Christmas in Austin

by Benjamin Markovits

“Don’t worry about it. He had it coming.” It didn’t matter if he did or not.

  When they crossed the Hudson an hour later, the sun was going down behind them—down the length of 287, flashing off cars. Everything shone. It put a blind spot in his rearview mirror, he adjusted the angle. Already it felt like time had passed, distance had come between them and the funeral, who knows when he’d go back to Port Jervis, maybe never.

  * * *

  Susie was going stir-crazy, she needed to get out of the house. Willy had spent most of the day in front of a screen. At lunch, he ate a little vegetable soup, whizzed up. He ate Ritz crackers. She gave him Tylenol and that got the fever down. If he was well enough to play Minecraft, he could sit in a car. He could sit in a car playing Minecraft. Margot was reading a book, James and the Giant Peach, lying on the sofa in the living room like a good girl, with a cup of warm milk on the coffee table. This annoyed Susie a little, but mostly it stressed her out. Dana kept apologizing. Cal was outside, in the cold, running around.

  “This is what happens,” Susie said. “If everyone gets on planes in December, kids with different colds, this is what happens. It’s not your fault. The only thing you can do is wash your hands, but what does that do. They’re kids.”

  Dana couldn’t tell if she was being reproached.

  At three o’clock they finally reached critical mass. Clémence was back, Nathan was willing to go out. They started marshaling troops. But Margot didn’t want to go, and Willy didn’t want to go. Clémence offered to stay behind with the kids, but Nathan nixed that. He hadn’t seen her all day. So David offered, and Susie felt again the force of comparisons.

  “I want to do something as a family,” Susie said. “I want to do something where you actually participate.”

  Julie said, “What should I wear? Do I need a coat?”

  “Yes, you need a coat. It’s freezing outside.”

  “So why are we going?” she asked.

  “Because everybody’s crazy,” Jean told her.

  They needed three cars. Jean and Henrik drove with Paul and Dana and Cal. Susie and David had their boxy Kia Soul, one of those stupid-looking cars they give you at the rental agency, and Nathan drove Liesel’s Volvo, with Clémence and Julie and Margot in the back. In the end they decided to go to Mount Bonnell. It seemed to involve the least amount of time or disagreement. “We can get out, we can walk up the steps, we can look at the view. We can go back home.” Nathan was in one of his perfectly reasonable moods. Tension in the family sometimes had this effect on him. He didn’t try to impose his will, and to the extent that it didn’t cost him anything, he went along.

  “I want to show the kids the peacocks afterward, at Mayfield Park,” Susie said.

  “Then you can show them. Nobody’s going to stop you.”

  Dana took her camera.

  It’s a ten-minute drive, over Mopac and into the hills. The houses thin out toward the top, and by the end, the Volvo struggled up the gradient. There are terraced gardens, heavily irrigated, gated driveways, and somewhere, in the slopes above, a metal and glass Modernist box, set between trees, that Nathan coveted. The road passes by the steps leading up to the summit—you park at an angle against the limestone rock face. Even on a cold day in December, people came. It’s the holidays, they’re stuck at home with family, the house is crowded, everybody gets antsy and bored. So they go to Mount Bonnell. It’s a festive thing to do, let’s get out of it all and stand above it and look down.

  David parked and turned to Willy in the backseat. “I can carry you, if you want me to carry you.” But Willy said he could walk. When they got out, into the cold, Susie took his hand. It was clammy and hot, and she had a moment of hesitation, of anxiety, but Willy was feeling calm and trusting, he clung to her, and they started climbing. There are ninety-nine steps cut into the mountain, between slopes covered in laurel and cedar, which hang onto the slippery loose surface of the rock.

  Willy said, “Where will we live, when we go to England?”

  “I don’t know yet. We’ll find somewhere nice.”

  “I mean will we live in a house?”

