Part 8 (1/2)

”Pie,” said Mrs. Brown. ”Pie brings us here. George was kind enough to help me out with a big ch.o.r.e over in Plum Borough, and coming back, we decided the only way to keep up our strength and salvage the afternoon was to have some coffee and maybe a little dessert.”

I noticed that we were all standing next to the Idle Hour Restaurant ”They do have really good pie here,” I said.

George spoke to Patty. ”I don't believe we've met,” he said, ”unless you have changed markedly.”

She laughed. ”I'm Patty,” she said. ”Patty Tsimmicz.”

”Oops,” I said. ”I should have done that.”

”Why don't you come in with us?” said Mrs. Brown. ”Do you have the time? You can tell us which kind is the best.”

So we did. Think about it, though. What are the chances that we would be walking by the Idle Hour at the exact moment George and Mrs. Brown stopped there? But there we were, ordering peach pie with ice cream in a booth with yellow vinyl seats. It felt like something that was supposed to happen. I felt that George and Mrs. Brown were people I was going to keep knowing somehow. It crossed my mind that if my mother had happened to see us sitting there, I would have had a hard time explaining how I knew them. What was I going to tell her when they showed up someday at my wedding? Well, that I could worry about later. But a reflex made me wipe the fog from the window and look out. That's when I saw what I almost didn't see that day, coming down the sidewalk. I saw Glenna and Maureen and a boy with his arm around Maureen's waist, and hers around his, girlfriend-boyfriend style.

Wow, I thought Who's that?

Glenna's smile was pasted to her frozen face as she matched her pace to theirs. From behind her determined brightness peered the eyes of a frightened animal. They pa.s.sed by our window, and, for an accidental instant Glenna's rattled eyes met mine. I wanted to feel satisfaction and revenge. But it was too much like looking into a mirror. I couldn't fit any spite into the small smile I tossed out like a tiny, halfhearted lifeline.

They walked by, and I scrambled back up onsh.o.r.e.

thirteen.

”WE'RE ALL A LITTLE GREEN AROUND THE GILLS,” MY MOTHER said into the phone. She was still in her pink bathrobe and slippers. No makeup yet. She was telling Mrs. Schimpf we wouldn't be in church because of the flu. She winked at me as I took a package of English m.u.f.fins out of the bread drawer. I was feeling better. And I was starved.

”Ed says he feels like he got hit with a Mack truck,” Mom told Mrs. Schimpf.

My dad and Chrisanne were still upstairs in bed, limp washrags trying not to move. The house was dark and still, except for the light over the kitchen sink and the radio on low. The smell of my toasting English m.u.f.fin filled the stale air with the promise of health and life, like the first crocus of spring. But it probably made Dad and Chrisanne queasy. I needed to breathe some fresh air.

”I'm going for a walk. Mom,” I said.

She tucked the phone under her chin and said quietly, ”Okay, doll. Dress warm.”

The whole world was gray and brown. Even if the brick chimneys had managed to reach a few inches higher and snag holes in the heavy clouds, there probably would have been more gray behind them. The trees in the front yards were bare. A few unraked brown leaves, curly and brittle, lay scattered around. My footsteps made a nice thud in the cold, motionless air, which filled my nose and lungs and made me feel sharp and alive.

I looked around and found some colors hiding in the browns and grays. Dark green pines and spruces. A red awning. A blue garage door. Red berries on a bush. The purple-black bricks of the Baxters' house. I myself was an emissary of color, moving through the world in a fluorescent red coat Chrisanne didn't know I was wearing and my eight-foot-long scarf. I trod once more over a much-trodden dirt path frozen hard as a rock through a small bunch of trees to the Boney Dump, a flat place where the power company dumps ash and kids ride their bikes on it. As I came out into the open, snow started to fall. I sat down on a rock and watched. The snow wasn't sticking to the ground yet, but I could look at the snowflakes on my coat sleeve. I knew each one was supposed to be completely different from every other one, but I couldn't see the differences that clearly. I could see that each one had exactly six skies, which seemed amazing enough for something just falling out of the sky. An extra detail, more than anyone would expect.

The snow fell more thickly. The hills, then the houses at the far edge of the Boney Dump, disappeared behind curtains of falling flakes. It felt private, like a room, with walls you could walk through. And then someone did Up out of the woods, just twenty feet away. I caught my breath for a second and ail the old warnings about the hoboes who were supposed to be loitering dangerously around the railroad tracks jumped into my mind. I had never actually seen a hobo. And I didn't see one now either. I saw Mr. Schimpf, of all people, huffing up out of the woods, in boots and floppy overcoat and hat with earflaps down and red nose and steamy clouds of breath. He must have walked four miles from their house in Birdvale to get there.

”Mr. Schimpf!” I said to him. ”Why aren't you in church?”

”I am in church,” he said.

”Me, too,” said I.

He hiked on, vanis.h.i.+ng behind the walls of snow. I wondered what had possessed him to walk so far on such a cold morning, but then look at me: I was sitting on a rock, getting acc.u.mulated on.

