"I"ve got the most darling children in the universe. All of you are beautiful in your own way," Lillian said. "Mary Anne, you"ve just never realized that you"d be far prettier if you"d just take a little time to fix yourself up. It takes time and work to be pretty. Like myself, I"ve just got an average face, but I"ve learned some tricks of the trade over the years that make me seem prettier than I really am. When I was a girl I was as gawky and ungainly as they come, but I knew I had to use all the tricks of the trade available and I said to myself, "Why Lillian, you"re just as pretty as any of those northwest Atlanta girls," and do you know what? Just saying it and thinking it made it come true. Because I saw myself as pretty, I became pretty. If you think you are ugly, you will be ugly, mark my words. I even think depression is caused by thinking about things that depress you. I feel that if you think positively, things will turn out for the better. It"s also a matter of good taste to talk about only happy things."
"Have you taught me to have good taste, Mama? Is that another trick of the trade I haven"t learned?" Mary Anne said.
"Good taste is not something you can be taught. It"s not something you obtain in a store or go to college to learn. You either have it or you don"t. It is pa.s.sed down from generation to generation in a straight line, but not everybody in a family gets it. It"s like high cheekbones. Your father will never have good taste and I will never be without it. You could drain every drop of blood from my body and what was left would include my innate good taste. I"m chock full of it."
"I"ve got it, Mama. I know I"ve got it. I got it from you," Karen said.
"Of course you do, sugah."
"Where"s the creature from the Black Lagoon?" Ben said, changing the subject.
"Don"t talk about your father like that on Christmas Eve. Shame on you," Mrs. Meecham admonished. "Your father"s in the bathroom."
"That means he"ll be in there about three days," Matt said.
Karen said, her face very serious, "What does that man do in there for so long?"
"He"s going number two," Mary Anne said with delicacy.
"He excretes in prodigious amounts, Karen, not seen on the earth since prehistoric times when dinosaurs let fly," Ben said.
"Ben!" Lillian said.
"You don"t have good taste," Karen said to her older brother.
"Y"all ever get a whiff of the bathroom when he comes out?"
"It smells like something crawled up his behind and died," said Mary Anne.
"I"m shocked to hear that coming from a young southern lady," Lillian exclaimed, but a half-smile betrayed her attempted sternness.
"That"s in poor taste," Karen said, glancing toward her mother for approval.
"I bet if you lit a match right by the toilet the second he got up," Ben said, "the whole house would explode."
"Hush, Ben, he might hear you," Lillian said, again casting a quick glance to the stair and listening for his heavy walk. "I"ll go upstairs and hurry him up a little."
"You better take a gas mask," Ben said.
"Poor taste, poor taste, Ben," Karen chirped.
"You will find, Karen," Mary Anne said as she watched her mother climb the last stairs, "that poor taste is a lot more fun than good taste. Good taste is real boring." Then turning to Ben she said, "Ben, do you remember the time we lived in that little house with only one bathroom up in North Carolina? The one right outside of Cherry Point?"
"My bladder just screamed when you mentioned it."
"Let me tell Karen and Matt about it. They were too young to remember this famous incident. This house only had one bathroom and Dad used to stay in there p.o.o.pin" and readin" the paper on Sunday morning for what seemed like weeks. The whole family used to be lined up outside the door screaming in pain and begging Dad to hurry up. He"d just sit in there grunting and threatening to kill us if we uttered another peep of complaint. When you"re younger you haven"t developed the muscles of steel necessary to keep from wee-weeing on crosscountry trips or long Sunday mornings. Well, one Sunday morning, ol" Ben here, yes, our marvelous hero-brother, all-star, all-American golden boy that we love, couldn"t stand it any longer. I mean this boy had to pee and pee bad. His very teeth were floating and his voice was a plaintive cry as he begged our father to rise from his throne and enter into family life. Finally, ol" Mom came along to save the day."
"Good ol" Mom," Karen said.