  It took her a minute to find out what was worrying him. He thought they might live with other people. Maybe he had overheard something and misunderstood it. Ben was listening, too, walking next to her on the other side. David carried May in the BabyBjörn; the steps were putting her to sleep, he was a few paces behind. Some power had shifted, this is what he felt, or some problem had resolved itself, and Susie, talking, felt it, too. She said, “In England they have different kinds of houses … a lot of people live in what they call terraces. We have them, too, we call them row houses, but they’re not as common. That’s where there’s a house next door to your house, they share a wall, but you have your own front door. In England they call apartments flats …” And so on. She was conscious that David was paying attention.

  By the time they reached the top, she was out of breath. The summit was semi-crowded. Under a kind of gazebo, people sat on the limestone walls, drinking from water bottles or taking pictures.

  Paul and Dana were there already. Even on a cloudy day, you could see for miles. A wide stretch of Lake Austin lay below them, crusted with mansions, boat docks, and waterfront lawns. Their driveways were paved for multiple cars. But beyond the shoreline, trees partly obscured the houses, and you had a sense of the continent expanding around you. Forest and overcast sky mirrored each other, rolling into the distance in irregular cloudy patterns. Dana said to Cal, who had jumped off the wall and was climbing through the undergrowth beneath it, “Come on, Cal, not there. There’s a sign, it says …” and Jean called out, “I’ve got something in my pocket you might like,” but he wasn’t listening. Paul eventually went after him, and Liesel arrived at the top, looking red in the face, under her white hair. Nathan walked with her, she had taken his arm.

  “Sag mal,” she said, “ich muss mich eine Minute hinsetzen.” I have to sit down. Clémence had carried Margot for the last few steps—she hung on her mother’s neck. Julie wasn’t talking to anyone.

  There’s nothing to do at the top but look around and go back down. Nathan made an effort with Henrik, but he felt some resistance. Maybe that was just his manner. Henrik spoke slowly and deliberately. He said to Nathan, “Jean says you organized a conference on the use of drones. In Israel.” But this wasn’t what Nathan wanted to talk about. In his experience, people (especially Europeans) brought it up when they wanted to pick a fight, when they were looking for a source of disagreement. Sometimes he liked to disappoint them.

  “Really what interests me,” he said, “is cultures of training. Often what you’re arguing about in government is how to make decisions. Not just how, but who … that’s what the drones discussion was about, and people make decisions according to their training. Politicians go through a certain kind, they’re used to looking at problems in certain ways. Lawyers go through another. As it happens, I like legal training, it’s got a long history, it’s rigorous, but more importantly it’s also predictable, it’s also regulated—there are professional bodies that assess acceptable and unacceptable practice. If you had to pick who should make decisions, I’d pick the lawyers. With certain caveats.”

  Henrik could tell that he was being lectured to. He wasn’t interested in that. His response to this kind of performance was to play up to it. He kept asking questions. Let him talk.

  Jean asked Clémence, “Did you get what you needed?”

  “I don’t know what we got,” she said. “You never get what you need, right? And if you do, you’re doing it wrong …”

  But they stayed two hours with this Beigott guy, they probably got an hour on tape. Whenever you talk to people it turns out that the story is more complicated than you thought it was, and usually in quite boring ways. It’s true he sold the house on 37th Street, partly to pay for his mother’s care. But he was ready to move out anyway. He got sick of the frat-house atmosphere at Christmas, people left beer bottles in your f
ront yard, they honked their horns. His daughter was there when we interviewed him, we talked to her, too. What it was like growing up, etc.

  Anyway, she’s twenty-seven years old and living at home again. She got a DUI and lost her license, which basically meant that she lost her job—she was working as a courier. Part of the gig economy. Which meant she lost her apartment. Anyway, you can see where this is going. So now she’s stuck in the middle of … the nearest town is Kyle. I mean, there’s nothing there, no bus service, nothing, taxis are too expensive, so anytime she wants to go anywhere, her dad has to drive her. Which he says he’s basically fine with, because it means he can keep an eye on her, he doesn’t trust her. And the truth is, they have a bickering kind of relationship, she rolls her eyes at him, but they also seem very close, they get along. So it’s not really clear what any of this adds up to. Joel says he’s perfectly happy, he likes the fishing at Quarry Lake. When you walk in the house, there’s a canoe paddle next to the front door. But if he shot himself tomorrow, I wouldn’t necessarily be surprised.

