The Beasts: A Winter's Tale

The Christmas Present

Conclusion

Today, her apartment seemed small, squalid and lonely, and it never felt that way to Joyce MacNamara. She was used to being alone, and pretty okay with it. She was alright with the holidays she spent away from a home she didn’t enjoy that much. Family had always been a hassle, the holidays a constant disappointment. But she had learned to deal with this. It was the reality of life, and she had left her place a mess the night before, not expecting to be hurtled into Strauss House and the beauty of Midnight Mass, the joy of cocoa and coffee at one a.m., something like a slumber party for grown ups.

“This place looks like the day after Christmas,” Joyce assessed, surveying the mess.

She realized even the house she was returning to, which everyone had insisted held darkness, was possibly grim on Decembver 26th. But Christmas Day had that lying quality, and so many people gave into the lie that things were about to be better, that the world was on its way to something new and beautiful, and then the next day you saw the grey in the sky, yellow stains in the snow, and the house was strewn with paper.

Well, never mind all that, it never would do to give into these little voices. Today, somewhere that wasn’t this apartment, there was light and laughter and good Christmas music and a tall tree, and she was on her way back there. She had showered this morning, so even that didn’t need to be done, but first she would be the loyal daughter and call home.

“It’s nice to come home every once in a while,” her mother said. “It grounds you. There’re so many college students around here and you can tell that they don’t have any roots. They don’t have a real home. Everybody’s running away, that’s the problem with folks these days.”

“There’s truth in that,” Joyce said.

“You know,” her mother continued, “the problem with you is you never had kids. You never got a man. Women need that. You were too proud. You always want someone to be perfect, but life isn’t perfect, and men aren’t perfect.”

“Um hum.”

“Women who don’t have kids end up being kind of selfish. It’s a woman’s place to be a mother, eventually. You never did learn that.”

Joyce took out a cigarette.

“Sometimes, honey, I wonder if you’ll ever be happy.”

Joyce didn’t feel like protesting that she was happy. It was sort of a useless protest anyway. After all, looking around at this apartment with a broken blind, a fucked up curtain and three pairs of panties on the floor, her life didn’t look very happy.

“All, I’m saying,” her mother said, “is you’re not better than the rest of us.”

“I have to go,” Joyce said.

She had envisioned her mother calling, and then she would say, “Mom, we need to talk less. We need to talk less and less,” and she would be relieved from this feeling of… she wasn’t exactly sure what to call it, that came with a call home. But Mom never called. Mom just expected to be called, and when she was called, it was some variation of the semi conversation that had just happened.

She didn’t say she was goingto Marabeth’s because Joyce already knew the conversation.

“Your lesbian friend?”

“Marabeth is not a lesbian.”

“She seemed like a lesbian.”

“But she isn’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong if she is.”

“Okay, Ma.”

“You know, I had this girlfriend before you were born. I mean a girl—who was a friend. A regular girlfriend. And one night we went out to a club, and we were all dancing, and then I felt these hands on my titties.”

“Alright, Mom.”

“And I liked it. And then I looked down, and I saw these red fingernails. And that’s when I knew.”

“What?”

“What?”

“What did you know?”

“That she was a lesbian.”

“Okay.”

“You get it? Cause she was the one with her hands on my titties.”

“Yes, Mother. I do get it.”

“You don’t have to sound that way about it.”

“I’m not sounding any way.”

“Are you a lesbian?”

“No.”

“It would explain a lot.”

“Maybe.” What could you say you that? “But I’m not a lesbian.”

“Does she live in a big house? Marabeth? Is her family rich? Do you feel like you’re finally high on the hog hanging out with them, Miss Joyce Noyce?”

And here she was, sitting in her apartment having an angry imaginary conversation with her mother that was just as enraging as the real one had been when Marabeth called and said, “Are you ready?”

“You have no idea.”

“I forgot how dark it gets, and how early it gets dark,” Joyce reflected as she was crossing the Cherry Street Bridge, coming back into downtown.

The wide river was nearly black, and in the early evening the white snow on the river walk was grey and the tall buildings of downtown black and grey and grim under the brownish white light. Birmingham Street and Marabeth’s stylish brown brick building were a little to the left, to the west, and then, once she was in the car with Joyce, they were heading south, back into the Germantown.

“How was your mother?” Marabeth said. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

“You see that?

As they drove down Demming, Joyce saw a dead cat. It had been run over, pressed magnificently by a bus, possibly, and frozen to the ground.

