Chapter Six

Carla Mae stayed after school with me to help remove the decorations from the tree before taking it home.

“You sure were lucky,” she said, as we worked.

“It wasn’t luck. I know how to play the odds. Dad taught me.”

“How?”

“If you go first, you always choose 5 or 6, so you get at least half the numbers on the high side or low side. If you go second, you choose the number right next to the other player’s, so at least you get all the numbers higher or lower than his, whichever gives you the most numbers. Get it?”

“No,” said Carla Mae, annoyed.

“Look, Gloria guessed 8, so all I had to do was guess 7, and that meant I had all the numbers from 1 to 7 and she only had 8, 9 and 10. So my odds were 7 to 3.”

“But you could have guessed 9, then she would have won!”

“I just explained why I didn’t guess 9!”

“You mean you were lucky?”

“Oh, no,” I groaned, and started to write it all down for her on the blackboard. “You’re just no good at gambling!”

We finally got the tree undecorated, and Carla Mae helped me drag it home through the snow. We struggled up the porch steps and through the door with it, and strained to lift it upright on its wooden base. When we had it up, we collapsed on the sofa and sat there admiring it. My heart was pounding.

“Doesn’t it look nifty?” Carla Mae asked.

“Looks OK,” I said, sounding bored. “I didn’t really care whether I won it or not, but since I won it, it looks OK.”

“It’s almost up to the ceiling,” she said, looking around the small room.

“Not bad for a free tree,” I said.

Just then Grandma came into the room to see what we were doing. When she saw the tree, she stopped dead in her tracks and looked stunned.

“It’s from school!” I said excitedly, running over to her. “We guessed numbers from one to ten, and I won!”

“Your dad is goin’ to have a fit!” she said.

“Why? It didn’t cost anything!”

“That’s not the point,” said Grandma. “My glory, it’s a beauty! Must be seven, maybe eight foot.”

“Why won’t Dad like it?” I asked.

“Maybe it’ll be all right,” Grandma said, but she sounded as though she didn’t really think so. “We’ll wait and see when he comes home. Now get those boots off, you two, snow’s meltin’ all over the rug!”

Soon Carla Mae and I were sprawled out on the living room rug, cutting paper decorations for the tree. We made colored chains, snowflakes, stars, circles, candles, bells and tiny Christmas tree shapes, colored them and put glitter on them. Then we drew a five-pointed star on cardboard, carefully cut it out and covered it with tin foil I had been saving from gum wrappers and Dad’s cigarette packages.

We asked Grandma to come in and fasten the star on top of the tree, because I knew her strong old fingers could bend a hairpin tighter around the top branch than ours could. We held a chair for her to climb on.

“Oh, glory!” she exclaimed. “You expect me to get up there with my rheumatism? I’ll get dizzy.”

“No, you won’t,” I assured her. “We’ll hold you up.”

Carla Mae looked at her moccasins as she climbed up on the chair. “Do you wear those because you’re a ‘character’?” she asked Grandma.

Grandma looked down at her. “Who says I’m a character?”

“Miss Thompson,” replied Carla Mae.

“She did, did she?” said Grandma, looking puzzled. “How’d Miss Thompson happen to say that?”

“A character’s a good thing to be!” I said quickly, not wanting her to misunderstand. “It means somebody like … Columbus … who does what other people are afraid to do, and doesn’t give a fig if they laugh at him!”

“How come Miss Thompson was hookin’ me up to Columbus?” asked Grandma as she took a hairpin out of her hair and used it to wire the star to the top of the tree.

“Some kid was making fun of you, so Addie punched him!” Carla Mae blurted out. I gave her a dirty look.

“Got yourself into another fight, did you?” asked Grandma.

I nodded.

“Well, good for you!” she said. “Glad your dad taught you to box.” I was surprised at her enthusiasm. She finished with the star. “There!” she said.

“That looks nifty, Grandma. Thank you.” We helped her down. “When I grow up, I’m going to be a character too,” I said. “So’s Carla Mae.”

“I am?” asked Carla Mae, looking very unsure.

Just then I heard Dad’s pickup in the driveway.

