I could think of to keep from feeling sorry for myself. I told Adam, “You’re no great prize, you know. I was just asked to a Christmas Eve party on condition that I don’t bring you.” The words just came out.
He looked really surprised. “You were?”
“I was,” I said.
“Whose party?”
“Never mind,” I said, hating my own big mouth for really fixing things for me that time.
He walked beside me silently for a while, and then he said, “I’m doing something Christmas Eve, anyway.”
Fine, I thought to myself; at least I spared myself the humiliation of being turned down.
“I don’t like parties, anyway,” he said. “I’ve been to so many parties where people mouth other people’s opinions that it all bores me. All you hear at parties is a lot of manifest knowledge.”
“A lot of what?” I asked him.
“Manifest knowledge,” he answered.
“I know it,” I said. I had no idea what he was talking about. “Oh, that’s the truth, all right,” I said.
“I’ve got this friend coming in from New York City to spend Christmas with me,” he said.
“Did he go to school with you?”
“It’s a she,” he said.
“Great!” I said, nearly bent double by a sudden stab of disappointment. “I hope you have a fabulous time.”
“It’s nothing like that,” he said. “She’s old enough to be my grandmother.”
I would have to go to Christine Cutler’s alone. It wasn’t a place you took just anyone.
“I don’t particularly like old people,” I managed to carry on the conversation. “They meddle with your life.”
“Not Billie Kay,” he said. “She isn’t a meddler.”
“Oh, la-di-da,” I said. “I gather you mean Billie Kay Case of Hollywood fame and fortune.”
“How did you know?” he said.
“The movie star I’m spending Christmas Eve with told me,” I said.
“But Billie Kay Case is who I mean,” Adam said.
“We must all get together and drop names,” I said.