The Last Noel

by Michael Malone

  Tat got all his money in cash and kept it in a big iron safe he’d bought and hid in the bedroom closet. Mrs. Goldman at that gallery hadn’t been able to do a thing with him about investments and taxes and all. And this New York “rep” didn’t even try. Tat spent every cent he got. He had more gadgets than Kmart. Even got himself a telescope to watch Halley's comet coming back, not that the little blur he showed Amma through that thing looked like much worth making such a big to-do over.

  A Child, a Child shivers in the cold

  Let us bring Him silver and gold…

  Amma slid her pecan pie into the oven, checking the clock above the stove. Yes, Judy and Noni and that baby would need a little Christmas to welcome them home after being gone so long and things so tough. Judy in the hospital with a broken collarbone after she’d had that fall down the stairs in their place in London. Somehow she must have lost control of her wheelchair while Noni was bathing the baby. It was hard to understand. Amma had been worried sick, despite Kaye's claiming how some hospital off in London, England, was going to be just as good as University Hospital in Hillston where everybody knew Judy's family.

  But what with the smoke and water damage and the new construction, it had taken Carolina Restoration almost a year to get Heaven's Hill back in shape. And nobody could live in the house while they worked on it, and that's how the stay in California had gotten started. Judy didn’t want to come back to Wade's—not that Wade probably even asked her—unless Noni would come too, and Noni and Wade just didn’t get along. So they’d stayed out in California where Doctor Jack could talk Judy into better treatment than old Dr. Schillings had.

  But then Doctor Jack sent Judy to see some expert back in Boston for a bunch more tests, and that man thought there might be something called Pick's Disease causing her troubles, so he sent her somewhere else. Judy didn’t mind the travel. In fact, the more traveling Noni did with her, the better she seemed to like it. So bless Noni's heart, the whole first half of her pregnancy, she was taking Judy all over everywhere, getting her some test or other or seeing some new specialist. Nobody could have done better or sweeter than Noni, and Amma was sure it hadn’t been easy, not with Judy getting so hard to manage. Sounded like those gentle moods of hers didn’t happen much anymore.

  Wrapping a cloth over the big turkey, Amma nestled it on its rack high on a counter where the dog Tina couldn’t get at it. Tina was the daughter of the long dead black Lab Philly that Noni had given Kaye back when they were in seventh grade; Kaye had named her Tina Turner, because when she’d been a puppy he’d stand her on her hind legs and pretend like she was dancing. Of course, who’d ended up taking care of the dog because Kaye was never around?

  Amma set the turkey aside, ready for the oven just before dawn. Nine for Christmas dinner. Not as many of her brothers’ children as other years. But young folks have their own plans these days. Like Kaye's arranging his party tonight at his new house over in his fancy neighborhood in Glade Lake. Of course he had invited her and Tatlock, too. But she’d said no. What were they supposed to do over there with all that dancing and loud music and fast-talking young people not even half their age?

  Here at Clayhome tomorrow they’d at least be able to hear each other speak when Kaye brought his girlfriend Shani over. Shani Bouchard that he’d met up in New York. She was so fast-and sharp-talking, it was hard enough trying to understand her even in the quiet. When Amma had gotten introduced to Shani's folks back at Thanksgiving, when they’d come down to meet everybody, they’d talked just like their daughter. The way they talked made everything sound like they were mad at you even though they weren’t. Kaye could imitate them to a T. New Yoikers, he called them.

  Of course, Tatlock had wanted to go to Kaye's party tonight. But he wasn’t about to get back from the airport with the Tildens ’til eight at the earliest. Plus, even with Austin and Zaki right there helping with Judy's wheelchair and their luggage, even with Tat's special van, it was still going to take a while to get them settled in here. And you’d think—angrily Amma snapped off the tips of beans—you’d think that Judy's only living son, Wade, that had claimed to love her so much, would have put off taking Trisha and Michelle to Disney world (which he was doing just because he wanted to play golf anyhow) so he could be around to pick up his own mama and sister at the airport. ’Specially if his mama and his sister had been gone this long and had ended up stuck in a London hospital with broken bones.

