Nor was he aware that Peyton had come downstairs, passing silently through the hallway, and was now standing in the door of the kitchen, saying, rather timidly: “Merry Christmas, Mother.”
There was no reply. Peyton set her mouth firmly and went on: “I said Merry Christmas, Mother.” Still there was no answer, only a flurry of mutterings that rose from the stove where Helen, her back to the door, was bending over a huge turkey. Helen’s elbow knocked a pan to the floor with a clatter. She turned without looking at the floor and faced Peyton.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose you’re satisfied.”
“What do you mean?” Peyton said.
“Are you really satisfied with yourself?”
“I well, I don’t know what you mean.”
Helen leaned down and picked up the pan, wiping it on her apron. “Your Uncle Edward. He came all the way down from Blackstone on special leave to see us. He wanted to see you especially.” She turned back to the stove, shaking her head. “Oh,” she said loudly and paused, and in the silence that sound hung like an enormous zero between them. “Oh,” she repeated, and turned again. “He was so shocked. Really, Peyton, he was so shocked. To see you coming in like that with that drunken boy. He wanted so much to see you before he left.” She went back to the turkey, and her hands were trembling as she began to baste the bird with a spoon. Part of the turkey had been burned a little. “Haven’t you got any self-respect, Peyton? Who taught you to act like that? To drink, to——”
“Shocked, my eye!” Peyton said.
Helen remained motionless, her back to Peyton still, the spoon suspended in mid-air, dripping grease. “Huh!” she said. It was almost like the first part of a laugh.
“Shocked, my eye!” Peyton repeated. “Uncle Eddie shocked! Why, dear, I’ve never seen anyone so polluted. Why don’t you come out and say what you really mean, Mother? Why don’t you? Why don’t you say it was you who was shocked? What’s wrong with you, anyway?”
Helen wheeled about, her mouth an oval, hovering on speech.
Peyton said, “Just a second. Don’t give me that ‘drunken boy’ routine. He’s my friend and I like him and what’s the matter with you, anyway, Mother? Good God, Mother!” Her face was red with anger and she stood in the doorway, trembling, the two of them trembling, voiceless, both ready to burst into tears. The kitchen was littered in amateur disarray; a sweetish smoke arose from the stove, something was burning. From the living room, in thin inconsequential slivers of sound, came a carol on the xylophone.
“I’ve tried——” Helen began hysterically.
“Oh, nuts!” Peyton said in a low voice. “What’s the matter with you, anyway?” She turned; the skirt of her bright red suit whirled about her knees; she stalked out of the room.
For half an hour they sat in the living room together—Peyton, Maudie and Loftis. No one said a word—except Maudie, who hobbled to her feet once and went to the window, remarking in low awed tones about the sky: the sun, what happened to the sun? The presents lay unopened. Peyton thumbed through a magazine; her face was still set in anger, and red, and she nervously crossed and uncrossed her legs. Outside, whirlpools of snow eddied down from the cedars; a fuzzy gray light filled the house. They waited. Wretched, and with another drink cupped in his hand, Loftis watched Helen’s shadow, a brief pale reflection in its passage from the kitchen to the dining room and back, pass the hallway mirror: she bore plates and dishes to the table like a reluctant acolyte, votive, long-suffering, and there was menace in her hurried tread, in those footsteps so quick and determined and ceremonial. Like the trampling feet of some penitent no longer in love with penitence, but only rather tired, yet bound to see it through. Finally, in a flat, spent voice, she called, “Dinner’s ready.”
