Actually, he’d forgotten what high interest his credit card charged. He was working extra hours now just to pay the minimum. Every time he found himself putting another sack of pancake mix or a shovel on the credit card, he told himself that after Y2K the credit card companies would be so messed up by confusing 2000 with 1900 that chances were his statements would get lost. The credit card companies would vanish, the banking system, crippled, would go back to swapping gold bricks. There would be no telephones, televisions, energy companies, no automobiles except old beaters without computerized engines, no gas pumps, no air traffic, no satellites. He would communicate by radio. He’d had an amateur’s license for years. Already, at night all December, he had tense conversations with his contacts all around the world. Every morning, he woke and jotted down another item on his list. On the weekends, he took Maggie and LaRose with him to purchase a ream of paper, a case of envelopes. Pencils and pens. Stamps. Would there be an old-fashioned ground mail system? Probably, his contacts said. The storage room was jammed. Nola didn’t notice because she was busy cooking those damn cakes.
Those chickens could have lived for months on the stale cakes, Peter thought. Nola smoothed rich frosting over sheet cakes, layer cakes, Bundt cakes, then carefully decorated each with LaRose’s or Maggie’s name. Even the children had now stopped eating them. He’d rescued the cakes and stored them in the unheated garage. When the local high school was renovated, he’d salvaged things he could use. It almost made him smile to look at the row of tin lockers and realize that behind each numbered door, on the narrow top shelf, there rested a pastel cake.
THE PARENTS DIDN’T want it, but Christmas came for both families. Nola woke a week before the twenty-fifth, picturing her heart as a lump of lead. It lay so heavy in her chest that she could feel it, feebly thumping, reasonlessly going when she wasn’t interested in its efforts. But Christmas. She turned over in bed and nudged Peter—she resented that he could sleep at all.
A tree, she said. Today’s the day. We have to decorate a Christmas tree.
Peter opened his eyes, his bright, dear, blue eyes that never would belong to another child. The boy had come out true to both of them, the best of each of their features, mixed, they had marveled. The framed photographs were still arranged across the top of the dresser. Dusty still ran in the sun, posed as Spider-Man, played in a wading pool with Maggie, stood with them all in front of last year’s Christmas tree. Nola found comfort in the pictures but closed her eyes now so that she would not see the likeness in Peter. To distract herself, she started humming, switched thoughts to her daughter. The thought of Maggie was complicated, sometimes alive with love. Sometimes heart-thumping fury. Maggie looked like her tough, impervious Polish grandmother or like her wild and devious Chippewa auntie. Those slant gold eyes that went black in her head when she was angry. That kind little startling crooked grin.
Nola’s gentle humming was encouraging to Peter. It was a thing she used to do. He reached out and stroked her fingers. Maybe?
I can’t, she said. Still, he kept asking either outright or with a touch.
I’ll take the kids out.
He had a chain saw, he had three chain saws. They were all big brute chain saws overqualified for cutting Christmas trees. All he needed was a handsaw.
In fact, he said, sitting up in the chilly room, the handsaw with the red handle. We’ll each take turns sawing down the perfect tree. He pictured it and he was surprised that it was even possible. But it was possible for him to get out of bed and do this thing that he’d done last year with a boy who had worn Maggie’s hot-pink Disney Princess parka because his parka was in the wash. Dusty’d had so much confidence. When Maggie mocked him by calling him her little sister, he struck a Gaston pose and made Maggie laugh. She used to have a laugh like little bells.
It had changed, Peter thought. Her laugh had become a jeer, a bark, a series of angry shouts, an outburst. She laughed now when things were sad, not funny.
OUT IN THE woods, in the scant snow and from a distance, Landreaux saw the three examining small spruce trees. He retreated. He had been checking snares, not looking for a tree. But when he saw them he remembered.
Well, said Emmaline, yes. We should.
I want a tree with white lights, said Snow.
Let’s get out the colored lights, said Josette. White’s too blah.
I like uniformity, said Snow. Everything else in this house is mixed up.
Hey, said Emmaline.
No offense, Mom, but a tree with solid white lights. It would be pretty.
Let’s cut two trees then, said Emmaline.
Really? You mean really?
Little ones.
By the end of the day two small trees were set up in a corner of the living room, one decorated by each sister. For the first time, Emmaline didn’t make the slightest effort—the sisters were competitive. They made ornaments from sequins, ribbons, powwow regalia bling, and LaRose’s Play-Doh. They had never wrapped presents in wrapping paper. They used magazines, colored newspaper, shopping bags. At some point, though, everything stopped and the girls started crying. Coochy rolled his eyes and glared, then stalked out. Hollis made a strategic exit to the boys’ room. Landreaux went to work early, and Emmaline was left stirring a pot of stew. Because of LaRose.
This exact thing had happened every week or so since Landreaux and Emmaline had explained to the other children what they had done.
In the boys’ bedroom, Hollis plugged in his blow-up air mattress and turned the dial to inflate. For a minute or two, the high-pitched whine blocked out their voices. When the mattress was plump and comfortable, he lay back and shut his eyes.