Christmas in Austin

by Benjamin Markovits

  “It doesn’t matter if you wake us up,” Jean said, and Henrik added, “If I wake up, I think, this is not my problem, and go back to sleep.”

  “You do not go back to sleep.”

  “I’m sorry, all this is my fault. I brought disease into this house.”

  “Dana, this is not your fault. Henrik woke up at half past three anyway. Just as I get over jet lag he drags me back in.”

  “It’s nobody’s fault, it just is what it is. David did the three a.m. shift, which is why I told him to go back to bed.”

  “What happened to your wrist?” Dana asked.

  “She had a fall,” Jean said, teasing her.

  “I did not have a fall. I fell, there’s a difference.” Clémence had slipped on the dusty snow, walking across the patio. She said, “It’s fine, it’s just a sprain, I think I can move it.”

  “You think you can move it?”

  “Is this moving it?” and she wiggled her fingers. Dana thought, I’m back in the middle of it all again. But she was going away.

  Susie had made the ice pack, grabbing a handful of cubes from the freezer and squeezing them into an old blue plastic New York Times delivery bag. She kept saying, “Leave it on,” but Clémence got tired of holding her hand in the air. It made her feel frail. She was turning fifty next year and didn’t want Nathan to think of her as somebody he had to look out for—she was conscious of the age gap. But there was nothing she could do, she really couldn’t use her hand. So she sat there “in state,” as she said, and let Jean bring her breakfast. Dana kept looking at the hallway. She ate her cereal and watched the clock.

  *

  Nathan gave up trying to make something out of the snow, there wasn’t enough. He liked doing stupid practical physical stuff with the kids, because it kept his mind off other things, but he was feeling cold now in his pajamas. The knees of his pants and the sleeves of his sweater were wet. He could smell the wool and feel the cotton against his skin as the thin material shifted and made contact and then hung loose again. But he didn’t want to go inside, and see Dana or Paul—if Paul decided to show up. He hoped Paul would come, for his sake, Nathan thought. Because it would mean he was a reasonable human being. Last night he didn’t have any trouble falling asleep but he woke up at three in the morning and went over the arguments in his head. There were the justifications he could use if he talked to Paul and the other arguments he had with himself. They bled together. At four or five he fell asleep again and then woke up again with the unusual light. When he saw it had snowed, and Liesel standing there, he went outside.

  And then Margot came out in her nightgown and a thick blue terry-cloth robe and her mother’s leather boots, which she could hardly walk in. “What are you doing?” she asked. She had followed them into the yard along the stepping-stones, from which the snow had melted. It was still cloudy, and the low white sky seemed to contain the light—they were caught in the middle.

  “What are you wearing?”

  “They’re Mom’s.”

  “I know they’re Mom’s. Did she say okay?”

  “She lets me. What are you doing?” she asked again.

  “Nothing. Going in.”

  “Why do you always stop when I come?”

  Her voice sounded normal, maybe the fever had passed; but her question genuinely surprised him. Julie was more predictable. Nathan had interesting conversations with her and liked their arguments, but she rarely said or noticed something that he hadn’t thought or noticed himself. But Margot was like her mother, he couldn’t always guess what she was feeling.

  “I’m just cold. You must be pretty cold, too.” But that didn’t really answer her question. “Okay,” he said. “There’s something I wanted to try anyway.”

  He had an idea of turning the court into an ice rink. There was a hose at the back, connected to a water fountain that Bill had put in next to the sycamore. (Paul used to practice out there hour after hour in the summer, hitting balls against the concrete wall.) It dripped but it worked, and Nathan hooked up the hose to the faucet and pulled the other end through the snow. The kids were watching him with a certain amount of expectation. He told Ben to turn on the faucet and slowly the hose shifted in its coils and he felt the pressure of the water under his thumb. As far as he could reach, he sprayed the court, standing on the stones by the edge. But it wasn’t quite cold enough, which he knew.

