Christmas in Austin

by Benjamin Markovits

  “It’s not a protest … that makes it sound. I mean, who am I protesting against? It’s just something I want to do.”

  “You want to suggest … or at least, you want to know what it feels like …”

  But they were talking to each other; it was a performance.

  “I remember there was some bad feeling when your parents let him go,” Dodie said. She was looking at Julie, maybe she was more confused than she first appeared. “Because what’s he supposed to do? Where’s he gonna go? But the whole neighborhood was changing. When we bought this house, in 1951, everybody got along. You saw a lot of black faces. The Tylers had a live-in maid. The Gormans—all of their children had black nannies. Everybody knew each other, they worked hard, nobody had any problems. But that’s all changed. How many black people live in Hemphill Park today? Nobody. If you see somebody now you reach for the phone.”

  And this is how it went on.

  “I voted for Obama, too, the first time around,” she said. “But not again. It’s getting so you can’t even talk about anything anymore. Without everybody getting excited. I tried to explain to your mother when they moved in, this is how it works. For a few years I gave him little gardening jobs, when I could. He mowed the lawn. But just getting here on the bus from Govalle … I think that’s where he lived. He was already pretty old, not as old as I am now but old. His brother ran an auto shop over there. But I said to him once, I’m not sure who’s doing the favor. He liked coming but it’s a long way. I don’t know what happened to him.”

  Nathan’s cell phone rang while she was talking. He said it might be Bill, who had flown to New York to see his sister, who was in the hospital. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I should probably take it,” and walked out the front door onto the sunporch—Julie could see him through the screen window.

  “Now your mother counts as one of the old-timers, like me,” Dodie said. Julie didn’t correct her. “That’s what happens, I guess,” Dodie went on, and then she laughed. “This is what you get for outstaying your welcome. You’re probably sitting there, thinking … I don’t know what you’re thinking. If my daughter were around, she’d tell you—she’d tell me … Mom, she’d say. Cut it out. What? What? Sometimes I act like I don’t know what she means, but I know. Some things you don’t say. But that doesn’t mean people don’t feel them.”

  “I think it’s better to say everything,” Julie said, at last.

  “I don’t get much opportunity,” Dodie told her. She was really a very small woman. She wore blue jeans and house slippers and a sweater that was much too big—gardening clothes. But on her hard dining-room chair, she sat up straight. (Julie occupied the two-seater couch.) Her gray hair was pulled up in a bun, which she must have pinned herself. There were only a few stray curls. And yet the main impression you got of her face was a certain vagueness, almost as if what she actually used to look like didn’t matter anymore, it didn’t count. Those sunglasses covered up a lot. Her lips were thin and colored like the rest of her face, an old woman’s tan.

  “Can I get you something else?” she asked. “I don’t think you like that eggnog much. Neither do I.”

  “A glass of water. I can get it.”

  “Sit down.” And then, coming back, with the water glass in her hand, “I got a lot of good neighbors, I’ve been lucky. Liesel sometimes asks me if I need anything. She’s no spring chicken either. Bill brings over the New York Times when he’s finished with it. I read the headlines, that’s all I can still see. The headlines are usually bad enough. I was no great fan of Mitt Romney, but I voted for him anyway. I liked his father. My daughter tells me I talk too much. You probably just want to go home.”

  “Did you have a nice Christmas?”

  “I got a phone call in the morning, which is all I wanted. I talked to my daughter. I talked to my grandson. I heard the baby crying.”

  There was a silence—they could both hear Nathan on the porch. He was pacing, too, among the clutter of plants and furniture. The screen mesh gave him a faint sepia blurriness. Tall and wild-haired, in his Austin clothes: crappy shorts, crappy T-shirt, cheap sneakers. Then he hung up and walked back in, and the feeling in the room changed again, Julie felt less exposed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “That was Bill. His sister just died. We should probably go.”

  “Aunt Rose?” Julie asked, instantly and almost to her surprise on the edge of tears.

  “Yes, last night.”

