BONUS PART 10 — The Christmas I Opened My Own Door
The first pancake burned while I was standing at the door with my father.
I smelled it before anybody said anything. Then I heard Brenna call from the kitchen.
“Do you want me to take this off?”
“Yes,” I called back.
A second passed.
“The pancake or the pan?”
“Both, probably.”
Dad laughed. He was still holding his gloves by the fingertips. I showed him the hook where he could hang his coat, and by the time I got back to the kitchen, Brenna had scraped the pancake onto a plate. It was black on one side and almost white on the other.
“I think you caught it just before it became two separate foods,” she said.
I opened the window an inch. Patricia put another orange slice into my hand. Lauren moved the bowl of chocolate chips away from the edge of the stove.
Mom stood just inside the kitchen, still holding the syrup.
“Where do you want this?” she asked.
“On the table.”
She took it over. I watched her find a space between the butter and the coffee pot. Then I turned the heat down and poured another pancake.
This one came out fine.
I put it on my plate.
For years, I’d given the first good one to whoever was standing closest. That morning, I’d been looking forward to the first pancake since I bought the flour. I put a few chocolate chips on it while it was hot, folded it in half, and ate two bites over the stove.
Behind me, Dad asked Brenna if she’d made the coffee the same way she had at graduation.
“Yes,” she said.
He poured himself a cup.
I turned around just in time to see him add hot water from the kettle. He caught me looking and raised one finger to his lips.
“I can hear you watering it down,” Brenna said.
Dad looked at the kettle as if it had betrayed him.
By the time I sat down, there were pancakes on every plate. Patricia had cut the oranges into uneven wedges because she liked the little ones. Lauren had put chocolate chips in hers and then added a few more on top. Mom poured syrup for herself and slid the bottle toward Dad before he asked.
I knew my father was nervous. He’d said so at the door. I’d said I was, too.
I’d thought I might spend the morning looking at him for signs that he felt better. Instead, I spent a surprising amount of it trying to get a piece of orange peel out from under the edge of my plate without spilling coffee in my lap.
When I finally got it loose, I looked up.
Dad was eating.
Mom was telling Lauren about the bakery across from their new place. She said the man at the counter had started asking which half of the loaf she wanted before she finished ordering. Patricia leaned across the table to ask Brenna whether Gary had survived the move to the larger pot.
Brenna took out her phone.
“He’s doing something with a new leaf,” she said. “I don’t want to make assumptions.”
She passed the phone to Patricia, who enlarged the picture with two fingers.
“He’s growing,” Patricia said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fairly sure it’s allowed.”
I laughed. Then I took another bite of pancake.
Nobody had asked me to get up for several minutes. The coffee pot was empty, and everybody at the table knew where it was.
Near the end of breakfast, Dad went into the hall for something in his coat.
When he came back, he had a small brown envelope.
He held it by one corner.
“I brought the list,” he said. “The one I made from the bank statements.”
My fork stopped halfway to my plate.
Dad looked at the envelope, then at the syrup bottle beside my cup. He seemed to notice how little room there was to set anything down.
“I was going to tell you I’d gone through it again,” he said. “I found two of the payments I’d missed.”
My mind started doing what it had always done with my parents’ bills. I wondered which payments he’d found. I tried to remember where I’d filed the receipts. For a second, I could picture the whole table clearing while Dad and I sat down with our numbers.
“I don’t want to look at that over breakfast,” I said.
He nodded.
“Do you want me to leave it?”
I looked at the envelope.
“Could you mail it after Christmas?”
“Yes.”
He took it back to his coat.
When he returned, Patricia asked him to pass the butter. He passed it and sat down. I waited for him to glance at me again, the way people do when they want you to know they’ve accepted something but would still like you to reconsider.
He picked up his coffee.
I took the bite I’d been holding on my fork.
A little later, Mom came into the kitchen while I was putting the remaining batter in the refrigerator. She opened the cupboard where I kept the containers and pulled down a lid with no matching bottom.
“Do you throw these out?” she asked.
“I put them back in the cupboard and hope the bottom comes home.”
She laughed. She found a container that fit and handed it to me.
“I didn’t know he was bringing the list,” she said.
“I believe you.”
She leaned against the counter.
“I heard you tell him to mail it,” she said. “I was going to tell him to leave it in the car next time.”
I looked over.
