Christmas Mischief
“Christmas really was Christmas, even without very many presents,” Amy said contentedly, lying on the rug in front of the merry little fire that burned in Avery Bell’s parlor fireplace. Avery’s sleek tortoise cat, Miss Demeanor, purred beside her. Amy had rearranged and balanced yet again the assortment of small painted wooden tree ornaments, each with its own particular Bell family history which Teddy and Avery had taken turns providing, and she was proud to gaze upon the big Christmas tree which glittered with symmetrical perfection in the firelight. It was three days after Christmas and the girls had been outside most of the day, walking on what they could find of the snowy paths in the woods on a slippery hike over hill and dale that Teddy had promised would be far less strenuous and half the distance it turned out to be.
“This has been an excellent Christmas,” Joanna agreed contentedly from the cushiony recesses of the marvelously deep sofa. “I’m ahead ten thousand points in Blink—”
“Because you cheated with the extra dominoes,” Amy interrupted. “And you changed the rule of slap clap nines halfway through. And you kept changing secret partners. So your points don’t really count on the grand tally list, only for the duration of our games in Long Harbor—just remember that.”
“And we’ve got Teddy, and Avery, and each other,” Joanna continued, ignoring her completely, “even though Teddy is a terrible liar who should never be trusted again about estimating the duration of a freezing slippery walk in the woods. When we complained, he just laughed like an irresponsible fetus. Oh, my poor feet will never be the same again,” she added, wiggling her striped socks. “But it was very beautiful, so I guess I’m not sorry we went. Plus we were entitled to make pigs of ourselves at dinner again, after all that. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m stuffed.”
“Me too. But is there any more hot cocoa?” Amy asked from her position of utter comfort on the floor. “I can’t get up without disturbing Miss D.”
“There is plenty indeed,” Avery said from her habitual place on the couch, an Irish blanket over her knees, where she had been alternately dozing and perusing a battered Angela Thirkell novel. The moment they laid eyes on her, Avery Bell had instantly reminded the three Green sisters of Mrs. Roth, their favorite teacher at Warren, now retired. She was a marvelous Latin teacher, given to throwing chalk at the heads of inattentive students, who all adored her anyway. Like Mrs. Roth, Amy had pointed out as they carried their bags up to the bedrooms, Teddy’s grandmother was hard and soft in interesting ways, like a cross between a nuclear physicist and a chicken.
“I’ll go put a flame under the hot chocolate pot,” Avery said. “But first tell me if your ‘me too’ was about being stuffed or about the frozen feet or about the suspicion of my grandson’s outdoor leadership capabilities.”
“Oh, all of those things,” Amy replied honestly. “But especially Teddy. He’s really terrible. He always says he can get somewhere in a few minutes even though it really takes an hour, or that a walk is just a couple of blocks when it’s six miles.”
“It’s a form of optimism that runs in our family,” Avery pronounced, putting her book down and warming to her topic as she
slipped her feet into her downstairs house moccasins. (She was a woman of many precise habits.) In the six days they had spent together, they had adapted to Avery’s habit of taking any stray remark as a launching point for a philosophic ramble on myriad topics. “His father certainly had it. It’s an essential flaw in the Bell family character. ‘He won’t be a bit of trouble, you’ll hardly know he’s there at all,’ is what he said to me that first summer. Can you imagine? A seven-year-old boy who had just lost his mother. He was shattered, though it hardly showed. And of course, there I was, optimistically thinking he was absolutely right, how much trouble could a small boy be? Ha!”
“Gran, I don’t think that’s optimism, exactly,” Teddy said from the doorway, where he stood with a fresh armload of firewood from the pile by the kitchen door. “I think the word for it is ‘denial.’”
“Oh, don’t start using your fancy Yale terminology on this old lady,” Avery scolded crossly. “I suppose you think your old grandmother is just too, too turnip truck, but I know a thing or two about how human beings are.”
