Double Take (14 page)

Christmas Day. I sleep until noon. Downstairs, I find that my mother has already cleaned up breakfast and is starting in on lunch. She says, “Good morning, merry sunshine” without mentioning that it's Christmas. My parents never exchange gifts, but a gift is waiting for me on the floor in the living room right where a Christmas tree would be if we had one.

The whole time I am opening the package, my mother stands and beams at me. It takes a while for me to remove the wrapping paper of flowers from neutral seasons but she is smiling the whole time. Her cheeks must be exhausted, I think. I open a white box from Marshall Field's and lift out a plaid wool scarf and matching beret. “Oh, thanks, how nice,” I say.

She is not fooled. She knows I hate them but pretends to be pleased at my response. “Try them on,” she says. This is what she would say regardless of what was in the box—a golf tee, a box of chocolates, a live aardvark.

I can tell without seeing my reflection that I look grotesque, and the mirror confirms this. The scarf is too short, more of a muffler really, and the hat makes me look like a tired, hungover elf. “How do I look?” I ask. She has come up behind me and stands next to me in the mirror. I can see that although I have my father's coloring, the bones in my face belong to her.

“You look beautiful,” she says, turning me around so she can hug me, then she stands regarding me.

She is still beaming, and I suddenly realize she really does think I look beautiful. This makes me incredibly sad. I take off the hat and scarf, fold them up, and put them back in the box. They lie there looking hopefully up at me. I close the lid on them, then put my arm around my mother. “Thanks,” I say, giving her a kiss. Her cheek feels as cool and smooth as it did the day I left for kindergarten.

We're eating turkey sandwiches on rye. As a concession to my father, we're at the dining room table instead of in the kitchen. He has left the TV on loud in his study and is eating his sandwich quickly so he can return to his football game, but with an air of studied nonchalance to prevent my mother noticing and accusing him of unseemly haste. He chews in quick bites like a hamster. They are drinking wine but have not offered me any. I get a glass, the kind they give away at gas stations, and fill it to the top. The glass is so big it holds half the bottle. No one comments.

The sound of a touchdown wafts in from the next room, and my father's eyes shift longingly in its direction.

“What is it today?” my mother asks, sounding annoyed. “The Sugar Bowl? The Orange Bowl? The Christmas Bowl? The Chanukah Bowl?”

“A bunch of idiots bumping into each other,” my father says, probably quoting my mother. “Of no interest.”

“It's a holiday,” my mother says, as if my father hasn't spoken. “Can't we all just be together for once?” She says “all” as if there are forty of us.

“Pass the mustard,” my father says to me. It's the first thing he's said to me, but I don't hold that against him. We have an unspoken agreement not to annoy each other on holidays any more than we can help. All our agreements are unspoken, and we both prefer this.

“I thought we could have a nice dinner,” my mother continues. “Maybe go to the Far East Kitchen.”

“Sorry, Mom, I have to work.”

“Work? Who works on Christmas?”

“We're open all year. Every day.”

“Even Bert's is closed on Christmas,” my father says.

“What do you know from Bert's?” my mother asks.

“My misspent youth,” my father says.

“Emily was conceived in Bert's,” I say. I have told them this before, but they always ignore me. My parents don't care for Emily's parents, My mother thinks her father is a drunken cryptofascist—he has written several books on Ezra Pound—and though her mother is a civil rights lawyer, she was evidently on the wrong side of some left-wing issue back in the fifties. My father just doesn't like anybody.

“Where do you go when you go out at night?” my mother asks.

“Bert's,” I say. “Of course. Where else is there to go?”

“There used to be jazz clubs,” my father says dreamily. “Why, I used to go and hear Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins right down the street.”

“Who do you go with?” my mother asks with uncharacteristic directness.

“I usually meet people there. Friends. From high school. Anyway, I haven't been going out much lately. I got kind of tired of it.”

“Rachel, what are you doing?”

“What am I doing? I'm eating a turkey sandwich.”

“What are you doing with your life?”

“I don't know.” I think for a minute, taking a gulp of wine. “I guess I'm going with the flow. I'm being here. Now.”

There is another touchdown noise from the next room, and my father finishes the last bite of his sandwich and throws down his napkin. “Going with the flow, what is that, some kind of sixties crapola?” he says.

“I think your team is winning,” I say to him. “I hear the fans calling your name.”

“Don't be a smartass,” he says, standing up.

“Rachel, Rachel,” my mother says.

“I'm sorry, Mom, I don't know what to tell you. I'm just waiting until I figure out what to do.”

“Don't wait too long,” she says, standing up and clearing the plates. She goes into the kitchen, taking what's left of my wine away with her.

