Chapters 4-5

4

Uncle Virg had a 1931 Ford Model A, Tudor Sedan. He bought it brand new and paid four hundred ninety-five dollars for it, but treated it like it was worth a million bucks. It was two-tone green and spotlessly clean, inside and out. The wood on the dash board shone like finely polished furniture. The car rugs were as clean as the carpets in the house. Uncle Virg kept a whisk broom under the passenger seat and rarely put the car away for the night without giving it a good sweeping out.

The minute Uncle Virg arrived, I let him know about the matter of the buggy. He made sure that the buggy, Jessie, and I fit in the back seat with no problem. The handle of the carriage came up over my legs, and of course I held Jesse while we sat up on the back seat all by ourselves.

"You know Carol, your first car ride was in this car, coming home from the hospital. It was only eleven days old, and so were you," Virgil remembered out loud.

Mama got in the front seat and we were off. We turned right out of our driveway and headed up Tower Street passing the market next door. Mama was applying the finishing touches on her lipstick in her compact mirror and I was looking out the window at the market, dark for Christmas day. I was surprised to see my father sitting on a crate under an awning on the far side of the store as we drove past. He had a brown paper bag between his legs and his hat hung off one knee. My chest leaped and I wanted to holler out, but something stopped me. My father winked at me and held up his curved pinky finger when he saw my face in the car window. That was our secret hand shake-- pinky swear. I watched him for as long as I could see him, then slowly turned my head to the front. Uncle Virg directed the rear view mirror so I could see his eyes. They spoke volumes, but he didn't say a word. His knowing expression said something like, "It's going to be alright Peach. Let him go. And whatever you do, don't tell your mother that you saw your dad sitting next to the market with a bottle of whiskey in his lap, and nowhere to go on Christmas Day."

Uncle Virg started to sing, "God rest ye merry gentlemen..."

Mama interrupted, "Virgil?"

"Yes Virginia."

"Do you remember what the Christmas Truce of 1914 was?"

"I do," said Virgil.

Mama closed her compact and slipped it into her purse. "Well I believe it was the last documented moment in which people were truly nice. It seems like people are not nice anymore. They don't do what they say they are going to do. They lie and do what is easy or what will cover up for their selfishness." She blotted her lips on her hanky. "I need to try to make a truce. Just for today. To be nice."

"What nature of a truce are you about, Virginia?" said Uncle Virg, in his school superintendent voice.

"The Christmas truce of 1937. Please turn the car around Virgil, I can't do this today," said Mama.

Uncle Virg pulled the car over to the side of the road. He kept his hands on the steering wheel, kept his eyes forward, and said nothing. Mama said nothing. I wrapped Jessie's blanket around her a little bit tighter.

"I saw him back there by the market Virgil. I pretended not to see him. I wanted not to see him, but I did and I can't go on my merry way with him sitting there on Christmas day with a bottle of whiskey as his only friend. Two wrongs don't make a right."

"You will never be able to match the wrongs that have been done to you, Virginia."

"So let's not try."

Uncle Virg turned toward her with a look of total obedience, trying to understand a heart that was better than his. "You're too good."

"I'm not good, I'm confused. Just go back before I change my mind," Mama said with a fluttery wave of her hand.

We drove back toward the store in silence. Father was sitting there just as before. He didn't look up as Uncle Virg brought the car to a gradual stop. Mama got out, left the car door open, and walked up to him. I could not hear what she was saying, but she had her arms folded and her body was completely still except for a barely noticeable, but constant and steady tap of her right heel. The tapping of her foot seemed to release just enough tension so she wouldn't cry, yell, or faint. He slowly lifted his eyes to her face. She placed her hands on her hips and her heel tapped faster. Finally, he stood up. He picked up the brown bag, paused for a moment, then dropped it in the trash can beside the crate. He put on his hat, and followed my mother to the car. Mama got in next to me and curled her legs up onto the seat to avoid the buggy. Father got in the front.

