The Christmas Pearl (3 page)

Enough of that! You can’t get from ninety-three to ninety-four sloshing around in self-recriminations, can you? And Cleland is not without merit. He certainly held enough chairs and doors for me to satisfy anyone’s
definition of a gentleman. It’s just that Fred and I had such high hopes for Barbara and Cleland and their children. I knew there was a basic goodness in them all; it was just that it seemed, well…what could I do to bring it out?

To preserve my sanity and bolster my spirits on a daily basis, I had developed my own routine to keep me not just young at heart, but also
young at mind
. I made it a point to inquire about Barbara’s well-being and how things were at the bank for Cleland that day. I read the newspaper every morning so that I had something to discuss at the table that evening. Each night after supper, at precisely seven o’clock, I indulged myself with a moderate measure of bourbon over shaved ice mixed with a little sugar syrup, garnished with a sprig of fresh mint. Yes, a mint julep in my favorite cut-glass tumbler, which is so well used it seems to me the edges are finally wearing away. You could set your wristwatch by its arrival.

Eliza, who was our modern-day version of a part-time partner in crime, as Pearl had been to my grandmother and mother, brought it to me with a small linen napkin and two cheese straws on a tiny silver tray, the one Eliza and I liked best. It had been passed down to me by my great-grandmother. While it wasn’t elaborate, it reminded me of more gentle days. Eliza liked the ceremony as much as I did. For me, it marked another
victorious day aboveground. For her, it was the beginning of her evening at home away from us.

No one could make mint juleps like Eliza, who had prepared one delicious meal after another for our whole family for the past twelve years. After eighty-something years in the kitchen, I hired Eliza as a treat for all of us. I could take it easy. My sweet Barbara had never been terribly imaginative or successful in the kitchen, even with shelves of cookbooks at her disposal. Like the younger generations say?
Not happening.
Barbara was a dear and we had Eliza to keep us nourished. It wasn’t that we couldn’t cook; it was just that Eliza was a trained chef. When Eliza was there, the house was a happy place. Besides, let’s face it. My social life was thin. My generation had been diminished to almost zero by the general calamities of living. I am probably one of the oldest people in Charleston! Can you imagine how very peculiar that is? Some days I can feel death all around me, so I feel some urgency to enjoy myself as much as I can within the boundaries of propriety of course.

Holiday decorations were not in Eliza’s job description. We accepted that. She did the grocery shopping, prepared dinner and supper, and cleaned up the kitchen. On occasion, Barbara used a cleaning service for the laundry and other general housework. But Eliza really gave the house the atmosphere we wanted.

Sometimes it seemed that I shared more secrets with Eliza than I did with my own daughter. She knew I valued her friendship and discretion enormously. Sometimes I would sit in the kitchen with her, but I wasn’t working. Frankly, the last thing I needed was to fall on a wet floor. What if I broke my hip? So for that reason as well, I was very glad to have Eliza in my employ. Every day she came to work she might have been extending my life.

Between us? For some peculiar reason she was the only one of our entire congregation who recognized and agreed with me about the general dissatisfaction and antics of the house. Maybe that extrasensory sensitivity was a side benefit of being an authentic Lowcountry resident. Who could say?

So these were my thoughts and it was Christmas Eve again. I was alone in the dining room, dressed in my favorite green knit dress and jacket that I wore during the holidays. On my left shoulder was the little emerald-and-pearl circle pin that had been Fred’s last gift to me. I touched it, remembering how he had smiled when he saw how thrilled I was by it, and how he pinned it to my shoulder. I waited for Eliza to arrive with my treat. I had to admit, I liked order and ritual more than ever. Habits surely contributed to keeping my beans together. The mint julep did not impair my tolerance level. In fact, it helped.

To be brutally honest, on this night of this particular year, everything was worse than ever. My heart was so troubled.

My family bickered across the hall in the living room as they decorated their so-called Christmas tree. I hesitated to join them. I simply didn’t want to be a party to their shenanigans. At least not without some fortification, as they were almost intolerable. I had dreamed about their attitude, had I not? Yes, I had. So many nights, I would see Pearl’s face in my dreams just shaking her head and wagging a finger at me.

