Another Life Altogether_ A Novel

Chapter SEVENTEEN



“JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE ALL THE WAY.” MY FATHER DANCED into the kitchen on Christmas morning wearing his brown wool dressing gown, paisley patterned pajamas, and red slippers. His hair, usually carefully combed in a vain attempt to cover his ever-expanding bald patch, hung in loose, jagged strands over his right ear. “Oh what fun it is to ride on a one-horse open sleigh, hey!” He stuck his hip outward and his hand into the air. Clearly, he was in good spirits and determined to inject our Christmas celebrations with an appropriate degree of cheer. I was considerably less jolly as I stood at the sink peeling what felt like an infinite quantity of potatoes. We were having them roasted and mashed to go with Christmas dinner. Mabel, Frank, and Granddad Bennett would be joining us, and I was preparing two five-pound bags to make sure there would be enough. “Merry Christmas, love,” my father said, stopping to plant a kiss on the crown of my head before dancing over to the cooker. “By heck, I could kill for a cup of tea. My mouth feels like the inside of a bloody birdcage. And, speaking of birds, how’s that turkey coming along, eh?”
The previous evening, while my mother had lain lifeless on the settee watching Val Doonican’s Christmas Show, my father and I had prepared the stuffing for the oversized bird, gratefully following the instructions from the recipe for roast turkey that Auntie Mabel had clipped out of a December issue of Woman’s Weekly and sent to us with the Christmas card signed by her and Frank. At seven o’clock that morning, my alarm had gone off and I’d got up to stuff the bird and hoist it into the oven. Now the turkey was roasting away in its massive roasting pan and I was basting it every half hour.
“It smells great,” my father said, dreamily sniffing the air as he filled the kettle with water. “When you grow up, you’ll make some man a lovely wife, Jesse.”
“I’ve told you before,” I snapped. “I am not getting married.”
He laughed. “That’s probably your best plan, love.” Leaning over the gas burner, he turned it on, struck a match, and leaped back when it burst into a ball of blue flame. “Bloody hell, another damn thing to fix,” he muttered, shaken as he brushed a few singed strands of hair that had been hanging perilously close to the gas burner back over his ear. “Anyway,” he said, putting the kettle over the flame and then searching the kitchen counter for the tea caddy. “You ask me, marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Certainly not the riding-into-the-sunset-happily-ever-after rubbish they make out, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”
He laughed again, but there was a sadness to it that made me wonder how many times he had regretted marrying my mother. I wondered also whether, given the chance now, my father would still choose to have me. But I knew the answer. My father’s ideal life would consist of a quiet house, an armchair, a television and a newspaper, and regularly but anonymously delivered cups of tea. If things went well, he’d get to watch the downfall and then humiliation of the royal family on the BBC. In that little cocoon, there wouldn’t be any room for a daughter who demanded his attention, who wanted more than he could possibly give. After all, he had so easily forgotten me the other night at the disco, and if Amanda and Stan hadn’t had that accident I would have been left to walk home completely alone in the dark.
“Of course, when I was young,” my father said, “that’s what you were supposed to do—get married. Never occurred to us to do anything else. But the world’s changing now. There’s lots more opportunities for you, love.” I saw my father as a much younger man—the young man he had been in his wedding photographs, dimple-faced with a full head of hair, grinning for the camera as he stood next to my mother outside the church after the ceremony. He had looked so happy, so full of hope. I wondered how he felt about that day now.
I brushed the thought away and tossed a peeled potato into the colander. “When are you going to pick up Granddad?” I asked.
“After Mabel and Frank get here,” he said. “Your granddad doesn’t like to wait for his dinner.”
“So when are Mabel and Frank coming, then?” I asked.
“About eleven o’clock. Mabel said she’ll take care of the cooking if your mother’s not up to it—which I can’t see that she will be, given the state she’s been in recently. I told Mabel I want to have the dinner on the table by half past one at the latest,” my father continued, taking a mug down from the kitchen cupboard as he waited for the kettle to boil. “That way, your granddad will be happy and I can be sure of seeing the Queen’s speech at three o’clock.”
