“A family conference?” said Morgan warily. He was the only family in the room.
Mr. Bailey had organized Dad’s last campaign. Mr. Bailey laughed heartily, to show that he had been sixteen once. “We’re on the same team, Mor, and we have to work up our plays.”
Morgan sat carefully on the couch. He and Mr. Bailey were in the rarely occupied formal living room. On the mantel were photographs of Morgan and Starr at various stages of braces and slow development. Morgan often considered burning the family photos.
“The thing is, Mor,” said Mr. Bailey, “you and I know that this family is beautiful. Really beautiful.” Mr. Bailey shook his head a few times to show how mind-boggling the Campbell beauty was. “But every now and then a closet that looks clean and neat is stuffed with skeletons. And the people donating to this campaign, people that have money riding on this—they like to know. Every skeleton falls out, Mor. No matter how tight you close that door, the media get in through the cracks. So there can’t be any secrets, you know what I mean?”
His hands were puffy again, the blood from his chest rushing to his fingers, to make him sign a confession. “I guess,” he said. He hated being called Mor.
“Now, a sixteen-year-old hasn’t had time to put many skeletons in the closet, Mor.” Mr. Bailey laughed.
Morgan could see his skeleton perfectly: the long white bones of a twenty-six-year-old named Denise Thompson.
“So,” said Mr. Bailey. “You ever try drugs? Who’d you buy them from?”
Morgan wondered if anybody had ever told Mr. Bailey anything. And if so, why?
“It’s okay, son. We elected a president who tried marijuana. You can tell me about it. That’s why your mom and dad aren’t in the room. It’s just you and me, so we can line those skeletons up and put ’em out of business. You know what I mean?”
Mr. Bailey went on about alcohol and drugs, like the films in Driver’s Ed. “So you can assure me,” said Mr. Bailey, his face so close that Morgan had to lean backward to escape, “there is no scandal we have to worry about with you.”
“Scandal” sounded middle-aged. Men and women with pasts. “All I do is go to school.”
Mr. Bailey nodded down at his notebook and seemed to check data on Morgan. “That’s true,” he said. “Don’t have your driver’s license yet, do you?”
Maybe he should throw the driver’s test. The way boxers throw matches. Couldn’t be that hard to fail. Then he wouldn’t get his license, which he didn’t deserve. “Another few weeks.”
Mr. Bailey grinned widely. “Then we’ll have to keep an eye on you, won’t we?”
Morgan grinned back. He wondered if the grin looked like Lark’s. Too tight for his mouth. “Yes, sir.”
Mr. Bailey whapped him on the shoulder blades. “Great talking to you,” he said. “I’m really really really excited about this campaign. We’re gonna win, I can feel it, your dad can feel it. How about you, Morgan, can you feel it?”
If he told what he was feeling, everything would get sucked down and drowned in the whirlpool of his stupidity.
Morgan collected his shepherds and handed out staffs. The church had a nice staff collection after so many pageant years. Everybody liked to hook everybody else’s ankles and yank them down at crucial spots.
This happened only in rehearsal. During the real thing, Christmas Eve, every year, it was real. The kids really were shepherds and the baby really was Jesus. On Christmas Eve, when the congregation sang “It came upon a midnight clear,” the shepherds would shiver, full of belief.
This, however, was rehearsal. The boys could hardly wait for the third line in the song, “peace on the earth, goodwill toward men,” so they could bellow the time-honored substitution, “piss on the earth.”
The crèche was up. Bales of hay rested below the altar. Kings’ costumes were draped over the first pew.
That’s what I did, Morgan thought. Pissed on the earth.
“Mom!” bellowed Mac. “We could bake pottery in here! Turn down the heat!” She didn’t, so he leaned between the front seats to adjust the car heater himself. “Remy, when you get your license, I’m in charge of temperature,” he said to his sister.
She didn’t even hear him. Remy’s crush on Morgan Campbell was sickening. How could his own sister fall for one of those blond preppies of perfection? Now she was even going down to the church on a Thursday afternoon to help polish the Christmas silver, a feeble excuse to feast her eyes on Morgan at a dumb old pageant rehearsal. Everybody but goody-goody Mrs. Willit saw through Morgan. “Pageant Director” would look good on his college application.
“Mom, you know that wrecked car on the high school lawn?” said Mac. He gave Matt an Oreo cookie because then Matt would be completely covered with chocolate saliva by the time they reached the church. “The one where the woman was killed because somebody stole the stop sign? I’d sue ’em, that’s what I’d do. Sue ’em for a million bucks.”
“If it was kids, they don’t have any money,” said Mom.
Mac shrugged. He knew about deep pockets. “The parents do. I say sue ’em.” It dawned on Mac that Remy did not have free Thursday afternoons. “Hey, Remy, what about basketball practice?”
“I quit.”
Mom practically went off the road. “What?” she cried. “Remy! You quit basketball? Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“You quit JV?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Tell me why! Your father and I love those games, Remy! How can you do this to us?”