"Yes, good ol" Mom, the queen of good taste, brought a quart milk carton and told him to do his business in it. Ben did so. But then he was faced with a dilemma. What should he do with the carton of foulness he now possessed? He thought for a minute, then decided to put it in the refrigerator until Dad came out. Then he would take the carton of wee-wee and dispose of it in the toilet now fully covered by Dad"s behind. But Benny-boy had a short memory, and after he had relieved his swollen bladder, he went out to play with his friends. Ben was kind of dumb in those days. After Daddy-poo came out of the bathroom, he decided that he wanted a bowl of cereal..."
"Oh, wow," Matthew cried.
"I don"t believe it, Mary Anne. You"re making this up."
"Yes, my children, have respect and let your dearly beloved older sister continue. Well, Daddy goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a carton of what he thinks is nice fresh milk. Then he goes to the cupboard and gets a bowl and some Raisin Bran. The next thing the family hears is a scream that can only be described as pure disgust. Ben remembers the carton, runs into the kitchen at the exact moment our father begins puking on the kitchen table. He grabs the carton and starts to run out the door. Dad chases him. Boy with carton of pee runs for his life. Man vomits as he chases boy. Man catches boy. Carton of pee spills on the floor. Man sticks boy"s face into the spilled pee until woman saves boy. It was one of the greatest family scenes in the history of families," Mary Anne said.
"Un-Jesus-Christ-believable," Matthew exhaled.
"I was close to death," Ben said, remembering.
"Shut up," Mary Anne whispered, "here they come."
Their parents walked downstairs, Lillian skipping lightly, proud of her beauty, aware of it; her husband followed, pulling at his necktie, uncomfortable in the full dress regalia of civilians. He noticed the sudden quiet of his children as he entered the room and he took this as a good sign. He liked a room to fall silent as he entered it. For him, silence was a precise instrument for gauging respect. A master sergeant had once reported to him that the rumor of his coming had silenced a mess hall. Bull considered that report one of the highest compliments he had ever received.
It was eleven fifteen now. The eyes of the Meecham children burned with the excitement of secret gifts camouflaged beneath wrapping paper. The memories of old Christmases winged through the room like richly plumed birds and rested on the pungent branches of the tinsel-heavy tree the family as a unit had decorated. No battles were ever fought in the Meecham home on the night before Christmas. It was a time when happiness was allowed to spill over, to inundate all rooms, to rule all faces, and to reign unmolested in the turbulent kingdom of the fighter pilot. It was as though happiness was the order of the day.
Christmas Eve was also a time when the children could tease their father and know there would be no sudden explosion or descent into fury. They took advantage of the occasion.
"Hey, Dad," Ben grinned, "how long had that tree been dead when you bought it?"
"What do you mean, dead, sportsfans. That"s a gorgeous tree."
"Yeah, Ben," Mary Anne said, joining in the chase. "Lots of people would be grateful for a brown tree."
"Darlings," Mrs. Meecham said, "be thankful for this tree. There are lots of children in the world who won"t have a Christmas tree this Christmas. Think of the poor Communist children who won"t have a tree. And the poor Jews."
"Well, having this tree is kind of like not having a tree at all," Ben said.
"Baloney, this is a perfect tree," Colonel Meecham said defensively. "It was the best tree in the lot."
"The lot was located at the edge of the Gobi Desert," Mary Anne said.
Karen said, "This tree is naked on the other side. It doesn"t have but two branches."
"This tree is the most gorgeous we"ve ever had. The head honcho has spoken. I don"t want to hear any more yappin". We got to get to church by 2330 hours."
They walked to the church, past the great houses that rested in the shadow of the Lawn, singing fragments of Christmas carols in the atonal Meecham voices, and laughing at every joke anyone made. Ben pretended to dribble a basketball down the street while his father pretended to guard him. "Defense," Lillian cried to her husband as she broke into a strange, graceful dance that involved a series of spins and leaps with precarious high-heeled landings that halted the imaginary basketball game as every eye in the family fastened to the spinning figure wildly dancing toward the church, her yellow dress coming high above her knees. She rarely danced for her family and they in turn often forgot that she had taken ballet lessons up until the time she married Lieutenant Meecham. But when she danced, it was with a feral grace, a controlled wildness that had been preserved secretly in her body. Now, the whole family joined the dance, leaping, screaming, and racing past parked cars and the weird shadows cast by palmettos. Even Bull Meecham leaped like a fawn in imitation of his wife. This mad, violently happy dance lasted until Cobia Street met Pinckney, and then it stopped, as the small Greek Revival outline of The Infant of Prague Church came in sight and Bull growled, "At ease. At ease. We don"t want G.o.d to see us c.r.a.ppin" around."
