Where or When (22 page)

He hasn't been inside the church in over a year, not since the Fahey funeral. The interior is dimly lit, with electric lanterns high overhead. Votive candles flicker in bubbly red glasses. He walks in twenty feet, looks at the altar, nearly smothered today in poinsettias. He has always hated poinsettias; their color alone seems poisonous to him. He studies the cross suspended above the altar, a particularly grotesque crucifixion, the skin of Christ abnormally white, with magenta blood from the wounds dripping along the feet and hands. Why do this to children? he wonders, not for the first time. He walks to the front pew, sits down, his hands folded limply in his lap. He examines the cross on the altar itself, a simpler gold cross, without a body. He focuses on the cross, tries to formulate a prayer. But the old words still do not work, and he cannot create the necessary sentences. He wants to ask for help and to kneel, as if in those simple acts he might be forgiven—not so much for what he has done as for what he is about to do. His longing for forgiveness feels enormous, a large indefinable longing, but he knows the request is futile. He will never give up Siân; therefore, according to the rules of the game, asking for forgiveness is out of the question. And in any event, it has been too long since he has had any clear idea of what or whom he was asking for forgiveness.

A chill shakes him. He stands up to leave, glances again at the flickering votive candles, remembers now what it was he was supposed to get for Harriet: light bulbs. He hurries to the car. He has been gone too long. He needs to get home, be with his children. And Christ, he forgot: the ducks—he has to marinate the ducks.

Pulling into his driveway, he sees the twinkling Christmas tree behind the window of the family room. At least Harriet has finished the lights, he thinks, emerging guiltily from the car. When he enters the kitchen, his children and his dog run in to greet him. His children's love is physical; they climb up his legs, tug on his arms—even Hadley, who snuggles into his shoulder. They squeal at him that he is wet and that his coat smells from the damp. As he removes his coat and jacket, he gently shakes off his children, one by one. He slips his tie through his collar, rolls his sleeves, and squats to nuzzle Winston's head in affection.

The children lead him into the family room to admire the tree. Harriet is perched on a stool, trying to repair the star atop the tree; it lists to port. She has on jeans, a hunter-green sweater. He studies her broad shoulders, the swell of her hips below her sweater, the way the jeans pinch in at the crotch. But when he looks at her, he feels nothing, not even a certainty of what her body looks like beneath her clothes. Sometimes he cannot even remember what it was like to make love to Harriet, what it was they did together, as if his time with Siân had somehow erased that particular loop. He watches his wife's sweater ride up in back as she reaches again for the top of the tree. He studies the sliver of pink skin above her waistband. The skin seems foreign to him, skin he has never touched.

“Let me get that,” he says behind her.

“Oh,” she says, turning to him, flushed with her effort. “Thanks.”

“I got the light bulbs,” he says.

She steps off the stool. They exchange places.

“How did your appointment go?” she asks.

“Fine,” he says. “It went fine.”

He hasn't told her yet about the bank. At breakfast he announced only that he had an appointment. The ubiquitous and generic “appointment.”

“You've been gone awhile,” she says, looking at her watch. “I was worried you wouldn't get home in time to do the ducks.”

“Had to buy a couple of rounds. You know how it is at Christmas.”

Charles secures the star with picture wire. It's still off five degrees, but it will do.

“How have the kids been?” he asks, stepping off the stool, facing her.

She stares at him a moment, puts a finger to his chest, strokes the cloth of his shirt in the vicinity of his left nipple. Idly, as though lost in a memory. Her eyes are uncharacteristically vacant, staring at the skin above the top button of his shirt.

“Harriet.”

She looks up at him, dragged reluctantly from her reverie. Her eyes are a vivid blue-violet and large—her best feature. He has sometimes thought her pretty; she
is
pretty. But not beautiful. He tries to remember if he ever told her she was beautiful. Perhaps at the beginning. He must have then. He hopes he did.

“Jack is in orbit,” she says slowly, removing her finger from his chest. “Hadley has been helping me with the tree. She wants to make cookies when you've finished with the ducks and the pâté.”