  Julie stood up; she held her hands in front of her and carefully aligned her Doc Martens so that the edges touched. Clémence used to make her do ballet, before she got too big, and Julie still found some comfort in standing like that with her feet together. She didn’t know if Dodie would shake her hand, or hug her, but she managed to make it outside without any kind of physical contact. Leaving her water glass on the wooden chest, where it might make a ring. Dodie followed them into the front yard in her slippers.

  “You wanted to hear stories about Earl Mosby,” she said.

  “That’s okay.”

  “I guess you’ll have to come back.” And Julie said thank you.

  It was only thirty feet from Dodie’s house to their front door, but even though she thought that what she should be thinking about was Rose’s death, what worried her was something else. Though maybe the feeling of guilt she had, like a black smudge in her vision, the kind you get looking through binoculars before you focus properly, was intensified or exaggerated by her sense that she should cry about Rose, or show some kind of appropriate response. Dodie had said racist things and Julie hadn’t corrected her. She had sat there politely instead and accepted a glass of water. In fact, the only thing she said was something like, it’s okay to say these things, or it’s better to say what you feel, which is the opposite of condemning or challenging her opinions, and she felt angry at Nathan for leaving her alone with that old woman.

  “You made me sit there for ages,” she said, pulling at his arm as they walked, because in spite of feeling angry she wanted his forgiveness, but he seemed to be thinking about something else.

  * * *

  Cal had spent most of the day in a passive state of illness acceptance. He didn’t seem to be in pain, but he didn’t have much energy either, and Paul and Dana couldn’t get him to eat. His tummy hurt; it’s probably the antibiotics, Dana said. She kept filling his water bottle with fresh water and putting it to his lips. They let him watch a lot of TV, and Paul sometimes sat with him on the low couch, under Susie’s family painting, with his arm around the kid. Feeling the heat coming off him, staring at some dumb show—Jake and the Never Land Pirates, which always ended with a couple of guys wearing pirate beards, singing and playing guitar. Paul wondered if they were happy, the actors, youngish men, approaching thirty; if they were having fun, if they thought, this is a stepping-stone to something else.

  Dana came in after clearing the lunch away and looked at them: father and son, blank-eyed. “Make him drink something,” she said, and Paul lifted the bottle to his mouth. Cal didn’t react and Dana left them to it. They were sitting there comfortably enough, she didn’t mean to get involved.

  At some point in the afternoon she tried to make Cal take a nap. This was the only time he showed any resistance. Eventually she gave up and retreated downstairs again, carrying him in her arms. She didn’t want him to be mad at her. It’s stupid, you withdraw until they cry, and then step in again, rewarding yourself with their affection.

  Paul said, “I don’t think it matters much. He’ll sleep when he wants to.”

  He was sitting at the kitchen table, teaching Willy how to play gin rummy. Liesel and Susie were mixing something in a metal bowl—Dana could smell cinnamon and ginger.

  “You must be tired,” Liesel said to her. “Why don’t you go lie down. I’m going to take a nap in a minute.”

  And Susie said, “We can look after Cal.”

  “I’m fine. I’m not really doing anything.” And then, in case this sounded like a criti
cism, “It’s very relaxing here.” But in fact Dana didn’t want to be pushed to the margins; she wanted to hang out with Paul and Cal, she wanted to worry about their son together. “Maybe we can take a walk,” she said. “Maybe Cal will go to sleep in the stroller.”

  “Okay, let me just finish this game,” Paul told her.

  But when it was over, Willy wanted to play tennis with his uncle, and Cal overheard them and wanted to go outside. “He’s sick, he’s got a fever,” Dana said, but when she felt his forehead, it was cool enough. “He hasn’t eaten anything all day,” she objected, “he gets very clumsy when he’s like this, this is when he hurts himself.” Somehow she knew she had already given in, and Paul got the rackets and balls from the TV room and took the boys outside.