I sat there a little longer. The ground was white now; everything was white. There was something churchy about it. Everyday cares and troubles floated out of me, just far enough away so they looked interesting and manageable, none of them hopeless. Then they floated completely out of sight. Maybe I was just going into a state of bliss before freezing to death. But no, this was a peaceful, holy moment, a peaceful, holy place. I sat there a few minutes more; then I went back home.

By early afternoon the sun came out; everything was frosted and glittering. It reminded me of a department store window display of snow because it was so fresh and dean and perfect I guess it's supposed to be the other way around, the window reminding you of the real thing. But the real thing doesn't usually stay perfect for as long. At least not in Seldem. Maybe nowhere.

fourteen.

FRAN HAD CHRISTAAAS EVE AGAIN THIS YEAR. LAST YEAR SHE skipped it because it is such a ton of work. So we were all thrilled when she turned from her spaghetti sauce one day and said, ”I'm thinking I'll have Christmas Eve, Helen. Can you come?”

My mother wrapped both hands around her coffee cup and studied an invisible calendar in s.p.a.ce.

”Well,” she said, ”we're not going anywhere, but my mother will be here.”

”Your mother will come, too, of course,” said Fran. ”You can bring a ham. And cookies. I'll need your oven.”

”And card tables,” said my mom. ”You'll probably want both of ours.”

”Do you still have those folding chairs from your church?” asked Fran.

Chrisanne and Tesey and I pa.s.sed smiles across our soup; once they got this far, there was no turning back. A notepad and pen materialized in my mother's hands, and she and Fran started going over all the details.

There were a lot of details. A lot of them had to do with fish. Italian Christmas Eve dinner is about fish. Unlimited fish. Soft, fat potato doughnuts stuffed with anchovies, called cullurelli. Baccala, which is dried cod that has to be soaked in water for a week, and the water changed every day. And calamari. This is like lasagna, and Fran made me taste it the first time and say how good it was before she told me that the noodles were pieces of squid. More squid and more baccala get tossed with spaghetti. And there is fresh cod, and smelts.

Then, because some people don't like fish, there is regular lasagna and spaghetti, ham and a stuffed turkey. Salad, vegetables, garlic bread, little crystal dishes with olives and pickles. Mountains of fruit and nuts. Everyone brings some dish prepared with patience and great care. We all clatter down into Fran and Danny's bas.e.m.e.nt and sit at tables connected by overlapping tablecloths into a long, uneven line, squeezed in between the storage area on one side and the freezer, washer, and dryer on the other skie, and we eat.

The food has a magical effect of making us feel we must be the most fortunate human beings living on the earth, because what it really is, is love, disguised as food. It holds all the love we didn't find words for this year. Or maybe food is just a better way to express it.

Anyway, the words are busy doing other things. Fran is telling everybody what and how mach lo eat (more, of everything). Her brothers are having big arguments about which turnpike exit has a Sunoco station or which moment of which day of which year the helicopter landed in the field behind Grandma Spina's backyard.

Here's how many conversations each person is having: Weddings, hairdos, illnesses, new babies, new storm doors, new cars, car trouble, bad weather, bad luck, good luck, work school, vacations, movies, TV.

Danny makes sure each gla.s.s is full of wine or pop.

After dinner, little gla.s.ses of Galliano are poured for the adults from a tall, skinny bottle. It's a sticky yellow drink that tastes like licorice. This year Chrisanne got her own gla.s.s. Tesey got one, too. I got a sip, which was all I wanted, really. It's interesting but I'd rather eat the cookies. You wouldn't think I'd have room, but I did, at least for nibbling. Biscotti, jumbrelli, ingenetti, and thumbprints. (Guess which kind we brought, being only honorary Italians.) Candlelight full stomachs, and sips of Galliano warmed and melted the tangle of noisy talk down into one conversation that stretched from end to end. It thickened into the middle as people moved into seats left empty by Tesey, Chrisanne, and the cousins, who drifted upstairs to play cards and wash dishes. I was going to go, too, but Fran was telling about the plastic tomatoes my dad tied to her tomato plants and about how she changed the labels on our cans while we were on vacation, and I wanted to hear her tell it.

”Can you believe it?” she said. ”I'm such a wimp. After Helen came over with the second can, I couldn't stand it anymore, and I gave her the list I actually kept a list, that's how compulsive I am, of what was really in each can.”

”She handed me this list,” said my mother, laughing, with tears spilling from the corners of her eyes. ”And I just looked at it. I thought. How does she know what's in my cans? It took me five minutes, even after she explained to me how she cut the labels off the cans with a razor blade and glued them on different cans-”

”You didn't think I could think of something like that, did you, Helen?”

”I couldn't believe anybody would think of something like that.”

”I had to tell her. She was ready to take the cans back to the A and P. I was afraid Joe down there would have a stroke; it would overload his brain, trying to figure out what happened. And then it would be my fault!”

”Hey, Fran,” said Aunt Angie. ”Speaking of strokes. Did you know that Vincent Peretti is in the hospital? I was at the desk when they brought him in. He had a stroke. A mild one, though. He's doing good. You should stop in and see him.”