Читать книгу An Indiana Christmas - Bryan Furuness - Страница 13

EARTHBOUND

Barbara Shoup

WE WERE SPINNING ON THE GREEN CHAIRS. They were ugly modern chairs my father had bought when my mother said we needed new chairs for our new house. He’d been so pleased to surprise her with them that she hadn’t had the heart to tell him to take them back and get two sensible, earthbound chairs.

My brother and I spun to outer space on those chairs. We time-traveled to the places I read about in books. Blindfolded, we spun each other silly. We loved to time how long it took us to get our bearings and stop walking into walls. It drove our mother crazy. During the daytime, she’d yell at us and make us stop; but at night, when our father was home, she’d let us spin to our hearts’ content. Eventually he’d snap, and she’d give him her how-could-you-be-so-dumb expression. Anyone could have told you that if you buy chairs that spin, kids will spin them.

Tonight she was letting us spin even though our father wasn’t there. It was Christmas Eve. As long as we were spinning, we weren’t asking her when he was coming home. We weren’t fussing to be allowed to open just one present early. We’d had our dinner and our baths. Our good clothes were laid out on our beds. Waiting for our father so we could go to the party at Aunt Rachel’s house, we spread-eagled ourselves on the green chairs as if held there by gravity, pretending we were on the Tilt-a-Whirl we rode each summer at the Catholic Carnival.

I stopped when the phone rang, but my brother kept spinning. Each time the chair went around it wobbled and brushed the wall, leaving a mark. “Mom’s going to kill you,” I said.

He jumped up and went to the window.

I eavesdropped. My mother had a telephone voice that was completely different from her regular voice—breathless, girlish. “Mmmm,” she said, and giggled. “Oh, good grief. So, he’s at the Reynolds’s now?”

Who? If I asked, she’d realize I’d been listening.

So I joined my brother, rubbed a circle into the fogged window, and looked out.

But I saw nothing but the empty front yard, the Christmas lights in the windows of the houses across the street. Ice glittered on the spindly trees.

Thump. I heard a loud sound on the roof. Thump. Thump. Then bells.

“Santa! Mom, it’s Santa!” my brother cried. He was five and believed absolutely.

I was eight. A girl in my class had sworn to me that last Christmas she saw her parents get her presents from the coat closet. All parents did that, she said. I didn’t believe her, but I meant to stay awake all night and make sure.

The bells grew louder. My brother ran around in circles, wild with joy. Now the stomping was on our porch. Someone pounded on the door. I rubbed the window where my breath had already refogged it, and I saw him.

“Ho!” Santa pulled up his red muffler, rubbed his gloved hands in the cold. “Ho, ho! It’s John and Mary Frances Corrigan I’m looking for. Is this their new house? I want to make sure I leave their presents in the right place!”

My brother flung open the door. “I’m John,” he shouted. “I’ve been good! I’m leaving your reindeer some carrots!” When our mother joined him, he remembered his manners and added, “Won’t you come in?”

“Nope,” Santa said. “Can’t dally. But I’ve heard about you two. Heard you’re pretty decent kiddos. Thought I’d just come see for myself. You still have that sister?”

I came out from behind the curtain and, speechless, presented myself.

Santa pulled a black book from his pocket and consulted it. “Mary Frances Corrigan,” he said. “Not bad. Not bad at all. She spins on those green chairs in the living room though she’s been told a thousand times to sit still. Could be nicer to her mother. But all in all, very good. Smart, too, her teacher says. I’ve got a note on that.”

He flipped the pages. “John Corrigan. Hmmm. JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn.”

“What?” my brother cried. “I’ve been good. Honest!”

“Ah, here you are,” Santa said. “Yes. You’ve been very good this year. And you’ll be good the rest of this evening, won’t you? I bet you’ll go right to bed when your dad tells you to.”

“I will! I will! I promise!”