My father loved the Queen’s Christmas speech. He’d probably never admit it, but it was one of the highlights of his Christmas—his annual chance to rant at the Queen, not just when she was waving from her carriage leaving Buckingham Palace or pictured having tea with some foreign dignitary but face to face as she addressed us in our living room.
I much preferred the perennial showings of A Christmas Carol. This year, it was being aired on BBC One on Christmas night, and I had circled it in bright red ink in the Christmas edition of the Radio Times. There was something about the transformation of Scrooge from miser and Christmas curmudgeon to generous humanitarian and jolly partygoer that I found irresistible, and I always got tears in my eyes when he raised the salary of his poor beleaguered clerk, Bob Cratchit, who for some reason reminded me of my father. But my favorite character was the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. I longed to be visited by a spirit like that, someone to tell me what lay ahead so I would know the worst to expect.
My mother finally came downstairs after ten o’clock. Though she had clearly made an effort to dress up, with a set of fake pearls around her neck, matching earrings, and a silver charm bracelet, she looked decidedly off-kilter. It was partly her dress, a silver-flecked outfit that resembled an oversized, stretched-out sweater, with an uneven hem that hung just below her thighs. Then there were the black seamed stockings and high-heeled silver sandals, which made me expect to see her put her hands on her hips and start kicking her legs in the air like a music-hall dancer. And finally the makeup, fiercely bright hues on her eyes, lips, and cheeks that made Mabel’s choice of cosmetics look minimalist by comparison. She looked ridiculous, like a child in dress-up clothes trying to imitate what she understood as adult sophistication.
“Are you all right, Mum?” I asked as she strutted into the kitchen, pausing to examine her reflection in the shiny curve of the kettle.
“Of course I’m all right,” she said, puckering up her lips, patting her hair, then turning toward me, beaming to reveal a smear of lipstick on her teeth. “Couldn’t be better. I mean, after all, it’s Christmas.” Her voice was high and overwrought. “Merry Christmas, love,” she said, sweeping me into her arms. “A merry, merry Christmas.”
“Same to you, too, Mum,” I muttered as she pressed my face into the mothball smell of her dress. I tried to sink into her, to relax into her embrace, but I felt stiff and prickly and, without really wanting to, I pushed her away.
“Oh, I see you’ve got the turkey in already,” she said in a disappointed tone, as if she’d been planning to prepare the meal herself and I’d beaten her to it. She flopped onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Any tea in that pot, love?” she asked, indicating the teapot that my father had filled earlier.
“It’ll be cold by now,” I answered.
“Oh, well, make another one, will you, love? You know me, can’t do a thing without my morning brew.”
Mabel and Frank arrived shortly afterward. They came bearing gifts. Three pounds of beef sausages, a box of Milk Tray, and a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry for my mother, a bottle of brandy for my father, and a book for me. My mother accepted the package of sausages from Frank without even a murmur of ingratitude and shoved it into the fridge. My father opened the bottles and offered Mabel, Frank, and my mother a drink.
“I’m not sure Mum should have anything,” I said softly as my father took the top off the Harveys Bristol Cream. I’d read the label on the bottle of pills he administered to her. There, along with the dosage instructions, it said very clearly: “Not to be taken with alcohol!”
“Don’t be daft, Jesse.” My father waved me away.
“But it says on her pills—” I said as I looked at my mother, who, having already torn the cellophane off the box of Milk Tray, had popped two chocolates into her mouth and was chewing loudly.
“It’s Christmas—everybody deserves a drink at Christmas,” my father said grandly.
“Oh, aye, you can say that again, Mike,” Frank agreed. “Nowt like a nice bit of booze to get the celebration started.”
I stood by silently watching as my father poured out a glass of sherry for Mabel and then for my mother. “Merry Christmas, everybody!” he toasted. The four of them lifted their glasses into the air, clinked them noisily together, then pressed them to their lips. Mabel, Frank, and my father took two or three fast little sips, while my mother swallowed the entire contents of her glass in one decisive gulp.
