bonnie’s christmas
Bonnie’s stepfather, StepStan, was raised sort-of Jewish, and he celebrated an aesthetic holiday known, informally, as Christmukah. The Wisconsin homestead where he lived with Bonnie’s mother took on a new aspect. An old GM half-ton truck sitting in a field beyond Stan’s studio was outlined and criss-crossed in multicolored lights, the world’s trippiest ride. Some number of Stan’s sculptures were set about the property, towering structures of anodized or case hardened or polished metal in the shape of spheres, wings, ribs, cages. These too were bedizened with special lighting effects, on one occasion, twirling red and green, on another, electronically programmed displays of starry blue-white lights going off like flashbulbs. Metallic ribbons were strung on wires, bumping and clanking together. The effect was not always festive. Often it was as if a crew of Jurassic Park dinosaurs had decked themselves out for the holidays.
One year there had been a twelve foot high metal stick figure with jointed arms that swung back and forth, and a triangular red Santa hat, but this looked disturbingly like a hanged man, and it was not repeated.
Indoors, Bonnie’s mother, Claudia, tried to represent the traditional. There was always a tree of some kind, and candles and felt decorations, and a menorah, and an old carved wooden nativity set that had belonged to Grandma Somebody, its colors gone soft with age. Stan liked to add the occasional figure to the set. One year there might be a small rag doll among the shepherds and magi, a calypso mammy-figure in headscarf and hoop earrings. Or a plastic Batman, or a squadron of army men. That Stan! He was such a kidder!
A week after Jane’s wedding, Bonnie headed north across the state line for those portions of the holidays that her family observed, eating and gift giving. She made a trip to a north side bakery for mandelbrot and macaroons, and to the liquor store for wine and spirits, God forbid they should ever run short. She bought a number of all-purpose gifts, books, mostly, and wrapped them up to distribute as needed. You could never tell who might or might not show up. In addition to Stan and Claudia, there would be, most probably, Bonnie’s older brother Charlie. (Their BioDad lived in New Mexico, and neither of them had seen him since they were little kids.) Their half-sister Haley was supposed to be there, along with her husband and twin babies. Beyond that, perhaps some assortment of Stan’s children from his previous two marriages, who were technically Bonnie’s stepbrothers and -sisters, although she hardly knew them. And anyone else Stan and Claudia might be cultivating or paying off with hospitality.
Jane once spent three days with Bonnie’s family over the holidays, and later said, “Well, I see you weren’t exaggerating.”
It had not been easy for Bonnie to get time off at Christmas. If anything, the crisis meter spiked during the holidays, as families collided and people went off their meds and the alcoholics stepped up their game. There was always some sick-making headline in the middle of the news coverage of midnight mass and the charity dinner. A beaten child, a murdered wife, somebody robbed and shot dead while picking up the sweet rolls for Christmas morning breakfast. Of course some of this was just run of the mill crime, as her cop boyfriend, Denny, pointed out. Meat and potatoes, head-banging fun. But somebody in her office had to be on call and nobody much wanted to do it, and in the end Bonnie had to make extravagant promises to her co-workers before she was off the hook. There was no reason for her to stick around; Denny would spend Christmas with his wife and kids and that was just the way it was.
Although now, fighting traffic and thirty miles of sideways snow on the Tollway, she wondered if it might have been better to stay in town and tough it out. Not that she was inclined to mope and pine overmuch about Denny, who had been a stupid idea from the get-go and they were probably pretty close to through with each other. He was just the cop iteration of all the other bad boys in her life, and totally full of himself. She could have made some excuse to her mother about working. She could have called around to her friends and found somebody to go out for drinks on Christmas Eve, or a movie Christmas Day. It wouldn’t have been so terrible.
But here she was, racing a snowstorm and hoping she could outrun it before she had to turn off the interstate and onto the two-lane. Snow was beginning to sift across the pavement in wind-driven, snake-like ropes. Her car, a little Dodge product, was good enough for city driving, not so great out in serious weather. She guessed if she ran off the road, she could eat pastry and drink the liquor until somebody showed up to tow her out of the ditch.