“Oh, shit,” Marabeth said, sparing a glance.

“I feel like that cat,” Joyce pronounced, “every time I call home.”

The sky was dark with early eveningwhen Marabeth and Joyce returned to the house on Dimler Street. Some people were settling down to an after Christmas dinner snack, and some to pie. There was a distinct absence of kids who must have made their way into one of the spare rooms of the house, and Jim was regaling his aunt with a story while Kris looked on with furrowed brows.

“You know they’re the same age,” Marabeth said. “Kris and Jim were always in the same class.”

Joyce nodded.

“Jim is always… a lot. You know. Super talkative. Super happy. Super… well, you’ve met him. And I think Kris feels like Jim is happier than him, has things easier. Which is crazy. Jim just seems to wear happiness better. And he keeps a great deal inside. I mean,” she shrugged, while Jim laughed out loud, reaching across his aunt to squeeze his grandmother’s hand, “he’s an orphan. His dad died and I can’t even remember Uncle Byron. And… Delia killed herself.”

Through all the noise came what might have been a knock at the door, and Marabeth said, “You heard that, right?”

“Yeah,” Joyce nodded.

Marabeth got up, and Joyce went with her while Jim called out, “Why is anyone knocking today? You just come in.”

But when Marabeth answered the door, the man, though casually dressed in an anorak with the hood down, red headed, broad faced and ordinary, did not look like he had come to party, and he was carrying a satchel with him which Marabeth remembered but couldn’t place.

“Is this the home of Nathan Strauss, 1948 Dimler Street?”

“Well, yes,” Marabeth said, as the man flashed his badge and she opened the door for him to enter.

The noise in the living room was discernibly quieter, amd now Jim and Kris came into the foyer too.

“I ah…” the man said, “My name is Detective McCord. Jason McCord. Would you be…?”

“His daughter,” Marabeth said. “And this is his son, and this is his nephew, our cousin Jim. What do you have to tell us?”

Joyce was standing near her now, and Joyce felt like they all knew what this man had to say, were just waiting for him to break the year long spell.

In the background, on the phonograph, Mahalia Jackson wailed:

“What can I give him…
poor as I am
This… little holy chiiillld….”

“Ma’am, is your mother here? His wife?”

“Yes, yes,” Marabeth said, “and his mother too, my grandmother. Please, what do you have to say?”

“You would be Marabeth, then,” Detective McCord said, handing her the satchel whose leather strap was cracked. “The message said it was for you, the message attached. I figured you had waited long enough. I brought it.”

“Please, Detective!”

“We found his body last night. Early this morning. We… We did tests. But it’s him. We’ve found your father.”

Joyce felt rocketed out of herself. Sick and dizzy as if she were breaking into fever. She didn’t dare look at her best friend.

I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here.

The music, which seemed to wind slower and slower as time stretched longer and longer now stopped as they all stood in the foyer, and Joyce was gripping Marabeth’s hand, feeling her friend’s nails cut into her palm, and Jim had gone back, and now he was bringing Rebecca Strauss and his grandmother.

“I am Natalie Keller Strauss,” their grandmother said. “They call me Miss Keller. My son,” she said to the Detective, “you found my son?”

“Yes,” Detective McCord said. Then, “Yes. Ma’am.”

“When can we bring him home?”

“In a few days, Ma’am.”

“I don’t suppose it would do any good to see him.”

“No, Ma’am. No. It seems what happened, happened… some time ago.”

Natalie Keller nodded, reflective.

“Do you have time to tell us about it.”

“Yes, Ma’am. I could do that.”

“Then please come in,” Natalie said. “Becca?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Would you make him some coffee, and maybe we can go into the study and let him talk, let the others have their Christmas.”

“Yes,” Rebecca nodded, her face white, her eyes wide.

“I’ll help,” Jim said, quickly, following his aunt.

Natalie reached back and took Rebecca’s hand.

“We knew,” Natalie told her, tenderly. “We knew. It was just a matter of hearing. And now we’ve heard.”

Rebecca nodded, and went back past the doorway into the living room.

Natalie said, “Detective, come in from this foyer. All of you, let’s come in.”

Kris went into the living room, and Joyce brought Marabeth in with her while Natalie Keller spoke quietly to Detective McCord.

“Thank you,” she told him, and then kissed him on the cheek.

“Ma’am. Miss Keller, I don’t understand.”

“Because, however you’ve brought my son, you’ve finally brought him home.”