“What’s that?” I said.
Ted smirked and shook his head like inattention was to be expected of his little brother. Without answering, he took my glass and carried both of our drinks into the kitchen for a refill. He stood at the pass-through where I could see him, pouring from a clear glass pitcher, eggnog thick as paint.
“You talk to Dad?” he said.
I felt my shoulders tense. “Yesterday. I went over there.” I took a breath. Now was as good a time as any to break the news. “I was thinking I might look in on him tomorrow. You know, after we eat.”
Ted stopped pouring. “Would you come back?”
“He doesn’t have a Christmas tree,” I said.
I’d dropped by to do a surreptitious inventory of the fridge, make sure Dad wasn’t roaring drunk or obviously depressed and found the corner by the bay window nothing more than its old self, all the lights and ornaments of my childhood still boxed up in the attic, and the sight had laid me low. I tried to talk Dad into letting me run up to a tree lot but he refused and for several hours, I’d seriously considered nixing Christmas altogether.
Ted pulled a sour face. “In the first place, Dad doesn’t need a tree, and in the second, you can’t stay just one night. We thought you’d at least be here til Monday. Marcy baked and everything. She made those cookies you like, those Mallomars or whatever.”
My confusion must have been apparent because Ted paced over to the stairs, still holding the pitcher.
He shouted, “Marrrrcy?”
“What?” she shouted back.
“What do you call those cookies Frank likes? The ones I told you about. I’m drawing a blank.”
“Macaroons,” she said.
Ted turned back to me.
“I like macaroons,” I said.
“Then it’s settled.” Marcy appeared suddenly on the landing, wrists draped over the banister, hair brushing her cheeks. “You’ll stay until we’re out of macaroons.”
The twins were with her, ready for bed. They were wearing matching nightgowns. I could never tell which was which. Marcy whispered something in their ears and they hustled down the stairs and across the room and kissed me shyly and simultaneously on both cheeks, then retreated behind their father’s legs. Ted said, “Tell your uncle Frank what you want for Christmas.”
“A pony,” they said in unison.
My brother laughed. “I keep telling them a pony will knock over furniture and leave road apples on the rug.”
“It won’t live in the house.”
They were excited and exasperated at the same time and I had the idea that Ted had jumped them through these hoops before. I asked where it would live and without missing a beat, the twins said, “In the yard.”
Marcy clapped her hands. “All right, girls. Santa won’t do his thing unless you’re both asleep.”
“In separate beds,” Ted said. “I’m gonna come check in a little while and I want everybody in her own bed.”
I’d seen him with his kids, of course, but it still surprised me sometimes how completely Ted had given himself over to fatherhood. Maybe it was the house, so adult, so finished, if that’s the word, the kind of place a man might live forever.
Turned out the twins were getting exactly what they wanted for Christmas. The ponies (there were two) were boarding on a farm out in the country. Ted had fixed it for somebody to bring them around in the morning before the girls woke up. He explained all this while Marcy was arranging Santa’s payload around the tree, matching helmets and jodhpurs and riding boots, a pair of pony-sized English saddles.
“Technically,” Ted said, “these are miniature horses. You know how Shetland ponies look like midgets? These guys have the right proportions.”
In a pensive voice, Marcy said, “They’re giving me the strangest dreams,” and right away a look came over her face like what she’d said surprised her or like she hadn’t meant to speak aloud.
My brother rolled his eyes.
“I’m in the mood for macaroons,” he said, already headed for the kitchen. “Anybody else want macaroons?”
“No thank you,” Marcy said.
They’d met in Ted’s last year of law school. She was still an undergrad, a sophomore, as I recall, still Marcy Hammond then, Huntsville born and raised, daughter of a travel agent and a high school football coach. She majored in art history, minored in psychology and married my brother twenty-seven days after accepting her diploma.
“What about these dreams?” I asked.
She gave me a wary squint. “Do you really want to know?”
“I never remember dreams,” I said.