Her luck held, and by the time she reached Madison the storm had taken itself elsewhere. She kept on 39 north for another hour, then turned west onto the county road, two lanes but decently maintained. The snow pack on either side looked like it was there to stay. Just as the light was fading in a cloud-muffled sky that had no hint of color, she made the last turn and climbed the ornery hill that led to Stan and Claudia’s. It was not Bonnie’s childhood home; she wasn’t sure she had such a thing, with all the ruptures and dislocations involved. But it was where whatever combination of memories and DNA she could call her own resided, and she guessed that was why she had to keep coming back.
At least she’d arrived at the right time of day to see the lights. She slowed the Dodge at the crest of the hill to take it all in. Stan always tried to top himself year after year, just like, Bonnie had pointed out, everybody with icicle lights on their gutters and inflatable Santas on the roof and spiral cones meant to represent trees. This year, he’d gone in for holograms.
Here was a new sculpture, a solid steel wall almost house-high. It was set up as a kind of screen, pulsing from blue to violet and then quickly through the spectrum, settling on a burnt orange. This gradually extinguished itself, turning once more to blue. And just in that last flare of light, a herd of galloping deer! She had to watch the cycle one more time to determine that the deer were, in fact, projected shadows. It was quite lovely and Christmas card–like. Perhaps Stan was losing his edge.
She drove downhill along the S-curve road to the main house, past a few more eruptions of colored lights that reminded Bonnie, unworthily, of the special effects at old Polynesian restaurants. A number of cars were parked out front, some of which she recognized, some not. Her mother had been vague about the holiday schedule when Bonnie had last called. “I think we’ll have a few people stopping by. Oh, I don’t know. Whoever Stan runs into. Whoever Charlie brings. No point in planning ahead.” As usual, there was the chance of at least one thundering party while she was there.
Bonnie parked and hauled her luggage up to the front door. The air was already biting cold, and she didn’t want to have to go out again. The house, as her brother Charlie liked to say, practically screamed “Artist in Residence.” It was a long, rambling structure with a dramatic roofline, sided in reclaimed barn wood. You approached the front door along a curved portico that gave the effect of walking through a barrel. The main room had a twenty-foot ceiling and an L-shaped fireplace. Around the fireplace was an expanse of severely modern couch seating. People at the far ends could only wave to each other.
Entering and dumping her bags, Bonnie heard a man whose voice she did not recognize say, “But design in itself is not sufficient. Design does not replace reality. Design must be a reflection of life yet also be itself. As is true of all living things.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Stan said. “Unless, of course, you’re talking about the idiotic decompositionists. Then all bets are off. Bonnie! You look like the orphan of the storm. Come here and warm yourself by the fire and be taken into our collective bosom.”
Still wearing her coat, Bonnie advanced into the room. The fire popped and snapped, but the room was so huge—a goddamned Viking mead hall, Charlie called it—that it hardly seemed to heat any of it. She nodded at the guest she did not know and allowed herself to be embraced by Stan, a process involving more enthusiasm and whiskers than she cared for. He wasn’t a big man, but he was gut heavy and muscled, used to hauling chun
ks of metal into place. Released, she took a step back and said, “I like the deer. I thought they were the real thing.”
“The real thing, although not replacing reality. Bonnie, this is Franklin. My blended daughter, Bonnie.” This last being Stan’s clever joke about blended family.
Bonnie shook hands with Franklin, who rose slightly from his seat and then fell back again. He had a jowly, dark-bearded face, severe eyebrows, and a head that was perfectly bald except for two fringes of dark hair that resembled earmuffs. One of Stan’s art guy friends. They tended to come in two varieties, the happy drinkers and the melancholy ones. She put Franklin down as melancholy, but maybe that was just the eyebrows. “Nice to meet you,” Bonnie said, then, turning to Stan, “Where’s Mom?”
“In the kitchen, attending to her womanly chores. So you liked the lights? The little deary deer?”
