The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman (9 page)

“Don’t you think you should go up? Talk to them or something?” I asked. “They might get a divorce over a stupid Christmas tree.”

Mother, removing her overcoat, said, “It’s hard to be newly wed.”

“My experience with newlyweds is that they should be gassed,” Fleur said.

Mother struggled to find the appropriate expression.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Fleur’s fingers covered her mouth when she saw Mother’s sagging jaw. “I didn’t mean Trish and Bjorn. My parents—that is, my mother is going to be newly wed for the sixth time on New Year’s Day. One of her husbands once called her a silver-lined slut. My father’s third marriage is breaking up even as we speak. His last wife broke his head open with a blender. I was thinking about them.”

“Oh dear,” Mother said again. “And poor Bjorn and Trish upstairs bludgeoning each other over a tree. We’d really better go up and knock on the door.”

My father nodded. “Good night,” he said, taking Mother’s arm.

“Do you guys want to go back to bed?” I asked Fleur and Richard.

Fleur shook her head. “I’d rather give them a little time.” She sat down in Dad’s desk chair. “You guys play. I’ll enjoy.”

Richard and I, after a half dozen false starts, interrupted by fits of giggling, mostly mine, played peaceful songs of a town called Bethlehem, a baby called Jesus, and winged singers called angels. Silently I prayed for peace upstairs.

 Revision Notes

I find I’m mad at Bjorn and Trish. Their marital problems are ruining my romance novel. I know there’s supposed to be tension, but not theirs! I feel like taking them out. But then why would Richard be a guest in our house? And if I didn’t have a brother, I couldn’t be in love with his friend, could I?

I could just take Trish out, but that’s kind of hostile. I mean, she’ll read the book and wonder why everyone’s in it but her. I shouldn’t have to be worrying about all this.

I don’t want you to think that I’m one of those naive narrators who are the last ones to know what’s really happening in a story. I know who my antagonist is as well as you do, and in
Chapter
Seven
she will accelerate her obnoxious behavior, increasing the level of dramatic tension ever so slightly. What are friends for?

I know why Ashley has been my friend. The trouble is I know how this book ends, and I’m not in any mood to give Ashley the benefit of the doubt. Still, I do, sadly, remember why I liked and, yes,
needed
her for my friend. A short list:

1. It was Ashley who allowed me to drop my owly, smart-girl self and entertained me with makeovers. She could do this thing with my eyes using pencils, creams, and little brushes, and suddenly I had dramatic eyes magnified by the glasses. She painted on cheekbones. “You look like Greta Garbo,” she’d say in her Greta Garbo voice. And the honest truth is I really do look better with lip gloss.

As long as I can remember, Ashley has had a closet
of costumes—feathery boas, old hats with veils, and gold high heels with straps and glittery bows on top. We’d strut in front of the mirror and call each other Ashley dahling and Kate dahling. For hours at a time, Ashley showed me glamour. I will miss that.

2. She introduced me to trashy television, trashy reading, and trashy food, all of which I loved. Last year we watched
Geraldo
every afternoon. “An hour with dysfunctional people is so invigorating,” Ashley would say. “It makes me feel so emotionally stable. I think I’m turning into Joyce Brothers!” We criticized Geraldo’s mannerisms—“He strokes his own chest, he’s so proud of himself”—and laughed while stuffing down pounds of cheese puffs.

And, of course, those romance novels, which I didn’t
have
to read but did, because I, like a voyeur, really liked those three-paragraph, sweat-inducing kisses.

3. Ashley knew how to have fun. If it hadn’t been for her, I never would have rented Rollerblades and skated around Lake of the Isles. I never would have spray-painted minor obscenities on the faculty bathroom walls in middle school, the only act of vandalism of my life. I wet my pants, I was so scared. And so thrilled.

She was like having Pandora for a friend. I was never sure what would come out of her box to entertain or horrify me.

Last Christmas I found out what was in the bottom of that box.

* * *

T
RISH WAS AT
breakfast Christmas Eve morning, but not Bjorn. He had left the house earlier; no one knew where he’d gone. Divorce lawyer would have been my bet.

“I’d like to take individual Christmas portraits of everyone over the next couple of days. Would that be okay with you guys?” Trish spoke shyly, self-consciously. Perhaps she was embarrassed about walking out on us the night before. Perhaps she wondered if we had heard them fighting. I wondered what Mother and Dad had said to them.

“You can take my picture if you’ll be kind with the light,” my father said, handing her a plate of sausages. He held her shoulder. “This is my good side,” he said, tilting his head.

Trish smiled at him.

“I hope you’ll take us as a group as well,” Mother said.

“You want to remember the Christmas of the invaders?” Fleur was stabbing at a sausage.

“Yes, I do,” Mother said.

It was past ten o’clock, because we’d all gotten to bed so late. I wasn’t surprised when the back-door bell rang.

“Hello, Ashley,” I said, sounding like a school principal. My body blocked the doorway. The freezing air raised goose bumps on my skin immediately.

“Guess what?” she squealed. “I found the diamond earrings! My mother had them hidden in a drawer in the laundry room. They look
gorgeous
on me.”

“Great,” I mumbled. Ashley had never once been surprised on Christmas day. Manipulators don’t like surprises.

“Can I come in?” She glanced over my shoulder.

“We’re in the middle of breakfast,” I said, trying to keep from shivering. I folded my arms for warmth.

“Are you mad at me?” She seemed truly shocked.

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact.” I was glad suddenly to be six feet tall, looking down my nose.

“Because of what I said yesterday? I was just being honest.” She tried to peer over my shoulder.