“He’s home!” I said, and Carla Mae leaped across the room and grabbed her coat.

“I gotta go!” she shouted, and was out the door before I could even say good-bye. I knew she didn’t want to be there for the fireworks that were about to happen.

I went nervously to the kitchen with Grandma, and we waited for Dad. He came in and put his lunch bucket on the table, as he did every night, and I opened it to see if there was anything left, as I did every night. I grabbed a cupcake and started to chomp at it nervously, as he went toward the living room. Grandma and I both watched the door apprehensively. For a moment there was nothing but silence.

Then he shouted, “Where the hell did that come from?”

“I won it!” I said excitedly, and ran into the living room, with Grandma following right behind me.

Dad was standing there frozen, looking at the tree with a painful expression on his face.

“I won it by figuring out the odds on a number between one and ten!” I went on. “Just the way you taught me! Miss Thompson asked who didn’t have a tree, and Gloria Cott and I raised our hands, and …”

“Gloria Cott?” he said.

“Yes …”

“You think we’re like the Cotts? Think I take charity, do you?” he shouted.

“No, Dad, it’s just that Gloria and I were the only ones who didn’t have a tree …”

“Then why didn’t she take it home!”

“I told you, I won it! Because you taught me how to figure odds … so Carla Mae and I carried it home.”

“Dragged it through the streets—letting the whole town think we take cast-offs—like some bums!”

“James,” said Grandma, “that tree’s not hurtin’ anything.”

“I do not take charity!” he shouted at her.

“It’s not charity,” said Grandma firmly. “She won it fair and square.”

“If I want a tree, I can damn well buy it myself!” he said.

“She’s the one who wants it,” Grandma said, “not you.”

“She has to learn she can’t have everything she wants, not in this life,” he said angrily. “I don’t have anything I want. Do you think I like working a crane fifty weeks a year? I’d like to go somewhere and sit in the sun and forget both of you!”

I had never heard Dad say anything like that about Grandma and me, and I began to cry and ran into the bedroom and closed the door. I could hear them in the living room, still arguing.

“I want that tree out of my house!” he shouted at Grandma.

“It’s my house, James, and I say the tree can stay right where it is!”

I knew then that this was no ordinary argument. Grandma had never thrown it up to Dad that we were living in her house. I knew she had said something very serious in sticking up for me, and I was scared.

“If you don’t want me here, I’ll be glad to move out and take Addie with me,” he said, trying to get back at her.

“Don’t talk nonsense!”

“I’m telling you, Mother, if we stay here, I’m not having you interfere between me and my daughter!”

“She’s more than your daughter,” said Grandma, trying to calm him down. “She’s a human being. She’s got feelings, even if you haven’t. James, don’t you see—the last person you felt anything for was Helen.”

“Leave her out of it!” he said angrily. Dad never liked to talk about my mother very much, and I was surprised that Grandma would even bring it up.

“I know you were brokenhearted,” she said. “But you’re not the only man who’s ever lost a wife. It’s almost ten years! That kind of grief is selfish. That child needs your love.”

“I proved I loved her, didn’t I?” he asked. “I wouldn’t let Will and Nora take her to live with them. I kept her. I took the responsibility.”

“While she was a baby it was all right,” Grandma said. “You could carry her around like a doll, plop her in her crib when you didn’t feel like carryin’ her, chuck her under the chin. She was just a cute baby. Now she’s growin’ into a person, and you don’t know what to do with her! You hold yourself away and live in this house like a stranger. When she’s old enough, she’s going to leave you, James. Then you won’t have the responsibility, and you won’t have a daughter, either.”

I had never heard Grandma talk that way to Dad, and when she had finished, neither of them said any more for a few moments. Finally he spoke.

“It was my fault,” he said quietly. “Having the baby is what killed her.”

“It was pneumonia, son,” Grandma said gently.

“People don’t have to die of pneumonia. It was the baby that weakened her. If she hadn’t had the baby. It was all because of me.”

“No, James,” Grandma said softly. “You both wanted a baby. It wasn’t your tault, or Addie’s. It just happened. No good ever comes of layin’ blame.”

Neither of them said any more then, and I heard him get up and go into his bedroom and close the door.