Mrs. Michaels had a very clear idea of what he could do for her, an idea that Father Windakiewiczowa regarded with blank disbelief.
“Mrs. Michaels,” he protested, when she’d finished laying out her demands, “I couldn’t possibly undertake to do what you ask. For one thing, Sister Symphorosa is entitled to conduct her class in whatever way she thinks fit.”
“Even if that means driving my child out into a snowstorm without his winter clothes? And slapping him in the face when he was already in a state near hysteria?”
“Sister Symphorosa is an experienced teacher, and I’m sure she wouldn’t have—”
“I am an experienced nurse, Father, and my son may have to be hospitalized because of that woman.”
“I sympathize with your distress, Mrs. Michaels, but—”
“I sympathize with your distress, Father, when the story is published in the newspaper.”
“Now, Mrs. Michaels, that would be… entirely unnecessary.”
“I hope so, Father. And if Billy hears from Sister Symphorosa by his bedtime, which is eight o’clock, you have my word that I won’t make any waves—no matter how sick the boy may get. And I would also like to have someone bring Billy’s coat home.”
“I’ll see that is done this evening, Mrs. Michaels. But as to being able to persuade Sister—”
The line went dead. He had been hung up on.
Obviously he was going to have to try to mollify Mrs. Michaels. He had no doubt at all as to the essential accuracy of what the woman had told him. Sister Symphorosa’s enmity to Santa Claus had more than once aroused parental indignation, and while she could scarcely be blamed for the boy’s running off half-dressed into the snowstorm, it undoubtedly did look bad. The Pioneer Press was generally well disposed toward the Church, but in this case the attraction of the “human interest” might prove too great. He would have to pull rank.
But not before he had his allotted before-dinner two ounces of schnapps, which he drank directly from the glass measuring cup, by way of avoiding extra dishwashing. He rinsed and dried the measuring cup and returned it to its place on the second cupboard shelf. Then he bundled into his overcoat and walked the two blocks to the convent through the thick-falling snow. The cold and glitter of the winter night seemed to mingle with the lingering bite of the schnapps to produce a sensation of briskness and vigor. By the time he’d reached the convent door he was almost looking forward to confronting Sister Symphorosa, since it was a conflict from which in its nature he must emerge as victor. Nuns, finally, must do as they’re told.
6
When Billy got home there was no one there but Grandma Obstschmecker, who wasn’t his grandmother but had to be called Grandma Obstschmecker anyway, and his bother Ned, who was actually his stepbrother. As soon as he saw Billy, red-faced and shivering, Ned said, “Boy, are you in trouble!” Then he ran out of the house to look for Billy’s parents. That left Billy by himself with Grandma Obstschmecker, who didn’t seem at all angry, even when she found out he’d gone to the bathroom in his pants. She promised to put his pants in the washing machine in the basement and wash and dry them herself and not tell Madge. Billy was more worried about the disgrace of messing up his pants than about anything else. Grandma O. made him promise to take a hot bath right away, which he did, and which started him shivering worse than he’d been shivering when he first came in the house. He was out of the bathtub and in his pajamas by the time Ned got back with his father. His father came tromping up the stairs so loud that Grandma Obstschmecker had to shout out “Henry! Please!” Then the two of them whispered outside the door to the bedroom, and while they were whispering, Madge came home, and so Billy was left for the time being to himself while the grown-ups argued in the living room. Billy could have heard the whole argument by going out to the heat transom in the upstairs hallway, but he was feeling strange and wanted nothing but just to lie there under the two extra blankets Grandma Obstschmecker had spread over him and drift off to sleep. But for some reason he wasn’t able to now. It was probably too long before bedtime. Or else it was part of the pneumonia that Grandma Obstschmecker said he would get when she was drying him off after his bath. He’d been sick for a long time when he was five, and one of the things he still remembered about it was lying in the bed and not being able to sleep. That was when he’d learned how to see things on the ceiling when it was dark. The argument downstairs ended, and his mother came up to sit beside him for a while, and that was nice, even if he couldn’t smell her hair the way he usually could, and then Madge came up with the thermometer. While Billy warmed the thermometer under his tongue, Madge said, “Well, I talked to him,” and Billy’s mother said, “What did he say?” and Madge said there was no telling, they’d just have to wait.
