“No. I’m just . . . trying to catch my breath. So much is happening, has happened. I want to think about it all quietly.”
“Right. Think about it,” he said, his voice sharp with annoyance. “Okay, I’ll call you to see if you changed your mind. In the meanwhile, have a good tree thing.”
I said good-bye and stared at the phone after I hung up.
What was I doing? There wasn’t a girl in my school who wouldn’t want Aaron Podwell to be her boyfriend. In my mind, I had committed myself more to him than I had to any boy. Why was I blaming him for trying to do the very thing I had told him I wanted to do? Why was I blaming him for caring?
Or was I doubting now that he really cared? Did I have more reason to suspect that everything he did was for one purpose, to make it with me, to add me to his list of conquests? Was I getting smarter, wiser about all this?
All the girls in my class now believed I was one of the most sophisticated among us, that somehow I had leaped beyond them when it came to romance and sex. Certainly, I wouldn’t make any mistakes or be just someone’s little conquest. They assumed too much. I wasn’t the person to go to with a romance question, but I didn’t let them know it, because I was happy that they saw me this way, happy that my ego was being stroked just when I was falling into a deeper and deeper hole of self-pity. It had pushed back the veil of darkness that had threatened to overwhelm and bury me in sorrow.
Everything negative could have followed if Aaron hadn’t shown interest in me. I could have given up on my schoolwork, on caring about my looks and my social life, on life itself. No one would have blamed me. I’d have been the primary one seeing a therapist, and my self-image would have dwindled until I was a mere shadow of who I had been. I might as well have crawled into the ground beside Willie. Shouldn’t I be thankful that Aaron came along? Why was I so confused about it? The mental turmoil was making me angry.
But this constant questioning wasn’t really surprising. At some point when you’re growing up, you suddenly realize that life is very complicated. I think that makes us all mad. We realize our childhood faith was an illusion. I had discovered that truth much earlier than other girls my age. My parents’ deaths had turned everything inside out and left a hole in our lives so big and deep that it seemed we would never crawl out again, never enjoy anything we ate, anything we were given, anything we used to enjoy. The emptiness inside us threatened to expand until we were two children with vacant eyes who didn’t know how or when to laugh or smile again. Our grandparents and Myra and My Faith brought us up for air, and we began to live again. However, like some giant pushing my head back under every time I emerged from the cold darkness, death visited us again and again.
I was coming up for air once more, and now I wondered if I was only bringing the darkness back by forcing Count Piro to face his own horrid memories. As I had unfortunately learned at an age not much older than he was, emotional and psychological wounds could be more painful than physical ones. He, however, was suffering all three kinds. How well did he sleep? What clicked on and off in his mind when he opened his eyes in the morning? A wall separated us, but somewhere in the darkness, we were both screaming.
I shook off these chilling thoughts and joined my grandfather, who I knew was waiting for me to go with him to pick out a Christmas tree. At first, Dorian thought she would come along herself and bring Count Piro, but he had developed some stomach trouble, and she thought it was best that he remain in bed for a while.
“I don’t think it’s anything serious,” she said. She thought a moment and then shook her head and held her tongue. Maybe she didn’t say anything because she would be saying it in front of me. It was difficult to navigate through all this mystery. Secrets gave birth to more secrets. They multiplied like rabbits in this house.
“Don’t worry. The tree will cheer him up,” Grandpa Arnold assured her. “We have all the fixings, and we’ll get out the electric trains, right, Clara Sue?”
I looked at him with surprise. I had forgotten about the electric trains and the tiny people and little houses. Putting that all together had been Willie’s prized Christmas assignment. He hated to have anyone, even me, help him. But what good would it do in boxes left in a closet? Of course we should take them out. “Right, Grandpa,” I said.
He nodded at Dorian. I caught the silent words they exchanged with their eyes and knew they were all about me. Were they suspicious about my willingness to cooperate now? I didn’t like not being trusted, but I couldn’t deny that I had earned it.
Moments later, we were off to hunt for the best darn tree in Virginia, as Grandpa would say. I felt him looking at me, trying to read my thoughts and feelings, especially now that we were doing this for our Christmas. The first time he, Willie, and I had done this after our parents’ deaths, he had talked all the way to the tree farm and back. I knew he didn’t want us to concentrate too long on our memories of decorating the Christmas tree with our mother and father. It was Willie who remembered that Mommy wanted the angel put on first. Every Christmas, she would tell us, “The angel has to look down and approve of what we do to her tree.”
“I don’t know how we do it,” Grandpa Arnold suddenly said. It was as if he was thinking aloud. He kept his attention on the road. I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.
“Do what, Grandpa?”
“Come back to the living. Every time something terrible happens in our lives, something terrible to someone we love, we think, Why bother going on?” He turned to me. “Yet we do, don’t we? We go on.”
“I guess I believe Mommy or Daddy, Grandma, or even Willie would want us to,” I said.
“Exactly. That would be like adding insult to injury if they didn’t. I mean, who’s to say they can’t feel guilty about something like that, even in heaven?”
I smiled. “You telling me you believe in heaven now, Grandpa?”
He looked at me, that subdued but loving smile trickling through his face as if the firm, serious face he habitually wore had become a transparent mask through which I could now see the true William Arnold. “I can’t think of anyplace else they’d be,” he said. “But don’t go and tell My Faith I said that, or she’ll smother me in Bibles,” he quickly added.
He tried to look serious about it, but we both laughed.
This is something we haven’t done for a while, I thought, laugh together at the same thing.
After we reached the tree farm, we walked among the rows, inspecting. We needed a rather big and tall tree for a living room our size. Grandpa was not only good at picking out a tree that had a perfect shape, but he was also good at negotiating the price for it.
“You always try to negotiate when you’re buying things, if you can,” he told me after we loaded the tree onto the small pickup he kept for odd jobs. Jimmy used it mostly and would have come with us if it wasn’t his day off. “People respect you more. I wish your uncle Bobby understood that. Artistic people are softies when it comes to the real world.”
“He’s a talented and lovely man, Grandpa. You should be proud of him.”
“Lovely, huh? Anyone ever called me lovely, I’d have their two front teeth.”
“Growl, growl,” I muttered, and he laughed.
Then he turned serious again. “Bobby knows he can go his own way, and I’ll still do whatever I can for him. Your grandma Lucy would rise from the grave and give me what for if I didn’t.”