Did the girlfriend tell you what color hair he has? Wendy asked.
Strawberry blond, same as me, she said. He probably has the devil of a time at the beach, too.
When Carolyn went back to her cabin, Wendy called home again, but Louie still didn’t want to talk to her.
The therapist says maybe we shouldn’t push it right now, Josh told her. It may be his way of dealing with loss.
He hasn’t lost me, Wendy said. I’m here.
For a four-year-old that’s hard to understand, Josh said. To Louie, you being in California feels as cut off as your mother not being here anymore.
Then we need to make sure he knows I’m alive, she said.
I’d put him on if he’d do it, Wen, he said. But when I talk about you, he gets angry. The only people he’ll talk to these days are me and Kate, when she comes over.
She thought about before, just after Labor Day. The first day she’d gone back to school that fall, when Josh and Louie had walked her to the bus stop. Louie with a strip of fake fur their mother had given him pinned to the back of his pants to be a tail, skipping alongside her, though really it was more like hopping. He had started to climb the steps of the bus with her. Josh had to remind him it was just Sissy going to school, not him.
We discussed this last night, Lou-man, he said. You know it’s a big kids’ school. Us two guys will stay home and build a fort.
Just let me come one time, Sissy, Louie said. I’ll stay home tomorrow.
I can’t take you, Louie, she said, kneeling down next to him. But I’ll be home in a few hours and we’ll play.
Not a few hours. Now.
I can’t, Louie. The bus is waiting.
Take me, take me, he said. Like Frankie in her book, wanting to go off with her brother when he got married.
She got on the bus. From the window, she could see them standing there, Josh in his green sweatpants, same as always. Louie in his arms. She waved, but he hid his face. The bus pulled away.
Twenty-Eight
It was starting to be Christmas. If this was an ordinary year, they’d be making plans to take a trip out to Connecticut to cut down their tree. You could buy one right on the street near their apartment, but Josh liked tromping through the woods in the snow and cutting it down with an ax. On their way home with the tree on the roof of their car, they always stopped at a diner that served the best macaroni and cheese.
Maybe this year we should only put white lights on the tree, instead of multicolored, her mother would say. Remember how pretty Kate’s tree looked last year?
What do we think about that idea, guys? Josh asked them.
Bad, said Louie. We want colored lights.
Next thing you know, you’re going to tell me when we get home that you want to put on Alvin and the Chipmunks’ Christmas album.
Al-vin, Al-vin, Al-vin, said Louie. He banged his spoon on the table the way Josh did when he was listening to some really cool drummer.
Someday, her mother said, I’m going to live in this really tasteful house where they only play the Messiah and the Joan Baez Christmas album and the Christmas tree has only white lights, and the ornaments are color-coordinated blue and silver.
Boo, said Josh.
Louie would be wired about Christmas, but her mother always said Louie wasn’t even the most excited one. It was Josh. Her mother explained to Wendy one time that Josh’s family was Jewish, and even though they weren’t religious, they hadn’t celebrated the holiday when he was growing up.
So now it’s like he’s making up for all those years, her mother said.
Josh wanted to do everything—stockings, Santa’s footprints on the rug, like he’d stepped in the ashes of the fireplace and tracked them all over the place. Corny presents for her mother, and the red vest he always put on Christmas morning. Christmas dinner he’d make a buche de Noel and set poppers next to their places.
I don’t know how you survived all those years without Christmas, her mother said to him.
I was just waiting till I located people who’d know how to get into the spirit. No point doing Christmas until you’ve got yourself the right kind of crowd to do it with.
We’re the right kind of crowd, right, Poppy? Louie said.
Are you ever.
It was a Saturday, but Garrett had some odds and ends to attend to over at the job site he was working at. He already had the truck loaded with his tools, and Shiva, when he called out to Wendy.
Why don’t you come along, Slim? he said. I’ll show you what I build.
She’d been reading The Butcher Boy. She could tell something bad was going to happen to the boy in the book, so in a way she was glad to be interrupted.
When I was young, Garrett said as they headed out, I thought I was going to be an artist. But not the kind my mother would have liked, that did portraits of rich people.
So you gave up art? she asked. Living in Brooklyn with her mother, and imagining his life in California, she had pictured him painting.
I didn’t stop loving to draw and paint, he said. I just got a little more realistic about making a living at it. That was something your mother and I always argued about, as a matter of fact. At the time, I thought she was unreasonable, but I came to see her point.
But art was your passion, right?
I would have said that when I was twenty-five, he told her. Now if I’m honest with myself, I think it was partly the idea of being an artist. Living in a loft back in the days when it was still actually the artists who lived in lofts in New York City. Sitting in bars in the Village, going to openings, telling beautiful women I wanted to paint them. Even the part about never having any money kind of appealed to me. It was such a slap in the face to my father, who always cared about that more than anything.
But what about the actual drawing part? Making the artwork?