  But that was Wade. Love was just something for Wade to talk about at his Baptist men's prayer club breakfast.

  Everybody talkin’ ’bout heaven ain’t goin’ to heaven, heaven…

  “Noni? Oh my god, Noni! It's been forever!”

  Noni turned at the baggage carousel and found herself in the arms of her old friend Bunny Breckenridge, just flown in from New York City, home for Christmas. Hair wilder than ever, wide warm smile, shawl dragging the floor, Bunny rocked Noni back and forth, then she bent down to the sleeping child in the stroller. “Oh my god! Is this your baby? I heard you had a baby in London!”

  “This is Johnny.” Noni knelt, pulled back the knitted blanket so Bunny could see the child's face, the tight blond curls and long dark lashes, the golden skin and tiny perfect features.

  “He's beautiful.”

  “Yes, he is, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, you’re lucky to have a baby!” Bunny hugged her. “Happy Birthday. It's your birthday today, right? How old are we?”

  “I hate to be the one to tell you but we’re thirty! Oh, Bunny, this is wonderful, how are you?”

  Bunny's briefcase stuffed with books and papers slid off her shoulder with the shawl. “Sameo-sameo. Somebody told me you’d moved to London for good.”

  “No, no. My mom had a fall and was back in the hospital, so we had to stay longer than expected.” Noni knelt again to let her mother know that this was Bunny, remember Bunny, her girlfriend from school? Bunny lived in New York now, she was a college teacher.

  Bunny bent down to her. “Hi, Mrs. Tilden.”

  Judy Tilden covered the right side of her mouth with her hand as she always did, embarrassed by its drooping, when she talked to anyone but Noni. “Noni's friend, yes. Whom did you marry, Bunny?”

  “Not a blessed soul.” Bunny laughed.

  Mrs. Tilden picked at Bunny's shawl. “Noni and Roland are divorced. You probably heard that. But at least she was already pregnant with Johnny when they separated and so we have my little grandchild.”

  “Well, he's sure a beauty.” Bunny kissed Mrs. Tilden, who then started complaining that she couldn’t breathe the horrible air in the terminal. She plucked at Noni. “Where's Wade? Why couldn’t Wade come get me?”

  Zaki Fairley, back from taking the carry-on bags to the curb where Tatlock waited in the van, offered to wheel Mrs. Tilden out there to see him. After they left, Noni asked to hear all her friend's news.

  Bunny shrugged. “Still live on Riverside with a cat and a fish. Still looking for a biped. Still need to lose twenty pounds. Well, thirty. Still call myself a feminist, that's the kind of old-fashioned girl I am. But you, Noni, you look fantastic!”

  “Oh god, don’t be silly.”

  “So this is what having a baby and leaving your husband does for you? I gotta get married so I can get a divorce! How is Roland Turd?” She hugged her friend. “Oh, I’m sorry. Kaye and I were mean to call him that. We were probably just jealous.”

  Noni smiled. “It's okay. Well, let's see. Roland said I’d destroyed his life and he’d never get over it and then he married his CFO's daughter a month after our divorce.”

  “Holy shit, you just made fun of somebody for the first time in your life!” They laughed together. “But is it still Noni Hurd?”

  “No, Noni Tilden. And the baby's John Gordon Tilden. John's my dad's real name.”

  “And Kaye's.”

  “John Gordon, for my brother and my dad.”

  Bunny studied her old friend. “So how does Roland fit into this?”


  “I have sole custody of Johnny.”

  “You do? That's strange.”

  “But true. It's fine with him.” Noni excused herself to check with Austin about the delay in the luggage.

  When she came back, Bunny asked her, “Your mom's not getting any better?”

