The Usual Rules

by Joyce Maynard

  The phone rang. Wendy picked it up. Josh on the line, and Louie on the extension, singing “Jingle Bells.”

  I want to talk, but something amazing just happened, she said. I’ll call you back.

  Tell me this isn’t some kind of cosmic alignment, Garrett said. I’m just getting off the highway for our exit when I see this kid standing there with his thumb out. I’ve been traveling ten, eleven hours by this point, mind you. Flying standby on Christmas Eve out of La Guardia is not exactly a mellow experience. So I’ve got an above-average amount of sympathy for my fellow holiday travelers by this point. I figure I’ll give the kid a lift into town, if that’s where he’s headed.

  You have yourself a destination? I ask him. Or were you just planning on taking in the sights of downtown Davis, Christmas Day?

  There’s a girl I thought I’d look up, he tells me. She said I could drop in on her if I didn’t have a place to go for the holidays. He shows me the piece of paper with Wendy’s name on it. My own damn address.

  I was remembering what you told me about how a person shouldn’t be alone on Christmas, Todd said to Wendy. He handed the plant to Carolyn.

  They were throwing this away outside a McDonald’s I stopped at. I don’t know if it’s any good, but I figured I should bring something.

  Some people have no patience with plants, she said. Just because the foliage might be looking a little funky one day they toss it. Imagine if we were that way about people.

  You should meet my mom, Violet told her.

  They set two more places. Garrett came over to Carolyn and put an arm around her. Hey there, he said.

  Good to have you back.

  Good-looking bird you girls cooked up. He reached out a hand to shake Alan’s.

  I’m Garrett, he greeted Violet and Tim, not that Tim looked up. Tim was working on a Lego set Alan had set at his place next to the Wheat Chex.

  Sorry to hear about your mother, Alan said. Don’t mind my son. He isn’t used to gatherings like this.

  Name me one person who would be, said Garrett.

  Just then the baby let out a little hoot—happiness, from the looks of it. His foot, hanging out over the edge of his infant seat, had collided with the bowl of peas and now a bunch of them showered down over the table like it was Mardi Gras.

  So how does it happen that a kid your age is traveling around on his own at five o’clock in the afternoon on Christmas? Carolyn asked him. If that isn’t too personal.

  I was up in Truckee, Todd said. Thought I’d look up this old friend that works the ski lift at a mountain there. A bunch of snowboarders this guy knows were renting a house for the week. It was going to be a big party scene.

  But it didn’t work out? Alan asked him.

  Oh, it did, he said. There must’ve been eighteen, twenty kids up at that house. Cold cuts, beer, weed, you name it. You walked in the door and there’s snowboard boots lined up like you’d landed at Santa’s workshop.

  Don’t any of these kids have parents? Carolyn asked. They just take off like that on Christmas?

  These are the kind of kids, Todd said, whose parents give them a check the week before Christmas and a gift certificate for a new board and bindings, the keys to the Land Cruiser and their ski house. Take your friends to Tahoe. Happy holidays.

  It’s guilt, see. The holidays roll round, these kids’ parents take off for the Caribbean probably, or Hawaii, with their own little stash of mind-altering substances, just a different variety. They liked their kid when he was little but for the last ten years or so the only thing they can figure out to do with him is get him expensive stuff and hope he stays out of their hair.

  Treats make trouble, Wendy’s mom would have said.

  One kid’s father owns some computer company in Mountain View. He’s got his own plane and a bunch of different houses, the Truckee place being one of the smallest. The parents split up a million years ago, and now the dad’s with some real young chick and they’ve got a couple of little kids, still in the cute stage like him.

  When he said that, Todd pointed at Walter Charles.

  So the kid takes off on some ski trip to Switzerland last year, and he ends up traveling all over the place. When he comes home, his whole face is tattooed blue and he’s had one of these balls the size of a jawbreaker inserted under the skin on his forehead, which is a thing they do over there in Berlin evidently. Where it looks like you’ve got a tumor only it’s actually a decoration, if you want to call it that.