  “Just wait,” he said; he could sense their disappointment. The snow was turning to slush and he felt unhappy and self-disgusted. “Let’s go. We can check again in an hour if the temperature drops.” Margot let him carry her back to the house.

  Liesel was telling a story when they walked in. Susie said, “Shut the door,” good-humoredly; it became a kind of refrain. Ben and Julie were messing around outside. Dana thought, just close it, just close it. As an only child, she wasn’t used to the amount of interaction. Eventually Liesel started again.

  Once in winter the fjord froze over—Nathan has heard this already, she said. Klaus, her brother, woke up first and went down to the beach, then came back to tell her what had happened. It’s amazing how flat the ice looked, like a parking lot. They could have walked to Denmark but didn’t dare. But they walked a hundred yards out, and she remembers that what surprised her most was how low their house seemed above the shoreline. She thought of it as high in the hills because of the steps from the garden to the beach, and the woods in between; but from the water it looked like you could throw a stone and break a window. In fact, they threw stones on the ice, which skittered and made a sound like the end of the world. None of the ships could get out of the harbor; it lasted for two weeks. She noticed that Dana kept looking toward the hallway.

  Nathan said to his wife, “What happened to your hand?”

  “I fell on the patio.”

  “She had a fall,” Jean said.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked tenderly, and his tenderness comforted him.

  “It’s fine. Susie made me put on this ice pack. It hurts because it’s cold.” The bag had started to drip.

  Then the phone rang and Liesel made a show of hurry, pushing her chair back and maneuvering her legs around. Her chair was at the end of the table, near the wall. She stood up painfully and answered. Cal ran in, wearing brand-new corduroy pants that were still a little stiff, a Christmas present, and Liesel said, “Get me a pen, get me something to write on.” It was Bill, she wanted to write down his flight information—he never used email. Jean gave her an envelope and Paul followed, carrying a bag of pastries from Texas French.

  Nathan said, “Tell him I can pick him up.”

  “Okay, okay,” Liesel said. “Ich freue mich sehr.” I’m very pleased. “Everybody’s missed you. Nathan says he can pick you up.”

  Paul put the pastries on the counter, next to his car keys.

  People had mostly finished breakfast but Jean unwrapped them anyway and laid them out. Dana was trapped between the table and the wall, but it didn’t matter, because Cal wanted to sit next to Ben. It’s annoying, Ben thought, the way kids follow you around. For some reason, he felt uncomfortable around his cousin. I don’t know why I didn’t tell anybody that he was there, too. Already the terms he used for describing that night were becoming vaguer. He had started to believe, it’s because I wanted to protect him; but instead of feeling generous he felt annoyed.

  Dana said, “All I do here is eat, I must have put on ten pounds.”

  “I don’t know where you put them,” Clémence said. She was conscious of Julie’s presence and thought, women shouldn’t boast or complain like this. She worked hard to keep her own weight down but also thought you should never talk about it.

  Already Susie had started on the first round of dishes, but nobody else had gotten up. They picked at the scones. Liesel turned in her chair (she had hung up and sat down again) and brought out a pot of good honey. Dana thought, this is how the day goes every day, it’s all going to go on without me. Partly she was relieved to be getting away.
She could feel whatever she wanted now that Cal was there, whereas before all she could do was wait to see if he came. She tried to say something to Paul, to have some kind of exchange, but he wouldn’t look at her.

  Henrik asked if he still went running with Lance Armstrong every Sunday.

  “Running or biking,” Paul said, with a full mouth.

  “Do you think I can come, too? I won’t be able to keep up for very long. I am still a little weak.”

  “I don’t know if it’s happening this Sunday.”

  “Are you training for something?”

  “Not really. I signed up for the Boston Marathon, which is in April. A friend of mine is having a kind of Stanford reunion that weekend. It’s his birthday or something, he’s got a house near Lincoln. I told him, maybe I’ll go. I haven’t made up my mind.”

