Ms. Banks’s story “Mean to My Father” appeared in NBM6.
I remember thinking how cozy the room looked. I had waxed the furniture that afternoon, using that red oil that my mother used — or was it the nuns? — oh so many years ago. And all the wood gleamed. Not just the tables, but the trim, too. And the legs of the chairs and things. I’d actually knelt down and worked the rag deep into all the crevices.
Outside, according to the radio, it was a grim eight degrees Fahrenheit. I only listened to what they said about Fahrenheit, because I never did learn Celsius.
It seemed especially cozy after I began sipping on the sherry that Alan had poured. He hardly ever offered me any, because I hardly ever drank it, but what with Christmas coming...
“Elaine,” he began, and I looked up at him and smiled. He smiled back, but a wry smile.
“The sherry is delicious,” I said, and wondered then if I could be drunk. How many sips had I had and how many sips did it take? Anyway, I sipped some more.
The wind picked up outside. I could hear it, but where had the sound come from? The windows? The chimney? The roof? I tried to listen closer. The windows, I thought. “You aren’t in a draft, are you?” I asked.
He shook his head, no, not looking at me, though. “Elaine,” he said again, and his voice sounded the way it did at the end of an argument. Thin and dry and faraway, as though I’d never ever understand and he was just giving up.
“It’ll be a wonderful Christmas,” I said, leaning deep into my chair. “Really wonderful.” I thought maybe I should get up and stand behind his chair. Rub his neck. He used to like that. Except that I couldn’t because the back of the new chair — the one that I’d wanted oh so much, the one with the roses climbing the fabric as if it were a trellis — had a back way too high for rubbing anybody’s neck.
“The Berensons were lots of fun,” I offered, staying put. They’d stopped by with a bird feeder. One that you had to stick on the side of the house, a plastic one with a little suction cup. I wondered then, would it stay up? Would the little cup hold? Or would it fall down, maybe not the day you stuck it up there, but one day?
“Yes, they were,” he agreed, and got up and went over to the closet where the liquor bottles were. While he was over there, he turned the radio off.
He hadn’t given up, not really.
“Alan,” I said, not wanting to accuse him or anything, but he’d been to that closet three times since he poured my sherry. Three times at least, maybe even four. But he acted as though he hadn’t heard me, and I acted as though that was all right.
“The Berensons are getting a divorce,” he said. The fire hissed when he said it and little sparks flew. The fire astonished me and I jumped forward in the chair, spilling a bit of the sherry. It ran down my hand. I wiped my hand on my skirt and looked down to see if it had stained. It hadn’t. Still, I felt tears leaking down my cheeks, as hot as the sparks must have been.
“Elaine!” he said it sternly, the way my father used to, the all-wrong way that only made things worse. Then he was kneeling in front of me. There were cat hairs on the rug and they’d stick to his trousers and then he’d get mad. He was wearing dark trousers; he always did, even though the cats got hair on everything and then it got on him. If I could have spoken, I’d have reminded him about the hairs, maybe so he’d get up before his pants got dirty. But I didn’t say anything. I just put my sherry down on the arm of the chair and ran my fingers through my hair, short hair cut like a boy’s, easy to take care of, you didn’t have to set it or anything. Just wash it and towel it and then let it dry. I thought of Jan Berenson’s hair, thick and dark and longer than it ought to be. Then I was able to say something and it just came right out, “No!”
Alan took my glass and held it up for me to drink from, kind of rolling the glass between his hands. He had hair on his knuckles. Actually, just below his knuckles, little tufts of hair. I thought about that and I thought about slapping at the glass, making it fly across the room, an arc of sherry rising and spilling across the rug. It would leave a stain then, I was sure of it. A stain that you couldn’t get out no matter what you used. That’s what stain meant: forever.
So I took the glass from him, careful not to touch his fingers with my fingers, and I even laughed before I sipped again. “I’m all right,” I said, “it’s just...” Just what? I didn’t know, odd, and such a surprise about the Berensons. “Well,” I said, wiping my nose with my knuckle and sniffing, still holding onto the sherry glass. “He was away so much...” And he was, Lester Berenson, an airline pilot, away so much.
“Yes,” Alan agreed. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the Christmas tree. As if, for the first time, appraising it. Was the trunk straight? Was it bushy and frill? Was it tall and fresh?
“Let’s get the tree up,” I sniffled and Alan looked at me. “You’re right about this tree,” I went on. “It wasn’t worth twenty-five dollars.” But I was thinking, how did he know about the Berensons? They hadn’t said anything, not the whole time they were here. Jan Berenson had even slung her arm around her husband when it was time to go and hiccuped on purpose and he, Lester Berenson, had laughed and kind of squooshed her up against himself. They had given us that bird feeder as a couple, and we had given them, as a couple, that maraschino-cherry bread that I always bake for everyone at Christmastime, the one with all the Philadelphia cream cheese in it.
I took one of the ornaments out and unwrapped it and then, I don’t know why, tried to twirl it by its hanger. I went around once, perilously, before it fell and broke. “Oh,” I said.
“You sit down, Elaine,” Alan had my arm, the way he always did when he was concerned about me. “I’ll clean it up.” And then I was sitting, but on the rug, and I was crying while I listened to him rooting around in the kitchen for the broom and dustpan. “Oh,” I wailed, “You’ll never find it,” meaning the dustpan, which was hanging from a nail, not down on the floor where you’d expect it to be.
I could see Jan Berenson plain as day, see her with that hair of hers, too long, too thick, a hussy’s hair and not the kind of hair a married woman should have. “I’m not surprised after all,” I said, watching Alan try to sweep with a long-handled broom and hold the dustpan at the same time. “Not about the dustpan,” I explained. “I mean about the Berensons.” I knew I should get up and hold the dustpan, but I didn’t want to, not just then. Let him see what it was like, let him see. “Where’s my sherry?” I asked. I wasn’t even crying anymore.
“This isn’t easy, Elaine,” Alan said. The little shards of glass — that was all that was left, little shards — went into the dustpan bed.
“That’s enough,” I said. “I’ll use the vacuum in the morning.” Alan put the broom and dustpan away and came back and sat on the floor beside me.
“It wasn’t something we planned,” he said.
“What wasn’t?” I asked.
“Oh, come on, Elaine.”
“No, what? What do you mean?”
“Elaine,” he said, “I think you know I mean Jan Berenson.” He actually turned his head completely away from me, as though he were talking to the Christmas tree.
“No,” I said, and I could feel my head shaking, making it a very definite no. “I don’t know. Not really.” A couple of times, parties and stuff, they’d be in the kitchen talking. But just talking. Not even sneaky talk, just regular talk, talk they didn’t change or stop when I came into the room. Just talk. Nothing serious, nothing to worry about. “I really didn’t know,” I said.