“Thank you,” Rebecca told her. In a majestically level, swift, flowing motion, she crossed to the hearth and bent for the butane torch hidden in the basket of pinecones at one side. She started lighting the candles she had set around the room — the Christmas candles and the Hanukkah candles and the all-occasion candles and even the pale egg-shaped candles ordinarily reserved for Easter.
“It’s a regular conflagration!” Aunt Ida said gaily.
Rebecca’s mother sat down in the rocker, first smoothing the back of her slacks beneath her as if she were wearing a skirt. “I laid out your cocktail napkins in a fan shape,” she told Rebecca. “I don’t know if that’s the way you wanted them. I straightened up some in the kitchen, and I took the liberty of watering that poor dead plant out back beside the steps.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
“You’ll find the leftover cold cuts on the top shelf in the fridge. I put them in one of those newspaper bags I found in the waxed-paper drawer, although I’m not entirely easy in my mind about letting foodstuffs come into contact with colored plastic.”
“I’m sure they’ll be finished off before the poison has time to take effect,” Rebecca told her.
The doorbell rang. Her mother said, “Mercy,” and checked her watch. “It’s three minutes before two! Who do you suppose that is?”
“Not a Davitch, you can bet,” Rebecca said. She went out into the foyer. “Company, Poppy!” she called up the stairs, and then she opened the door. J. J. Barrow, her electrician, was standing on the stoop with his twelve-year-old son. Both of them were dressed up — J.J. in a suit and tie, his son in a navy blazer and tan corduroys — and J.J. was holding a bottle of bourbon with a ribbon around its neck. “Come in!” Rebecca told them. “You two are so punctual!”
“Well, we didn’t want to keep folks waiting,” J.J. said. He was a large, bearded bear of a man, a type Rebecca had a weakness for, and she had invited him on impulse when he and his son came to fix the thermostat earlier in the week. Now she ushered them into the parlor, keeping an arm around the son’s shoulders. “Mother,” she said, “Aunt Ida, this is our electrician, J. J. Barrow, and this is his son, J.J.J.” J.J.J. was what they called J.J. Junior, and she always had to stifle a giggle when she was saying it; it made her feel she was stuttering. “My mother, Mildred Holmes, and my aunt, Ida Gates.”
“How do you do,” Aunt Ida said, and Rebecca’s mother smiled and tilted her head. “Are you… here as guests?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” J.J. said. “My wife would have come too, except her pastor dropped by unannounced.”
“J.J. can handle anything electrical,” Rebecca said, “and also some plumbing repairs as long as they don’t require inspection. And his son knows nearly as much as he does; don’t you, J.J.J.?” Oops, another giggle.
J.J.J. looked worried and said, “Well, I would still need Pop’s help with some of the big things, though.”
“Rebecca and me have been through a lot,” J.J. said, falling into a chair. “She was my main support when my first wife up and left me. And I was around when her grandson Danny passed through that little shoplifting stage.”
“Well, now!” Rebecca said, clapping her hands. (She hadn’t mentioned Danny’s shoplifting stage to her mother.) “Where’s our guest of honor, I wonder!”
Her mother wore a blank expression. Aunt Ida just smiled and patted the sofa cushion beside her. “Why don’t you come sit down, J.J.J.?” she asked. “Aren’t you sweet, to attend an old man’s birthday party!”
“I never met anybody who was a hundred before,” he told her, and he crossed the room and settled next to her, admirably composed, hands folded loosely between his corduroy knees.
Now they heard Poppy on the stairs — cane, shoe, shoe; cane, shoe, shoe — and Rebecca went out to the foyer to meet him. He often woke from his nap extra stiff; she thought he might want help. But no, he was barely leaning on the banister, and his face looked rested and relaxed, not stretched by pain. He wore his gray suit and a narrow black bow tie knotted around a collar so high and starched that he seemed to have stepped directly from the year when he had been born. His hair was slicked down flat and his cheeks looked polished. “I thought I heard the doorbell,” he said.
“Yes, J.J. and his son are here. You remember J.J.,” she said hopefully.
He might or he might not. At any rate, he grunted and continued his descent.
“And Mother and Aunt Ida came while you were napping,” she said. “You should see what they brought you!”
“I intend to open my gifts as they arrive,” he told her. He reached the bottom of the stairs and started pegging into the parlor, passing her in a breeze of lavender cologne. “They won’t get the proper notice if I just pile them in a heap and open them all at once.”
“Fine, Poppy,” Rebecca said.
Not that her permission was needed. Already he was reaching out a hand for J.J.’s bottle, holding it at arm’s length to study the label. “Thanks,” he said finally. “It’ll make a nice nightcap.” He turned toward the two older women. “Ladies.”
“Happy birthday, Mr. Davitch,” they said practically in unison, and Aunt Ida added, “You don’t look a day over eighty!”
“Eighty?” Poppy asked. The corners of his mouth turned down.
“Yes, sir, it’s not often I’m asked to celebrate somebody’s hundredth birthday,” J.J. told him.
“How often?” Poppy asked him.
“Well, now, I guess I would have to say never, in fact.”
“Here, Poppy,” Rebecca said. She took the wrapped package from the chest of drawers. “This is Mother and Aunt Ida’s gift.”
“Wait, just let me get comfy.”
He chose a wing chair and lowered himself by degrees, first setting the bourbon on the table beside him. Then Rebecca handed him the package. “Nice paper,” he said. He slid a trembling thumb beneath one taped flap. “Don’t want to tear it; might as well save it for later use.”
“Absolutely,” Rebecca’s mother told him, and she bit her lip and sat forward, concentrating, until he had lifted the flap without causing any damage.
William McKinley turned out to be a forthright-looking man in a high white collar and black bow tie nearly identical to Poppy’s. Rebecca had worried Poppy wouldn’t know who he was, but luckily a brass nameplate was tacked to the bottom of the frame. “William McKinley. Well, now,” Poppy said, slanting the picture on his knees to study it.
“He was President the year you were born,” Rebecca told him.
“Well, how about that.”
“Got himself assassinated,” J.J. offered out of the blue.
“How about that.”
“It was McKinley who was responsible for us taking over Cuba,” J.J. went on. “Also Hawaii, if I’m not very much mistaken.”
Poppy lowered the portrait and turned to frown at J.J. “Who did you say you were?” he asked.
“J.J. is our electrician, Poppy,” Rebecca said. “He just this week fixed our thermostat.”
J.J. was nodding emphatically, as if urging Poppy to do the same, but Poppy kept his frown. Then suddenly his forehead cleared. “’All I Want for Christmas Is You,’” he said.