“Ho,” Santa said. “I sure hope so, because I’ll be back later, and I’ll fly right over if I don’t find the two of you asleep!” He jangled the bells on the strap of his black bag, laughed a deep belly laugh. “Merry Christmas,” he bellowed, and before we could say “Merry Christmas” back, he was gone.

The three of us stood in the suddenly empty doorway. Its light cast a silver rectangle across the narrow porch, across the sidewalk, barely touching the frozen yard. That was when I heard the voices.

They were faint at first, children’s voices calling, “Santa, Santa.” I thought I had imagined them. But when my mother opened the screen door and poked her head out, the voices grew louder. I knew they were real.

“Those damn Dougherty kids,” she said. It was something she said a lot, and so did all the other mothers in the neighborhood. Duane and Petey Dougherty ran wild at all hours of the day and night while their mom did who-knows-what down at the Elks Club. We kids were half-afraid of the Dougherty boys, half-enamored of them. They burned snakes in trashcans and invented weird gadgets in their backyard with wood and wire and old flashlight batteries. Now there they were under the streetlight, howling for Santa.

Soon, a few of the other big boys joined them. They wrestled, slipping and sliding in their slick-soled shoes. Petey saw us watching. “Hey, Mrs. Corrigan!” he yelled. “You guys seen Santa? We heard he was at your house a coupla minutes ago. We wanna ask him to bring us some toys.”

My mother closed the door. “I don’t like this,” she said. “Those darn boys—”

We heard them laughing as they pounded through the narrow passageway between our house and our next door neighbor’s into what, those days, still seemed like one huge communal backyard.

My mother dialed the telephone and stood tapping her foot, waiting. “Lois,” she said, “has Santa been to your house yet? No? Oh, yes,” she said. “The kids were thrilled. But those damn Daugherty kids are on the loose again. I think they’re after Santa.” She laughed. “You’re so right. Coal would be too good for them. But listen—” She spoke in an odd voice, at the same time playful and strained. “We don’t want to get Santa mad at our nice new neighborhood, do we? Maybe it would be a good idea to send Joe out to check around. Just to be safe.”

I didn’t hear a word she said after that. Why had we moved to this stupid neighborhood anyway? I missed our comfortable creaky old house, the railroad yard behind it, and the workers, who had thrown me some of the fat pieces of chalk they used to mark the boxcars. I missed the dark, cluttered corner store with its big jar of penny pretzels. When we lived in our old house, I could walk right across the tracks to my grandmother’s. Or to the dime store. I could ride my bike to the library and fill my basket with books.

Our new neighborhood was miles away from anything, and all the ugly little houses looked the same. It was a wonder Santa had found us at all. Now the Daugherty kids were chasing him. If he managed to get away from them, who could blame him if he never came back?

The phone rang a half-dozen times. My mother and the other mothers in the neighborhood tracked Santa from one house to another, trying to figure out where he had been seen last. But why didn’t she worry about where our father was or about missing the party at Aunt Rachel’s house?

The presents for our cousins waited on the dining room table along with the fruitcake my mother had been asked to bring. Only the few presents we’d bought for each other were under our tree now, sprinkled with fallen pine needles that were dry and sharp to the touch. Our empty stockings lay there, too. In our new house, there was no mantel to hang them on. I felt like a poor child, without hope.

“You go get dressed, Mary Frances,” my mother said in between calls. “Then help your brother.”

“But where’s Dad?”

She drew her lips straight and gave a sharp nod in the direction of my bedroom.

We’d just finished dressing and returned to the living room when the front door opened, and my father stepped in, wet and disheveled, laughing. I didn’t dare throw my arms around him with my good clothes on. His coat was soaked through and bits of dead grass stuck to it. Our neighbor, Mr. Sankowski, had followed him in and held an old felt hat, ringing it round and round with his fingers, water dripping from it onto the carpet.

“Those goddamn Daughertys,” my father said, wheezing, and burst into fresh peals of laughter. “By Christ, they chased—”

“Herb,” said my mother.

He saw me then and pulled me to him. The dampness in his coat soaked into my taffeta party dress, making it go limp.