"Thanks Virgil, Merry Christmas," mumbled Father.

"No thanks to me Gust. Not my idea," said Uncle Virg. He offered Father a cigarette, and father took two, lit both and handed one back to Mama.

The second time Uncle Virg turned the car around on Tower Street that Christmas day, we were a family again. No one spoke for a while, and when the thought came into my head I asked, "Uncle Virg, what was the Christmas truce of 1914?"

He took a long deep breath and thought a moment before answering. "Well, it was during World War One, when some clever boy sent a message over, probably threw it wrapped around a grenade without the pin pulled. It might have said something like, "Let's have a party. Let's meet in the middle. No shooting between the lines." So the soldiers got up out of their trenches, left their rifles behind and went up to enemy lines. They swapped cigarettes and addresses, asked about friends or relatives they knew from each others hometowns. They left their differences behind and treated each other like brothers on that Christmas day. There was an unspoken understanding that after Christmas they'd go back to fighting, but for that one day they would trust each other to act cautiously civil and attempt to put away their differences."

"Oh," I said. "Too bad they had to go back to fighting."

Father leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes. Mama looked out her window and commented on everything she observed, like the Christmas decorations uptown and the ornate window displays in Biglows Department store. It was a three hour drive each way to Greenwood, where Uncle Virg lived, I hoped Mama didn't act this odd way for the entire drive. Once we got out onto the big highway, little rivers of accumulated rain streamed down the hills along the highway and every once in a while the tires sent fans of water off to each side. The damp made it feel close and steamy inside the car. I wrote my name on the fogged-up glass of the window. On the outside, the window held little drops of moisture that worked like a kaleidoscope when I put my eye close to the window and looked through them at the green and blue and brown of the passing countryside. The skeletons of the leafless trees sent droplets from branch to twig to twig like trapeze artists swinging from limb to limb, and every once in a while a giant raindrop would fall from the canopy of trees along the road. There would be no walks with the buggy on the sidewalk in front of Uncle Virg's house today. But their house had a covered porch that wrapped all the way around and I already knew it would be the perfect place for Jessie and me to take our maiden voyage with the buggy.

I was dying to get out of the car as soon as we pulled up to Uncle Virg's house but he told me to stay put. We were going to church, and we needed to make room for Aunt Marion in the car. Mama opened her door and guided the baby buggy out to Uncle Virg. He carried it up onto the porch, opened the front door and rolled it over the threshold. Aunt Marion's Boston bull terrier, Butch, sneaked out the door to greet us, but as soon as his paws felt the rain, he high-tailed it right back into the house. Butch was just about as spoiled rotten as a dog could be. He had his own bed in the corner of the kitchen by the wood stove, and several hand knit sweaters made by Aunt Marion herself. Aunt Marion was still talking baby-talk to Butch when she shut the door. Uncle Virg helped her down the steps. One of her legs was a little shorter and skinnier than the other because of Polio when she was a little girl. She said she was lucky to have a leg at all. Mama scooted over next to me and Jessie so Aunt Marion could get in the back with us.

"Merry Christmas Carol...Gust. Merry Christmas Virginia," said Aunt Marion. She laid her hand on top of my mom's and gave it a "Good to see you" squeeze.

"You're longer than I expected, did the rain slow you down?"

"No Marion, we had to go back and get something we forgot, said Mama. "Oh no, I forgot the pumpkin pies!" Mama tapped her hand to her forehead and sunk down in frustration.

"Oh Virginia, don't think about it for even one minute. I made my minced meat pie and chocolate cake and we had the pleasure of your pies at Thanksgiving. Take them to the hospital. They won't last five minutes in the lunch room."

Mama was obviously disheartened, but smiled with a nod.

"Of course you could always feed them to Carol for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The child is so painfully thin." She looked across the seat to me. "I see you finally fit into your skirt."

"And she looks very smart in it, I might add," said Uncle Virg.

