by Han Nolan
"That's 'cause she's trying to get you to participate, fit in, but all you do is drag everybody down." Bobbi ran her paintbrush across the mantel where I had already painted.
I slapped my brush down on the mantel, not caring where the paint landed, and said, "Fine, all of you do what you want. You can toast marshmallows in a snowman's mouth for all I care. Nothing I say matters, anyway." I marched out of the room and headed for the stairs. I heard Susan say, "Spoiled baby."
Then Larry said, "That's enough. Leave him alone. He's allowed to have his opinion," and it occurred to me then that 1 had become Larry, the old Larry, always on the outside, unable to fit in at school or at home. I thought about this, climbing up the two flights of stairs to my room. He had come into our home and taken over my position in the family. He played the role of the oldest child now, and he had collected about him all the people he could find who were enough like him to make him feel good and right, while at the same time managing to shove me off balance and out in the cold.
On Christmas Eve we celebrated Pap's birthday just the way everyone wanted it. I knew Mam was pleased; she liked anything that was held outdoors. And Pap was so excited he couldn't do anything right and went around all day with his shoes on the wrong feet, refusing to change them. Late in the afternoon Mam hauled out the wool blankets Leon had brought us and spread them out on the lawn, while Larry and I dug through the semifrozen ground to build a pit and light a fire. Then we all sat out on the blankets, wrapped in everything warm we owned, and grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. We toasted marshmallows and watched the glow from the campfire, the lighted Nativity set looming above us.
Pap stuffed two wrinkled hot dogs in his mouth, no bun or condiments, then jammed several puffy-skinned brown-black marshmallows down his throat and said through the sticky wad in his mouth, "Okay, let's stop now and open my presents already."
Bobbi, who had been stuffing down just as many hot dogs and marshmallows as Pap, jumped up and ran to the porch for her gift. We knew she had been excited about what she had bought Pap. She had bustled around the house all day, teasing Pap and trying to get him to guess what she had bought him.
Bobbi handed Pap his present and Pap tore off the wrapping paper without even looking at it. He opened up the box in his hands and found a set of gardening tools, silver with red handles. Beneath the tools were packets of wildflower seeds and a booklet with colored photographs of flowers. Pap drew in his breath with delighted surprise. But you could hand him a bar of soap wrapped with a bow and he'd be pleased.
Bobbi knelt down beside him. "Your very own garden set, Pap. Take good care of them."
Pap hugged the box of tools, and then Bobbi. "Yes, I love these all, and I love myself gardening. Don't you just love me gardening? Don't you love it's my birthday? What else did I get?"
We all gave Pap something for gardening—pots, a kneeling pad, a pair of gloves, and then because we still had two more hours until we all piled into Larry's van and went to midnight mass, we decided to give out all the presents. I gave Mam and Pap my school picture in a frame I bought at a boutique downtown. I gave Larry a bunch of recipes I'd copied out of the Vegetarian Times magazine. Mrs. Pallo, who worked with me in the school office, had tons of back copies of the magazine in her home, and she brought them in and I copied a bunch of the recipes out on index cards and bought a fancy recipe file, also at the boutique store. I gave Bobbi my Einstein T-shirt and she hugged me. Mam saw us and wiped her eyes as if she had tears in them. I gave Larry's poet friends each a copy of the poem "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg, the group's favorite poem. I'd typed it into the computer at school, created a design around the edges, and printed it off on gold paper.
Mam gave everyone books, except for me and Pap. I had been hoping for a computer. I had imagined it every night before falling off to sleep. Mam knew I wanted it, and I felt sure she'd get me one this year. She had said that all of Grandma Mary's insurance money was for Pap, but I knew she had set some aside for me, since I had put all my money into the house fund. I couldn't wait to get the computer. I imagined all the work I could do right in my own home, up in my own room. Then, when she brought out our gifts, mine and Pap's, I saw right away that it wasn't a computer. She could hold the gift easily in one hand. I felt betrayed. She handed me the wrapped present with eagerness and joy in her eyes, and all I could do was look back at her dumbstruck. She gave us the exact same thing, as if we were brothers, as if we were just alike. We both got cameras. Nice ones—both of us. I thanked Mam and set the box by my side, but Pap put the strap around his neck as Larry instructed and began taking pictures, with everyone giving him advice on how to get a good shot.
