April & Oliver (10 page)

Oliver touches Nana’s hair gently. “We’ll all be together tomorrow. April, too.” But as soon as he says this, he realizes
it is a lie. No one has told her about Buddy. “Come,” he says. “We’ll be late for dinner.”

As Oliver goes to the closet for Nana’s coat, he notices a picture on the mantel, April in her crisply starched Holy Cross
uniform, fourth grade, eyes sparkling, teeth sweetly crooked. Her face is framed by a nebulous backdrop, a blue ethereal haze.
In the two months since their clash in the bar, he has not spoken to her.

In the kitchen, he helps Nana with her coat.

“Are these your sons?” Bernadette says, looking at the sailor-suit picture.

“Sometimes a lie is more like the truth,” Nana says. “The truth isn’t always the way it happens.”

Oliver thinks of Buddy. How long can they deceive her?

“I thought of him as my boy,” Nana says. “No less than that.”

Oliver smooths her lapels.

“It was a car accident,” Nana says. “Who can explain that?”

Oliver gives Bernadette a furtive look. Has someone told Nana?

“Stone drunk,” Nana says. “And he was driving that Packard like a race car. The poor woman never saw it coming. The carriage
was mangled, but Hal landed in the grass without a scratch.” Nana touches the image beneath the glass. “God caught him in
the palm of his hand.” She looks up at Oliver and strokes the side of his face.

Oliver shivers, glancing at Bernadette. He takes Nana’s hand. “I haven’t heard that story before. Did you ever tell my father?”

“I wanted us to be a family,” Nana says.

“Of course,” he says. “We are.” He brushes lint from the shoulder of her coat. Nana reaches for the frame and takes off the
back. A second photo slips out. “Your grandmother was a beautiful woman,” she says. “I suppose she would have wanted you to
know that.”

It is a studio shot, the kind women sent to their boyfriends during war. The woman is attractive in a nondescript way, but
Oliver sees no resemblance to his father or himself. “Thank you, Nana,” he says gently. “But bloodlines don’t matter to me.
I consider you my grandmother.”

They start down the stairs. Nana holds tightly to Oliver’s elbow.

“Have you met Buddy?” she asks Bernadette.

“Once,” she answers, which is half true, if you count the funeral.

“The baby of the family gets away with murder,” Nana says. “Buddy says he wants to go skiing for Christmas, and everyone says
sure. Just like that. Poof, and he’s in the White Mountains.”

Oliver and Bernadette exchange a disconsolate glance. It’s wrong to withhold the truth this way, but since her stroke happened
shortly after Bede Sr.’s death, no one is willing to take another chance.

During the lengthy drive east, Oliver turns off the radio when the carols begin to annoy him. For as long as he can remember,
Christmas revolved around Buddy. After Al, Oliver, and April grew wise, Santa was perpetuated for Buddy alone. The family
held a collective breath on Christmas morning; they lived the magic through him. Who knows how long he pretended to believe
for the sake of everyone else?

Oliver remembers wrapping presents with April one night on the living room rug while his parents made tea in the kitchen.

“How do we wrap
this
one?” Oliver asked, holding up a basketball.

April grinned. “Just wait until we get to the junior lacrosse sticks.”

“You’re spoiling him. Even your dad doesn’t give him this much stuff.”

“My father”—she shook her head—“got him a giant stuffed Pooh Bear. He’s in another world. The kid is seven years old!”

“A young seven,” Oliver said. “He’ll be sleeping with Pooh till he’s twelve.”

She smiled with one corner of her mouth. “You just like disagreeing with me.”

“Not true.”

“There you go again.” She jabbed his ribs and he snatched her wrist. With her free hand, she lightly slapped his cheek.

“Fresh,” he said, snatching that hand, too. She giggled, pulling away.

“I just don’t get it,” his mother’s voice rose from the kitchen.

Oliver let go at once.

“Journalism, fine,” his mother said. “But why sports?”

Oliver pictured them flipping through the day’s mail, more college catalogs for Al.

“Because it’s what he loves,” his father answered.

“Oliver loves the piano,” she said. “But he’s not foolish enough to make it his life.”

April’s eyes darkened. He felt her staring at him.

