The Holiday Season

by Michael Knight

  Faintly, Lulu heard footsteps on the gritty, sawdusty stairs.

  “Ike,” she said.

  He grunted, put his lips on hers, tried to kiss her quiet, but Lulu turned her face away. “What?” he said. He looked like he’d been hypnotized.

  “Someone’s coming.”

  Ike blinked, cleared his throat.

  He said, “Who’s there?” to the dark.

  Myrtle Walsh leaned against the doorjamb. She was a sophomore at Bishop O’Dell, which put her three years ahead of Lulu, a year behind Ike. She crossed her arms and her ankles. She had a beer in her right hand.

  “Ike Tiptoe,” she said, “your presence is requested on the lawn.”

  That was something Lulu had noticed about Myrtle Walsh: The more she drank, the more formal her speech became. By the end of most nights at Illumination Meadows, she was enunciating like she’d learned to talk by reading wedding invitations.

  “What’s up?” Ike asked.

  Myrtle rolled her eyes.

  “The Neals and young Ollie have cornered a possum. They desire the pleasure of your company while they fuck with it.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Ike said. He stood and hurried over to where a window would have been, pushed back the sheet of plastic, laughed out loud. “Holy shit. I’ll be right back. You guys hang out.” And he was gone, his feet clomping down the stairs, his voice leaping up from the lawn. “You dumb shits. That thing’s probly rabid.”

  Myrtle took Ike’s place on the bench seat, offered Lulu a sip of beer, which she accepted.

  “So. Are you and Mr. Tiptoe having a lovely time up here?”

  Lulu said, “Yes.” Which was sort of true. She added, “So far,” though she wasn’t sure what she meant and hoped Myrtle didn’t ask. She walked over to the window, gazed down on Ike and his friends. They were huddled together watching this big old possum amble through the weeds. When Ollie rushed it, the possum flopped over like it had fainted and the boys howled with laughter. Then they crouched behind Ike’s Jeep until the possum thought the coast was clear, let it waddle a few yards farther from the house before one of the Neals came charging this time and the possum swooned again.

  Myrtle said, “I always thought it was fake.”

  “What’s that?” Lulu said.

  She watched her words take shape in the cold, then disappear.

  “Playing possum. That’s what it’s doing, the poor thing. I thought it was just some weird, old-time expression.”

  So had Lulu, but she didn’t let on.

  Boyd

  “Ike Tiptoe. Ike Tiptoe. Ike Tiptoe.”

  Boyd Fountain listened to his ex-wife repeat the name like an incantation, like the solution to some great mystery was contained in those three syllables. They were in his car now, headed west on Old Shell Road. Boyd was fiddling with his cell phone. He needed to get ahold of his blind date, explain himself, apologize, but he couldn’t make the call with Stella in the car. Haley Marchand had set it up out of the blue. Esmerelda Daza. Beautiful, Haley said. As beautiful as her name.

  “Ike Tiptoe, Ike Tiptoe,” Stella said.

  Every night for the final ten years of their marriage, they would wait until Lulu was asleep, then creep down to the basement to hash out the day’s disagreements where their daughter couldn’t hear. There was always something. One night, when Lulu was away at summer camp, they were arguing beside the Ping-Pong table and the foldout couch, the air mildewy and stale, and it occurred to Boyd that nobody else was home.

  “What’re we doing down here?” he asked.

  Stella tossed her head.

  “We’re talking about respect, Boyd, how you can’t seem to remember you’re not the only person who lives in this house.”

  “I mean in the basement.”

  Stella looked at him for a minute. Then it dawned on her and she smiled.

  “It’s over, isn’t it,” she said. “It’s been over for a long time.”

  And just like that they stumbled onto the antidote for their unhappiness. Yes, it was hard on Lulu; that was the worst thing. Maybe if they hadn’t done such a bang-up job hiding things from her when they were still together, she’d understand that they were better off apart.

  Boyd had dated some at first but he took no pleasure in it, in part because he felt, despite the reams of legal documents, permanently attached. He had agreed to let Haley set him up tonight only because of the woman’s name. Esmerelda Daza. Esmerelda. Daza. It sounded like a kind of warm and glowing gem.