  “No. She hasn’t walked since the fire. One of the London doctors thinks she ought to be able to, but she can’t. Some doctors we’ve seen say it's one thing, some say it's another. It's a long, slow process.” Unconsciously, Noni clasped her wrist over the bracelet that Kaye had given her years ago; it still had only two gold charms, the piano and the telephone. “So you’re in touch with Kaye? How's he doing?”

  Bunny glanced puzzled at Noni. “He's fine. I saw him a few times in New York. It's great you’re here for his party.”

  “Kaye's having a birthday party?”

  Bunny frowned, her mouth awkward. “Tonight. His… girl…He's seeing somebody pretty regularly and she's moving down here.”

  “Oh.…Do you know her?” Noni bent to pull a sock back up on her baby's foot.

  “No, I never met her. He's got a new house. You knew he’d bought this house?” Noni shook her head, smiling, embarrassed. Bunny said she’d seen the place only once. “It's not that far from where I grew up, right on Glade Lake. Very modern, you know, lot of glass, lot of high tech, not much furniture. You two don’t keep up?”

  Noni was trying to imagine the house as she said, “I haven’t heard from Kaye since the fire. I wrote him while we were traveling but, well, I guess he's been busy. That's Kaye.”

  “He did tell me he’d been mad at you.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  Bunny lifted her shoulders. “No, he didn’t.”

  Noni blushed, her pale skin splotching with red. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Stooping, Bunny began stuffing the scattered books and papers into the case. Noni bent to help her. “Come on to Kaye's party with me, Noni. We’ll surprise him.”

  “No, I don’t think I will. Thank you though, Bunny.”

  Then the buzzer sounded and bags began falling out onto the carousel.

  “I don’t know why you two won’t admit you love each other.” Bunny kissed her friend and, puzzled, watched her walk away, pushing the stroller with the sleeping child.

  Holy infant so tender and mild,

  Sleep in heavenly peace….

  Amma thought she heard car tires on the white stone driveway but it wasn’t the van, whose sound she would recognize. She suddenly wondered if maybe Kaye was dropping off an invitation at Heaven's Hill for Noni to come to his party tonight. A week ago Amma had told him that Noni would be flying home from England on Christmas Eve. Even if Noni was too tired to go, it still would have been a nice thought to ask her. But Amma hadn’t seen any invitation in the mail for Heaven's Hill; she’d have put it on the hall console by that blue jar where Judy Tilden had always collected her invitations.

  The truth was, something bad had happened between Kaye and Noni around the night of the fire, and they’d never gotten past it. Something had closed them off from each other. Ever since they’d been seven years old, those two had had their ups and downs, the way friends do, but this was different, worse.

  Amma took down the framed photograph on her kitchen shelf of the teenaged Noni and Kaye, arm in arm, wearing their Moors High School graduation gowns. She sat down at the table with the picture, took off her thick glasses, rubbed her eyes, put them back on. Look at those two, so young. Noni like ivory and Kaye like dark gold. Hugging and laughing.

  Maybe somewhere along the way they had gotten closer than just friends, the way Judy Tilden had always been so scared they would do. No sense in denying Amma had thought it before, herself.

  But who could tell what was going on with young people, even when they were under the same roof as you?

  One thing she did know. Right after that fire, they’d had the worst fight she’d ever seen between them. Amma had heard Kaye yelling at Noni there in the hospital. It was the day they had released Judy, and Noni was taking her to California. Amma heard Kaye's voice in the hall outside Judy's room, and had stepped out to see what was wrong. What she saw was Noni throwing down all those flowers she’d carried from her mama's room, and then she’d ripped that little silver chain with the heart right off her own neck, the heart that Kaye had made out of a dime, and then she’d thrown it at him. Amma had shut the door so Judy wouldn’t hear them fighting.

  When Amma had opened that door back up, Kaye was sitting there on the floor of the hall, had just sunk right down there on the hospital floor, with his face as wet with tears as if you’d thrown water in it. She’d never seen him like that before or since. He was holding that little broken chain. Amma had gone in the ladies’ room to get him a paper towel, and there was Noni, leaning against the wall, crying too.