A while later, after his mother had kissed him good-bye and gone back to Willowville, the phone rang. Billy knew right away that this was what Madge had said they’d have to wait for, and sure enough a little later Ned came upstairs to tell him to come down, there was a phone call for him. “From who?” Billy wanted to know. “You’ll find out,” Ned told him ominously.
When he went to the phone, which had been placed at the end of the dining room table, where Grandma Obstschmecker usually sat, the whole family was hovering round just the way they would have been for an important TV program, only instead of the TV it was Billy they were watching. Madge was in the doorway to the kitchen with rubber scouring gloves on, and Ned was sitting at the other end of the table, pretending to do his homework. Grandma Obstschmecker was in her platform rocker, which had been turned from facing the TV to face into the dining room instead. Billy’s father was sitting in the bay window with all the potted geraniums, fingering a copy of TV Guide. Billy looked at the phone mistrustfully, and then at Madge, who pursed her lips in a grim, thin smile. “It’s for you, Billy. It’s Sister Symphorosa.”
His heart sank, but he picked up the receiver and said, “Hello.”
“Good evening, Billy. This is Sister Symphorosa.”
He nodded.
There was a long pause, and then she said, “We’ve all been very concerned for you here at the convent, Billy. Quite a few of the sisters have been out looking for you, as far off as McCarron’s Boulevard.”
Billy didn’t know where McCarron’s Boulevard was, but just from the sound of Sister Symphorosa’s voice he knew it must have been quite a ways. Her voice had the sort of trembling sound it got just before she exploded and hit someone. He was glad she was on the phone and not in the same room, since he didn’t know what he was supposed to say to her. He said he was sorry. That was usually a safe bet with grown-ups.
“Well,” said the sister, in the same trembly voice, “we’ll deal with all that when school resumes again, after the holidays. But tonight I just wanted to say that I was… mistaken… in telling you there is no Santa Claus. Father Windakiewiczowa has come to the convent this evening—he is here with me right now—to inform me that there is a Santa Claus. And that he is—how did you put it, Father?” There was a short pause filled with a mumbling sound, and the sister resumed, in a tone of barely restrained fury: “He is the spirit of love incarnate. So, I hope you find that information reassuring.”
Billy didn’t know what to say, and said nothing.
“Do you have any questions about Santa Claus, Billy?”
Billy almost didn’t have the nerve—but finally did ask: “Does he really come down chimneys?”
“Just a moment, I’ll ask Father Windakiewiczowa. He’s the expert here on Santa Claus. Father, Billy wants to know if Santa Claus really comes down chimneys.” Another pause. “Yes, Billy, he really does. Any other questions?”
Billy shook his head.
“If you have no more questions, I should like to remind you—with Father Windakiewiczowa’s permission—that we also celebrate the birth of the Christ Child at Christmas. I hope you remember some of what I told your classmates about how Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem?”
“Yes, Sis
ter.”
“He was born so that we might be saved from our sins!”
She really sounded like she would explode any moment. Billy was glad he wasn’t Father Windakiewiczowa, though of course being a priest (and a grown-up) meant that Sister Symphorosa wouldn’t explode at him.
She would wait till Billy was back at school and then get him.
“Billy, are you listening to me?”
“Yes, Sister.”
“I wonder if you could tell me—tell all of us—where you went when I sent you down to the principal’s office.”
Billy could feel his face and hands starting to sweat. He stared at the little holes drilled into the telephone mouthpiece as hard as he could, so he wouldn’t have to meet the collective gaze of his family, who were all looking at him and straining to hear the other end of the conversation. Then a strange thing happened. Without his trying, he was able to see Sister Symphorosa. Her pale blue eyes had a funny glow inside them, like the glow of the night lamp that burned all night inside the bathroom, and there were beads of sweat all over her forehead (just as there were, he realized, on his own forehead), and her hands were gripping the phone receiver like the handle of an ax. She was furious—with him and with Father Windakiewiczowa and even, Billy realized, with Santa Claus. At first he thought she’d been lying to him, that she didn’t believe in Santa Claus but was only saying it because she had to. But seeing her like this he knew that she really did believe in Santa Claus. You can’t hate something the way she hated Santa if you don’t believe in it.