They went in. Just as, inevitably, they were eating Christmas dinner under a fog of hostility, so, as inevitably, and as a not really very ironic sort of counterbalance to the tension, Helen surpassed herself: the meal, except for a small burned part of the turkey, was impeccable. Everything was present, accounted for: clams, cranberry sauce, oyster dressing, a handsome centerpiece of ivy and holly. Yet Loftis knew there was pain and martyrdom in the precision with which the salt cellars were filled, in the careful fold of the napkins. All without Ella, all by herself. All by herself. For Peyton, perhaps. For us. For the family. God rest you merry … The day grew quiet. There was little conversation, and what there was of it was stiff and unconvincing. Helen, calm now, talked serenely of the weather: it looks like more snow. Solemnly Maudie thanked everyone for the fourth or fifth time, with a gentle nod of her head, for the presents she had received: thank you, Papadaddy, thank you, Peyton dear. Peyton tried to tell Loftis a joke, tried to eat. Glancing at him with a look of disgust, she let her fork drop helplessly, her plate still half-filled. A terrible melancholy seized him; his mind trembled upon loss, upon the sounds of ancient forgotten Christmases—or were they sounds at all, those gay words without a voice ascending skyward, like notes from a tuneless xylophone, in rooms filled with smoke, laughter, harmless vanished faces? He looked up at Helen. Her plate was empty. She was smoking a cigarette, staring out at the bay.
Peyton knocked over her glass.
They all three arose at once, moving for napkins, a handkerchief, heading for the kitchen, but Helen was first: “Keep still, I’ll get it.” Peyton’s face was white and bewildered, and her eyes sought his as she moved her lips soundlessly, beseeching. A trickle of water drained down her skirt. They both sat down, and now Helen was on her knees beside Peyton, mopping up the water, humble, propitiating, but saying nothing—a charwoman immersed in a flood of atonement. And Loftis, hot anger and despair surging up in his chest, thought: God, like a nigger she wants to be, a black slave. She wrung the rag out into a pan, dabbed at the spots of water beneath the table, and squeezed out the rag again. Then she got up, with an air of infinite weariness, and went back to the kitchen. She cleared the dishes away. Neither of them rose to help her; they were cowed by her. Peyton looked at him, and her eyes were full of tears. He smiled a little, put his finger to his lips and gave her a subdued, numb wink. If we can get through this dinner, he thought, I can get Helen off by herself somewhere. He reached out and touched Peyton’s hand. Oh, to keep her home.
“The pudding!”
Maudie clapped her hands, shouted again; in it came, glorious and flaming. “It looks wonderful,” Loftis ventured hopefully. Helen began to carve slices from its flank. “Thank you,” she replied, and her voice was surprisingly decent and sociable. “Ella made it. I wish I could make a pudding.”
“It was a lovely turkey, too, Mother,” Peyton said. She smiled a little. There was no answer.
“Helen,” he said bluntly, “Peyton said she liked the turkey.”
“Oh.” She looked up and smiled, but her eyes fell only on the walls. “Thank you. I burnt it some across the bottom.”
“It was a lovely turkey, Mammadear,” said Maudie.
Helen smiled again, made a little humming sound, and there was an adoring look on her face as she paused to stroke Maudie’s cheek. “Thank you, darling,” she said.
In such small dramas of frustration there comes a moment when something must give. Loftis knew that Helen was spoiling for a breakdown. God help her, wasn’t she aware of what she had been doing? What crazy furied winds, bearing the debris of what wicked imaginings, sour suspicions, balked hopes, had swept her mind? Who on earth was it that she hated, loved? And had she indeed cried aloud in the nighttime for love to return on white, silent wings: Yes, Milton, feel that; haven’t I got love down there, too? For that he could feel guilt and pity. But now, for this show of immeasurable shabbiness, nothing but hatred. He wished he had the courage to slap her across her drawn, tortured face. He thought of Dolly. Oh, Jesus … The room, lit only by candles, was filled with wintry shadows. Two edges of a cloud parted, an open wound, revealing sunlight, the stark and frozen bay, icicles sparkling at the eaves like pendant blades of glass—and closed again:
like sunflowers, Maudie’s eyes turned toward the window, turned back again as the shadow descended. Then casually she put on the purple paper hat.