There was my conundrum. I knew that the odds were that the Good Lord was going to call me home soon—no one lived forever. Except, I did not want to leave the earth with my family in its present state. What could I do? Who cared what an old lady thought?

“Here we are, Ms. Theodora! Just the way you like it!”

“Oh my! Thank you, Eliza!” I took the drink and the napkin and put the dish of cheese straws on the table. I motioned to the living room, where my family’s voices cackled like crows above the beautiful music of Tchaikovsky’s
Nutcracker
. “Listen to them, will you?”

We stood together, watching the lights flicker. Picture frames tipped to the east and west as we listened to them.

“They all need a good switching!” I said.

“They have always been like this,” Eliza said. “At least, since I’ve known them.”

“I think they’re worse.”

Well, there were a few blessings to count. Barbara and Cleland’s son, George the Complainer, was finally delighted about something. Nine months and two days after they married, his third bride, Lynette, who is from an unfortunate family of greatly lesser means and manners, had given him a daughter.

Their child, Teddie, had been strategically named for me in hopes that when I went to my great reward, theirs would be greater. She was barely ten years old, a little devil, and had been right from the cradle. George spoiled her absolutely rotten and rarely corrected her.

I’m sorry to say, Lynette was too intimidated by George to be an effective disciplinarian. In addition, she was so thin she could blow away in a strong wind. I think that Lynette’s weight was a direct result of George’s vigilance about every crumb that traveled to her mouth. The world would say he was a very shallow man and excessively concerned with her appearance. Ah, well. Poor Lynette. George just had to have something to control and poor Lynette was it. Lynette wore what George liked, vacationed where George wanted to go, and George had the pitiful wisp dripping in diamonds. Their Teddie would probably have been an adorable child if she weren’t the weapon they hurled
at each other when the winds between them blew foul. George was a wildly successful real-estate broker. On top of everything else, I was certain that his success caused some jealousy between him and his father.

Camille, at thirty-six, was separated from her husband, Grayson, and was patently jealous of Lynette’s jewelry and grander possessions. Their little boy, Andrew, who was a darling child, had suffered horribly from the separation. I would venture a bet that Andrew had a tutor for something or other every afternoon! Every time Grayson tried to exercise his right of visitation, Camille lit angry fireworks. It was very upsetting to everyone. She called Grayson such terrible names and said such vile things about him that I believed Andrew thought if he showed affection for his father, he was betraying his mother. And Camille really did baby him too much. It was just all so convoluted and wrong.

“They have everything in the world you could want,” I said. “It makes me want to cry.”

“I don’t know, Ms. Theodora,” Eliza said. “For some people, everything isn’t enough. You want me to get some coal to put in their stockings?”

I knew that Eliza’s little drop of levity was intended to keep my spirits afloat.

“If only coal would do the trick…” I sighed and looked at her. “Malcontents. That’s what they are. An
ensemble of malcontents.” I heard the portrait of my grandmother over the dining-room mantelpiece scrape the wall as it slid a little, and I stepped over to right it, giving her image a wink. I could almost hear her saying,
My poor dumbbells!

Just then, Eliza’s cell phone rang and she stepped away to answer it. I took another deep breath, a long swig, and went into the living room to see what I could do about the appalling way they were dressing the tree.

Where did all these new things come from? The tree’s lights were blinking so fast and crazy I could not imagine how they could see where to place any of the ornaments without going cross-eyed. On closer inspection, I could see that the older ornaments, the ones we had collected since before I was born, had been relegated to the back of the tree. The front was covered in some crazy-looking elves with long legs like spaghetti, fat rhinoceroses dressed up like ballerinas, and every other kind of silly thing the world could dream up to shake money from your wallet.

They must have seen the shock on my face.

Camille said, “What the matter, Gran?”

“She doesn’t like your wacky tacky glitter theme,” Cleland said bluntly without apology.

