The Last Noel
Page 9
The Fourth Day of Christmas
December 25, 1974
The Porch Rocker
The Tildens were having Noni's godfather, Dr. Jack Hurd, for Christmas dinner this evening. Noni, just turned eighteen, and her mother were setting the table with the holiday china. Mrs. Tilden had invited him, she said, because she felt sorry for Doctor Jack, whose wife had left him for a dentist.
“That's a real come down all right,” agreed Bud Tilden, passing by on his way to the den where he was pasting photographs and souvenirs—invitations, programs, ticket stubs—into enormous vinyl photo albums. Because he and his wife were the last of their two families, he had whole generations of Tilden and Gordon photographs stored in large boxes beside him, and he now spent his evenings filling book after book with their pasts. But to his wife's distress, there was no organizing principle behind the way he pasted together the family story. In fact, she couldn’t bear to look at the chaos he was making of their history. On one double page, for example, he had glued a Hilton Head golf scorecard, the puppy Philly sleeping on the now deceased Royal Charlie's neck, R.W. Gordon on a camel in front of the pyramids, thirteen-year-old Noni and Kaye dressed like the Mod Squad at Halloween, his great-aunt's wedding announcement, Gordon's baby footprint, nametags from Parents Day at Wade's military school, and a daguerreotype of his wife's twice-great grandfather on the porch of Heaven's Hill in 1860, a baby held in the arms of a black slave wearing starched white clothes.
While Mr. Tilden worked on the albums or read his Great Books, often until the early hours of the morning, he listened to classical music like the Warsaw Concerto or what he called “the old-timers”—like Nat King Cole and Doris Day—sing sad songs, or he listened to Noni playing the piano across the hall. What he liked most was romantic piano music that had been turned into the kind of songs Frank Sinatra sang—like Rachmaninoff's “Full Moon and Empty Arms” or Chopin's “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.” Noni was happy to play for him; she practiced the piano three hours a day now. Her teachers thought she had a very good chance of being accepted at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She would find out in April.
In the dining room, arranging the silver flatware at each place setting, three forks, two knives, three spoons, Judy Tilden told their daughter Noni that she didn’t know what her husband meant by “a real come down.” Did he mean that Doctor Jack was a better person than the dentist even though the dentist was better looking? Or that Jack (head of OB/GYN at the university medical school) had a better job than the dentist and made more money? If the latter, then did Bud really mean that she, Judy, was a snob? She suspected that's what he did mean, although she wasn’t sure what he meant by it.
Mrs. Tilden corrected her daughter's positioning of the three glasses at each setting as she confessed that she almost never knew what her husband meant anymore, if indeed he meant anything. He sat in the den reading from the matched sets of famous books of poetry and philosophy, writing down passages from them on scraps of paper that she found rolled into little balls in his pockets or on his dresser. He wandered the house for hours as if he were looking for something he could never find, talking softly to himself, smiling. She suspected that somewhere along the years he’d decided that life was a joke it would be inappropriate for him to share.
Nor did Judy Tilden imagine her father the bank president would think the joke were funny if he’d happened to overhear it at Moors Savings. Judy's father was losing patience with Bud. Not only was his son-in-law making odd remarks to wealthy customers, he was giving loans to people who had no collateral. Fortunately, Bud's secretary was devoted to him and Judy had taken this woman to lunch to ask her to keep an eye on her husband, to check his desk drawers for bourbon bottles and report back. The secretary had been so noncommittal that Judy had felt obliged to point out that if Bud were forced to leave the bank, the secretary would also be out of a job.
There would only be five for dinner at Heaven's Hill tonight—Noni and Doctor Jack, as well as Mrs. Tilden, her husband Bud, and her cousin Becky—whose attempts to seduce her husband Bud had escaped Judy's notice. (Bud had noticed the overtures but had politely sidestepped them.) Since Becky and Jack Hurd were both divorced, Mrs. Tilden planned to play cupid, she told Noni, and bring the couple together in a non-dating venue to see if they had chemistry.