That part was real. I still keep a sketch pad in my truck, and anytime I go off camping, there’ll be one day where I just sit on a rock for a few hours and draw. But that whole thing about making a name for myself, having these big angry paintings hanging on a wall someplace, stopped mattering so much. I go to San Francisco now and then, take a look at what people are doing these days, or, more likely, the old stuff, the work that’s stood the test of time. Once or twice a year I might make some little drawing that feels good enough to hold on to. But it started to feel more important, having a life that worked, instead of making art that didn’t. There’s more satisfaction than I would have known in going off to a job in the morning, framing a house really well, knowing it’s going to be around a lot longer than most of the stuff my friends and I used to turn out in our studios back then.
He had pulled the truck to a stop in front of a partly finished house, situated on the rise of a hill, a few miles outside of Davis. The walls were mostly up, though there was only plastic covering the doors and windows, and the roof was only half-shingled. Shiva jumped out of the truck. Garrett began unloading some boards from the back.
My mom used to want to play Peter Pan on Broadway, Wendy said. When she was growing up, that was her dream. She used to say she was going to fly.
A person should have those kind of dreams, Garrett said. But you don’t have to see your life as a failure if it doesn’t end up taking the exact shape you originally pictured. You might hang your art on the walls of a museum. You might make the best damn trout lure anybody ever cast into the Merced River. You might build cabinets or grow cacti. That might be your art. Who’s to say?
They walked into the half-finished house. The smell of sawdust hung in the air. At the far end of one room, a stone fireplace was under construction. Not yet finished, but Wendy could see it would be beautiful.
I made that, he said. I gathered all the stone in riverbeds. He ran his hand over the mantel.
My mother doesn’t like to tell her friends her son is just a carpenter, he said. I have a feeling she tells them I’m an architect. To me, the only shame in building houses is if you do it badly.
<
br /> She was in her room drawing. The phone rang. It was Kate.
Josh says maybe we should leave you alone out there to get into your life, she said. But I just had to call. We miss you so much.
Hearing Kate’s voice after all that time gave Wendy a dull, empty feeling, like walking past a house you used to live in a long time ago, and they’ve changed the paint and the stone lion that used to be out front is gone. She thought about the old days, not just before September but before Josh and Louie, too, all those nights when she and her mom and Kate would curl up on the couch together watching Shirley Temple movies or old musicals and eating popcorn.
Sometimes she would lie in bed and listen to her mother and Kate in the other room, talking late into the night about their jobs or their dream of opening up a little bed-and-breakfast together in Maine. They told each other stories of horrible dates they went on that always made them sound funny even though at the time they probably weren’t.
Then Wendy’s mother met Josh, but Kate had stayed single all these years. Maybe I’m just supposed to be this Auntie Mame-type person to Wendy and Louie, Kate said. Which isn’t so bad.
Now she was calling from New York. Josh fills me in on what you’re up to out there, she said. But I just wanted to hear your voice.
I have to admit, when you went to California, I was really down on the idea, she said. But maybe it’s turning out to be a good thing for you after all, huh?
In some ways, it’s better here, at least for now, Wendy said. But I miss everyone back home a lot. And I’m worried about Louie.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with him lately, Kate said. We go to play Skee-Ball every Saturday, and he seems to like that. I think it’s partly that I remind him of your mom. Last week when I went by to pick him up, he wanted me to wear that red jacket of hers. The week before, he wanted to give me her boots.
It’s a good thing he gets to see you, Wendy said.
Next weekend, I’m taking him to see a magic show, Kate told her. Maybe we’ll go check out the tree at Rockefeller Center.
How would you say Josh is doing? Wendy asked her.
Oh, Josh, she said. She was silent for a moment.
We talk on the phone a lot. He’s just so lonely. He’s got all his musician friends, but the truth is, your mom was everything to him. He came over to Kate’s mother’s house for Thanksgiving, and I’m hoping he’ll do the same for Christmas, but I know he wishes he could just go in a cave somewhere. Only he can’t because of Louie, which is probably a good thing.
Do you think it would help if I came home? Wendy asked her. She had been thinking about it more lately. In her original plan, Davis was just going to be a getaway.
You do what’s best for you right now, honey, Kate said. Your brother and Josh will work things out eventually. All Josh wants is for you to be okay. You and your brother.
When I talk to Louie on the phone, his voice has this dead sound, Wendy said. He won’t tell me anything about school. Most of the time he doesn’t even want to talk to me.
He doesn’t talk about it, but I know he thinks about your mother all the time, Kate said. Just because a person’s only four years old doesn’t mean he can’t get depressed.
Then suddenly Louie seemed better. He called her the next week around dinner time.
What are you doing up, Louie? she asked. It’s got to be nine-thirty.
Me and Kate went to a magic show, he said. All the kids got balloons, but I got to go up on the stage with the magician. He spoke in a hushed whisper, like just the thought of it was too much to repeat.
You were a lucky duck, huh? she said.
He wanted someone that was really brave, because it was a hard trick. He said you should only raise your hand if you weren’t afraid to go in a box, and if you did, Miss Sparkle, the helper, had a special treat. I was afraid, but I raised my hand anyway, because I wanted the treat.