There was one at each place. Why Helen had put them there no one but she could explain, and Loftis couldn’t ask her. Three were purple, his was green, left over from some long-ago birthday, and Maudie’s gesture was a signal: Helen gravely put hers on, slanting it down over her forehead, then Peyton, then he himself. Save for the diffident tinkle of the coffee cups, the table was plunged into silence. No one said a word. But from a great distance, glancing secretly from face to face as if through a pane of translucent glass, they watched each other over the rims of their cups, with unfocused pupils that managed to caress—rather than a person or other eyes—the walls and the far horizon. In an instant, each of them crowned with the gaudy innocence of birthday hats, each of them took a lasting fatal measurement: of whose guilt, of whose love or hatred, and why, of the length that all this could endure. Then they looked past each other, demurely and foolishly, into the windy wilderness of sky and frozen sea. Only Maudie escaped; oblivious, she turned to Loftis, saying, “Papa-daddy, this is a Christmas hat.” Only Maudie and perhaps Peyton. No, Loftis knew, not Peyton after all—she who arose with a gasp from her chair, upsetting the water again. Loftis would remember the water: pure, pale and cold, still bearing on its miniature tide two cubes of ice as it swept across the table, it engulfed the legs of the salt cellar, swept on, drenching the prim lace doilies, and sank like a waterfall over the edge, soaking the carpet in a noisy clean spatter.
Here Peyton stood, sidestepping the flood, stiff with fury, her arms straight as broomsticks at her side. “Oh—” she began, looking not at Helen, but at Loftis. “Oh, God! Oh!” Helen had got up, too, and in sudden mimicry, Maudie, who had started to cry. He alone was left sitting, with a feeling of paralysis, watching them. Above Maudie’s frightened moans came Peyton’s “Oh!” again, and Helen, the purple hat still slanted violently across her brow, her eyes growing wide with awareness, contrition or regret, perhaps just fear, put both hands convulsively to her mouth and began to sob. “I’ve tried to make——” she began. But no one was listening. Peyton tore off her own hat, threw it to the floor, and rushed weeping past Loftis out of the house. He was transfixed. It was many seconds before he was able to rise and shout, with lamentable rhetoric, “Helen, by God, this is the end!” But in the meantime she had run to the vestibule, dragging Maudie with her, and he could hear her frantic voice at the telephone: “Carey! No. Yes. May I speak to Mr. Carr?”
He grabbed Peyton’s coat and his own, and followed her outside. It was frightfully cold; a path had been cleared along the flagstones to the seawall, and it was here, above the beach, that he found her. She was standing alone; he threw the coat around her shoulders.
“Baby, you’ll catch pneumonia.”
She didn’t answer him, only nodded a little and shivered.
“Come on back inside now.”
“No.”
“Baby——”
“No, I tell you!”
“Baby, listen——”
“No.”
“Baby, listen——”
“No.”
“Look, baby, we’ll get the car and drive down to Old Point to the hotel, have a drink, talk this thing over. It can’t be this bad. Already she’s sorry——” Frantically he contrived—anything to keep her with him—the weirdest blandishments. But it was no use. He turned her about and dried her tears, pulling her close to him.
“Look, baby——”
“She’s crazy. Absolutely, Bunny. Absolutely off her head.” She pressed her head down on his shoulder. “Oh, I can’t stand it!”
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m never coming back here again.”
“No,” he said hoarsely. “No, that’s not true.”
“Yes, that’s true,” she said, and her arms went tightly around his waist. It began to snow tentatively; past the frozen reach of ice the bay was as black as dusk, as despair, and a cruiser slid rakishly off into war and night: night would come soon on a day as bleak as this. He kissed her hair, her brow.
“Baby,” he whispered, “don’t leave me. I love you so.”
“Bunny?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve tried to do what’s right. Do you think everything will turn out O.K. someday? I’ve tried, Bunny, I’ve tried. Do you think so?”
“Oh, yes, baby. Lord, yes.”
“I’m a good girl, I think. All I’ve done is just what’s normal. Oh, Bunny. I’ve——” She shivered. “It’s cold.”
“Shh-h. We’ll get over all this.”
