The Big Shuffle

by Laura Pedersen

  Peeking out into the audience during intermission I spy Craig along with some local guys. Great, we've both become townies. Only, damn he looks good. His wavy butterscotch hair is down past his ears, and he's laughing good-naturedly at something one of the guys must have just said. Well, at least he's not with that tart Megan.

  I don't get many compliments on the scenery because it's pretty minimal, but Bernard and Gil insist that the sets work perfectly. Louise, on the other hand, receives a standing ovation, and guys in the audience release ear-piercing whistles when she walks out onstage to take a bow.

  EIGHTY

  THE SANTA FRENZY AT MY HOUSE IS APPROACHING ITS ZENITH, with the consumption of sugar adding to the tumult. Traditionally the Christmas Eve festivities include smearing cookies with red and green icing, most of which goes directly from the bowls to the kids’ mouths.

  It takes ten stories to get them into bed, forget about falling asleep. Teddy finally comes to the rescue by announcing: “Santa cannot come if you're awake. It's the law. He'll fly right over this house.”

  Pastor Costello and I clean up the baking mess and remove Santa's snack from the mantelpiece so the cat doesn't get it. After Mom double-checks to make sure the kids are finally asleep, or at least faking it really well, we sneak the presents out from the garbage cans behind the furnace and arrange them around the tree. It's not as big a pile as in previous years, but there are two things for everyone. Pastor Costello brought a few dolls and matchbox cars over yesterday, and whether they were left over from the church toy drive or he went out and bought them, I'd rather not know.

  Louise goes downstairs to watch all the holiday specials we were deprived of as children without cable TV. She gives her usual nighttime sign-off, “May the force be with you.”

  “And also with you,” Pastor Costello answers reflexively, as if it's part of the Christian liturgy.

  “Don't stay up too late,” Mom cautions Louise. “There's no going back to sleep once they're awake!”

  It's a quarter past ten and I say good night as well. If history teaches us anything, it's that tomorrow is going to be a very early morning. Once in bed I can't help but replay Christmases past, and the excitement of being a little kid, having the hiccups eight times in one night. I'm half asleep when I remember the fire in the fireplace. We hardly use it since more heat is siphoned out of the house than put into it, but Mom always loves a fire on Christmas Eve. Certainly she'll make sure it's out. But what if when Pastor Costello leaves for midnight mass she walks him to the door and forgets? I imagine the entire house going up in flames, kids trapped upstairs, presents burning, cat forever lost in the woods.

  I traipse back downstairs to make sure the fire is out. Mom and Pastor Costello are sitting on the couch in the soft glow of the tree and watching the dying embers.

  “I was just checking to make sure—”

  And that's when I see it. They're holding hands.

  “Oh my God! What are you doing?” I practically shout.

  Pastor Costello leaps up, and Mom also appears startled.

  “You worked yourself into this family by acting all helpful just so you could hit on my mother!”

  “Of course not, Hallie,” shoots back Pastor Costello. “My intentions were pure. And … and nothing has happened, I mean we—”

  “What? You were just giving my mom the lonely widow a little comfort and consolation on Christmas Eve?” Tears burn in the corners of my eyes.

  “It's not that way at all!” insists a confused-looking Pastor Costello.

  “How could you do this to us?”

  “Hallie!” my mother whispers, though her eyes flash with horror.

  “Plus you're supposed to be gay!” I storm out of the room only to find myself in the kitchen. Fortunately my boots and coat are right by the door to the garage. The good thing about wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt as pajamas in a cold house is that you're basically ready to leave at a moment's notice.

  I hear Mom and Pastor Costello talking in low voices, and then he appears in the kitchen. “Hallie, where are you going at this hour?”

  Only I'm halfway out the door.

  “I'm not gay,” Pastor Costello calls after me. Then he quickly adds in Seinfeld fashion—“Not that there's anything wrong with it.”