I lifted Jessie to better show off my skirt and started to say how much I liked it but she interrupted, carrying on about how Pendleton Wool came from Oregon and was some of the finest wool made in the whole United States--and that when I grew out of it I should preserve it in moth balls and save it for my own children because it would last forever. This was probably only the seventeenth time I'd heard this lecture. I vowed never to make my children wear Aunt Marion's skirt.

It was a short drive to the church. I loved going to church with Aunt Marion and Uncle Virg. Whenever we stayed over a Sunday with Aunt Marion and Uncle Virg-- which included the past three Christmases--we'd go to whatever service or gathering the church was having and be greeted like celebrities. On Sunday mornings, whenever it was a child's birthday week, they got to go up in front of the congregation during the offering and put a penny in the little ceramic, church-shaped bank. I always asked Mama for two pennies, one for me and one for the Christ Child, as our birthdays are only nine days apart. For my birthday that year Mama had gotten me a book called The Birds' Christmas Carol, by Kate Douglas Wiggin. It is about a little girl named Carol Bird who is bedridden and sickly, but was most certainly the nicest girl I would ever hope to meet. She was born on Christmas day so her parents called her their own Christmas Carol, just like Mama called me. I actually think Mama got the idea from the book, but that's okay, I wished I was Carol Bird, except for the part when she dies. Mama and I bawled our eyes out when we read that part. That was the book that made me love to read. It seemed so real. So, in honor of my new imaginary friend, Carol Bird, that year I asked Mama for three pennies to put in the offering. One for me, one for Jesus and one for Carol Bird.

The other thing I liked about the Greenwood Church was the shoes. I always made sure to sit on the end of the pew, nearest the isle, so when everyone went up to get the bread and the juice, I could see the different styles of shoes. I had two pairs of shoes, one for church and one for school. I usually went barefoot when it got warm in the summer. As I got older, what shoes I got for the next school year greatly depended on what I saw walking the isle at Greenwood Methodist. Our neighborhood church in Jamestown had a piano, and the pastor's wife played it in such a manner as made me want to march. At Greenwood, there was a pipe organ with a giant row of pipes all along the wall above the altar. The organ was stately and serious. It filled every corner of the sanctuary with thrones for the Holy Spirit. I could sing as loud as I wanted and never go off key. They also had a harp that made me think of magical wonders in heavenly places. Listening to it, if I closed my eyes, I could picture myself dressed in a white frock with wings lifting me up to sit right on Jesus' lap, like the pictures in the Sunday school room. On this particular Christmas day, after I had deposited my pennies, we were singing "Oh little town of Bethlehem," with the harp as the accompaniment. I looked up at Father sitting next to me. He wasn't singing, but he had his eyes closed and wore a thin, wide, smile. I wondered if he wished that he had a white frock too. He looked so joyful and different. I threaded my arm through the crook of his elbow and rested my head on him and listened. I held on tight to my father's arm, thinking I might lift right off the pew with all the joy I was feeling. The drone of the preacher's voice usually made me sleepy, but today was different. I couldn't think of anywhere I'd rather be. I didn't know it then, but this was the last time I would ever sit in church with my dad.

5

After church Mama announced that she and father would walk back to the house, and asked if  Aunt Marion and Uncle Virg would take me home with them. Aunt Marion tried to talk Mama into going downstairs to the fellowship hall for pastries and coffee, but Uncle Virg intervened and off they went. I ended up being the only celebrity and got all the attention, and two pastries. On our way home in the car we passed Mama and Father, but they didn't see me waving to them out the window. Father was talking with a serious face, and his hands were waving around like Mrs. Indellicati, the sausage lady.

Since we got home before them, I settled Jesse in her buggy and made several trips around the porch. Butch trotted along beside me as I promenaded. After the fourth time around, Butch retired to a temporary patch of sunlight on the front door mat. His little legs were plumb worn out. So on my next trip around I made room in the buggy and told him to lay down, but he had no intention of being my other baby. He propped himself up with his paws on the side of the buggy and enjoyed the view from his new perspective. The slatted boards of the porch made a bumpy noise and the vibration seemed to helped Jesse fall asleep. I was feeling a little tired too, so we stopped. I sat in the wicker chair on the side of the house and as soon as I was settled in, Butch jumped onto my lap and curled up for a little nap.