  Clémence when she talked showed a lively use of hands. Her accent was always hard to place, you could hear the French in it, you could hear London. Liesel listened, too. She said, “Nobody wants to live out there, nobody wants that.”

  And Jean said, “She’s not saying they do.”

  “People want to live where you can walk to a store.”

  “Mom, you didn’t listen, that’s not what she’s saying.”

  But Clémence broke in, “It was a relief to get back to Wheeler Street afterward. It makes you think, everyone we know, people like us, what we do is move from island to island.”

  They had started to walk back along the trail. It descended gently to the road level a hundred yards on from the steps. On your left, the ground gave way to loose rock and undergrowth; it sloped steeply toward the water, and a certain amount of parental attention was absorbed by making sure the kids didn’t fall off the cliff—Susie and Dana trailed after Cal and Ben.

  Paul said to his brother, “Nobody asks if you’re okay.”

  “What do you mean?” But Nathan knew what he meant. “Once a week I inject myself with Avonex. Or Clémence does it. I get my liver tested. When I see my doctor he checks for signs of depression. That’s one of the side effects. So far as I know, and these things can be incremental, I haven’t had another episode. The longer this goes on like this the better.”

  “Do the kids know?”

  “The kids do not.”

  “Does anybody know?”

  “Anybody I have some kind of professional contact with, where it might be relevant. This is the first thing I tell them.”

  Paul walked with his head down; there were bits of white limestone underfoot, like loose chalk. He said, “It feels weird to me that we don’t talk about it, but we don’t want to talk about it all the time. We like to think of you as indestructible.”

  “I’m fine. I try to look after myself, I try not to drink too much. I try to get some sleep. All these things are good for me.”

  “Even when it pisses us off, it’s important for us to think of you as indestructible. It’s important to know that you’re always right.”

  “I’m mostly right,” Nathan said.

  At certain points, the underbrush gives way, and the view opens out over the water and the forest beyond. Susie said, “Let’s get a picture.” Dana when she wasn’t chasing after Cal had been using her Leica. It gave her an excuse not to talk to people. But views are the hardest thing to photograph—they look like views.

  Nathan, softened by Paul, still had to make his usual objections, but he got overruled. They all lined up, even the kids. Even Julie. Nathan had to say to her in the end, “Come on, I don’t want to do this any more than you do.” She stood next to Henrik and Jean on the far side, away from her family. Dana backed up on the gravel; everybody looked cold. “Smile,” she said. “Say queso.”

  Some of them said it and some of them didn’t and she took the picture. A white path in the foreground, a few rocks, a layer of trees. The sun was going down behind them, red and cool and wrapped in cotton, and she had to adjust the exposure on her camera. She took several more shots. You could just see the edge of the water around Henrik’s shoulder, gleaming flatly. Their shadows stretched toward her like ghostly arms. People behind them had stopped for a moment, waiting to pass, and Paul said, “Now you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let’s get one with you in it.”

  “That’s fine. It doesn’t matter. I don’t …”

  But he asked a guy in a Michigan sweatshirt, who was walking with his arm around his girlfriend. She looked Asian or Latina, it was hard to tell. “Excuse me,” Paul said. “Do you mind …” and Dana had to give in. The guy unwrapped his arm and she handed him the camera, lifting the cord from around her neck. She stood next to Paul, who stood next to Nathan, with Cal and Margot and Willy in front of them. Liesel was in the middle, with Henrik and Jean and Julie on her other side. Susie, Clémence, and David made another little row. May still slept against his chest; Susie had a hand on Ben’s hair.

  “Now we’re all here.”

  “Except Bill,” Jean said.

  Afterward, Dana retrieved her camera, and Paul asked her, tenderly and curiously, “Why didn’t you want your picture taken?”

  “I don’t like to …”

  “You used to be a model.”

  “Yeah, well,” she said.

