The Last Noel

by Michael Malone

  Amma slapped at his hands, laughing. “There's nothing the matter with my heart!”

  He kept tickling her. “I know there's not. That's why I want it to go on thumping away forever and ever and ever and ever. Why, you listen, my operations’ll be so famous they’ll be on TV, have their own show.” He moved around behind her, hugged her back and forth in her chair.

  “That's the last thing I want to see, isn’t that right, Noni? Kaye cutting up some poor soul's heart and making jokes while he do it?”

  Noni took in everything—the Christmas paper, the gold letters spelling Moors Savings Bank on the passbooks. She bent on the other side of Kaye, embracing his grandmother. “Oh, aren’t we proud of him, Aunt Ma? Aren’t we proud!”

  “We sure are, honey.”

  Smiling at them, Kaye checked his watch, looked out the window. The rain had slowed to drizzle. “Hey, Noni, come on. Let's go to the Indigo and celebrate.” He pulled on her hand as if they were going right out the door that minute. She was suddenly strangely reminded of the first night in her bedroom, the feel of his scratchy red mitten when he had pulled her to the window to look at the snow. He was still holding her hand as he said, “Now, here's an idea. Forget Curtis. Why don’t you come to Haver in the fall too? You know you’ll get in. And believe me you don’t want to go to any school in downtown Philly. Believe me that place is too hard for somebody like you, isn’t that the truth, Grandma?” He dropped Noni's hand to turn to Amma.

  Amma laughed. “You talking about Philadelphia or that Indigo Club? I don’t think she ought to go to either one.” Indigo was a black dance club, a low, sprawling frame road-house on the old highway leading out of Moors. From the forties to the sixties, Indigo had had live bands, some of them good bands touring the South, and it had catered to hard-drinking, hard-dancing couples who dressed for the occasion; now it had disc jockeys and served beer to young locals and college students. Noni had never heard of it.

  “I’d love to go,” she said. “I just have to tell my folks.”

  Kaye rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t be asking them if you can go to the Indigo Club.”

  “How dumb do you think I am? I’ll just say I’m going out.”

  Amma held up her remonstrating hand. “Noni, don’t you be lying to your mama and daddy. Are y’all even old enough to go to the Indigo?”

  Kaye told her they only had to be eighteen, which they now were.

  Noni said, “Let's take my car.”

  Kaye pretended to look out the window. “Don’t tell me that green Alfa Romeo belongs to you? That Spider? That's what your old pal Santy gave you for Christmas?”

  She smiled, mimicking his flamboyantly crossed arms. “So? Santy just gave you a scholarship worth forty thousand dollars.”

  Tatlock Fairley rolled lumbering in his wheelchair into the kitchen, the old weakened floorboards trembling with his weight. He shoved himself over to his radio, turned it off, hugged the large metal box to his stomach. “Y’all all lost your damn minds? What's going on out here? Who got forty thousand dollars?”

  Noni hurried to him as Amma slipped the bankbooks into her sweater pocket. “Oh, Uncle Tat, Kaye's won a scholarship that's going to pay every penny of his college education. He's a Roanoke Scholar.”

  “I’m a Forty Thousand Dollar Man!” laughed Kaye.

  Tatlock's big dark head swayed in thoughtful assimilation of this news. “Good. ’Cause I got too many other things to worry ’bout to be paying Kaye's bills.” Then he sighed. “They’d made me one of those Roanokes, I mighta had a chance to get somewhere. Wouldn’t be long they’d be calling me ‘Six Million Dollar Man,’ much less Forty Thousand.”

  Noni kissed his wide gun-black cheek. “I bet they would, Uncle Tat.”

  Amma turned the wheelchair toward the living room, leaned over Tatlock's broad back, rubbed her chin in his shoulder. “Come on, Six Million. Let's us go to bed, let these young folks have their time.”

  He reached up his hand, cupped her face in it. “Had us ours, didn’t we, Lady?”

  “I guess we did.” She leaned her face into his hand as she rolled the chair from the kitchen. “Y’all don’t stay out too late. And be careful driving in that rain.”

  Together Noni and Kaye stood outside the door of Clay-home under her father's big white golf umbrella. Their hands entwined, she struggled to keep control of the umbrella handle but he wrestled it away, telling her she was too short and that she was holding it so his head kept getting caught in the spokes.

