The Season of Us

by Holly Chamberlin

“Now, Virginia, I’m sure I threw it out long ago. Why would I have kept such a thing?”

  “No reason, Mom. I was just wondering.”

  “I do recall,” Ellen said musingly, “that it was a very good costume.”

  “It was the best, Mom,” Gincy said. “It was the best costume at the party.”

  CHAPTER 38

  “What do you think, Mom? Santa’s sleigh facing to the right or to the left?”

  Tamsin was crouched at the base of the old, indestructible tree where she was setting up a Christmas tableau on a blanket of cotton snow. The tableau featured a miniature Victorian village, including a bank, post office, tavern, and grammar school, and figurines representing a mother, father, two children, two grandparents, and a dog vaguely resembling a spaniel of some sort.

  Earlier that day Tamsin and her mother had gone downtown to gather a few more holiday decorations for Number Nineteen. At Ellen’s favorite shop (Gincy holding her glove to her nose the entire time they were there) Tamsin had fallen in love with the Victorian village, and though it was a bit pricey it was awfully charming, and Gincy had agreed they should buy it for her mother.

  “I don’t think it matters from which direction Santa is coming,” Gincy said. “I think people are just happy that he’s paying them a visit.”

  Tamsin laughed. “I suppose you’re right.”

  They had ignored the giant box of lights they had found in the basement, most of which Gincy figured were probably burned out, and bought several boxes of new tiny white lights at the hardware store Ed Gannon used to manage. No one working there now was old enough to have a personal memory of Ed Gannon, and no one recognized Gincy as his daughter. Everything changes, Gincy thought, glancing at the key-making machine as they left the old store. Everything.

  Together she and Tamsin had strung a line of twinklers (that was Tamsin’s word for the little lights) around the living room window and another around the windows of the upstairs bedrooms. Once Gincy had nailed to the front door the gaudily decorated wreath her mother had chosen the other day, the house finally looked appropriately festive.

  “Now we can decorate the tree,” Tamsin said, rising from the floor. “I’ll open the boxes.”

  “You’ll get dust all over your clothes,” Gincy warned. “I don’t know how they got so dusty in the basement. Dad kept things so clean down there.”

  Tamsin shrugged and unfolded the flaps of the three cardboard boxes lined up on the floor. Gincy watched as her daughter began to lift out the ornaments that had been in the Gannon family for at least fifty years.

  Gincy grimaced as Tamsin held up a crocheted . . . thing. It was an unhappy combination of browns and beiges, and around one end was tied a red ribbon. “What is this supposed to be?” Tamsin asked.

  “I was never sure,” Gincy admitted. “An animal of some sort? A Christmas snake? And I have no idea where it came from.”

  Tamsin turned the thing over in her hand. “I don’t see any eyes or nose or mouth. Maybe they fell off.” Tamsin shrugged, tossed the thing onto the couch, and continued to unpack the boxes. There was no doubt about it, Gincy thought. Most of the ornaments were tacky at best and ugly at worst—cheesy plastic elves in sequin bodysuits; leering, drunken-looking Santas; creepy snowmen made of oversized cotton balls badly glued together, with small black buttons for eyes. What, she wondered, had possessed her mother—or had it been her father?—to choose these things over classic glass ornaments and delicate silvery tinsel? Maybe, she thought, her parents hadn’t had the money for nicer ornaments. Maybe they had simply liked the poorly constructed snowmen and sparkly elves. And that was fine, too.

  “Wait,” Gincy said, “what’s that?” She reached into the box Tamsin was unpacking. Something had caught her eye....

  “What is it, Mom?”

  Gincy held out a slightly damaged Styrofoam ball now only partly covered in green glitter. At the top of the ball a small plastic hook protruded.

  “Tommy and I made these,” she told her daughter “When he was about five and I was about ten. There were at least three or four of them.”

  Tamsin made a quick search of the box. “That’s the only one left, I think,” she said.

  Gincy gazed at the little ball, and suddenly she was forty years in the past and she and her little brother were sitting at the kitchen table, craft materials spread out before them on a single layer of newspaper. Her mother, she remembered, had left the kitchen for some reason, and not a minute after she had gone one of them—but which one? She couldn’t remember!—had poured a handful of glitter from its narrow plastic tube and tossed it into the air.

