u. Hide somewhere. I look
around, wildly, and there's a door: boys. I open it, and I'm in a miniature men's
room, brown tile, all the fixtures tiny and low to the ground, radiator blasting,
intensifying the smell of institutional soap. I open the window a few inches and
stick my face above the crack. There are evergreen trees blocking any view there
might have been, and so the cold air I am sucking in tastes of pine. After a few
minutes I feel less tenuous. I lie down on the tile, curled up, knees to chin. Here I
am. Solid.
Now. Here on this brown tile floor. It seems like such a small thing to ask.
Continuity. Surely, if there is a God, he wants us to be good, and it would be
unreasonable to expect anyone to be good without incentives, and Clare is very,
very good, and she even believes in God, and why would he decide to embarrass
her in front of all those people-I open my eyes. All the tiny porcelain fixtures
have iridescent auras, sky blue and green and purple, and I resign myself to
going, there's no stopping now, and I am shaking, "No!" but I'm gone.
Clare: Father finishes his sermon, which is about world peace, and Daddy leans
across Sharon and Mark and whispers, "Is your friend sick?"
"Yes," I whisper back, "he has a headache, and sometimes they make him
nauseous."
"Should I go see if I can help?"
"No! He'll be okay." Daddy doesn't seem convinced, but he stays in his seat.
Father is blessing the host. I try to suppress my urge to run out and find Henry
myself. The first pews stand for communion. Alicia is playing Bach's cello suite
no. 2. It is sad and lovely. Come back, Henry. Come back.
Henry: I'm in my apartment in Chicago. It's dark, and I'm on my knees in the
living room. I stagger up, and whack my elbow on the bookshelves. "Fuck!" I
can't believe this. I can't even get through one day with Clare's family and I've
been sucked up and spit out into my own fucking apartment like a fucking
pinball-
"Hey." I turn and there I am, sleepily sitting up, on the sofa bed.
"What's the date?" I demand.
"December 28, 1991." Four days from now.
I sit down on the bed. "I can't stand it."
"Relax. You'll be back in a few minutes. Nobody will notice. You'll be
perfectly okay for the rest of the visit."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Stop whining," my self says, imitating Dad perfectly. I want to deck
him, but what would be the point? There's music playing softly in the
background.
"Is that Bach?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, it's in your head. It's Alicia."
"That's odd. Oh!" I run for the bathroom, and almost make it.
Clare: The last few people are receiving communion when Henry walks in the
door, a little pale, but walking. He walks back and up the aisle and squeezes in
next to me. "The Mass is ended, go in peace," says Father Compton. "Amen," we
respond. The altar boys assemble together like a school of fish around Father,
and they proceed jauntily up the aisle and we all file out after them. I hear Sharon
ask Henry if he's okay, but I don't catch his reply because Helen and Ruth have
intercepted us and I am introducing Henry.
Helen simpers. "But we've met before!"
Henry looks at me, alarmed. I shake my head at Helen, who smirks. "Well,
maybe not," she says. "Nice to meet you-Henry." Ruth shyly offers Henry her
hand. To my surprise he holds it for a moment and then says, "Hello, Ruth,"
before I have introduced her, but as far as I can tell she doesn't recognize him.
Laura joins us just as Alicia comes up bumping her cello case through the crowd.
"Come to my house tomorrow," Laura invites. "My parents are leaving for the
Bahamas at four." We all agree enthusiastically; every year Laura's parents go
someplace tropical the minute all the presents have been opened, and every year
we flock over there as soon as their car disappears around the driveway. We part
with a chorus of "Merry Christmas!" and as we emerge through the side door of
the church into the parking lot Alicia says, "Ugh, I knew it!" There's deep new
snow everywhere, the world has been remade white. I stand still and look at the
trees and cars and across the street toward the lake, which is crashing, invisible,
on the beach far below the church on the bluff. Henry stands with me, waiting.
Mark says, "Come on, Clare," and I do.
Henry: It's about 1:30 in the morning when we walk in the door of Meadowlark
House. All the way home Philip scolded Alicia for her 'mistake' at the beginning
of Silent Night, and she sat quietly, looking out the window at the dark houses and
trees. Now everyone goes upstairs to their rooms after saying 'Merry Christmas'
about fifty more times except Alicia and Clare, who disappear into a room at the
end of the first floor hall. I wonder what to do with myself, and on an impulse I
follow them.
"-a total prick," Alicia is saying as I stick my head in the door. The room is
dominated by an enormous pool table which is bathed in the brilliant glare of the
lamp suspended over it. Clare is racking up the balls as Alicia paces back and
forth in the shadows at the edge of the pool of light.
"Well, if you deliberately try to piss him off and he gets pissed off, I don't see
why you're upset," Clare says.