  “He’s a good uncle,” Susie said, by way of apology maybe, but instantly regretted it—she heard an echo somewhere and wondered if she had said this before. Dana didn’t answer and watched them through the breakfast-room windows, moving across the lawn, toward the playhouse at the back, and the tennis court behind it, another sunshiny winter afternoon, and felt weirdly helpless, or like something was slipping through her fingers.

  “What are you making?” she asked. “Can I do anything?”

  “A gingerbread house. Every year we do it, and every year it sits there for weeks getting stale.”

  “Smells good.”

  “It would be good, if we ate it now.”

  After they put it in the oven, Liesel lay down in her study for a nap; and Susie heard the crackle of the monitor—May was waking up. She went upstairs to get her daughter (David was working at the Starbucks on Guadalupe), and for two or three minutes, Dana hung around the kitchen, checking on the gingerbread and waiting to pull it out. What am I doing here, she thought. Paul doesn’t need me, really he just wants Cal. Nobody loves me here, everybody’s nice, but it’s not like I’m anyone’s first choice. Even Cal just wants to run around with his cousins.

  She wanted to call Stephen, but he always spent Christmas Day with his daughter and first wife. They had a place in Connecticut, and Stephen got along fine with the new husband, who by this point wasn’t particularly new anymore, and in fact they sometimes complained together about … anyway, it was a good thing, it was one of the things in his life he hadn’t screwed up. Everybody still got along, and so on Christmas … Dana didn’t want to interrupt him. His daughter had had a little baby, his first grandchild. You’re dating a grampa, he said. She opened the oven door and felt the heat on her face (a real blast; she turned her head away for a moment) and stuck a knife in the gingerbread and pulled it out again. Fine, it looked fine to her (but what do I care—by the time they eat it I’ll be gone), and she put on the oven mitts and lifted the pans out carefully, and set them on the stove.

  When Susie came down, carrying May in her arms, freshly changed, smelling of Desitin, she said, “Fuck this, right?” She meant the baking and babies. “Let’s go shopping,” and she started looking through the house for Jean and Clémence, to see if they wanted to come along.

  Dana went outside to tell Paul. She found him on the court behind the playhouse; Cal looked happier than he had looked all day. He was running after the tennis balls that Willy hit. Paul kept saying, “Give it to me,” but while Dana was watching Cal threw the ball at Willy himself, who scuffed his racket, trying to swat it on the ground, and Paul had to scramble among the stones and weeds.

  “Susie and I are going shopping,” Dana told him.

  “Buy yourself a nice dress,” he said, in his father’s voice, like a game show host. He meant, you’ve earned it, for putting up with us.

  At least, that’s what she understood. Her mood had lifted, Cal was improving, that’s really all it was, you can’t be happy when they’re not. But still she called out, because she couldn’t help herself, or maybe because she felt happy, and intimate and normal, “Make sure he drinks.”

  He didn’t respond at first (she regretted it instantly). Then he shouted after her, “It’s Christmas, everything will be closed,” and so she walked back to the house to tell the others.

  Susie and Jean were out front, strapping May into her car seat. “I don’t know where Clémence is,” Susie said. “I couldn’t find her.”

  “It’s Christmas,” Dana told her. “Everything will be closed.”

  “Of course it will.”

  “It’s confusing in this weather,” Dana said.

  And for a minute they just stood in the driveway. May was buckled in and Jean was teasing her with her English house keys—holding them just out of reach and then giving in. They made a tinkling sound, May tried to put them in her mouth.

  “Let’s do something, let’s go somewhere,” Jean said, taking them away, and suggested they get a hot chocolate at the Driskill Hotel.

  So that’s what they did, or tried to do. They managed to park downtown, but the restaurant itself was fully booked, and Susie didn’t really want to bring a baby into the bar. People are paying for an upmarket experience, they don’t want … “I don’t care what people are paying for,” Jean said, but Susie told her, “I won’t have a good time.” And in the end, they drove out to Zilker Park to look at the tree. By this point it was almost four o’clock. The sun was starting to descend behind the cone of lights, and the pale clear blue of the sky had darkened like a glaze. It was getting chilly, too, and Susie felt glad of May, whom she covered with her jacket and held against her breast.