  “Of course you’re welcome to stay with us,” Nathan said.

  Paul didn’t respond, and to break the silence Dana asked, “What time do I need to leave for the airport? My flight leaves at twelve. Should I book a cab?”

  “You should absolutely not book a cab,” Susie told her.

  Jean said, “I can take you.”

  It was nine o’clock now, they had at least an hour. Dana reminded herself, there’s nothing you really have to do, just sit here. So she sat there.

  *

  They all lined up in the front yard to see her off—it was pretty cold. Take two, Jean almost said. Liesel told Dana, “I’m very glad you came,” somewhat formally. When Dana gave her a hug she closed her eyes. She thought, I might not see you again. Paul stood around impatiently.

  “Let’s not make this a big production. She has to say goodbye to Cal.”

  But Cal kept running away. Ben was in the living room, looking at YouTube videos on the iPad; it was the only place that got reliable reception. In the end Susie had to take it away, because Cal wanted to watch. Dana said goodbye to him in the hallway with nobody else around.

  “You’re my guy,” she said. “Just you. You’re my guy.”

  He hugged her but also quickly wriggled out and Paul chased him down and carried him by force to the driveway in his arms—a big kid, with his head turned away. Offering him to Dana, like a bouquet.

  “I’ll see you next week.” She kissed her son’s hair, before getting in the car.

  “Wednesday,” Paul said, and suddenly her heart went out to him.

  *

  “So what the hell happened last night,” Jean asked her, as they drove away.

  “I don’t know. I panicked, I fucked everything up.”

  “Is everything fucked up?”

  Dana didn’t answer at first but then she said, “I’m worried about Paul. I just didn’t want to be stuck out there with him.”

  “I’m worried about Paul, too.” She had to concentrate a little, merging onto I-35. “So is it serious, this thing with this guy in New York?”

  “I can’t really think straight about anything right now.” But Dana didn’t want to put her off; she was grateful for Jean’s directness. All morning long the sense of ordinary life proceeding had weirded her out. “Have I fucked it up with you guys, too? I mean, will I see you again?”

  “You’ll see us again,” Jean said.

  There wasn’t much traffic, and they reached the airport (the control tower, the hotel, the wide flat parking lot surrounding it, glittering with cars)—sooner than Dana wanted. It was warm in the car with the heating on, and she felt reluctant to get up or leave or do anything that required competence or effort. The snowfall was thin enough that only a little slush survived on the roads or built up by the side of the highway and melted there. But some of the parked cars had a clean white thatch, and she knew that in New York the snow was piled up, dirty, she’d arrive in the dark and have to go back to a cold apartment on her own. Maybe she’d call Stephen from the airport; he wanted to take her out, but at this stage in her present frame of mind that might not be a good idea, and she was still in the zone where calling him felt like a betrayal and compounding of errors. But the thought of her childless apartment … the next few days, the quiet after the crowds, which only an hour ago she’d been happy enough to get away from.

  Two or three times in her life, in the first few months after dropping out of Amherst, when she moved in with the guy who would become her first husband, and then several years later after he divorced her, Dana had suffered from depressions severe enough that her mother had almost insisted she take Prozac or some equivalent. She agreed to see a therapist, partly just to get her mother off her back. Her mother, who was even-keeled and almost terrifyingly cheerful and social, had been on antidepressants more or less since Dana was a kid. She considered it almost a natural part of adulthood, and Paul had always resisted the view of the world that made this seem reasonable. It’s one of the things she liked about him, that he didn’t buy it. But given what he was doing to himself now … and she felt like, after this week, she couldn’t rely on the part of her thinking that had been shaped by her relationship with Paul, which was substantial, but still somehow depended on Paul for system updates, which she didn’t have access to anymore or didn’t want. But without him, she had to start again, she had to think through a lot of things again, like attitudes to Prozac and a hundred other things. But you don’t have to do it now. You just have to get through the week, until Cal comes back.