“I’ll have another one of them, Mike,” she declared, slamming her glass down on the kitchen table with all the gusto of a cowboy in a Wild West saloon. Playing the part of the cowed bartender, my father obediently filled her glass.
As soon as she’d taken a few sips of her sherry, Mabel commandeered the kitchen. “You’ve done a grand job, our Jesse,” she said, peering into the oven at the sizzling turkey. “But I’ll take over from here. It’s a real woman’s touch you want with your Christmas dinner, right, Frank?”
“Oh, aye,” said Frank, nodding sagely. “And, believe me, Mabel is definitely a real woman, one hundred percent.” He nudged my father and wiggled his eyebrows. My father responded with an awkward laugh.
I turned and made a prompt retreat to the living room. There, I curled up on the settee and examined the book that Mabel had brought me: The Girl’s Book of Heroines, a volume that was a little young for me, perhaps, but as I flipped through the pages I found it was filled with fascinating stories. Against the drone of my father’s commentary in the hall and on the stairs as he gave Frank another tour of the house, providing updates on his latest do-it-yourself accomplishments, I reveled in stories of the Virgin Queen, who never married despite being pursued by suitors far and wide; Saint Joan, who dressed in men’s clothing so that she could fight a war but was burned as a witch afterward; and Lady Jane Grey, queen for a mere nine days until she was deposed by Mary Tudor and sent off to the Tower of London to have her head chopped off.
Looking at the illustration of the tragic and beautiful Lady Jane Grey made me think of Amanda and what had been almost constantly on my mind since the night of the Reatton disco—the kiss that she had placed on my lips before we parted in the village. It wasn’t a long kiss, not like those lock-lipped, endless smooches that the girls and boys had been giving one another at the disco earlier. Nor was it like those open-mouthed kisses that the heroes of Sunday afternoon films planted on the lips of struggling and then suddenly limp-limbed women. And it wasn’t like the swirling kisses that Captain Kirk gave those female aliens. But that kiss by the village Christmas tree was the longest and softest kiss I had ever had. Not the fierce dry peck of my great-aunt June or the whiskery rub of my father or the oily lipstick smear that Auntie Mabel greeted me with. This had been my first real kiss. Tender, lingering, so that I could still conjure up that sensation of the unexpected softness of Amanda’s lips, the astonishing warmth of her mouth against mine in that freezing night.
Afterward, I had been unable to meet Amanda’s eyes, afraid of what she might see there. I longed for her to say something, a comment that might make it real. But when all she said was “Well, see you then, Jesse,” and turned to walk away, I wondered if I had imagined it. I stood a long time there in the snow and the silence, watching the meandering track of her footprints as if it were the only evidence of what had just occurred.
“Jesse! Jesse! For God’s sake, how many times do I have to call you?” It was my mother. She stood in the doorway, leaning loosely against the doorframe. “Are you deaf?”
“I was reading.”
“Well, a lot of good that will do, won’t it? Your auntie Mabel needs you to set the table.”
“Can’t you do it?” I asked, resenting her sudden intrusion.
“No, I can’t. I’m busy. I’m making the sherry trifle.” Her expression was even slacker than it had been earlier, and I guessed that she had probably consumed at least as much sherry as she had put into the trifle. “Come on, you’ve got to do your part, you know. This is a family dinner, after all.” As she turned, she hit her shoulder against the doorframe and reeled back a moment before she launched herself out of the room. I followed unwillingly.
“Are you all right, Mum?” I asked as she barged into the kitchen and knocked into the table.
“‘Course I’m bloody well all right,” she said, steadying herself with a palm pushed against the Formica before flopping down into one of the chairs. “Never been bloody better. Mabel, pour us another sherry, will you?”
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough, Ev?” Mabel said. “Enough?” My mother laughed. “Yes, I’ve definitely had enough. Had enough of everything, I have. Had it up to here.” She jabbed her index finger clumsily against her temple. “That’s why I could use another drink.” She laughed again. “That’ll wash the cares away—oh, yes it will. Oh, yes it will indeed.” I gave Mabel a beseeching look.
“Why don’t you at least wait until you’ve had some food in you, Ev?” she said. “It won’t be long until it’s ready.” She took a slurp from the gravy spoon.
