The Stories of Richard Bausch (31 page)

In the morning,
after breakfast, Aunt Lois began to talk about how good it would be to have people at her table for dinner on Christmas Eve. She had opened the draperies wide, to watch the snow fall outside. The snow had started before sunrise, but nothing had accumulated yet; it was melting as it hit the ground. Aunt Lois talked about how Christmasy it felt, and about getting a tree to put up, about making a big turkey dinner. “I don’t think anybody should be alone on Christmas,” she said. “Do you, Marie?”

“Not unless they want to,” Marie said.

“Right, and who wants to be alone on Christmas?”

“Lois, I suppose you’re going to come to the point soon.”

“Well,” Aunt Lois said, “I guess I am driving at something. I’ve invited someone over to dinner on Christmas Eve.”

“Who.”

“It’s someone you know.”

“Lois, please.”

“I ran into him on jury duty last June,” Aunt Lois said. “Can you imagine? After all these years—and we’ve become very good friends again. I mean I’d court him if I thought I had a chance.”

“Lois, who are we talking about?”

“Well,” Aunt Lois said, “It’s Bill Downs.”

Marie stood. “You’re not serious.”

“It has nothing to do with anything,” Lois said. “To tell you the truth, I invited them before I knew you were coming.”

“Them?”

“He has a cousin visiting. I told him they could both come.”

“Who’s Bill Downs?” Charles asked.

“He’s nobody,” said his mother.

“He’s somebody from a long time ago,” Aunt Lois said. They had spoken almost in unison. Aunt Lois went on: “His cousin just lost his wife. Well—last year. Bill didn’t want him to be alone. He says he’s a very interesting man—”

“Lois, I don’t care if he’s the King of England.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Aunt Lois said. “Don’t make it into something it isn’t. Look at us, anyway—look how depleted we are. I want people here. I don’t want it just the three of us on Christmas. You have Charles; I’m the last one in this family, Marie. And this—this isn’t just
your
grief. Lawrence was my brother. I didn’t want to be alone—do you want me to spell it out for you?”

Marie now seemed too confused to speak. She only glanced at Charles, then turned and left the room. Her door closed quietly. Aunt Lois sat back against the cushions of the sofa and shut her eyes for a moment.

“Who’s Bill Downs?” Charles said.

When she opened her eyes it was as if she had just noticed him there. “The whole thing is just silly. We were all kids together. It was a million years ago.”

Charles said nothing. In the fireplace a single charred log hissed. Aunt Lois sat forward and took a cigarette from her pack and lighted it. “I wonder what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have a steady girl, Charles?”

He nodded. The truth was that he was too shy, too aware of his girth and the floridness of his complexion, too nervous and clumsy to be more than the clownish, kindly friend he was to the girls he knew.

“Do you think you’ll go on and marry her?”

“Who?” he said.

“Your girl.”

“Oh,” he said, “probably not.”

“Some people do, of course. And some don’t. Some people go on and meet other people. Do you see? When I met your mother, your father was away at college.”

“I think I had this figured out already, Aunt Lois.”

“Well—then that’s who Bill Downs is.” She got to her feet, with some effort, then stood gazing down at him. “This just isn’t the way it looks, though. And everybody will just have to believe me about it.”

“I believe you,” Charles said.

“She doesn’t,” said Aunt Lois, “and now she’s probably going to start lobbying to go home.”

Charles shook his head.

“I hope you won’t let her talk you into it.”

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” Marie said, coming into the room. She sat down on the sofa and opened the morning paper, and when she spoke now it was as if she were not even attentive to her own words. “Though it would serve you right if everybody deserted you out of embarrassment.”

“You might think about
me
a little, Marie. You might think how I feel in all this.”

Marie put the newspaper down on her lap and looked at her. “I am thinking of you. If I wasn’t thinking of you I’d be in the car this minute, heading north, whether Charles would come or not.”

“Well, fine,” Aunt Lois said, and stormed out of the room.

A little later,
Charles and Marie went into the city. They parked the car in a garage on H Street and walked over to Lafayette Square. It was still snowing, but the ground was too warm; it wouldn’t stick. Charles said, “Might as well be raining,” and realized that neither of them had spoken since they had pulled away from Aunt Lois’s house.

