Fragile Beasts (34 page)

He gets to the front door before me and stands beneath the light looking through my sketches. He hasn’t said anything to me yet about the cause of tonight’s fight. I brace myself for his verbal attack.

He’s staring at a drawing I did of some kids in my earth science class. I wait for his smart-ass remark.

“When you do this, does it keep you from thinking about anything else?” he asks me.

“Yeah.”

He closes the book and hands it back to me without saying anything more. I wonder if he’s suddenly realized that I’ve had to find a way to escape from our lives, too.

I
’ve never been too big on Christmas. I don’t mean I don’t like it. I enjoy ting presents and eating turkey and having family togetherness just as much as the next guy. The problem is all those good things came along with a few bad things in my family.

I can’t remember a single year of my life when my mom wasn’t in a crappy mood from November through January. She complained about all the decorating, baking, and cleaning she had to do, which I always found a little hard to swallow considering Dad and us kids put up the tree and the lights, her idea of holiday baking was slapping red frosting and green sprinkles on a box of store-bought sugar cookies, and the house was as big a mess on Christmas as any other day of the year.

My dad was always stressed out, too, not just because he had to deal with Mom but because of all the money we were spending that we didn’t have. He’d drink more than usual and get really sentimental.

He’d talk about the sled he got from Santa when he was six years old and how he smashed it into a tree and got fifteen stitches in his head. He’d reminisce about the year the ruffled collar on Grandma Bev’s dress caught on fire when she leaned into some candles and how she got a third degree burn on her neck. He’d recall with a tearful smile the year he and his best friend were crawling around their snow fort late on Christmas night and a drunk uncle came out with his rifle thinking they were raccoons getting in the garbage cans and shot his friend in the butt.

All my dad’s fondest Christmas memories involved bodily harm.

Mom, on the other hand, had no Christmas memories or at least not any she chose to share with us. Aunt Jen was the same. Even when I’d ask them
straight out what Christmas was like when they were kids, all I’d get in response were blank stares and a reach for the nearest bottle.

Despite all this, the big day itself usually started out well. We’d get up and open our presents while a disheveled, bleary-eyed Mom and Dad in his-and-hers plush red bathrobes covered in cartoon reindeer quietly nursed their Christmas Eve hangovers with big steaming mugs of coffee and a half-dozen cigarettes.

By midday, Mom would be feeling much better and would have changed out of her robe into one of her painfully glittery holiday sweaters, a black velvet miniskirt, and a pair of high-heeled red patent leather boots Dad called her Naughty Elf boots. For a few hours they’d be in love, flirting, and kissing, and drinking toasts to each other.

They’d love us, too. That was back when Mom and Klint weren’t always fighting or avoiding each other, back when she used to give him hugs after his games and stroke his hair while he wolfed down his breakfast and gave him a kiss before bed every night.

We’d be one big happy family for a while. Aunt Jen would arrive down in the dumps because she didn’t have a date or because she had a date she didn’t want, and Bill would come over wearing a white beard and a Santa hat toting a case of beer and a bag of presents. Mom would set about cheering up Aunt Jen, and Bill would crack open a beer and take a seat next to Dad where he’d listen to him talk wistfully about his mom catching on fire for the hundredth time. We’d have dinner and everything would seem okay, but then about halfway through the meal something would set off Mom. Dad would try to appease her, but when Mom decided she was going to be pissed, nothing could change her mind.

Eventually when the shouting, door slamming, and dish throwing got to be too much for us, Klint, Krystal, and I would get our new toys and sneak into one of our rooms where we’d barricade the door with a dresser and have our own celebration. I always liked this part. It was cozy and quiet, and it calmed down Krystal, who tended to get pale and twitchy when Mom and Dad started to fight.

I’ve been relieved to find out that Miss Jack doesn’t make a big deal out of Christmas. Jerry puts up a tree for her and Luis sets up a Nativity scene, but that’s about it.

I think her lack of interest in the holiday comes from the fact that Luis isn’t here. He spends almost the whole month of December in Spain with his family.

