The Holiday Season

by Michael Knight

  Eventually, a woman from the farm showed up and Ted gave her an earful, featuring words like negligence and liability, which she heard without batting an eye. He mentioned nothing about getting his money back so I figured he was just venting. The woman was short and hippy with big forearms and a braid down to the middle of her spine. She seemed accustomed to ignoring yahoos like my brother. When he was finished, I helped her walk the ponies around to a trailer and she hauled them off into what was left of Christmas morning.

  The twins were a little shaken up but nothing serious. I couldn’t see a mark on them when Marcy brought them down. They were wearing red velvet dresses and patent leather shoes. All of a sudden we were running late for church. We slipped into Holy Innocents Episcopal after the readings but before the gospel, just in time to sing a few carols and hear the standard homily on the true meaning of Christmas. It was still cold out but it had warmed enough to get all the rain gutters in town ringing with snow melt. Bay Street was like a postcard, restaurants and galleries and boutiques, the whole world tinseled and garlanded for the holiday and more beautiful somehow for being deserted. But a moody fog had settled over us after the incident with the ponies and it failed to dissipate after church. No-body said much in the car and everyone went their separate ways when we got home. The twins bolted to the playroom with a DVD and Ted shut himself up in his office and Marcy got busy preparing her Christmas spread.

  I decided to take a walk. I hadn’t been to church in a long time and I felt released after the service. Plus, I thought my brother’s family could use some private time. The boardwalk spanned the shore from the Punta Clara Hotel to Zundel’s Wharf, maybe three miles altogether. I set out in the direction of the hotel, hands in my pockets, chin tucked into the collar of my coat, waffling on the subject of my father. I couldn’t make up my mind about dropping in on him tonight. The drinking didn’t worry me as much as the fact that he was blowing Christmas off. I could picture his presents gathering dust in the foyer, bows wilting like old flowers. At the same time, I was flattered that my brother wanted me to stay, that it meant something to him, and I was pleased, secretly, shamefully, to be caught up in the middle of all this.

  For most of its hundred some odd years, the Punta Clara Hotel had served as a kind of old-fashioned family resort (outdoor swimming pool, shuffleboard, croquet on the lawn), the sort of place where parents could turn the kids loose after dark without concern and soft-footed black waiters circled the dining room refilling cocktails without having to be told. There was music and dancing every night but only until ten o’clock, a famous Dixieland brunch on Sundays. In the last decade, however, the Punta Clara had been purchased by a conglomerate and converted into a spa/golfer’s paradise. The original rooms had been retooled and they’d installed a massage facility where the band shell used to be and a former PGA champ had been retained to overhaul the links. Outside, the hotel maintained an air of vaguely decrepit glamour, crumbly bricks and Spanish moss drooping from the live oaks, but inside, you could just as easily have been in Ohio or Arizona. I wandered through the lobby and the bar and past the row of shops, all of it bright and bland as nickels, made a lap around the grounds, drifted down to the pier, its pennants aflutter, sailboat rigging chiming in the wind, then started back to Ted’s. I’d been gone an hour. I hoped that was time enough to clear the air.

  My brother was waiting in his boat when I returned. His face was red and his eyes were watery. I had the idea he’d been out there for a while. Twin Evinrude 150s burbled at the stern, billowing exhaust. He waved his arms over his head at my approach, as if trying to signal me from a great distance.

  “Where you been?” he said. “We’ve only got a couple of hours til Marcy puts dinner on the table,” and I wondered if, in my distraction last night, Ted had scheduled a boat ride for the two of us without my noticing. He pointed at a cleat on the corner of the wharf. “Get that line.”