“I’m not a bloody child, you know,” my mother said, slamming her hand down on the table, making it wobble from side to side. “You might have been able to boss me around when we were kids, but you can’t tell me what to do now.” She pouted and added, “Anyway, I have been eating. I’ve polished off them chocolates you brought.” The box of Milk Tray sat ransacked on the counter.
Mabel gave a hopeless shrug. “Oh, go on, Jesse, pour your mother another drink. At least it’ll shut her up while I get the rest of this dinner cooked.”
My mother watched me with narrowed, expectant eyes. “Go on, you heard your auntie Mabel,” she said, hitting the table even harder. This time it groaned slightly as it wobbled.
I poured about an inch of sherry into my mother’s glass and pushed it toward her. She looked at it scornfully, then heaved herself up, leaned across the table, grabbed the bottle, and filled the glass to the top.
Half an hour later, I looked out the kitchen window to see my father pull into the driveway and Granddad emerge from the passenger side. His gray hair was so shiny with Brylcreem that it looked wet, and as he crossed the front garden, swathed in an oversized black wool coat, he made me think of a massive sea mammal—a walrus or one of those elephant seals I’d seen on a BBC Two wildlife documentary—fearsome and inelegant, and ready to butt chests with anyone who got in his way. When he got within a few yards of the house, he stopped and appraised it. He didn’t seem impressed.
For a while I stayed in the kitchen while Mabel bustled around like a woman possessed. She stirred and agitated pans, put things in and pulled things out of the oven. Moving through clouds of steam, her face was damp and rosy, and her chest—revealed by the plunging neckline of her skintight orange sweater—was flushed a patchy red. I offered to help, but she brushed me away. And since my mother, now staring foggy-eyed and wordless at her empty sherry glass, wasn’t exactly my idea of good company, I left and wandered into the living room. There, while my father stared at a Bugs Bunny cartoon, Granddad and Frank were engaged in a somewhat one-sided discussion of the character-building merits of military service.
“I mean, just look at the state of youngsters these days,” Granddad said as I entered the room. “All them lads with hair past their shoulders. And the lasses, my God. When I was young, the lasses put some effort into their appearance. Not anymore—oh, no. Far as I can tell, they sleep in their clothes and never so much as run a comb through their hair.” He looked at me and shook his head disapprovingly.
I had on the same outfit I’d worn at the Christmas disco. And though it probably didn’t match Granddad’s antediluvian fashion taste, I had carefully ironed it the night before. I’d also taken care to brush and style my hair and had thought I looked quite presentable before I descended the stairs that morning. I opened my mouth to protest Granddad’s pronouncements, but it was hard to interrupt him once he was in a flow.
“This country, going to the dogs, it is,” he continued. “It’s all them hippies and peacenikers or whatever they call themselves. No wonder England’s in such a mess. Can you imagine it, if we’d been the same when I was younger? Hitler about to kick in the bloody door and us responding by growing our hair and preaching free love. We’d have all been speaking German and living on sauerkraut by now. I’ll tell you one thing, erm—” He narrowed his eyes and waved at Frank. “What’s your name again, laddy?”
“Frank. Frank’s the name and I—”
“Like I was saying,” Granddad interrupted, “lads need to look like lads. Need to act like them as well. Best thing you could do for them is give them a short back and sides and make them do their national service. Never did Mike any harm.” He looked over at my father and bellowed, “Did it, Mike?”
“What?” my father asked, still staring at the television.
“He said national service never did you any harm,” Frank said.
My father shrugged. “Bloody waste of time, you ask me.”
“Eh? What did he say?” Granddad asked.
“He said he thought it was a waste of time,” Frank repeated, louder. “I never felt like that, mind. Too young to serve in the war, I was, but not too young to serve my country. I—”
“Should be proud of serving your country,” Granddad said, scowling at my father. “If you’d appreciated your time in the army, maybe it would have made more of a man of you. See, our Brian … Did I tell you about our Brian, erm—” He waved vaguely toward Frank.