  What did the father do when he saw it? Wendy asked. She thought about her and Amelia and the hidden rose tattoo they were planning when they turned sixteen. One small bud. Imagine if your whole face was blue forever. And wherever you went for the rest of your life, that would be the thing people would think about you first.

  The father told the kid he’d buy him a Porsche if he’d have the ball taken out of his forehead. While they were at it he wanted the kid to remove a couple of studs he’d put in his tongue. There wasn’t much to be done about the blue face. I think they sent him to some kind of dermatologist where they lightened it up a little. He used to be bright turquoise. Now he’s more that color the sky gets when it’s going to snow.

  They had all stopped eating at this point.

  And my mom thinks she’s got problems with me, Violet said. That rich dad would probably love it if the only problem he had was one little baby that cries a little more than average.

  This is a great baby, Carolyn said, stroking his head. This baby isn’t what I’d call a problem.

  Tim looked at him then, his blue eyes locked on the face of Walter Charles. Do you like Wheat Chex? he asked.

  Wally doesn’t talk yet, said Violet. He’s still a little young. She said it in this matter-of-fact way, as if the idea of someone addressing a question to her two-month-old wasn’t so unusual.

  Hey, said Garrett. I forgot for a minute. The boy came over yesterday, right? From Oregon. How’d it go?

  Wendy gave him a look. Not now was what she was trying to say.

  Oh, he said. I guess we can discuss it later.

  Let’s just say we’re a lot better off with the crowd we have over here today, Carolyn told him.

  So how come you left Truckee? Violet asked. If there was this great free house with all the food and everything? I bet there was even a hot tub.

  Also a sauna, he said. Surround sound in the family room.

  Some people’s idea of heaven, said Violet.

  They were partying last night, same as always, he told them. Everyone was wasted. Music playing so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think, so I went onto the deck, where you could look out at the mountains. And I’m thinking how it’s Christmas Eve and even though I’m not religious, it always seems like this special magic night to me. Like you should do something different from what you would normally. Or at least not play some CD at top volume where some guy’s yelling about how he wants to have sex with his mom.

  There was this house a little ways away from the one I was at, he said. I could see in the windows. I saw the Christmas tree with all the lights on, and the mom and the dad putting together this dollhouse. Arranging all the little furniture in the rooms. Getting ready for morning.

  All of a sudden I just wanted to be out of there. I didn’t want to go to bed in that guy’s house with the blue face and wake up there on Christmas with a bunch of people throwing up in the bathroom.

  I had one of those fathers, Garrett said. The kind who writes you a check when he doesn’t know what else to do.

  At least you didn’t have a Ping-Pong ball inserted in your forehead, Carolyn said.

  In a manner of speaking you might say I did. I did a lot of pretty crazy things when I was younger anyway. Where the main point, looking back on it, was probably hurting my parents.

  From the kitchen they could hear the sound of Carolyn taking the store-bought pie out of the oven. On the stereo, Laura Lee was belting out a number called “Dirty Man.” Wendy thought about home, with Ella
singing “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve” and “Moonlight in Vermont.” Alvin and the Chipmunks doing their version of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Josh in his red vest setting the buche de Noel on the table, with the meringue mushrooms and the sparklers stuck in the frosting and little flashes of sparks lighting up their faces. Her mother slipping off one ballet slipper and resting her foot in Josh’s lap the way she did at the end of a meal.

  Wendy looked across the table at Todd, his plate piled with turkey, stuffing, and yams. I can’t believe all this great stuff, he said. I feel like I’m on The Waltons.

  Eat hearty, John-boy, Carolyn said. There’s plenty more where that came from.

  I didn’t get a chance to go shopping for you, Slim, Garrett said. I was going to and then the call came about your grandmother. But I brought you something from Greenwich.

