Deborah takes the handle from Father Carl without looking at it, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. As Deborah climbs the stairs with his coat, Father Carl’s eyes go to the cords dangling from the spot overhead where there was once a light fixture.
“I saw circles and Xs on your body. Drawn with a marker. Why did you draw circles and Xs on your skin?” I ask heatedly.
“You’ve got a renovation going on, I see,” Father Carl booms.
“Oh, that’s been on hold for a while!” Deborah yells down. “This house is a bear. Too many diversions lately!”
Liv’s shoulders raise and her spine grows taut, like someone has lifted slack strings above her head. “Deborah says stick-style Victorians were high-concept houses. You can read the outside from the inside: eaves and trusses on the inside make shadows and voids on the outside. The sticks are decoration, meant to symbolize where the joints and posts are,” she says.
“We’re talking about you, not high-concept houses,” I hiss.
“The builders capitalized on the best resources of the era. If you live in a day and age when modern tools can make something more beautiful, it’s a sin not to use them,” Liv says.
The room is so cold, I think I see my breath.
“And she won’t spare any expense.” Liv turns and waves to Father Carl. “Father Carl! Come see. What should we do about Baby Jesus? He’s not supposed to make an appearance until Christmas Day.”
“Well, look there.” Father Carl comes in, squatting in front of the manger. “Very pretty. And God won’t hold it against you, Olivia, if Baby Jesus makes a premature arrival. Though I know some people like to keep him hidden until the day he was born.”
“I think that’s an excellent tradition,” she says.
Father Carl turns to me. “You’re Julia. It’s very nice to meet you, Julia.”
I give him a stiff, upright wrist wave, close to the belly. “Hi.”
“Olivia has told me so much about you,” he says.
Liv stays kneeling, staring into the manger, and says, “An excellent tradition, keeping him hidden. Because no one ever talks about the heartache that he caused. All those other babies who died on his behalf.”
Father Carl’s eyebrows rise into triangle tips. “Other babies?”
“Julia doesn’t know what we’re talking about,” Liv says. “Her mother is an atheist.”
I start to correct her, then stop.
“King Herod learned he’d been outwitted by the three wise men and ordered all boys in Bethlehem under the age of two to be slaughtered,” she continues.
“Be right down, Father!” Deborah calls from far away.
Father Carl pats his belly. “Well, that’s the biblical story, yes. I believe modern historians put the number at about twelve.” He spins on his heels to me. “Bethlehem was a very small town, you see.”
“King Herod was obsessed with his legacy. He built a lot of things, like fortresses, aqueducts, and theaters. Splashy, visible projects. Like the Temple of Jerusalem,” Liv says.
“You’ve certainly been keeping up with your Bible studies, Olivia.” He glances back to the center stairwell where Deborah disappeared.
“But he was also paranoid and bloodthirsty. Especially toward the end of his reign, as he was getting older. He even thought the plots against him were hatched by his own family. He killed one of his wives, Mariamne, and three of his sons: Alexander, Aristobulus, and Antipater. What kind of monster does that to his own family members?”
“Maybe we should eat,” I say.
“The thing is, no one would be sad when he died, and he knew that. That’s why as he was dying, he rounded up the leading men of Israel and threw them in the Hippodrome, ordering they be killed when he died so more people would mourn. A totally immoral monster, wouldn’t you say?”
Deborah rushes down the stairs with something in her arms.
“It’s no surprise that Caesar Augustus said, ‘It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son,’” Liv says.
Father Carl forces a laugh.
Liv forces a laugh back. “Funny, right? The joke, of course, is that since Herod was a Jew, he wouldn’t eat pork, so the pig would be safe.”
Deborah bustles toward Father Carl with a square box wrapped haphazardly in tissue with a pink grosgrain ribbon I recognize from a pillow on her bed. She gives me a sharp look that tells me she heard the sound of broken parts inside Father Carl’s gift, and if she didn’t have to be on her best behavior, I’d be toast. “And you’re all in the parlor. Perfect! And you’ve already been talking to the girls, so your counseling is done. Are you hungry, Carl? Because if you can wait, I’d love for you to open a small gift I got you.”