“Then I remembered he’d already answered you.”
I pressed down on one corner of the lid. It snapped shut.
“Did you want to talk about it today?” I asked.
“No. I want to know if you’re going to make those last two pancakes before we leave.”
I looked at the container. There was enough batter for one good pancake or two that would disappoint everybody.
“Do you want to split one?”
“Yes,” she said. “Put chocolate chips in it.”
We went back to the stove.
Mom stood beside me while it cooked. When I slid it onto a plate, she handed me the heavy fork from my place at the table.
We ate our halves standing at the counter.
Dad waited until eleven before he asked about the piano.
He was helping Brenna gather cups. He’d picked up three by the handles and was trying to figure out how to take a fourth without putting any of them down.
“Would you feel like playing something?” he asked.
I thought about the six measures on the last page. I’d reached the end the previous night with him sitting beside me. I could have tried again with everybody listening.
Then I looked at Lauren. She was still in the folding chair beside mine, with one pajama leg caught above the top of her sock. Patricia had orange peel on her plate. Mom was bringing the last of the coffee over in a mug because there wasn’t enough in the pot to pour neatly.
I knew what I wanted to play.
“Put the cups down first,” I told Dad.
He did.
I sat at the piano and opened the book to the piece I’d started learning before I met Irene. I could turn to it without the grocery receipt now. The pages opened there on their own.
“I know this one,” Mom said after the first few bars.
Then she went quiet.
I played it a little faster than I had the day the piano arrived. At the bottom of the second page, I looked up and saw Dad standing beside the chair he’d moved over the night before. He was looking at my hands. Brenna sat on the floor, where she’d sat the first time.
I found my place again before I missed it.
When I finished, I kept my foot on the pedal for an extra second. I liked what happened to the sound when I let it stay in the room.
Lauren asked, “Can you play the bit your mom hummed wrong?”
Mom looked at me.
“You told her about that?”
“I think I hummed it wrong for her, too.”
“I’d like to hear both versions,” Patricia said.
I played the two notes the way Mom had sung them. Then I played them the way they were written.
“I still like mine,” Mom said.
“Play them together,” Brenna called.
I tried it. It sounded like the piano had asked a question and then forgotten what it wanted to know. Dad laughed so hard he had to sit down.
We were all still laughing when I glanced at the clock.
Eleven twenty-five.
Patricia had seen it, too. She got up and found the towel she’d wrapped her knife in. Brenna asked if I wanted her to take the trash down. I told her I could do it later. She said okay and went to look for her keys.
Lauren put on her coat over her pajamas.
“You know you have to come back out in those,” I said.
“I’m going from your door to my car. If anybody sees me, they’ll think I had a very good Christmas.”
She picked up her folding chair.
“Leave it,” I told her. “I’ll bring it over later.”
“You want it here?”
“For now.”
She set it down again.
Dad was the last one into the hall. He put his gloves on, then pulled one off because he’d put his keys in the wrong pocket.
“Did it get better?” I asked him.
He looked up.
“You said you were nervous when you came in.”
“Oh.” He thought about it while he found his keys. “Yes. Around the time I spilled syrup on my sleeve and your mother told me to roll it up.”
I looked at his cuff. One sleeve was still folded higher than the other.
“What about you?” he asked.
“I forgot to be nervous when I smelled the pancake.”
He smiled.
Then he said, “I’m glad you opened the door.”
I’d known all morning that he might say something about the door. I’d imagined myself having an answer ready.
What I said was, “I almost brought the pan with me.”
Dad laughed. He tucked his glove into his pocket and reached to hug me, slowly enough for me to see him ask without speaking.
I stepped toward him.
It was a short hug. His coat was cold where he’d put it on. I could smell coffee on his scarf.
When he let go, Mom asked if I wanted the extra bottle of syrup.
“Yes,” I said. “I think I’m going to make breakfast again tomorrow.”
She put it on the shelf by the door, where I could reach it.
Then they left.
I’d asked for an hour and a half because I wanted the apartment to myself afterward.
When I closed the door, it took me a few minutes to remember what I liked about the quiet. I could hear the refrigerator. Somebody upstairs was walking around in shoes. There was a little pop from the window frame as the heat came back on.
I carried two plates to the sink. Then I left the rest where they were.