“We don’t know that yet,” his father said gently.

Normally his father would challenge her more, but it had been a few weeks since the diagnosis. Everyone was still hopeful,
but careful, too.

“Anyway,” he continued. “It doesn’t matter what we think. You know Al. He’ll do what he wants.”

Oliver could hear her resignation all the way from where he sat. “Well,” she said. “At least we have one reasonable son.”

April gave Oliver a pained, inquisitive look. Her lips parted; there was something she wanted to say.

“I say we don’t wrap it at all,” Oliver said, tossing her the basketball. “Just stick it under the tree.”

“Is that what Santa would do?”

“Buddy doesn’t believe anymore. And if he does, he shouldn’t.”

“That’s not what you really think.”

“I don’t know what I think,” he said, rubbing his face. “Except that you can’t believe in magic forever.” He felt her hand
on his knee.

“I’m tired of wrapping,” she said. “Play me something.”

“Not now,” he said, glancing at the kitchen door.

She stood and pulled him to his feet. “Let’s go for a drive then. Let’s go to the beach.”

“The beach?” He laughed. “With what? My learner’s permit?”

“A walk, then. To the high school. We can shoot some hoops. We can climb the water tower. It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

“It’s eleven o’clock at night. It’s thirty degrees out.”

She pulled their coats from the front closet. “Good night, Uncle Hal, Aunt Avila,” she called. “Oliver’s walking me home.”

“Good night, honey,” his father called.

“Be careful, Oliver,” his mother said.

Outside it was raining. “Perfect,” she said brightly. “We’ll ride our bikes.”

“Our bikes?” He grinned. “You mean my bike?”

“And Al’s.”

“He’ll kill you.”

She headed for the garage. “I’ll race you.”

He pulled his hood over his head. The rain was cold and sharp. “Where are we headed?”

“Anyplace,” she called over her shoulder. “As long as it’s unreasonable.”

Oliver smiles to himself. In the backseat, Nana snores. He turns off the highway. The road winds through wooded lots. They
pass a burned-out barn, a pony grazing in a garden, nibbling the shorn-off stubble of last year’s corn. Sea smoke drifts from
a passing pond. The high school appears, low and sprawling, the baseball diamond empty and dark.

Oliver remembers a conversation with Buddy six weeks or so before the accident, the start of Buddy’s freshman semester in
college. He called to ask Oliver’s advice on choosing a major. It had become clear that an athletic scholarship was not in
the picture.

“Do what you love,” Oliver had said. “Do what you can’t not do.”

“Is that how it is with you?” Buddy asked. “With law?”

Oliver was silent for a moment.

“Trust yourself,” he said finally. “You’ll know if it feels right.”

T
HE HOUSE IS DARK
except for a string of lights neatly framing each window. Snow whirls slowly through the bare branches of sugar maples, the
first white Christmas in years. April finds the key in the mailbox where Hal said it would be. Buddy’s car ticks behind her,
its tracks fresh. The other cars are blanketed, giving the impression they have been there for years. She stands for a moment
at the front door and looks up at the night family plaque Oliver carved in high school. She loves the beautiful irregularity
of the letters, each one filling with white. The world is so quiet she can hear the snow.

She had not wanted to come, but Hal insisted they keep up the tradition in memory of Buddy. What could she say to that? “I’ll
come in the morning,” she offered, but he said his Christmas Day waffles were meant to be eaten in pajamas. She was told to
come straight from work.

She slips off her boots without turning on a light. A note on the side table is barely legible in the dark. “Take Oliver’s
old room,” Hal wrote. “He’s on the roll-away in Al’s room.”

She hangs up her coat. The fire is nearly out. She can’t blame Hal for wanting everyone here. It is the one night each year
when the house is full. It has been a decade since Avila’s death. Surely he could have remarried if he wanted to, but as far
as April knows, he has never gone on a date.

She sits on the rug in front of the sofa and watches the dying fire. It feels so strange to be in this house without Buddy.
His absence hits her physically, a hollowness inside. Yet she is glad to be here, away from her apartment. T.J. has not moved
back. He waits for her to go to him.