  “Let us remember,” she said oratorically. “That I was taller than you for a long, long time.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  Laughing, her arm through his, they ran together across the wet lawn to her new car, the green Alfa Romeo Spider. Noni slid into the passenger seat and gestured for Kaye to take the driver's, watching him as he quickly, appreciatively studied the instrument panel, the wood gear-shift knob, the leather-wrapped steering wheel. The key was in the ignition and Kaye started the engine. The sports car leapt forward.

  “Kaye, what are you doing?”

  “Hang on!”

  They raced along the oval driveway, the white stones flying away under them, the little car cornering tightly as Kaye sped around the circle faster and faster, again and again.

  “Last lap,” he shouted. “We’re in the lead!”

  “Kaye, you’re crazy!” But Noni was laughing.

  He braked to a stop in front of the bright lights of Heaven's Hill and opened the car door for her with a grandiose bow, holding the umbrella over her. Just as they reached the porch steps, they heard another car crunching in the white stones up the slope of the driveway. It came floating over the curve and was caught in all the sparkling white Christmas lights strung in the dozens of crepe myrtles and tall Savannah hollies. Both Noni and Kaye recognized the blue GTO that Roland Hurd still drove.

  “I thought you two broke up,” Kaye said, closing the umbrella and stepping away from Noni's side.

  “We did.” She watched Roland run around the hood of his car, his Navy blazer pulled over his black curls.

  “Noni. Hi, Noni. Noni, please, my dad got home and said you were here…listen, I’ve got to talk to you. I love you, baby, this is just crazy.” Roland registered that she was standing there with Kaye. Distracted, he shook Kaye's hand. “Hi. Excuse me, but I really need to talk to Noni, okay? Excuse me.” He reached for her hand, drew her across Kaye toward him.

  Noni pulled away. “Kaye and I were just going out to the Indigo.”

  “The Indigo?” A twitch briefly decomposed Roland's regular features. “That roadhouse?”

  Kaye shrugged. “Yeah, well, you know, I thought we’d go there first, get bombed, then maybe drop by an opium den, check out a whorehouse—” Kaye thought he heard a chuckle somewhere in the dark, but it certainly wasn’t coming from Roland.

  “Not funny, man.” Roland's voice tightened in a low whisper. “Noni, please, please, just talk to me. You know anything I say, anything I do, it's ’cause I love you and need you. Please.” He reached for her again and this time she didn’t resist, although she kept her face toward Kaye. “Noni, just take a little drive with me. Just give me a few minutes. Come on, let me give you your birthday present.”

  Noni kept looking at Kaye.

  Kaye thought he saw Roland pull a ring box from his blue blazer, squeeze it, jam it back in his pocket.

  “Kaye?” Noni turned to him.

  Kaye leaned against one of the porch's big white columns, shrugged. “No big deal. You guys go ahead. We’ll do the Indigo some other night.”

  Noni was aware of too many feelings inside her and suddenly remembered a moment when she was a child and a bird flew through her window. The bird had panicked when it found itself trapped indoors and had hurled itself crazily at the walls. Amma had run into the room, thrown a blanket over the bird, then shaken it free outside the window. But there was no way to shake these feelings free now. She was glad to hear Roland say he
was sorry and that he loved her, needed her. Wasn’t it what she wanted, to be loved, needed?

  But the thought of hurting Kaye by not celebrating his triumph with him was a hot pain in her throat. Yet maybe it was conceited of her to think Kaye cared whether she went to the Indigo with him or not. He had never invited her there or anywhere else for at least a year, and he almost always said no when she and Bunny asked him to go any place other than a political rally with them. He usually ignored her at school and he treated her most of the time with a casual irony that she took for affection, but perhaps she only did so because his irony had been in her life so long. He’d certainly never said he needed her, and probably he never would.

  Roland pulled her hand to his cheek, kissed her palm. “This is the most important night of my life,” he told her.

  She turned again to Kaye. “If I got back in fifteen minutes, we could still go, okay?”

  Kaye shook his head. “Let's make it some other time. I don’t even know they’re open on Christmas. Stay cool.” He walked past them down the steps and around the GTO. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun. He was halfway across the lawn when he heard the GTO doors shut and the tires crunching through the white stones, circling him, speeding down through the columns and into the night.