  Before they reached the street again, David took Susie aside. “I don’t want to be shut out from these conversations.” He spoke in an undertone; there were people around. He was almost pleading with her. “I want you to talk to me about Ben, and not anyone else.”

  “Fine,” she said.

  “I don’t want you to be angry that we’re going to England.”

  “I’ll get over it.”

  Cars went past with their lights on. You could see pockets of mist rising in the glare of the headlamps. The Kia was still warm from the ride over, and they shut the doors quickly and drove back to Wheeler Street. Susie had given up on Mayfield Park—they could see the peacocks another day.

  *

  The first thing they had to do, on getting home, was make supper for the kids. In Austin, even the big kids ate early. The dinner service functioned on a couple of sittings, otherwise there wasn’t room around the table. Anyway, it got too crazy. Nathan wanted to fry some fish, by way of appeasement—for Julie’s sake. There was cod in the freezer and he’d taken it out before they drove to Mount Bonnell; it was dripping on a plate. He took flour from the cupboard and sprinkled it over the tiled kitchen counter. Susie, whose kids didn’t like fish, cut up vegetables next to the sink. She put a pot of water on—they could eat pasta.

  Nathan said, “There’s plenty of fish.”

  He mixed salt and pepper in with the flour, and poured oil in a pan, letting it silently gather heat on one of the burners. Nobody talked much. The kids were next door, watching TV.

  Twenty minutes later, Paul came down. He said, “We’re taking off now. You should say goodbye to Dana, in case we don’t make it to breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  “What?” Susie said. “What about supper? Cal needs to eat.”

  “There’s some Bolognese in the fridge at home. We can all eat together.”

  He had Cal’s suitcase in hand, loosely packed. It didn’t matter if they left some of his things upstairs, he could pick them up another day.

  Dana said, “I’m flying out tomorrow. Paul thought it might be a good idea to move Cal over tonight. I can sleep in the spare room.”

  “Ben, Willy,” Susie called out. “Say goodbye to your aunt. They’re leaving.”

  But she had to go into the TV room and turn off the TV. Dana kept saying, “Don’t bother, I’m sure we’ll see you in the morning. Otherwise, I’ll feel stupid coming back.”

  “What time’s your flight?” Nathan asked her.

  “Twelve o’clock.”

>   “We’re pretty much on your way anyway,” Susie said.

  She had walked in again and stood with her hands folded, feeling foolish and formal, as if the occasion should be marked. She had the sense that maybe she hadn’t talked to Dana much. You always assume there’s more time. With the kids around, most of the time you’re just fighting fires … that’s not really true. You put it off, because you don’t want to have the big conversation, but now she felt remiss.

  “It is not on the way,” Paul said, and Susie shouted again, for the kids to come.

  Somebody had to tell Liesel, who was in her study. Jean came down, too—Henrik had been taking a nap upstairs. Everybody gathered in the entrance hall to say goodbye; Cal was clearly a little freaked out. He clung to his mother, who carried him, which made it hard for her to hug anyone else. Paul got slightly annoyed.

  “Let’s not make this a big deal.”

  “I’m sure we’ll see you tomorrow anyway,” Nathan said. The fish was in the pan—he had to get back.

  “I won’t say goodbye,” Liesel told Dana. “But I’m very glad you came.”

  Her eyes shone a little, her emotions were near the surface. Dana leaned over in spite of her son and put an arm around her. She was moved, too, and closer to tears than she had any reason to be. “I don’t want to go,” she said, and Paul couldn’t tell what she meant. He got bored standing around and carried the suitcases to the car, then waited on the front porch by the open door.

  “If we don’t see you for breakfast, we’ll stop by after the airport,” he said. “Cal, come on, Buddy. You’re not really going anywhere.”

  “Shut the door,” Susie said. “You’re letting the cold in.”

  Afterward, they gathered in the kitchen, which smelled of the fish. Susie slid spaghetti into the pot, the water was boiling now, and heat and steam fogged up the window over the sink.

  Liesel said, “Maybe later we can light the tree again and sing songs.”

  “I don’t know what you’re looking so pleased about,” Jean told her.

  “What do you mean?”