The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane (20 page)

Jocelyn, who less opened hers than let it tip so that things simply fell out to a pile by her feet where she could ignore them in peace, got, from what I could see, a toy truck, several packages of candy cigarettes, and an embosser the actual seal of which I couldn't read but seemed to be for the Zingle Company. Should she ever be in need of papers marked with the Zingle logo, she was all set. Humdinger's seemed to be entirely full of neckties and that handy garlic press, of course. Mine had a flute, an assortment of small rubber balls, the purpose for which was unclear, some packing labels, and some boxes of tea. I offered Mrs. Mendelbaum the tea and Uncle shrieked at me, “No TRADING!” Mrs. Mendelbaum said she didn't want the tea anyway and gathered her things, which I was pretty sure she had no use for, into a tight little pile in her lap and held on to them possessively while glaring at all of us as if daring us to take them away.

“What kind of games?” I asked suspiciously.

“Christmas games,” said Uncle Marten, clapping his hands again. The hand clapping at first seemed to be a particularly obnoxious Christmas tic, but then I noticed that it was turning on and off the tree lights. He had some kind of clapper device installed for this purpose and he couldn't seem to stop playing with it all day.

So Humdinger dutifully passed out paper and pens and we were forced to do word scrambles and mazes and word searches and any number of puzzles for prizes that were made up of each other's stocking stuffers. When someone won, Uncle Marten simply swooped in and took something off someone's pile of loot and awarded it to the winner. The first time he tried to take something away from Mrs. Mendelbaum, she grabbed it back and gave him such a look he did not try that again. When we exhausted all his paper games, he started moving our chairs around and announced we were going to play musical chairs, which was when Humdinger declared luncheon served.

“Oh no, not right now, surely it can wait,” said Uncle Marten, but “The flan is temperamental” was all the satisfaction he got from Humdinger, who, I noted, was clearing breakfast things and setting a lunch table as fast as his little tuxedoed legs could carry him. It was only ten o'clock, but nobody mentioned this. We all sat at the table, even Humdinger and Mrs. Mendelbaum. Jocelyn, with her steely discipline, managed to stay upright all through the Christmas lunch, which consisted, as per Uncle Marten's menu, of a celery root salad and some flan and a green Jell-O mold in the shape of a wreath with cinnamon Red Hots and Cool Whip decorating the top.

“Women's magazines online are such a source of incredible foodstuffs,” said Uncle Marten cheerily. “Have some celery root?” He passed it to Jocelyn, who shivered uncontrollably.

There was a silence as we looked at the ten o'clock victuals on our plates; all of us, I thought, except Mrs. Mendelbaum, must be thinking of Christmases past.

“Light lunch,” said Uncle Marten, reading his book on the life of Einstein—one of the stocking stuffers Humdinger had thoughtfully chosen for him—throughout lunch and barely looking up. After lunch Jocelyn begged to go up for a nap and Humdinger reminded Uncle Marten that she was ill, as was Mrs. Mendelbaum, and perhaps we should take a break in the festivities so everyone could admire the contents of their stockings anew in the comfort of their own rooms.

“Excellent. Excellent suggestion and unquestionably in the spirit of the day,” said Uncle Marten and, sweeping his goodies together, was the first to retire upstairs. We all gave a collective audible sigh of relief and I thought Jocelyn was going to faint, but when Humdinger came to help her, she just crabbily waved him away, which turned into more of a push from where I was standing, and headed off upstairs, her pile of stocking stuffers still untouched and unexamined on the floor by the fire. Humdinger collected them and later put them in her room and I heard her say something crankily to him before he crept back out again. It wasn't like her to be rude to grownups, but these days she always had the querulous air of someone who had been prematurely roused from a deep sleep.

Uncle Marten rang a little bell at three in the afternoon. We all tried our best to ignore it, but he followed it up by shouting, “It's time for PRESENTS!” Oh, God, give me strength, I thought, imagining what we had suffered with the stockings multiplied. Then I remembered that we had actually given him a Christmas list, so if he had followed it, and I saw no reason why he wouldn't, the tools and things I would need to make the airplane were there and perhaps I could even get started working on it tonight. This excited me so that I flew downstairs.