I should probably admit that I used to call her now and then while my brother was at work. This was back when they were still living in Mobile. They were trying to get pregnant and Ted didn’t see the point of Marcy’s finding a job if she was just going to quit and I knew she was tired of shopping and lunches and movie magazines. Rehearsals were at night so my days were mostly empty, too. I’d bring her up to speed on all the theater gossip, if I was sleeping with one of the actresses or who was hooked on diet pills. Sometimes, when I wasn’t on the road, I’d rent a movie and take it over there. The whole thing felt heady and illicit, like I was mixed up in an affair. Nothing ever happened, of course, and Ted knew all about it and I don’t think I would have acted on my desire even if she’d been interested but in those days, the sight of her bare feet propped on the coffee table was enough to get me going. Naturally, I was happy for them when she got pregnant, but I was disappointed at the same time. Somehow, her pregnancy made our friendship untoward.
“Well,” she said, “last night I dreamed I was a trick rider in the rodeo. I’ve been scared of horses all my life but there I was doing handstands in the saddle and riding two at once like water skis.”
“That’s a laugh.” Ted swung back in from the kitchen, his voice a mumble around the cookie in his mouth. “Marcy’s terrified of horses.”
“I just told him that,” she said.
“It’s a good dream,” I said.
“I had on this sequined leotard. And a rhinestone belt with a big buckle. I have no idea what it could mean.”
Ted stood, chewing, behind the couch.
“Don’t get her started,” he said. “She took a class.”
Marcy blushed and waved her hand in the air beside her ear, as if to consign the subject over her shoulder and into the past where it belonged.
The fire had burned to coals by the time we packed it in. Marcy walked me up to the guest room. To make sure I had everything I needed, she said. Ted was downstairs performing his nightly rounds—checking the locks, hitting the lights.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Frank. He doesn’t like to make a big deal out of it but family means the world to Ted.” She swiped a strand of hair behind her ear. We were perched on opposite corners of the bed. “Ever since your mother died …” She dropped her eyes. “Your poor father …” Her voice trailed off again.
I would have been interested to hear whatever it was Marcy was having trouble putting into words but I didn’t want to press. Those collarbones. Those slender wrists. I was happy to let her off the hook.
“I’m glad to be here,” I said.
“I don’t want you to think I’m a crazy person. That class I took, Ted makes it sound all new-agey but it wasn’t. The Practical Meaning and Application of Dreams. That’s what it was called. We only met one night a week.”
She told me she’d seen a flyer for an adult outreach program at the community college up the road, told me the professor had a PhD from Brown.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” I said.
“I’ve always been interested in dreams,” she said. “Ever since college. Freud and Jung and all that stuff. Every culture in the world puts stock in dreams.”
“The chief nourishers of life’s feast,” I said.
Marcy raised her eyebrows.
“Shakespeare,” I said. “Macbeth.”
�
�You see,” she said.
I heard Ted’s footsteps on the stairs, then his voice in the twins’ room, a low rumble, then his footsteps in the hall. Marcy pushed to her feet just as my brother came lurching in and flopped backward on the bed.
“The little sneaks were sleeping together.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Did I or did I not tell them to sleep in their own beds?”
Marcy stooped to read his watch. He was wearing one of those indestructible black titanium numbers that kept time in all twelve zones and was pressure-tested to something like ten thousand feet.
“It’s Christmas,” she said.
Ted said, “I don’t see how that makes a difference.”
I saw her consider whether or not to correct my brother’s impression—her face was that unguarded—saw her decide against it. She looked at me instead.
“Is it true you never remember dreams?”
I might have told her that there were mornings when I came to feeling wistful and mislaid, with something nagging at me like a word on the tip of the tongue, but that wasn’t the same thing as remembering.
“I think that’s sad,” she said.
