The Christmas Pearl (8 page)

Once again, the family relics rested on the dining-room sideboard with the sands, rum balls, and fruitcake. It did my heart good to see at least some piece of our family’s traditions restored. Getting back to the larger problem at hand, holiday food and old relics were nice, but I suspected it was the contents of the punch bowl that would matter.

We were gathered together in the living room, plac
ing last-minute gifts under the tree, listening to a medley of carols played by the Canadian Brass. Although the mood seemed festive, I was nervous, fretting about what the night would bring. Pearl must have read my mind because she brought me my cocktail on the same precious tray Eliza used. She gave me a wink and then turned to the others.

“Y’all want to try some punch? It’s an old Gullah recipe my mother used to make for special occasions. It’s good, ’eah?”

“Sure,” Barbara said. “Can the kids drink it? I mean, is it fortified with spirits?”

Pearl burst into laughter.

“Ms. Barbara?” She laughed again. “It’s perfectly safe for the children to drink. In fact, the more everyone drinks the better!”

Pearl could barely contain her unmitigated glee. I knew why she was in stitches. That punch was fortified by spirits, all right, but not spirits of this world.

“Probably better with some rum,” Cleland said, and took the bottle from the bar to his place at the table.

“That’s up to you, Mr. Cleland,” Pearl said.

I followed Pearl back to the kitchen.

“What kind of concoction is in that bowl?”

“We called it the Clean Slate punch.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, this ’eah family needs to wipe the slate
clean. If I was you, I’d stick to bourbon or ice water. Somebody might have to be the referee.”

Mystified by her explanation, I went to the dining room, where everyone waited. Teddie and George were the first ones to try it. It didn’t appear to have any special effect on them. Soon the others all had a cup and then another. Camille, given to excesses of all kinds, seemed to be serving herself more than double what the others consumed.

“This is so delicious!” she said.

I stuck with my cocktail and sipped it more slowly than I had sipped a drink in twenty years. Maybe longer. All I could do was worry about what was to happen.

Soon we were gathered at the supper table for she-crab soup, which would be followed by bowls of shrimp creole over white rice. We’d always had seafood for Christmas Eve dinner, and even though the children were not particularly fond of it, that night they did not balk or complain. Large baskets of Pearl’s light-as-air biscuits almost floated around the table on their own and more punch was served in lieu of water or wine.

However insincere it may have appeared to the outside observer, Cleland offered one of his feeble blessings, and we toasted the holiday and one another. I lifted my spoon and the meal began. At first the con
versation was benign enough, but soon I noticed that Camille had developed a little twitch. That bothered me and I hoped to steer the conversation toward a safe harbor.

“What do you want Santa to bring you, Teddie?” I asked, hoping she wouldn’t blow the night for Andrew.

“Clothes and stuff. I’m too old for toys.”

“I’m not,” Andrew said.

“And pierced earrings,” Teddie added.

“You’re too young for pierced ears,” Lynette said. Kindly note that Lynette had at least four holes in each ear.

“No, I’m not!”

“Well, your father thinks so,” Lynette said.

“It’s not necessary to stick holes in your ears,” George said. “What’s next? A tattoo?”

Bomb number one was to launch immediately.

“Well, it sure won’t say
I heart Dad,
” Camille said.

Teddie put her spoon down as her face fell. Frankly, I didn’t see why George felt that way about Teddie piercing her ears, but perhaps it was an attempt to delay her maturation in some way. Camille’s remark—well, I decided I must have misunderstood what she meant and I took the lead again.

“What are you hoping for, Andrew?” I said.

“A mountain bike. All my friends have them.”

The next little bomb dropped.

“If all your friends jumped off the Cooper River Bridge, would you jump, too?” This imbecilic, and hostile, cliché tumbled from the lips of who else? George!

“No, of course not,” Andrew replied. His brow wrinkled and he looked down at his lap, frowning, knowing that Christmas Eve or not, he was in unfriendly territory.

