Works and Days
Christmas
3
It was about noon when the family at 1735 Breckinridge heard a Cherokee screech to a halt. The front door flew open and John charged in.
“When Russell came back we asked him where you were?” Patti said.
John looked at his sister and then he looked at Thom’s sister. Jaclyn was standing there looking terrified.
“Daddy! Daddy!” the kids were running around John in circles.
“I will deal with you later,” John told Jaclyn and charged up the stairs to Russell’s door banging on it.
“Open up the door! Open—”
“John!”
John stopped and turned around to see Thom with a hand out.
“What’s going on? That’s my boy, you’re harrasin’,” Thom spoke gently. He didn’t even realize he’d dropped his g.
John, slack mouthed, fist unclenching, realized this. Thom sucked in his breath. There wasn’t much difference between the thirty year old and the fourteen year old boy he’d met all those years ago.
“John,” he said gently. “I know what happened.”
Thom tapped on the door.
“Son, do you think we could all talk? Son? Russell, what’s wrong?”
Suddenly they heard sobbing on the other side of the door. Russell had inherited his calm from his father. Thom did not remember ever seeing Russell weep. John had certainly never seen it. Both men listened to the boy crying on the other side of the door. It wasn’t right. Especially on Christmas.
“Russell,” John’s voice was quiet now. “Russell, I’m sorry. Please open the door.”
They heard the bolt slide back into the door, then it opened and Russell stood before them.
“Oh, my God,” Thom muttered.
John shook his head and sucked in his breath.
His pants and shirt rumpled, Russell stood before them. His eyes were red rimmed and his face was wet and sticky. In his right hand he held a pair of garden scissors, and in the other was his red hair.
“Oh, my God!” exclaimed Patti, letting the wooden paddle sink into the yellow batter as John and Thom came into the kitchen with Russell.
Jackie stood up so amazed that she forgot her fear of John and now Kristin and Reese and Kathleen were coming into the kitchen.
“Russell, what happened?” Kathleen demanded, her British accent wavering.
Russell opened his mouth and closed it.
“We need someone to fix this.” Patti said.
“Mickey cuts hair,” Jackie suggested.
“On Christmas?” Patti turned to her sister-in-law.
“Unless you want to look like this all day,” Jackie said to Russell.
Russell, dumb, shook his head.
Sharon, Graham, Chayne, Felice, Mickey, LaVelle, Pethane and Janna’s heads formed a circle looking into the cradle.
“He’s got my nose, don’t he?” said Pethane’s brother. “Looks like my spitting image, don’t he?”
Pethane didn’t answer. It was Felice who spoke.
“The baby is white.”
“It’s light skinned.”
“Yes,” Chayne agreed. “Because it’s white.”
“Come on, yawl,” Tory said, “Beth said I was the Daddy. Why would she lie?”
Pethane suggested, “Because she’s a ho?”
Tory looked at his sister.
“Well...” Janna conceded, “she is.”
There was a knock at the door, and as Chayne went to answer it, he heard Tory say, “Yawl just jealous.”
“Yeah,” remarked Chayne. “I wish I had a white son too,” and so saying, he opened the door to see Russell, standing there hair hacked, flanked by John and Thom.
“Not a word,” Chayne said to Mickey, and then to Russell, “What the hell did you do to yourself?”
“I don’t know,” Russell said in a low voice.
“Can you fix it?” Jackie asked since neither Thom nor John knew Mickey.
“I didn’t bring anything, but me and Chayne can run over to my house and pick up clippers.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do this on Christmas—” started Thom.
“I don’t know what the fuck happened,” Chayne said, “but I’m not leaving or having my cousins travel around town for this.”
“Chayne!” Mickey said.
“It’s some old clippers under the sink,” Chayne said. “Use those.”
Sharon Kandzierski had been smiling so fiercely to herself that day, that Graham said, “What the hell is that? Some kind of love letter?”
Folding it to her chest, and then placing it in her pocket, Graham’s wife said, “Maybe it is, Old Man. Maybe it is.”
Printed on expensive stationary in neat handwriting she had read:
Dear Sharon,
I hope I can call you dear, and you won’t get offended. If your husband gets offended, good, because he should know there’s competition out there, and you’re still a foxy lady. I’ve been half way around Europe and I still haven’t found a woman like you.
Speaking of finding, I hope this letter is finding you well this Christmas. I hope you don’t think it strange that I wrote you, but it just seemed natural that you would be the one I wrote. If you hadn’t spoke to me that night, I wouldn’t be here. No one really cared enough to give me good advice or at least that’s what it seems. And I didn’t really even care about myself. So thank you.
I’ve just seen Paris. I bought a bunch of James Baldwin books and started reading them while I was here. The strange thing is that I have to admit I don’t really like it. I thought I would get a little culture and this place is definitely dirtier than Chicago (there’s urine all over the walls and dog crap in the streets) the plumbing is bad too, the water’s undrinkable. I liked Germany better, but there the people never washed and they thought I was strange because I wanted to shower all the time.