  A full-blown glitter war had ensued, with glue squirting across the table and glitter descending in clouds onto every surface of the kitchen. Gincy smiled. She and Tommy had been punished for making a mess, but boy it had been fun while it lasted. She would ask Tommy if he remembered that day when he next came by.

  “Still no word from Tommy?” Gincy asked, after securing the ball to a branch of the tree.

  Tamsin shook her head. “He hasn’t called me. Maybe he’s talked to Grandma.”

  “Maybe I should go around to his place. See for myself if he’s all right.”

  “Grandma says he always turns up. . . . But maybe you should go, Mom. I could come with you.”

  “No,” Gincy said firmly. “If I go, I’ll go alone.” The last thing she wanted was for her daughter to witness her uncle in serious distress. Or worse.

  And suddenly another old memory struck her, and with force. She must have been around eight, making Tommy about three. They were in a neighbor’s yard or maybe at the public playground. For the life of her she couldn’t remember either of her parents being around. If they were, it would put the lie to the rest of the memory, which was an image of Tommy falling and hitting his head on the edge of a sandbox. There was blood, what seemed like a lot of it. And then she was lifting her brother into her arms. He was crying and screaming and she, a skinny little kid, was stumbling along under his weight, telling him it would be okay. Taking him home.

  What exactly had happened after that, Gincy couldn’t recall. She did know that Tommy had been fine. He hadn’t needed stitches, and there hadn’t even been a scar to memorialize the event. But she remembered the day now, as clearly as if it were yesterday. . . .

  “Mom,” Tamsin said. “Are you crying?”

  Gincy startled and forced her eyes wide. They were a bit wet. “Of course not,” she said. “Why would I be crying?”

  Tamsin shrugged. “This fire engine ornament,” she said, holding up a battered bit of tin. “Was it Tommy’s?”

  Gincy laughed. “It was mine. For a time when I was little, I wanted to be a fireman. There were no women firefighters back then—okay, I’m old—but I didn’t see why that should stop me.”

  “Good for you, Mom!” Tamsin cried. “A woman before your time! What did Tommy want to be?”

  Gincy thought hard. “I know,” she said after a moment. “When he was very little, maybe three or four, he said that he wanted to be a rock. How odd that memory should come to me now, after all these years. And how odd that he should have wanted to be a rock. Why a rock, I wonder.”

  “Maybe he meant something else but he didn’t have the word for it,” Tamsin suggested. “Little kids always mess up words.”

  “You mean he really wanted to be a sock? Or a clock?”

  “Ha, ha. Maybe he heard someone saying that someone else was dependable like a rock and he thought, ‘That’s what I want to be.’ ”

  “We’ll never know,” Gincy said, “unless we ask him, but I doubt he’d remember that far back.”

  “You know, Mom, when Uncle Tommy and I went to the trolley museum the other day, he told me he really misses Grandpa. He said they used to watch ball games together all the time, football in the fall and baseball in the spring.”

  “Did they?” Gincy said with a smile. “I didn’t know. Well, I’m glad Tommy was able to share that with you. I don�
��t know much about his friends, such as they are. I suspect they’re not really a support system, just drinking buddies.”

  But maybe, Gincy thought, drinking buddies were enough for Tommy, as long as he had his family. As long as his family didn’t let him down, especially now that Ed Gannon was gone. She made a mental note to ask Rick about giving Tommy money enough to either repair his truck or buy a decent used one. And when they had finished decorating Number Nineteen for the holiday, she would get in her car and drive to Tommy’s apartment. No matter what she found there, knowing was better than not knowing.

  “You’re not hanging that candy cane properly, Virginia. Here, let me do it.”

  Gincy turned to see her mother standing at the entrance to the living room. Since when, she thought, was there a right or a wrong way to hang a candy cane? Only one end had a hook! She remembered what Clare had said the other day—there was something funny about her mother’s habit of contradiction and criticism. Gincy handed the candy cane to her mother. “Here you go, Mom,” she said.

