Mrs. Price had some sort of surprise for them, that was clear, but she seemed torn between sharing her secret and hanging on to it a bit longer. Aldine was sure she would wait—it was Mrs. Price’s nature to nurse on deprivation—but a look of resolution came into her face. “Yes,” she said. “Why not?” She was smiling now, smiling at each of her children. “Okay then. Just wait here.”
After she departed the room, Mr. Price laid more wood on the fire. It was clear that no one knew what might be coming next, but in a short time Mrs. Price returned with a small wooden crate, which she set down in the middle of the room. Her face was beaming. She took up the lid—the nails holding it had already been loosened—and laid it aside. Then, after one more expectant look at each of her children, she slowly began withdrawing small gifts from the straw packing.
“How did they get here?” Neva shouted. “Where did they come from?” The poor girl was in a state of near hysteria.
“St. Nick,” Mrs. Price said, and Neva at once replied, “No. Tell me! Where did they come from?”
“St. Nick,” Mrs. Price repeated, “and if you ask again, I’ll send them back to the North Pole.”
A strange exalted vibrancy had taken over the room, and as Mrs. Price handed out the gifts one by one, each recipient in turn beheld the package, turning it in the hand and regarding it from all angles with such slow brimming expectation that it seemed ceremonious. When Charlotte lifted away the lid from her small box, she found a powder-holder music box that, once she’d wound it, played the first few bars of a stately sonata. For Clare, there was a pair of Carl Zeiss military binoculars; for Neva, a small straw-stuffed monkey with a silver rivet imprinted Steiff on the cuff of its green velvet waistcoat; and for Mrs. Price, a double-stranded pearl necklace. “Why, they’re . . . exquisite,” she said in a tender voice as she stared down at them draping over her hands. “But where in the world would I wear them?”
Neva announced that her monkey’s name was Milly Mandy Molly, then began poking around in the straw packing of the crate until satisfied that nothing else lay hidden there. “If Santa brought the presents, how come he forgot Daddy and Miss McKenna?”
Mrs. Price didn’t seem to hear the question—she was transfixed by the pearls—so Charlotte said, “Santa didn’t know Miss McKenna was here, Nevie. And he knows Dad isn’t the type for fancy gifts, are you, Dad?”
“No, I’m not,” Mr. Price said, and for the first time Aldine became aware of the stiffness that had come over him.
Mrs. Price couldn’t keep her eyes off the necklace. Charlotte couldn’t, either. “At least put them on,” she coaxed, and when with a nod she acceded, Charlotte helped her with the clasp before standing away so all could see.
“Oh, they’re truly lovely,” Aldine said, but wished she hadn’t because Mrs. Price’s expression, which had drifted, came back into focus, and she reached behind her neck at once to unfasten the clasp.
“Can I try them on?” Neva pleaded, and Mrs. Price, while tucking the pearls neatly back into their velvet-lined case, said, “You certainly may not.”
So Neva wound her sister’s music box.
“Beethoven,” her mother said, and Mr. Price said something so low nobody could hear it.
“What?” Clare asked and Mr. Price, looking up, said more emphatically, “Mozart.”
“He’s right,” Charlotte said, reading something from the box. “Mozart Piano Sonata number 16.”
Why the good cheer had gone out of the room, Aldine was unsure. But it had. The room was heavily quiet now. Hot and heavily quiet. Aldine pinched her robe away from her chest for air. Mrs. Price set aside the boxed necklace, rose from her chair, and started for the kitchen. The last time she’d left the room, she’d seemed buoyant; now she seemed wary and deliberate.
“Ellie,” Mr. Price said.
Mrs. Price stopped and in just that moment of turning, her expression grew hard.
He scanned the presents in the room before letting his eyes settle again on his wife. “How did this come about?”
Mrs. Price didn’t wait. She said, “I wrote him.”
A moment passed. “And what did you tell him?”
“What do you think I told him, Ansel.” This was not a question. Her voice was low and even. “I told him that we were up against it. I told him that we didn’t have a thing for Christmas just like we didn’t have a thing last Christmas and the Christmas before that.”
She looked as if she might have more to say, but he didn’t wait to hear it. He turned and with his lips tight and jaw working and eyes cast straight forward, he walked out of the parlor and through the mud porch and out the yard gate. To the barn, Aldine supposed.
The stillness in the house felt brittle.
Finally, in her smallest voice, Neva said, “We did, too, have Christmas last year. I got . . .” but the dead, cold look in her mother’s eyes checked the girl.
Mrs. Price turned then to Charlotte. “Kitchen,” she said.
Charlotte rose. Neva did, too. Aldine supposed she would help as well, but Mrs. Price’s eyes narrowed on her. “And you,” she said, and even more than hearing the words, Aldine felt the hatred pulsing bloodlike within them. “You go upstairs and put some decent clothes on your body.”
28
Clare sat alone in an empty parlor that, minutes before, had been brimming with people and presents and good cheer. But it hadn’t been trustworthy good cheer. They’d found that out. His father had pulled the drain plug from the room and now there was nothing left.
Clare slipped his military binoculars into their leather case. They were made in Germany by the Carl Zeiss company, the same company that made Charlotte’s fancy camera. He had prized the binoculars, but that feeling wasn’t trustworthy, either, because now he saw that the gift was part of an insult to his father. Clare didn’t snap the case closed; the sound would be too loud. He looked toward the kitchen, where his mother, Neva, and Charlotte were cleaning up without talking. Then they would be making things without talking. He’d been looking forward to the roasted pheasant but he knew that was all spoiled now. He stared out toward the barn, where his father had gone. A loose mist hung low, and everything else was brown and cold and hard outside. He checked the stovepipe that poked from the side of the barn. His father would be getting a fire started in the stove, he supposed, but there was no smoke yet.