Wonderland (21 page)

Though he spoke of himself as giddy, Dr. Pedersen talked as always with a rapid, wonderful clarity. And yet—there was something about his voice and his face that confused Jesse and made his saliva run with panic, as if, at the very center of his being, there was a light too powerfully bright to be borne.

Jesse ate so much that day that his new olive-brown suit strained at the waist and caused him discomfort. He stumbled and would have fallen into the Christmas tree itself if Mrs. Pedersen hadn’t laughingly caught hold of him. “What, are you drunk? Is my Jesse drunk?” she cried. Her own face was bright, her eyes glittering. For this special day she had done her hair up in rows of curls, layers of curls, that looked artificial and not nearly so pretty as her everyday hair, but she wore a
magnificent scarlet dress with an ermine collar, and a large diamond bracelet—Dr. Pedersen’s main present to her—and Jesse thought she looked beautiful. He kept wanting to cry, she looked so beautiful, and Dr. Pedersen, always the center of a group of intense, laughing people, was so wonderful a man, so wonderful a father.… In the late evening the guests began to leave, slowly and reluctantly, and by midnight everyone had gone: at last they were alone, just the Pedersens! Dr. Pedersen went right upstairs to change into the elegant blue wool bathrobe Hilda had bought for him, and the leather slippers Jesse—with Mrs. Pedersen’s help—had bought for him, and he came down again eagerly, rubbing his hands together as if, for him, the party was only beginning. Mrs. Pedersen kicked off her shoes, giggling. Hilda, who had had too much champagne, pressed her flaming cheeks with a damp cloth. Frederich, who had left the party off and on, perhaps annoyed by the noise, came down from his room now, fully dressed as he had been at dinner; his face looked unusually rosy and expectant. Jesse had been ready for bed a few minutes before, but now he felt eager, his heart almost pounding with excitement. He had never understood Christmas before, he thought dizzily. All the Pedersens went out to the kitchen, where Mrs. Pedersen opened the refrigerator and took out food, bowls of food, food wrapped carefully in waxed paper, and made them a supper. Hilda helped her, giggling and pretending to be drunk. They had warmed-up turkey and gravy and dressing; warmed-up ham; several loaves of good rye bread; whipped potatoes; and omelettes stuffed with mushrooms and chunks of ham, made just for fun by Mrs. Pedersen and Hilda who was supposed to learn how to cook someday soon, taught by her mother.… And slabs of leftover apple pie and minced meat pie that Mrs. Pedersen said would not keep, and an entire orange chiffon cake that Mrs. Pedersen had kept hidden just for midnight supper. Jesse and Hilda had several tumblers of milk, and the others had coffee with whipped cream spooned into it.

“Now we will read a little, just a little,” Dr. Pedersen exclaimed, and they went back into the big living room, where Dr. Pedersen built up the fire again, and they sat together on the sofa. Dr. Pedersen brought in a heavy book from the library, the family scrapbook, which had hinged wooden covers and which was usually kept on a little podium in the library. The covers had been decorated many years before by
Hilda with a wood-burning set. The letters of the title were large and deep:
THE BOOK OF FATES
.

“Now, now, we will read about ourselves just a little. On this Christmas Day of 1940, we will give thanks for all that we have, we will assess it,” Dr. Pedersen said happily. Mrs. Pedersen passed around a plate of fudge. They gathered around Dr. Pedersen, who sat with the heavy book on his lap, turning the pages slowly. Jesse sat beside him, pressed up close. He wanted to see everything. His eyesight blurred and wavered, he was so determined to see everything. He felt that he had never understood Christmas before and now it was going to be revealed to him, explained to him.… Mrs. Pedersen sat on Dr. Pedersen’s other side, and Hilda hung over his shoulder, girlish and silly. Only Frederich sat a little apart, pretending interest. He was much more alert than usual, however; usually he sat with his fat legs before him, his face sallow and bored and detached. “Now we begin at the beginning, as if this were a novel,” Dr. Pedersen said, and the first page was a series of photographs of himself as a child, a plump, handsome child. Hilda screamed with laughter at something—an old joke, evidently. “Hilda, please!” Mrs. Pedersen laughed. Dr. Pedersen turned the large page and there was a photograph of himself in a graduation cap and gown, evidently taken on the day of his graduation from college. “Isn’t your father handsome!” Mrs. Pedersen cried, reaching across to poke Jesse. Jesse, who was chewing fudge, a mouthful of delicious nut-studded fudge, did not even know at first what she had said. Then he smiled; he grinned happily.
Yes. Yes
. His father was a handsome man,
yes
. He glanced up to see that Frederich was just now taking out a handkerchief from his pocket, and along with the handkerchief something flew out and hit the carpet—it looked like a black, lint-covered piece of something, maybe a jellybean—and, stooping sluggishly, Frederich picked it up and popped it into his mouth mechanically, as if he hadn’t known exactly what he was doing. Jesse blinked, wondering if he had seen right. Had Frederich really popped a dirty jellybean into his mouth? Frederich gazed at him through half-closed eyes, contented; he did not seem to be really looking at Jesse.