On the crooked shelf I’d put up straight, the green marble was still in the middle. Beside it stood the folder Brenna had bought me for my birthday. It was a deep reddish brown, with a pocket on the inside that was just the right size for Marianne’s old note.
I took the note out.
Below the practice-room hours and the date I’d written down, there was still room for one more line.
I didn’t write anything. I put it back in its pocket and went to sit by the window.
The year I’d spent Christmas alone, I’d come home from my parents’ porch and tried to decide what to eat. I kept opening the refrigerator like something new might turn up if I stood there long enough. I’d wanted to be able to say I was having a nice day. I thought if I could get the meal right, I might believe it.
Now I had a plate of cold pancakes and half an orange I’d forgotten about. I ate the orange. Then I called Lauren to ask if her mother needed me to bring anything besides the pies.
“She says bring yourself,” Lauren said. “My brother says clarify that the pies are still coming.”
“They’re coming.”
“Good. We’ve put the forks out.”
After we hung up, I went back to the piano.
The newer piece was still open to the difficult page. I played two lines and stopped in the middle of the third because I heard the radiator knock.
It did it again.
For some reason, that reminded me of Brenna calling on the first night in her new room, asking me what kind of bird might be outside her window.
I texted her.
Whatever happened to the bird?
She answered almost immediately.
It was a loose bit of gutter. Still judgmental.
I played the next line. My left hand got to the right place, and my right hand lost its place entirely.
I went back one measure.
This time, I could hear where I needed to go.
At Lauren’s, her mother had set my water glass out before I arrived.
There was a new tablecloth. It was cream with a line of little red berries around the edge. Lauren’s brother had spilled something on it already and put the bread basket over the spot.
Lauren lifted the basket the moment I sat down.
“Look at this,” she said.
“It happened while I was helping,” he said.
“What were you helping with?”
“I was helping myself to something.”
Their mother laughed and told him where the clean cloths were.
I watched him get up.
A few years earlier, I would have been on my feet before she finished telling him. I would have known which drawer to look in, or made it look as if I did. This time, I put butter on my bread and watched him come back with a cloth so wet that it made the spot twice as large.
“Do you want me to make it worse?” Lauren asked him.
“Could you?”
They spent several minutes making it better between them.
When we were ready to eat, Lauren’s mother looked over at me.
“How was your breakfast?”
I thought about Dad saying he was nervous before he stepped inside. I thought about the envelope going back into his coat. I thought about Mom and me eating from one plate while the rest of the family argued over whether a plant could have an attitude.
“It was good,” I said.
“What did you make?”
“Pancakes.”
“Were they any good?”
“The second one was.”
She laughed. Then she asked if I wanted the gravy, and I said yes.
After dinner, Lauren cut the pies. Her brother was allowed to serve himself only after everybody else had a piece. He stood by the counter watching us as though he’d been asked to wait outside a bank vault.
I took apple.
Lauren put a little piece of pumpkin on my plate as well.
“You didn’t get any last time,” she said.
I’d forgotten that. She hadn’t.
When I finally put my fork down, it was getting dark outside. Nobody needed the chair I was sitting in. I stayed a little longer and helped Lauren’s mother finish a crossword. We disagreed about an answer until she counted the boxes and found room for both of us to be wrong.
I drove home with one empty pie dish and one with a slice left in it.
There were lights on in the apartment across the hall. A pair of boots had been set out on the mat. I carried the pies inside, put the empty dish in the sink, and ate the last slice over the counter with the heavy fork.
Then I washed the fork and went to bed.
Dad mailed the envelope in January.
He put a note on top.
I found the two payments on a statement your mother had kept with the furnace paperwork. I’ve marked which ones they are. There’s no rush to look at this.
I read it on a Saturday morning with coffee beside me. I had nowhere I needed to be until noon. There was enough time to look at the pages, and I wanted to.
One of the amounts was for a repair. The other was for groceries in a month when Dad had missed work. I remembered buying the groceries because I’d used a coupon for something I didn’t even like and kept the receipt afterward to see whether it had really saved me any money.
He’d also listed what he’d already paid back. The two hundred dollars he’d sent in the first letter was there. My mother’s payments for the Christmas envelope were on a separate line. He’d written paid in full beside them.
I checked the two new amounts. One matched my records. The other was off by nine dollars because I’d kept part of the groceries for myself.
I sent him a picture of the receipt. I circled the things I’d taken home.
