The New Black Mask (No 8)

Shhh, Shhh, It’s Christmas Carolyn Banks

“ ‘Shhh, Shhh, It’s Christmas’ is, for me, an experiment in voice,” Carolyn Banks says. “The narrator has what I think of as a wee voice, and I couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take a reader to realize that the information she is imparting might be sinister. In other words, is it true that ‘It ain’t what you say; it’s how you say it?’ ”

Ms. Banks’s story “Mean to My Father” appeared in NBM6.

I remember thinking how cozy the room looked. I had waxed the furniture that afternoon, using that red oil that my mother used — or was it the nuns? — oh so many years ago. And all the wood gleamed. Not just the tables, but the trim, too. And the legs of the chairs and things. I’d actually knelt down and worked the rag deep into all the crevices.

Outside, according to the radio, it was a grim eight degrees Fahrenheit. I only listened to what they said about Fahrenheit, because I never did learn Celsius.

It seemed especially cozy after I began sipping on the sherry that Alan had poured. He hardly ever offered me any, because I hardly ever drank it, but what with Christmas coming...

“Elaine,” he began, and I looked up at him and smiled. He smiled back, but a wry smile.

“The sherry is delicious,” I said, and wondered then if I could be drunk. How many sips had I had and how many sips did it take? Anyway, I sipped some more.

The wind picked up outside. I could hear it, but where had the sound come from? The windows? The chimney? The roof? I tried to listen closer. The windows, I thought. “You aren’t in a draft, are you?” I asked.

He shook his head, no, not looking at me, though. “Elaine,” he said again, and his voice sounded the way it did at the end of an argument. Thin and dry and faraway, as though I’d never ever understand and he was just giving up.

“It’ll be a wonderful Christmas,” I said, leaning deep into my chair. “Really wonderful.” I thought maybe I should get up and stand behind his chair. Rub his neck. He used to like that. Except that I couldn’t because the back of the new chair — the one that I’d wanted oh so much, the one with the roses climbing the fabric as if it were a trellis — had a back way too high for rubbing anybody’s neck.

“The Berensons were lots of fun,” I offered, staying put. They’d stopped by with a bird feeder. One that you had to stick on the side of the house, a plastic one with a little suction cup. I wondered then, would it stay up? Would the little cup hold? Or would it fall down, maybe not the day you stuck it up there, but one day?

“Yes, they were,” he agreed, and got up and went over to the closet where the liquor bottles were. While he was over there, he turned the radio off.

He hadn’t given up, not really.

“Alan,” I said, not wanting to accuse him or anything, but he’d been to that closet three times since he poured my sherry. Three times at least, maybe even four. But he acted as though he hadn’t heard me, and I acted as though that was all right.

“The Berensons are getting a divorce,” he said. The fire hissed when he said it and little sparks flew. The fire astonished me and I jumped forward in the chair, spilling a bit of the sherry. It ran down my hand. I wiped my hand on my skirt and looked down to see if it had stained. It hadn’t. Still, I felt tears leaking down my cheeks, as hot as the sparks must have been.

“Elaine!” he said it sternly, the way my father used to, the all-wrong way that only made things worse. Then he was kneeling in front of me. There were cat hairs on the rug and they’d stick to his trousers and then he’d get mad. He was wearing dark trousers; he always did, even though the cats got hair on everything and then it got on him. If I could have spoken, I’d have reminded him about the hairs, maybe so he’d get up before his pants got dirty. But I didn’t say anything. I just put my sherry down on the arm of the chair and ran my fingers through my hair, short hair cut like a boy’s, easy to take care of, you didn’t have to set it or anything. Just wash it and towel it and then let it dry. I thought of Jan Berenson’s hair, thick and dark and longer than it ought to be. Then I was able to say something and it just came right out, “No!”

Alan took my glass and held it up for me to drink from, kind of rolling the glass between his hands. He had hair on his knuckles. Actually, just below his knuckles, little tufts of hair. I thought about that and I thought about slapping at the glass, making it fly across the room, an arc of sherry rising and spilling across the rug. It would leave a stain then, I was sure of it. A stain that you couldn’t get out no matter what you used. That’s what stain meant: forever.

So I took the glass from him, careful not to touch his fingers with my fingers, and I even laughed before I sipped again. “I’m all right,” I said, “it’s just...” Just what? I didn’t know, odd, and such a surprise about the Berensons. “Well,” I said, wiping my nose with my knuckle and sniffing, still holding onto the sherry glass. “He was away so much...” And he was, Lester Berenson, an airline pilot, away so much.

“Yes,” Alan agreed. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the Christmas tree. As if, for the first time, appraising it. Was the trunk straight? Was it bushy and frill? Was it tall and fresh?

“Let’s get the tree up,” I sniffled and Alan looked at me. “You’re right about this tree,” I went on. “It wasn’t worth twenty-five dollars.” But I was thinking, how did he know about the Berensons? They hadn’t said anything, not the whole time they were here. Jan Berenson had even slung her arm around her husband when it was time to go and hiccuped on purpose and he, Lester Berenson, had laughed and kind of squooshed her up against himself. They had given us that bird feeder as a couple, and we had given them, as a couple, that maraschino-cherry bread that I always bake for everyone at Christmastime, the one with all the Philadelphia cream cheese in it.

