ing bird. At first I am the only person who notices
this, and I sit, horrified, unsure what to do. Then Philip sees her, and then the
whole table falls quiet. He's on his feet, by her side. "Lucy?" he whispers. "Lucy,
what is it?" Clare hurries to her, saying "Come on, Mama, it's okay, Mama..."
Lucille is shaking her head, No, no, no, and wringing her hands. Philip backs off;
Clare says, "Hush," and Lucille is speaking urgently but not very clearly: I hear a
rush of unintelligableness, then "All wrong," and then "Ruin his chances," and
finally "I am just utterly disregarded in this family," and "Hypocritical," and
then sobs. To my surprise it's Great Aunt Dulcie who breaks the stunned
stillness. "Child, if anybody's a hypocrite here it's you. You did the exact same
thing and I don't see that it ruined Philip's chances one bit. Improved them, if you
ask me." Lucille stops crying and looks at her aunt, shocked into silence. Mark
looks at his father, who nods, once, and then at Sharon, who is smiling as though
she's won at bingo. I look at Clare, who doesn't seem particularly astonished, and
I wonder how she knew if Mark didn't, and I wonder what else she knows that
she hasn't mentioned, and then it is borne in on me that Clare knows everything,
our future, our past, everything, and I shiver in the warm room. Etta brings
coffee. We don't linger over it.
Clare: Etta and I have put Mama to bed. She kept apologizing, the way she
always does, and trying to convince us that she was well enough to go to Mass,
but we finally got her to lie down and almost immediately she was asleep. Etta
says that she will stay home in case Mama wakes up, and I tell her not to be silly,
I'll stay, but Etta is obstinate and so I leave her sitting by the bed, reading St.
Matthew. I walk down the hall and peek into Henry's room, but it's dark. When I
open my door I find Henry supine on my bed reading A Wrinkle in Time. I lock
the door and join him on the bed.
"What's wrong with your mom?" he asks as I carefully arrange myself next to
him, trying not to get stabbed by my dress.
"She's manic-depressive."
"Has she always been?"
"She was better when I was little. She had a baby that died, when I was seven,
and that was bad. She tried to kill herself. I found her." I remember the blood,
everywhere, the bathtub full of bloody water, the towels soaked with it.
Screaming for help and nobody was home. Henry doesn't say anything, and I
crane my neck and he is staring at the ceiling.
"Clare," he finally says.
"What?"
"How come you didn't tell me? I mean, there's kind of a lot of stuff going on
with your family that it would have been good to know ahead of time."
"But you knew...." I trail off. He didn't know. How could he know? "I'm sorry.
It's just-I told you when it happened, and I forget that now is before then, and so
I think you know all about it..."
Henry pauses, and then says, "Well, I've sort of emptied the bag, as far as my
family is concerned; all the closets and skeletons have been displayed for your
inspection, and I was just surprised...I don't know."
"But you haven't introduced me to him." I'm dying to meet Henry's dad, but
I've been afraid to bring it up.
"No. I haven't."
"Are you going to?"
"Eventually."
"When?" I expect Henry to tell me I'm pushing my luck, like he always used
to when I asked too many questions, but instead he sits up and swings his legs
off the side of the bed. The back of his shirt is all wrinkled.
"I don't know, Clare. When I can stand it, I guess."
I hear footsteps outside the door that stop, and the doorknob jiggles back and
forth. "Clare?" my father says. "Why is the door locked?" I get up and open the
door. Daddy opens his mouth and then sees Henry and beckons me into the hall.
"Clare, you know your mother and I don't approve of you inviting your friend
into your bedroom," he says quietly. "There are plenty of rooms in this house-"
"We were just talking-"
"You can talk in the living room."
"I was telling him about Mama and I didn't want to talk about it in the living
room, okay?"
"Honey, I really don't think it's necessary to tell him about your mother-"
"After the performance she just gave what am I supposed to do? Henry can
see for himself that she's wacko, he isn't stupid-" my voice is rising and Alicia
opens her door and puts her finger to her lips.
"Your mother is not 'wacko'," my father says sternly.
"Yeah, she is," Alicia affirms, joining the fray.
"Now stay out of this-"
"The hell I will-"
"Alicia!" Daddy's face is dark red and his eyes are protruding and his voice is
very loud. Etta opens Mama's door and looks at the three of us with
exasperation. "Go downstairs, if you want to yell," she hisses, and closes the
door. We look at each other, abashed.
