Russell Banks - A Permanent Member of the Family

“I guess I forgot. I mean, I didn’t know.” She looked like she was putting on some weight, a bit thicker through the face and shoulders and waist. Or maybe it was the red dress. He felt his chest tighten and his arms grow heavy. She was still beautiful to him, and she was growing older, and he wasn’t going to be able to watch it happen, except from a distance.

“It was on the invitation, Harold. We’re starting a tradition,” she said. “Next Christmas we’ll fill a box with all these decorations for people to pick from and take home for their own trees, and we’ll put up a whole new set. It’s like recycling. Except for the star on top. That stays. It’s from Bud’s family. Look, aren’t some of these great?” She pointed out carved wooden animals, gingerbread men with M&M for eyes, delicate glass bells and balls, large and small candy canes, chocolate Santa Clauses, plaster angels, and birds with real feathers.

“So where’s Bud?” Harold asked, looking around the room.

“Getting a stepladder from the garage. To put up the star.”

“Say, by the way, congratulations.”

“For…?”

She wasn’t looking at him and was about to step away in the direction of a red-faced couple in matching ski jackets who had just come through the door — summer people, he noticed, up for the holidays to ski at Whiteface and go to parties.

“I heard you got a new baby,” Harold said. “Adopted a baby. Congratulations.”

“He’s fabulous! So handsome, and so smart! Oh, there’s Bud!” she said, as tall, blond, smiling Bud Lincoln eased his stepladder through the crowd that had gathered around the Christmas tree. He opened the ladder legs and climbed the first three steps awkwardly, carrying in one hand a large, gold-plated, five-pointed star and in the other a plastic cup half filled with eggnog. Sheila left Harold’s side and made her way to the ladder, grabbed its sides and steadied it for her husband. A couple of people nearest the tree shouted for Bud to be careful and laughed. Bud laughed back and told them not to worry, he had everything under control.

Harold set his can of beer down on a side table and found himself edging away from the crowd, backing toward the sliding glass door, and then he was standing outside on the deck, coatless, shivering from the cold, watching Bud slowly reach with the star in hand toward the spindly top of the tree. He lifted the star over the last few limbs and hooked it properly in place, turned and raised his arms in triumph. Everyone applauded. Sheila let go of the ladder and clapped with them.

At that moment, to Harold, she looked very happy. She was proud of her husband, of her fabulous, handsome, smart new baby, of her beautiful house. Proud of her life. There was a light emanating from her face that Harold had never seen before.

It occurred to him that he had left the room and stepped out to the deck because he hoped that Bud would fall from the ladder and the goddamned overloaded Christmas tree would come crashing down with him. He might have broken a leg or an arm. He would have been humiliated. Harold had wanted it to happen, had even expected it. It would have been the perfect ending to his story of betrayal and abandonment, especially if he’d been able to watch it from a safe distance, out here on the deck alone.

It was dark now, except for the cold light of the moon blanketing the snow-covered slope below. Harold knew that no one inside the bright, warm living room could see him out here. He wore only a flannel shirt and fleece vest against the December night. His breath drifted from his mouth like smoke, and he wished he’d grabbed his parka when he left the living room, but there was no way he could retrieve it now without people noticing that he was leaving the party early. People would think that he wasn’t over her, that he hadn’t moved on in his life, that he was angry at Bud and angry at Sheila, too. And jealous, maybe envious, of their new house and their adopted African baby.

He walked to the north corner of the house, where the deck continued past an adjacent room, a den or maybe a guest bedroom. Like the living room, it was lined with floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors. When he got there he saw the crib and an overflowing toy chest and animal pictures on the wall and knew that it was the new baby’s room. He recognized the babysitter sitting in a rocking chair with an open schoolbook in her lap; she was one of the architect Nils Luderoski’s two teenaged daughters, he wasn’t sure which. Luderoski must have designed the house, Harold thought. Luderoski was expensive. Harold had never been hired to work on a building he’d designed. The blueprints probably had the word Nursery written on this room from the start.

The glass door was unlocked, and when he slid it open he startled the girl. She looked up wide-eyed, then recognized him and cautiously said hi.

“Your dad design this house?” he said and smiled, closing the door behind him, as if finishing the tour.

She nodded yes and put a finger against her lips and tilted her head toward the crib.

He crossed the room to the crib and looked down, expecting the baby to be asleep, but he was wide awake, on his back, looking intently up at a brightly colored mobile suspended from a metal arm clamped to the headboard. He didn’t seem at all interested in the man staring down at him. Harold had never seen an African baby before except on television. Sheila was right, her new baby was very handsome. Harold reached down and slid his hands under the baby’s body and lifted him gently from the crib.

The Luderoski girl said, “Better not do that, Mr. Bilodeau.” She put her book on the side table and stood up and walked toward him, her hands extended to take the baby from him. “Mrs. Lincoln wants him to sleep. He has trouble falling asleep.”

They were singing Christmas carols in the living room now. He could hear the slow, muted strains of thirty or forty adults singing “Little Town of Bethlehem.” Holding the baby close to his chest, he turned away from the girl and moved toward the glass door. “What’s his name?”

“They’re calling him Menelik. The name he had in the orphanage. In Ethiopia,” she said. “Better give him to me now, Mr. Bilodeau.”

Harold held the baby in the crook of his right arm. With his free hand he grabbed the blanket from the end of the crib. He carefully wrapped it around the baby, leaving only his shining face exposed. As if he were used to being held by strangers, the baby stared up at the man, unafraid and incurious.

“Hello, Menelik,” the man said.

From behind him, her voice rising in fear, the girl said, “He needs to go back in his crib.”

Harold slid the outer door open, and cold air and darkness rushed into the room.

“What are you doing?” the girl said. Moving quickly, she placed herself between Harold and the open door and grabbed the baby away from him. “You better go back outside,” she said. She stood facing him with the baby in her arms, and he stepped around her onto the deck, and she drew the door shut behind him. He heard the click of the lock.

He walked slowly around to the front of the house, opened the door there, and entered the living room as if he had never left it. No one seemed to notice his return any more than they had noticed his departure. They were all standing around the beautifully decorated Christmas tree singing “Silent Night.”

He walked over to the bar and asked the girl with the tattoo for another beer. She flashed him a smile and fished a can of Pabst from the cooler and passed it to him. She wished him a merry Christmas.

He said, “Same to you.” He took a slow sip of the cold beer. “I forgot to bring something for the tree.”

She said, “That’s okay. They got more than enough.”