  “This is nice,” she said. Other people were there, it was a communal experience. An Austin thing.

  But Jean said, “It’s fine, but it’s another …”

  “What?”

  “It’s something you do with kids. It’s fine. I thought Dana could use …”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  Susie offered: “We can go back to the Driskill and I’ll drop you off.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You can get a cab home.”

  “It’s fine, this is nice,” Jean said.

  “We should probably go back anyway,” Dana told them. “I’m worried about Cal.”

  “I’m sure he’s fine. Paul’s there.”

  But they went back, and when they got home, Liesel met them at the door. Her hair looked uncombed after her nap; she was in a state of agitation, not tearful at all, but full of a kind of emotional energy, which she didn’t know what to do with. “Bill called,” she said, as they walked up the steps. She must have heard their car, or been looking out for it. “Rose died.”

  *

  Conversation about Rose took up most of the rest of the day. Nathan was worried about Bill. He’s going to get caught up in the argument between Judith and her father. This is what happens to families, especially when their affairs are badly managed. And Rose lived a very disorganized life. She owed money, she was generous, too, and made promises she couldn’t deliver on. My sense is, for example, that Judith expects the house money, or most of it, to go to her. She’s maybe even depending on it. And when she finds out it isn’t, the person she gets mad at is going to be the person she’s still communicating with. In this case, Bill.

  Only Susie cried. Her tears were very near the surface, but she tried to suppress them because, as she said to Liesel, “May ends up feeling whatever I feel, I don’t want to upset her.” And the kids still had to be fed (Clémence, quietly, started making dinner), while Susie sat in the living room nursing May. Jean sat with her for a few minutes.

  “From Yonkers to Durham is less than two hours in the car,” Susie said. “Every Thanksgiving we called her, we said, come to us. The boys can share a room if she wants to stay over, it’s no trouble. I called her almost every year. She came once. David actually liked her. I mean, he’s good at that kind of thing, he likes talking to old ladies. He grew up in an English village, this is what you learn. But the way she lived … I can’t even imagine. What did she do all day? And you hear about these people and you think, who let it happen. We let it happen. It’s an hour and thirt
y, an hour and forty minutes in the car …”

  And Jean listened, partly feeling, Susie represents something, or has a point of view in which she stands for a part of society, and its obligations … while May sucked at her breast. She wore the kind of shirt you can just pull up. Whereas Jean … for some reason she imagined Paul dead. To feel what she would feel. But this was different, because there were always the others, Nathan and Susie, while Bill—for him, everybody was dead. Everybody connected to his childhood. Maybe because Paul lives alone, because he’s divorced. But he’s still stuck there, in Rose’s house, in New York, where he grew up, while the rest of his family, in Texas … her thoughts went back and forth.

  Dana went looking for Cal when they got in, and found him watching TV again, sitting on the sofa next to Paul. Paul had a bowl of dry Cheerios on his lap. He put some in his hand and Cal took them out of his hand. Cal’s eyes were glazed, he had red cheeks. Willy and Ben and Margot were on the sofa, too.

  “He looks hot,” Dana said.

  “He’s all right.”

  “I told you not to let him overdo it.”

  “It’s just that time of day.”

  And Dana, feeling helpless, corrected what she was going to say next. “I’m sorry about Rose,” she said. “Has he got any water?”

  “It needs filling up,” Paul said and held out the bottle.

  When Dana came back, there was nowhere for her to sit, but she leaned over and gave him a sip of water. Cal shifted his head—she was in his way.

  Ben said, “I can’t see.” His voice was … it was like she was a stranger at a movie theater.

  “Deal with it,” Paul told him.

  “Do you know when the funeral is?” she asked, standing up.

  “I haven’t really talked to anybody.”

  “Because I could go … if you wanted me to. If Bill wanted it. I assume I’ll be back by then.”

  Paul looked up at her for the first time. “I’ll ask him when I talk to him,” he said.