  When Jean pulled in to the terminal, Dana said again, “When will I see you?”

  “If we get married, I’ll invite you to the wedding.” But this wasn’t a joke or a flippant remark, she had obviously been thinking it through. And Jean had tears in her eyes when she got out to help with the suitcase, then waited in the car until Dana had walked through the revolving door and turned to wave and somehow (at least this is what it felt like) release her.

  *

  When they were gone Susie said to Paul, “Let’s go for a walk. Just wait a minute while I put May in the stroller. She had a bad night last night. Maybe she’ll go to sleep.”

  “What about Cal?”

  “He’s happy, he’s fine,” but Paul went to look for him anyway.

  He found him in the playroom next to the kitchen. The TV was off. Clémence was reading to Cal and Margot on the sofa, holding the book with one hand and bending the spine with her thumb. Her reading manner was very performative. You could tell she was used to the microphone. Paul felt uneasy, listening; it was like watching someone look at herself in a mirror.

  “How is she feeling?” he asked. Margot still seemed pale.

  “She says her ear hurts.”

  “That’s what happened with Cal.”

  “It’s her father’s fault. He dragged them out in the snow.”

  “I guess it doesn’t snow here often.” But he didn’t know why he was defending Nathan; it’s not what he felt like doing.

  “They get snow in Cambridge all the time.”

  “Cal,” he said. “Do you want to come for a walk with me and Aunt Susie?”

  But Cal didn’t answer, and Clémence said, “Go, he’s fine.”

  “We can play in the park,” but the boy shook his head.

  “I’ll keep an eye on him,” so Paul left.

  They walked in the road because the sidewalk was still icy. Already the snow had started to disappear. It dripped from the trees and looked almost bluish in the grass. Kids were out, playing in their front yards, but the park itself was pretty empty. The creek in the middle had swollen with the runoff, everything tinkled and gleamed. You could feel the heat of the sun building slowly under the layer of cloud.

  “What happened last night?” Susie said.

  When they were kids Paul went back and forth between his brother and sisters. They fought and formed alliances and switched sides. You spent your whole childhood in the middle of these relationships, then you grew out of them. But maybe he hadn’t gone anywhere because he was still in the middle. Susie’s pretty-enough face was still his sister’s face, though she was almost forty.
Her breasts were heavier and she carried the weight of her children on her hips and dressed in comfortable hippie-mom clothes. None of that mattered. There are four or five people in the world you can have these conversations with, and she was one of them.

  “I can’t tell you how angry I am at Nathan.”

  “He didn’t want to do it,” she said.

  “I don’t know what he told you.”

  “He didn’t tell me anything. I talked to Jean.”

  “What did Jean say?” But he didn’t wait for the answer. “Nathan throws his weight around, he thinks it’s his job to play arbiter. Not everything is his problem.”

  “Paul, he loves you. Honestly, he’s incredibly upset. He didn’t know what to do.”

  “How do you know he’s upset if you didn’t talk to him?”

  “I can see it. It’s not very hard to see.”

  “He should have called me. When Dana called, he should have called me and said, what’s going on. Basically, he acted like I couldn’t be trusted—like I’m one of those guys. This is bullshit.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you. Sometimes he overthinks things, he believes in due process, but this has nothing to do with what he thinks of you.”

  “We had supper together like a family. We were watching a movie.”

  “She called and asked him to come.”

  “So he says, let me talk to Paul. That’s what he says. Or he calls me himself.”

  “Maybe he should have. But that’s not what she asked him to do.”

  The park has a road running through it, a bridge over the creek, and houses on either side overlook the green. They walked on the empty road under the shade of the trees. No cars came, or if they did, the road was wide enough to let them pass. May slept. Susie had pulled the rain cover down to keep off the drips.

  “Have you talked to Dana?” she asked.

  “Last night she drove off in the middle of the night without saying anything and this morning—you’ve seen our interaction.”

  “I mean have you had any kind of conversation about any of this in the course of the week?”