“I did. I like representational, I wish you’d do more of it.”
“Representational,” Stan said, “is interior decorating. I just put it outside.” He spoke dismissively, but Bonnie knew he soaked up praise of any kind. Artists, in her experience, were all attention whores.
“What’s the structure, the tall one, is it headed somewhere?” Stan often had partially assembled pieces on the property so he could troubleshoot them.
“Kansas City. Guy there wants a waterfall for his stately home. They all want waterfalls. They’re big on fake nature. Are you going out to the kitchen? As long as you’re passing the bar . . .” Stan wagged his empty glass at her.
Bonnie collected their glasses. She paused on her way to contemplate the Christmas tree, which stood, as always, in the juncture of two windows. It was an ordinary enough Douglas fir, probably purchased from the Kiwanis lot in town. And it was decorated with an ordinary string of multicolored lights and some gold bead garlands. But the rest of it had an unsettling, Druidic air. Sheets of moss and lichenlike growths draped the branches, also a number of twigs and dried leaves. A large black crow sat on the topmost perch, its yellow eyes glittering.
She put the packages of sweets on the dining room table and draped her coat over a bench. Like every other piece of furniture in the house, the table had some design pedigree she couldn’t remember, like the chairs in the shape of artful gnarled branches, like the enormous glass globe suspended lights, like the bathroom vanities made of pickled wood and the sink basins of volcanic stone. Jane, and anyone else who she brought home with her, always marveled, surprised that there was so much money to be made in giant metalworks, that Bonnie herself had that kind of money, though they didn’t always put it so crassly. Bonnie shrugged it off. It was Stan’s money, or more accurately, his mercantile grandfather’s, and Bonnie’s access to it was controlled by Stan’s whims and by a system of legalities that resembled plumbing, complete with capped pipes and shut-off valves.
Claudia was standing in front of the stove, enveloped in a cloud of fragrant steam. “Hi Mom.”
“Honey! Did you just get here?” Her mother turned and embraced her with one arm. She held a wooden spoon in the other hand. “Were the roads horrible? I was so worried.”
“They were fine.” Bonnie had to bend down to get her mother’s welcoming kiss. She wasn’t tall, but Claudia was a shorty. “What’s for dinner, you need any help?”
“Cioppino. Pasta. I got it under control. Go find out if Frank is allergic to any seafood. He just showed up and I already had dinner planned.”
“Showed up from where, exactly?” It wasn’t like they were in the middle of a flight path.
“New Jersey, maybe? He lost his job, or something else bad, I forget. Stan’s going to help him. Isn’t that nice of him? Are you starving? Do you want wine, there’s some open. How about you put some salami and antipasti stuff on a plate and take it out to them, so they don’t get too carried away.” Carried away meant drunk. “There’s olives and breadsticks and mozzarella. If they want anything else, they can come fix it themselves.”
An idle threat, Bonnie knew. Claudia fed the multitudes. Bonnie took a platter from the cupboard and ate salami and cheese as she put the food together. The kitchen had a six-burner Wolf range with a custom hood and mosaic backsplash, a central island with its own bar sink, and a separate butler’s pantry. It had been designed so as to console Claudia for living out in the Wisconsin wilds. Bonnie couldn’t cook her way out of a Glad bag. It was one more piece of mirthful family lore.
She fixed Stan and Franklin their new bourbon and waters, brought it and the food in to them, and interrupted the conversation long enough to learn that Franklin would eat whatever was put before him. She went back to the kitchen and relayed this to Claudia. “Who else is here, I saw a bunch of cars.”
“Charlie brought some friends. They’re in town playing pool, they’ll be back later. Haley and Scott and the babies are down in the family room, that’s where they’re staying. You haven’t even seen them yet, they’re precious. You’re in Haley’s old room, I hope that’s all right.” All the while she was talking, Claudia was opening cupboards and drawers, stirring, tasting, chopping. She cooked, she ran the house, she kept up her looks with yoga and antioxidant facials. She tracked Stan’s commissions and managed his money and arranged for his appearances and interviews and believed in his genius as if it were a religious vocation. “Talk to me, how was the wedding? Did Jane look happy?”