Father Pinckney began the high Ma.s.s at midnight. In a thick drawl, more ponderous than his low ma.s.s responses, the priest spoke the Latin phrases with a sonorous, dramatic discernment. In his more public moments, Father Pinckney tried to hide his southern accent, but even through the Latin and the incense the state of Tennessee was advertised and glorified each time he spoke a word.
The altar was adorned with thick, fragrant cl.u.s.ters of flowers illuminated by the slender white stemmed candles that burned from six candelabra. The priest"s vestments shone with the white and gold jubilation of the church celebrating the birth of its redeemer. P.K. Hill swung the censer and plumes of incense smoked out of the chained gold globe filling the church with an odor that Ben always connected with the smell of G.o.d, just as he connected unleavened bread with the taste of G.o.d. Ben and Matthew were serving Ma.s.s in red ca.s.socks worn only on feast days and special holidays. To Ben, the Latin responses had more gravity at night, especially when combined with a choir and a packed church. A manger scene was set up at the left side of the altar. Ben could see the Christ Child out of the corner of his eye. Above him, the Christ in agony hung above the altar. G.o.d on the borning day and the dying day brought to this single moment past midnight presided over the re-enactment of the Christian mystery by an alcoholic priest from Tennessee, a boy bent low to say the confiteor, and a churchful of people praying beside a river in Ravenel, South Carolina.
Ben believed in G.o.d on Christmas Eve above all other times, and on this night, he turned always away from the stern man on the cross, and ceased to believe in the h.e.l.lmaker, the firelover, the predatory creator, the G.o.dly carnivore who flung men and angels into a place of darkness and devastation, pain and endless fire. On this night, he gave himself to the child, not the gnarled carpenter who himself was nailed to the wood he once worked with until he was called to walk among the Jews. The child would not send anyone to the flames. Ben knew this; felt it; hoped it.
Ben swung his body toward the priest and the middle of the altar. He tapped his breast solemnly when he reached the words that always moved him, even though spoken in the secret tongue of a dead language: Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa. Through my fault. Through my fault. Through my most grievous fault. Somehow, Ben felt, dead languages could sway G.o.d more easily than a language soiled by everyday use.
Sister Loretta Marie prayed in the first row, her pinched face stiff with the effort of prayer. Moving her lips rapidly, she held her rosary tightly and recited each Hail Mary with a desperate gravity, as though she were flinging anvils at the gates of Heaven. There was no softness to her prayers. They welled up out of a dry unhappy place in her, the barren back-forty of a soul hurt by the savagery of the world to its ugly women. She prayed hard with her eyes fiercely closed.
Colonel Meecham stood at the back door of the church, his arms crossed, and his mind wandering. He never sat with the family in church. Instead, he stood guard in the rear to the unconcealed chagrin of the ushers. There, he half prayed, half thought. As a first prayer, he prayed for the fighter pilots in his squadron, for G.o.d to keep them safe in his high dominion. Then he would thank G.o.d for his family. He prayed in formulas that rolled out of his brain like the beat of drums. He prayed for the President, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and other men in the top echelons of the Corps. Often, without thinking, he would go down half the chain of command before his prayers would take another form. Sometimes he would think about the relationship of Catholics and the military. Good Catholics make good soldiers, he thought. The soldier has to obey his commanding officer without questioning his orders. Same with Catholics. G.o.d"s the Commanding Officer and the Pope is his first sergeant. G.o.d tells the Pope what he wants done and the Pope lays down the law. The Church is the structure wherein laws are administered. The Church and the Pentagon are alike in that respect. I am Commanding Officer of 367. G.o.d is the C.O. of the Universe. Both of us have similar responsibilities. O Lord, make me worthy of the squadron I command and please give me the chance to kill Castro.