“Charles,” his mother said, and then seemed to stop herself. “Never mind.”

“What?” he said.

“Nothing. It’s easy to forget that you’re only eighteen. I forget sometimes, that’s all.”

Charles sensed that this wasn’t what she had started to say, but kept silent. They crossed the square and entered a sandwich shop on Seventeenth Street, to warm themselves with a cup of coffee. They sat at a table by the window and looked out at the street, the people walking by—shoppers mostly, burdened with packages.

“Where’s the Lafayette Hotel from here?” Charles asked.

“Oh, honey, they tore that down a long time ago.”

“Where was it?”

“You can’t see it from here.” She took a handkerchief out of her purse and touched the corners of her eyes with it. “The cold makes my eyes sting. How about you?”

“It’s the wind,” Charles said.

She looked at him. “My ministering angel.”

“Mom,” he said.

Now she looked out the window. “Your father would be proud of you now.” She bowed her head slightly, fumbling with her purse, and then she was crying. She held the handkerchief to her nose, and the tears dropped down over her hand.

“Mom,” he said, reaching for her wrist.

She withdrew from him a little. “No, you don’t understand.”

“Let’s go,” Charles said.

“I don’t think I could stand to be home now, Charles. Not on Christmas. Not this Christmas.”

Charles paid the check and then went back to the table to help her into her coat. “Goddamn Lois,” she said, pulling the furry collar up to cover her ears.

“Tell me about
your girlfriend,” Aunt Lois said. He shrugged this off.

They were sitting in the kitchen, breaking up bread for the dressing, while Marie napped on the sofa in the living room. Aunt Lois had brought the turkey out and set it on the counter. The meat deep in its breast still had to thaw, she told Charles. She was talking just to talk. Things had been very cool since the morning, and Charles was someone to talk to.

“Won’t even tell me her name?”

“I’m not really going with anybody,” he said.

“A handsome boy like you.”

“Aunt Lois, could we talk about something else?”

She said, “All right. Tell me what you did all fall.”

“I took care of the house.”

“Did you read any good books or see any movies or take anybody out besides your mother?”

“Sure,” he said. “Okay, tell me about it.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know what you did all fall.”

“What is this?” Charles said.

She spoke quickly. “I apologize for prying. I won’t say another word.”

“Look,” he said, “Aunt Lois, I’m not keeping myself from anything right now. I couldn’t have concentrated in school in September.”

“I know,” she said, “I know.” There was a long silence.

“I wonder if it’s too late for me to get married and have a bunch of babies,” she said suddenly. “I think I’d like the noise they’d make.”

That night, they
watched Christmas specials. Charles dozed in the lounge chair by the fireplace, a magazine on his lap, and the women sat on the sofa. No one spoke. On television, celebrities sang old Christmas songs, and during the commercials other celebrities appealed to the various yearnings for cheer and happiness and possessions, and the thrill of giving. In a two-hour cartoon with music and production numbers, Scrooge made his night-long journey to wisdom and love; the Cratchits were portrayed as church mice. Aunt Lois remarked that this was cute, and no one answered her. Charles feigned sleep. When the news came on, Aunt Lois turned the television off, and they said good night. Charles kissed them both on the cheek, and went to his room. For a long while after he lay down, he heard them talking low. They had gone to Aunt Lois’s room. He couldn’t distinguish words, but the tones were chilly and serious. He rolled over on his side and punched the pillow into shape and stared at the faint outline of trees outside the window, trying not to hear. The voices continued, and he heard his mother’s voice rising, so that he could almost make out words now. His mother said something about last summer, and then both women were silent. A few moments later, Aunt Lois came marching down the hall past his door, on into the kitchen, where she opened cabinets and slammed them, and ran water. She was going to make coffee, she said, when Marie called to her. If she wanted a cup of coffee in her own house at any hour of the night she’d have coffee.

Charles waited a minute or so, then got up, put his robe on, and went in to her. She sat at the table, arms folded, waiting for the water to boil.

