Maud's House (18 page)

Suddenly, Reverend Swan snapped to attention. His focus sharpened; and he saw, for the first time, the restless crowd. They waited, for him.

“I…” Reverend Swan said, seemingly at a loss. His hand touched a paper, reminding him of his notes, which he had forgotten earlier in the cold car. He glanced at the index cards that he had dashed out in his vestments to retrieve from the ice cube tray, the notes stacked neatly on the pulpit, and discovered: He couldn’t read them. His heart lurched. Struck blind in the middle of a sermon. Surely, there was a sign in that. Who would drive the ice cube tray home? What should he do? Say something. He started talking, rambling, saying whatever came to mind. He could have been discussing grocery lists for all he knew. He squinted at the blurry notes, but they still were no help. Loss. He could tell the congregation about loss. Loss of vision.

“When I was a child, I was always losing things,” Reverend Swan said. “Once, in fourth grade at Sacred Heart School, I lost my gloves. At recess, I shuffled to the office in my big snow boots and asked Sister Magdalen if I could look for my gloves in the lost-and-found box. As I pawed through the moldy pile of mittens, hats, scarves, and jackets, Sister Magdalen lectured. She said I should have clipped them to my coat. I should ask the Lord, Sister Magdalen said, to help me to be more conscientious.

“I did not find the gloves and returned to the schoolyard with the distinct impression that loss was a sin and frozen fingers was the penance. I believe I have grown more conscientious with age, but still I keep losing things.”

Reverend Swan scratched his head. “Go figure,” he mumbled, “go figure.”

As the parishioners poured out of Our Lady of Perpetual Savings, the snow dropped like stones from the sky. A silent snow, a holy snow, a purifying snow. It hushed the landscape, slowed the busyness, returned the day to nature and God. In no time, snow covered the shoulders and hair of Reverend Swan, who stood on the steps of the church greeting his flock.

No one seemed in a hurry to head home. We stood in groups on the church steps, chatting, feeling the beautiful softness of the snowflakes on our eyelashes and in our dimples. It felt right to be together at that moment. There was a closeness between humans, between man and nature, between man and God. This, I thought, was what the television producer was trying to capture in his beer commercial—and never would. I was glad. I didn’t want Hollywood to take back this piece of Round Corners. It was such a perfect piece, I wondered how even I dared to try to capture it on one of my canvases.

For Christmas dinner, Thomas cooked some vegetarian holiday dish. T-Bone sneaked in three bags of potato chips under his parka. After dinner we watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” on television, making sure to flip past those other holiday movies with Fred Astaire in them.

While T-Bone and I cuddled and dodged the holiday musicals, Wynn and Harvey carved the bird with Harvey’s mother who undoubtedly made some crack about Wynn’s enormous appetite or her hair color. Freda and Lewis Lee watched the children pulverize the pretty wrapping paper under the Christmas tree; and when all the toys were assembled and the kids were squabbling about whose action toy was the best, Freda Lee slipped away to the bathroom where she perched on the commode with a bottle of expensive perfume in her hands and wondered why she wished it was some silly animal carving made from a clothespin.

Wisconsin Dell manned the dispatcher station as she does all the other 364 days of the year; the day was quiet except for the occasional SSB (Skiers in Snow Bank). Between calls for tow trucks, Wisconsin Dell carefully touched the box of chocolates and monogrammed handkerchiefs placed by the microphone where she could see them all day. Every Christmas Odie gives his dispatcher chocolates and monogrammed handkerchiefs, thinking each year this is a new and innovative gift. His dispatcher never corrects him.

Odie pulled two cars full of skiers out of the ditch on his way home from church; while his wife stuffed the turkey, Odie stuffed hundreds of little suet bags and hung them on the trees in his yard as a gift for the birds. The suet bags covered the trees like Christmas bulbs.

Frank and Ella Snowden ate a crispy ham in polite silence; Frank didn’t remind Ella that any ham, much less a burnt one, isn’t his favorite and Ella didn’t say anything about the puddles of melted snow she stepped in with her stocking feet when Frank forgot to take off his boots after church. They exchanged gifts: a red tie for a man who hasn’t worn a tie in ten years and a pair of leather racing gloves for a woman who prefers woolen mittens.

On that quiet day, behind every door in Round Corners, there was unquiet. It was that kind of Christmas.