He called later that afternoon.
“You kept the mustard?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t even like mustard.”
“I bought it for sandwiches.”
There was a pause.
“I’ve got a whole jar here,” he said.
I laughed.
He did too. Then he told me what he could send each month. He’d already looked at their expenses for the new place. He knew what month the car insurance came due, and he’d left enough aside for it.
“If something changes, I’ll tell you before the payment’s late,” he said.
I believed he meant it. I also knew I’d feel better once I saw what happened when something actually did change.
“Put it in an email,” I told him. “I’d like to be able to find it.”
“All right.”
The email came the following morning. It was four lines long. He’d put the amount and the day of the month at the top where I could see them.
I saved it.
In March, he called to say they’d had to replace a tire and asked whether he could move part of that month’s payment to April. I asked him which date in April. He gave me one.
The money arrived on that date.
I was making toast when I saw the notification. I entered the amount after breakfast. Then I called him that afternoon because I’d heard a noise in my own car and wanted to know if he could listen to it with me.
He asked where I’d parked. I told him.
“Want me to bring tools?” he asked.
“Just listen first.”
He came over with his hands in his coat pockets.
We stood beside the car while I started it. It made the noise once. He asked me to do it again. It stayed quiet for three tries, then did it a fourth time when both of us had stopped paying attention.
“Of course,” Dad said.
He didn’t know what it was. I made an appointment at the garage the next morning.
When I told him the mechanic had found a loose shield underneath, he asked how it sounded now.
“Quiet.”
“Good,” he said.
That was all I’d needed from him that day. I was glad I’d asked.
In the spring, Marianne put together an evening for adult students at the music shop.
She told me after a lesson. I was packing my bag, trying to get my folder in without bending the corners, when she asked if I’d like to play something.
“In front of how many people?”
“Eight, if everyone comes. Twelve if they all bring somebody.”
“That’s a fairly significant difference.”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s four people.”
I laughed. Then I asked which piece she thought I should play.
She looked down at the one open on the rest. I’d finally got through the six measures without having to go back, though I still slowed down so much before the last one that it sounded as if I’d reached the end of the piece early.
“Would you like to play that?” she asked.
I touched the edge of the page.
“Yes.”
“Then that one.”
I invited Mom.
I did it at her place, where we were sitting by the kitchen window with coffee. She’d figured out where to put the chairs so the spoon drawer opened all the way. She demonstrated it for me as soon as I sat down.
“See?” she said. “You can get to everything.”
She got a spoon out and put it beside my mug.
When I told her about the music shop, she asked whether I wanted her to come.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m asking you.”
Her hand stopped on the sugar bowl.
“I’d love to.”
A second later, she asked whether Dad was coming.
“I haven’t asked him,” I said. “I thought it could be you and me. We could get something to eat afterward.”
She looked out the window. Across the street, somebody from the bakery was turning the sign around.
“All right,” she said. “I’d like that.”
On the night, there were eleven people.
A woman went first and played the same opening twice because she’d started before she was ready. A man who’d brought his own bench said he was going to do something short, then took six minutes to adjust the height. By the time he began, everybody was smiling at him. He smiled back.
I watched Mom listen to each person. She had her coat folded across her knees. When the man on the bench finished, she waited until he looked up before she clapped.
Then Marianne said my name.
I went to the piano.
From the bench, I could see the stuffed bear in the front window. Somebody had taken its headphones off. One ear was folded down where they’d been.
I put my hands on the keys.
The beginning went the way I’d practiced. In the middle, I heard myself get a little too fast. I had time to slow down before my left hand took over.
Then I got to the six measures.
I played the first three cleanly. On the fourth, I caught the edge of a black key and heard the wrong note ring out.
I kept my foot down just long enough to get to the next chord.
Then I lifted it, and the wrong note went away.
I knew what came next.
I played it.
When I went back to my seat, Mom moved her coat so I could sit beside her.
“You went on,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
She nodded and looked toward the piano. There was another woman getting ready to play. She was smoothing the pages flat with both palms.
Mom leaned a little closer to me.
“Is it always that loud when you’re the one sitting there?” she whispered.
“It feels louder.”
She sat back. Then she listened to the next woman play.
We got soup afterward. Mom ordered one kind and wished she’d ordered mine. I gave her a spoonful. She offered me some of hers, and I took it because I wanted to see what she’d got wrong.