“I’m not good enough.”
This was true, and yet because Mac knew either everything about his sister or nothing, and in this case it was everything, he knew that she was lying. She had not quit because she was lousy at it. So she had quit her basketball team, after all these years of effort and practice, in order to hang out and stare at Morgan!
“Sue her,” Mac told his mother helpfully.
Remy could not figure out why nobody from Driver’s Ed had called in to get the reward Mr. Thompson was offering. Money motivated people. Look at Mac, so eager to sue, to hop on that good old American bandwagon, grab his share in the lawsuit. Any lawsuit.
Last night she had stood in front of the mirror staring at her hair: the short quick gold hair she usually approved of. A single strand had grown too long. She cut it off with embroidery scissors and suddenly wanted to cut it all off, hack it off, scrape it off, look hideous and ridiculous and guilty. She had stood trembling, a hank of hair in her left hand, scissors held open in her right.
She had not done it. The thing was to blend in, to be one of the crowd, as invisible to the world as she and her classmates were to Mr. Fielding.
“I don’t want Henry being Jesus this year, Mom. Let them use a doll. Or the Van Holland baby. You know Henry won’t behave. You know he’s more like a difficult pet than a person.”
“Remy!”
“Well, he is! Stop pretending he’s different from anybody else’s one-year-old. He’s all mess and noise and smell.”
Mom parked at the church back door. The church was pure white, reassuringly symmetrical whether you came in at the back, side, or front.
Somebody would call Mr. Thompson. Somebody would want money enough to do it. Remy didn’t want it on TV that the Marland family was so screwed up, one kid was out there killing while the other was playing Jesus.
Starr had been an angel for years. At last she’d get the scarlet cape, which would fill the aisle behind her like a princess’s wedding train. “Ugh, you two are the other kings?” said Starr, gagging at the sight of Roger and Kyle.
“I’m only kinging because my mother’s making me,” said Kyle.
“And I get the red one, Starr, so keep your mitts off it,” said Roger.
“Morgan!” screamed Starr. “I get the red cape.”
The sheep got down on their hands and knees and the shepherds herded them with resounding whacks on exposed limbs.
Mrs. Marland set the baby down. Henry took off at full speed, which was a lot faster than Morgan expected. Henry crashed into a pew, picked himself up, climbed onto the pew, clambered along it, fell off, opened a hymnbook, tore out pages, crawled out of reach, laughed joyfully, crawled under the next pew, and found another hymnbook to deface.
This is Jesus, thought Morgan. Wonderful. Maybe we could sedate him prior to the pageant. Jesus the tranquilized.
“Remy,” said Mrs. Willit affectionately, “I can always count on you. Who else would agree to do this?”
Remy had propped the kitchen door, the hall door, and the sanctuary door open so she could watch Morgan as she polished. When Morgan saw her, they waved Royal Family waves back and forth.
Her heart turned over.
Going out with Morgan. I wonder if we actually will. Go out, that is. Or if we’ll just say so to other people, and lie, and lie, and lie some more.
Our wave, thought Morgan. Our joke. Our stop sign.
The stop sign had moved. It was not hidden in the basement. It was between him and Remy. He wanted to steal it a second time—destroy it—set fire to it. Anything to go on with life.
And every time he thought that, he remembered that Denise Thompson could not go on with her life.
Generations ago somebody had given the church Christmas silver: plates and chalices heavily embossed with stars. It had been lying around for decades getting black with tarnish. Mrs. Willit wanted to use the stuff this year. She and Remy struggled with polish, old toothbrushes, paper towels, soap and water.
“I love how tarnish disappears,” said Mrs. Willit, admiring the sparkle. “Isn’t it a great metaphor? From tarnish to treasure. I’ll use that in my next sermon. Polish takes away sin.”
Remy, whose hand was full of filthy paper towels, stared at Mrs. Willit and knew something.
Mrs. Willit had never done anything wrong. Oh, she’d probably been mean to somebody once, or even shoplifted a lipstick. But if she had done anything truly wrong, she’d know polish didn’t take anything away. It just moved it around. And saying you’re sorry—that didn’t take anything away. Didn’t even move it around.
Remy was sorry, and Denise Thompson was still dead.
Remy hadn’t even read the single word on that sign, had done nothing by intent, and Denise Thompson was still dead.
“Come on, Remy, let’s go,” said her mother. “I’m still provoked with you for quitting basketball. It ruined the whole rehearsal for me.”
Henry had reached the toddler stage of exhaustion in which nothing was left but whining. Only sleep could solve his problems but he was too hungry and too wired. They’d have to endure his screams and sobs and hitting until he collapsed.
Remy rubbed his little back, which sometimes calmed him.
I could baby-sit for Bobby Thompson, she thought. I have lots of experience. I could work off guilt that way. Kind of like going to a gym and working off flab.
How obscene. She would snuggle a little boy whose mother lay in a grave because of her?
