The Used World (28 page)

Or maybe she wasn’t lying. Maybe Caroline’s honesty, which seemed incontrovertible in all other situations, was at the heart of this story, too, and Hazel could not read it. The Elks Club, the Cardinal Golf and Country Club, the awful Cannadays in their new, sprawling ranch house: this grim world of commerce and conformity and the Jaycees’ Prayer Breakfast—maybe Caroline was up to something genuine in those places, and was not worthy of Hazel’s latent contempt. Or so Hazel hoped.

Hazel lay on the bed in the husk of Edie’s nursery, idly watching the only television in the house. There had been one Christmas special after another:
Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol,
followed by
Cricket on the Hearth,
and then the new one,
The Little Drummer Boy.
What Hazel needed was either the mindless spectacle of
Shindig
or
Laugh-In,
or
60 Minutes.
She heard a peculiar sound, the sort that might be coming from inside one’s own head or might be coming from some distance. She sat up, listened more closely. Nothing. Beside her, Mercury slept curled in a ball, one paw hooked over his cheek, covering his left eye against the television light. The noise came again, and Mercury raised his head. Hazel stood and turned off the television. Something was coming down the lane, but without lights and with no motor. As Hazel slipped on her shoes she heard it: a tinkling, or singing. No—there were no voices.

She turned right in the hallway, took the formal staircase two steps at a time, causing the portraits of the elders to quake. In the vestibule she wrapped her neck in one of Finney’s scarves, pulled on her hat and coat, stepped out onto the porch.

A team of black horses was headed toward her in the moonlight, their necks heavy with bells. They were pulling, with artful ease, a black sleigh over yesterday’s snow. Hazel closed the door and walked down the steps as the driver of the sleigh pulled back on the reins and the horses stopped. Jim Hank leapt to the ground, wearing his peacoat and a top hat, and Finney jumped out behind him, bedecked in a moth-eaten prom dress, her father’s ratty old fur, and a hunter’s cap with earflaps.

“Merry Christmas!” Jim Hank said, bowing beside the horses, whose muscles flickered beneath their skin.

Hazel covered her mouth, felt a sheen of tears grow cold on her eyes.

“Merry Christmas, Miss Hazey May!” Finney clapped her mittened hands together. “We did this for you, for Christmas!”

They were like children, and Hazel, too, felt childish, unhinged. The night was starlit and beautiful after yesterday’s tree-creaking snowfall, and she was breathing in the air, the scent of the horses. Her eyes traveled over the feminine lines of the sleigh, the light glinting off the bells and the formal tack. “How did you do this?” She reached out and rested a hand against the neck of the nearest horse, who raised and lowered his head.

“I rented it from Trockler’s Mortuary!” Jim Hank seemed barely able to stay in his skin. He ran his hands over the sleigh, patted a horse on the rump. “I rented it for you. Finney and me were thinking”—Jim looked at Hazel with the shyness she thought he’d overcome years earlier—“that maybe we could ride down the Old Road and around the meadows, to say Happy Chris—Happy Holidays to you, you know.”

Hazel held out her hand and let Jim Hank take it, and for the rest of her life she would remember snapshots of that night, the edges of herself against the air, the horses so graceful they might have been mechanical. But she would remember nothing as clearly as that moment, her hand in Jim Hank’s worn leather glove, the way he helped her into the carriage and Finney slipped in the other side, the way the three of them were warm and happy, pressed against one another. The horse’s hooves measured out their music against the ground, and Hazel and the two great loves of her life were moving away from the house, past the corncrib, the flatbed wagon, turning past the fire ring and the barn where the ghost of her cruel pony thrashed against his stall. They were at the top of the curve and Hazel could see all the way to the bottom, the horizon where the line of virgin timber rose up and up against the sky. She followed the birch tree to the top without thinking, and saw the owl there, not leaping off the branch like a man who had convinced himself he could fly—just sitting there. Then Jim Hank cracked the reins and they were heading down the road and toward the open meadow, and beside her Finney began to sing.

