Two If by Sea (43 page)

“You sound just beat.”

“I am, Frank. Every day is harder with the anniversary coming.”

This was the worst time to share his news. Frank felt guilty for the joy that underlay the occasional searing remembrance of Christmas past. He thought of a line from Carl Sandburg:
So far? So early? So soon?

“Really, this is why I called, Brian. There's something I need to tell you; not about the boy, that's all under control. It's that I'm getting married.”

So far? So early? So soon?

“Why, that's wonderful, Frank. I wish you only good luck.”

“She's very like Natalie. Not to see. In some other ways. Her sense of humor is like Natalie's. Of course, it's not the same. It couldn't be. You only have one first love.” In his abashed state, Frank didn't want to back himself into dismissing Claudia as though she was the local tavern keeper and it was just easier to screw her at his house than in the room above the bar. “Her name is Claudia Campo. She's a doctor. A psychiatrist.”

“Did you go to see her after your bereavement?”

“She's one of my brother-in-law's professors.” Jesus Christ. “My sister's husband, that is. I met her because she's training for the World Cup. Jumping.”

“You're still on that?”

“I didn't expect to be, but yes.”

“Well, I hope you find contentment and joy, Frank. You deserve it. And it's good for boys to have a mother. She's fine about the boys, is she?”

Frank murmured agreement. He said then, “Brian? Do you ever think that someday you . . .”

“My children died, Frank.”

“Of course,” Frank said.

“I wish I had, too.”

“Brian, come to us for Christmas. My gift to you, please. Everyone would love to see you. A change of scene. It's been years since you've been in the United States. You loved New York. Meet us there . . .”

“I can't, Frank. Lovely of you to ask. I'll let you get on with your day . . . well, your evening now,” Brian said. “Have a good night. And a happy Christmas to you.” Frank was possessed with the belief that Brian Donovan would take his own life. There was nothing he could do.

Sensing his mood, Claudia came home late, after the boys were asleep, ate a few bites of something from the refrigerator, and sat quietly in the kitchen. Then also quietly, with Claudia carefully dressing in modest flannel pajamas striped in pink and black, she and Frank propped themselves up on pillows, turned on their reading lamps, read their books, and went to sleep.

There should have been champagne and exhausting passion on their engagement night.

But it was no ordinary engagement.

They were no ordinary couple.

Between them swung the weight of sorrows and secrets, the private words and deeds that bound them now, and would never go away. So, in a sense, they were already mated, each the bearer of the other's seal.

•  •  •

The following morning, since Claudia didn't have classes, they'd already decided to treat themselves to the fun of telling everyone else the good news. Frank wouldn't get up at five for chores, and Claudia wouldn't get up at five to take a run and get ready for classes. They would act all crazy, and sleep until seven, like the rest of the household.

Claudia woke first, and tiptoed down to get a cup of tea. The smell of the first day's coffee was like reveille at Tenacity and would get everyone up. When she returned, with two fragrant mugs, she said, “I'm not even sure that Ian knows that was why we went to see my dad.”

“Of course he knows.”

“He doesn't usually pay any attention to most adult stuff unless somebody's in trouble. That way he's like any other kid.”

As if summoned, Ian came in first, fuddled and puzzled that Frank hadn't woken him for chores and his mostly milk coffee before the school bus.

“I'll drive you to school,” Frank said. But Ian was distracted by then, by the unfamiliar sight of Claudia in her candy-striped pajamas. “Cloudy, you had a sleepover.”

“She can have sleepovers now. We're getting married,” Frank said.

“You are?”

“We said so about a hundred times at the grandfather's house.”

“I was sick in bed. I was sick from those sickening dead bird babies.”

“Yes, of course, I forgot,” said Frank. “We have to remember never to cook baby birds for you. No four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.”

“Did people really do that?” Ian asked.

“No,” Frank lied. He knew very well people had, and starved the birds first, so they wouldn't crap as the oven's heat climbed to intolerable levels. He steered the subject away. “Will you let Claudia be your mom?”

“Can I still call her ‘Cloudy'?”