She held Henry before putting him in the car seat, and pressed her face against his, so their tears blended. Oh, God! she thought, and it was no prayer to a little local deity, it was to the real one. The big one. But there was no answer.
Car pools consumed the children in batches. Shepherds returned their crooks by hurling them across the church like javelins. The bales had been torn open, and hay was strewn around as if camels had been put up for the night.
Christmas! Morgan thought, swearing. He wondered who had given Starr a ride home and why they hadn’t waited for him. Life had broken down into installments, payment after payment.
Tonight was the first of several Campbell Christmas parties. Tonight was lawyers. Lawyers under the tree, lawyers by the punch bowl, lawyers singing carols, lawyers opposed to carols.
Morgan thought of presidential hopefuls and the secrets they had thought hidden, or had forgotten about, or hadn’t known were important. TV found out, and the candidates were ruined. From New York to Los Angeles, from Chicago to New Orleans, America said, “Ugh, kick him out.”
I have to know, thought Morgan, if my parents would kick me out.
He had a dim sense of no longer knowing what the Campbell family was, or why it existed. No longer knowing what love was, or whether it existed.
In the church kitchen, between the stretch of ovens and dishwashers, was a telephone, LOCAL CALLS ONLY, it said, which ensured that everybody in Sunday school would make long-distance calls.
Morgan’s was local.
He called Nicholas. “I have to tell.”
Nicholas stood very still.
His family was not religious, and for them Christmas was stockings, poinsettias, and lots of shopping.
His mother was Frisbee-ing junk mail across the kitchen into the open trash can and his father was circling Christmas-tree ads in the paper. They always cut their own tree. Dad liked to pick a tree farm at a pretty big distance, so getting it would be an event.
Nicholas scoffed at this. You could drive to the corner, point to a tree, and have them deliver. Even when he was eight or ten, Nickie was too old for such nonsense. Now he was seventeen and he thought, I’m too young. I can’t have this happening to me. Morgan is going to tell? Does he have any idea what will happen to us?
He held the phone loosely, trying to be casual. What could he say with his mother and father in the room while he talked?
Tell, and I’ll kill you, Morgan. No, wait, I’m coming over. I’m going to kill you first, before you tell. Anyway, I won’t admit I was there. Me? Drive that jerk Morgan around? Give me a break. I’ll lie, Morgan. It’ll be all you. And what about Remy, huh? You going to haul Remy into this? Going to ruin her life?
But the room was full of parents. There was nothing Nicholas could say, not a word.
His mother handed him a Christmas card to read while he talked on the phone: old neighbors who had moved to Kansas and said the schools were better.
Nicholas said to Morgan, “Not yet. Let’s talk about it first.”
I’ll kill him. I have to get rid of him. He can’t tell. It would kill my parents.
Remy extricated Henry from the car seat. Of course, when Henry was in such a bad mood, he would not be carried, but also refused to walk. When she finally got Henry in and set him on the floor, she had to barricade him with her knees till she got the door locked behind them.
She loved that moment of safety when the door closed tight against the dark and the chill. She had not even had time to feel warm, to know that houses were good, and furnaces were best, when Mac yelled, “Call Nicholas. He says it’s important. He says Morgan is going to tell.”
Henry screamed to be picked up, lifting his arms and jumping against her. He tried to hook his little fingers in a tear in her jeans to yank her down to his level.
“What’ll Nickie tell?” said Mac.
“Gossip.”
“Tell me first.”
“No.” Remy ran to her room. Shivering and trembling, she stared at the extension.
Oh, God! she thought again, and then he was in the room with her—God was—suffocating and horrifying—somebody she did not want around at all—some grim, vengeful God from some ancient time, who would use a scythe and cut off her hands.
Remy picked up the phone, but called Morgan, not Nicholas.
Mrs. Campbell answered. “Hello, Remy, dear. Morgan just got in. Won’t it be wonderful when you two have your licenses? And you don’t have to arrange chauffeurs or miss rides? I understand your test is next week.”
Small talk. Please. “Yes, it is.”
“Are you excited?” said Mrs. Campbell, excited.
“Oh, yes.”
“I’ll be thinking about you, Remy. I know you’ll pass.”
“Thank you.”
Phones were exchanged.
“Hello, Remy,” said Morgan.
She leaped into it feet first. “Morgan, don’t. Don’t tell. You can’t. Please. There’s nothing we can make better by telling.”
“It’s just that I’m having a hard time thinking about anything else.”
“Me too—but, Morgan, I keep looking at my family. You’re letting Henry be Jesus again and my mother is so happy and here her darling daughter goes out and kills people.”
There was a weird sound, not out of the phone, but behind Remy. A sort of sucking, like a small vacuum cleaner. She whipped around, and there stood Mac, who had breathed in so fast, he had choked himself.
She looked into her brother’s eyes and saw that she had just achieved a childhood dream: she had shocked Mac.
“You took the stop sign?” said Mac. “You?”