He went off a couple weeks ago, dressed to the nines in a charcoal gray suit and a fur-trimmed black overcoat, smiling and humming “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly” while lugging four big suitcases filled almost entirely with presents.

He must be a star when he returns to his small hometown in Spain: the exotic American uncle laden with gifts who works for a wealthy heiress and who once worked for El Soltero.

I finished the caricatures on time. It wasn’t easy. I worked on them every day for a month, but it was worth it. He loved them and paid me thirty bucks apiece, which came to $240!

He said he would’ve spent more than thirty dollars on each of his siblings to get them some impersonal gift they probably didn’t need. The caricatures were something unique and thoughtful.

I was pumped up at first and started to think maybe I could make a decent living at being an artist until I realized I’d just been paid $240 for an entire month’s work and then it didn’t seem like so much. I’m still happy about it, though, and excited to think some of my work with my signature at the bottom will be hanging in houses in a different country an ocean away from here being appreciated by people who don’t care at all about baseball.

Before he left for the airport, Luis gave Klint and me a few instructions about Miss Jack. They weren’t really commands about what we were expected to do for her as much as they were reminders of her deficiencies due to her extreme age and her dependence on him.

We both knew Miss Jack was within hearing distance. Luis probably knew it, too.

“Remember Miss Jack is very old,” he told us as he slipped into his coat and gloves. “You must make sure she doesn’t fall down and break her bones.

“And remember Miss Jack is getting senile,” he added. “You must check on her time to time and make sure she hasn’t done something stupid.

“And remember Miss Jack is used to me doing everything for her. No one expects you to take my place. God knows no one ever could,” he said, making one of his customary glances toward heaven, “but you must not get upset with her if she starts ordering you about like a slave the way she does with me. Just
remind her you’re not a slave. Tell her the slave is having a good time without her.”

He also made a ton of meals and froze them for us. We’ve discovered over time that he can cook anything, not just Spanish food but all the best American food, too: lasagna, pizza, gravy, tacos, fried chicken, mac and cheese, stuffed pork chops, and the best french fries I’ve ever had. He doesn’t even mind doing it. At first I thought he might be insulted, but he said it’s Miss Jack who wants Spanish food all the time. He loves cooking all kinds of food as long as he can add his own personal touch.

Miss Jack has been gloomy, and I feel kind of bad for her. I know I should feel bad for myself. This is my first Christmas without Dad. It’s a mental health milestone. I should be buried beneath a pile of poignant memories. The grief counselor at school would be disappointed in me if I didn’t cry my eyes out at least three times today. But I don’t miss Dad any more today than I do any other day.

Maybe it’s because Christmas ceased to be a big emotional deal for us once Mom and Krystal left. All the fun seemed to go out of it, not to mention Mom took all our decorations with her.

Fortunately for us, we discovered purely by chance that the tractor supply store has a seasonal section stocked with a selective line of ornaments, so from then on our tree was decorated with John Deere tractor mowers and rifle-toting snowmen dressed in camouflage hunting gear.

What depresses me most about today is the absence of Shelby. This was going to be my first opportunity to spend a major holiday with her, but she decided to stay in France.

She texts me now and then with brief, bubbly messages about how great Paris is, and she continues to thank me for saving Baby. But other than that, she’s one more person who’s disappeared from my life.

Miss Jack told me that under normal circumstances we would have spent the entire day with her nephew and his family, but since Shelby’s parents decided to join her in Paris and Skylar is spending the holidays with her fiancé, it will be impossible this year. She didn’t seem too broken up over the situation.

Starr chose to stay home by herself. She’s supposed to come over later today, and this is the one thing I’m looking forward to. I don’t know why I’m excited about seeing her again, other than the obvious fact that she’s sexy. But
she also scares me. I’ve been picturing her in my mind as a sleek tawny wild cat pacing agitatedly around Cam Jack’s empty mansion looking for prey, and even though I know I’m not meaty enough for her to want to eat, there’s always the possibility she might pounce on me out of boredom.