T
HE BIRTH OF A
S
AVIOR.
Every year Claudia turned it over in her head—that strange, compelling story—but could never get far. Things weren’t what they appeared to be in the tale, of that much she was certain. An illegitimate son, born to a young girl in a barn. The way the stars aligned, as they do for all of us, and the three foreign men who arrived, bringing both treasure and embalming fluid. Death in life—that seemed to be what the story foretold far more than the promise of resurrection. Maybe there was some occult wisdom there, a snakelike understory that wound its way into our consciousness and wouldn’t leave. Not the miracle of birth; not the bastard son that rises to change the world; not those things. It was the fascist king, the tyranny of the tax collector, the exile, the baby born to die. Because the rest of it? The singing of hosannas in honor of the Messiah’s arrival? In what way—and this was something Claudia had wondered for a long time now—in what way was humanity changed by the murder of a Nazarene carpenter? In what way were we saved? As far as she could tell, life and suffering and desire continued precisely as they had always been. All the crucifixions on all the hills of the world could not alter the most elemental facts.

But this was Christmas in America, if one was adult and had a family. Claudia sighed as she pulled out of the parking lot of the mall. She recalled, wistfully, the last years with Ludie, and then alone, when the holiday’s only claim on her was a brief dinner with Millie’s family on Christmas Day. Millie and Larry would chew on some grievance; the children would be silent and sullen and vanish from the table as soon as possible. And then Claudia would be allowed to go home, where there was no tree, no Santa knickknacks, no inflatable snowmen.

Now she had a backseat filled with gifts and twinkle lights. She had dug through the basement until she found the old tree stand and the boxes of ornaments that dated all the way back to the earliest days of her parents’ marriage. This morning she and Rebekah sat on the couch and took them out of their tissue wrappings, studying each one. Claudia hadn’t remembered them as so delicate and interesting, but to Rebekah they were priceless; not merely as relics of Claudia’s history but as the symbol of something Rebekah couldn’t name, something she had sorely missed. Vernon had forbidden it all, of course, the whole secular mess, and Claudia was beginning to understand why.

She sighed again, thought of the money spent, the time in the mall. She drove past the Used World, where the lights were out and what was to be sold this season was sold and gone.

Even if the image had been created by an advertising firm—no matter what kind of lie it might have been—when Claudia drove home in the crepuscular light that Saturday in December from last-minute Christmas shopping and saw her house lit up like a ship on the dark sea, and knew that Rebekah and Oliver were in there, warming every room, Rebekah likely gliding around the kitchen floor in her socks to Glenn Miller, Claudia felt a joy all the more powerful because it was tenuous. There were no words spoken between them, no promises, not even a glance at a calendar. Rebekah had asked to stay for a while, until she got her bearings, and while they talked and talked, late at night and first thing in the morning and all the way to work and all the way home, neither of them ventured a word about the future. At work Claudia watched Rebekah open and close suitcases, polish mirrors, disappear for an hour or more in the back. There was nothing in her movements Claudia could read. And when, daily, Claudia was called to help empty a truck or rearrange a booth, she listened for Rebekah’s laughter, which she could hear above all other sounds, as if it occupied its own airwaves, a frequency that bore Rebekah’s name.

Any day now she could be gone, and with her would go not just this daily happiness, but the baby. That other baby, the strange creature, was more real to Claudia, she knew, than it was to Rebekah; for Rebekah it was also a condition. But Claudia imagined a person, just a person like Oliver, who was in there doing what people do while they bide their time—swallowing, breathing, thinking. Soon it would begin to suck its thumb. Claudia blinked, pulled into her driveway, got out of the car and looked at the house. The tree tied to the top of the Jeep was dusted with snow; she left it there.

She stepped into a cloud of heat and steam, a fire in the fireplace, music from the kitchen (Sinatra this time). She took off her coat, her scarf, and hung them in the closet, hoping to be quiet enough to catch Rebekah unaware at whatever she was doing. Oliver’s Gymini was open on the living room floor, his toys scattered around it. His swing sat silent; the blanket and stuffed rabbit in the playpen looked as if he’d recently gnawed on them. Claudia walked through the living room, past the stairs, past the door to Bertram’s study, the guest bathroom, an unused bedroom, and into the hot kitchen.