“And now I’m being honest. You’re just using me to get to Rich when you know—you
know
”—I lowered my voice—“that I like Rich. I thought you were my friend.” I was shivering hard now, and suddenly I was afraid I would cry. The cold made it worse. Expressing my disappointment out loud made it worse.

“Kate, close the door, you’re freezing us out in here.” Mother appeared in the doorway. “Hi, Ashley, come in and join us for breakfast.”

Ashley stepped past me into the back hall. “Thanks, Mrs. Bjorkman. Just coffee would be nice.”

I closed the door and stood in the hall, hunched over, hugging myself, until I stopped shaking.

“Hi, you guys. Hi, Rich.” Ashley’s voice grated. The shivering started up again.

As she’d done yesterday morning, she had taken Mother’s chair next to Richard and was semihuddled against him. “I’m still cold,” she said breathlessly, heaving her breasts under Richard’s nose.

He smiled benignly.

“Why don’t you put your coat back on?” I said and wished I hadn’t. It sounded sullen, the way I felt.

“Do you still want help with your Desdemona paper?” Could Fleur sense my misery?

I nodded.

“Let’s run down to the university library the day after Christmas. I don’t know how long I’m going to be here after that.”

“Aren’t you leaving with the others?” I had heard Bjorn say they would leave after New Year’s because he wanted Trish to experience New Year’s
Eve
. It’s a kind of joke in our family.

“I was going to—” She smiled, embarrassed. “I was thinking maybe I should attend my mother’s wedding.”

“Oh, I forgot.” I had wondered last night why she would choose this Christmas to spend in Minnesota if her mother was getting married, but then I figured that a family with parents marrying over and over again operated under different rules.

“Don’t say anything to the others.” She had lowered her voice. “I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

I nodded.

The garage door opened, and a few minutes later Bjorn burst into the room with an armload of packages.

“I hope you bought me something small and expensive,” I said.

“Diamond earrings!” Ashley said.

Stuff the diamond earrings.

“Have you eaten?” Mother asked.

“No, and I’m starving,” Bjorn said.

There wasn’t a vacant chair in the room. “Sit here,” Richard said, standing. He moved over to the counter to make more pancakes.

Ashley looked disappointed.

“I drove past Como Lake this morning.” Bjorn’s look took in everyone, but Trish got the most repeated glances. “The snowplows have cleaned one section of ice for skating. I thought it might be fun to go—you know—” His eyes shifted again and again to Trish. Hadn’t they made up yet? “Go skating. What do you think?”

“I’ve never been ice-skating.” Fleur made it sound like bungee-jumping.

Richard turned away from the frying pan. “That’s why you came, isn’t it? To
experience
winter?”

“No, I think it’s great. Let’s do it.”

“Fleur and I don’t have any skates,” Trish said.

“I’m sure we can find some around,” Mother said.

“If not, there’s a place where you can rent them,” Bjorn was quick to add.

“I’ll bring some cocoa in a thermos for everyone.” Ashley had found a way to be included.

M
OTHER HAD FOUND
skates that fit Trish and Fleur and was wiping them off in the front hall when she saw a boy carrying a large white box tied with a red ribbon walking up the front steps. “What’s this?” She opened the door before he had a chance to ring the doorbell.

“Delivery for Ms. Trish Bjorkman?” the boy said.

“Trish?” Mother turned.

“For me?” Trish rose from the stairs where she’d been sitting. She signed the receipt and took the long box from the boy. “Merry Christmas!” she called to him as he
hurried down the walk. Her voice was the cheeriest I’d heard it in the last twenty-four hours.

She lifted the lid and folded back the tissue paper. “Oh, oh, how beautiful, how exquisite!” She leaned her face into the box to smell the roses.

Fleur picked up the card that had fallen to the floor and handed it to Trish. “Bet they’re not from Santa Claus,” she said, lips pursed.

“What’s holding up this show?” Richard came in from the kitchen, followed by Bjorn, who was working hard to keep his face neutral.

Trish, having read the note, swung on Bjorn, embracing him with her one free arm. “Of course I forgive you.” She kissed his lips. “Bjorn, they’re so beautiful.” She kissed him again. “I’ve never had such a lovely gift. Thank you!” Kiss. Kiss. Kiss. Smooch. Smooch.

Bjorn had his arms around her. “Things okay now?”

“Yes, I love you so much.” Smooch again.

Mother, with a tight-lipped smile, was already on her way to the kitchen. “You’ll need a vase,” she said.

Something was wrong with this picture, but what? I felt exactly the way I had felt in Sims Market a few nights before, when Ashley and Kirk had “performed” in front of me. The roses were lovely and, yes, romantic. Trish was happy. Bjorn was happy. Why this feeling of mine? Perhaps it was that I was acutely aware that Mother thought a dozen roses were a profound cliché. She had said this many times. “A dozen lilies are far better.” Mother’s voice was loud in my head. Hadn’t Bjorn heard her say it?

He and Trish followed Mother into the kitchen, clinging to each other.

Fleur heaved what seemed to me a disgusted sigh. “Forgot my gloves.” She ran upstairs.

Richard stood at the edge of the dining room watching me, his hands in his coat pockets. “Bribery seems to be a strong aphrodisiac,” he said.

Bribery?

“I guess,” I said. I followed Fleur up the stairs for a second pair of wool socks in case I got cold.

In my bedroom, Fleur was ripping at her hair with a hairbrush. As usual, our eyes locked in the mirror. She stopped brushing. “Roses don’t solve anything. It’s just a bribe to get her to be nice to him again. My mother fell for it all the time. Geez.” She set the brush on the chest and turned around to face me directly. Her expression softened. “I’m sorry. Bjorn’s your brother—I have no right—”