When they were gone, I washed my face and gave my toothbrush a workout, then stripped to my boxers and hunched over my duffel for a minute, but I’d forgotten what I wanted. I knew as soon as I climbed into bed that I wouldn’t be able to sleep but I lay there hoping for half an hour, scrolling through images like a microfiche machine (here was Dad dozed off in the shambles of his den and here was Ted with his hurt feelings and his eggnog and here was Marcy, too beautiful for community college, shooting her hand up when the teacher asked a question) and listening to those sounds that pass for silence in the middle of the night: the house creaking, branches ticking against the windows, warm air rushing in the ducts.
Eventually, I gave up on sleep and made my way down to the kitchen for macaroons and milk, which I consumed by the light from the open refrigerator. On the way back to bed, I noticed a pair of identical faces peering at me from the doorway of the twins’ room.
“Hey, girls,” I said.
“Uncle Frank?”
“It’s me,” I said. “It’s late.”
“Did Santa come?”
To say the twins spoke in unison isn’t exactly right. It was more like bad looping in a movie or half-assed ESP. They spoke over and around each other, one of them rushing ahead or lagging behind, not always using the same words but arriving at more or less the same meaning every time. It’s impossible to do justice to it on the page but believe me, some scientist somewhere could have done a study.
“Not yet,” I said.
“Do we have to go back to bed?”
“He won’t come if you’re awake.”
They looked at each other, then back at me.
“Will you stay with us until we fall asleep?”
“All right,” I said.
I followed them into their room, watched, without remark, as they climbed into the same bed, a four-poster with a frilly canopy. I knew my brother would’ve wanted me to speak up but the scene was too lovely to disturb. There was an identical bed not six feet away, along with duplicate nightstands and chests of drawers and a table with matching ice cream parlor chairs, everything done in shades of white, each side of the room a moonlit reflection of the other. I wasn’t sure what the twins expected, so I just tucked them in, then stood there looking out the window until I could see the first pale glimmer of dawn mirrored on the bay.
Picture me manning the video camera on Christmas morning while my brother led the twins on a pony ride around the yard. The ponies were black all over, speckled with white in places like somebody had flicked them with a paintbrush. The twins weren’t so much riding as engaged in mounted hugs. Each had her arms wrapped around a pony’s neck, her face pressed into a mane. Marcy was out there, too, warming her hands around a coffee mug. She was wearing a puffy white coat over her robe and her eyes were still bleary from sleep. Every time I put the camera on her, she ducked and waved me off but she looked great, like a team of hairdressers had devoted the predawn hours to styling her coiffure into a perfect balance between realistically disheveled and believably together. Maybe it was the camera but I kept feeling one step removed from everything or like all this was a set, the ponies and the girls and Ted, the bay behind them as bright and crinkled-looking in the sun as a sheet of foil. Neighbors popped out onto their porches to witness the happy commotion in my brother’s yard. And Ted was really hamming it up. In his flannel pajamas and his duck boots and his parka, he strutted like the leader of a marching band.
When we were kids, Mom had a rule about opening one present, one person at time. We went around in a circle. It was meant to teach us a lesson in patience or something. But there was no such rule in my brother’s house. They let the wrapping paper fly. I gave Ted The Outlaw Josey Wales on DVD, Marcy a porcelain compote I’d found in an antique store. They gave me a cashmere sweater and a set of barbecue tools. I refrained from mentioning that I didn’t own a grill. I could see the ponies tied to a picnic table in the backyard, nipping at the meager grass that pushed up through the snow. At some point, Marcy produced a sausage and egg casserole which we ate while waiting for the twins to finish tearing into their gifts.
In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Ted had given me complicated instructions about shopping for the girls: It was absolutely necessary to give them separate presents, he said, never one big item to share, which apparently was a temptation with twins. It was vital that they conceive of themselves as individuals. It was also important, however, to give them exactly the same thing so there’d be no envy or hard feelings. I had settled on costume jewelry, matching sets of faux diamond chokers and tennis bracelets and clip-on earrings. They didn’t seem particularly impressed but Marcy oohed and aahed to make me feel better.