He has taken to photographing her again at odd moments when she is not watching, scraping ice off her windshield, setting
out a saucer of milk for a stray cat behind the bar. If he is looking for evidence, he won’t find it. He slips the unmarked
black-and-whites into the mail, and when she receives them, she tosses them in the trash. In most of them, she doesn’t recognize
herself. She appears smaller than she remembers, lost inside her clothes. In every shot, she looks out of place.

On the coffee table is a plate of shucked oyster shells and lemon rinds, stemware filmy with eggnog, Hal’s reading glasses,
and a tie she figures for Oliver’s; Al almost never wears one, and the regimental stripes are not Hal’s style. She picks it
up and smooths it over the arm of the chair. The crackling of the wood makes her feel quiet inside, the aroma musky and sweet.
She slumps back against the foot of the chair. The room chills as the fire languishes. This house has not changed much, with
its endless bookshelves and cozy hearth. What impressed her most as a kid was the absence of a liquor cabinet.

The ashy fragrance of the fireplace makes her eyelids heavy. She remembers the time her father caught her stealing from his
liquor cabinet. A junior in high school, she had been invited to a party with seniors and wasn’t about to show up empty-handed.
It wasn’t really that she liked to drink, but as a social skill, it proved useful. She had gotten to the point where she could
down three shots without feeling drunk, which impressed the kids she hung out with, particularly boys.

Her father came into the room silently. She jolted when she spotted him, wondering how long he’d been watching her. She closed
the liquor cabinet and folded her hands in front of her.

“Little bitch,” he said quietly.

She tried to think of a plausible explanation for standing there, but there was none. “I always replace what I take,” she
said. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

He lunged for her. She ducked, but instead of striking, he took her by the shoulders and hurled her back against the wall.
Buddy’s first-grade picture clattered down, the glass shattering on the hardwood floor. A shadowy fog invaded the room. She
felt the coolness of the floor against her cheek.

“April, sweetheart.” Her father pulled her arm until she straightened into a sitting position. She felt there was an ax in
the back of her head, and she laughed aloud, picturing it.

“Jesus, April,” her father said, pulling her up. “Why do you have to do this? Why can’t you just be good?”

She pictured her dead mother appearing in the doorway, covering her mouth with the sleeve of her bathrobe and vanishing again.
April prayed Buddy wouldn’t wake up. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” she said.

“You’re impossible,” he said. “Stand up now. Show me you’re all right.”

“I’m all right.”

“Jesus, how did I get a daughter like this?”

“Go back down to your poker game. I’ll clean up,” she said. “I’ll buy another frame.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Behave yourself, April. I see a bottle missing later, I’ll break your legs.”

She couldn’t help it; she pictured the ax in her head and her legs in casts. She knew it was sick to laugh, that it could
cost her. As soon as her father descended the stairs and the rec room door clicked shut, she cracked, her laughter so hard
she could barely breathe, nor see the shards of glass she was trying to sweep, so fast and hot were her tears.

“Screw the party,” she thought to herself, and instead walked to Oliver’s studio. It was late, but he was there. She was still
dressed in her stupid, tight clothes, but it didn’t matter. It was only Oliver.

He stood up from the piano, looking surprised. “Thought you had a date,” he said. Then, “God, you look like hell.”

“It must be the ax in my head.” She laughed so sharply it came out as a sob, which made her laugh even harder.

“Are you drunk?” he asked.

“No,” she said, touching her head. “That’s the problem.”

He touched her neck, parting her hair to look at the back of her head. The gentleness of his touch combined with the tenderness
of the pain was excruciating. “Jesus,” he said. “You’ve got a goose egg. I’m calling my father.”

“No. A bump is good. It means the swelling went out instead of in.”

“You should at least take some aspirin.”

“I’d probably throw it up.”

“Nausea is a sign of concussion.”

“Just play me a song. That’s all I need.”

“Tell me what happened, and don’t give me the slipping-on-the-staircase story.”

She sat down wearily. “I’m a pathological wiseass, that’s what happened.”

“Are you giving him an excuse?”

“No, but if I hadn’t been doing something wrong—”

“You don’t deserve this.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“Believe me, Oliver. There are things about me you wouldn’t want to know.”

“What things?”

“Why don’t
you
make some mistakes once in a while so I don’t have to?”