  “Ike Tiptoe,” Stella said.

  The heat was running in the car but it looked cold outside. Steam billowing from restaurant vents. The too bright, too clear quality of the light. He wondered why winter bothered with Alabama. There was nothing redeemable about the season, not even snow or ice to make it charming way down here.

  Then, suddenly, like something had just occurred to her or like she’d been thinking of something besides Ike Tiptoe all along, Stella said, “What were your plans? Where were you going when I called?”

  “Nowhere important.”

  He could feel her staring at him. Neither of them had been invited to the Marchands’ New Year’s Eve party since the divorce and he knew her feelings would be hurt. He also knew—and so did she—that he couldn’t keep a secret. Not from her. She kept on staring.

  In a quiet voice, he said, “The Marchands’.”

  “Do you have a date?” she said.

  He looked at the cell phone in his hand. He couldn’t look at Stella.

  “Not really. More a blind date sort of thing.”

  “Sounds like fun,” she said.

  Then she screamed and Boyd was so startled he dropped the phone and hit the brakes and they came skidding to a stop. He thought at first that she was screaming because of him but there was a man in a gold tracksuit in the middle of the road. “What the hell?” Boyd said. It was like he’d fallen from the sky. The man was just standing there, unfazed. He was holding a poster-board sign that said, Repent! in black letters. Boyd honked but still he didn’t move. Boyd honked again. No response. So he backed up and drove around, went by the man on Stella’s side. As they passed, Boyd gave him the finger and Stella drew the sign of the cross in the condensation on the window.

  Katie

  When they weren’t at parties, which was most of the time, the Butters lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, right around the corner from their church. Hugh made plenty of money. Both Evan and Nicole did well enough in school. Katie had her volunteer work, her friends. Once a month they booked Miss Anita to keep the kids so they could have what Katie referred to as a date: dinner and a movie or a traveling production of a Broadway show. Unless Hugh was too worn out from work, they had sex on Friday nights, usually missionary, usually in bed, but once in a while they tried something more risqué, the shower maybe or Hugh’s car in the garage. Until September, they’d owned a neutered cocker spaniel, but he’d been run over by a van. Katie buried him herself behind the potting shed before the kids got home from school. If she’d had her way they would have replaced the dog for Christmas but Nicole wasn’t interested and Evan had his heart set on a computer.

  Now, she was perched on the Marchands’ couch between Lauren Killibrew and Astrid Watts. There was another woman, Esmerelda something, sitting in an armchair to her left. Katie had seen her before, talking to Urqhardt. Nearly an hour had passed since Hugh had left her in the kitchen.

  “I need to find someone for kissing,” Esmerelda said. She spoke without contractions, adding a lilt of the exotic to her voice. “My date, he is not coming. There is nothing more sad than a woman alone at midnight on New Year’s Eve.”

  “What about him?” Astrid said. She pointed at a man holding a martini glass over his head, staring up into it through the bottom, as if he suspected a foreign object in his drink.

  Esmerelda made a face.

  In the corner by the window stood a Christmas tree, frosted white and decorated with the sort of enormous colored
lights popular in the ’70s. Katie wondered if it was meant to be retro or nostalgic. Tomorrow, she thought, she’d box her own ornaments and Hugh would return them to the attic and drag their tree out to the curb. Then, in a day or two, she’d inform the children of her plans and nothing would ever be the same.

  “Well,” Lauren said, her voice self-consciously good-humored. “You can kiss my husband if you want. If you don’t find anyone. I’m sure he’s tired of kissing me.”

  Astrid slapped Lauren’s thigh, a playful rebuke.

  “Which one is yours?” Esmerelda said.

  Lauren aimed a finger. Mark was at the buffet table holding a meatball on a toothpick.

  “My life is over,” Esmerelda said.