And he picked you.
I was worried he wouldn’t see me on account of Kate and me were sitting behind a tall man, but I got up on my seat and I was waving and sending energy beams, so he would pick me. He said, How about that boy in the Yankee jacket, Miss Sparkle? And that was me. And Kate said, Think you can do it? And I said, Yes!
The magician had asked him his name.
Louie, he said. For Louis Armstrong, the greatest trumpet player of all time. Josh had taught him to say that when people asked.
The crowd had loved that. They clapped for me, Sissy, he told her. Then the magician had explained how he was going to put Louis Armstrong’s namesake inside a special box and close the lid. Little Louie, the magician called him.
And I was scared, he told her, but Miss Sparkle gave me a special flashlight to hold while I was in there.
The magician said he was going to saw the box in half then. I sure hope we don’t lose Little Louie, he said. I was starting to like that kid.
Then Louie told her some things she couldn’t follow about spears coming through the box, but in certain places where he knew they wouldn’t stab him, and a secret passageway with Miss Sparkle inside. She had jelly beans.
Then the magician was opening the box again and Louie came out, only he was wearing a silver cape and holding a wand just like the magician’s. Everyone started clapping and Louie bowed the way their mom taught him this famous dancer used to do named Mikhail Baryshnikov that was her favorite. They didn’t even tell him to do the bow. That part he just thought up.
Since you did such a great job here today, Louie, I’m thinking maybe we should give you the special magic wand to take home. Let’s see if the audience agrees.
They did. So he got to take the wand home with him. Before he walked back off the stage Miss Sparkle had bent down close to him and whispered in his ear.
There’s one special wish in every wand, she said. If you save it till your birthday and you’re a very good boy and close your eyes and wish very hard, it could just come true.
Neat, Wendy said. And then I bet Kate took you to see the tree at Rockefeller Center, right? With all the skaters.
She did but he didn’t have so much to say about that part.
So what did you ask Santa for, she asked him. Every year, he and Josh wrote the letter together.
Some Legos and the Tonka crane, he said.
Wendy knew that other years his list had been much longer.
How’s school going? she asked.
Okay, Louie said. We’re learning about when letters say their own name.
Before you know it, you’ll be reading, Wendy said. And then you can read Curious George to Josh and me.
This was where, in the past, he would have asked her when she was coming home, but he didn’t.
Louie, she said.
Yes, Sis. His voice sounded very small and far away.
Even when I’m not there, I think about you every single day.
Okay, he said.
Who’s your only sister in the whole world?
You.
And who’s my only brother?
Me.
A letter came for Carolyn. She had used their address because her mailbox had fallen down a while back and she hadn’t gotten around to fixing it. When Garrett came home and saw the letter he called to let her know.
Postmark Bend, Oregon, he said. Looks like your kid wrote back. I suppose that means you might be moseying over here one of these days to find out what he’s got to say in his letter.
She was there a half hour later.
He said he’d received her letter. Received was the word he used.
The whole letter was a little like that. Written in the kind of language Wendy’s Connecticut grandmother would have approved of.
“It was gratifying that you would invite me to pay a visit to your home,” he said. “After consideration, I have decided to accept. I will be coming with my future wife. We are planning a trip to visit her parents over the Christmas holidays. Assuming your schedule could accommodate us, Sharon and I could stop through on th
e morning of the twenty-fourth. If this is satisfactory, please send confirmation and directions to your home. Yours truly.”
Then came the signature. Nathan Lowry in small tightly formed letters. Underneath it was a P.S. “Sharon asked me to express appreciation for the photograph. Due to the size, it was hard to make out much of your appearance, but evidently we share the same color of hair.”
He doesn’t sound all that friendly, Carolyn said.
Some people aren’t the letter-writing type, Garrett told her. He’s taking it slow. Doesn’t want to get too hepped up till he gets here. Smart kid.
They’ll never find my place, she said. And then there’s that old car out front, and all the mess of my plants. You think we could have them over here instead?
Mi casa es su casa, said Garrett.
It’ll be the Long-Lost Children’s Christmas, he told her. All we need to make the festivities complete is my mother.
They did hear from her oddly enough, but not the usual Christmas package, the Brooks Brothers shirt and monogrammed blouse. She was going into the hospital, she told him on the phone. They’d found a blood clot. You don’t need to worry. Not that you would.
How’s Tim doing? she asked Alan when she stopped by the store. Does he like Christmas?
Christmas is hard on him, said Alan. Tim likes a nice steady routine. When we went to the Laundromat last week, he got upset because they had all these decorations up.
Do you and your wife go up there to spend the day with him? she asked. She had been thinking about Josh. People who might be alone on Christmas. Violet being another one.
Linda goes to an ashram up north every year for the week between Christmas and New Year’s, he said. And Tim does better if I keep to the schedule and only come on the usual visiting day.
If you’re going to be alone, you could have dinner with my father and his girlfriend and me, she said. My dad’s girlfriend’s son is coming for a visit the day before, but Christmas Day, it’s just going to be us.
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