  EIGHTY-ONE

  IT'S ELEVEN O'CLOCK WHEN I COME TO A SCREECHING HALT IN front of the Stocktons’ house. The lights are on downstairs and I can hear carols playing as I approach the front porch. The door is unlocked and so I march inside. Olivia, Ottavio, Bernard, Gil, and Craig are all gathered around a Scrabble board, surrounded by candles, drinks, and cookies, apparently having a grand old time.

  They look up at me wearing my coat pulled over sweats and the shitkicker boots I haven't bothered removing in my rush to locate Gil.

  “Oh Hallie, how wonderful that you've come by,” says Olivia.

  “It's a come-as-you-are party,” Bernard says as he looks at my outfit.

  “What are you doing here?” I say angrily to Craig. He is absolutely the last person I want to see right now.

  “I was invited over, if that's okay with you,” Craig retorts just as angrily.

  Olivia senses a bit of tension and remarks about the carol playing. “ ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’ is such a lovely song. I'll bet you didn't know that it was written by a Unitarian minister.”

  Now I turn on Gil. “You said Pastor Costello was gay!”

  “I said you should confirm it with Bernard. He's the one with the gaydar,” says Gil. “But why on earth does it matter?”

  Bernard laughs. “Pastor Costello isn't gay. For pity sake, he wears rayon! And look at those orthopedic shoes! Don't even get me started on that aftershave. Goodness Garbo, no!”

  Olivia sees that I'm upset and doesn't treat the matter as lightly as Bernard. “If memory serves, Pastor Costello was engaged about fifteen years ago, when he first took over the church. But the young woman died of leukemia. Why is this suddenly a problem?”

  “Was he caught trying to audition for a gay men's choir?” jokes Bernard.

  “He was caught holding my mother's hand!” I inform them.

  “I'll call the Council on Churches immediately!” jokes Bernard. “Try some of my incredible baba au rhum. It's the pièce de résistance!” He thrusts a plate of spongelike cake steeped in rum syrup toward me and practically falls over in the process. Apparently Bernard has been enjoying the rum as much as the cake.

  Gil begins to laugh heartily as well, as if I'm making a mountain out of a minister.

  Craig stares at me as if this is final confirmation I've lost my mind and that insanity runs in the Palmer family. Next thing I'll be seeing Jesus in the garden rake.

  At least Ottavio looks concerned when hearing about a man of the cloth being accused of having designs on a woman. He's not yet managed to get all the different religions in the U.S. straight.

  Tears start to flow down my cheeks. “It's not funny! He—he worked his way into my family and now … now this.” I play to the hilt my role as a woman destined for the darkly fated life of a victim in a Gothic romance.

  Olivia rises and steers me into the kitchen. “Goodness gracious, from the way you're acting one would think that he's taken advantage of your mother. It doesn't sound as if she was trying to release herself from his grasp.”

  “No.” I sniffle, as if the tears could go either way at this point. “They were sitting in the dark in front of the fire.”

  “Just holding hands, right?” asks Olivia.

  Before starting to sob, I manage to say, “My life is ruined!”

  Olivia goes to the stove and ladles out a cup of hot mulled cider, adding a cinnamon stick. She places it in front of me at the table.

  “Sometimes when I'm upset I think how different the world might be today if John F. Kennedy hadn't been assassinated and lived to win a second term,” Olivia says softly. “Or if his brother Robert hadn't also met with an assassin's bullet while t
rying to get the nomination in 1968.I was impressed by Bobby Kennedy because he was one of the few politicians to publicly change his mind about Vietnam when it could still make a difference. And after his older brother died he seemed to care so much more about civil rights and poverty.”

  I stop crying. It's hard to keep a full sob going when someone is discussing public policy.

  “There's a quote on Bobby Kennedy's grave at Arlington Cemetery. Bobby said it after his brother John was assassinated. Though it originally comes from Aeschylus. Jackie Kennedy encouraged Bobby to read the Greeks after John's death. Anyway, it goes like this: ‘He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.’ ”

  Olivia gives this a moment to sink in and then says, “You realize what this means, don't you?”