“Frank, the name’s Frank,” he said, a strain of irritation in his voice.
“Right, Frank.” Granddad repeated. “Well, Frank, did I tell you about my lad Brian? Grand lad, he was. Now, if he’d had a chance he’d have served his country. But killed, he was. On his eighteenth birthday.” Granddad breathed a heavy sigh, shook his head, and folded his arms over the huge curve of his belly.
“What, in the army was he?” Frank ventured.
“He was a football player,” I chirped. “He was run over by a delivery van.” For some reason, I enjoyed supplying this particular item of information.
“Oh, aye,” Granddad said. “Terrible it was. Best bloody football player you’ve ever seen. And if his life hadn’t been snatched away from him so young there’s no doubt he would’ve played on the national team. Lad like Brian, he’d have gotten the England squad out of the bloody doldrums. He wouldn’t have let us lose three nil to the bloody krauts.”
At that moment, the door burst open and Mabel propelled herself into the room. “Right, then, lads,” she said, breathless. “I hope all this sitting around has worked up your appetite because your dinner’s ready.”
As if on springs, both Frank and my father bounced to their feet and followed Mabel into the kitchen. I launched myself after them, leaving Granddad, who continued to extol Brian’s football-playing skills, muttering behind me in the hall.
Once assembled, we all sat, a cramped little bunch, elbows touching, around the piles of steaming food on the kitchen table. I had covered it with a big white tablecloth and had managed to make it look quite festive, with holly-patterned serviettes. In an effort to enhance the party atmosphere, my father had unearthed a box of Christmas crackers that Ted had given us on one of his previous visits. At some point, apparently, the crackers had been stored in the sun so that, on one side, the colors on their crepe-paper coverings were washed-out and streaky. The fatigued colors gave our gathering a rather sad air. Like the crackers, my mother looked as if she had passed her prime. No longer gleefully drunk, she sat glum and barely verbal, staring down at her empty plate and playing with the edge of the tablecloth, as a nervous guest might, wrapping it between her fingers and around her hands.
“Cheer up, Evelyn,” Frank declared, knocking against her with his shoulder. My mother flinched slightly and glowered at her plate. “Crikey,” he muttered to Mabel. “Doesn’t seem like I can do a bloody thing right.”
“It’s all right,” Mabel said, lowering her voice to a whisper, as if my mother wouldn’t be able to hear her across the tiny table. “She’s just in one of her moods, that’s all. She’ll get herself out of it, you’ll see.” I was glad for her optimism, but I wasn’t so sure. I’d seen my mother like this before, and it seldom ended well.
“Some people, they don’t know when they’re onto a good thing, really, do they?” Granddad pronounced, unfurling his serviette, tucking a corner into his shirt collar, smoothing the rest over his chest, then picking up his knife and fork. Not known for his willingness to stand on ceremony, Granddad was apparently eager to get started on the food. “Most women—well, they have to make Christmas dinner themselves, don’t they? Don’t have a loving sister like you to come in and make everything for them, do they now, Mabel?”
“I helped,” I said. “And Dad. We made the stuffing, and I peeled the potatoes. It took ages.”
“Aye, well, there’s some men what would think it’s a wife’s job to take care of all that,” Granddad said, pointing his knife at my father. “Your mam, God rest her soul—well, she would never have expected me to help out in the kitchen. Oh, no, a woman’s job, is that.”
“Maybe women don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen, maybe they want to do other things instead,” I said.
“See, I told you, didn’t I?” Granddad said, giving Frank a knowing look. “Listen to it, the voice of the younger generation. Don’t know what the world’s coming to. I tell you, young lady, the way you’re talking there’s no man will want to marry you.”
“Good,” I said decisively.
“Now, now,” said Mabel, “it’s Christmas, remember. No time for disagreements. And, besides, we need to tuck in—it’s getting cold.”
“You’re right there, Mabel. But before we start noshing,” my father said, his voice booming with false jollity, “why don’t we pull our Christmas crackers? That’ll be a lark, now, won’t it?” He looked hopefully at my mother. She did not respond.
“What a lovely idea,” Mabel said.