  For twenty minutes, I was thoroughly preoccupied by the wind, lips numb, teeth chattering, the rest of me shivering under my coat. I was already chilled from the walk, had been looking forward to warming up by the fire, but now Ted was plowing across the bay at full throttle, ours the only boat in sight. I had no idea where he was taking me but, eventually, Middle Bay Light took shape in the distance, little more at first than a pencil smudge against the horizon but solidifying into itself faster than I would have thought possible. It looked more like somebody’s crazy summer cottage than the standard New England version of a lighthouse. Hexagonal in shape, white with black shutters, warning lantern built right onto the roof. The whole business was raised on a web of pylons and guy wires and plopped down a mile from either shore. Ted cut the motor and we glided within thirty yards. By March, this place would be crawling with fishermen plumbing the depths for snapper or tourists out on a sightseeing trip from the Punta Clara, but at the moment, we shared it only with the gulls.

  Ted opened a sliding panel in the console, came out with a sleeve of saltines and started crumbling crackers overboard. Within seconds, the air was aswarm with noisy birds, dozens of them, swooping in almost close enough to touch, beating the air with their wings. They dipped their beaks into the water, retreated with their spoils to the lighthouse, then lifted off once more to get back into the fray.

  “I like it out here,” Ted said.

  He was hunting around in the console again. This time, he retrieved a silver flask. He sipped, handed it over. Brandy. I was glad to have it. My face felt like a mask of itself in the cold, unnatural and stiff. For a while, we just sat there drinking and baiting the gulls. Then Ted said, “I’m sorry about this morning.” He was staring over his shoulder, away from me, in the direction of Mobile.

  “For what?”

  He shrugged. “I told Marcy riding double was a bad idea. The twins, they want to do everything together. Eat off the same plate and share the tub and sleep in the same bed. They talk at the same time. Have you noticed? Marcy thinks it’s no big deal.”

  “Won’t they grow out of that?” I said.

  Ted looked at me like the last thing he needed was his little brother’s opinion on childhood development. He sighed and rubbed his face with both hands, as if to wipe away ill feeling.

  “Are you gonna stay the night?” he asked.

  I took a drink and passed the flask. A lone seagull perched on the bow, watching us sidelong.

  I said, “You know that wig Mom had? Long and red? The last one she bought, I think?”

  Ted stopped the flask halfway to his lips, lowered it without drinking, let his hand rest on his thigh.

  “What about it?”

  “Dad still has it. On one of those mannequin heads. Right beside the bed.”

  “Here we go,” Ted said.

  “You don’t think that’s creepy?”

  “Yes, Frank. Yes, it’s creepy. That’s exactly why he should be out here with us right now instead of holed up in that house. That’s exactly why you should quit holding his hand. This is what I’ve been telling you.”

  “He drinks too much,” I said.

  Ted nodded like he was not surprised. “I tried to tell him it was a bad idea to retire. I told him a hundred times. Did he listen? Of course not. His wife was dead and his judgment was clouded. I understand that; I’m not an asshole. What I fail to understand is why my little brother won’t help me help him.”

  “I don’t think he likes me very much,” I said.

  Ted did a rankled furrow with his brow, then brought the flask up quickly to his lips and took a big drink and in a gasping, wheezy, angry voice said, “Oh, fuck you, Frank.” If we’d been back at the house, I’m sure he would have stormed off, slammed a door on his way out, but out here, there was nothing but water on all sides. He worked the key in the ignition but the outboards had gotten cold while we fed the seagulls, didn’t want to turn over. Ted cursed and jiggled the choke and the motors came coughing to life at last and he put us on a silent course toward home.

  The house had unde
rgone a transformation in my absence. The air smelled rich and warm with cooking. The living room had been detailed, all that wrapping paper and plastic packaging whisked out of sight, all those presents stowed. A new fire had been laid over last night’s ashes. Marcy was putting the finishing touches on the table. There were flowers in complicated arrangements and flickering candles and wedding china and tasseled cords around our napkins. The silver gleamed. And Marcy—her hair was pulled back now, knotted at the nape of her neck with a velvet ribbon, and her face was flushed with kitchen warmth. The whole scene was straight out of my imagining of their lives. She looked up and smiled as we came in, both of us huffing into our hands and beating our arms against our sides. We’d hardly spoken since my brother turned the boat around.