At Christmas, Reverend Swan’s flock included more than his regulars. There was a large showing of tourists, people who spent the week of Christmas skiing, people who bought little Christmas trees for their motel rooms and didn’t mind eating Christmas dinner in a restaurant.

“Merry Christmas, Reverend. Oh, Ted, look at the snow; it’s so, so, New England.”

“C’mon, let’s get back to the motel and change. I can’t wait to hit the slopes.”

“Ted, it’s Christmas.”

“And
this
,” said Ted, “is my Christmas present.”

“It was a nice sermon, Reverend,” said Ted’s wife.

“A little weird,” said Ted. His wife elbowed him. “But nice. A change from the usual theme of salvation.”

Reverend Swan said, “Salvation is a timeless and universal theme.”

Ted nodded. “You said it, Reverend, they had taxes and we have taxes; they had no room in the inn and we have no room in the inn. You couldn’t rent a closet on the mountain today.”

“The miracle of snow-making machines,” said Reverend Swan.

“That’s right, Reverend.”

After Reverend Swan removed his vestments and carefully hung them away in their proper place, he joined his wife. As usual, she waited for him in the vestibule. He kissed her on the cheek and wished her a holy Christmas. Together they locked the door and climbed into the ice cube tray. Reverend Swan drove slowly home, past children sliding on the sidewalks.

The church was situated at the head of Main Street (Highway 100 on the state map). Entering the town from the south, the road aimed straight for the church, then curved sharply ninety degrees, in front of Our Lady, and headed up the mountain. The first thing anyone entering Round Corners saw was the church with its white steeple. The rest of the town seemed to huddle around the church in picture postcard perfection, just like a Maud Calhoun original sold at the cash register of the Round Corners Restaurant. Barns, mountains, cows. And churches. The tourists loved them.

When the Swans arrived home, Mrs. Swan made hot chocolate. Their Christmas tradition. Hot chocolate and croissant rolls. “It makes me feel so continental,” Mrs. Swan confessed. The Swans sipped hot chocolate in a warm kitchen, their drinks so full of marshmallows they left white mustaches on the Swans’ upper lips.

Reverend Swan did not remember driving home in the cold car (apparently his vision had returned) or shaking hands with his parishioners on the steps in nothing but his vestments or Mrs. Swan cutting the greetings short and rushing him back into the church to change into warm clothes.

“You were wonderful today,” said Mrs. Swan.

“Really?”

His wife nodded.

“What did I say? I can’t remember.”

“You were inspirational, as you always are.”

“I thought the people seemed a bit restless, bored, perhaps.”

“Never bored. I’m sure you raised the consciousness of peace and love another notch today.”

“Let’s hope they remember it later when they run into each other on the slopes.”

Mrs. Swan suggested he lie down and rest for awhile. She said that often now.

“I
am
tired.”

“It’s no wonder, making up an entire sermon off the top of your head.”

“Did I do that?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t give the sermon I wrote on Wednesday?”

“You can save it. Give it another time. A good sermon never grows stale.”

“I suppose not.”

Reverend Swan slowly ascended the stairs, a white marshmallow mustache still on his face. After every service, Reverend Swan retired to his study. There he grabbed his saxophone, like a desperate smoker scrabbles for a cigarette, and played jazz. The most nonsensical music he could wail. As the notes sailed from the horn, the tension flowed from him, his stomach settled, his life returned to an even keel. And as usual, after awhile, Reverend Swan began to think giving sermons wasn’t so bad and telling people what’s the right thing to do wasn’t so difficult.

Automatically, Reverend Swan turned in the direction of the study and the saxophone stand in the corner. Then, he remembered there was no saxophone. His wife mentioned driving into Burlington to a pawn shop. She’d seen a saxophone in the window just last week. It probably could be had for a reasonable price. Maybe after Christmas, Reverend Swan said. Right now his heart wasn’t in it. Right now he just wanted to lie down in his quiet bedroom.

T
he only plant in Wynn’s Cut and Curl is a plastic potted palm. An artificial palm needs no water or sun or love. People don’t feel compelled to talk to a plastic plant, the way they might with a plant coursing with chlorophyll, a plant they expect to grow and propagate. You could subject a plastic palm to loud rock music, freezing temperatures, and cigarette burns all day long, and not evoke a single response. It shows no stress and no happiness. It just is.