“Come on, Ev, pull a cracker with me, won’t you?” my father said. My mother said nothing and merely worked her fingers more fiercely into the tablecloth.
“Will you pull mine with me, Dad?” I asked, picking up my Christmas cracker and holding it across the table so that my father could take the other end.
“Of course, love,” he said. I took the crepe-paper ruffle of the cracker in my hand and searched with my fingers for the cardboard strip inside. “All right, now, let’s give it a good tug, eh?” my father said. We both reached across the table, pulled hard, and the cracker tore apart, sounding its short, sudden bang. My father and I burst into laughter, but my mother, who had been steadily staring down at the table, still entranced by her empty plate, hadn’t anticipated the noise, and, jolting with shock, leaped from her chair, gripping the edge of the table and pressing all her weight against it.
The table creaked, shifted slightly to one side, then to the other. All of us watched with held breath as it performed this gentle wobble and the plates, cutlery, and food in front of us wobbled with it. Then, as my mother let go and reeled backward and the table seemed to right itself, we all let out our breath in relief. But, with that collective exhaled breath, the table creaked again and shuddered as two of its legs buckled outward from under it and the entire thing toppled sideways, falling hard against Frank and knocking him from his chair as it made its fast and inevitable journey to the floor.
The plates, food, and everything else that had been on the table were hurled around the room in a deafening cacophony of clattering metal and shattering china. Frank, sprawled on the floor next to his chair, shrieked as the gravy boat landed on him, spilling steaming turkey gravy into his lap.
For perhaps a second, the rest of us sat there stunned and I had the sensation of sitting within a frozen tableau, watching from some outside viewpoint: my father white-faced and open-mouthed; Mabel, a palm pressed hard against each of her cheeks; Granddad, a bemused frown on his face as he held his knife and fork expectantly aloft; while I looked over at my mother, horrified, and she stared at the collapsed table, her face a picture of dazed bafflement. And, as I observed the scene, I wondered why I hadn’t been able to prevent this calamity. I’d known my mother shouldn’t drink, and I’d witnessed the precipitous decline of her mood. I’d even seen how the kitchen table hadn’t seemed as steady as it should have when she slammed her hand down on it earlier. If I’d been brought to witness this chaotic scene by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come a couple of hours before, I would not have been surprised. Like Scrooge, I might have asked if this version of the future was inevitable or if I could make different choices that would change the outcome. But now it was too late. And, as the turkey, which had fallen off the table to balance precariously on Frank’s vacated seat, dropped to the floor with an enormous thud, that frozen moment was ended and I was no longer distant, observing, but fully occupying my horror.
Everyone began to move. Frank scrambled to his feet and half hopped, half ran over to the sink, where he began frantically dabbing at his trousers with a wet cloth. Mabel jumped up and dashed over to help Frank, Granddad loosed his grip on his knife and fork and let them clatter to the floor, and my father, speaking through clenched teeth, said, “Jesus bloody Christ, Evelyn, you’ve gone and done it now.”
“Are you all right, love?” Mabel said as she reached Frank.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” he said bitterly. “Of course, I may never have a normal sex life again.” He looked, incensed, over at my mother, who had backed away to the kitchen counter and slid down to the floor. She sat there, legs folded under her, shoulders sunken, as if she had crumpled.
“I’m sure you’ll be all right, love,” Mabel said, grabbing another wet cloth and starting to dab at Frank’s trousers herself. “Just a bit of gravy.”
“Gravy? More like frigging molten oil. It’s not right, Mabel. I come here for Christmas dinner and I end up losing my bloody manhood.”