Billy’s long silence, though not intended as simple obstinacy, finally accomplished the same purpose. Sister Symphorosa finally retreated to a more easily answered question. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay,” he said noncommittally.
“Mrs. Michaels was worried that you might come down with a bad cold as a result of your going out with no snowsuit.”
Billy looked at the tiny face in the mouthpiece of the telephone, squinting and blinking to try to make it go away. He knew from the way she was biting her lip and from the way the blue wormy thing wiggled on the back of her hand (which was, Billy knew, one of the veins that squirt the blood to every part of the body) that what she really wanted to say was that she hoped he would get a bad cold.
“I’m fine,” he insisted. And thought: And I hope you get the cold instead of me. I hope you get pneumonia!
“Well, good night, Billy,” she said in a softer voice, as though she’d suddenly given up being angry. “Have a Merry Christmas.”
“Good night, Sister.”
She held on to the phone a little while longer, as though she were waiting to see if he’d wish her a Merry Christmas in return, but he wouldn’t, and finally she hung up. When she did, he stopped being able to see her face in the mouthpiece of the phone.
“Well?” Grandma Obstschmecker demanded. “What did she have to say?”
“She said…” Something funny was happening to the light in the dining room, as though little by little it were leaking out into the snowy night. He tilted his head back to see if that would make things better. “She said there really is a Santa Claus.” He smiled triumphantly, and then his eyes rolled up and his knees caved in and the lights went out completely.
“What a little actor he is,” Grandma Obstschmecker commented acidly.
Madge bent down over her stepson and felt his forehead and his pulse and made a professional tsk of concern. “He isn’t acting, Mother. He’s fainted.” She grabbed Billy under his armpits and lifted him into a seated position. “Henry,” she ordered her husband, “help me carry him up to the bedroom.”
7
It was Sunday night, the night before the night before Christmas, and the kids had been put to bed. Madge had gone off to work (she’d been on the night shift for the past three months; it paid more), and Henry Michaels and his mother-in-law were sitting at the dining room table wrapping Christmas presents. Or rather, Henry was. Mrs. Obstschmecker, having been unable to find proper to-and-from cards in the box of last year’s leftover wrapping supplies, had taken on the more congenial tasks of supervision and advice. Henry’s style of wrapping presents was inventive but not very neat, and this gave Mrs. Obstschmecker plenty of opportunity for constructive criticism. Henry nodded at each of her suggestions and then went right on wrapping the presents his way.
Mrs. Obstschmecker turned to politics. “I can’t believe that they are seriously talking about impeaching the president. The president!”
Henry, who had been enjoying every minute of Watergate, smiled. “Who else could they impeach, Grandma Obstschmecker? Impeachments are reserved specially for presidents. Ordinary people just go to jail.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me Grandma, Henry. I’m Ned’s Grandma, but I don’t think I’m old enough to be yours.”
“Sure, whatever you say. But you see my point about impeachment, don’t you? That’s the only way they’ve got to nail him.”
“He is not a criminal. Nothing’s been proven. Aren’t people supposed to be innocent until proven guilty?” This was an argument she had employed several times in discussions of Watergate, and she’d never known it not to produce at least grudging assent. But Henry just went on as though she hadn’t said anything worth considering, without even looking up from his wrapping.
“Nothing’s been proven,” Henry said, “ ‘cause he’s sitting on those tapes and won’t budge.”
“The tapes are full of national security secrets,” Mrs. Obstschmecker pleaded.
“Yes, and then some,” said Henry.
“You’re as bad as all the rest. You just want to drive him out of office, and you don’t care how you do it. I think it’s a sin, the way that poor man is being made to suffer.”