  He reached in his pocket and handed her a gold cameo pin of a woman’s face in profile. She remembered her grandmother wearing it that time she and her mother had met her grandmother for lunch in New York, and her mom saying how she’d always wished she had a cameo.

  Her grandmother had said it used to be her mother’s. I have no one to pass it on to, she had said. Only having a son.

  I made you something, Wendy told Garrett. She went to her room and came back with a colored pencil drawing of him holding his fishing rod, with Shiva next to him, and a fish on the line. She had studied the photograph he’d sent her of him in front of Carolyn’s cabin for reference, but the part about the fishing rod and the fish was from her imagination.

  What do you know? Garrett said. It would appear I just caught myself a twenty-pounder.

  Alan set the Christmas pudding on a platter.

  It never looks like much when you take it out of the mold, he said, and he was right. The pudding sat there like an old log. Not a buche de Noel kind of log. More like something you’d find at the bottom of the woodpile.

  It’s one of those things where the good part is concealed, he said.

  He explained to them how you make a Christmas pudding, starting with nuts from the farmer’s market, and currants and raisins and dried apricots soaked in whiskey. There was a certain kind of cherry that grew outside of Modesto. He picked those himself in the fall. His wife had helped take out the pits, even though she was never into Christmas pudding. Then he soaked those, too, in a different kind of liquor—kirsch.

  There’s flour and butter and sugar, naturally, he said. Nutmeg and cinnamon, cardamon and allspice. A little orange peel and candied ginger.

  You’ve got some patience, man, said Garrett. From the sound of it, you might have a future as a fly fisherman.

  To me, it’s a kind of therapy, Alan said. Some people wade into a trout stream. I bake.

  When the batter was all assembled, you poured it in the mold. You set the mold in a pan of water in the oven. After the pudding was baked, you set it aside and forgot about it. Till Christmas, when you took it out and set it on a good fireproof platter like this one. Whipped up a batch of hard sauce with cream. Doused the thing with rum. Struck the match.

  It was dark out now. On the Sweet Soul Sisters record, Fontella Bass was singing “Rescue Me.” Garrett turned out the lights, so there was only the string of bulbs on Carolyn’s cactus. Even Walter Charles looked up.

  Alan touched the lit match to the rum-soaked pudding. Blue flame leapt up around the platter, high enough that for a second there Wendy wondered if the house might catch on fire, and she could see Carolyn reach over to shield Walter Charles’s face. But the fire stayed only on the Christmas pudding, dancing around the edges of the platter. Wendy had never smelled anything like this before—spices and liquor and something burned but in a good way. Then the fire went out and Alan reached over to scoop the warm pudding onto their plates, with a puddle of hard sauce on the side.

  I don’t suppose anyone here would be a big enough fool to choose pie, Carolyn said.

  I would, said Tim.

  It’s only store-bought, she told him.

  I want pie.

  After, when Tim was licking his plate to get the last crumbs of the Shop ‘N Save pumpkin pie, Alan said he’d drive Violet and Walter Charles home. I hate to see this baby go, said Carolyn. Not that we haven’t enjoyed your company, too, Violet. I just meant it’s good to have a baby around the house.

  I could come back, she said. She reached into her diaper bag.

  This is for you, she said to Carolyn, handing her the small foil-wrapped package. It was supposed to be for my mother, but you turned out to be more of the mom type.

  It was the pendant in the shape of a heart.

  Man, Garrett said. You’re really making me look bad here. I even had it on my shopping list. Ruby necklace for Carolyn. I just ran out of time.

  I love you anyway, she said.

  Tim wanted to check the laundry one more time to make sure they hadn’t left any socks in the dryer. Alan packed up the empty pudding mold and platter and the box of Wheat Chex.

  I hope you’ll stop by the bookstore, he told Carolyn.

  Maybe you’d want to go fishing sometime, Garrett said.

  Sounds good.