“Herb,” my mother said again.

He held me at arm’s length. “So, kiddo,” he said, “I hear you had a visitor.”

I burst into tears. “Santa,” I cried, “and the Daugherty kids are chasing him right now and even if he gets away from them, he’ll never come back. I hate those kids. Dad, I hate it here. Why do we have to live here, anyway? Why can’t we go back to our other house?”

The room grew suddenly silent. My father knelt before me, swaying slightly. There was a sweet, medicine-y smell to his breath, which, I know now, was whiskey. “Oh, honey,” he said, “Santa Claus is fine. Just fine. Isn’t he, Chick? Didn’t we just see him?”

“Hell, we saved him,” said Mr. Sankowski.

“That’s right.” My father collapsed on the floor Indian style and pulled me down to join him. “You listen,” he said, his face right next to mine. “Chick and me got a late start from work. Missed the damn bus. So there we were hurrying up the street toward home, and what do we see? Santa running to beat the band and those damn Daugherty kids and their buddies running after him. Whoa, were we mad! We took off after the whole pack of them.”

He grabbed his soggy coat, brushed at his ruined pants, and looked at my mother earnestly. “How do you think we got to be such a mess? By God, we chased those little sons of bitches through every yard in this subdivision! Finally, Chick headed them off, and I took a shortcut through Benson’s yard and caught up with the old guy. Boy, he was beat. Was he ever glad to see us.”

“Herb,” my mother said. “Please. We’re already a half-hour late for your sister’s.”

But my father was into the story now. “Santa says to me, ‘I hope your kids aren’t anything like those Daughertys.’ ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘They certainly are not. They’re not even allowed to play with those punks. Juvenile delinquents,’ I told him.”

“I got them good,” Mr. Sankowski said. “I got them. Cracked their two dumb heads together, Petey and Duane. Huh. Marched them right up to the front door and told their old lady, ‘Lock these two up or they’re dead boys.’ Those other kids took off real fast after that.”

“I hid with Santa in Benson’s shed,” my father said. “Until Chick came back and told me the coast was clear.”

Mr. Sankowski guffawed, then he caught himself. “I’ll tell you, I made sure,” he said. “I wasn’t about to take any chances. Not with Santa Claus, no sir. Me and your dad, we saved him, Mary Frances. He’ll be back later tonight, no doubt at all.”

I looked at my father, who nodded solemnly.

We were late to Aunt Rachel’s, of course. I was sure that once everyone understood what had happened, there would be no bad feeling. But when I tried to tell my aunt about how my father had saved Santa Claus, she said distractedly, “Yes, dear. Yes, dear.” She hovered over the silver platters of cookies, stirred the spiced cider. She wouldn’t look at me.

My cousin, Christine, said, “Honestly, Mary Frances, you’re such a baby. You believe that?”

“Yes, I believe it.” Tears sprung to my eyes. “It’s true. Isn’t it, Dad?”

“Mary Frances,” my mother said, “I want you to calm down. Now.”

But I was agitated. I couldn’t help my bad behavior. I would not stand in line to say “Merry Christmas” on the telephone to my Aunt Laurie and Uncle Lou in Cincinnati. I argued with my cousins. I whipped Aunt Rachel’s dog into a frenzy throwing the tennis ball and nearly broke one of her porcelain birds. I was not duly grateful for the embroidered handkerchiefs, the bubble bath, the crisp new dollar bill I was given.

I had to stay up all night and wait for Santa, I told myself. So I could say sorry. My mother tucked me into bed and kissed me on the forehead, just as if I’d been a perfectly wonderful child all evening. The sheets were cool. My eyes still stung from crying, and I longed to close them. But I sat up in my bed, pressed my back against the knobby headboard, and played games with myself to stay awake. I went through the alphabet and made myself think of five hard words for each letter. I thought up stories.