It was perfectly good soup.
I still liked mine better.
By the next December, I knew which drawer held the spoons at my parents’ new place without asking.
I knew Dad would call before dropping by if he wanted to come in. Sometimes I said I had plans. Once I told him my plans were to stay on the couch and finish a book. He asked whether it was a good book. I said it was getting there. He said he hoped it got there before I reached the end.
Brenna still called on Wednesdays when she could. Some weeks we missed each other. She’d leave a message about a thing she’d seen, and I’d call her back when I had a thing to tell her.
One Wednesday, she asked whether I wanted to make Christmas breakfast again.
I was sitting at the piano with my shoes still on. I’d come home from work, played half a page, and decided I wanted to order dinner instead of taking anything out of the refrigerator.
“I don’t think I feel like cooking this year,” I said.
“Okay. Do you want to go somewhere?”
“On Christmas morning?”
“There’s a diner by me that opens until noon. They have pancakes. I checked because I thought you might say no to cooking.”
“You did?”
“Yes. I almost offered to bring the batter. Then I realized I wanted to sit with you, and it didn’t matter who made it.”
I took one shoe off and pushed it under the bench with my foot.
“What time?” I asked.
“Ten?”
“I could do ten.”
She asked if I wanted her to invite anyone else.
I thought about it.
“Just us this time.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll ask if they take reservations.”
They didn’t. We arrived five minutes apart and waited near the door with three other people. It was cold each time somebody came in. Brenna had the red key ring looped around one finger. The picture of Gary had faded along the top where the sun got to it.
When the waitress came over, she asked whether we were waiting for anyone.
Brenna looked at me. There was no surprise in it. She just wanted to make sure we’d both heard the question.
“Two,” I said.
The waitress took us to a booth by the window.
We ordered pancakes. Brenna got chocolate chips. I asked for oranges on the side, and the waitress said she could bring a whole one if I didn’t mind peeling it.
“I don’t mind,” I told her.
While we waited, Brenna showed me a photograph Patricia had sent that morning. Mom and Dad were having breakfast at her place. Dad had put his mug down too close to the edge of the table, and Patricia had put a hand beside it just as somebody took the picture. Mom was laughing at something outside the frame.
I looked at the photograph for a few seconds.
Then I handed the phone back.
“Do you think that’s the good coffee?” I asked.
“Patricia’s? She measures it with a tablespoon she found in a flowerpot.”
“I’ve had that coffee. It’s good.”
“I know,” Brenna said. “That’s what bothers me.”
Our pancakes came. The waitress put the orange on a little saucer beside my plate. I peeled it while Brenna cut the first bite of hers.
The peel came off in three pieces. I put two wedges on Brenna’s plate because I knew she’d want them. She ate one immediately.
Halfway through breakfast, my phone buzzed in my coat pocket. I finished what I was eating before I took it out.
Mom had sent a picture of Dad holding his coffee with both hands. Beneath it she’d written, Merry Christmas. Would you call when you get home? I want to hear about the diner.
I read the message to Brenna.
“Tell her they put in enough chocolate chips,” she said. “She always thinks nobody will.”
I put the phone away.
We ordered another coffee and stayed until the waitress began refilling the sugar bowls at the empty tables.
When I got home, I hung my coat by the door and called my mother.
I told her about the diner. She wanted to know if we’d had to wait. Dad called from somewhere near her that he’d seen a picture of the orange and wondered why they’d given it to me whole.
“Because I can peel an orange, Dad.”
“I know you can. I just thought it was a funny way to serve one.”
I could hear Mom laughing.
We talked for a little while. I told her I was going to Lauren’s later and wanted to play before I left. She asked what I was working on.
“Something new,” I said. “I can only play the first page.”
“Do you like the first page?”
“Very much.”
“Then I hope you get a chance to play it.”
We said goodbye.
I put the phone on the table. The kitchen was still bright enough that I didn’t need a lamp. I had a pie cooling on the counter and another one waiting to go into the oven.
There was a knock across the hall. Somebody answered it. For a moment I could hear several people wishing one another a merry Christmas, all at once, until the door swung shut and their voices got softer.
I went to the piano.
The scratch across the lid caught the light when I sat down. I opened my folder, found the new piece, and played the first page.
Then I turned it.
I had time to see what came next.
