The Corrections

The last ornament was the Christ baby in a walnut shell. Pinning it to the tree was a task for a child, for someone credulous and hopeful, and Denise could now see very clearly that she’d made a program of steeling herself against the emotions of this house, against the saturation of childhood memory and significance. She could not be the child to perform this task.

“It’s your calendar,” she said. “You should do it.”

The disappointment on Enid’s face was disproportionately large. It was an ancient disappointment with the refusal of the world in general and her children in particular to participate in her preferred enchantments. “I guess I’ll ask Gary if he’ll do it,” she said with a scowl.

“I’m sorry,” Denise said.

“I remember you used to love pinning on the ornaments, when you were a little girl. You used to love it. But if you don’t want to do it, you don’t want to do it.”

“Mom.” Denise’s voice was unsteady. “Please don’t make me.”

“If I’d known it would seem like such a chore,” Enid said, “I never would have asked you.”

“Let me watch you do it!” Denise pleaded.

Enid shook her head and walked away. “I’ll ask Gary when he gets back from shopping.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She went outside and sat on the front steps smoking. The air had a disturbed southern snowy flavor. Down the street Kirby Root was winding pine rope around the post of his gas lamp. He waved and she waved back.

“When did you start smoking?” Enid asked her when she came inside.

“About fifteen years ago.”

“I don’t mean to criticize,” Enid said, “but it’s a terrible habit for your health. It’s bad for your skin, and frankly, it’s not a pleasant smell for others.”

Denise, with a sigh, washed her hands and began to brown the flour for the sauerkraut gravy. “If you’re going to come and live with me,” she said, “we need to get some things clear.”

“I said I wasn’t criticizing.”

“One thing we need to be clear about is that I’m having a hard time. For example, I didn’t quit the Generator. I was fired.”

“Fired?”

“Yes. Unfortunately. Do you want to know why?”

“No!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

Denise, smiling, stirred more bacon grease into the bottom of the Dutch oven.

“Denise, I promise you,” her mother said, “we will not be in your way. You just show me where the supermarket is, and how to use your washer, and then you can come and go as you please. I know you have your own life. I don’t want to disrupt anything. If I could see any other way to get Dad into that program, believe me, I would do it. But Gary never invited us, and I don’t think Caroline would want us anyway.”

The bacon fat and the browned ribs and the boiling kraut smelled good. The dish, as prepared in this kitchen, bore little relation to the high-art version that she’d plated for a thousand strangers. The Generator’s ribs and the Generator’s monkfish had more in common than the Generator’s ribs and these homemade ribs had. You thought you knew what food was, you thought it was elemental. You forgot how much restaurant there was in restaurant food and how much home was in homemade.

She said to her mother: “Why aren’t you telling me the story of Norma Greene?”

“Well, you got so angry with me last time,” Enid said.

“I was mainly mad at Gary.”

“My only concern is that you not be hurt like Norma was. I want to see you happy and settled.”

Mom, I’m never going to get married again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, in fact, I do know that.”

“Life is full of surprises. You’re still very young and very darling.”

Denise put more bacon fat into the pot; there was no reason to hold back now. She said, “Are you listening to me? I’m quite certain that I will never get married again.”

But a car door had slammed in the street and Enid was running into the dining room to part the sheer curtains.

“Oh, it’s Gary,” she said, disappointed. “Just Gary.”

Gary breezed into the kitchen with the railroad memorabilia that he’d bought at the Museum of Transport. Obviously refreshed by a morning to himself, he was happy to indulge Enid by pinning the Christ baby to the Advent calendar; and, as quickly as that, Enid’s sympathies shifted away from her daughter and back to her son. She crowed about the beautiful job that Gary done in the downstairs shower and what a huge improvement the stool there represented. Denise miserably finished the dinner preparations, assembled a light lunch, and washed a mountain of dishes while the sky in the windows turned fully gray.