I took one of the ornaments out and unwrapped it and then, I don’t know why, tried to twirl it by its hanger. I went around once, perilously, before it fell and broke. “Oh,” I said.

“You sit down, Elaine,” Alan had my arm, the way he always did when he was concerned about me. “I’ll clean it up.” And then I was sitting, but on the rug, and I was crying while I listened to him rooting around in the kitchen for the broom and dustpan. “Oh,” I wailed, “You’ll never find it,” meaning the dustpan, which was hanging from a nail, not down on the floor where you’d expect it to be.

I could see Jan Berenson plain as day, see her with that hair of hers, too long, too thick, a hussy’s hair and not the kind of hair a married woman should have. “I’m not surprised after all,” I said, watching Alan try to sweep with a long-handled broom and hold the dustpan at the same time. “Not about the dustpan,” I explained. “I mean about the Berensons.” I knew I should get up and hold the dustpan, but I didn’t want to, not just then. Let him see what it was like, let him see. “Where’s my sherry?” I asked. I wasn’t even crying anymore.

“This isn’t easy, Elaine,” Alan said. The little shards of glass — that was all that was left, little shards — went into the dustpan bed.

“That’s enough,” I said. “I’ll use the vacuum in the morning.” Alan put the broom and dustpan away and came back and sat on the floor beside me.

“It wasn’t something we planned,” he said.

“What wasn’t?” I asked.

“Oh, come on, Elaine.”

“No, what? What do you mean?”

“Elaine,” he said, “I think you know I mean Jan Berenson.” He actually turned his head completely away from me, as though he were talking to the Christmas tree.

“No,” I said, and I could feel my head shaking, making it a very definite no. “I don’t know. Not really.” A couple of times, parties and stuff, they’d be in the kitchen talking. But just talking. Not even sneaky talk, just regular talk, talk they didn’t change or stop when I came into the room. Just talk. Nothing serious, nothing to worry about. “I really didn’t know,” I said.

My voice sounded the way it had when the Berensons had come to the door, bright as tinsel. “Where will we put this bird feeder? By the front door? Or maybe by the bedroom window? Then we can wake up and watch the birds. We’ll have to buy seed. Wild-bird seed.” Were they really wild? Were they? Or was it just a word they put on the package without really thinking about it? My voice grew small. “Have you?” I watched him out of the comer of my eye. “With Jan?” He nodded yes, but he didn’t say it. I thought, “Coward! Coward!” but I didn’t say anything either. I dusted at myself, but hopelessly, cat hairs all over my skirt.

We got married when that song came out. I don’t know the name of it. The one that said, “...and two cats in the yard.” Simon and Garfunkel? Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young? And then I thought, they split up. All of them, they split up. I took a glug of sherry. Not a sip, a glug. “We’ll have to keep the cats in the house after we put the feeder up. Because the cats will kill the birds,” yank their wings off and shred their feathers and bite out their bright round eyes.

“I meant it,” I said, standing, “about putting up this tree.”

“I’ll test the lights,” Alan said, and I smiled. We had those real old sets that used to belong to my parents, the kind where all of the bulbs in the string went off when even one bulb was bad.

“I’ll make us a surprise,” I said, “for our last Christmas,” and I ducked into the kitchen. I put water in the pot, the big pot that I use for soup. I could hear Alan humming in the other room. I put cinnamon in the pot, and nutmeg, and whatever other sweet spice came to hand. I’m good with seasonings. I put the pot over the fire so that the water would heat and the sweet smell of Christmas would fill the house. Then I got the instant Nestea and some orange juice.

Alan hummed away. He had done it, he had told me, so of course he felt relieved. “Hey,” he called from in there, “sure smells good.”

“You bet,” I said. I thought about what all my friends in school had said. About how I was so lucky. So very lucky. And I stirred.

When it started simmering, I sat down at the little kitchen counter that served as my desk.

Alan looked at the pot when I carried it in. He had a bulb in his hand and light cords at his feet. I checked to make sure that, yes, he had the plug in place, and then I heaved the pot in his direction and saw its contents, sweet with sugar and tea and spices, slap his trousers and the cords and the bulb and his hands. I watched Alan jolt and shake and jolt and shake and hold out his hairy hand toward me. I didn’t move, I didn’t even back away, I just stood there until it was time to call the Berensons.

In a way, it was a shame to call them. It was so late. I knew Jan Berenson had already changed for bed. I could see her in front of her vanity mirror, her hair crackling with static electricity, lifting up and trying to stick to the brush. That’s the trouble with hair like that. You have to do so much to it.

She would say, “Would you get that, Lester?” when she heard the phone, because Lester would be up. Probably packing for a flight. I heard her say that once, that Lester was always packing for a flight.

Lester would keep repeating what I said, filling in the spaces because I would only use separate words like tea, and tripped, and lights, and then maybe almost a sentence, like, Alan tangled up, and lights, again.

But then Alan came into the room and stood in front of my typewriter, blocking the light. “You know, Elaine, maybe this is it. Maybe this is the reason.” I didn’t look up and he went on. “I talk to you about something as important as this, and what do you do? You type. I mean, look at you. You don’t even remember anything, not even the tea.”

I looked up now. I smiled. I was even, relatively speaking, content. “Shhh,” I said, “shhh, it’s Christmas.”