After his first muttered comment, my father had remained silent. But now, as I looked at him, I realized it would not be for long. He stood up slowly, visibly shaking, the muscles in his face tensed. His hands were clenched, white knuckled, with one fist still wrapped around the remnants of the Christmas cracker we had pulled. He spoke softly at first, glaring down at my mother as if his eyes could burn right through her. “You have to spoil everything, don’t you?” he began. “Bloody everything. Can’t bloody well stop yourself, can you?” Gradually, his voice became louder, his words faster. I felt myself pressed against my chair, as if I had been slammed there by a wild and irresistible gale. “We can’t even have a bloody Christmas dinner without you causing chaos,” he continued, while my mother looked at him, her face pale and expressionless. “If it’s not one thing, then it’s another. I mean, what more do you want? I try my best. I bloody well do. I go out to work every day. I come home and I try to fix up this bloody house. I put up with your moods—your bloody ups and your bloody downs, your crying fits, your screaming bloody rages, your bloody weeks in bed. I take you to the doctor’s. I try to play the nice bloody husband. The caring bloody spouse. Hah!” He let out a short, sour laugh, shaking his head as if laughing at his own stupidity. “But nothing works, does it, Evelyn? Nothing ever does. And what I want to know is, what is wrong with you? What the bloody hell is wrong?” He was yelling now, but he stared at my mother imploringly, as if he really expected a response. His question hung in the air between them, the force of his words and his need for an answer filling the room. My mother dropped her gaze to the floor and began running an index finger along the zigzag pattern in the shiny linoleum my father had laid a couple of weeks before. My father sputtered and turned away. “I don’t know why I bother, I really don’t,” he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head so slowly that it was as if he could barely move it for all the misery it held. “I mean, what’s the bloody point?” Then he scowled over at my mother again. “Are you bloody well listening to me?” he yelled. My mother flinched, as if a sudden shock had coursed along her spine, but she did not look up. “Might as well not waste my breath.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mabel, Frank, Dad,” he said, his voice suddenly soft and utterly defeated. “I really didn’t mean to spoil your Christmas like this.” Then he looked at me. “I’m sorry, Jesse, love,” he said. His face looked as worn out as I had ever seen it, his skin pale and sagging, as if, after finding the energy for all this anger, the muscles beneath had lost all their strength. “Sorry, love,” he repeated, “but I’ve got to go.” He turned away and began walking to the door. Halfway across the room, he realized that he was still holding the ragged remainder of the Christmas cracker. He paused, lifted it up and looked at it for a moment, then threw it to the floor. Then he walked out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and out the front door.
AFTER MY FATHER LEFT, Auntie Mabel and I bundled my mother up the stairs and into her room like a heavy sodden sack. She fell onto her bed, pausing only to kick off her shoes before clambering under the covers, resisting both my and Mabel’s efforts to make her undress. Within a minute or so, she had fallen asleep, her breaths coming out in soft, chortling snores.
I ate my Christmas dinner on my lap in front of the television with Granddad, Frank, and Mabel—a plate of salvaged turkey, stuffing, Brussels sprouts, and mashed potatoes, all of it cold and rather dry without the benefit of any gravy. Frank had apparently found a pair of my father’s trousers to change into. They were far too big and hung around his thin hips in huge folds. A belt kept them from falling to his ankles when he stood up.
“Well, I don’t know about you three, but I could do with a cup of tea,” he said, still chewing on a final Brussels sprout, his teeth flecked green as he spoke.
“Ooh, yes,” declared Mabel. “That’ll do the trick. Thanks, Frank.”
“Aye, tea would be nice,” Granddad said. “Would be nicer with a bit of Christmas pudding, though.” He looked meaningfully at Mabel.
“You want Christmas pudding, Harry, you’ll have to make it yourself. There’s some sherry trifle in the fridge that our Evelyn made, but last time I looked at it, it didn’t look like it was going to set.”
Granddad turned and scowled at the television. “Should have stayed at home and ordered bloody Meals on Wheels.”
Frank carried his and Granddad’s plates to the kitchen while Mabel pushed hers onto the arm of the settee, lit a cigarette, and began flicking her ash into a pile of uneaten mashed potatoes. “I honestly don’t know where your dad’s gone,” she said, leaning forward and craning her neck to look out the window, as if she might see him lurking in the front garden. “A bit daft taking off like that, if you ask me. Don’t you worry yourself, though, darling,” she said, reaching over to pat my knee. “I expect he’ll be back when he gets hungry enough.”