"He's just so smug," Alicia says, punching the air with her fists. I cough. They
both jump and then Clare says, "Oh, Henry, thank God, I thought you were
Daddy."
"Wanna play?" Alicia asks me.
"No, I'll just watch." There is a tall stool by the table, and I sit on it.
Clare hands Alicia a cue. Alicia chalks it and then breaks, sharply. Two stripes
fall into corner pockets. Alicia sinks two more before missing, just barely, a
combo bank shot. "Uh-oh," says Clare. "I'm in trouble." Clare drops an easy
solid, the 2 ball, which was poised on the edge of a corner pocket. On her next
shot she sends the cue ball into the hole after the 3, and Alicia fishes out both
balls and lines up her shot. She runs the stripes without further ado. "Eight ball,
side pocket," Alicia calls, and that is that. "Ouch," sighs Clare. "Sure you don't
want to play?" She offers me her cue.
"Come on, Henry," say Alicia. "Hey, do either of you want anything to
drink?"
"No," Clare says.
"What have you got?" I ask. Alicia snaps on a light and a beautiful old bar
appears at the far end of the room. Alicia and I huddle behind it and lo, there is
just about everything I can imagine in the way of alcohol. Alicia mixes herself a
rum and Coke. I hesitate before such riches, but finally pour myself a stiff
whiskey. Clare decides to have something after all, and as she's cracking the
miniature tray of ice cubes into a glass for her Kahlua the door opens and we all
freeze.
It's Mark. "Where's Sharon?" Clare asks him. "Lock that," commands Alicia.
He turns the lock and walks behind the bar. "Sharon is sleeping," he says,
pulling a Heineken out of the tiny fridge. He uncaps it and saunters over to the
table. "Who's playing?"
"Alicia and Henry," says Clare.
"Hmm. Has he been warned?"
"Shut up, Mark," Alicia says.
"She's Jackie Gleason in disguise," Mark assures me.
I turn to Alicia. "Let the games begin." Clare racks again. Alicia gets the break.
The whiskey has coated all my synapses, and everything is sharp and clear. The
balls explode like fireworks and blossom into a new pattern. The 13 teeters on
the edge of a corner pocket and then falls. "Stripes again," Alicia says. She sinks
the 15, the 12, and the 9 before a bad leave forces her to try an unmakable two-rail
shot.
Clare is standing just at the edge of the light, so that her face is in shadow but
her body floats out of the blackness, her arms folded across her chest. I turn my
attention to the table. It's been a while. I sink the 2, 3, and 6 easily, and then look
for something else to work with. The 1 is smack in front of the corner pocket at
the opposite end of the table, and I send the cue ball into the 7 which drops the
1.1 send the 4 into a side pocket with a bank shot and get the 5 in the back corner
with a lucky carom. It's just slop, but Alicia whistles anyway. The 7 goes down
without mishap. "Eight in the corner" I indicate with my cue, and in it goes. A
sigh escapes around the table.
"Oh, that was beautiful," says Alicia. "Do it again." Clare is smiling in the
dark.
"Not your usual," Mark says to Alicia.
"I'm too tired to concentrate. And too pissed off."
"Because of Dad?"
"Yeah."
"Well, if you poke him, he's going to poke back."
Alicia pouts. "Anybody can make an honest mistake."
"It sounded like Terry Riley for a minute there," I tell Alicia.
She smiles. "It was Terry Riley. It was from Salome Dances for Peace!"
Clare laughs. "How did Salome get into Silent Night?"
"Well, you know, John the Baptist, I figured that was enough of a connection,
and if you transpose that first violin part down an octave, it sounds pretty good,
you know, la la la, LA..."
"But you can't blame him for getting mad," says Mark. "I mean, he knows that
you wouldn't play something that sounded like that by accident."
I pour myself a second drink.
"What did Frank say?" Clare asks.
"Oh, he dug it. He was, like, trying to figure out how to make a whole new
piece out of it, you know, like Silent Night meets Stravinsky. I mean, Frank is
eighty-seven, he doesn't care if I fuck around as long as he's amused. Arabella
and Ashley were pretty snitty about it, though."
"Well, it isn't very professional," says Mark.
"Who cares? This is just St. Basil's, you know?" Alicia looks at me. "What do
you think?"
I hesitate. "I don't really care," I say finally. "But if my dad heard you do that,
he'd be very angry."
"Really? Why?"
"He has this idea that every piece of music should be treated with respect,
even if it isn't something he likes much. I mean, he doesn't like Tchaikovsky, or
Strauss, but he will play them very seriously. That's why he's great; he plays
everything as though he's in love with it."
"Oh." Alicia walks behind the bar, mixe