So on Mom and Dad’s money I’ll be heading to England pretty soon and I keep on thinking I’ll run into King Arthur or something, maybe hang out with knights. But I know there are no knights in England and no Camelot, just bad food. you probably can’t drink the water there, either.
In a way I am having the time of my life, but I’ve never had the time of my life before. You woke me up. I’ve never really been awake before and it’s scary. The world’s so big. there’s so much in it and I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know where to go in it. I don’t really know what will make me happy. Where I’ll settle down. I thought I was just looking for a get away but now I know I’m sort of looking for a home, and I’m not exactly sure where I’m going to find it.
If I don’t stop, this letter will get depressing, and I don’t want to sound depressing because for the first time I’m really really happy. I know that sounds strange because everything I said was pretty blah, because sometimes I feel sad, but at least now I feel. At least now I’m alive.
A Merry Christmas to you and all of your family,
Robert Keyes
Sharon smiled, folded the letter, unfolded it and smiled again.
In Graham and Sharon’s kitchen, Mickey attempted to repair Russell’s hair.
“Of course, it’s harder the less hair you have,” said Mickey. Well, this is what I can do. It’s not bad? Do you like it?”
“How do you like it?” Russell looked up and asked Chayne, who was leaning against the counter and repressing all questions.
“It looks decent. You look... like a normal white kid, I suppose.”
Jackie handed Russell her compact and he looked dismally at himself.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re right.”
Handing the compact back, Russell looked at Chayne again.
“Would you like to talk about this?” Chayne asked the boy.
“Yes,” said Russell, “but not right now.”
Chayne nodded.
Thom knocked on the door, and when Russell said come in, his father did.
“What happened?” Thom asked his son, leaning against the door.
“I don’t know,” Russell shook his head. “I don’t know what I was thinking. No one is reliable. Everyone is acting crazy. Nothing is making any sense, and it should on Christmas. I don’t get what’s going on. I don’t get people. I don’t trust anybody anymore. And so I got mad, and I thought I’d change too, do something radical. Only, I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Russell ran his hands over his shorn head. Now he and Thom had the same haircut. Thom was sad because, though he thought Russell could have used a trim, he now realized he’d liked the hair.
“I... I wanted to do something radical too. I wanted to be unreliable... and shocking.”
“Is it about John... and Jackie?”
Russell shook his head. “It’s about the way he was acting this morning. He was so mean. It wasn’t like him.”
“Grown ups can do things by accident.”
“Be assholes?”
“Uh… yeah. And whatever John did, he was hurt.”
“Well do you all have to hurt me in the process?”
“Sometimes. When we don’t know what else to do... It’s like you can’t help yourself. I know that’s not an excuse—”
“I told you I hated you because I was hurt,” Russell told his father. “I just wanted to say something to hurt you back, to make you know that... To wake you up. I didn’t think it would because—because I didn’t really know you had feelings. You never show them. You seem a lot stronger than… than you actually are.”
“Never say you didn’t inherit anything from your Old Man.”
Russell looked at his father, shocked.
“I’m not strong!”
Thom squeezed his son’s shoulder. He kissed the boy’s head. He had to sort of bend Russell’s neck to do it, since he and his son were the same height now.
“You’re stronger than you think,” Thom said. “But not as strong as we often mistake you for.”
“I need to know I can rely on someone. I need to know that someone’s not going to—ruin everything. Be stupid!”
Suddenly Thom said, “I’m sorry you saw me with Liz.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Yes,” Thom nodded. “I think it is, whether you admit it or not. I’m so sorry you saw that.”
“Have you told Mom?”
Thom shook his head.
“Do you want me to?” Thom asked..
“I don’t know what good that would do,” Russell said.
“It would just hurt her for no reason.”
“Can I tell you something, Russell?”
Russell nodded.
“I was about to say that I never meant to hurt you, and that’s true. But the one thing that’s hard to admit is that what I did... when I did it... I don’t know if you’re at that age or not when you get lonely. I don’t mean lonely as in you don’t have friends. I mean really, horribly lonely where you… don’t even feel like you’re still real. It’s horrible. That’s part of what happened. But the other part is that I did want to hurt your mom. I wanted to get back at her, so I had an affair. I’ve tried to deny it, but it’s true, only I ended up hurting you.”
“And yourself,” said Russell. “And her. Liz.” Russell sounded tired.
“I guess... you’re human.”
“Well then let John be human too.”
“Is that what being human means? Screwing up? Because if that’s what it means, I don’t want any part in it.”
“It means—partly—acknowledging that you’ve screwed up. It means,” said Thom, “being able to admit the times when you failed to be human.”