In the middle of the service Ben was. .h.i.t with the vision of Ansley Matthews naked before him. He mounted her at the gospel, drove deep inside her, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s soft and giving beneath him, her loins wet with wanting him, her smells the strong smells Ben imagined a woman gave off in the heat of lovemaking. His p.e.n.i.s went erect under his ca.s.sock. Ansley"s tongue drove into his ear; she whispered his name, then screamed his name as he bit into her phantom shoulder. "f.u.c.k me. f.u.c.k me," the ghost of her screamed to him in a language that was not dead nor could not die.
All during Father Pinckney"s Christmas sermon, Ansley possessed his brain like a torturer, Ansley the nude, desiring him in full Technicolor. Ben only caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of the sermon even though he tried hard to eliminate this forbidden yet splendid mirage by concentrating on the words of the priest. Once he saw Father Pinckney pointing to the statue of Mary and saying, "Only Mary, the mother of G.o.d, could wear both the white rose of virginity and the red carnation of motherhood." He fought against the image as he and Matt walked to the cruets for the Lavabo. As he poured the wine into the chalice, he could see Ansley"s breast coming out of the chalice into his face, extinguishing all thoughts of salvation, all delusions of holiness. He sucked a nipple that was not there, slavered on the neck of a girl he had barely spoken to, foamed over a sin that took place in the uncontrolled cosmos beneath his skull.
He once had a thought. A near occasion of sin. The Pope could make a law. He could make masturbation a prayer. Make it a sacrament. He could call it self-love and give plenary indulgences for its religious performance. If he did, Ben had thought, Ben Meecham would waltz into the kingdom of G.o.d. If it became a sacrament, Ben felt that he would be a high priest, a cardinal of the upward stroke, a pope of wasted seed.
The Jesus on the cross stared at Ben"s erect p.e.n.i.s which was a stone rising out of the center of him. The Christ Child lifted himself above the manger and pointed toward Ben"s belt. Then Father Pinckney lifted the holiest fingers in Tennessee, held a white host aloft, whispered the old dead prayers, believed in the deepest mystery, believed that the bread and the child and the nailed carpenter were one. The bells rang in Ben"s hand, the p.e.n.i.s withered, Ansley Matthews set his body free, and Ben turned in all the fury of a Catholic boyhood, in the dazzling cyclone of his belief, toward the moment when the bread became the light.
Father Pinckney held bread in his hands. Father Pinckney held G.o.d in his hands. Three times the bells sang. The bread trembled. Ben looked up and believed.
The host convulsed like a fetus, kicked with new blood. Arteries burst through to the strongest grain of wheat where the soul of G.o.d took root, where a new heart more ancient than time, stronger than nations, pumped G.o.dblood to the smallest vein in the bread. Teeth formed in the grain of Christ and soft, unleavened nails scratched against the fingers of Father Pinckney. A mouth formed a cry in the voice of the bread. Eyes that came to life in the moonblaze of sacristies and witnessed the birth of the world struggled to open against the priest"s grip. In the perfect circle of the host, lungs began to breathe the incensed air, the same lungs that had breathed in the blackness of the void, the ozone of creation, and the fire of molded stars hatched by hands large enough to arrange galaxies. Softly, G.o.d grew in the hands of one priest; in the womb of his hands the Christ grew. A man and a G.o.d lives far in the bread, deep in the grain. And Ben Meecham believed.
The children were ordered to bed as soon as they returned home from Ma.s.s. Lillian came in to kiss Ben good night and whispered to him, "I wouldn"t expect too much of a Christmas this year. We"ve had a lot of expenses that were unexpected and with you going to college and all I just wanted to warn you that this is going to be a very lean Christmas. A very lean Christmas."
"Sure, Mom," Ben said, smiling, "that"s what you say every Christmas."
"Well mark my words. I just don"t want you to be disappointed. I can still remember how disappointed I was when I was a little girl and Santa Claus skipped my house."
"I"m a little old to believe in Santa Claus."