“You know, she did.” It was a mild surprise to realize this. “Kind of a small scale thing, but that’s what they wanted.” Hoping to steer the conversation away from weddings, which might lead to difficult questions, like when was she going to have one herself, Bonnie said, “Whose idea was that tree? It looks like Hallowe’en.”
“It’s a woodland theme. It goes along with the deer.”
“I liked the deer. But why do you have to have a Christmas tree with a dead bird on it?”
“It’s not real, it’s papier-mâché. You just got here, try not to criticize.” Claudia ran water in the sink and shut it off with a snap.
“I’m just saying. For once, couldn’t you have candy canes and snowmen? A corny, all-American Christmas? Would that kill anybody?” They used to have such things. Her earliest memories, pre-Stan.
“When you have your own household, you can decorate whatever way you want to.”
“Shot through the heart,” Bonnie said, clasping her chest and staggering back in mock affliction. “Spinster daughter put in her place.”
“Don’t be silly, nobody says that anymore, ‘spinster.’ And please tell me you’re looking for a new job. I can’t stand thinking of you in the middle of all those crazy drug users.”
“I’m not in the middle of them. The cops are. I only see them if they get arrested and there’s an intake process.” This was not entirely true. There were times she put on a vest and aided an officer at the scene, although they were always careful to keep her out of harm’s way. She thought about Denny, who, whatever else was wrong or inconvenient about him, was the very model of To Serve and Protect, right down to being Irish, and she felt a little wayward pulse of horniness. “I just got here, try not to criticize.”
“I’m not criticizing, I’m worried. Every horrible news story I hear from Chicago, I wonder if you’re involved. Now don’t go mocking me, you know what I mean. I just want you to be more—settled. Happy.” Her mother turned as if to give Bonnie another hug, but the flame under a skillet flared up and demanded her attention.
Meaning, Bonnie supposed, that she should find a megalomaniac man of her own and devote herself to his care and feeding. But Claudia was content, to all appearances, with being a handmaiden to the artist. Here was her kitchen kingdom, with its collection of gourmet salts, its espresso machine and Le Creuset pans and the glass fronted china cabinets with the Craftsman details. What did Bonnie have to show for herself? A collection of matchbooks from cop bars.
“Mom, I’m fine. My job is fine. I’m glad I’m here
.” Three lies in a row. “I’m sorry I started in about the tree. It’s actually pretty funny. I’m going to go see Haley, meet the chillun, OK? Call me if you need any help.”
As Bonnie headed downstairs she heard her mother say something about “pretty funny,” but she didn’t wait to hear the rest of it.
One of the babies was screaming bloody murder, and a moment later the other one started up in solidarity. “Now, now, Aunt Bonnie’s here,” she announced. The screaming redoubled.
There was another fireplace in the family room. Scott, Haley’s husband, was trying to get a small, sulky fire to burn. “Hey Scott. Merry Christmas.”
“This chimney won’t draw.”
“HalfHaley! Merry Christmas.”
“I wish you would not call me that.” Haley was sitting on the couch, a baby on each side of her. Their faces were red with screaming. Their legs and arms flailed in infant fury.
“Sorry. So these are the kiddos? Very robust. What’s the matter with them?”
“I ate some chili that turned out to be too spicy and now they both have gas.”
“Oh dear,” Bonnie said, bending over the sofa to get a better look. She was not one of those people who naturally took to babies. She preferred children who were somewhat older and more articulate. “This must be . . .”
“Leah. That one’s Benjamin.” The babies wore identical striped onesies and striped knit hats. Their tiny faces were clenched like fists. They were three months old. Haley looked unhappy, overtired, and still saggy from baby weight. Actually, all four of them looked unhappy. Even Scott, who had a naturally furtive expression that made it hard to tell.
“They’re amazing,” Bonnie said, wondering if that expressed sufficient admiration. But no one was paying her that much attention.
She Poured Out Her Heart Page 8