  “Oh,” Ellen said, then, giving the candy cane a final small adjustment on its branch, “I just spoke to your brother. He’s fine, like I told you, Virginia. His boss at the convenience store gave him more hours this week and he’s been busy.”

  “I’m so glad he’s okay!” Tamsin cried.

  Gincy, too, felt enormous relief, but she still wished her brother had called her back. But why should he have, she thought. She had never shown any real interest in him since the very earliest days; she had never expressed any real concern after they were small children. How would he possibly know that she cared about his welfare? A few calls to his cell phone couldn’t make up for years of neglect.

  “That’s a lovely village!” Ellen said, pointing down at Tamsin’s arrangement on the white cotton snow. “Is that for me? Where did it come from?”

  “We got it at your favorite store, Grandma, the one you took us to with Clare. Bea’s Hive.”

  “Well . . .” Ellen cleared her throat. “Thank you, Tamsin.”

  Gincy was reaching for one of the awful little elves to hang next to a candy cane when she became aware that her mother had turned her attention away from the Victorian village under the tree and was eying her critically, from head to foot and back again.

  “Mom,” she said. “What are you looking at?”

  “You don’t look as wrinkled and messy as you used to, Virginia.”

  Tamsin tried but failed to hide her smile.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Gincy said. And to be fair, she thought, she had used to dress like a slob. Over the years, as she had risen in her career, she had made a serious effort to dress in a more mature fashion. People took you seriously when your clothes were clean and pressed. If she still wore sweatpants, jeans worn through at the knees, and overly large T-shirts at home, well, that could be excused.

  “Maybe it was that Clare who was a good influence on you,” Ellen went on.

  “Mom was a good influence on Clare, too, Grandma,” Tamsin said. “Mom and her other friend, Danielle. They both helped Clare leave her awful fiancé way back when. They helped give her the courage.”

  “Breaking an engagement is a serious matter,” Ellen said with a little frown.

  “And Clare left him at the altar!” Tamsin added.

  Gincy cringed. “That wasn’t my idea, Mom, I swear. I was as shocked as anyone.”

  “It must have been like in a movie! What was that one with Julia Roberts like, a century ago? Runaway Bride or something?”

  “Was he really an awful man?” Ellen asked.

  “Yes, Mom,” Gincy said, “he was awful and meanspirited. Clare would have been miserable being married to him.”

  Ellen gave a firm nod. “Then you and Danielle did the right thing. Virginia? Thank you for the little village.”

  “Glad you like it, Mom,” Gincy said. “Really.”

  Ellen, having said her peace, arranged the candy canes to her liking, and pronounced on her daughter’s decent appearance, went off to the kitchen.

  There was no doubt about it, Gincy thought, picking up the unidentified crocheted object and turning it in her hand as Tamsin had done. Her mother had improved since the unexpected arrival of her daughter and granddaughter. Their presence seemed to have nudged her back to some interest in life, and she had already gained back a few pounds. Maybe it would be all right to leave Appleville in the next day or two.

  Gincy was no saint or martyr. She missed her husband, and though she knew he would join her at her mother’s for Christmas Day if she asked, bringing Justin with him, she would rather be home, under her own roof, in her own pleasant home.

  And why else, she thought, glancing at the candy cane her mother had insisted on hanging herself—the right way—why else would her mother have asked twice how long she and Tamsin were planning to stay unless she was prepared for them to leave? No doubt Ellen Gannon wanted her home back under her own control, now that she had regained some of her old spirit along with her appetite. That was understandable. She was a proud and independent woman. I’m like her in that way, Gincy thought. As in so many other ways.

  Well, maybe they would leave the following day, Christmas Eve. Or maybe they would stay through Christmas morning. Yes, that was a better idea. She would ask Tommy to come by Number Nineteen, and she would make her mother and her brother a big Christmas breakfast—no runny eggs or too crispy bacon, maybe pancakes instead, and not with lumps—and see them settled with plenty of good, easy-to-prepare food in the house for a decent Christmas dinner—no prepackaged frozen meals or fast food. And then she and Tamsin would set out for Boston, where they would spend the afternoon and evening celebrating as a family with Rick and Justin.