Rebekah was at the stove, stirring a dark soup and singing “It Was a Very Good Year.” She was wearing a forest-green dress with short sleeves and little gold buttons; Claudia had never seen it before. Rebekah’s hair, thicker and longer than two weeks ago, was gathered up in a big barrette; she was barefoot. Oliver wore only a diaper and a pair of blue socks, riding on Rebekah’s hip and clutching a wooden spoon he periodically waved in the air like a sword. Claudia wanted to say something casual but found herself tongue-tied by the scene—this woman in her kitchen, dress straining against her new curves, the creamy smoothness of the baby’s back, his shoulder blades moving like vestigial wings.

“Oh, look who’s here, Mancub,” Rebekah said, breaking the spell Claudia found herself under. “Take him, will you? I think he’s wet, and also put something on his chin, some Vaseline or something—he’s drooling so much I’m afraid his face will get chapped.”

Rebekah cocked her hip so the baby was raised up. Claudia reached out for Oliver, who reached out for her, and as her hands closed around his naked chest, Claudia noticed Rebekah’s own chest, which shone in the heat. A blue vein bisected the smooth, white expanse where her right breast just began to swell.

“What are you making?”

“Beef stew with carrots and potatoes. A spinach salad. There’s bread in the oven.”

“It smells wonderful.” Claudia turned to head upstairs and change Oliver.

“Your sister is coming over.”

Claudia stopped, turned back toward Rebekah. Oliver tapped her on the head with the spoon. “I’m sorry—what?”

“Your sister is coming over.”

She hadn’t told Millie a thing about Oliver, about anything, really, had even spoken to her sister a couple times on the phone while holding the baby and failed to mention him. That she was now caught had nothing to do with Rebekah and was entirely Rebekah’s fault.

“I don’t understand how this happened.”

“She called. On the phone, the way people do. I answered and invited her over for dinner.”

Claudia took a deep breath, closed her eyes. Oliver hit her on the head again. “Did she ask who you were?”

Rebekah checked the bread, slipped the pan out of the oven and onto a cooling rack. “No, when I answered the phone, she said, ‘This must be Rebekah.’”

“Oh Lord.”

“Oh Lord is right. How long did you think you could keep this all a secret, Claudia, in a town like Jonah? For all I know, there’s been an announcement in the
newspaper:
TALL WOMAN, PREGNANT HOLINESS GIRL, STRAY BABY.
Hopwood County is probably on fire with talk.”

Claudia walked back into the kitchen and sat down at the table, overcome with dread. “How long did I think I could keep it a secret, a good question. I don’t know. Longer than this.” She pulled at the collar of her sweater, realizing how hot it was in the room.

“My feelings would be hurt, too, if I was your sister.”

Claudia shook her head. “You have no idea. You don’t know her.” She wanted to point out how lovely everything was, how lovely the whole rest of the evening would have been if just she and Rebekah and Oliver were going to be there together for dinner. They would have eaten, given the baby a bath, decorated the tree still tied to the top of the Jeep. After the baby was in bed, they would have gone into the living room with tea or hot chocolate, reading and talking until they were sleepy. She wanted to ask Rebekah to consider that loveliness, and then to remember it when Millie was there. The distance between how nice it would have been and how ugly it would actually be was another measure of how long Claudia hoped to keep her life a secret.

“Well, it’s too late to do anything about it now. She’ll be here in twenty minutes.”

Claudia sighed, stood, hoisted up Oliver, who was rubbing his gums together and making a
yang yang yang
sound.

“Also I wouldn’t have pegged you for such a coward,” Rebekah said, rinsing the spinach in a colander. Even with her back turned, Claudia could tell Rebekah didn’t mean it, that she was squinting up her eyes as if she’d said something mildly funny, but Claudia didn’t answer. A coward. Rebekah didn’t know the half of it. Claudia climbed the stairs feeling the whole of her weight on her knees and ankles, and with each step she recited in her mind things she was afraid of. Green eyes, green dress, red hair, blue vein.