I end up working the counter, where a few old men sit drinking coffee. Tee hands me her rag, says, “Merry Christmas, baby,” and heads into the bathroom to change. She emerges in a red dress with green tights and holly leaf earrings, but apart from that you wouldn't know it was Christmas, except for the tinsel across the Greek columns and the lights on the plaster Venus de Milo. Nicky, resplendent in his usual baggy madras pants, does not seem to be in a particularly good mood, which is okay with me because I'm not either. I lean against the counter, and for a second I feel so incredibly shitty I'm about to fall over, but it passes.

A little dark-haired guy in a trench coat sits down at the counter. He takes the coat off to reveal a houndstooth jacket and a shirt with a busy flowered pattern.

“What can I get you?” I ask.

He smiles sweetly at me, and I notice an egg-yolk stain on his lapel. “Just coffee, miss, if you don't mind. Thank you very much. Thank you.”

“Okay,” I say to myself, and I bring him a nice fresh cup of coffee. I am expecting him to thank me again and am all set to tell him he's welcome, but instead he says something I can't quite hear. “I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that.”

“I said I'm underground,” he explains in a louder voice.

“You're—”

“Underground. Some people are above ground and some people are underground. I'm underground.”

I don't know quite what to say, and I stare at him for a minute. Then I say, “Do you mean that in a political sense? Do you mean that you're some kind of fugitive?” I'm beginning to get interested, like maybe this guy is a Weatherman or something. When I was in high school the principal gave the FBI a bunch of names of people she alleged were Weathermen, including me, though she was wrong about all of us. I have always wanted to meet a real Weatherperson, some of whom are in hiding but rumored to be around here somewhere.

“I mean I'm underground. We have choices in life, miss . . . What is your name?”

“Cookie,” I say without thinking.

“We have choices, Miss Cookie, about whether we want to be above ground or underground. There are advantages to both. For example, above ground there is abundance.”

“Like the sun, et cetera?”

“Very good. I can tell you're very intelligent. I myself have an extraordinarily high IQ. In fact, I practice law.”

“Oh, you're a lawyer?” I ask, wondering about the egg stain.

“No,” he says in a patient voice. “I practice law.”

“Then you're—”

“Underground. I have my own credentials.” He takes out an ID card and shows it to me. It says, “Ron Elman, Law Practitioner.” It's typed, and the photo is from one of those booths in the train station, which is probably where he had it laminated, too. “The advantages to being underground, however, are numerous. For example—”

“Good plumbing?” I ask. I always interrupt when I'm nervous.

“Ha ha ha,” he says, without really laughing. “You're very funny, Cookie. No, the primary advantage to being underground is that you are not subject to the constrictions of above-ground life. Underground you determine your own context. You construct your own reality and there is no one to contravene it.”

“It's like California?”

“I don't know. I have never been to California. Well, enough about me, let's talk about you. What do you think of me?”

I look at him. His dark hair is uncombed, and his little black eyes are cheery. His tie has a huge palm tree on it, and for a second I feel homesick for L.A. “I think you're very interesting and—”

“That was a joke. I was making a joke.” He sounds angry.

“Rachel, honey,” says a voice beside me. It's Oscar, thank God. He sits down next to Ron Elman. “It's Christmas, you should be home with your family.”

“Well, we already had our big celebration. What can I get you?” I am all set to go to the fridge and get him some Jell-O. I haven't looked yet, but my guess is that it's cut into little red and green blocks today.

“Rice pudding, please,” Oscar says.

“Not—”

“It's a new year. I'm making some changes.” His eyes crinkle at me.

“Really?”

“I'm even learning to drive.”

“Wow, that's great. Okay, rice pudding.”

“Good choice,” says Ron. He sticks out his hand and says, “Ronald Elman, practicing attorney.”

“Oscar Snipes.” He shakes Ron Elman's hand.

I have never known Oscar's last name, and it seems weird that he has one. I suddenly visualize the entire Snipes clan with Oscar as a boy at their knee, in front of a huge Christmas tree with a million presents spread beneath it while little Oscar runs around ecstatically, shaking each package to try to guess what it is with that same gleeful smile he gets when he sees me, or Jell-O, or other small, unimportant things. This image of happy little Oscar makes me so sad I wrap my arms around my stomach and bend over in pain.

“Rachel, are you all right?” Oscar asks at the exact same time that Ron Elman says, “Is everything okay, Cookie?”

“Everything is fine,” I say, straightening up and trying to smile. “How could it not be? It's Christmas.”

Oscar seems really focused on his rice pudding. He wraps his smile around each spoonful while Ron Elman drones on at him about something I can't quite hear. I catch the words “law,” “underground,” and what I think is “beatitude” as I pass back and forth running coffee to old men at either end of the counter. I have an urge to get everyone together for a game of pinochle. Maybe I'll start a bingo parlor and serve coffee, sandwiches, and Jell-O, and charge a dollar at the door. It is the most concrete career idea I've had so far.

“How's the pudding?” I ask Oscar.

“Very good, thank you, honey.”

