Those chickens could have lived for months on the stale cakes, Peter thought. Nola smoothed rich frosting over sheet cakes, layer cakes, Bundt cakes, then carefully decorated each with LaRose’s or Maggie’s name. Even the children had now stopped eating them. He’d rescued the cakes and stored them in the unheated garage. When the local high school was renovated, he’d salvaged things he could use. It almost made him smile to look at the row of tin lockers and realize that behind each numbered door, on the narrow top shelf, there rested a pastel cake.
THE PARENTS DIDN’T want it, but Christmas came for both families. Nola woke a week before the twenty-fifth, picturing her heart as a lump of lead. It lay so heavy in her chest that she could feel it, feebly thumping, reasonlessly going when she wasn’t interested in its efforts. But Christmas. She turned over in bed and nudged Peter — she resented that he could sleep at all.
A tree, she said. Today’s the day. We have to decorate a Christmas tree.
Peter opened his eyes, his bright, dear, blue eyes that never would belong to another child. The boy had come out true to both of them, the best of each of their features, mixed, they had marveled. The framed photographs were still arranged across the top of the dresser. Dusty still ran in the sun, posed as Spider-Man, played in a wading pool with Maggie, stood with them all in front of last year’s Christmas tree. Nola found comfort in the pictures but closed her eyes now so that she would not see the likeness in Peter. To distract herself, she started humming, switched thoughts to her daughter. The thought of Maggie was complicated, sometimes alive with love. Sometimes heart-thumping fury. Maggie looked like her tough, impervious Polish grandmother or like her wild and devious Chippewa auntie. Those slant gold eyes that went black in her head when she was angry. That kind little startling crooked grin.
Nola’s gentle humming was encouraging to Peter. It was a thing she used to do. He reached out and stroked her fingers. Maybe?
I can’t, she said. Still, he kept asking either outright or with a touch.
I’ll take the kids out.
He had a chain saw, he had three chain saws. They were all big brute chain saws overqualified for cutting Christmas trees. All he needed was a handsaw.
In fact, he said, sitting up in the chilly room, the handsaw with the red handle. We’ll each take turns sawing down the perfect tree. He pictured it and he was surprised that it was even possible. But it was possible for him to get out of bed and do this thing that he’d done last year with a boy who had worn Maggie’s hot-pink Disney Princess parka because his parka was in the wash. Dusty’d had so much confidence. When Maggie mocked him by calling him her little sister, he struck a Gaston pose and made Maggie laugh. She used to have a laugh like little bells.
It had changed, Peter thought. Her laugh had become a jeer, a bark, a series of angry shouts, an outburst. She laughed now when things were sad, not funny.
OUT IN THE woods, in the scant snow and from a distance, Landreaux saw the three examining small spruce trees. He retreated. He had been checking snares, not looking for a tree. But when he saw them he remembered.
Well, said Emmaline, yes. We should.
I want a tree with white lights, said Snow.
Let’s get out the colored lights, said Josette. White’s too blah.
I like uniformity, said Snow. Everything else in this house is mixed up.
Hey, said Emmaline.
No offense, Mom, but a tree with solid white lights. It would be pretty.
Let’s cut two trees then, said Emmaline.
Really? You mean really?
Little ones.
By the end of the day two small trees were set up in a corner of the living room, one decorated by each sister. For the first time, Emmaline didn’t make the slightest effort — the sisters were competitive. They made ornaments from sequins, ribbons, powwow regalia bling, and LaRose’s Play-Doh. They had never wrapped presents in wrapping paper. They used magazines, colored newspaper, shopping bags. At some point, though, everything stopped and the girls started crying. Coochy rolled his eyes and glared, then stalked out. Hollis made a strategic exit to the boys’ room. Landreaux went to work early, and Emmaline was left stirring a pot of stew. Because of LaRose.
This exact thing had happened every week or so since Landreaux and Emmaline had explained to the other children what they had done.
In the boys’ bedroom, Hollis plugged in his blow-up air mattress and turned the dial to inflate. For a minute or two, the high-pitched whine blocked out their voices. When the mattress was plump and comfortable, he lay back and shut his eyes.
Nothing. There was silence.
Hollis knew that his own dad, Romeo, had dropped him off with Emmaline and Landreaux sometime around Christmas. He’d been five, maybe six, like LaRose. He’d slept in one of the bunks for a while, but liked the blow-up better. He also knew that he’d been born in some sort of house, not a hospital. His memories of his first years were a jumble of sleeping under tables with people’s feet, or better, in a dog bed with a dog, or with some other kids one winter, all wearing their parkas in the bed. There was a salty skin-dirt smell, overlaid with sour weed and clumped hair, that still closed his throat. The smell was on some people, some kids, and he’d back away from it. He took a shower now every day. He washed his clothes. Liked the smell of ironing. The girls teased him, but they liked it too. Being clean wasn’t something he took for granted, or having his own bed. So, no, he didn’t get involved with this LaRose issue. For safety, he just eased away. But they started up again. He could hear them.
So will you give me away if you kill somebody, Mom?
That was Josette shouting.
Snow stepped forward and slapped Josette, who slapped her back. Emmaline dropped the spoon and slapped them both — she had never slapped her child, or any child, before that moment. It happened so quickly — like a scene choreographed by the Three Stooges, which was what saved it. Emmaline started crying, Josette started crying, then Snow. The three of them clung together.
I want to cut off my hand, wept Emmaline. I never slapped you girls before.
We should each cut our hands off, wailed Snow.
Then making frybread two of us will have to stand together, you know, like each use our remaining hand, pat, pat. Josette and Snow demonstrated.
Pat, pat, how pitiful, cry-laughed Emmaline.
Slowly, one by one, they came back to the stew pot that Emmaline kept on sadly stirring. Hollis had dozed off, a short nap. Coochy had wrapped small things that he had stolen months ago from each of his sisters in order to give them something on Christmas. He placed the packages in the branches. Landreaux came home with two black Hefty bags full of mittens and hats, boots, jackets, all new. Father Travis had picked them out from the mission store before anybody else had been through the donations. Hollis came out of the bedroom and helped haul the bags to the house and sort the gifts. He tried to be jovial but couldn’t. It was in his blood to give off feelings of holiday suspicion, instead of cheer, but that gave the girls reason to pick on him.