Miss Jack is sitting, fully dressed, in a stiff-backed, satin, striped chair near the tree. Jerry started a fire for her this morning, and the dancing flames in the huge, open fireplace are cheerful and warm.

This is the first time Klint and I have been in this room other than checking it out when we first moved in looking for a TV or a ghost. It’s a beautiful room but about as inviting as a museum display. The only things missing are red velvet ropes and a low-voiced tour guide explaining the history of the pictures on the walls, which period the furniture is from, and the names of the famed sculptor who carved the twilight-blue marble mantelpiece and the artist who painted the mural of a hunting party on the high scrolled ceiling.

Most of the other rooms in the house are colorful and interesting and reflect Miss Jack’s taste, but this one only reflects her money.

Just looking at the furniture here makes our butts hurt, so Klint and I have chosen to sprawl out on the floor next to the tree in our pajama bottoms and T-shirts while Miss Jack sits primly wearing a high-necked green silk dress and big square-cut emerald earrings.

She told us one night at dinner that she doesn’t believe in making a big fuss over Christmas and she especially dislikes the practice of buying ridiculous amounts of gifts for people. She said that one humble, thoughtful gift meant more than twenty expensive gifts bought solely for the purpose of showing how much money one could spend and how little effort. Gift-giving, like everything else in America, had become a competition.

Klint and I had looked glumly at each other. We had been hoping for lots of thoughtless presents, but we agreed with her that one would be plenty.

Now looking at the meager heap of gifts sitting under the huge tree dripping with gold and silver, I’m having second thoughts.

“Well,” Miss Jack says, getting up from her chair and smiling at us. “Let’s get started.”

She reaches under the tree and hands us each a box from our mom.

“I think you should open these first.”

Klint and I exchange skeptical, defeated looks with each other. The orange
wrapping paper is covered with smiling chili peppers wearing Santa hats. Arizona even gets Christmas wrong.

I let myself get a little excited as I begin to wonder if Krystal made me anything this year.

She used to make me things all the time. She was a creative kid. She had tons of those arts and crafts kits that made everything from jewelry to candles, but she also liked to make up stuff on her own. One time she took an old mayonnaise jar and made this little farm under glass. She decorated the inside with cutout trees and a barn she drew on construction paper and glued some plastic toy animals and a silver foil pond into it. It was one of the best things I’ve ever seen.

Another time she made Mr. B a muscle shirt by taking a sleeve off one of Dad’s old T-shirts and cutting two little holes for the cat’s front legs to go through. She sewed a bunch of hearts and “Mr. B” onto it using red sequins and beads.

He almost scratched my face off while we tried to get him into it, but it was worth it. He tried everything to get rid of it and then when he figured out he couldn’t, he did the classic cat thing where he sat down and licked himself and acted like nothing had ever happened, like he wanted to wear it. Even Klint broke down laughing.

The first Christmas after she left with Mom, Krystal made me a needlepoint pillow with the Pirates’ logo on it, but last year she sent a pair of gloves and a hat I know Mom probably picked out for her.

Every year I wonder what Krystal’s Christmas is like. Does she think about what it used to be like when we were a family? Does she remember how beautiful our tree was and her favorite decorations? Does she remember Mom singing along to her endless supply of pop Christmas CDs, and Dad and Bill in his Santa hat sitting on the couch holding tinsel-trimmed beer cozies and cheerfully recounting how much Dad bled after he hit that old maple on his new sled? Does she remember going outside and playing in the snow, how I dragged her around for hours on our sled, how we licked icicles, how we made snowmen and snow angels and did all the dopey stuff kids are supposed to do never thinking for one minute one day it would all be taken away from us?

Is she sad or does she like it better out there? Does she do weird stuff like go swimming or play tennis on Christmas Day? Do they have a fake tree? Do
they have a tree at all or do they decorate a cactus? Do they eat turkey and gravy or do they have a cookout and eat Christmas burgers and red and green macaroni salad? Does Jeff have his own set of memories from his childhood that he tells while he’s drinking a margarita with a little paper umbrella in it?

Klint and I realize what’s in the boxes and give each other stunned stares.