“No,” Claudia said. “You can call me ‘Cloudy' for fun, and I can call you ‘Eeny' for fun, but you'll have to call me ‘Mommy.' ”

“Well, okay.” With a small, secret smile, he climbed into Frank's bed between them. “What about Colin? Will he be jealous if I call you ‘Mommy'?”

“I'll be his mommy, too, of course,” Claudia said.

Colin came into the room. “You stayed over! Does Hope know?”

“I'm going to move in,” said Claudia. “We're going to get married.”

“I thought that was what you said to all those people when we were having dinner. But I didn't know because at first, I thought you were married already and you just lived someplace else because you were maybe getting a divorce.” Frank thought, What a swell job we did of explaining Colin's new life to him.

“Ha! Nope,” Claudia said. “There will be some big changes around here, buddy. Like, you have to mind me.”

“I already mind you. I'm a mind reader,” Colin said, and punched Claudia lightly. She pulled him down and kissed him, and he allowed it.

Hope hurried past, hearing voices, and determined, with purposeful grace, not to notice Claudia in Frank's bed.

“Mom, wait!” Frank called. “Come back.” Sighing audibly, Hope did. “We're getting married.”

“You're getting married?”

“You're getting married?” Marty said, passing the door in his Badger sweatpants. “Welcome to the fam, Professor Campo.”

“
You
are getting married?” Eden said. “You. Frank Mercy?”

“What does that mean, Edie? I was married before. Not so long ago at all.”

“You're such an old bachelor. I thought that Natalie must be an enchantress to have broken your will.” She leaned back against the wall, her big tummy stretched low against her long nightshirt. “Crabby old men who own six identical shirts must be the thing for beautiful doctors now.”

Frank gestured around him, at Ian now somersaulting off the end of the bed. “Edie, you're my sister, so you can't appreciate what a stud bomb I am to other women.” Colin laughed until he had to run and blow his nose. “I think good wishes are in order.”

“I think good
luck
is the wish—for Claudia anyhow.”

“Clearly, cranky Irish girls with big mouths are all the thing for upcoming young Jewish doctors now.” Marty made a whipcrack sound with his tongue.

They all stopped as they heard Patrick open the back door and begin to make coffee, grumbling and whistling through his teeth. “Pat!” Marty called. “Frank's getting married.”

“Ah, shit,” Patrick said. “Does Claudia know?”

J
UST HOME FROM
early Mass on Christmas Eve with Hope, Ian asked to lead the prayer at the table that included Hope's friend Johnny, the new librarian, and Johnny's beloved, Blake. The food wasn't even on the table when Ian took up his solemn stance at the head: Marty and Claudia were still ferrying steaming platters from the kitchen, where both stoves and both ovens had been working double time since before dawn. In the middle of the living room, between the leather couches that usually faced the fish tank, stood the tree, a blue spruce twelve feet tall and comically rotund, set in a giant galvanized bucket of sand. With the boys, Patrick had made a Yorkshire Christmas tree: they'd folded and strung multifaceted stars from aluminum foil and pierced them with thread. They dipped pinecones in glue and rolled them in glitter. They strung red ribbons from branch to branch, and wrapped the core in white lights. With Hope's small favorites, made by her children, and the handblown glass icicles of many colors that Claudia carried home one summer from Italy, the result was a quiet country fantasy out of Dickens, a kindly and humble tree.

Since the doors from the bedrooms at Tenacity opened out onto a wide hallway balcony with balustrades, Frank and Claudia had taken the precaution of hiding not just the children's Santa presents but everyone else's under the fitted rubber cover on the back of Tenacity's big pickup truck—a tarp tightened down with fasteners that required a tool to open. Even if the boys thought of the hiding place, the adults were reasonably sure they'd never be able to breach it alone. However, Johnny and Blake carried in piles of gifts, Blake wearing a quilted foolscap and a cape in motley colors.

Toasting and prayers, Johnny and Blake insisted, had to wait until after gift giving.

When they handed Colin three wrapped packages, he said, “Thank you, but you don't have to give these to me. You don't even know me.”

“But you're Hope's grandson . . .”

“
She
doesn't even know me!”