She opens her mouth again, then closes it. She seems to want to say something more, something that is hard for her to say, and he knows that if she does, he will have to tell her. He wants to tell her that he is sorry, that whatever has happened or not happened between them, it was not her fault. That it wasn't because she wasn't beautiful or that he didn't want to love her. Or that he has been recognized, at last, in a way his wife has never known him. He puts his hand on the sleeve of her sweater, rubs her arm between her elbow and her shoulder.

She moves away from him, turns her face to the side. “Keep your eye on Anna,” she says. “I have one or two more presents to wrap.”

“Harriet?”

“Yes?”

She looks at him, wary now, the vacant look gone entirely. She narrows her eyes, seems almost irritated, impatient to leave the room.

“My parents will be here at four,” she says.

 

Handel's
Messiah
blasts from the kitchen speakers. He has played it so often through the years that he knows almost all the words by heart. He likes particularly to belt out the “Hallelujah” chorus and does so as he puts the ingredients for the marinade—teriyaki sauce, fresh ginger, soy sauce, garlic, shallots, sherry, and a splash of red wine—into the several roasting bags. He has cut the breasts and legs and thighs off six ducks; purple carcasses line the yellow Formica kitchen counter. Winston stands by his feet, his nose pointed upward, alert for a tidbit that might deliberately fall his way. Somewhere between the second and third ducks, Charles sliced the tip of a finger; he has stanched the bleeding with a kitchen towel, which is now wrapped untidily around his hand. Hadley, leaning against the counter, studies her father thoughtfully. He glances down at her face, at the steady gaze of her large brown eyes. She looks concerned.

“Dad,” she says.

“What?”

“Are you all right?”

He slides duck pieces into a roasting bag with a flourish, sets it along with the other bags in a large pan on the counter. He is on a roll now, four cookbooks open on the island. His menu did not really come together until somewhere between “O thou that tellest . . .” and “All we like sheep . . .,” and he has been into town twice for extra ingredients for his meal—once to the fish market, once to the Italian deli—emptying his checking account in the process. He is aware that his menu is somewhat eclectic and that possibly all of the proper components are not quite there, but he has always preferred to cook because he felt like making the separate dishes, not necessarily because they formed a perfect whole—and he thinks that somehow this spontaneous and haphazard desire might be applicable to his life and his financial ruin as well. In addition to the duck carcasses on the counter, he has now two fillets of salt cod for the baccalá; five pounds of mussels (he hadn't planned on the mussels, but he couldn't pass them up at the fish store—he will serve them in a brine of tomato, basil, capers, and white wine); one fillet of salmon, which he will coat with salt and sugar and dill, and marinate in plastic wrap so that it will cook itself (they'll have the resultant gravlox for an appetizer); and a medley of scallops, shrimp, and smoked salmon, which he will do up in squid ink pasta, along with red pepper slices, as an accompaniment to the duck. Into a massive teak salad bowl he presses out several garlic cloves, then mixes the paste with the anchovies, along with Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, mustard, capers and hot sauce He tastes his efforts with a spoon and makes an extravagant gesture of approval for Hadley, kissing his fingers with a moue of his lips. The Caesar will have a good scald on it, he tells his daughter. The counter is awash in body parts, spilled sugar, chopped dill, empty sauce bottles, bottle caps, wet spoons, and flour from the sourdough bread. He kneads the bread in a baking bowl, trying to camouflage into the dough the inadvertent smears of blood leaking from the wet kitchen towel around his hand. Jack comes into the kitchen, looks at the carnage on the counter.

“Ew, yuck, Dad. What are you making?” he asks.

“Don't ask,” says Hadley.