  Carolyn handed the baby back to Violet then, looking like she wished she didn’t have to. Violet still had her Santa hat on, though it had started to slip down over one side of her face again. She straightened it. Carolyn, with her pendant on now, put her arms around Tim, who stood very still, arms at his sides, his blue eyes staring into the night.

  Todd said he’d do the dishes. That was always my specialty back in Cleveland, he told them. Wendy said she’d help him.

  Looks like we lucked out, Garrett said to Carolyn. What do you say you and me take a little stroll around the neighborhood with this dog of mine?

  Then it was just the two of them, Wendy and Todd, in the kitchen. The pile of dishes, the sinkful of warm soapy water. Todd’s sleeves rolled up. The Sweet Soul Sisters still blasting about men who did them wrong.

  You have a great family, he said.

  It wasn’t exactly the one I started out with, she said. Or who I thought I’d be spending Christmas with.

  Me neither.

  She thought about the night back at the Fairmont Hotel, Todd in the bathrobe.

  You look different from that other time, he said.

  It’s probably just my hair, she told him.

  You have a boyfriend?

  No.

  I don’t have a girlfriend, either, he said.

  Where are you going after this? she asked him.

  Colorado. A kid I bumped into in Truckee said he heard my brother might be out there working at a restaurant. It would be the greatest thing to see him again.

  That’s how I feel about my little brother.

  I could write to you. I don’t write letters all that much, but sometimes I do.

  That would be nice.

  You look pretty with your hair like that.

  Thanks.

  I guess you’re still just thirteen, huh?

  It’s my birthday in three weeks.

  When difficult things happen it makes you seem a lot older, he said. A lot of people take me for older than fifteen.

  Me, for instance. This whole time, I thought you were sixteen.

  Some kids I know force themselves on a girl, he said. I wouldn’t do that. It’s not like I wouldn’t want to, but I just think it should be the girl’s decision, too.

  That’s what my mom used to say.

  You must be missing her a ton today.

  Yes.

  If you felt like it, we could go take a walk, too, Todd said after the dishes were done. He put his hand up to her cheek, and for a second, she almost felt scared.

  You had a little soap there, he told her.

  They heard the door open, and Garrett and Carolyn and Shiva coming back in.

  We’re calling it a night, her father called out to her.

  I set out a couple of blankets for you, Todd, Carolyn said from the other room. You c
an make yourself comfortable on the couch. Wendy heard the sound of their feet on the stairs, the bedroom door closing, the dog settling herself on her towel.

  It was a perfectly clear night. They walked to the end of her street, past the house with the Santa display on the roof and another with a couple of reindeer set up in the front yard, white lights blinking. Inside the window they could see a man washing dishes and, in another window, a boy playing a video game.

  They walked without talking for a while. She could feel every inch of her skin.

  That first time I saw you, I noticed you right off, he said. Down at the Embarcadero, when I was skating.

  He took her hand. Is this okay? he said.

  Yes.

  I would kiss you, he said. If that was all right.

  Okay.

  When she had pictured kissing in the past, she had imagined it was more something a person would do at one precise moment, like sticking a stamp on an envelope. But Todd kept on kissing her for five minutes without stopping. He stopped. He didn’t pull all the way away from her but enough that she could see his face again.

  Are you all right? he asked her.

  Yes.

  He started kissing her again, but a little harder this time. He’d had both his arms around the back of her the whole time, stroking her hair and her shoulders and sometimes her neck, but now one of his hands moved to her chest. His hand wasn’t inside her shirt, just on top.

  I would touch your skin, he said. But I don’t want you to get scared.

  She would be scared, though partly she wanted him to. Nobody ever touched me there, she said.

  It probably has to happen sometime.

  I guess you could.

  He touched her cheek first. I like you a lot, he said. I wouldn’t ever want to hurt you.

  His hand, when he touched her skin, felt rough for a person his age. He must have known it. Your skin is so smooth, he said. It was just her belly he was touching. The space between her belly button and where her bra started.