Wandering back through the dining room with his chinkling bourbon, Bud murmured, “Sure, why not?” He was wearing his sunglasses in the house, which he had taken to doing lately, as if there were nothing he cared to see and no one he wanted seeing him.
“Bud, let's make this a fun evening for Jack and Becky,” his wife called after him.
“Why not?” he said again.
The Tildens’ son Wade was having Christmas with his wife's family and had invited his grandfather R.W. Gordon to join them. A few days earlier, in a “blow out,” as Noni had described it to Kaye, Wade told them he would rather be with his wife's family than his own because he was sick of everybody's sitting around wishing Gordon were alive, or wishing Wade were Gordon. (Everybody told him it wasn’t true, but in a way it was.) Wade then called his father a loser and a drunk, an assessment with which Bud Tilden declined to argue— although Noni had done so, and had added that Wade made her sick when he advised their mother to “wise up and get rid of Dad.”
Wade was twenty-three now and his red hair was once again very short. He wore three-piece suits and wide paisley ties and played golf all the time with his grandfather. He already had not only a wife (Trisha), but a new business (the first two had failed despite his grandfather's friends) and a baby—a little girl with whom Trisha had been pregnant when they married.
Noni didn’t think her mother knew that Trisha had been pregnant at her wedding. But maybe she did; maybe she also knew that until a few years ago Wade was popping pills, smoking pot, sniffing cocaine, and stealing from his parents to pay for it all. But Noni didn’t think so. She didn’t think her mother knew that Gordon had only gone to Vietnam because she had made such a big deal about how the men in her family had always served their country and how she would be ashamed of him if he dodged the draft. Noni doubted her mother knew that Wade had bullied his first fiancée into having an abortion and had cheated his way through two mediocre colleges (the first expelled him), or that Noni had lost her virginity last summer to Roland Hurd.
But maybe Mrs. Tilden did know all these things and just pretended she didn’t in order not to crack the smooth mirror in which she needed to view their tranquil lives in order to keep herself from going to pieces. She said she could stop worrying about Wade now that Trisha had him firmly in hand. She was confident (using current lingo like a tourist with a phrasebook) that “Wade has his act together and Trisha's the chick to thank.” Bud Tilden thought it was not so much marrying Trisha that had turned Wade around as the failing health of R.W Gordon, who’d bluntly told his grandson to “get his ass in gear in a goddamn hurry” or he could expect to inherit from him “a big fat goose egg.”
“Trish,” said Bud Tilden, “you nabbed Wade on the rebound from R.W. Gordon.”
“Oh Poppy,” smiled Trisha but it was not really a smile. “Don’t tease Wade.”
“I’m teasing you,” he told her, but she knew better.
In many ways, thought Noni, Trisha was very much like Mrs. Tilden, both of them piling sandbags of rules and amenities against a rising, flooding chaos, both at war against imperfection, their faces composed, their eyes desperate.
Noni's mother had wanted to invite Jack's son Roland to this Christmas dinner tonight as well but Noni had stopped her by threatening to “talk politics” at the table. Mrs. Tilden was unhappy because Noni had once again broken up with Roland, but she didn’t want to risk her dinner party. She had no patience for “things nobody cares to hear about”—like the resignations of Agnew and Nixon or the disastrous war in Vietnam—and she was horrified when she learned that Noni had been going to peace marches and civil rights meetings and was in a
high school “women's lib group.” She blamed Noni's friends Kaye and Bunny for her daughter's even knowing the words Wounded Knee, Karen Silkwood, and Rap Brown.
But there was a deeper, blacker terror in Mrs. Tilden than even a child's liberal activism. It bubbled up like oil in her sleep, churning and spuming at her the word “Kaye.” What if her daughter and Kaye should fall in love? What if they already were in love but didn’t know it? What if they did know it? What if that silver heart that Noni still wore on a chain around her neck were a secret token of a love all too requited?
Asked whether he also worried about Kaye and Noni's relationship, her husband Bud replied, “We should be so lucky,” which was scarcely any comfort. Then he added as he wandered away, “Kaye's Noni's only brother.” She wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that, except that it was a slap at Wade, which was scarcely any comfort either.