“Of course you do, Gran,” Teddy soothed, dropping the wood into the big copper tub on the hearth. “It’s in all your books.” He left a trail of snow worms that had formed in the patterns of the soles of his sneakers. Amy swept up with her hand the ones she could reach without stirring from her cozy spot and crunched them into a single lump, which she offered to the cat, who sniffed at it for a moment and then turned away.
“And speaking of how human beings are, I believe our friend Meg is having yet another secret telephone chat in the library with a love interest of some kind,” Avery said with a sly look of triumph. “I may be an old nuisance, but I still notice what goes on.”
“You’re not a nuisance, stop that! You’re just trying to provoke flattery and you know it. But what makes you say that about Meg?” Teddy asked, catching Joanna’s eye. Amy had stopped stroking the cat and was clearly listening as well.
“It’s a tone of voice a woman uses only when she is speaking with a man,” Avery said with authority. “I went in to get my reading glasses, which I remembered I had left by the telephone just before dinner, and I could not help but hear her. There is a kind of laugh, a way of responding—well, I just know.” She cocked her head to one side and murmured, “‘How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears!’”
“Hey, you guys,” Meg said, coming into the parlor, buttoning her sweater. “More cocoa? I can heat it up.”
“How was your phone call?” Amy asked with candid interest. “You said you were going upstairs to get a sweater, not into the library to make a telephone call.”
“What? Oh, fine,” Meg answered, startled. “I, um, just needed to check with someone about, um, something for the reading for the art history class I’m taking next term. Oh, I’m sorry, Avery, I should have asked! I’ll pay for any calls we make while we’re here.”
“Don’t speak of it,” Avery dismissed with a wave of a hand. “But that’s quite commendable, Meg,” she said, fixing her with the gimlet gaze over her half-glasses that Teddy had long thought of simply as “the look.” “Planning your reading for a class that hasn’t even started yet. I wish Teddy were half as diligent as you.”
The next morning, Teddy and Joanna found a moment to confer in the laundry room.
“What the hell, Teddy?”
“We’ve got to talk to her,” he said. The laundry room was a place that would have ordinarily interested Joanna very much. She could see that the cupboards and shelves were stuffed with old picnic hampers, retired toasters, soap flakes in a box so old it was probably worth something to collectors, baking tins, vases, thermoses, straw hats, all sorts of interesting objects. She made a mental
note to prowl at a later point. She wanted to ask Teddy at another moment about the poignant row of worn dog collars on hooks that had obviously belonged to several generations of Avery’s spaniels.
“How can we?” Joanna said in frustration. “I tried to get her to talk last night but she was buzzing around brushing her teeth and flossing and plucking and moisturizing and then after we turned out the light she went right to sleep, or pretended to. You know how hard it is to talk to Meg about something when she sort of vaporizes. She hates talking about feelings anyway. You know what she used to say when we were little? ‘I don’t want to discuss about it.’ That’s such a total Meg expression. But she’s been so out of it since we got here, don’t you think?”
“We’ll just be honest and tell her that we know about her and whatshisname, the dashing Professor Verb Adjective,” said Teddy, concentrating on tracing a jagged crack in the red linoleum floor with a socked toe. “And, obviously, it’s not okay, we’re concerned about it. We’ll just tell her we know something’s going on with him and we can just try to talk to her about the whole thing. We don’t even have to get into the feelings part of it. I mean, what sort of future does she think this can possibly have?” Teddy looked up to see what Joanna was thinking.
“Oh, that will be a very relaxed conversation,” Joanna said bitterly. “Trust me, I’ve had family conversations like that, you know? This is where you came in, remember?”
“Okay, fine, how do you want to handle it, then?” Teddy asked. He leaned against the ironing board and the iron sitting on one end wobbled dangerously until Joanna steadied it.
“Look out,” she said crossly. “I don’t know! Just let me think about it, okay? Boys always want to do something. Girls like to analyze.”
“I think of you as someone who prefers to do something,” Teddy said.
“Maybe. Okay, here’s a thing I can do. I’m supposed to go grocery shopping with her in a little while. We said we would make dinner tonight. So if you can keep Amy busy here, maybe I can find a moment if it’s just the two of us in the car.”