There is something about his tone that makes me sure he wishes he had stuck with the usual but is too good a sport to say so. This is what I love about him, I think as I watch him. It's not that he lies to himself about the rice pudding. He knows the rice pudding is not that great, but he makes the best of it, he sits there eating it with as much enjoyment as he can muster while he listens graciously to the ramblings of Ron Elman as if actually interested. He does what he can, I think, but then I realize that I have no idea what is going through Oscar's head at the moment, I only think I do. Still, I say, “Oscar, you're a prince.”

He laughs and says, “Thank you, honey.”

“What about me?” Ron Elman looks jumpy, like he is going to whip out a gun and take us all hostage.

“You're a prince too. You're both princes. We're going to put gold crowns on both of your seats.”

“That would be nice,” Ron says, as if we really will.

I am relieved when he leaves.

That night I dream that I am in court, and Ron Elman is my lawyer. He is telling the judge that I am not really a Weatherperson, that it only looked that way because I happened to have a lot of explosives hidden under my bed. The judge, of course, is my high school principal, and she doesn't look as if she believes him. I glance behind me and see my parents watching calmly, like they're not the least bit worried. Next to them are a bunch of people from Casa Sanchez, including Sam, Fletcher, Victor, and Rat. “She's not a Weatherman,” Ron is saying in his sweet little voice. “She's just underground. If she
were a Weatherman, don't you think the sun would shine a little more? Don't you think there'd be a little less snow?” I turn around to look for Rat, but he's not there, and then I notice that my parents have left too, like they had another party to get to.

I am downtown at the Customer Service counter in Marshall Field's.

“It was a gift,” I tell the woman at the counter, handing her the white box. I recognize her from high school, and I can tell she recognizes me. We pretend we have never seen each other before. She writes out a credit slip, then takes the box away from me. I feel a stab of remorse at the loss of my hat and scarf, but it passes.

“The thing is, Mom, I might not stay here,” I found myself explaining the other day. “I might move somewhere else. Somewhere warm. Like Florida. Or Barbados.”

Six months ago, this would have pushed her buttons, but now she would be only too glad to get rid of me. “What about California?” she asks in this sly way she has. She wants to ask me about Michael, but that would be too direct. Her second language is insinuendo.

“It's a state,” I say just to be funny.

“Is it a state you plan to return to?” she asks with an edge to her voice.

“I don't think so, Mom,” I say. “It's too nice there. Every time the sun shines I feel guilty.”

“So stay here. Suffer with the rest of us.”

“That's the trouble. Everything here seems so unhappy.”

“Rachel, cows are happy. People are more complicated.”

We are talking in our usual light-hearted vein, as if we are kidding, but I am suddenly aware that I am not kidding, that somehow I feel California is too nice for me.

I spend forty-five minutes wandering around Marshall Field's looking for something to buy with my credit slip. Everything is too expensive. Finally I find a pair of really dark sunglasses that cost three dollars less than my credit. The salesman actually gives me change, and I put the sunglasses on and exit onto Wabash Avenue. The sunglasses are so dark I can barely see the L tracks above me. I'm hoping someone will ask me why I'm wearing them but no one does. I pause to stare into the window of the candy store on the corner. I have always stopped to gaze here, sometimes with my mother tugging on my arm to hurry me down to the train station, but as far as I can recall I have never actually been in the store. I go in. The smells of chocolate and mint envelope me, and I close my eyes and breathe deeply, like it is the freshest air I've breathed in years. I ask for six chocolate turtles, and the saleswoman puts them in a little pink bag. I don't really feel like eating candy, but I feel good walking down Randolph Street toward the train station with my turtles, like I have finally figured out what I wanted out of life and gotten it.

There's a kind of rushing sound as I descend the steps to the station, and then I enter a long tunnel that always scared me when I was little. Halfway down the tunnel, a blind man is playing the blues on a harmonica, and the sound bounces off the walls from all directions as I get closer. As I pass by, I put what is left of my change from Marshall Field's into the hat on the ground before him, then as an afterthought, drop the turtles in there, too. I can smell shoe polish from a nearby stand as I go through the double doors. I have always loved this moment when you leave the tunnel and enter the station, with its unintelligible loudspeaker noises, the faint sounds of trains below, and the little sparkly things embedded in its floor. It's like finding a hidden lost civilization. I walk over to a
small counter that sells strange fruit drinks and order a Pink Breeze to go. A troll-like woman hands me a paper cup full of coconut milk and strawberry juice. It has an odd, familiar taste, the first thing that has tasted good to me in months. When I've finished it, I turn around and head for my gate. A man in a black raincoat brushes past me. For a moment, I stop walking and stand frozen. Then I run after him. When I dash up behind him and grab his arm, he wheels around, and I notice his fists are clenched. “Hey, Sam,” I say, taking off my sunglasses and giving him what is probably a pretty weird smile. “It's me, Cookie.”