“Ah, here, look here!” Dr. Pedersen cried. The large glossy photograph before him was of the Pedersens on their wedding day. “My modest bride—isn’t she charming?” Jesse was surprised to see that Mrs. Pedersen had been so slender. The photograph showed a woman
in her twenties, only a little thick about the hips and thighs, her face eager, glowing, lovely, the eyes spaced wide apart. The photograph had been touched up a little and her lips were too clearly outlined in red; but she had been a beautiful young bride, in yards of fine white lace. Dr. Pedersen, a stoutish young man with metal-rimmed glasses and a stern, handsome face, stared directly into the camera. His cheeks had been retouched too, rouged, so that he looked unnaturally festive.

“Oh, don’t look at this—turn the page—” Mrs. Pedersen said quickly.

The next photograph was of Mrs. Pedersen as a girl, standing in front of a rose bush in someone’s garden. The garden was immense. Mrs. Pedersen, squinting a little, smiled a sweet maidenly smile into the sun. Her skirt drooped down on her legs and her arms were crossed self-consciously across her bosom. Jesse guessed she was about twenty years old in the picture.

“Pretty. Such a pretty woman,” Dr. Pedersen said, as if making a diagnosis.

“That was so long ago, please don’t look,” Mrs. Pedersen said sharply.

She turned several pages in succession.

“Mama, don’t turn them so fast, you’ll rip them,” Hilda said. “Show Jesse this one. Look, Jesse, it’s Mother—would you recognize her?” A large newspaper clipping from the Women’s Page of the newspaper had been pasted into the scrapbook. It showed “Mary Shirer of Willow Street” receiving five blue ribbons at the Niagara County Fair of 1920 for her baked goods. The clipping had been sealed inside a piece of plastic. “Oh, please don’t look at that, that was so long ago,” Mrs. Pedersen said in distress.

She turned the pages quickly, and Dr. Pedersen, with an amused sigh of resignation, did not try to stop her. Jesse saw how this Mary Shirer was transformed gradually into Mrs. Pedersen—heavier hips, arms, a face that grew rounder, that grew almost round, a bosom that suddenly billowed out, the breasts like sacks of something soft and protruding, the upper arms fleshing out like sausages, the whole body thickening, growing outward like the trunk of a giant tree, corseted tight and rigid. One recent photograph was of Mrs. Pedersen standing—perhaps half hiding—behind a large table piled with baked
goods for a bazaar at the church, pies and cakes and tarts and brownies and cookies, baked goods piled everywhere on the table in front of “Mrs. Karl Pedersen, Chairwoman of the Autumn Baked Goods Sale” at the Lutheran Church. One pie was so cut—the fork marks so placed—that Jesse for an instant saw a face there, a child’s sweet, happy face smiling toward the camera.

Then the photographs and clippings of Dr. Pedersen began.

Pages and pages of them—Dr. Pedersen being awarded a trophy at a Fourth of July ceremony at Atwater Park, 1931, a bald man shaking his hand, flags in the background; Dr. Pedersen standing at a banquet table, flanked by flowers, a large copper medallion on the wall behind him with the face of Abraham Lincoln on it, and writing Jesse couldn’t read; Dr. Pedersen on the cover of a Sunday supplement magazine, in full color, standing in front of the Pedersen Clinic, which had evidently just opened, in 1933; Dr. Pedersen in the children’s ward of a hospital; Dr. Pedersen photographed for a Buffalo newspaper with a child in a wheelchair, a small girl, the two of them posed smiling awkwardly at each other—the caption for this read, “Gloria Spanner shows her gratitude for the efforts of Dr. Karl Pedersen, of Lockport, who is credited with saving her life by making a diagnosis of her condition, a rare bone-marrow disease.” There were large glossy photographs of Dr. Pedersen boarding a train, boarding an airplane, receiving strange objects of honor from groups—a large candy cane, a key as big as his arm, a huge bouquet, a giant stuffed rag doll, many trophies, a medallion, even a baby lamb, a real baby lamb; and of Dr. Pedersen with some friends at the golf course of the Lockport Country Club, and at more banquet tables, and at ground-breaking ceremonies for buildings; and at an Elks’ Club Halloween Party for Crippled Children, Dr. Pedersen enormous in a harlequin outfit, all rags and diamond designs of red and black and yellow, wearing a fool’s cap and bells, holding a kind of scepter; and of Dr. Pedersen on stage somewhere with a small, elderly man, the two of them facing each other in front of a large chart that showed great progress in something—the Community Chest Drive for 1939. There were several pages of a magazine story on Dr. Pedersen—Jesse caught sight of a headline that declared, “In his patients’ eyes this man can do no wrong”—and another front page of the same Sunday supplement, this
time showing Dr. Pedersen in his hospital whites, sitting at a desk; the story promised on the inside pages was called “Scientist or Mystic?—Dr. Karl Pedersen of Lockport.” As the years passed, Dr. Pedersen’s face grew wider and merrier, like a balloon being blown up. Jesse would have liked to study these pictures and stories. He felt dazzled, there was no time to make sense of this … and now Mrs. Pedersen was passing a bowl of salted nuts to him and Frederich.…

