Vinegar Hill

by A. Manette Ansay

  “Smells good,” James says, not looking at his mother.

  Ellen asks quickly, “When are you bringing up the tree?”

  “Oh, soon,” he says. “When you’re done with this, I guess,” and he gestures vaguely at the ornaments, the twisted red and white ropes of cranberries and popcorn.

  “We’re almost done,” Ellen says. “I want to leave time for a nap after supper so we’re all wide awake for Midnight Mass.”

  “What kind of tree is it?” Amy suddenly asks James.

  “What?”

  “You know, like is it a fir, or a Scotch pine?”

  James considers this. “I guess you’ll have to tell me when you see it,” he says. “Maybe it’s just a Christmas tree.”

  “Mama made goose so it fell off the bone,” Mary-Margaret says. “This goose will be dried right up.”

  “I think it will be fine,” James says softly. He kisses Ellen’s cheek, surprising her, then heads back into the living room. Mary-Margaret sulks, wrapping the red flannel scarf more tightly around her neck, but she doesn’t say anything else. After James is gone, Amy rolls her eyes and says, “There’s no such thing as a Christmas tree.”

  “Use your imagination,” Ellen says.

  But Amy rolls her eyes a second time. Lately, she’s been studying James, looking for signs of weakness, for chances to prove him wrong. She’s at an age where she is figuring out that her parents are not perfect; she resents it, resents them, but it is James whom she blames. It frightens Ellen sometimes to think of Amy as a ten-year-old girl, almost a teenager, certainly beginning to emerge as an individual person. She watches Amy work with the scissors, searching for clues that will tell her what Amy will be like when she’s grown, eight Christmases from now. She wonders what all of them will be like, as she scours the countertop with bleach, thinking of James’s unexpected kiss.

  During halftime, James goes into the basement. He’s down there for a long time before they hear him curse. His voice travels up the heating vent and echoes in the living room as if he were right there. “Got-dammit!” he says. The kids giggle and run downstairs. Mary-Margaret giggles too, sneaks looks at Ellen; her boy is being naughty. She sits in her parlor chair by the window in her pink chenille robe, her hair freshly curled, rinsed the color of the faintest blue sky. Beside her, Fritz sprawls in his La-Z-Boy. When Ellen moves the end table from between their chairs to make room for the tree, his sock feet stick straight up like exclamations.

  “Where the hell am I going to set my coffee?” he says. “How the hell can I see to read without the lamp?”

  “The Christmas tree will give off light,” she says. “Or I can set the lamp up somewhere else, if you want.”

  Balloons fill the TV screen; the crowd cheers. It is time for the halftime show. Amy and Herbert race back up from the basement, and Ellen hears the sound of metal being dragged across concrete, then the thump-rest-thump-rest as James jerks the tree up the stairs.

  “Got-dammit!”

  “How’s it look?” she asks the kids.

  Herbert says, “Big.”

  Amy says, “Green.”

  “Where the hell am I going to set my paper?” Fritz says, just as James and the tree burst out of the stairwell in an explosion of painted bark and plastic needles. The tree is a vivid, neon green, strangled in wide ropes of gold and silver tinsel. Red glass balls glisten like wounds. The angel at the top is missing a wing, and one of her eyes is askew.

  “It’s already decorated,” Ellen says.

  “Less work this way,” James pants. “You just bring it up, no hassles.”

  “Oh,” she says, and he jams it between Fritz and Mary-Margaret’s chairs, in the space where the end table used to be. It is so tall that the angel is pushed flat against the ceiling. The smell of the basement fills the room: moist concrete, mildew.

  “Some of the ornaments are broken,” Amy says.

  “Look, there’s a spider,” Herbert says. “Yuk.”

  “There’s another one,” Amy says.

  “No problem,” James says. “We’ll just pick off the broken ornaments, and as for the spiders…”

  He disappears into the bathroom and comes back with the Lysol. PINE SCENTED, it says in bold letters across the side. “That’s expensive,” Mary-Margaret says, but James opens fire on the tree. Spiders drop from the branches and scuttle across the moss-colored carpet. Amy and Herbert stomp most of them.

  “There,” James says. His eyes water through the Lysol, and the angel’s skewed eye seems to be watering, too.

