Spoonwood (27 page)

3

CHRISTMAS AT THE ELMANS'

ONE YEAR LATER

P
ersephone had depended on Katharine Ramchand's good sense and calm demeanor to keep her own spirits up, but Katharine was flying to Tunapuna, Trinidad, to be with her half-sisters and their families for the holidays. Persephone had given Soapy and Roland a week off, and they had left for parts unknown. Persephone and Birch would have the mansion all to themselves. How to give the boy a proper Christmas when she herself could care less and had no talent for faking anything, let alone joy? It was not Christmasy-looking in Upper Darby that year. The early part of the month had seen a surprise storm and below zero temperatures for a week. And then everything changed. It rained, the snow melted, and now it was sunny, the temperature befitting October. The thaw was supposed to last two or three more days.

She had brought Birch home only three weeks ago from the rehab center. The doctors believed he had no permanent brain damage. Even so, his mind had been distorted. He remembered some events in minute detail, some not at all, and it appeared as if his imagination had filled file cabinets usually reserved for memories. His speech was oddly formal, as if he remembered
how to speak from the books he had read. He'd pause in places where most people would motormouth. His diction gave him the power to command one's attention. Doc Mendy believed that the latest trauma had exacerbated the effects of earlier traumas.

The paralysis in Birch's face had diminished but it left a tic around the eyes, so that he often appeared to be squinting, as if poring over some very fine print. Persephone had no doubt he would grow to be tall, handsome, and strong like Reggie, but for now he was still weak, his muscles slack from months of inactivity. His smile, revealing a mouth full of metal, was rather hideous. In rehab they'd taught him to walk all over again without toes.

It was the day before Christmas, and they were decorating the tree in the Butterworth family tradition—real pine cones painted in wild colors for ornaments, family pictures from various periods starting with the 1870s, hair ribbons belonging to the Butterworth women, jewelry, family memorabilia (emphasis on the funky and bizarre, such as discarded sunglasses, pocket watch chains, tied trout flies), and popped corn, lots of stringed popped corn. If there was one thing that heartened Persephone, it was Birch's delight in popped corn, a Salmon and Butterworth family tradition. The tree reached to within inches of the twelve-foot-high ceiling.

Every Christmas season, even the years when Persephone was not in Upper Darby, Obadiah Handy and Chahley Snow would deliver a tree they cut from the trust lands. The trees were always perfectly symmetrical, and Persephone puzzled over this matter; she'd been in the woods, and she knew that young evergreens never had enough room or light in the deep forest to grow evenly. She marveled that her loggers could find a perfect tree. What Persephone Salmon did not know was that Obadiah and Chahley looked for a tree at least sixty feet tall, one that stuck out above the others. The top, exposed to the sun without competition from its neighbors below, would be perfectly formed. They'd drop the tree, lop the top, and leave the rest to be gobbled by the Nature-machine.

The tree was magnificent enough, but it did not dominate the room. The fireplace and its giant maw would always reign here.
Persephone told Birch how on the twelfth day before Christmas his grandfather Reggie Salmon would build a huge fire, and how it would take three or four days before the bricks were warm and then the fireplace would become a giant radiator and that would heat the huge room with logs alone for the holiday.

“Why did, he, do, that, when, the, furnace could do it better?” Birch asked, each word a question, an observation, a marker for the world to take note.

“He did it for fun.”

“I would, like to, try it.”

“You're too young now. We'll have to make do with smaller, occasional fires. Do you remember your father's wood stove?”

“I remember, the fire. My mother, my mother, was in, the fire.” He spoke as matter of factly as you'd talk about the weather.

“Oh, goodness.”

“It's okay. The fire, the fire, the fire, did not, her . . . hurt her. She”—Birch made a diving motion with his hand—“flew down, from the”—Birch raised his hand to heavens—“stars, to, to, to acquire, my attention.”

“Acquire?” Persephone laughed at the word choice. “What went on between you and your mother, or rather her ghost?”

Birch shook his head, and when he spoke it jarred her because his voice was almost perfectly normal, “I don't, know. It's all mixed up in my head. I don't really know until I start talking and then I, I remember.”