“Well, you could sure use the exercise,” Teddie said, and snickered. No one joined her. She blanched in embarrassment, but wasn’t she simply following her father’s lead?

“Know what? You’re a creep,” Camille said to George. “Will your schadenfreude cup never be filled? It’s bad enough that your little girl is…uh, uh,
sadistic
. Given who you are, it should come as no surprise to anyone that you are, too.”

Stunned, George clamped his mouth shut. Luckily, the remark flew right over Teddie’s head, or surely she would have started screaming to find herself called
sadistic
. And Lord! Schadenfreude? Did George really find delight in the pain of others? I had not heard that term in years! Perish that thought right to a waste bin!

“Would anyone care for more punch?” I said.

“Sure, Gran, thanks,” Camille said. “While we’re on the topic of stinkers…Daddy? I saw you at lunch today at Peninsula Grill.”

Cleland stammered around and finally said, “I was having a business lunch.”

“Sure. Monkey business.”

Barbara looked up at Cleland and then said to Camille, “Maybe we should talk about your daddy’s business
friends
another time. I think I would like some more punch. Will you get it for me, dear?” She held her cup out toward George.

“Sure,” he said, and got up. “Maybe one reason Dad has
friends
is that you act like the imperious queen of an ice castle.”

“I don’t think this is nice talk for Christmas Eve, George,” I said.

“It’s okay,” Cleland said. “I married her for her castle and she doesn’t care.”

Barbara’s face turned crimson and her eyes filled with tears.

“Cleland, I know what you do and where you go. It doesn’t matter. I have always loved you. I wish I could make you feel differently about me. And, I wish you would drink a little less.”

“You’re a fine one to talk,” Cleland said with a scowl.

“I’d drink, too, if I had a philandering husband,” Lynette said in a screwball defense of Barbara.

“You do have one,” Camille said, throwing another hand grenade into the evening.

“Oh, shut up, Camille. Why don’t you take your pill-popping bahunkus shopping and spend some
more
money!” George said.

“The stores are closed,” Lynette said.

“There’s always another day,” Camille said.

In the brain, off the tongue. I was terrified. I also realized if this punch was forcing them all to tell the raw naked truth, it appeared that only Barbara and Andrew had nothing to hide.

“Are you running around on me, George?” Lynette asked.

“I’m a man, aren’t I?” George turned to Cleland. “I learned it all from you, Pops. It took me three marriages and watching how indifferently you treat Mom to figure this out. You don’t have to love women for them to give you babies.”

“Really?” Lynette said.

“Yeah,
really
!” George said.

“You’re a disgrace and a coldhearted…I won’t use the word with the ladies present,” Cleland said to George. “But I think you know what I mean. Do you know what an embarrassment you are?”

“Me? Me a disgrace? I make five times the money you do! What have you ever accomplished in your life?”

Lynette stood up. “You don’t love me, George? Well, I’ve got news for you, Georgie. Merry Christmas! Teddie ain’t yours!”

“What? What? Daddy’s not my daddy?” Teddie started kicking the table and everything rattled and rattled.

The wind picked up, howling as it had last evening, and it seemed to me that the walls were undulating in anger and disgust.

“It doesn’t matter if he’s your biological daddy, hon,” Camille said. “You’re just like him anyway.”

“Yeah? Well, my daddy says the reason Andrew doesn’t have a daddy is that you’re a man-hater. Uncle Grayson left you because you wouldn’t stop shopping! And the reason Andrew is so stupid is because you’re on drugs all the time.”

“My mama is
not
on drugs and I am
not
stupid!” Andrew said, bursting into a geyser of very impressive tears. “How do you think life is for me? I can build the Chrysler building out of a box of LEGOs, but I can’t read the directions right to build a simple fort! Then, in class…kids laugh at me when it’s my turn to read, but I can recite almost word for word what I hear…sometimes I think I want to just die. Just die.”

“You don’t mean that, Andrew,” Camille said. “Please don’t say that.”