This house was grand, compared to our basement apartment. Aunt Marion called it her Victorian Beauty and said she never would move, as long as she could climb the stairs. She spent most of her free time in spring and summer in the yard and vegetable garden. After she went back to teaching at the College in the Fall, she spent weekends in September and half of October, canning the bountiful harvest of fruits and vegetables that she and Uncle Virg grew. When the canning was done she took to crocheting. She used a tiny hook and very fine cotton thread to made doilies, collars, lace and sundry other useful, if frivolous, creations. From each of the upstairs windows hung intricately crocheted curtains. When the windows were open, the fringe waved in the wind and made pretty shadows on the walls. Their house was fancy and breakable. I liked being outside more than in and my favorite part about the house, other than the porch, was the roof. It had five tall peaks and a turret over their bedroom that looked like a hat, topped with an angel blowing a trumpet. It was an easy climb up to the roof from the balcony off of the guest room, but I only went up there when Aunt Marion wasn't home. I liked being at Aunt Marion and Uncle Virg's house, I never felt like company.

Mama arrived back before Father did. She looked tired and her cheeks were pink from the walk. She took off her rain bonnet and sat in the love seat across from me and pulled the collar of her coat up around her neck.

"When you were a baby I used to wrap you up in a bunting and put you outside on the covered porch in your bassinet for fresh air, even in the winter," Mama said.

"Didn't I get cold? Weren't you afraid I would get sick?" I said.

"Nope, you had lots of blankets, you were nice and warm. I'd let you lay out there and cry and get mad so you would be good and tired by the time your father came home. You'd wail for five or ten minutes while you flailed your arms and legs around. It was good for your lungs. Then I'd bring you in with your face all red and wet and cuddle you up for a snack, and you'd sleep for a few hours, snug as a bug." Mama got up from her seat and started toward the kitchen door around back of the house. "It's probably getting time for dinner Carol. Let's see if Aunt Marion needs some help."

I got up and followed her with Jesse in the buggy, bumping over the kitchen threshold and into the steam of boiling potatoes.

"What can we do to help, Marion?" Mama asked.

Aunt Marion started right in, giving orders and delegating responsibilities. As usual I was in charge of the silverware.

Dinner was uncomfortable. Usually Uncle Virg told stories and shared remembrances of when he and Mama were growing up. Aunt Marion liked to re-cap the news headlines and offer her opinions and conclusions. Today it felt like they were quizzing Father on a chapter of a book he hadn't read.

"How's the job search, Gust?"

"Not so good, Virgil."

"What nature of work are you looking for?" Aunt Marion probed.

"Can't say. Carpentry maybe."

"There's a service station, Texaco I think, going in at the North part of Jamestown. You could see if they need any help," Uncle Virg suggested as he passed the peas.

"Could. Might build furniture." Father took a small spoonful, like he didn't deserve more.

"Well times are tough," offered Aunt Marion. "I've lost my assistant and they've given me a student volunteer. The girl doesn't know diddly about being a secretarial assistant. Can't type or file or answer the phone with any civility. She's more interested in the health of her cuticles than the pile of papers on her desk. How's your typing, Gust?"

"Don't type." His jaws pulsed, not from chewing but from clenching. He did this when he didn't want to talk about it.

I dove in to save him, "Wanna play checkers after dinner daddy?

"We'll see Peach" He didn't smile.

***

When Father went out for his after-dinner cigarette, he didn't come back. Aunt Marion wore a questioning furrow on her brow. Mama seemed relieved. Uncle Virg and I played checkers in the corner of the kitchen by the wood stove while Aunt Marion and Mama washed dishes.