Silently I agreed with him. I thought the new decorations were absolutely in the worst taste imaginable, but I also realized that I was a very conservative, tra
ditional woman. Anyway, how could I be thrilled with a tree whose decorations, which represented more than a century of living, were shoved aside like an ugly blight?

True, it was still my house, but long ago I had allowed Barbara and Cleland to take over the day-today operations. I’m sorry and don’t mean to whine, but I waited all year to touch each one of those ornaments and to remember where they had come from or who had given them to us. Maybe it was overly sentimental of me. I was feeling very melancholy. And if I said anything about it, one single word, I would just be adding pepper to the pot.

My poor spineless daughter, Barbara, meekly said, “Well, the White House has trees in every room and each one represents a theme. So I imagine if you want a new theme, Camille, why would anyone object? After all, we
did
decide over Thanksgiving that Camille would be in charge of the tree this year.”

Quietly, I took a seat on the end of the sofa and decided again to hold my tongue. I did have the thought that I would not have put Camille in charge of making slice-and-bake cookies, which were another abomination of the immediate-gratification society in which we lived. She would forget the oven was on, leave the house, and it would burn down to the ground. After she burned the cookies, that is.

“Andrew is
such
a baby,” Teddie said to me in her
shrill voice from across the room. “He
still
believes in Santa Claus.”

She repeated this several times until I worried that Andrew would start to wail. He was only eight and his beastly cousin was trying to ruin his Christmas. Just as I was on the verge of giving that child a piece of my mind, Camille spoke up.

Abruptly, she covered Andrew’s ears and said, “Lynette? Can you please ask your daughter to stop?”

“Camille?” George said. “Why don’t
you
shut up? Go take something to calm yourself down.”

“Now see here,” Cleland said in a stern manner, and then his patriarchal stance evaporated like morning dew as he said nothing more, went to the bar, and poured yet another drink.

In my opinion, Cleland drank too much. Once he had been quite the charmer, but over the years, he had withdrawn into himself and away from the family.

Well, that was enough, so I stood up with the intention of turning down the music. This time I was ready to give them the lecture they had earned. But before I could reach the remote control for the stereo, I turned to see Eliza in the doorway of the room, dressed in her coat and hat over her apron. She was quite upset.

“Whatever is the matter?” I said.

“My daughter’s in labor…”

“But I thought the baby was coming in February,”
Barbara said, as though a baby had never been born prematurely in the history of humanity.

Oh Lord, no! I thought and sent up a silent prayer that she would be all right.

“The baby’s breech. That was my son-in-law on the phone. He says she’s calling loud for me!”

“Then you have to go!” Barbara said, redeeming every false start of her life, in my eyes at least. “Go and don’t worry!”

“Barbara!” Cleland said in a shout. “You can’t boil water! What about our dinner tomorrow and on Christmas?”

That was an example of the long reach of my son-in-law’s sensitivity.

“I called my friend Jewel,” Eliza said. “She says she’ll come and help you tomorrow and on Christmas day!” Then Eliza burst into tears. “Ms. Theodora? Can I see you outside for a moment?”

“Absolutely!” I said, and hurried to her side.

I followed her as she moved quickly down the hall and through the kitchen to the back door. Her car was parked in the gravel courtyard behind the house.

She said, “She—Jewel, that is—she’s kinda not so easy to get along with and she wants a terrible amount of money to do this job, it being Christmas and all. I’ll pay you back, but I’ve
got
to go be with my girl! Please…”

“Don’t you even think a thing about it,” I said. “Any problem you can fix with a handful of money isn’t a problem at all. Go! Scoot! Good luck and call me!” I was about to close the door when I remembered something and called, “Eliza!” I hurried down the steps to her and hugged her with all my might. “Eliza! You’re about to become a grandmother! What better or more spectacular Christmas gift could you possibly receive?”

I stepped away. Even in the pitch-black dark I could see her smiling through her tears. She waved, blew me a kiss, and said, “Oh my! Ms. Theodora! You’re right! Merry Christmas to you, too! Thank you!”

When I returned to the living room, I was to receive the next surprise of Christmas. Barbara was delivering a stammering lecture, and for once, Cleland was almost supporting her.