Mrs. Obstschmecker regarded her son-in-law balefully. She didn’t understand how he could be so disagreeable all the time without ever actually quarreling. Whenever she had disagreed with Mr. Obstschmecker, dead now these past three years, they’d ending up screaming and yelling. They didn’t just make a lot of nasty little jokes the way Henry Michaels did. She would never understand why her daughter had wanted to marry the man. Unless it was the way he looked.
He looked like JFK. Except that his hair was more reddish than JFK’s, and his body more spindly, and his ears, despite his haircut, stuck out from his head, and there were dark crescents in the loose flesh under his eyes as a result (he claimed) of his job (which he’d just lost) as assistant manager of the Leif Ericson Hotel—aside from those details he looked (in his mother-in-law’s eyes) exactly the same.
While to many people such a resemblance, if they had seen it, would have counted in his favor, to Mrs. Obstschmecker it represented everything intolerable in her son-in-law: long hair, a lot of holier-than-thou liberal ideas (he was against the war and in favor of sex education), and a general sense that he was laughing up his sleeve at ordinary people such as herself.
“Pass me the scissors,” he said. Not “Please pass me the scissors”; just “Pass me the scissors.” Typical.
“They’re right in front of you,” she said.
Henry sliced off a section of blue-and-silver Christmas bells wrapping large enough for the recording of comedian Poppy Mueller narrating Fairy Tales the World Over.
“Well, I still believe in him,” Mrs. Obstschmecker declared.
Henry looked up with the sly grin he used to sweeten his insults. “That makes two of you.”
“What?” She narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out his remark. “If you mean to say no one else believes in the president but me and the president himself, you’re quite wrong. Billy Graham was on the news just tonight saying that he has every confidence in the president’s integrity. And that’s a quote. He said he may have made some errors in judgment but that he’s a man of integrity. And Billy Graham wouldn’t say that if he didn’t believe in the president.”
“That’s very loyal of Billy Graham, but it’s not what I meant.”
“What d
id you mean then?”
“I meant we’ve got two true believers right here in the family—you believing in Nixon and Billy upstairs believing in Santa Claus.”
Mrs. Obstschmecker emitted a little sneeze of laughter, but she felt no better for it. Laughing at Henry’s jokes was like being tricked into agreeing with him.
She changed the subject to something certain to be unwelcome. “What’s happening at the hotel?”
“Today they closed down the coffee shop.”
“And that beautiful restaurant, with the big chandelier?”
“That was closed down the day they made the announcement, two weeks ago.”
“I just can’t understand it. Such a fine old building. Where will people stay when they come to St. Paul if there’s no hotel?”
“They won’t come here. They don’t already—that was the problem, that’s why we’re closing. The downtown is a ghost town after dark.”
“I still remember when Mr. Obstschmecker’s cousin Gladys had her marriage reception in that ballroom. That was almost thirty years ago. Mr. Obstschmecker was still wearing his uniform. My goodness, it doesn’t seem that long ago.”
Henry had finished Scotch-taping the Poppy Mueller LP’s wrappings and was measuring a cellophane package of underpants against a remnant of glossy red paper salvaged from last Christmas. There was just barely enough, which gave Henry a ping of mathematical satisfaction.
Mrs. Obstschmecker had begun a reconstruction of her husband’s cousin’s wedding reception at the Leif Ericson Hotel in 1945, or possibly 1944, when she was interrupted by loud cries that seemed to come from the ceiling directly overhead. She looked up at the heat transom fearfully.
“It’s Ned,” Henry said matter-of-factly, putting down the package of underpants and getting up from the table. “He’s having one of his nightmares.”
Henry went up to Ned’s bedroom, a huge dark cave with its own private sun porch that faced north and so never received any direct sunlight. He switched on the single 60-watt overhead bulb, summoning dim forms from the darkness. Ned was lying rigid in the middle of a big brass-framed bed (one of the Obstschmecker heirlooms), staring up with blank-eyed terror at the peeling paint on the high ceiling and shouting out over and over, “I didn’t see it! I wasn’t there!” Sometimes he’d throw in “You’ve got to believe me, I didn’t see anything!”
THE M.D. A Horror Story Page 3