  Katie was thinking of their house in the old neighborhood, the way it creaked and moaned at night, the way she sometimes had the feeling that she was being watched, the way it was cold in places for no good reason. She’d speculated to Hugh that maybe something bad had happened there, something tragic, but Hugh, of course, dismissed her. What surprised Katie was that the feeling had traveled with them when they moved. When all the lights were out and the children were in bed and Hugh was snoring at her side, she’d lie in the dark for hours washed in nameless trepidation. This is what was on her mind when she excused herself and hurried off into the crowd before Lauren or Astrid, presuming she was headed for the restroom, could offer to accompany her. She was not, in fact, headed for the restroom. She told herself that she was looking for Urqhardt, feeling guilty about before, that she wanted to apologize for her rudeness. If she happened to locate her husband, so much the better.

  Evan

  Evan gathered himself on the way downstairs, prepared to look innocent and unashamed, but nobody paid him any mind. Miss Anita was sprawled on the couch with her heels in Nicole’s lap. Nicole was massaging her arches, watching TV. Miss Anita’s feet were fat as hams, the color of chocolate on top, caramel on bottom, her toenails hard-looking, yellow, shot through with cracks. Nicole didn’t seem to mind. She pressed her thumbs into Miss Anita’s flesh and Miss Anita moaned. The popcorn was in a metal colander on the coffee table, but Evan had lost his appetite.

  “You got it now, baby girl,” Miss Anita said.

  Her eyes were squeezed shut and though she did not open them at his approach, Miss Anita turned her head slightly when Evan dropped into his father’s leather chair.

  “How’s Lucifer?” she asked.

  Evan said, “Dead.”

  Miss Anita popped her right eye open.

  “Praise Jesus.”

  Evan looked at the TV. Times Square. The milling, roaring masses. There was a rock band playing on a raised platform. The crowd moved like wind-licked trees. Evan felt a blush rising in his cheeks. You didn’t actually get to do battle with Lucifer until the seventh circle of hell and he’d only made it to the third, where he’d been beheaded by a demon called Asmodeus. There had been a maiden in a tattered dress chained to the wall in the chamber where he died.

  Nicole said, “Miss Anita is letting me stay up to watch the ball drop.” She was blond, her hair chopped into a pageboy. Her hands kept moving over Miss Anita’s feet. “She said I could if I gave her a massage.”

  “That was sposed to be our secret.” Miss Anita didn’t sound particularly concerned.

  Evan said, “Mom won’t like you up til midnight.”

  “You either,” Miss Anita said. “We all in this together. Or we all in bed at ten o’clock.”

  Nicole jerked her knees and slapped the bottom of Miss Anita’s foot. “But you promised. You said if I rubbed your feet I could stay up. That’s what you said, Miss Anita.”

  “And you said you wouldn’t tell nobody. Now look.”

  Nicole gazed at Evan with pleading eyes, her fist closed tight around Miss Anita’s toes as if she’d forgotten what was in her lap. “Evan. Please.”

  Miss Anita did a sleepy, slit-eyed smile. “How bout it, big brother?”

  Evan glared at her a moment, turned his attention back to the TV. Beside the bowl of popcorn, there were four tiny, empty liquor bottles, the kind his father drank on airplanes. He knew his parents wouldn’t like that either. He was thinking of a time several years ago when he’d said something smart to Miss Anita (he couldn’t remember what it was) and Miss Anita spanked him and he’d gone running to tell his mother and his mother had gotten mad at him instead. She made him write a hundred times, “I will always be polite to Miss Anita.” His handwriting was clumsier and slower and loopier back then and it had taken him two hours and ten sheets of paper to get it done. Tonight, he felt like his skeleton was too big for his skin. On TV, the camera panned in on the vocalist. Her lips and eyes were done in black. Then the camera backed away and she was taking these long, spidery steps, her elbows jacked above her head, hair visible in her armpits. He wanted to head up to his room but he was afraid his erection would let him down again. He’d seen movies where cancer victims refused to go to the doctor because they didn’t want to know about their disease. That was how he felt.

  “I’ll think about it,” Evan said.

  Miss Anita groaned and rocked to her feet. She told Nicole, “Don’t you go nowhere, baby girl. I got a whole nother foot needs some attention.” She tottered off in the direction of the bathroom. Her purse, a huge ungainly thing crocheted with roses, was on the floor at her end of the couch. When she was safely out of earshot, Evan slipped across the room and unlatched the clasp.