“I feel like that damn plant,” said Wynn Winchester. “A pregnant plastic palm. Harvey says I look beautiful. But what does Harvey know? I’m tired, too tired to do my own hair, after doing other women’s all day. Too tired to sew baby clothes, clean the house, cook. Harvey practically lives on canned spaghetti. Freda, do you ever feed your family that spaghetti in a can?”

“The kids love the pasta shaped like the alphabet, but Lewis goes after the stuff that looks like space monsters. I’d rather eat turpentine sandwiches myself.”

Wynn wrapped the last of Freda’s hair around a pink roller. Thirty rollers, thirty pelvic squeezes. Two weeks ago, she and Harvey started Lamaze classes. They saw a film of a baby being born, which Harvey considered a blockbuster. He hightailed it to the library the next day and checked out more books on childbirth.

“Harvey’s a fount of advice,” I said, leaning back in one of the dryer chairs. The bubble was pushed up. I flipped through one of Wynn’s magazines, looking for tips on keeping your sex life alive.

Wynn snorted. “He monitors my milk intake. He counts how many cookies I eat. Every time I turn around he’s begging me to pant in his face. And some days I just don’t feel like it. I bet those other women in Lamaze class practice panting every chance they get. They’re going to breeze through childbirth like a mother cat having kittens and pop right back into size nine pants. I’m going to be screaming at Harvey and hyperventilating. And the child will be in college before I ever see the narrow side of a size twelve.” Wynn sighed. “Freda, was Lewis with you when you had your babies?”

“Every one. They couldn’t keep him out of the delivery room. Lewis was birthing babies with me long before it was the fashionable thing to do. He held my hand, talked to me, wiped the sweat from my face while the other fathers wore the linoleum off the waiting room floor. There isn’t a man on earth I’d rather have a baby with than Lewis.”

“But when you were pregnant, didn’t Lewis drive you crazy with his helpfulness? Didn’t you ever want to tell him to leave you alone?”

I looked up and saw a shadow drift across Freda’s face.

“I’ve
never
wanted Lewis to leave me alone. Some men thoroughly enjoy fatherhood. I’d rather have one who cares too much than one who doesn’t care at all. They had to drag my daddy out of a bar every time my mother was ready to have a baby. She had to drive
him
to the hospital. It’s a time to share, my mother said; you want someone around even if he is half drunk and pukes all over the nurses’ station.”

Wynn moved Freda to the dryer next to me, flipped the bubble down over Freda’s head, and twisted the temperature setting. She knocked on the plastic bubble.

“You all right in there?” Wynn yelled.

Freda gave the thumbs up sign.

It was a Saturday morning. Freda dragged me out of bed to lend moral support while she sat under a dryer burning her ears in Round Corners’ only beauty shop. Under the big bubble dryer, a tiny hurricane whirled around her head, blocking out sound, letting in only thoughts. As Freda thumbed through a magazine, I knew her mind was not on the European chocolate-lovers diet (eat all you want and lose beaucoup pounds a week) or seven ways to develop assertiveness. She even passed on an interview with Cynthia Sands, “the diva of afternoon soap operas.”

“Perhaps it’s good that Lewis and I are through with having babies,” she said in the car on the way to Wynn’s. “He’s hardly ever around anymore. And I couldn’t bear to go through it without him.”

That morning she walked into Wynn’s shop and said, “Make me into a new woman.” She didn’t have an appointment. She didn’t tell Lewis where she was going. She wanted a new look to lure back her old Lewis Lee, she said.

“I miss that man. I miss those afternoons, when the children were in school and we could take our time loving.” The cavorting in those television beds was nothing compared to what happened between her and Lewis, she said. And afterwards, he would hold her and they would talk as friends do. “None of that cigarette-after-it’s-done shit like they do on television, Maud,” Freda said.

Freda’s new look resembled many of the new looks walking around Round Corners. Not quite right. Was it lopsided? Maybe the curl was too tight or the cut too short? There was nothing to pile on top of her head as was Freda’s style for years. Wynn said she thought the short, earlobe-length fluffed out by a perm was flattering. She showed Freda all kinds of things she could do with two little barrettes. Wynn clipped the curls back from Freda’s face.