  Whatever she decided, she knew she would be back in Appleville some time in January—after her birthday on the first, which she would definitely spend in Boston, no doubt exuberantly thanking Rick for whatever it was she found in that little box already under their tree. She would be back to Appleville to confirm that Tommy was all right and that her mother wasn’t once again sliding into depression and lethargy. No more six-month intervals between visits. And she would call her mother every other day and her brother once a week. She would make it a point.

  “Mom?”

  Tamsin’s voice brought her back from her reverie. “What?” she said.

  “What are you doing to that thing?”

  Gincy frowned and looked down at the crocheted object still in her hand. She was gripping it by what might be its neck.

  “It looks like you’re strangling it,” Tamsin said. “You shouldn’t strangle the family’s Christmas snake.”

  Gincy laughed and tossed the thing to her daughter. “Don’t ever let your father see that,” she said. “You know how he feels about snakes.”

  CHAPTER 39

  It was late afternoon and the sky was steadily darkening. The three women were gathered in the living room, Gincy and Tamsin on the couch and Ellen in what had always been “her chair,” a high-backed armchair bought on sale at one of those big-box furniture stores a good twenty-five years earlier.

  “The tree looks very nice, Virginia,” Ellen said.

  Gincy, who was checking her office e-mail, looked up from her laptop and smiled. While it certainly couldn’t compare to her neighbors’ potted trees with their theme decorations, the old Gannon family tree did have a sort of charm, even if it was indefinable.

  “We need some Christmas music,” Tamsin announced, and she got up from the couch.

  Gincy and Rick had given her parents a CD player years earlier; Ellen had been suspicious—“The radio has always been fine for me”—but Ed had taken to it and over time had amassed a decent collection of music, including some popular jazz, big band favorites, and the much loved Christmas standards.

  “This one’s got a cute cover,” Tamsin said, loading a CD. “Bing Crosby, whoever he is.”

  After a few fairly secular ballads, the opening bars of “God Rest Ye Merry,
Gentlemen” sounded through the living room. When the chorus came along, Gincy found herself quietly singing along with Bing’s famous bass baritone.

  “Oh, tidings of comfort and joy . . .”

  Ellen sighed.

  Gincy looked up from her laptop. Her mother’s expression was wistful. “What’s wrong, Mom?” she asked.

  Ellen put her hand briefly to her heart. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s just that this was your father’s favorite Christmas carol.”

  “That’s right, Mom. I remember him singing it. He had such a good voice when he was younger. So clear. A lovely tenor.”

  “I remember Grandpa singing, too,” Tamsin said. “All sorts of songs. What was that goofy, really ancient song—something about a cement mixer and putty? It used to make me laugh so hard.”

  “That’s why he sang it,” Gincy said. “He loved to hear you laugh. Other people being happy made him happy.”

  “That’s probably why he gave me a teddy bear every time he saw me,” Tamsin said. “He knew how much I love teddy bears. Now I feel like I’m going to cry.”

  Gincy put her arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “We all miss him,” she said. “Right, Mom?”

  But Ellen didn’t answer. Instead she rose from her chair and went off in the direction of the kitchen. For a moment Gincy thought that maybe she shouldn’t have tried to include her mother in the conversation. Then again, Ellen had been the one to mention the carol being Ed’s favorite. Her mother was probably fine, just a bit melancholy. Even for the happiest, most content of people, Christmas could bring moments of poignant sadness as well as moments of great joy.

  A few minutes later, Gincy and Tamsin heard a cry come from the kitchen.

  “Grandma!” Tamsin shouted

  “Stay here unless I call for you,” Gincy told her daughter, literally tossing her laptop aside as she leapt up from the couch. As she hurried toward the kitchen she pulled her phone from her pocket, prepared to call 911.

  “My, God, Mom,” she cried, “what’s happened?”

  Her mother stood slumped against the counter, weeping and whimpering. On the cutting board behind her were two peeled potatoes, one of which had been sliced in half. And one of her mother’s dull knives sat next to it, a tiny spot of blood on the blade.