A loud crash came from the kitchen. “Ooh, heck,” said Mabel. “I hope Frank’s not broken any more dishes. You’ll be lucky if you have any left, the rate things are going today.” She took a final puff on her cigarette, then dunked it into the pile of mashed potatoes on her plate. “Do me a favor, can you, Jesse, love, and go and give him a hand?”
I got up to make my way to the kitchen, quickening my stride when I heard another crash. When I got there, Frank was on all fours by the kitchen counter, picking up the pieces of a broken cup and saucer, his scrawny backside shrouded in my father’s pants. “Bit of a clumsy dollop, I’m afraid. Flew right out of my hand, they did. You mind giving us a hand down here, love?” he asked, crawling across the floor with all the agility of an arthritic baby. “Can’t say I’m as nimble as I used to be. Not after I put my back out at work last year.” He groaned as he reached toward a shard of china. “I’ll have to have Mabel rub some liniment on me after this. What with your mam spilling boiling hot gravy on my bloody privates, I feel like I’ve been through a war and not a Christmas dinner. Things always like this at your house?” He sounded jovial enough, but there was a prickly undertone.
“Only sometimes,” I said as I knelt down beside him and began gathering the shattered pieces of the cup.
“Mabel said your mam tried to knock herself off. Cut her wrists in the bath.”
“Yes,” I said softly. He had stopped picking up the pieces now, and I could feel his eyes on me.
“Carted her off to Delapole, didn’t they? Kept her in there awhile.”
I felt the color rise in my face. I hated that Frank had this information about my mother, and I felt a flare of anger at Mabel for telling him this shameful fact. Frank had no right to know. And he had no right to bring it up.
“Yeah, well, she’s always seemed like a bloody nutcase to me. No wonder your dad cleared off. Though God only knows why he put up with her until now. Those things tend to run in families, you know.”
I reached for the cracked-off curve of the cup handle that lay next to Frank’s knee. As I did, he put his hand on top of mine. I tried to pull away, but he pressed his hand down hard, pushing my palm against the sharp edge of the broken cup handle. I winced at the sudden burn of pain and looked into his face. He was still smiling, his narrowed eyes glinting like deep-set jewels. “Get off,” I said.
He pressed down harder. “So, are you a nutcase like your mother?”
“No.”
He held my hand down, and the cup handle’s serrated edge cut deeper into my skin. “Good, because I wouldn’t want to get myself too involved in a family full of crackpots. I mean, Mabel’s all right, but a man can’t be too careful. And that bloody mother of yours—”
“Let go,” I said, trying to pull my hand away again. But I was pinned. The world narrowed to the sharpness of the pain and Frank’s growling voice.
“Frigging humiliating, not to mention the real harm she could’ve done. I’ve never been one to put up easily with being made a fool of. But by a bitch like that, well—”
“Frank! Frank!” Mabel was shouting from the hallway. Within seconds, the kitchen door swung open. “Where’s that—For God’s sake, what are the two of you doing down there?”
As soon as he heard her voice, Frank let go of my hand to begin picking up pieces of broken china from the floor. “Oh, hello, love,” he said. “Jesse here was helping me pick up a cup and saucer I dropped. Silly butterfingers me.” He barked a throaty laugh.
“Well, me and Harry are still waiting for our tea.”
“I know, love. And I was just about to bring it in.” Frank reached up to grab the edge of the counter and slowly eased himself to standing. As he did so, he pressed a hand into his lower back. “I think I’ve done myself a right injury down there, I have.”
“Should take more care with the dishes, then, shouldn’t you? Men,” Mabel said, rolling her eyes at me. “They can’t even make a pot of tea without creating a bloody crisis. I say, love, what happened to you?”
I realized my hand was bleeding, the blood seeping across the bright shine of the new linoleum.
I looked up at Frank to see him staring at me, the skin at the edges of his eyes puckered and his eyelids fluttering slightly, as if he was trying to contain his rage. I thought of telling Mabel what he had done, but I felt the weight of that look. I didn’t want to provoke him into more meanness.
“It’s all right, Auntie Mabel,” I said, holding my palm upward so that the blood rolled in a thin stream over my wrist and down my arm. “It’s just a little cut. It will heal.”