“Fine. That might work. Suit yourself.”
“Are you mad at me, Teddy?” Joanna asked anxiously. “I mean, we don’t have a problem, do we, you and me? I would hate that more than anything.”
“No, it’s not you. It was you, for a while, but it’s not you anymore,” Teddy replied cryptically. “So fine, let’s try that, that’s a good idea,” he said, moving toward the door to the kitchen, suddenly impatient with the conversation. “Let me know how it goes.”
It didn’t go. Try as she might, Joanna could find no easy way to work the conversation around to Meg’s telephone call or to Teddy’s having seen her at the bakery with Mark Frank. On the way to town, Meg had twiddled the radio until she was satisfied with a blaring song called “Weird Science” that she said was by a group called Oingo Boingo. Conversation was impossible. Joanna had never heard of either this song or the group and thought it very strange that Meg had developed a sudden and mysterious affinity for this awful music.
Shopping for their groceries, Meg had taken charge of the wagon and had distractedly consulted their list over and over, motherishly sending Joanna on one mission after the next throughout the store. Vanilla extract, check. Lemons, check. Pork roast, check. Eggs, check. No, not small ones, large ones, check. The least-haggard-looking green vegetables, check. Tapioca, after a prolonged search as neither of them could think where to find it, check.
On the return trip, Meg took the opposite tack, talking a blue streak about how much she liked Avery, how prickly but secretly kind Avery was, how she really wanted to read Avery’s novels now, how beautiful her house was, how charming the village of Long
Harbor was, how wonderful the view of Stark Island was from the upstairs bedroom windows, how sweet Amy was with Miss Demeanor and maybe they should think of getting Amy a kitten for a surprise, and before Joanna knew it they were back at the house, unloading groceries from the back of the Subaru.
Amy had gone with Avery to town in the ancient Volvo called Edna, ostensibly to the post office but really for a conversation about taking her art more seriously over coffee at a place next to the post office, a plan engineered by Teddy. He heard the car in the driveway and came out to help Meg and Joanna carry things in the back door to the kitchen. Joanna gave him a negative shake of the head when he looked at her expectantly.
A few moments later, when they had taken off their coats and were organizing the food in the pantry and refrigerator, Teddy said to Meg in a casual tone, “Oh, you had a phone call.”
“Really?” Meg looked surprised. “I didn’t give anyone this number.”
“Well, it was a man. He didn’t leave his name. Who knows, sometimes people get a number from their Caller ID thing.”
Joanna tried to intercept Teddy’s gaze but he kept his eyes on Meg’s face, which had gone a little pale.
“What did he say?” Meg asked, folding the brown paper grocery bags vigorously and putting them in their slot under the counter. She looked out the window. “Pretty snow on those bushes. What a beautiful place this must be in the summer. Lucky you, spending your summers here every year. Does it get hot? I suppose it does, but probably not humid, since we’re right on the shore, right? Are there many mosquitoes?” Meg began to empty the dishwasher, and busied herself finding the right slots in the kitchen drawers for a fistful of cutlery.
“Your message, Meg? Do you want to hear it or not?”
“Oh, sorry, Teddy, yes, yes, go ahead,” Meg said, opening and closing drawers while she hunted for logical homes for a spatula and a measuring spoon with unnecessary urgency.
“He said he really wanted to see you as soon as possible,” Teddy said. “He said he had made up his mind about something.”
“What? Are you sure that’s what he said?” Meg asked, dropping her pretense of nonchalance. “He had made up his mind about something? But we agreed that we weren’t going to be in touch until after the new year. Are you sure he didn’t say anything else?”
“Who?” Joanna asked. “Who is this ‘he’ person?”
“He said you would know what he meant,” Teddy said.
“Was there anything else?” Meg was a little breathless and had developed two small pink spots on her cheeks, like someone who has just come in from skating on a brisk winter day.