“It’s sixty dollars for a good Christmas tree,” she said. “A ridiculous amount of money.”

Charles sat down across from her.

“You’re just like your father,” she said, “you placate. And I think he placated your mother too much—that’s what I think.”

He said, “Come on, Aunt Lois.”

“Well, she makes me so mad, I can’t help it. She doesn’t want to go
home and she doesn’t want to stay here and she won’t listen to the slightest suggestion about you or the way you’ve been nursemaiding her for four months. And she’s just going to stay mad at me all week. Now, you tell me.”

“I just wish everybody would calm down,” Charles said.

She stood and turned her back to him and set about making her coffee.

According to the
medical report, Charles’s father had suffered a massive coronary occlusion, and death was almost instantaneous; it could not have been attended with much pain. Perhaps there had been a second’s recognition, but little more than that. The doctor wanted Charles and his mother to know that the speed with which an attack like that kills is a blessing. In his sleep, Charles heard the doctor’s voice saying this, and then he was watching his father fall down on the sidewalk outside the restaurant; people walked by and stared, and Charles looked at their faces, the faces of strangers.

He woke trembling in the dark, the only one awake on Christmas Eve morning. He lay on his side, facing the window, and watched the dawn arrive, and at last someone was up, moving around in the kitchen.

It was his mother. She was making coffee. “You’re up early,” she said.

“I dreamed about Dad.”

“I dream about him too,” she said. She opened the refrigerator. “Good God, there’s a leg of lamb in here. Where did this come from? What in the world is that woman thinking of? The turkey’s big enough for eight people.”

“Maybe it’s for tomorrow.”

“And don’t always defend her, either, Charles. She’s not infallible, you know.”

“I never said she was.”

“None of them—your father wasn’t. I mean—” she closed the refrigerator and took a breath. “He wouldn’t want you to put him on a pedestal.”

“I didn’t,” Charles said.

“People are people,” she said. “They don’t always add up.”

This didn’t seem to require a response.

“And I’ve known Lois since she was seventeen years old. I know how she thinks.”

“I’m not defending anybody,” he said, “I’m just the one in between everything here. I wish you’d both just leave me out of it.”

“Go get dressed,” she said. “Nobody’s putting you in between anybody.”

“Mom.”

“No—you’re right. I won’t involve you. Now really, go get dressed.” She looked as though she might begin to cry again. She patted him on the wrist and then went back to the refrigerator. “I wanted something in here,” she said, opening it. There were dark blue veins forking over her ankles. She looked old and thin and afraid and lonely, and he turned his eyes away.

The three Of
them went to shop for a tree. Charles drove. They looked in three places and couldn’t agree on anything, and when it began to rain Aunt Lois took matters into her own hands. She made them wait in the car while she picked out the tree she wanted for what was, after all, her living room. They got the tree home, and had to saw off part of the trunk to get it up, but when it was finished, ornamented and wound with popcorn and tinsel, they all agreed that it was a handsome tree—a round, long-needled pine that looked like a jolly rotund elf, with its sawed-off trunk and its top listing slightly to the left under the weight of a tinfoil star. They turned its lights on and stood admiring it, and for a while there was something of the warmth of other Christmases in the air. Work on the decorations, and all the cooperation required to get everything accomplished seemed to have created a kind of peace between the two women. They spent the early part of the evening wrapping presents for the morning, each in his own room with his gifts for the others, and then Aunt Lois put the television on, and went about her business, getting the dinner ready. She wanted no help from anyone, she said, but Marie began to help anyway, and Aunt Lois did nothing to stop her. Charles sat in the lounge chair and watched a parade. It was the halftime of a football game, but he was not interested in it, and soon he had begun to doze again. He sank deep, and there were no dreams, and then Aunt Lois was telling him to wake up. “Charles,” she said, “they’re here.” He sat forward in the chair, a little startled, and Aunt Lois laughed. “Wake up, son,” she said. Charles saw a man standing by the Christmas tree, smiling at him. Another man sat on the sofa, his legs spread a little to make room for his stomach; he looked blown up, his neck bulging over the collar of his shirt.