  Kaye was almost home when he realized he still had Noni's father's golf umbrella. Turning back, he ran to the porch of Heaven's Hill, leaned the white umbrella against the front door.

  A voice softly called out of the dark. “You ever drink a Sazerac?”

  Startled, Kaye peered into the dark, saw a shape in one of the green rocking chairs in the far corner of the long wide porch. It was Mr. Tilden, holding out to him a small crystal glass.

  “Hey, Mr. Tilden, Merry Christmas.” He pointed at Noni's green Alfa Romeo Spider parked where he’d left it in the driveway curve. “Nice car.”

  “Yeah, you two looked like you were having fun. But hey, it's a thing. The world's full of them.”

  “That just makes folks without money want them more.”

  “Oh, you’ll have money, Kaye, and it won’t make you happy. Just like they say. Merry Christmas. Taste this.”

  Kaye sipped the pleasantly bitter beverage. “Um hm.”

  “I’ve had the Sazeracs at Galatoire's, and this is a good one.” Tilden had a wire golf basket filled with tennis balls on his lap and he suddenly threw one of them the length of the porch. It landed in the silver loving cup with his name on it that usually sat on a shelf above his stereo in the den. He threw another and it missed the cup, rolled under the rail and off the porch. Shrugging, he took back the drink. “Kaye. There was one thing that twenty years ago I was really excellent at. And that was throwing a ball through a fairly high net.” He tossed another tennis ball; it dropped into the silver bowl. “Twenty-eight points in the national semifinals. You may think that's a silly thing to brag about, smart guy like you.”

  “No, it's a gift.”

  “You can marry a Gordon with it, that's for sure.” He threw another ball into the bowl. “Well, now there’re two things I do really well, Kaye. Mix drinks and tie a Windsor knot.” Tilden pointed at the neat knot in his soft gold silk tie. “Some men go to the moon. Our pal Jack Hurd says I tie the best tie in Moors, North Carolina.”

  Kaye pointed at the drink. “Sazerac. So you up to ‘S’?”

  “Um hm.” Tilden took a swallow. “Not looking forward to those Singapore Slings.” He coughed, shivering in the cold damp in his white dress shirt.

  “Why don’t you skip ’em?” In the dark, Kaye sat down in the rocker beside Noni's father.

  “Can’t do that. Can’t cheat.” For a few years now, in addition to assembling photo albums, Bud Tilden had taken up the hobby of making his way methodically and alphabetically and daily through a comprehensive bartender's guide, drink by drink.

  They sat together a while. Over the rise of Heaven's Hill, somebody set off fireworks. Clusters of blue and red sparks flew up into the night, then spilled away. Tilden took a bottle of aspirin from his pants pocket. “Kind of an early start on the New Year.” He called out to the darkness, “What's your rush?!” He opened the cap of the pills with his teeth and almost choked on it. Kaye jumped from his rocker to help him just as the inebriated man spat out the plastic cap.

  “You okay, Mr. T? Don’t scare me like that.”

  “Fine. I’m fine. But if I wasn’t, you’d be the guy I’d want.” In a while, to his surprise Tilden added, “Got a girlfriend, Kaye?”

  “Two or three,” he answered. It was true.

  Tilden shook a finger solemnly. “Two or three's the same as none. Take it from me.”

  Kaye worried that Bud Tilden was referring to his extramarital affair with his secretary at the bank, about which Kaye had overheard his grandmother fretting to Grandpa Tat. His grandmother had said Mrs. Tilden and Noni had no idea about it.

  To forestall any unwanted confession, Kaye took one of the tennis balls from the basket and tossed it at the silver bowl. It missed. Tilden put another ball in Kaye's hand, showed him carefully how to hold it, how to release it. Kaye tried again, still missed. Tilden showed him once more. This time Kaye's ball bounced into the silver trophy. “So, what you doing out here on the porch so late, Mr. Tilden?”

  “Listening to the rain. Rain on a metal roof sounds pretty.” The tall man pointed across the lawn at the copper roof of Clayhome.

  Kaye did a loud drum roll with his fingers on the rocker's arm. “Not if your bed's less than a foot away from that metal.”