  “I don’t like this Christmas tree,” Herbert says.

  “Come on, now,” James says, sounding playful, but showing too many teeth. “Isn’t this the best Christmas tree we’ve ever had?”

  It is the ugliest Christmas tree Ellen has ever seen. The tree forms a perfect triangle, and the metal trunk is painted a smooth, artificial brown, the color of tree trunks in children’s books. Real trees are lopsided, too fat in the middle, skinny on top. Real trees have bald spots, ragged trunks, rough edges.

  “How am I going to read my goddamn paper without the lamp, that’s what I want to know,” Fritz says.

  “For heaven’s sake, I’ll set up your lamp on the other side,” Ellen says.

  “You forgot the cotton,” Mary-Margaret says.

  “The mice got into it,” James says. “Pa, I’ll set some traps down there if you want.”

  “There’s no mice in that basement,” Fritz says. “There’s no goddamn mice any place in this house.”

  “What’s the cotton for?” Ellen asks.

  James gives her a funny look. “Snow,” he says. “You know, you put the cotton under the tree so it looks like snow, and then you set the presents on it. Pa, it’s crawling with mice down there. Why don’t you let me set some traps?”

  Fritz stands up, hoists his pants; James’s face goes gray.

  “C’mon, Pa,” James says softly. “I don’t mean nothing by it.”

  “We don’t need to have snow,” Ellen says, trying to smooth things over.

  But Fritz is suddenly angry. “What,” he says, and he snaps off the TV, “it ain’t good enough for you, Jimmy? It ain’t good enough for you here?”

  “Pa, I didn’t mean that.”

  “You think you can do better you are welcome to leave right now and take the rest of ’em with you and all their goddamn commotion. Bringing up this nonsense,” he says, and he’s yelling now, waving his arm at the tree. “All this bullcrap. Let me tell you something. This ain’t no goddamn slum. There’s no goddamn mice in the goddamn basement, do you understand?”

  He grabs James by the collar and punches him in the face. Blood spurts from James’s nose. He backs away, his head bent to his chest, making no move to defend himself. Fritz hits him again. The blow glances off James’s shoulder; Fritz kicks him in the shins before he turns away, breathing heavily. It has happened so quickly that it doesn’t seem real, but then James licks blood from the top of his lip, and Ellen hurts for him, she is burning with a clean, hot rage. She approaches Fritz from behind, not knowing what she will do, but James looks up and sees her. Then she feels how she is shaking all over.

  “Get the kids’ coats,” he tells her thickly.

  “No, Jimmy,” Mary-Margaret says, but James is pushing the kids through the room and into the entryway. Ellen follows with their coats, still trembling, hearing the crash and tinkle of the tree being thrown to the ground, Fritz grunting with the effort. James shoves them all roughly out the front door; the sudden cold air hurts Ellen’s head.

  “What about your mother?” she says to James.

  “Pa won’t bother her,” James snaps. He wipes his mouth and chin with a tissue, fumbles the keys from the pocket of his coat. “All those years, it was always me and Mitch who took the brunt of it.”

  The kids stare straight ahead. Snow is still falling, and the smell of the lake is in the air: fish, sewage, cold green water. James unlocks his door, gets in, leans over to unlo
ck Ellen’s. She reaches around to unlock the back door. The sound of the locks is sharp as breaking ice. She wonders where they will go. To her mother? Maybe Julia? But even as she worries, she is exhilarated. They can’t go on living with Fritz and Mary-Margaret after this. She realizes she’s been holding her breath, and she exhales slowly, cautiously.

  “Get in and buckle up,” she tells the kids, and then she gets in too. She looks at James, his swelling nose, blood crusted around his mouth. “Oh, Honey,” she whispers. “Do you want me to drive?”

  He starts the car, squeals them out of the driveway. “Don’t talk to me,” he says fiercely. “Don’t you say one goddamn word.”

  They drive for miles and miles, up to Cedarton, over to Schulesville, following Highway KW along the lake. By now it is dark; the windows of the houses they pass are lit with holiday candles; lights twinkle in the trees. Even with the heater on it’s cold, and Ellen wishes the kids had their boots. Odd thoughts flicker through her mind: the road construction that was here in fall, a green print dress she once tried to make for Amy, the position of her feet, crossed neatly at the ankles. She thinks about the chewing gum she has in her purse, longing for a piece, but not wanting to disturb the uneasy quiet.