But it was true; she was going, and he felt that she would never come back again. He felt it all afternoon when they sat alone in the living room. Helen remained upstairs. Friends of theirs, the Albrights, a youngish couple with eyes avid for refreshment, dropped in later on, and Peyton served them the rest of the eggnog. They lingered too long, talked too much, and ruined any chance he might have had to speak to Peyton; for when they left, still talking, they collided at the doorway with Dick Cartwright, who had come to take her off in his brand-new convertible. She packed her bag, avoiding Helen. She simply said that they were going back to finish the holidays at the home of Dick’s parents on the Rappahannock. The snow had ceased. The air was damp and cold, and the houses up and down the street, with their dimly lit windows, had a subdued look, as if everyone finally were tired of Christmas. “Drive carefully, son,” he said. “Write me, baby,” and kissing her through the car window seemed neither sweet nor proper, but only the bitter farewell to a dubious season. “Come back soon,” he said, and desperately: “Everything will be all right.” But she merely gave him a sad grin, and winked. “Tell Maudie by-by for me,” she said, and the pane of glass floated up smoothly between them, and the car eased forth down an arch of icy sycamores.
Inside the house, immersed in the glow of the Christmas tree, the presents lay unopened, including Peyton’s. He poured a drink. If he could get off to war, he thought, get a commission, everything would be solved. … That lousy Edward with his cheap arrogance … Upstairs a light burned softly in Helen’s room. He had four drinks in a row and went to the bottom of the stairs.
“Helen,” he shouted upward, “you’re a real horror, do you know that? Why, God damn your soul, I——” But what was it he was trying to say, and of what use? In place of anger, he felt only a vast, detestable pity. And at any rate, Helen made no answer. He turned on the radio: spongy sounds came out, a crooner’s voice that sang of a white Christmas, and a choir of trombones shunting leaky, synthetic notes across the darkness.
He called Dolly, but she was out again. Finally, when Ella came at eight to wash the dishes, he helped her, getting soapy, getting drunk and filled with a sudden mawkish ecstasy: Go tell it on de mountain, they sang together, Ella disapproving. “Seems like you ain’t cheer-some with Christmas,” she said, raising a withered arm to shove his glass out of the way, “seems like you just gittin’ drunk.” Go tell it on de mountain, he sang, loudly and bravely, over de hill and everywhere.
Dat Jesus Christ is born …
And “Good night, Ella,” he said, “Happy New Year for you. Christmas Gif’!”—pressing five dollars into her hand, and finally groping his way upstairs past Helen’s darkened room, the stertorous breathing sleep—dreaming what dreams?—and into bed, thinking of Peyton, close to tears.
That was Christmas. Peyton came home neither in the spring nor in the summer, when she stayed at the home of a classmate in Washington. Four times during the summer he drove up alone to see her. But from Christmas on, the memory of the holiday remained in a corner of his mind, inflaming his emotions, his affairs, and caused him to retreat from contact with Helen in almost any form. They lived like shadows together, indeed like “boarders,” as Helen had said, but like boarders in some city rooming house who pass each other stiffly on the stairs, trailing behind them the warm air of suspicion and dislike and
who, to show their real breeding, are each obsessively dedicated to keeping their radios turned down, the bathroom spotless, and their manners beyond reproach. They seldom spoke to each other, except on business. Loftis hated the business sessions—not merely because he was forced, with a sketchy show of politeness, to talk to Helen, but because, since money was involved, they made him conscious of his continued dependence upon her. From his law practice he received a marginal income, and the practice itself, involving as it did contracts and drafts and mortgages, was an increasing bore. Gradually though, and as if by a mutual unspoken agreement, his and Helen’s daily life became so scheduled that they were not often faced with the ordeal of gazing into each other’s eyes. Remorse for Peyton he knew she felt. He noticed that she kept Peyton’s picture on her dresser, in a silver frame, along with Maudie’s. That meant something, a little something, at least. And one hot, fearsome spring night he heard her call out her name aloud, while she slept: a lone startled cry—“Peyton!”—and lying in the muggy moonlit silence, alone in his room, he wondered about her dreams. When he left one week end in June for Washington, she astonished him with her shyness. “Tell Peyton I send my love,” she said. He put on his raincoat; she kissed him on the cheek: it was like a feather brushing against his skin—the first time she had kissed him in over a year.