“Oh no, not these ugly things,” Hilda said. She turned away as the photographs of herself began: a child of about six, already heavy, a child of nine, of eleven, of twelve, some of the pictures just snapshots, others professional photographs, others clipped out of newspapers and magazines—the biggest story had been in
Life
, called “Math Prodigy from Upstate New York Baffles Professors.” As a small child Hilda had been pretty and cheerful, but as the photographs progressed her smile faded, her face soured, until the picture in
Life
showed a beetle-browed girl with a woman’s body shapeless as a tub.

“They’re not ugly, Hilda,” Dr. Pedersen said.

“At least you let me throw out that one that called me a freak,” Hilda said.

“Oh, Hilda, that wasn’t serious, that was just a journalistic method,” Dr. Pedersen said. “The word ‘freak’ had quotation marks around it, after all.…”

“A freak is a freak,” Frederich said.

It was the first time he had spoken for quite a while.

Dr. Pedersen ignored him. He was turning the big pages of the scrapbook slowly and reverently. Jesse, pressed up close to him, his own body close to Dr. Pedersen’s, stared at what was being shown to him—he could not look hard enough. He must see everything, remember everything.
The Book of Fates
, kept in Dr. Pedersen’s library, was not to be touched by anyone except Dr. Pedersen himself. There were a few more pictures of Hilda, only one glossy photograph of Frederich at about the age of eleven; then pictures of the family, of relatives and friends, perhaps twenty or thirty pages of these domestic snapshots, page after page until Jesse’s eyes began to ache. Then, at the back of the book, there was a section entitled “Impersonal Fates.” Dr. Pedersen showed Jesse a few of these pages, but it was clear that he too was tiring and his interest was ebbing. Most of these entries were clippings
from newspapers and magazines. They were about strangers, and the destinies of strangers; Jesse gathered that they had for some reason attracted Dr. Pedersen’s attention. A barber in San Francisco had been struck by a nineteen-year-old boy in a Cadillac convertible, thrown into the air, lodged in the back seat of the car, and, dying, dead, had been driven around for three hours by the panicked driver, who had gone mute from shock.… An eighty-seven-year-old Cincinnati grocer had been held up by robbers three days in a row, once in his store, once in a parking lot, once entering the side door of his own house, and on his way downtown to report the third robbery he was struck by a delivery boy on a bicycle and killed.… A family in Portland, Maine, had been awakened by an elderly female neighbor who told them she had dreamed of an angel sent to flatten their house, and within ten minutes of her telephone call their house had collapsed, injuring the mother and two of her children, but not seriously.… In New York City, twin brothers of fifty-five years of age were reunited after many decades’ separation, only to discover that they had been wounded in identical organs in World War I.… In Montreal, a thirty-year-old woman woke each night hearing a baby’s wail coming from the wall of her furnished room and, after calling police and notifying them for several days in a row, she gave birth herself to a dead infant, though she claimed she was not pregnant and “did not know” how the baby had got inside her.… In Galveston, Texas, a taxi driver reported that his cab had been flung in the air by a waterspout that preceded a small local hurricane, and that his fare, a white woman of about sixty, had been sucked out, never to be seen again, though no one was reported missing to the police.… Jesse’s heart hammered as he read these items, his eyes snatching at them. Dr. Pedersen began turning the pages faster and faster. For some reason he did not want to close the book, perhaps it was a ritual with him to go through the entire book, yet he was obviously eager to get to the end. Jesse wanted to slow his hand, to protest. Only a few more pages to go … Dr. Pedersen turned them rapidly … and, at the very end, Jesse caught sight of a familiar clipping, he had only time to glance at the headline before Dr. Pedersen closed the book, a headline that had nothing to do with him and that he rejected at once:
BOY ELUDES GUN-TOTING FATHER
.