  Tilden leaned forward to look at Kaye, nodded apologetically about this unconsidered drawback. He tipped the rocker so far that he would have fallen out had Kaye not caught him and settled him back in the chair. “Birds too. Lot of night birds calling to each other out here if you just listen.”

  “Like owls?”

  “Sure, owls. All kinds. Talking to each other, working things out.”

  “I saw this really nice letter in the Moors paper about birds working things out and why can’t the human race. It was signed ‘Night Owl.’ Was that you?”

  “That was me. You didn’t think it was dumb?”

  “It was great. I loved the way it ended with that Gandhi quote. ‘Somebody asked Gandhi, “What do you think of Western Civilization?” And Gandhi said, “I think it would be a good idea.”’ Why didn’t you sign your name to it?”

  “You know who owns the Moors Mercury Gazette? My father-in-law.”

  “So what? What would he care?”

  “Mr. R.W Gordon likes Western Civilization just as it is. Well, just as it was. I think he really resents them freeing the slaves.” Tilden tried to light a cigarette; his hands were shaking.

  Kaye asked where Mrs. Tilden was, worried that she ought to get her husband out of the cold.

  “Gone to sleep. Oh, about ten years ago. This’ll amaze you, Kaye. When we got married we were in love. I sure was. First time I saw her she was swimming in a race at the Haver pool. She won. Beautiful stroke, just beautiful. But now she doesn’t like me much. You notice that?”

  Kaye felt uncomfortable with such personal talk. He offered his great news as a distraction. “I’m going to get a Roanoke Scholarship to Haver, Mr. T.”

  “You are? That's wonderful!” The man beside him reached over, pulled Kaye's head close, and surprisingly kissed him on the side of his face. “That's wonderful! Congratulations, Kaye. Jack’ll go nuts! Noni too. You tell Noni?”

  Kaye just nodded, not wanting to expose her, or Doctor Jack either, for releasing the news too soon, or for excluding Tilden from their happiness.

  The tall man patted his knee. “Well, son, that's a start. That's a real start. You keep going.”

  “I’m going to.”

  “I bet.” Noni's father sat silent for a while, drinking his cocktail. Finally he said, “She's the one thing in the world makes sense to me. Sometimes I think we’re the only ones that get her, Kaye.”

  Kaye knew he meant his daughte
r Noni. “Um hm.”

  “The thing about Noni, if you thought of any situation and you imagined her in it, you could count on what she’d do. She’d do the good. Know what I mean by that?”

  Kaye nodded. “But you got to include the good for yourself. You think she does that?”

  Another long silence before Tilden asked, “You like Roland?”

  Kaye thought about lying but decided not to. “No.”

  “He's probably okay. Don’t you think?”

  Kaye didn’t reply.

  “I want someone to love her who knows who she is, knows what they’re getting.”

  Kaye didn’t reply.

  Finally Tilden sighed. “Sure. It's none of my business.… You play golf, Kaye?”

  “Nope.”

  “This spring we’ll play some, all right? I’ll teach you. I’m not bad.”

  “That’d be great, Mr. T.”

  “Isn’t your name John really?”

  “John Montgomery King.”

  “That's what I thought. We’ve got the same name. You know my name's John, too? John Fitzgerald Tilden. But nobody ever called me anything but Bud.”

  “You’re kidding? John Fitzgerald, like Kennedy?”

  Tilden laughed. “Right, Fitzgerald was my mother's name. But, hell, maybe that's why Judy's stuck with me as long as she has. She was crazy about JFK.”

  Side by side on the dark porch the two rocked slowly back and forth, listening to the screek of their chairs, the soft fall of cold rain on the distant metal roof.

  The Fifth Day of Christmas

  December 26, 1976

  The Hope Chest

  Noni was twenty years old and everyone said she was beautiful. The old rector, Dr. Fisher, said she was the most beautiful bride in the history of St. John's Episcopal, a history that was longer by ten years than that of the nation itself. And although Kaye would not smile at her, and although Noni's mother, on her knees arranging the train of the wedding gown (itself half-a-century old), quickly demurred that all brides were beautiful, Noni felt on this day that Dr. Fisher was absolutely right. She was beautiful in her grandmother's satin gown with its French lace and beaded pearls.