She gave him an encouraging nod. His memories from inside the coma were especially vivid, and she liked listening to them. “You talk, I'll listen,” she said. “Tell me something you remember about your mother.”

“Right now—nothing. I remember, remember, Dad. He held, my hand, and he, talked to me. I wanted, to tell him that, I, I, understood, but I couldadint. Is that, a word?”

“Couldn't, contraction for could not. Couldadint sounds like patent medicine.”

“I knew, that, I already, knew that. I remember my mom now, in heaven, with my mom. She said, that Dad, was his own worst, worst, worst. Emmy?”

“Enemy.”

“Right. Dad was his own liverwurst enemy?”

Persephone laughed. “Are you making a joke?”

“Yes, you, got it, good. Mom said, love Dad, anyway. Dad told, me, me, he told me . . .”

“When?”

“During my, coma. He talked, ‘I did, one, good thing in my, life. I, found, your grandfather Howard's, mother. She's, she is, she's eighty-six and lives in Maine.' He, Dad, told, me, me that Grandpa Howard, drove up to see her. They had a re-onion.”

“A re-onion?”

“Right. After Dad told me, about Grandpa, seeing, his mom, Dad, Dad, he sat in a chair, and he, he, was quiet, but I know what he was, was, doing. I knew, the sound. I, can't, think of the, idea, in verbal. But, the sound.” He squinted, looking for words and diction, it appeared.

“Make the sound,” Persephone said.

“Sip, sip, sip, sip.”

“He was drinking a glass of water?”

“No,” Birch was adamant.

“You say you were with Lilith in heaven.”

“Yes.”

“Did she speak to you?”

“I, think, so.”

“What did she look like?”

“Like the pictures.”

“Apparently, one does not age in heaven.” Persephone laughed, her bitter scraping laugh that could peel paint.

“Grandma, Purse?”

“Yes?”

“Can I, go and see, Dad, once, in a while?”

Persephone thought long on this question. “Let me think about it. Birch, is there something special for Christmas I can do for you?”

“More, presents?”

“If you want. What would you like? Your own TV maybe?”

“Okay, a TV.”

“Really?”

His squint became more pronounced. “Not really. If I, could, have, it would be, to see, Missy Mendelson, and to eat Christmas, dinner, at Grandma Elenore and Grandpa Howard's mobile home, with Dad.”

“They pack them in that trailer, and you'd rather be there than here?” She was talking to herself now, a bad habit, for the quality of the company was not up to her standards.

“Did, I, I hurt, your feelings, Grandma Purse? I love you.”

“I know you do,” she said. She wanted to hug him, but he was at an age where hugs embarrassed him.

They watched
A Wonderful Life
on the VCR, a recent addition in the Salmon house, because Birch had become addicted to television and movies in the hospital and in rehab.

Afterward, Persephone went into her office, closed the door, and telephoned the Elman residence. Elenore Elman answered the phone.

Persephone found herself unaccountably shy. She had to light a cigarette just to keep her voice steady.

“Mrs. Elman, Persephone Salmon here. Listen, I know this is the last minute, but Birch has expressed a desire to eat Christmas dinner with you folks. I was wondering if I could drop him off. I've made arrangements for Missy Mendelson's mother to pick him up and bring him to the Mendelsons'. They just returned from a vacation.”

“Well, this is really something,” Elenore said, and Persephone could not tell from her tone, surprised and a little suspicious, what her meaning was. Persephone's old animus gnawed her gut. She wanted to tell Elenore Elman to speak her mind, but she reined herself in.

“Birch says you eat punctually at noon,” Persephone said. “I could drop him at a little before then, and Missy's mother will pick him up at 3:30.”

Again there was a long pause. Finally, Elenore Elman spoke. “It used to be that all our children and their families would come to our place for Christmas
dinnah,
but they moved away, thousands
of miles. Mrs. Salmon, maybe you'd like to help fill out our table.”

“You're, inviting me—me?”

“Yah, you.”

Suddenly, both women choked up with emotion. The very idea—the Elmans and the Salmons at the same table. Why had they waited so long? They lingered in some kind of telekinetic embrace conducted through the phone lines, then hung up at the same time without good-byes.