  “You boys wash up,” she said.

  Ten minutes later, dinner was served. Turkey and wild rice and salad and asparagus and corn pudding and buttery-looking rolls. Ted asked the twins to say a blessing and we all held hands and they launched without hesitation into a prayer they knew by heart, very Episcopal, exactly as subdued and gracious and lovely as the table.

  “How do you tell them apart?” I said.

  “They can hear,” Ted said. “Don’t talk about them like they’re not in the room.”

  Marcy started, gave Ted a look, but he was spooning wild rice into his mouth and didn’t meet her eyes. To me, she said, “It’s not so hard. It was harder when they were little. We had to paint Colleen’s fingernails. Her fingernails were small as lemon seeds.”

  The twins said, “I don’t remember that.”

  “You were babies,” Marcy said.

  Ted let his spoon fall with a clatter. He wiped his mouth and pushed his chair back from the table and walked around behind the twins. “I’d like to conduct a little experiment,” he said.

  Marcy said, “What are you doing?”

  “This’ll be fun. On your feet, girls. Frank, you close your eyes.”

  He stared until I did as he instructed. I know how this will sound but in that moment, with my eyes closed, I had the sense that I could see my brother clearly. All he wanted was for me and Dad to come over here and poke around and find his life worthwhile, even if it wasn’t as perfect as it looked. He wanted the present to get equal billing with the past. That seemed reasonable enough. But knowing this didn’t change anything with Dad. In his eyes, I thought, Ted’s life must have looked like proof that the world wasn’t much affected by our mother’s death, that her passage through time mattered less than it should have. What good was I between them? A few seconds later, Ted told me it was all right and I opened my eyes to find the twins stationed on either side of my brother. He had a hand on each blond head.

  “Who’s who?” he said.

  I studied them for what felt like a long time, long enough for a blush to prickle up, but I couldn’t make out a difference. Round cheeks, full lips, tapered chins, dainty ears, all identical, right down to the matching blue crescents under their eyes. I wondered if their fatigue was the result of ordinary Santa Claus anticipation or some more pressing and personal girlish concern.

  Marcy touched my leg under the table.

  “Why don’t I guess instead,” she said. “Hmmmm. Blond hair, blue eyes. You must be Lily?”

  It was obvious, even to me, that she’d gotten the answer wrong on purpose, but the twins howled at her mistake, did a happy lap around my brother, rearranged themselves at his sides. “Do it again!” they chanted. “Do it again!” Ted was standing there with his arms crossed, looking at me like he’d made his point.

  Marcy steered us back on course with small talk (the twins at their new school and Shakespeare Express and an interesting case my brother had been working on, involving a particular brand of hairspray that had a rare but real tendency to ignite if used in combination with a curling iron) and we made it through pecan pie without further incident. The twins were none the wiser, that I could tell, were even pleased by this curious interlude at their table and refused for the rest of the meal to answer to their right names.

  Afterward, Marcy took the girls up for their bath and my brother got busy on the dishes. I offered to help but he said, “You’re my guest.” His tone was not entirely unfriendly, though I was pretty sure he wanted to be alone or at least that he didn’t want to be alone with me. So I headed up to my room. It didn’t take long to pack my duffel but when I was finished, I felt tired, heavy-limbed, short of breath. I stretched out on the bed, listened to water running in the pipes, the murmur of female voices down the hall, my brother clattering in the kitchen. For a while, I hoped that Ted would finish up and seek me out and we’d have one of his patented heart-to-hearts. He could go on about my lack of ambition and direction, my unwillingness to commit, whatever, and instead of tuning him out or changing the subject, I’d bob my head like he really had me pegged. But he found something else to do after the dishes. I picked up the phone beside the bed and dialed the number of my youth, intending to let Dad know I was coming. It rang for a long time, remote, inconsequential, then he answered and I snugged the receiver hard against my ear.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Ted?”