“We think you must be a good kid,” Blake told him. “We think Ian is great, and you're like Ian, but older, so you must be smarter. It's okay to accept presents from friends of your family, and this is your family now.”

Ian said, “Be nice now. Let's all eat and pray.”

Ian had taken to religion with gusto—and now was part crypto-Catholic and part devout pagan.

He began, “Let's pray for Natalie, because she died at Christmas with no presents.”

“Okay,” Claudia said, and they did.

“Let's pray for those old people at the farm where Glory Bee lived, and Patrick's sainted mother . . .”

They did that, also.

Ian next ordered a prayer for Grandma to live for a long time, for Ian to be given the power of invisibility, and—Claudia misted up—for Prospero to have wings.

“This is a lot of praying,” Frank said. “Can we be done?”

“Just one more,” Ian said. “God, please show us how to make an ark.”

Frank said, “A what?”

“So we can get out of town in the flood.”

“There's not going to be a flood in Spring Green,” Frank said.

Then why, Ian wanted to know, had the Sunday school teacher in this very town told them the story of the ark with two cats, two geese, two cows, two pigeons, two zebras, two wombats, two polar bears, two spiders, two monitor lizards, two fruit bats . . .

Frank thought, Why indeed?

“Amen!” Colin said.

Ian crossed himself in several different ways—including one that looked like head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes, and everyone fell upon the platters of turkey, ham, venison, extravagances of potatoes scalloped, mashed, and twice-baked, dressing with apples and walnuts, cranberry relish with orange peels, and breads in the shape of petals and pinwheels and pretzels.

Later, they played games, like charades, that were old to everyone except Ian and Colin—who both had to be taken aside and warned against using any funny stuff in aid of their respective teams. They held a baby-naming contest for Eden and Marty's child. Claudia and Eden were certain it was a girl (Eden favored her grandmother's name, Philippa). Everyone else insisted it was a boy—whom Marty wanted to name after
his
grandfather, Saul, a pronouncement that invariably drew ire from Eden (“Why not Shlomo? Why not Yehuda?”), an outburst that Marty quite righteously found baffling. Eden admitted to being the world's snarkiest pregnant lady, and said they should have let the doctor tell them the baby's gender at the ultrasound instead of being coy about it.

“You could find out now,” Hope suggested.

“Oh, it's too late now,” said Eden. “Now it would just be weird.” She apologized, and went off to bed, Marty following, and calling down, “Well,
shavua tov
, everybody.”

Hope, Blake, and Johnny were playing cutthroat Scrabble when Frank turned in.

But he slept uneasily.

Frank imagined he would dream of Natalie, and he did, but not the sweet angel dream of a husband greeting his first true love across the star-strewn gulf of eternity. Natalie came into the room, blue-lipped and naked, her hair wet and slicked back, the morgue sheet slipping from around her hips, trampled under her feet, where puddles formed. In her arms was her unborn baby.
So soon, Frank? Do you think of me, Frank? Be careful, Frank.
A foot from the bedside, Natalie thrust the half-formed baby at Frank. He jerked awake, drenched in sweat, and stumbled from the bed to the protective yellow glow of the bathroom light, shivering as he pulled off his shirt and sweats and slipped into the clean ones he always set out the night before.

What else did he expect from a mind wrung with guilt by the joy he had so indecorously embraced?

Sleep was over. He made coffee in the dark, grabbing a cup, then collecting the things he kept on a low shelf—his water bottle, his flashlight, and his phone. For a moment, emotion flickering between affection and poignancy, he noticed Ian and Colin's small flashlights lined up beside his, at the exact angle.

When he stepped out the back door, it wasn't quite four. More than a foot of snow had quietly fallen: Colin and Ian would be wild with joy, for until now there had been only a dusting. The fall was wet and heavy, and Frank came awake as his muscles engaged, shoveling hard, a path to the stable. The goddamn motion light was out again, but Frank could feel his way. Then he quickly set to a cursory mucking out of the five big boxes, and made sure the troughs were clean and flowing. He stroked the horses' necks as he gave them their measures and filled their mangers with the clean hay he and Patrick had put up last summer.