"Later," I tell Daddy. "Give me a hard time later." Henry has been sitting on
my bed this whole time, trying to pretend he's not here. "Come on, Henry. Let's
go sit in some other room." Henry, docile as a small rebuked boy, stands and
follows me downstairs. Alicia galumphs after us. At the bottom of the stairs I
look up and see Daddy looking down at us helplessly. He turns and walks over
to Mama's door and knocks.
"Hey, let's watch It's a Wonderful Life" Alicia says, looking at her watch. "It's on
Channel 60 in five minutes."
"Again? Haven't you seen it, like, two hundred times already?" Alicia has a
thing for Jimmy Stewart.
"I've never seen it," says Henry.
Alicia affects shock. "Never? How come?"
"I don't have a television."
Now Alicia really is shocked. "Did yours break or something?"
Henry laughs. "No. I just hate them. They give me headaches." They make
him time travel. It's the flickering quality of the picture.
Alicia is disappointed. "So you don't want to watch?"
Henry glances at me; I don't mind. "Sure," I say. "For a while. We won't see
the end, though; we have to get ready for Mass."
We troop into the TV room, which is off the living room. Alicia turns on the
set. A choir is singing It Came Upon the Midnight Clear. "Ugh," she sneers. "Look at
those bad yellow plastic robes. They look like rain ponchos." She plops down on
the floor and Henry sits on the couch. I sit down next to him. Ever since we
arrived I have been worrying constantly about how to behave in front of my
various family members in terms of Henry. How close should I sit? If Alicia
weren't here I would lie down on the couch, put my head on Henry's lap. Henry
solves my problem by scooting closer and putting his arm around me. It's kind of
a self-conscious arm: we would never sit this way in any other context. Of course,
we never watch TV together. Maybe this is how we would sit if we ever watched
TV. The choir disappears and a slew of commercials comes on. McDonald's, a
local Buick dealership, Pillsbury, Red Lobster: they all wish us a Merry
Christmas. I look at Henry, who has an expression of blank amazement on his
face.
"What?" I ask him softly.
"The speed. They jump cut every couple seconds; I'm going to be ill." Henry
rubs his eyes with his fingers. "I think I'll just go read for a while." He gets up
and walks out of the room, and in a minute I hear his feet on the stairs. I offer up
a quick prayer: Please, God, let Henry not time travel, especially not when we're
about to go to church and I won't be able to explain. Alicia scrambles onto the
couch as the opening credits appear on the screen.
"He didn't last long," she observes.
"He gets these really bad headaches. The kind where you have to lie in the
dark and not move and if anybody says boo your brain explodes."
"Oh." James Stewart is flashing a bunch of travel brochures, but his departure
is cut short by the necessity of attending a dance. "He's really cute."
"Jimmy Stewart?"
"Him too. I meant your guy. Henry."
I grin. I am as proud as if I had made Henry myself. "Yeah."
Donna Reed is smiling radiantly at Jimmy Stewart across a crowded room.
Now they are dancing, and Jimmy Stewart's rival has turned the switch that
causes the dance floor to open over a swimming pool. "Mama really likes him."
"Hallelujah." Donna and Jimmy dance backwards into the pool; soon people
in evening clothes are diving in after them as the band continues playing.
"Nell and Etta approve, also."
"Great. Now we just have to get through the next thirty-six hours without
ruining the good first impression."
"How hard can that be? Unless-no, you wouldn't be that dumb..."
Alicia looks over at me dubiously. "Would you?"
"Of course not."
"Of course not," she echoes. "God, I can't believe Mark. What a stupid fuck."
Jimmy and Donna are singing Buffalo Girls, won't you come out tonight while
walking down the streets of Bedford Falls resplendent in football uniform and
bathrobe, respectively. "You should have been here yesterday. I thought Daddy
was going to have a coronary right in front of the Christmas tree. I was imagining
him crashing into it and the tree falling on him and the paramedics having to
heave all the ornaments and presents off him before they could do CPR..." Jimmy
offers Donna the moon, and Donna accepts.
"I thought you learned CPR in school."
"I would be too busy trying to revive Mama. It was bad, Clare. There was a lot
of yelling."
"Was Sharon there?"
Alicia laughs grimly. "Are you kidding? Sharon and I were in here trying to
chat politely, you know, and Mark and the parentals were in the living room
screaming at each other. After a while we just sat here and listened."
Alicia and I exchange a look that just means So what else is new? We have spent
our lives listening to our parents yelling, at each other, at us. Sometimes I feel
like if I have to watch Mama cry one more time I'm going to leave forever and
never come back. Right now I want to grab Henry and drive back to Chicago,
where no one can yell, no one can pretend everything is okay and nothing
happened. An irate, paunchy man in an unders