  “It’s me,” I said. “It’s Frank.”

  “Hang on,” he said.

  There was rustling on the line and I pictured him patting his breast pocket for his glasses. I heard what sounded like a woman’s voice on his end and for an instant, I thought maybe he’d patched things up with Madame Langlois, but the voice died out and I thought it was just TV, likely some no-nonsense anchorwoman on CNN, and I knew right then that I wasn’t going home.

  “What can I do for you?” he said.

  “Nothing. Just checking in.”

  “I opened my presents,” he said. “No ponies but thanks for the book.” I’d given him a JFK biography. “And thank Ted and Marcy for the tie. And the DVD player. Which I’ll never figure out.”

  “Maybe I can help with that,” I said.

  There came a tapping at the door and Marcy poked her head into the room. She apologized for interrupting, told me the girls wanted to say good night.

  Dad said, “Was that your brother?”

  “Marcy,” I said. “Putting the girls to bed. Ted told me to tell you Merry Christmas, though. He said tell you Merry Christmas and he loves you.”

  “That reminds me,” Dad said. “There’s something I meant to tell you. I was gonna tell you this morning but you got off in such a rush.” He coughed and cleared his throat. I could hear ice clinking in his glass. “Remember that little Graceland? There’s a For Sale sign in the yard. Apparently, the husband got busted passing bad checks. The wife is moving back to Memphis. That’s what the neighbors told me anyway.”

  “Elvis has left the building,” I said.

  Then we did our good-byes and I stood there for a minute with the phone still at my ear, a rushing on the line like the ocean in a seashell, before hanging up and making my way to the twins’ room down the hall.

  Marcy was still tucking them in. She slipped her arm into the crook of my elbow and steered me between the beds and gave me a look, half pleading, half amused. “Now listen, girls. Uncle Frank knows. He’ll tell you it’s better if you sleep in separate beds.”

  The twins were watching me, their faces sober but not entirely resigned. They each had an arm atop the blankets, an arm beneath, one right, one left, a perfect mirror image.

  “Your mother’s right,” I said.

  “Why?”

  I looked at Marcy. Marcy shrugged.

  “Where’s Ted?” I said.

  She jerked a thumb in the direction of the windows.

  “He’s been in already. You know Ted. He delivers his orders and expects to be obeyed.”

  After a moment, the twins said, “Why can’t we sleep in the same bed?”

  “There must be a good reason. I just can’t think of it right now.” I tried a goofy smile, the useless but lovable uncle. “Why do you want to?”

  “I don’t know,
” they said.

  I walked over to the window. There was a light burning on the wharf and I could see Ted in his boat, just sitting there behind the wheel, breath puffing out of him like tiny smoke signals.

  “Have you named the ponies yet?” I said, turning back to the twins.

  They shook their heads.

  I said, “You know your father and I are named after presidents. Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt. They were related somehow. Your grandfather, he admires them both. Despite the fact that Teddy was a Republican. Teddy bears are named after Teddy Roosevelt.”

  Marcy took my hand, linked our fingers. The twins said nothing in reply and who could blame them? Even I didn’t know what I was talking about.

  “I’m sorry,” I said and I wondered how many times I’d uttered those words in my life and how many times you had to say a thing before it had no meaning anymore.

  Marcy gave my hand a squeeze.

  I said, “I couldn’t tell you two apart.”

  They looked at me slyly for a moment. Then one said, “I’m Lily,” and the other said, “I’m Colleen,” and they were able to maintain their composure only for a second before collapsing into hysterics. They thrashed in their beds and kicked their feet under the covers and after a moment Marcy and I laughed with them.

  “You think that’s funny?” I said.

  “Yes,” they said.

  I told them, “I do, too.”

  Ted didn’t look up as I made my way out to the wharf but I know he heard me coming.

  “Permission to board?” I asked.

  He shrugged and I hopped into the boat and sat along the gunnel.