The kitchen sink was under a set of double-hung windows that looked out onto the back yard and the creek beyond. Naked weeping willows hung over the muddy water, which ran swiftly on this dark, drippy, day. Mama was taking special care to clean off the dried gravy under the pour spout of the gravy boat. Aunt Marion dried the glasses with a special towel that had the word "glass" woven right into it. She held each glass up to the light of the window before she returned it to the paper-lined shelf.

"Virgil," said Aunt Marion, still drying and checking, and double checking, "why don't you and Carol go out to the parlor for a while. Make a fire if you want to, I think Jack Armstrong, the all American Boy, is on the radio."

"What is it you had in mind, Marion?" said Uncle Virg.

"Nothing a young girl and her Uncle would be interested in. Go on then. I'll be out shortly with dessert. Do you care for coffee Virgil?"

"Becher-life!" Uncle Virg said, and then looked at me with his Cheshire cat smile and bouncing eyebrows. "A little minty cocoa might be a nice libation for my opponent. We have a championship to play and the winner gets a double portion of chocolate cake." He winked at me and carefully raised the checkerboard from the table. We left through the kitchen door. It swung three times and rested in it's place.

"I'll be right back Uncle Virg," I said, and detoured to the bathroom.

"Don't hurry, I'll be planning my strategy," he chided.

Thanks to a large vent that allowed the wood stove heat to flow into the bathroom, I could hear everything Aunt Marion and Mama said from the kitchen. Consequently my trip to the bathroom lasted a little longer than I had intended.

"Virginia, what in the world is going on with you and Gust? There couldn't have been five words shared between the two of you during that entire meal, and he never did look me in the eye, not a single time."

Mama didn't speak right away. I imagined her staring silently out the window, past the creek and the trees, past the sky and rain clouds, and all the way back around to her heart. I was worried she would cry again. I couldn't do what I went into the bathroom to do. My stomach ached.

Finally the words churned through her lips. "He doesn't ...love me. I still love him, but he doesn't love me," she wept.

Aunt Marion growled. I heard the clink of coffee cups, the snap of the canister lid, and water running. Then the kitchen was quiet for a time.

Uncle Virg's voice came through the vent, "How's the coffee coming, sweetheart?"

"Bad timing," Marion barked.

The kitchen door swung three more times as Uncle Virg retreated. I stayed seated, rocking back and forth to calm the gurgling in my stomach. I looked out the window and traced the terminal branches of the oak tree with my eyes. A blue jay landed and enjoyed the bobbing of the branch for a few seconds before it pulled a piece of moss from a knarly twig and flew away.

When Mama's sobbing stopped, Aunt Marion asked, "Why do you think he doesn't love you?"

Mama's words came slowly, with a chesty tension that made it difficult for me to listen to, but I couldn't help myself. "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, rude or selfish. It is not easily angered and keeps no records of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. Love always protects, trusts, always hopes... always perseveres. Love doesn't come home on payday with liquor on his breath and no check. Love is there when your daughter is born and when your mother dies. Love knows the difference between working late, and carousing around with the bosses daughter."

"Oh dear God, Virginia," Aunt Marion said.

Both women wept.

"It'll be alright Marion, I'll be okay," Mama said. "He's moving out and I'm moving on."

"I'm so sorry. I had no idea. Virginia, you don't deserve this. What will you do? How will you get by? I need a secretary, how's your typing?"

"I'm an excellent typist, but that's not what I'll do. Carol and I will be fine, it's Gust I'm worried about. Seems the booze has sucked the life out of him, just doesn't act rational anymore. He's sad and puny most of the time and when he's happy it's because he has some grandiose pipe dream that's gonna bring our ship into harbor and set us up for life."

So, I knew a secret. We all knew a secret, for when I came out of the bathroom, Uncle Virg still had his ear up to the kitchen door. My father was more than a liar. My father had secrets too. I may have been only six, but I understood the story my mother told through her tears.

We each swept our four-way secret under the nearest rug, for the sake of the others, and continued to let it be Christmas.