I caught Mam looking across the flames at me, and I could tell by her expression that she knew I felt insulted. I tried to smile. It was a great camera, after all, but I could feel my smile turning into something more like a grimace and I looked away.
Then Larry announced that he had a special gift for all of us. He asked Ben to give him a hand and they left us by the pit and ran down toward the cabin. Pap took a picture of their backs.
We knew Larry had wanted to fix up the cabin in the woods and live out there, so we all guessed he had finished working on the floor, but why, we wondered, didn't he ask us to follow him?
A minute later Pap jumped up and got a picture of Larry and Ben struggling up the slope of the lawn carrying something big, something wooden, between them. We couldn't make out what they had until they got within range of the campfire and set the object down before us.
Larry stepped back and said, "Voilà!" Pap snapped another picture, this time of a long wooden table; It had been made in the style of a trestle table, only Larry had used old wood he'd found out in the garage so that it looked like an antique.
"Feel it," he said when everyone crowded in to get a better look. "Run your hand over it. Go ahead, you won't get a single splinter." We all ran our hands over the surface and agreed on how smooth it felt. Then, instead of carrying it into the kitchen, we brought the chairs out to the table and stayed outside.
Mam shook her head, ran her hand over the table again, and said, "I never knew you were so skilled, Larry. This is really a beautiful job. You're an artist."
Larry took the cigarette out of his mouth and grinned. "I never knew it, either. You think it's good? Did you notice I used old nails? I got them at the junk shop on the road to Lahaska. They've got all sorts of old junk from houses, windows and doors and things. I was thinking of maybe making my family one. You think they'd like one?"
Everyone said yes except me. I hated the table. It was perfect, the perfect gift, and it made my stupid picture in a frame appear childish and unimaginative.
Larry said, "I like this because it looks antique. I like that part of it. But my father, I think he likes things to look new. Maybe he wouldn't like it." He shook his head. "No, he wouldn't like it."
We all sat there a moment thinking our own thoughts. I thought about families and wondered if the whole crew would be staying over that night for Christmas or if they'd go home to their own families.
Then Pap started singing "We Three Kings," holding his camera out at arm's length and taking pictures of himself with his mouth wide open. Then everyone joined in, huddled beneath the wool blankets, their bodies swaying shoulder to shoulder. I was the only one not singing, not swaying. I stared out beyond the table, looking up at the Nativity, and I thought it looked beautiful that night, the lighted figures shining in the darkness. The thought surprised me, and I sat staring at the Nativity a long time while the others ran through a round of Christmas carols.
Then I noticed Bobbi sitting next to me. I heard her voice above all the others and was startled by how beautiful it sounded, how rich and strong and pure. I turned toward her and held my breath, listening. I wanted everyone else to stop singing and sit silent while she filled us with her voice, her music. Then they sang "Angels We Have Heard on High," and I thought, Here it is. Here is order, here is beauty, here is perfectio
n. Her music, the music from her own throat, made my throat knot up, and I felt as if I wanted to cry, or cry out I searched my mind for something sad, and found Grandma Mary waiting for me to mourn her passing, to finally cry for her. I turned away from the others. I closed my eyes and remembered Grandma Mary.
Chapter Fifteen
WE DRAGGED HOME exhausted after the party and midnight mass, and by two in the morning the household had settled down; everyone had found a place to sleep for the night—in sleeping bag, bed, or sofa—and had gone to sleep.
At a little after two-thirty I heard a knock on my door. I sat up and before I could say anything, I heard, "It's Bobbi. Can I come in?"
I paused a moment, not to consider her question but to wonder if I weren't dreaming. I had been lying awake thinking about her—or I thought I had been awake. In my mind I could still hear her singing, and I'd decided I wanted to hear her voice in my head the rest of my life.
I saw the door open and Bobbi stuck her head in.
"JP?" she whispered.
"Yeah, come in, sorry."