  ’Course, Noni and Kaye had fought before; Amma had heard them right here in this kitchen at Clayhome time after time, arguing and arguing. But nothing like this. And it seemed like this time Life had gotten in their way too, and messed up any chance for mending things.

  Just a few weeks before Noni had brought her mother back to Heaven's Hill from California and Boston, Kaye had all of a sudden won some prize for some little thing he’d invented to use in heart surgery and he’d gone up to New York City for the ceremony. And that's where he’d met Shani Bouchard, a doctor herself, and he’d stayed up there to go out with her, and then had gotten himself invited to teach a course up there and had called Amma and said he wouldn’t be back for six months.

  When Amma told Noni all this the day she got home, and told her how she’d missed Kaye by only a few weeks, the girl just fell apart. She’d said he hadn’t answered her letters or called her or left her a message the whole time she’d been out in California. Amma couldn’t get her calmed down.

  That night when Amma was helping Judy get to bed, Judy told her Noni was “emotionally overwrought” because she was pregnant. Then Judy got all upset herself, talking about how Noni was going ahead with divorcing Roland even though she was having his baby.

  The week after that, Roland flew to Moors and Amma heard him telling Judy he was going to fight the divorce. But then Roland and Noni went out to the pool for a long talk, and when they came back inside, Roland stormed up to his room, packed his bag, and flew off to Texas. He married somebody else as soon as his divorce papers came through.

  By the time Kaye got home from New York, Noni had already left with her mama to take Judy to see that doctor in London. When Kaye heard Noni was having a baby, he’d looked disgusted in that nasty way he had, and said he was amazed she hadn’t canceled her divorce, but figured she’d be happy with two babies to take care of, Roland's and her mother. He said she’d never stop throwing away her life on people that didn’t deserve her. “Maybe Jesus told you to walk the extra mile, but when did even Jesus say you had to fly across the ocean with a woman who’d done nothing but make you feel lousy about yourself for the whole first half of your life! When did your friend Jesus say that, Grandma?”

  “What Jesus said was, you don’t quit on people you love. You never do. And, Kaye King, you ought to listen to Him. All Noni's trying to do is get her mama walking again.”

  That's when Kaye said the scary thing. “Well then she ought to take her mother to a good psychiatrist because I’ve seen her charts, I checked them out, I even called Jack Hurd out in California, and I don’t think Judy Tilden's legs are the problem. As long as she can’t walk, Noni can’t walk out on her.”

  It was right after that when Shani Bouchard flew down for the first time to visit Kaye. Then Kaye started flying up to New York to visit her. And now Shani was moving in with him.

  Kaye and Noni. Amma looked around her kitchen. Kaye and Noni. There were so many memories of those two in this room. All that dancing they used to do in here. All their schoolwork at this table. Making those election posters. Playing those violins. Filling out the college applications.
Arguing about anything and everything. Laughing.

  But, oh, who knew with young people? Maybe it was all for the best.

  That Shani Bouchard was something. Long-legged and strong, just beautiful, like she’d walked right out of a red-clay country road, or out of the hills of Africa with her robes flying and her dark feet bare, not a fear in her face. But Shani had grown up her whole life a city girl. Born in Harlem with public school teacher parents and with sisters and brothers that still lived there. They were all so proud of her, a doctor, young as she was.

  Shani would sit here in the kitchen for hours asking you about “Colored” water fountains and bathroom doors that said “Women” for blacks and “Ladies” for whites. Ask you about having to give up your seat on the bus to a white person, and not sitting at the lunch counter or having to go up to the balcony in the movie theater or the courthouse or the church. And you could tell it was like you were telling Shani something about Ancient China.

  But the past wasn’t that long ago. Amma's own grandmother Clay had been brought a slave child to Moors, North Carolina, by E.D.R. Gordon. That's how close the old times snuffle along at our heels.

  Oh deep in her soul how Amma wished that Deborah could have held on to see her son Kaye grown into a fine doctor. Fine and free. With all that education and all that confidence so nobody could turn him around.