“Um, yes, he said it would be best if you waited to get in touch, to, um, make a plan, when you’re back. He said you shouldn’t call him until you’re back in New Haven.”
“Teddy?” Joanna asked. “When did this telephone call from … him come exactly?”
“Just before you got back just now,” he answered easily. “I was reading, Amy and Avery had just gone out. I thought it might be you guys at the Big Valu”—he pronounced it the perverse way Avery did, “Valloo”—“with a question about what to get for dinner.”
“He said I shouldn’t call now?” Meg asked uncertainly. “I should wait?”
“You got it,” Teddy said.
“Was there really a phone call for Meg when we were out, Teddy?” Joanna asked at the first moment when she could get him alone, having propelled him back into the laundry room for another powwow. The dryer was running and provided a pleasant mechanical whir. Joanna always loved the smell of hot laundry. It always made her feel taken care of.
“Do you come here often?” Teddy clowned. “People will say we’re in love.”
“Teddy?”
“Call it Plan B,” he replied. “I’ve sprung the trap. Let’s see what develops.”
“What could possibly develop? What are you thinking? This is cruel. I should tell Meg you lied to her about the call,” Joanna whispered hoarsely. “She totally went for it.”
“But you won’t,” Teddy soothed her, putting his finger to her lips. “Because we have something in common, Joanna. Neither of us is entirely nice when we need the truth of a situation.”
“Force it out into the open, you mean?”
“Sure.”
“What happens now? I mean, if I don’t tell her you lied.”
The dryer buzzed and stopped running. The little laundry room became still and almost instantly chillier.
“You won’t. We watch her. She’ll insist on going back to New Haven early, which is okay with me, I hope you don’t feel cheated out of New Year’s Day here, but it would actually be better for me to get back anyway. I’m sort of reaching my limit with Avery right now. I mean, I love her, but you haven’t heard every single story ninety-nine times the way I have. Plus, if you have any of those insane millennium breakdown concerns, maybe we shouldn’t be on the road.”
“It’s not the millennium. I thought we agreed about that. And will you please tell me about these dog collars?” She reached up and fingered one. The tags jingled faintly.
“That was Ezra. He came from the pound,” Teddy said, touching the collar. “And this one was Milne. He was originally called Barkley but his name changed because of a bad habit he had that resulted in what we called the pooh corner, if you really want to know.”
“Does Avery miss having dogs now?” Joanna wondered, taking clothes from the dryer and folding them into separate piles.
“Sure, probably, but she’s probably better off with a cat, in the winter especially,” Teddy said. “Though I miss Milne. He used to
like to go out in the kayak with me. And Thurgood, this is his collar—he was tremendous, a really witty dog. So anyway, where were we?”
“The millennium. Is this your shirt?”
“That used to be my shirt but I gave it to Amy,” Teddy said.
“Look out for Amy borrowing your stuff,” Joanna warned. “She’s sly. If she wants something you’ve got, she uses borrowing as the first small step toward possession and the next thing you know you don’t have the heart to ask for it back.”
“Don’t worry about it. So you and I know when the millennium really is, but Amy and Avery are millennium believers. Meg seems to flip-flop,” he added. “But my guess is she’ll use it as an excuse to go back to New Haven early. So anyway, we’ll just wait and see what happens when she calls him. Maybe he’ll set up another rendezvous at the bakery. Whatever, we’re forcing his hand, don’t you see? This will precipitate a confrontation of some kind, since she thinks he’s made up his mind about something.”
“Hmm,” Joanna said, emptying lint from the dryer trap, the laundry done. “It’s awfully complicated, isn’t it? Can we sit?” They both slid against the wall until they were side by side on the linoleum floor next to a pile of laundry baskets. Joanna began to gather up some stray clothespins into a neat pile.
“But isn’t it cruel,” she began again, “sort of getting her hopes up in a pointless way? And how did you know there was a something for him to be thinking about, anyway?” She slid her small hand under the dryer and felt around, and was rewarded with two more lint-covered clothespins.