I got up and cracked my door open, so I could see my parents in the living room. When would they go to bed? I imagined Santa Claus circling and circling above us, waiting till the lights went off so he could land and bring us our presents. The radio in the living room droned on; the Christmas carols drifting back to my room were as faint as the voices of my brother’s kindergarten class had been singing their song in the school pageant. My parents’ voices rose and fell. Though I couldn’t understand what they said, I knew my mother was mad. Her voice rose, questioning. My father’s voice was persuasive, rushed.

“Shhh,” they said to each other now and then. “Shhh.”

Then they began to laugh. Softly, first, then harder and harder. I wanted to be with them, cozy between them—the way the three of us had been a long, long time ago, before my brother. It always charmed me when they laughed like that, but tonight, left out, it made me sad. I grew even sadder when I tried to remember the last time I had heard them laughing and could not.

My father worked hard. Most nights he came home dirty and bone-tired from his long shift at the steel mill. I knew even then how my mother had to scrimp and save to make ends meet. But that night they were happy. They were still young enough to believe a house of their own was the first step toward a better life. So young that when my father took the half-pint bottle from his jacket pocket, my mother smiled and raised a glass for him to fill.

I saw him pour the golden liquid into it then lift the bottle to his lips and drink right from it. He poured and drank again. Again. Their voices grew louder.

“Honest to God, Betty,” my father said, “I thought those kids were going to kill me. I haven’t run since the army! And if that weren’t bad enough, there were those goddamn pillows. Every step I took, they slid farther and farther down my pants. Plus, Chick lost his kid’s basketball when they took off after us—you know, the reindeer. He’ll be in hot water about that.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! The two of us ended up in Ed Benson’s shed. Freezing our butts! But we had to stay there until I could get the damn Santa suit off. It was so wet, and my fingers were like ice. It’s still over there. The beard’s wrecked.”

My mother giggled and yawned.

“The kids loved it, though,” my father said. “John and Mary Frances. They loved it, didn’t they? That Mary Frances. Hook, line, and sinker. I thought for sure we’d lose her this year. After all, she’s eight. She’s no dummy.” He moved to the green chair I’d spun on earlier and gave it a twirl. In the deep ho-ho voice I had believed was Santa’s, he said, “She spins on the green chair in the living room, though she’s been told a thousand times to sit still.”

“Honestly, Herb,” my mother said. But she was laughing.

“You believe that?” my cousin Christine had said. “You’re such a baby, Mary Frances.”

I was a baby. A big fat stupid baby. A fool. At that moment, I hated my parents more than I would ever hate anyone again. They could have told me there was no Santa Claus. I was half-ready to hear it. I would have taken the news just fine. But to find out this way, to be tricked by my own parents, made a fool of! I would never, never forgive them.

I watched them bring out the presents. They set John’s fire truck and my bride doll under the tree, unwrapped. There were other, smaller, presents, too, but I couldn’t see what those were. My mother must have wrapped them while John was napping, while I was at school.

Finished, they stood in front of the Christmas tree and surveyed what they had done.

They kissed. Arm in arm, they walked to their bedroom. I heard the door close behind them, heard the creak of the bedsprings as they settled into their bed.

When I had heard nothing but the whisper of the furnace for a long time, I went into the living room. There was my bulging stocking. My grandmother had knitted it for me before I was born. Bending to touch it, I could feel the round shape of an orange. There was always an orange. And candy canes and gum. And little gifts: coloring books, funny wind-up toys, number puzzles for car trips. I could feel all these things with my fingers.

I saw the books then, and I knelt to examine them. Heidi, The Three Musketeers, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates. There were twelve in the set. I could tell they were expensive, probably more than my parents could afford.

“Smart, too.” Remembering my father’s Santa voice, I pulled my hand from the books as if it had been burned. I sat down on the green chair and stared at them. They were beautiful books, bound in bright colors, the pages edged in gold. I longed to claim them.

But, as young as I was, I understood that only by not claiming them could I hurt my parents as much as they had hurt me. I sat a long time that night, staring at the books they had bought for me. I sat on the green chair, absolutely still.