Noni and Roland Hurd had been dating off and on for two years but now was one of the off times. Last month they had had a fight about Roland's possessiveness, how he constantly wanted to know where she was and what she was doing. He said everything he did just meant he loved her. Noni assumed she was in love with Roland, too, but sometimes she wasn’t sure she wanted to be. Although she felt her future floating inextricably into his in a slow strong relentless tide, there was a way in which over the past two years she hadn’t altogether minded his long absences from her daily life.
Everyone at Moors High knew she was going steady with a sophomore at Princeton, and as a result she had both status and freedom from the dating competition that so pressured her friends. Admittedly she had applied to Curtis Institute of Music mostly because Philadelphia was less than an hour from Princeton. She knew that the proximity of the Institute to Roland also made it a more appealing college possibility to her mother—who otherwise (terrified by memories of Noni's illness in her boarding school, coming so soon after the loss of Gordon) had opposed all choices beyond the borders of North Carolina.
Noni had also, like Kaye, applied to Haver University, only an hour away from Moors. As she was not merely a double legacy but a Gordon legacy, it was inconceivable that she wouldn’t be admitted. But she thought it would be easier to keep her independence living an hour away from Roland in Princeton than an hour away from her mother in Moors. She had already flown to Philadelphia to audition at Curtis; she had played the hardest Liszt her teacher could find and on her own had added some little Bartok songs. It had been nauseating to perform under the terror that she would fail her mother, but she got through it and one of the judges even told her she played the Bartok beautifully, and that nobody should try a Liszt Transcendental Etude unless he or she had to, because there was too much else in the world to play and most of it was a hell of a lot easier. For the first time Noni began to think studying music could be fun.
“Noni, move those candlesticks a little to the right.” Mrs. Tilden rearranged the centerpiece of fruits so that a tapered bunch of black grapes spilled over the edge of the silver plate just as she had seen in a photograph of a painting in the Prado. Mrs. Tilden loved to look at paintings in museums, or even pictures of paintings. Despite her family's wealth, she hadn’t traveled much (except for trips to New York City as a child) because extensive foreign travel wasn’t something Southern girls like her had done at the time. They’d gone to college, found husbands, and had children, just as Judy Gordon had done. But she had always tried to make her home a museum and to turn its furnishings into the kinds of paintings she might have seen if she had traveled.
The table was now perfect with red candles surrounded by evergreens and special Christmas china. When she looked at the table, the tight bands that were always around her chest slightly loosened. It wasn’t much, a beautiful table setting, but it was something. A stand, even only for a moment, against the world's continual collapsing.
She turned her attention to Noni, who was wearing a black velvet pantsuit with a tuxedo jacket that had wide satin lapels. Under the jacket was a shirt with huge white ruffles. Noni's hair was long now and fell in two straight blonde parts over her shoulders. Mrs. Tilden smoothed the hair and fluffed the ruffles on the blouse, her hand tensing as she saw the little silver heart on the silver chain.
Later, at 6:45, the doorbell rang. “Please get that,” Mrs. Tilden called to Noni, who jumped from the piano where she was playing for her father, and closed her sheet music inside the black leather folder embossed with her name, “Noelle Katherine Tilden.” Kaye had given her the folder for her birthday. She hurried into the hall, thinking about Kaye, wondering what he was doing tonight. Behind her she heard her mother say, “Damn it, why is he always early?” as Noni opened the door to Roland's father, Dr. Jack Hurd, hoping he hadn’t heard her mother's remark too.
The porch was garlanded in swags of ribboned pine; there were holly balls and wreaths hanging everywhere, and a large fanlight over the door was decorated with fruits and nuts. Dr. Hurd stood there shaking his head at the display. “You know your mom's a little compulsive?” He smiled at Noni.
“Think so?”