The Elman yard was appalling—junked cars, various discarded appliances with bullet holes in them, a bathtub Mary in a vegetable garden, garbage trucks in a dirt parking lot, things just lying here and there. The scene made Persephone fearful. She wasn't afraid of the inhabitants of this place; she was afraid of her own insulting, unmanageable tongue. For Birch's sake she resolved to put a clothespin on it.

On impulse she'd brought the Elmans special gifts, but now in the driveway she questioned her own judgment. How could these people appreciate works of art? She must have had a temporary lapse into insanity to agree to come here.

Inside, the mobile home was neat to a fault. Apparently the Elmans divided their domain into duchyes: he got the barn and the outdoors, she got the domicile. Persephone couldn't tell from the road, but another room with a shed roof had been added, making the kitchen and the adjoining “family room,” as they called it, fairly good-sized and comfortable. But that wall-to-wall carpeting!

An Aubuchon hardware store calendar decorated a kitchen cabinet door. Magnets held notes to the refrigerator. In the family room was a framed print of a rosy-cheeked Jesus, with Joseph and Mary, and another print of cows grazing in a field. Persephone saw only one well-made piece of furniture, a gun cabinet, beside which was a plastic creche and an artificial Christmas tree. Framed portraits of children and grandchildren popped up
everywhere. A couple of shelves spilled over with
Reader's Digest
condensed books. A magazine rack contained
Time, People,
and the
Catholic Messenger.
No ashtrays in sight. The poverty of art depressed Persephone. It wasn't that the Elman house was in poor taste; it was that it lacked any standard or even idea of taste. Still, it was neat and clean.

Birch embraced his grandparents in a cautious, reserved way. Latour and Birch did not embrace, but something passed between them—a smile, brief but penetrating eye contact, an intimacy that gave Persephone a pang of envy. She remembered that Latour as Frederick Elman had been an insecure, high-strung young man with a chip on his shoulder. Now, on the brink of middle age, he was a different person. Rueful—was that what she was seeing behind the calm exterior?

Persephone was introduced to the other guests: Pitchfork Parkinson and his sister, Delilah, obviously a sweet-dispositioned Down's-syndrome person; Long Neck McDougal and his girlfriend Janice (no last name given, bad teeth). Pitchfork and Long Neck were part of Howard's trash collection team. Persephone was impressed by the physiques of these men. They didn't have the pumped-up, poster-boy look, nor did they resemble athletes; they were a breed apart, slouchingly muscular from manual labor, eight hours a day Monday through Friday plus Saturday mornings, ugly, dependable, expendable bodies, like the machines they loved so much.

Birch tore into presents from his grandparents, a video game and a sweater from Elenore and a .22 rifle from Howard.

The grimace on Latour's face told Persephone he didn't approve of guns, but he didn't say anything.

“I'll take it back if you don't want him to have it,” Howard said to Latour.

“Pop, you're going to do what you're going to do,” Latour said with mild amusement.

Howard turned to Persephone. “I've been holding onto this little pea-shooter for a week, didn't even know whether I'd have the opportunity to give it to him. I probably should have checked with you first.”

“As long as he takes a gun safety course, it's all right with me,” Persephone said. “I've been shooting since I was eleven years old—skeet.”

“I stand corrected,” Howard said. He had a droll way of talking that suggested he never stood corrected.

Latour's gift to Birch was about the size of a box of chocolates and wrapped in birch bark. Birch closed his eyes and held the box for a moment.

“I bet you know what it is,” Latour said.

“I do,” Birch said. “Can I open now?”

Latour didn't say anything. He just smiled, and Birch opened the box. Inside was a Swiss Army knife and a sharpening stone.

“You remember how to use the stone?” Latour asked.

“I remember everything Dad.”

“I knew you would.”

Persephone experienced a complex emotion. It was joy and anguish and envy. She knew that Birch and Latour had reestablished the connection that had bound them in the years they were together.

Elenore and Janice served turkey, store stuffing, mashed potatoes, peas, Thanksgiving all over again. Dry toast in place of rolls—what was that all about? Persephone declined dessert, and despite her efforts to remain cordial and calm she began to fidget. Only Howard noticed. He made a motion with his fingers and pointed toward the door.