“Tell Uncle Frank thank you.”
“Thank you, Uncle Frank,” they said and moved on to the next package in the pile.
Finally, we all gathered at a phone mounted on the kitchen wall to call the grandparents, Marcy’s family first, then Dad. The twins held the phone between them and chattered about the ponies, then Marcy got on just long enough to wish Dad Merry Christmas. Ted was next. He hoisted himself onto the counter and swung his legs, heels thumping the cabinets while he talked. I leaned against the refrigerator waiting my turn. “Yeah,” Ted said. “We’ve had a big time.” He hopped down from the counter and started moving breakfast dishes into the washer, the phone pinned between his shoulder and his ear. “What about you?” He poured detergent and turned the dial, then stood at the pass-through listening with a hand bridged over his eyes. Marcy was in the living room now helping the twins into their new riding gear. It looked like some kind of festive bomb had gone off in there, shredded tissue and wrapping paper everywhere in sight. “I don’t know.” Ted listened again, then said, “I’m not sure that’s the best idea, Dad. They’re still pretty young. Here’s Frank, OK?” He snapped his hand away from his brow like a salute and passed the phone to me.
“Ponies?” my father said when I picked up. “Lord.”
He didn’t sound drunk exactly but his voice was warm and slow in a way I recognized. The clock on the microwave said 10:08. Ever since I was a kid, Dad had maintained a policy about not drinking until after 5:00 but on special occasions, he allowed himself a Bloody Mary or two regardless of the hour.
“Did you have a nice morning?” I said.
“I spent a few hours with your mother. The cemetery looked like hell. Just because it’s December doesn’t mean they aren’t obliged to provide an attractive resting place.”
Everybody else had gone back outside for a last ride before someone from the farm came around to pick up the ponies. I could see them through the big windows in the living room, the girls arrayed like extras from National Velvet, waiting patiently while Ted and Marcy hashed something out. My brother frowned and shook his head.
I asked Dad if
he’d opened his presents.
“Not yet.”
“You should open your presents, Dad.”
“I know,” he said. “I will.”
“There might be a pony in there for you.”
“I’m too old for ponies. Can you return a pony? Can you take a pony back if it isn’t what you wanted?”
“I have my doubts,” I said.
While I watched, Marcy smiled too brightly at Ted, handed him a lead, lifted the twins one after the other onto a single pony’s back, and I understood what they were hashing out. The twins wanted to ride double. My brother was against the idea but Marcy was ignoring him. She leaned against the rope, but the pony didn’t budge. She stiffened, breathed deep, swiped the hair out of her face, said something to Ted without looking at him. Ted walked over and slapped the pony lightly on the rump. You could tell, even from a distance, that his effort was halfhearted, but the pony skittered forward a few steps like he’d been stung, then planted his hooves a moment before rearing his back end and jerking his legs out behind him like a bronco, sending both girls over his neck into the snow. All of this took place in seconds, not even long enough for the silence between Dad and me to get uncomfortable, but it seemed much longer than that and there was an instant, just before the twins were unseated, when they looked poised in time, wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, unsure but not yet afraid, as if on the verge of an epiphany. Then they were down and I could hear the muted sound of their crying and Ted and Marcy were swooping in to pick them up.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I have to go,” I said and I hung up just as Ted and Marcy burst into the house, each holding a twin. As they passed, headed upstairs in a hurry, sobs trailing out behind them like fading sirens, Ted barked at me to “do something” with the ponies. I had no idea what that something might be but I was happy to make myself useful. The ponies lifted their heads at my approach, then flared their nostrils, simultaneously, and executed a pair of world-class, world-weary sighs. I had assumed that they were young (because of their stature, I guess) but now I wondered if my brother had procured a pair of old birthday party veterans or petting zoo retirees, nursing a lifetime of pony woes, fed up at last with children riding double.
The Holiday Season Page 4