Bobbi entered kicking the swimming raft she slept on, and her sleeping bag, into the room ahead of her. Behind her came Parakeet, a ten-year-old golden retriever who had lived in our house for the past week.
"Mind if we sleep on your floor?"
I was dreaming!
"No, uh—yeah, okay, sure."
Bobbi dropped her raft on the floor and spread her sleeping bag on top.
"Don't get any ideas," she said, slipping her pillow out from within her bag.
"What ideas?"
"It's just Christmas Eve's never been a good night for me, with my father and all. I just thought I'd feel better with some company." She climbed into her sleeping bag and squiggled down inside it. Parakeet waited for her to get comfortable, then she climbed aboard, circling this way and that before settling halfway on the foot of the raft and halfway on the floor. Bobbi said, "Good girl," then to me, "You don't have to talk to me or anything."
I lay back down in my own bed and stared up at the ceiling. "No, it's okay. Whatever."
We stayed quiet a few minutes and then Bobbi said, "Nice service, huh?"
I thought of Bobbi singing next to me in the pew, incense and candle-wax smells swirling around us. "Yeah, really nice."
"Pap sure got excited."
"Yeah, he gets like that—his birthday and all."
We stopped talking again and I thought how nice it was to have Bobbi in my room, how I wished I had the guts to invite her into my bed.
Then Bobbi asked, "You ever wonder what it's like to be someone else?"
"Like who?" I asked.
"I don't know, anybody. What's it like to be you, JP?"
I sat up on one elbow and looked down on her. I shrugged. "I don't know. Quiet, I guess."
"Peaceful, huh?"
"No, just quiet." I felt uncomfortable talking about myself this way. I asked her, "So what's it like to be you?" just to change the subject, and then I realized, as she started to answer, that I wanted to really know.
"Scary."
I nodded. "Your father."
"No," Bobbi said. "Me. I'm scary. I don't know who I am, what I want. I never know what I'll do next." She stretched her arm down and reached for Parakeet's head. Parakeet inched her way forward and allowed Bobbi to play with her ears. "It's funny, but with Daddy the scary thing is you never know what's going to trigger one of his fits, but then when he's hitting me, there's this peace that comes. It's the only time I ever feel it. It's like I'm so scared, every day, all the time, I'm so afraid, and then Daddy beats me and I don't know when he'll stop or what he'll do next, and it's too much. It's too much, and then there it is, this quiet. It just comes over me. It's like one second I'm burning, I'm on fire, and then the next I'm floating in a boat down the river. I'm not there when he's beating me anymore, and I think he knows it, that's why he keeps hitting and hitting. He knows I'm not there. I'm in my boat. I'm floating down the river."
Bobbi's voice sounded trancelike when she spoke, as if she were in the boat while talking to me, and I floated along with her. When she stopped speaking I didn't know what to say, and we fell silent again.
Then Bobbi said, "You know, I go to mass and I say the 'Our Father' and all I can think of is my own father. I wish I could think of God as being more like Pap."
"Pap? Now there's a scary thought." I rolled onto my back and laughed.
Bobbi sat up and faced me. "What is it with you? I mean, you have the greatest parents in the world. You've had all this love surrounding you all your life, and yet you've never loved anyone back. You're pathetic, you know that?"
I stared at the ceiling. "Thanks."
She slid back inside her sleeping bag. "Well, it's true."
I didn't say anything.
"JP?"
I let the silence hang between us for a while, and then I said, slowly, my voice sounding lifeless even to me, "So why did you come in here to sleep tonight? Why not spend the night with the others downstairs?"
"That's easy. You're the safest person I know."
"Safe?" I said. That was a new one.
"You're stable. You know? You got your feet on the ground. Actually, they're downright stuck in the mud"—Bobbi chuckled—"but it's comforting somehow. I mean, you'd never do anything unexpected. You're predictable and straight as an arrow."
"Sounds boring," I said.
"I don't know. You tell me, are you bored?"
I thought about it. I couldn't remember ever being bored. I had too many books I wanted to read, too many thoughts circling my head.