  I wasn't aware that there was going to be a test. “That we learn by suffering?”

  “Well, yes … but I was referring to your mother and Pastor Costello.”

  “That Father Costello is probably going to be Stepfather Costello before long!”

  “Perhaps in time. But I think what it means right now is that you can go back to school in January.”

  “We can't afford it.”

  “Hallie, I don't mean to sound as if I want you to take advantage of the situation, but your family currently has no earned income, and so your tuition will mostly be covered.”

  Oh my gosh. I hadn't thought about that. The sticking point with financial aid was always that my dad earned a decent salary. What they never understood was that his income just barely paid for the family to survive.

  As I absorb this information I'm reminded of something said not by a famous Greek, but another very wise man by the name of Cappy. There are two sides to every coin, plus the edge. The past has loomed large up until this moment, but suddenly the future appears slightly larger.

  “You know, if I take a job in the cafeteria to cover living expenses, it could probably work.” After all, hadn't Craig said that doing dishes in my house was like working at a restaurant?

  “Yes, of course it will,” continues Olivia. “And now your mother has someone to lean on. You've shown tremendous courage under fire.”

  “Yeah, if you want to redefine courage as not letting anyone else know that you're scared to death inside,” I say.

  “Hardly,” says Olivia. “But either way, I'm sure your mom doesn't expect you to stay home forever. And this way you're not abandoning her in a difficult situation.”

  “I would have had to sign up for classes weeks ago,” I say. “And find a place to live.”

  “Surely it's still possible to organize a schedule. Plus a few students always drop out at this time of year. As for housing, worst case is that you go back to living on campus for a semester.”

  I remember a girl in my freshman dorm whose mom had died in a car accident and she was issued a free meal plan.

  “So you see,” says Olivia, “Pastor Costello has actually done you a favor, and you'll realize it much more as time goes by.”

  Despair briefly returns. “But I'm just not ready for this!”

  Olivia places her arm on my shoulder. “I remember the first day I met your father. He arrived huffing and puffing on the front porch, all angry and worried about you leaving school and running away. It was so obvious how much he cared for you! I think that hope is the hardest love of all to carry, because it so often means letting go. I'm glad you didn't see him the day he signed the legal guardian papers. It wasn't that he didn't understand you so much as he was too well aware that the road less traveled is rockier. And I suppose it is, but it's not something you ever consider, for there isn't really an alternative.”

  “I guess not,” I say.

  The CD finishes in the other room, and we can hear them all arguing about what to put on next. Bernard is in favor of French carols.

  Gil can be heard saying, “It's a shame Led Zeppelin never made a holiday album.”

  Craig chimes in good-naturedly, “Turn on all the appliances and that's what would it would sound like.”

  Upon hearing Craig's voice, Olivia whispers in my ear, “Are you sure this is all about your mother finding someone? The British author Jerome K. Jerome once said that love is like the measles, in that we all have to go through it.”

  Then she says loud enough to be heard in the other room, “We mustn't leave the men folk unsupervised any longer or they may attempt to turn on the Super Bowl.”

  “Ha ha,” says a tipsy Bernard as we enter the room. “The only bowls around here are used for serving soup and salad.”

  “The Super Bowl isn't until the end of January,” Craig informs us. “But there's a big football game on tomorrow.”

  “Bocce is best ball game,” offers Ottavio.

  “I'm going down to the basement to get some more wood for the fire,” says Gil.

  “Save yourself the trip and just toss in the collected works of Theodore Dreiser from Mother's study,” says Bernard.

  “If you knew Pastor Costello wasn't gay, then why didn't you tell me?” I ask Bernard.

  “Are you asking me for a straight answer to a straight question?” He laughs uproariously at his own marvelous sense of humor and sways slightly.

  “Oh, just forget it,” I say.

  Bernard becomes serious for a moment. “Hallie, I had no idea that you didn't know.” But his commitment to solemnity quickly dissolves. “Or else I would have outed him!” Bernard cracks up again and Gil returns with the wood.