Claudia changed Oliver’s diaper, dressed him in a blue one-piece decorated with red trains, brushed his hair with the baby brush until he looked like something in an Easter basket. She put him in his crib and turned on his mobile, then lay down on her bed. Downstairs, Rebekah set the table, filled water glasses. Claudia heard her move into the living room and begin picking up the baby’s things. Rebekah was tired, Claudia knew, and washing the spinach had probably made her queasy, as she was having a hard week where anything with leaves was concerned. Who would have guessed that textures could make a woman vomit? Just two days ago Claudia had offered Rebekah a set of flannel sheets, and Rebekah had touched them, then run for the bathroom.

I’m punishing her, Claudia thought, but couldn’t get up and stop doing so, surprised to find herself furious. Her house had been invaded, her life had been entirely co-opted by a woman who might not even stay, Claudia didn’t know from day to day which might be the last, and now she was going to have to endure a wasted evening with a sister who had never been a sister to her and had never come to dinner before.

Oliver’s mobile played “Rock-a-Bye Baby,” tinkling out the tune that had grown so familiar it seemed to represent all babies, babyhood, the universe of infancy in a few measures. Claudia sat up and looked through the bars of Oliver’s crib; she could just see him, above the bumper pad, grasping his own feet and rocking from side to side. He was blowing spit bubbles, his new favorite game. Oh, she was mad at Rebekah all right, and she didn’t want Millie in her house, there was all of that, but probably she should also face the other thing that had sent her up the steps and onto the bed, the thing that had lifted a dark wing and brushed her memory. She had been recalling, out of the blue and persistently, moments in the sixth and seventh grades; whole days of junior high school; an encounter with her gym teacher; an overweight girl named Trisha who’d once cornered Claudia in the restroom. Something in the seventh grade. Something in junior high. The gym teacher, who had pushed Claudia at basketball until Claudia couldn’t play anymore. Trisha. Amos had asked her: Was there any other reason she had ceased to be a believer, had one day found herself
apart
from the simply faithful of the Jonah Christian Church? She awakened to a handful of images tossed, confetti-like, onto the day’s screen, and she considered them as she drove into work and took care of Oliver and in all ways acted as if nothing were amiss. A ragged, sick feeling had entered her body, and she knew it wasn’t the flu or her diminishing hormones. It was something she would have denied existed if anyone had asked her six months earlier—it was nothing but the truth barreling toward her faster than she could move out of the way. This happened in books and movies, any time a certain level of drama was called for, but it didn’t really happen in Jonah, Indiana: a character reads a letter, or is told in the hospital that blood tests have confirmed that her father couldn’t be, et cetera, or a man sees the leaves falling one autumn and recognizes that his entire life has been a lie.

Downstairs, Rebekah was opening, then closing, the oven door, and dishes were being moved around. Claudia lay back down, heard again Hazel asking her, two days ago, why she didn’t have any close women friends.

“I do, Hazel, obviously.”

“Who? Who, then?” Hazel put a sticker on a stack of Mikasa bowls, priced to sell.

“Duh,
you,
for one, and Rebekah, for another.”

Hazel nodded. “Who besides us? Who before?”

Claudia thought about it, but couldn’t answer. If she couldn’t count Ludie, and she assumed Hazel wouldn’t let her, it was indeed the case that Claudia had lived her life virtually friendless, tucked into the shadow of her parents and the safe house they’d made for her. She’d lived it in books, and in Ludie’s garden, and in the infrequent, unreciprocated gestures toward Millie and her children.

Hazel shook her head, looked down at the dishes. “It’s an old wound, I’m guessing, the risk of such relationships.”

Claudia had walked away, hadn’t denied or confirmed anything. She strode heavier than she meant to back through the breezeway, past the new corner booth that sold nothing but NASCAR collectibles still in plastic, grinding her teeth. Hazel just
said
things, it was a trait of hers Claudia couldn’t get used to; Hazel didn’t even try to imagine the effect they would have, or whether they were appropriate. Claudia walked all the way to the Parlor, turned around, and walked back.