“There’s always a something, isn’t there? And it’s no crueler than what she’s doing, potentially messing up a family. She’s playing with fire and she’s going to get burned. I thought you’d be pleased, Jo-Jo!” he cried out in frustration. The day had been both unprofitable and unsatisfactory and he wished he could
live it over again. He looked sorrowfully at the dear face beside him. “I thought I was helping bring this mess to an early conclusion!”
“Maybe you are,” she said, leaning against him. “I just hate this! Oh, Teddy, I don’t want to be mad at you on top of everything else!” She put one arm across his shoulder and hugged him awkwardly for a long moment. They sat together for a while with their heads touching in a sad communion, their eyes closed as if against some harsh light.
A change seemed to have come over Meg. Although they had planned to stay in Long Harbor with Avery until New Year’s Day, she had, as predicted, insisted on returning to New Haven the day before, citing vague concerns about chaos on the roads and millennium problems with computers. Avery insisted that it made no difference to her, as her New Year’s Eve habit of many years was to be in her own bed asleep by nine.
“It’s not a sacred tradition or anything?” Meg asked worriedly.
“Certainly not,” Avery assured her. “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind, for goodness’ sake. Never forget that.”
“Emerson always did have such a way with words,” Teddy footnoted helpfully, which caused Avery to swat him.
They would be leaving first thing in the morning in order to make the long drive to New Haven in what there was of the watery winter daylight.
It had snowed most of the past two days, and in that time, when they were all together incessantly through the days, reading, eating endless meals, listening to Django Reinhardt and Le Hot Club of Paris through the hiss and crackle of Avery’s
dusty old records, playing marathon hands of Blink, Meg had been quite unlike herself. She started when spoken to, blushed when looked at, was very quiet, and was often found sitting over an unread book in her lap, with a timid, troubled look on her face.
“So, my dear, you’ve become very quiet,” Avery said to her as they tidied up the living room before bed.
“I’m sorry, Avery,” Meg said, piling newspapers neatly next to the kindling basket, which brimmed with pinecones she and Amy had collected that afternoon. “I didn’t mean to be such a bore. You’ve been so welcoming and generous to us, letting us overrun your house for the most wonderful Christmas.”
“I’ve loved having you three girls in the house, with your richness, your enjoyments, and that absurd card game. I look forward to my work and my solitude, but I will also miss all three of you, and of course I always miss Teddy. It’s been a nice change from the wilderness of my books in this lonely house. And you’re not what I would call the least bit boring, Meg. The secret of being a bore is to tell everything, as our friend Voltaire so wisely pointed out. You, on the other hand, tell very little. Nothing, in fact. Hardly boring, that.”
Something in Avery’s kind and honest eyes made Meg wish she could blurt out her deepest worries, and if they had been truly alone, she might have.
“Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real,” Avery said gently.
“How do you know that?” Meg asked.
“A very wise woman called Iris Murdoch said so,” Avery answered.
“It is all so difficult—” Meg began hesitantly.
“Dishwasher empty, everything put away!” Amy announced to
Avery, appearing at just that wrong moment. “And I hope it’s okay with you—since it’s our last night, I gave a little bowl of cream to Miss D.”
“On the table, no doubt. In one of the best dishes, I assume. I won’t know what to do with her when you leave, Amy, she’ll be so spoiled,” Avery said with an indulgent chuckle. “Where are the others?”
“Teddy’s gone to sleep, Joanna’s reading in bed. So come on upstairs to bed, you,” Amy said with impatience to Meg. “Don’t just stand there in the dark. I did all the dishes myself while you were just lurking in here. You’re the one who wanted to get an early start tomorrow and you’re driving.”
“Don’t be cross with me, Amy,” Meg said. “You were great to do the washing up, really. You’ve been great. Don’t mind me.”
Avery reached over to turn off the big reading lamp by the couch. The three of them stood together and admired the glowing Christmas tree for one last look.
“I don’t want to go back to school,” Amy said. “Can’t I just stay here with you?”
“But you must get your education,” Avery reproved.