Charles feels almost happy now—or a state as close to happy as he has been able to achieve in this house, in this town. If he keeps moving, he is certain, his dinner will be a success. He has to choreograph his pots, conduct the play between the stovetop and the oven so that the ducks won't conflict with the sourdough bread, so that his largest pot will be free for the mussels after he has made the pasta. He doesn't worry much about timing, however: Though his timing in love and finance have been appalling, he has been blessed with an uncanny sixth sense when it comes to cooking. Cooking is orchestral, he decides, resembling something of a symphony or at least a concerto, the movements allegro or largo, depending on the tempo of his swoops and turns as he reaches between the island and the fridge, between the stove and the counter, as he plays the butter of a roux, the garlic of a sauce. He has Bing on now. Can't make Christmas dinner without Bing, he says to his younger daughter, Anna, who has come into the kitchen to observe the performance. He reaches up to pour himself another tumbler of the Kendall-Jackson, a nice dry red, which he opened because he needed it as the finishing touch to the marinade, and as he does so he notices that the bottle is nearly empty. His dress shirt and the pants to his suit are spotted with olive oil and flour and bits of something brown that might be blood. He has an apron somewhere in the kitchen, but he has been unable to find it.

Outside the warm kitchen, a gust of rain sweeps against the windows, rattling the windowpanes. He takes a sip of the dregs of the red, looks through the panes to the sheets of water beyond. He wonders where she is, what she is doing at this precise moment. He glances at the phone, thinks fleetingly of calling her, then shakes off the desire: He cannot risk hearing the resonant voice of her husband, having to hang up on the man once again. He tries to imagine what her husband looks like, tries to envision the body that might go with the voice; Charles has never asked Siân, and she has not volunteered any details, about her husband's appearance. With the heel of his hand, he punches down the rising dough in the bread bowl, pummels it roughly. He wants her now, with an ache that is not physical, or not entirely physical. His body feels taut, stretched with wanting her, wanting simply to be in her presence. He bends suddenly at the waist, touching his forehead to the surface of the island. He wants to lower himself to the floor. His insides feel hollow, empty without her.

“Daddy?”

Charles glances up quickly, remembers his children. Hadley looks quizzical.

He forces himself upright, smiles.

“Dessert,” he says.

“Dessert?”

“I have to think about dessert.”

“I want Christmas cookies,” says Anna.

He opens a cookbook on the island. He contemplates the ceiling. Winston, who has come to him, nuzzles his knees. He has an image of a French tart; no, of a flan. He thinks about custard; does he have the ingredients? He could do a crème brûlée possibly. Yes, that's it, he decides, cracking open another bottle of the Kendall-Jackson. A ginger crème brûlée—the ginger will be a perfect holiday nuance for the end of the meal. What will he need? he wonders. Eggs? Cream? He has fresh ginger from the marinade. Sugar, of course. And a blowtorch. Can't caramelize the top without a blowtorch. He tries to think where it was he learned this: in the kitchen of a restaurant just outside Providence. He'd inquired of the waiter, as he sometimes did in restaurants, how a dish was prepared (in this case, a particularly fragile peach crème brûlée) and had been summoned into the kitchen by the chef himself, who'd demonstrated the blowtorch technique: Sprinkle a thin layer of granulated sugar along the top of the custard; blast it with the torch. The process—definitely overkill and probably not ecologically sound—was repeated until the top of the crème was a paper-thin disk of caramelized sugar, like a perfect circle of delicate brown ice.

He gathers on the island the eggs and cream and sugar and ginger, finds a clean bowl and the eggbeater. He stands on a stool, investigates the top shelf of the cabinet over the fridge. He has an idea that there is behind the champagne glasses a set of custard dishes, ramekins, perfect for the crème brûlée. He sees them, snakes his hand through the champagne glasses, then hears his name spoken by his wife in a tone that reminds him of a teacher he had in seventh grade.

“Charles.”

He teeters for a moment on the stool, turns around to face his family. They are standing there beneath him, aligned at the end of the counter—Harriet, Hadley, Jack, and Anna. The tableau they make is characterized by composite alarm. He knows how he must look to them—the singular embodiment of the chaos he has created, both within the kitchen and without. He holds a champagne glass in one hand, a ramekin in the other. His shirt is soaked under the armpits, smeared with duck entrails and flour; the kitchen towel is still ineffectually wrapped around a hand. They stare at him as if at any moment he might be able to explain himself. From his considerable height, he surveys the kitchen—a bloody and ungentle mess, a manic attempt to stave off the unbearable sadness of Christmas.

He looks at his children and his wife, at the walls of a house he no longer owns.