  Snow spins in the glow of the headlights, and she remembers the blizzard of ’59 that decided her life so quickly. James was driving her home when a storm set in, terrible and white. They pulled over, not sure if they were still on the road. All night they talked as they huddled beneath an old wool blanket, running the engine every half hour for heat, and in the morning, when the sky blew abruptly, brilliantly clear, and they heard the plow in the distance, they knew they would have to be married. For who would believe that a man and a woman could spend a night together in a car without making love? If they didn’t marry, they both knew what the consequences would be, regardless of whether or not a baby came nine months later. To choose to marry was far better than to have your parents choose for you, to be taken to the church by your tight-lipped families, to listen to people say for the rest of your lives, Them two, they had to tie the knot.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Amy says and, wordlessly, James veers back toward town. They pull over at a family restaurant just south of Holly’s Field. The broad front windows are like a stage, and Ellen stares greedily into other people’s lives…the teenage couple sharing fries and pop…the group of women piling their coats cozily over a chair, arranging their purses and shopping bags around themselves in a way that makes her think of robins building nests…the old man stirring his coffee, licking a finger, a flick of gray tongue…

  She fights a sudden, horrible urge to run.

  “You coming in?” she says to James, but he doesn’t answer. His face is swollen and homely, and she knows that, once again, anything she says will be wrong. “We’ll just be a minute,” she says, and then she takes the kids inside. The smell of frying burgers hits her stomach like a fist.

  “I’m hungry,” Herbert says.

  She leads him and Amy through the restaurant to the back where the rest rooms are. She thinks about the goose she has cooking in the oven, ready to come out in half an hour, the dressing, the twice-baked potatoes waiting in the fridge, the Kuchen. “I don’t have any money,” she says. “Besides, you’ll spoil your dinner.”

  “Daddy has money.”

  “Daddy feels really bad right now. It’s probably best not to bother him or ask him for anything because that will make him feel worse. The way we can make him feel better is to just stay very quiet.”

  Bert’s hair is still knotted with ribbon. She twists it free, then puts him in a stall to pee. Amy takes the stall farthest away from them. The rest room smells of toilet cleaner and strong musk perfume.

  “He’s going to leave us here,” Amy says. Ellen can see her small feet swinging.

  “What?”

  “He won’t be there when we go back out.” She speaks slowly and clearly, as if she were speaking to a very small child.

  “Of course he will!” Ellen says. She takes Herbert to the sink, washes her hands, helps him reach the faucet. She hadn’t thought of that: James leaving them here, traveling on, anywhere, far away. What she had wanted to do a moment earlier. But didn’t. Herbert lets his hands drift dreamily under the water. “Hurry,” she tells him. “Let’s not keep Daddy waiting.”

  “He won’t be there,” Amy says again, smugly. She comes out of her stall and sticks her hands defiantly in her pockets.

  “Stop it!” Ellen says, hating her. “You’re being silly. Now wash your hands.”

  Amy moves her hands through the water slowly, extra slowly, as Ellen’s stomach falls and falls inside her. When they get back outside, the car is where they left it, idling hard, exhaust curling through the air.

  It is dark when they turn back onto Vinegar Hill. Herbert is sleeping; Amy shakes him awake as they pull into the driveway. The snow is heavier now, wet, crunching an inch deep beneath the wheels. The house is dark. Ellen starts to get out of the car, but James doesn’t move. The engine idles uncertainly.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” she says.

  “I’m going out for a bit.”

  “I don’t want to go in there alone.”

  James stares straight ahead. Amy opens her door and gets out. Herbert gets out too. Finally, Ellen gets out.

  “So you’ll be back for Mass?” she says through the open door.

  “Yes, dammit,” he says. “Yes, I’ll be back.”

  “Where are you going?” she says, but he pulls away, tires squalling on the ice. “Wait,” she shouts, “I don’t have the key!” and she chases him out into the street. He tosses it past her without looking, drives away. She picks it up; it’s hooked to a key chain in the shape of a smiling face. The kids are watching. She’s horribly embarrassed. Then she is numb.