"No," I said. "I guess I'm just boring, but I'm not bored." I sat up. "Like, take for instance the other day when it rained so hard and everybody was complaining."
"Yeah, I just about froze to death," Bobbi said. "I got soaked."
"But you see, I thought it was cool. I sat up here in my room looking out the window, and I guess our gutters are stopped up because the rainwater was spilling over the sides and running in streams past my window. Now, each stream had its own flow and each flow was sporadic—unpredictable, sometimes pouring out a little to the left then shifting to the right, then stopping, then on the right again, or maybe left—totally unpredictable. I had before me the perfect example of chaos."
Bobbi groaned. "Chaos!"
"Wait a minute. See, what was neat about it was that even though you had all this random spilling out of water, if you closed your eyes and just listened you heard a rhythm, a unified sound. So, like, there's this pattern that emerges, this stability in the midst of chaos. I'd read about it, worked it out on the computer even, but there it was in front of me, this steady state! That's what I'm looking for and there it was, right in front of me."
I'd gotten myself all worked up. The discovery had been so exciting, so perfect, and it was my own, not something I picked up in a book. I wanted to record the sound and chart it on a graph and see what kind of pattern I'd come up with on the computer at school. That was my latest idea, but Bobbi didn't seem interested.
"You're right," she said. "You may not be bored, but you sure are boring. 'Night."
"'Night," I said, deflated. Then I added, "You sounded great tonight. Uh—I mean, singing. You have the most—you have a beautiful voice." I said these last few words and my own voice choked on me. I lay back down and told myself to just shut up.
Then Bobbi's face appeared in front of me. "You're not always boring. Somewhere you've got heart, huh?" Then she kissed me. It was brief, but it was on the lips and I went to sleep a happy man.
Chapter Sixteen
I WOKE UP Christmas morning knowing I'd fallen in love with Bobbi. She and Parakeet had already left, but her sleeping bag still lay spread out on the raft beside me. I reached down and touched her pillow. The pillowcase had a print of buttercups all over it, and it reminded me of Bobbi, the new Bobbi, the Bobbi from last night. I'd never seen that side of her before. I'd never known it existed, and I wondered how this angel wi
th the sheening voice had slipped in and taken her place without anyone noticing. I sat up in bed and laughed, tossing her pillow up arid grabbing it.
I saw the camera Mam had given me sitting on my shelf, and it no longer angered me. I would take pictures of Bobbi, lots and lots of pictures.
I headed downstairs with my camera and heard the Messiah playing on the radio. I hummed along, thinking that maybe Christmas would turn out to be all right, even if Larry did prepare the dinner vegetarian style. I had Bobbi to think about, Bobbi to follow around, to listen to, to take photographs of; I had Bobbi. I found her with Mam and Jerusha practicing yoga poses on the floor of the living room, and I took a picture of her attempting to twist her torso around one way while her legs were crossed and twisting the other. She couldn't do it as well as Mam and Jerusha, and the effort showed in her red, tensed face and her hiked shoulders. Her body wasn't long and lean the way theirs were. She was more compact in size and broader in the shoulders, like a swimmer. Yes, she had a swimmer's body. She was a swimmer. A swimmer. I imagined her in a bathing suit, swimming in the cool clear water, swimming toward me, wanting me. I imagined myself diving in above her and coming up behind her underwater.
"What's that stupid look supposed to mean, O'Brien?" Bobbi broke into my fantasy. "Stop staring at me and get your camera out of here. Mam"—she twisted around the other way to face Mam—"tell him to stop. I don't want him in here taking pictures." She looked at Jerusha, who had moved into the next twisting pose, her face hidden by her legs.
"Doesn't matter to me," Jerusha said. "He's not taking my picture, just yours."
Before Bobbi could say anything else, Mam cut in and said, "JP, why don't you see if Larry needs any help in the kitchen? The men are all in there, I believe. And see if Pap's doing all right."
I left them alone, but I didn't join the guys in the kitchen. I knew they didn't want me around—the killjoy. I went to my room, only this time I didn't read or study, I simply replayed the night before in my head and waited for my next opportunity to spend time with Bobbi.