"No you"re not," Lillian said. "Always believe in things and people that bring you pleasure. What good does it do to throw those things out the window?"
At that moment, Bull had climbed out the attic window onto the roof. Every Christmas since Ben could remember Bull had clambered out on the roof of mobile homes, quonset huts, Capehart houses to make Santa Claus laughs and reindeer noises.
"Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho!" Bull bellowed from the roof.
"Get a gun, Mama. There"s a pervert on the roof," Mary Anne called out from the next room.
"Hush, sugah, and let your daddy have his fun. Did you leave out the cookies and the milk for Santa Claus?"
"I did, Mama," Karen answered.
"Is Dad going to do his reindeer act?" Matthew asked from his bedroom.
"Moo! Mooooo! Mooo!" came the voice from the roof.
"Why does Daddy do a reindeer like a cow?" Karen asked.
"Cows and reindeer come from the same family. That"s as close as he can get," Lillian explained.
"Moooo, Mooo," the reindeer lowed again.
"On Dasher and Donner and Comet and all you other guys with the weird names," Bull called out from the roof. "Now whoa, you h.o.r.n.y sons a b.i.t.c.hes."
"Bull!" Lillian admonished. "Don"t get carried away."
"Mooooooo," he answered.
"Good night, children. Santa Claus has to get to work now. Remember what I told all of you. It"s going to be a lean Christmas so don"t be disappointed."
"Good night, Mama," Lillian"s children called as she went to her room and began removing hidden presents.
At five o"clock in the morning, a hand touched Ben"s shoulder. He awoke slowly and unrefreshed. Stretching, he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes along with a dream he would never recover. He made out Mary Anne"s outline when his eyes adjusted to the dark.
"How can you sleep?" she asked.
"Oh, I don"t know," he answered, looking at the clock by his bed. "I"m kind of eccentric. I"ve always been one of those weird guys who likes to sleep at five o"clock in the morning."
"I"m too excited to sleep. You ought to see all the presents under the tree."
"I"ll see them when I wake up," Ben yawned, putting the pillow over his head.
Mary Anne was not going to give up, however. "I"m not going to let you sleep," she answered.
"Let me remind you," Ben said, his voice m.u.f.fled under the pillow, "that I can kick the h.e.l.l out of you because I"m a lot stronger."
"You used to stay up all night with me waiting for morning," she said.
"I know, Mary Anne. That"s true. I used to be a little kid. I used to believe in Santa Claus and leave him milk and cookies on the mantelpiece."
"Karen and Matt are down there by the tree now."
"Good," Ben sighed, "tell them I"ll be down in about six hours."
"You"re coming now. They sent me to wake you," she said.
"I"m tired, Mary Anne," Ben replied, "but it"s been fabulous having this conversation with you. I feel much closer to you after having this talk this early in the morning. Now don"t let the door hit you on the f.a.n.n.y on the way out."
"O.K., O.K.," she said, nodding her head sadly, "but I"m gonna tell you every present you got right now so that you won"t have a single surprise when we finally open the presents."
"Don"t do that, Mary Anne," Ben whined.
"Let"s see," she teased, "Matt bought you a can of tennis b.a.l.l.s and Karen bought ..."
"All right, G.o.ddammit, I"m getting up. I"m getting up."
"That"s more like it, feces face."
They padded through the hall past their parents" bedroom door and down the stairs. Matt had plugged in the lights of the tree. The sight of the presents piled beneath the tree startled Ben. It was a ma.s.sive pile of silver and gold paper; ribbons streaked the pile with bands of deep color. Once again, he thought, the two children of the depression had fought the misery of past holidays by spending a modest fortune on their own children. Presents spilled off a three foot stack that surrounded the tree. Each stocking, hanging from the fireplace and swollen fat as sausages, could not have held another item. Each child, mesmerized by the a.s.sault of color, stared into the drift of presents with a seasonal greed as pure as angel hair.
"Isn"t it beautiful, Ben?" Karen said.
"Beautiful," he agreed, "just beautiful."
"That"s my present for you, right on top," Karen said to Ben.
"I"ll open it first, Karen."