  “C’mon,” she says briskly. “Let’s get inside before we freeze.”

  “He’s not coming back again ever,” Amy says. Ellen pretends not to hear.

  When she snaps on the living room light, Mary-Margaret blinks at them, owl-like, from her rose-embroidered chair. The Christmas tree is gone, the table back in place. “Where’s Jimmy?” she says.

  “Out,” Ellen says, hanging up her coat, helping the kids with theirs. She can smell the goose. And Lysol. “He’ll be back for Midnight Mass.”

  “Fritz went for dinner at Senior Citizens’,” Mary-Margaret says. “They’re having ham and scalloped potatoes, I saw it announced in the paper. But I wanted to wait for Jimmy.”

  “Did you take the goose out?” Ellen says.

  Mary-Margaret shakes her head; her lip curls faintly. Pleased.

  The kids follow Ellen into the kitchen, hugging the walls. The popcorn, the walnuts, the strings of cranberries: everything is gone. The counter is a wide white gleaming space. They look at each other and their faces close up. Ellen sees they are going to pretend this hasn’t happened, that nothing is wrong, and she is relieved to pretend that too. She puts them to work setting the table, as Mary-Margaret leans against the wall, watching. “When is Jimmy coming back?” she says. She rubs her hand through her tight blue curls.

  “He’s never coming back,” Amy says. “He said so.”

  “Amy!”

  “What?” Mary-Margaret says.

  “He’s coming back,” Ellen says. “He just went out for a bit. He’s at the Gander with Hummer and Bill,” and as soon as she says it she knows it’s the only place he would go: back to his high school friends, to the booth where they always sat, squashed between the jukebox and the rest rooms. “He said he’ll be home on time to go to Midnight Mass.”

  “He said he never wants to see any of us again.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Herbert says.

  Mary-Margaret looks back and forth among all of them. Amy’s eyes are bright.

  “Believe who you like,” Ellen says. “Food’s ready.”

  They sit down to Christmas dinner. The goose is dry as bread. Mary-Margaret shakes
her head at the first bite, makes a clicking sound with her tongue.

  “Mama made goose so it fell off the bone,” she says.

  Ellen puts the kids to bed early, sets their alarm for eleven. There, on Amy’s bed, is the star she made out of cardboard and glitter. So it was Fritz who threw their decorations away; Mary-Margaret would have saved nothing unless it belonged to Herbert.

  “It’s a good star,” Herbert says. Like me, Ellen thinks, trying to fix things, trying to make it all better. And Amy, like James, who will be comforted by no one, crumples it into a ball that unfolds, bit by bit, after she throws it into the trash. It rustles there like a living thing as she turns away to get into her nightgown. Herbert dresses standing beside Ellen, his body gray hollows in the lamp light.

  Mary-Margaret stops outside the doorway. “Come watch me take my pills,” she says.

  “In a minute,” Ellen says. “We’re saying prayers.” She waits until she hears Mary-Margaret move down the hall and the bathroom door click shut behind her. The children get into their beds and stare at the ceiling.

  “Angel of God,” Ellen prompts them, and they continue with her:

  My guardian dear

  To whom God’s love commits me here.

  Ever this night be at my side

  To light and guard, to rule and guide.

  Amen.

  Their voices, chanting together, are like music in the half-dark, and when they finish they are quiet for a moment. The prayer itself means little to Ellen. It’s the sound of the words, the feeling of so many people before her who spoke them with the same sadness, the same need. She said this prayer every night as a child, tucked into her mother’s bed. When the light clicked off, bleeding into darkness, she was comforted by the thought of God watching over her. Prayers were a charm against loneliness. Prayers were an incantation warding off the razor-toothed fears that slept just out of sight, a constant humming presence. In the morning, there would be prayers before getting out of bed, prayers before and after meals, prayers for special intentions. On Sunday mornings, Mom drove them all to Mass; on Saturday evenings, they said the Rosary, kneeling shoulder to shoulder on the living room rug. Even now, Ellen can hear their individual voices, Heidi’s light soprano, Gert’s reedy whisper.