“Ah, a little enthusiasm at the thought of presents, excellent, excellent!” said Uncle Marten, rubbing his hands together. Humdinger was already there. We waited a bit. Uncle Marten rang his bell a few times again and then, finally, we had to repeat the actions of the morning, with Humdinger going up after Mrs. Mendelbaum. I went to get Jocelyn, who, although she'd had a nap, was still cranky.

“I don't
want
to go down. I don't
want
to have Christmas with a bunch of strangers,” she said.

She was only saying what we were all feeling, but it annoyed me to hear it aloud. What good did it do to say it? “Get downstairs. The sooner you open your packages, the sooner I can start building the plane,” I reminded her.

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” she said, but allowed herself to be led sulkily back down to the wing chair reserved for her. She sat there with her arms crossed over her chest, glaring at the fire. Mrs. Mendelbaum, I think, had had a little private drink of some sort and was looking a bit loopy and stoned. She kept swaying as if she heard music. Uncle Marten sat in a chair and Humdinger fetched us each one present. The opening of them took the rest of the afternoon. Mrs. Mendelbaum, for some reason, was given a large mounted singing fish, which she said confirmed her worst suspicions about goyishe holidays. Uncle said he got it from an overstocks catalog. “Tahkeh a metsieh,” said Mrs. Mendelbaum, but as usual none of us knew what she was talking about. I got all my tools, and we were down to the last present when Humdinger put a long rectangular box on my lap. I couldn't imagine what I had asked for that was shaped this way, and I wondered if Uncle Marten had gone out on a limb and gotten me something he'd chosen himself because he thought I'd like it, but this seemed unlikely. He had no idea who I was or what I'd like. Yet he seemed particularly excited by this last present.

“Open it, open it, best for last,” he said excitedly, getting off his chair and dancing around me. I struggled with the ribbon. He had wrapped the presents himself and had obviously had Boy Scout training. The knots had taken us forever to undo. “And I must say, Meline, I was ever so happy
someone
thought to ask for one because next to a large toy truck I can't think what Christmas would be without one.”

“One what?” I asked ripping off the paper. I sat there flabbergasted. Inside was a large doll that looked a bit like me with its round apple cheeks and blunt hair with bangs. I couldn't think what to say. I hadn't played with dolls in years. Mind you, it was no stranger than getting the embosser that said Zingle Company.

Uncle Marten awaited my response breathlessly, then when I could think of nothing appropriate to say, blurted out, “It's your dolly! The dolly you requested.”

I tried to smile, but it was more just a matter of stretching my closed lips across my face. I looked up at Uncle Marten and saw Humdinger eyeing me, a tiny glint of amusement that he was unable to conceal peeking uncharacteristically out.

“Thank you,” I said finally.

“Now for dinner!” said Uncle Marten, clapping his hands in excitement and inadvertently turning on and off the tree several times. It was disco Christmas. We sat in the chairs while Uncle Marten handed round eggnog, rumless for me and Jocelyn and with rum for Mrs. Mendelbaum, who if you asked me didn't need anything else to make the day merry and bright, she was merry and bright enough when she came down, but I was too depressed to discreetly point it out to Uncle, who hadn't noticed anyone's state anyway. The light was fading, which should have made the house feel cozy and even more Christmaslike with the millions of candles Humdinger had lit about the halls, but instead it felt like a large, empty death. Sorrow lay around our feet, like warm water, coming six inches up our legs. We waded through it. Everything was damp and wet, not shiveringly cold, but you couldn't wade from room to room without being aware of it. Always there. Not life-threatening, just lapping against your legs so you could never move freely in the way you had before. I told this to Jocelyn, who, as usual, was very literal and said, “Six inches of water can be life-threatening. There was a woman in my mother's guild who drowned in a creek during a drought. There wasn't more than six inches of water there. Probably less.”

“How is that possible, Jocelyn?” I argued. “It wouldn't cover her head, so unless she was facedown, it wouldn't go in her nose, and even if it did, all she would have to do is turn her head.”

“She couldn't turn her head, my mother said. She took a terrible fall and she didn't have the energy for it.”

Well, it sounded very bogus to me, but I didn't feel like arguing at that point. It seemed to me that if you drowned in six inches of water you just weren't showing much spunk. I went to sit next to Mrs. Mendelbaum by the fire. She kept taking sips from a small flask in her pocket. Whatever she was drinking didn't look like liquor. It left a thick black rim around her lips.