Under his Burberry raincoat, Dr. Hurd had on almost the same velvet pantsuit Noni did—except instead of ruffles he wore a claret-colored shirt. “Wow,” he said as they went into the hall. “You look great. Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday. Don’t you hate them dumped together?”
She hugged her godfather. “Yes, I do.”
“Looks like Santa came in an Italian sportscar.” He pointed outside.
“Oh, you know my dad.”
He hung his coat on the Victorian hat rack. “You know what I think it is? Bud can’t spoil you so he just keeps trying…. Still mad at Roland?”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Please forgive him. Please! I know he's a jerk but I’m counting on you to change all that. Don’t forget, you owe me. Who delivered yah, baby?”
“You did. You’re my Deliverer.” She took his armful of presents, put them on the console by the mended blue Chinese jar and the jeweled metal pear tree. “So I’m warning you. Mom's setting you up with a blind date tonight.”
“Who? Farrah Fawcett?”
“Close. Mom's cousin Becky. Becky Van Buehling.” (Becky had big streaked blonde hair rather like the actress Farrah Fawcett.)
“Oh lord, her. I’m too old. Maybe I’m too young. You know she married Bob Van Buehling for his name? Her name was Becky Nutt. That's true, that's what your mom told me, Becky Nutt, and now it's like she's got a castle on the Rhine. Rebeccccaaaa Vannn Buehlllingkkk.” He turned Noni's face from side to side, examined her pale skin.
She smiled. “I know. Eat more spinach.”
“Liver. Eat somebody's liver every other day.”
Noni had always loved her godfather, with his thin homely face and his gray ironic eyes, so unlike Roland's cool blue ones. And although she thought Doctor Jack a little silly in his youthful faddishness, and naïve in his effervescent good will, she also thought him a smart, generous man. She tried not to wonder whether she didn’t see, and love, more of the father in his son Roland than was actually there.
In the hall that smelled festively of pine garlands, Hurd pulled her down beside him onto the green leather bench. “Have I got some great news for Kaye! Hubba hubba.”
One of the things Noni liked most about Doctor Jack was the interest he had taken these past years in Kaye; the time he had spent talking with him about his going to medical school. Now he whispered dramatically. “Quick, before everybody shows up. I got a call from a guy on the Roanoke committee. It's not official and I’m not supposed to say anything.”
Noni leapt to her feet. “Tell me! Did Kaye get it? Did Kaye get it?”
Jack Hurd laughed, kissed both her hands, his gray pony-tail flopping over the wide collar. “He got it. The first black ever.”
Noni was so happy she bounced up and down as she corrected her godfather. “Afro-American, we’re supposed to say Afro-American.”
“Christ, I can’t keep up.”
“Shhh,” whispered Noni. “Don’t tell her about Kaye.”
“Kaye who?” grinned Doctor Jack.
By ten o’clock, across the lawn from Heaven's Hill, Kaye and his grandmother had almost finished the dishes. Amma returned bowls and platters to their places on her shelves. Kaye took back the chairs he’d brought to the dining room table for the big family meal. Most of the chairs, discarded, donated, forgotten, had come over from Heaven's Hill sometime in the last century and a half. Whenever the big house had redecorated, so did Clayhome. The chairs were all different. There was an eighteenth-century Windsor chair whose spokes sometimes fell out, a 1940s metal chair, a black lacquer Depression Modern chair with three burled legs and one makeshift pine leg, and a Victorian throne-chair with a plush purple seat into which Tatlock Fairley was transferred from his wheelchair for the special meal.
This afternoon, Amma had served Christmas Day dinner to her three brothers, their two living wives, three of their grown children, those children's children, as well as Tatlock, his daughter-in-law Yolanda, his son Austin, Kaye, and herself.
Her brothers had never felt about Clayhome the way Amma did, so hers was the first generation since 1840 when a male Clay hadn’t made the place his home, when the house hadn’t had a “Clay” in it to pass along its name. “The end of our line on this land,” Amma said every year. But her brothers and their children and Kaye didn’t share her love of Heaven's Hill. “Clayhome was never ours anyhow,” they told her. “It's just where the hired help lives.”