  “The moon has crossed the yardarm, gentlemen,” announces Olivia. “Why don't we go upstairs?” She gives a nod indicating they should leave Craig and me alone.

  And I suppose that I do owe him an apology.

  Gil is the last one to head upstairs. “Guess what?”

  I've had enough surprises for one night and nod my head that I give up.

  “I'm quitting my job,” he says. “The community theater has managed to scrape together a modest salary for me.”

  “Congratulations.” And I really mean it because I know how much Gil hates his job.

  Gil goes over to the stereo. I think he's turning it off, but as he goes upstairs Percy Sledge's greatest hits album begins playing softly in the background.

  “So … Merry Christmas,” says Craig.

  “Not really, no,” I say, and flop down on the couch. “I'm sorry I yelled at you. I was upset.”

  The song “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is playing and I hear the words, We skipped the light Fandango/Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor.

  “Remember that New Year's Eve we left the party right before midnight and you walked me back here?” I ask him.

  “Of course,” says Craig, and a faint smile plays across his lips. “It was the first night we kissed. Out in the snow.”

  “I'm sorry for being such a jerk about you not wanting to finish school,” I say.

  “I don't blame you for being upset, especially with everything that was going on at home. Looking back, maybe I could have expressed my feelings a little better.”

  “I'm returning to school in January,” I say. “Surprise!”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” says Craig. “I have a surprise for you, too.”

  Wow. I can't believe that Craig would actually buy me a gift after I've been such an idiot. I glance over to where the presents are stacked up alongside an almost life-sized soldier that looks as if it starred in a 1950s performance of The Nutcracker before it was promptly killed and stuffed.

  “It's at my house,” he says.

  I follow Craig's car in mine. It's like driving through a celestial city. Christmas Eve is the one time everyone leaves the outdoor lights on all night. A full moon illuminates the sky with phantasmagoric splendor and winter's frost makes the snowcrusted earth glisten.

  EIGHTY-TWO

  THE LARKINS PALE YELLOW ALUMINUM-SIDED HOUSE IS TWO STORIES high
with a two-car garage. It's basically the same size as ours, except they have three people living there instead of ten. I consider them pretty lucky, because in addition to all this space they have three fairly new cars, nice clothes, and plenty of money in the bank. But I guess you don't ever really know how another person feels about his or her luck.

  We remove our boots in the front hall, which is lined with a soft tan-colored cloth. “Wow!” I say. “Is this real suede on the walls?”

  “I guess so.” Craig barely looks at it. “My mom always says that it's better to buy quality because in the end it actually costs less.”

  “Yeah, if you can afford it in the beginning,” I say.

  “Come downstairs,” says Craig.

  Downstairs? I thought we'd hang out in front of the Larkins’ big tree in the living room, which has a train that runs around the base. Or else go up to his room.

  Craig leads me down to the basement, where two large tanks sit next to each other. Once he turns on more lights I can see big goldfish swimming around, and also koi, the fish that Craig used to stock the Stocktons’ pond last summer. In one tank the fish are fairly small and mostly pale orange, but in the other they're large and all different colors.

  “Cool,” I say. “Are you raising fish now?”

  “That's only part of it,” explains Craig, and there's excitement in his voice. “I'm going into the pond-building business. It's becoming very popular—not just for private homes but in malls, parks, restaurants, museums—almost any open space you can think of. I'm building a Web site, and my dad is going to back the business.”

  “That sounds cool,” I say.

  “I have an appointment to meet with a bank in Cleveland next Wednesday. They want a pond in their lobby!”

  We go upstairs to Craig's room, and I hardly recognize it. There are big drawings of ponds lying across the bed and reference books scattered all over the floor.

  “You're really into this,” I remark.

  “Sometimes I wonder if I'd have discovered all this if Bernard hadn't asked me to design that pond for him last summer. Talk about serendipity!”