“Sometimes I feel as though there isn’t anything to learn in high school,” Amy said. “The subjects are all so stupid and boring. Sometimes I wish I could study real things.”
“Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision,” Avery said.
“Reeling, Writhing, and Fainting in Coils,” Meg added.
“It’s the best Christmas tree, Amy,” said Avery, noting the solemn face on her little friend. “You did a splendid job arranging every ornament perfectly.”
“I hate it that time passes,” Amy declared. “I want it to stop.”
“In sweet times, yes,” Avery said, “that would be splendid. But surely the many advantages of time passing should not be overlooked.”
“Whatever,” Amy said begrudgingly. “I just know that I want
to be here and now, and I don’t want to be back at that egregious school next week.”
“But remember our talk,” Avery reminded her. “You can make the most of it. And you can stop time in your own way whenever you want—you have a marvelous ability to preserve your moments with a pencil or a paintbrush. You don’t have to give up your moments. Joanna, I suspect, has words with which to do just that, if she gets around to it, the way I have had good strong words for company all my life, and Meg here”—she gave Meg’s shoulder a friendly squeeze to soften her words—“I’m not quite sure what Meg’s gift is, actually, she’s so full of secrets, but perhaps that is her gift—holding secrets safe. However, Miss Amy Green, I see in your future that you will be a great artist. It is a gift in which I know you will find much comfort.”
“In ten years, let’s all meet here and see how many of us have got our wishes,” Amy whispered.
“If we are all alive ten years hence,” Avery said dryly. “Ahoy, it’s late,” she said, suddenly businesslike. “Shadrach, Meshach, and to bed we go!”
She sighed a little sigh as she bent to switch off the Christmas lights and then fumbled in the sudden dark for her glasses and book and her cardigan sweater, which was draped on the arm of the sofa. Waiting for her out in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, Amy and Meg each thought at that instant that Avery suddenly looked very old and small.
The house creaked and settled. The furnace rumbled on. Upstairs, radiators knocked. The day was over. The interlude in Long Harbor had come to an end. Miss Demeanor emerged abruptly from the darkened room, having been dislodged from her perch on the sweater, startling all three of them, and darted past them to run swiftly up the stairs, as if she had an urgent appointment that she had almost forgotten.
Reader’s note: I’m learning terrible things about events in my life as I read these pages. MG
Author’s note: I’m sorry you feel obligated to read so literally. There are many meanings in the story of The Little Women, and not all of them pertain to your experience.
Reader’s note: Do tell, what exactly is the meaning of this story? MG
Author’s note: Flannery O’Connor said it best: The meaning of the story is the story.
Reader’s note: It’s bad enough that you have the Avery character spouting literary chestnuts. Can’t you explain yourself in your own words instead of perpetually hiding behind the words of authors you happen to admire? Are you consulting some anthology of defensive literary quotations? MG
Author’s note: This novel is how I explain myself in my own words. Ideally, it would speak for itself. Ideally, readers will allow it to do just that.
Reader’s note: You feel absolutely no obligation to honor reality? MG
Author’s note: Wallace Stevens said reality is not what it is. It consists of the many realities which it can be made into.
Reader’s note: How handy for you that Wallace Stevens said that! MG
Reader’s note: Are there any more scenes with the Avery character? AG
Author’s note: No.
Reader’s note: I think you should have her come back into the novel. I was hoping she would play a larger role in the story than this. AG
Author’s note: Understandably, you miss the person I call Avery in this novel since her recent death, but the events of the story are limited by necessity and she simply doesn’t figure again in the narrative. Reference to Amy’s trip to Paris with Avery the following summer existed in an earlier draft, but that has been cut.
Reader’s note: Why? AG
Author’s note: The entire chapter set in the following summer was dropped. It wasn’t essential to the story.
Reader’s note: Is there no place to work it in elsewhere in the manuscript? AG
Author’s note: It is unwise for an author to take advice from a family member about how to construct a novel.
Reader’s note: “An” author? “A” novel? AG
Author’s note: This author. This novel.