“Can't wait for goose, eh?” said Uncle Marten delightedly on his way through the dining room. Fortunately, he didn't wait for an answer. He turned the stereo on—one of his presents from himself to himself was a whole stereo system, which he had spent an hour hooking up while the rest of us sat glumly. Finally he herded us all to the dining room to the haunting sound of some boys' choir singing carols in a big echoey cavernous church. The music ringing in all that empty space only accentuated our own dilemma. I think all of us would have given anything to just go to bed at that point. Even Uncle Marten, though clearly loopy on eggnog, seemed to be fading.

“Well then, well then,” he said when we were all seated. “I suppose now is the time to carve the goose.
Wait,
the crackers! The Christmas crackers!” Then we all had to pull on the end of these strange party favors that made explosive sounds that clearly freaked out Mrs. Mendelbaum. Inside each was a toy, a hat, and a joke or witty saying. We had to read these and put on our hats. Fortunately, no one was called upon to exclaim about yet another useless toy. Then Uncle Marten grabbed his large dangerous-looking carving paraphernalia again, and holding a carving knife and fork in his hands with his paper crown on his head, bid Humdinger to bring in the goose. The goose was duly gotten and Uncle Marten hacked at it, looking all the while at an illustration from a book he had bought on goose carving. I kept thinking of the geese which we saw flying over the island in October in beautiful long-necked V's and which still hung around, swimming in the ocean and pecking worms out of the meadow, and I wanted to throw up. I knew for certain that although I'd come a long way from my vegetarian ways I could not eat goose. The only one who ate it with any gusto was Humdinger, who had also cooked it. Mrs. Mendelbaum picked at hers, but she was clearly by now stoned out of her mind and kept asking people to pass her the side dishes, which she would then look at as if she'd already forgotten what she'd wanted them for, before passing them on untouched. This kept everyone busy and her too busy to do much eating. Jocelyn put food dutifully on her plate but just took sips from her ice water and finally fell asleep in her chair, something I was reasonably sure she had never done before in her life. It was quite some time before anyone else noticed it. Uncle Marten took one bite and stopped eating. “So this is goose?” he said as if he didn't quite want to believe it. “Well, it's simply horrible. No wonder most people eat turkey. No wonder there's not a run on geese at Christmas. Because who in their right mind would want to eat them. I, myself, can't go through with it. It's very fat, isn't it? It's … fat.” I think it was the breaking point for him. Up until then he'd been able to ignore the fact that no one else was full of Yuletide spirits, that living in the house together did not make us one big happy Christmas family, that the cat wasn't going to wear her Christmas collar or the dog his Christmas sweater. The stockings sucked, the presents sucked, and the goose tasted disgusting. I think it was finally occurring to him that you could buy all the props you needed for Christmas but people were not props. Humdinger looked at Uncle's face and then noticed Jocelyn and carried her off to bed. Mrs. Mendelbaum asked where dessert was, and while Uncle looked vaguely around for the Christmas pudding, Mrs. Mendelbaum started passing side dishes again. That's when I left the table.

I went upstairs. How I spent the rest of the evening was nobody's business. I didn't even have the energy to go look for airplane parts. I lay down on my bed trying to decide whether to go to sleep for the night even though it was only six o'clock when there was a knock on my door. I couldn't imagine who it could be. Nobody ever came to my room, not since Jocelyn had been too ill to move, but it wasn't Jocelyn anyway, it was Humdinger with a mint.

*   *   *

By the New Year, Jocelyn's fever went away. Dr. Houseman, who had come in periodically to check on us when her schedule allowed, didn't need to come anymore, but Uncle's radio phone rang a lot and it was usually her and she usually wanted to speak to Humdinger. “What do you talk to her about?” I asked him at breakfast, but Uncle called down for him before he had a chance to answer me. I struck up small conversations occasionally now because otherwise I would talk to no one. Uncle, as if demoralized by the Christmas fiasco and his miscalculations of what would be enjoyable for all of us, hid his nose in a book during dinner and often didn't come down at all, sending me his apologies through Humdinger and requesting a tray. When he did come down, I tried to talk to him about something I thought might interest him.