“Moron! Moron! Fat little moron!” Teddie said in a most obnoxious singsong.

“Shut up!” Camille said.

Lynette grabbed Teddie’s arm to quiet her. I began
to panic. What in the world was happening? This was terrible! They were saying such loathsome things that they would never forgive one another! Pearl was absolutely wrong.
Absolutely wrong!
With the toe of my shoe I pressed the buzzer under the rug at my place to bring her from the kitchen. Barbara had a buzzer, too, but perhaps she was too upset to use it. On top of it all, the windows were beginning to rattle, and I swanny to heaven, I thought this time they would shatter and come crashing to the floor for certain!

“Aren’t we a lovely family?” Camille said. She turned to Teddie. “Let me tell you something, you sassy little urchin of unknown origins, my son Andrew is not a moron. You are. And my husband never left me over money.”

Where was Pearl?

“I think…” I said.

“What?” they all said at once.

“I think y’all better stop all this hateful talk, right this very second, or you all will regret it later.”

Pearl appeared, and as you might guess, she snapped her fingers in the air. A sudden silence occurred. Everyone seemed to lose their voices and the desire to fight. Except for Barbara and Andrew, my family had once again proven that they were an odious lot. Were they in some hypnotic state? Undoubtedly! Was this progress? I didn’t think so.

Pearl placed a tureen on the sideboard and took away everyone’s soup plates. She returned and began to ladle out the she-crab soup.

“How’s it going?” she whispered to me when she came to my side.

“You know perfectly well…Pearl?
What
are you doing? This is the
worst
Christmas of my
entire
life. Please! Make this stop!”

I was hopping mad. Worse, although Pearl knew how angry I was, she had the gumption to smile at me. Worse still, she placed a box of tissues at both ends of the dining-room table because Barbara, Andrew, Teddie, Camille, and Lynette were all weeping in silence. George and Cleland’s faces were filled with alarm and consternation and I was on the edge of a crying jag myself. It was just too much. Every picture in the room went askew, and even in my peripheral vision, I could see that the Christmas tree lights had gone haywire, blinking at triple their usual speed.

“Hold steady,” Pearl said.

When she had served the last plate and refilled the cups with punch, she left the room. Everyone began to talk and eat, but it seemed they were in a trance.

“This is the best she-crab soup I have ever had in my life,” Barbara said.

“It is,” Cleland said.

“Yes,” the rest of them said.

It
was
absolutely delectable, but who cared about soup at that moment? I looked from face to face. Tears were flowing from the women and children, but they were eating so fast you would have thought it was their first meal in months. The men seemed to have been stricken with a kind of dark-eyed lockjaw but they were eating, too, as though they were completely famished.

There was no doubt about it; the punch had delivered them to some kind of altered state of mind. All their sins and secrets, or at least I
hoped
all their sins and secrets, were laid out in front of them.

Pearl reappeared and cleared the table. Silently she sliced the fruitcake onto dessert plates and added two rum balls, a sand, and a dollop of whipping cream to each portion.

When their dessert plates were empty, which was almost instantaneously, my family members began to rise, yawning and yawning, one by one. Cleland left the room, saying nothing. Barbara followed. Camille took Andrew by the hand; he grabbed a rum ball, fed it to her, and took one for himself. George looked warily at Lynette and then to Teddie. His bitterness seemed to melt like butter on a hot skillet. His expression turned blank as he yawned, his jaw dropping open to a size that could have swallowed Jonah
and
the whale. He put his arm around Lynette and took Teddie’s hand into his. Suddenly I was alone at the table.

I looked at my wristwatch. It was midnight! Where had the time gone? I pressed the buzzer under my toe again.

Pearl appeared out of nowhere with the small silver tray. On it was a small glass of blackberry brandy and another mint julep. I took my glass and she lifted hers.

“It’s Christmas, Ms. Theodora! Merry Christmas!”

“Are you
sure
about that?” I said. “Is it merry?”

“As sure as I have ever been about anything in my life or after…”

I had serious doubts.