  Nicole said, “You better not.”

  Evan gave her a look. There were half a dozen airplane bottles in the purse, maybe more, still unopened. He picked one up and read the label. Peppermint Schnapps.

  “I’m telling,” Nicole said.

  “Not if you want to stay up,” he said.

  The toilet flushed and Evan dropped the bottle back where he had found it. It made a plinking sound. He took another look and he would have sworn he saw a pistol, small and black, wedged in the bottom corner, part hidden by Kleenex packages and paperback books and mittens and hard candy and a key ring that must have held a hundred keys. The sight of it made his scalp itch. He was just reaching for it when he heard the slap of Miss Anita’s step-ins on the hardwood and he fixed the clasp and hustled back to his chair.

  “All right, baby girl,” Miss Anita said, kicking her shoes off, wiggling her toes. “You ready with those magic fingers?” It took a minute to get herself rearranged on the couch. There was a lot of scooting and sighing and pillow smacking before she was satisfied.

  Evan didn’t know what to do about the pistol or the schnapps so he watched the parade of musicians on the countdown show while Nicole and Miss Anita jabbered about nothing in particular. He considered his evidence. He couldn’t figure how to let his parents in on what he knew without seeming like a snoop, without getting himself in trouble, too. He wasn’t even sure of what he’d seen. Miss Anita cleaned house for his mother two days a week and in the afternoons his mother drove her to the bench up on Spring Hill Avenue where Miss Anita met the bus that would take her to her neighborhood. Evan didn’t know where she lived. He pictured her sitting there at the bus stop while his mother’s car receded. Then he heard his name and his ear pricked up.

  “With Lulu Fountain,” Nicole said.

  “Well, well.” Miss Anita’s eyelids looked like the tongues of his father’s old brown shoes.

  “He circled her in his yearbook. I saw it.”

  “I didn’t make that circle,” Evan lied. His skull felt huge and molten. “The yearbook was already like that when I got it.”

  “You love her,” Nicole said.

  Evan said, “I do not.”

  Miss Anita said, “Sometimes love don’t feel like love.” She crossed her ankles. “There were times when I didn’t much want to love McGreggor.”

  Evan said “Who?” in an irritated voice. He wondered why some people had to go around saying what they thought about everything all the time. It took all his willpower not to blurt out what he knew
.

  “My babies’ father.” Miss Anita paused, pinched her lower lip. “He gone.”

  Evan was struck by that word—gone—by its mystery, its finality, and by the way she said it, like it was familiar on her tongue, but he didn’t want her to think he was curious about her life. Gone, he thought. It was a hard word to get his head around.

  “I don’t love Harold Flower,” Nicole said.

  “You don’t?” Miss Anita said.

  “There’s no such person,” Evan said. “You made Harold Flower up.”

  Nicole poked her tongue at Evan. “How could I not be in love with him if I made him up?”

  Evan gaped at his sister. That was such a stupid thing to say he could hardly imagine a reply.

  Ike

  What never failed to surprise Ike Tiptoe was how thoroughly the world tapered down upon itself when he was kissing Lulu, as if nothing existed beyond the kiss, not winter or music or Illumination Meadows, not even Lulu herself, in a weird way, except her lips and tongue and neck and earlobes and the sugary smell of her skin all mixed up with the citrusy smell of her hair.

  He was absolutely divorced from his conscious self, a perfect conduit of yearning. He wondered sometimes how much this had to do with Lulu or if the feeling was born of the act itself, kissing a girl, any girl (he was handsome in a pale and slender way, almost pretty, and had kissed his fair share), for hours on end, without the hope of satisfaction. Lulu had made her boundaries clear to Ike and though he was always testing, his forays into her shirt or toward her panties were little more at this point than a way to occupy his hands. He was convinced of her resolve. This might have been a deal breaker under other circumstances but there was something about Lulu, in the purity of her restraint, that separated her from other girls, that made the act of kissing her an end in itself. He had approached her that first time, at the homecoming game (Lulu in her white mittens, her pleated pep squad skirt, her tights), in part because he hoped a younger girl might be grateful for his attention and in part because he’d already kissed most of the girls worth kissing in his own grade.