Bottles and a Button

***

Morning came, invited by no one. It just showed up. A blinding headache slapped my forehead, so I breathed deeply and steadily until the headache eased. It was as if a child on a sled had run over my forehead, laughing, then slipped away. I blinked to sooth the sandpaper in my eyes, then stared at the ceiling that entertained me last night with a bizarre slide show of life - snow, darkness, women, cheating, nothing. I sat up slowly, taking more deep breaths to control the nausea. After a few minutes, I pushed myself to stand up, dress, and cover the snow globe again before I left the room.

The plastic holly garland wrapped around the railing looked a rich shade of gray and pricked my wrist as I descended the stairs. The smell of coffee turned my stomach, so I practiced a smile before entering the kitchen, "Ma?"

"In here," she replied from the dining room. I heard her sigh. Peeking around the corner, I saw that she had cleared the buffet of last night's plates and cutlery, and had arranged the little holly nest. Her shoulders sagged.

"Ma, is something wrong?"

She shook her head without looking at me, "I think someone stole my snow globe last night."

I caught a bit of throw up in my mouth. Damn it! In my current condition, I didn't want to discuss it, but couldn't ignore it, either, "Well, maybe it's around here somewhere. I mean, it's a nice snow globe, but do you really think anyone would steal it?"

"All those drunk people. Me in the kitchen all night. Who knows? Someone might have found its hiding spot and stole it as a joke."

"At Christmastime?"

"Worse things have happened at Christmas," she looked at me sidelong as she stepped into the kitchen. "You didn't happen to find it when you got the Cointreau, did you?"

I gulped, "Uh, no." She looked at me a moment longer than usual, but said nothing. I wanted to ask about Pa, but shut up instead and spent the day in bed with a book and a hangover.

***

Just as I returned downstairs late in the afternoon, Pa came home. He parked his car in the garage and came in through the kitchen door. His tie hung loose and the skin under his eyes looser, "Couple of things to do at the office." Ma ignored him while she dumped leftover chicken and vegetables in a pot. He winked at me as we passed each other at the threshold of the kitchen."Well, let me take a load off." That meant gin in the parlor until Ma called him for dinner.

I leaned against the doorway, "Can I help?"

She sighed, "Set the table, please."

I gathered place settings and carried them to the dining room, wishing I needed only two, preferably four. I heard the clinking of glass in Pa's dark parlor, the forest green walls and cluttered desk lit only by an accountant's lamp. Oddly enough, Pa had allowed Ma to hang sheer, feminine white curtains in the window. He probably just drank and dreamed and imagined he was looking through a woman's slip.

I placed the settings on the tablecloth adorned with Grandma's needlepoint flowers. Ma's widowed mother had needlepointed for extra money between working and raising a child alone. As I arranged each utensil, the air felt thicker, then... did I see it right? A dusty circle appeared where the snow globe usually sat on the buffet's glassy surface. I approached the buffet and touched the spot; no dust but unusually warm. My finger lingered, and I caught Ma looking at me.

She turned and faded back into the kitchen, serving up plates. "At least he never complains about leftovers."

"Do you?" I asked, before I could check myself.

Ma dropped the spoon in the pot and turned to me. "Look, there are things you don't know, so leave him alone. Any business he and I have is just that - our business. He's put a roof over your head, food in your mouth, and he's never beat you. He's not a perfect man, that we know... I certainly do, but enough. Tell Pa dinner's ready."

"So, Daniella, no fellows at work?" Really, Ma? I trudged to the parlor. Mr. Drinker sat by the window, his back turned to me. He balanced a glass of gin on the arm of his favorite chair.

"Dinner's ready, Pa."

"Hmm? Mmm, okay," I watched him from the dark doorway, wondering when he would stir.

"Daniella!" Ma shouted from the dining room, making me jump. I crossed the hall. Ma frowned at the table, "Is this a joke?"

Four place settings at the table.

"Uh, I guess I wasn't thinking. I thought I only set three." I started gathering up the extra setting.

"No. Leave it. Maybe you drank too much last night." She dropped the plates and returned to the kitchen.

As if by signal, Parlor Pa sagged into the dining room with his drink thoughtfully left behind. I heard Ma sniffling in the kitchen.

Pa and I stood behind our chairs, waiting for Ma. "What's wrong?" he asked. What's wrong? Oh, where should I begin? I wanted to smack him, but Ma saved me by returning to the dining room with the third plate and her composure. Ma sat first, then Pa and I. He sat across from the empty setting, "Was someone coming I should know about?" Wink. Yuck.

I mustered a weak smile. "No. Sorry, Pa. No one. I wasn't paying attention when I set the table. That's all." The lights dimmed, then went back on full. Ma and I looked at each other. Pa said all the holiday lights drained the power grid, then he attempted a lame joke about the electric company. He laughed alone, then shoved a forkful of chicken into his mouth.

The extra place setting wasn't a waste. It welcomed Margaret's presence, real or remembered. Blocking her from our lives had stunted us. We never made the effort to share our sorrow and mourn as a family. Each of us had built a wall and receded.

I had to change. The lonely life at home followed me to my apartment. What young person lives alone in a cold apartment with no friends or at least a date once in a while? The prospect of meeting someone and starting a family terrified me. I could handle the mechanics of it, but what if there was no happiness? What if my own family ended up like this one? I did not want that.

Margaret would have been about fifteen, a sweet high school girl, perhaps with long hair now and dimples still charming the room. I hoped she'd never meet a man like Pa, although Pa wasn't all bad, like Ma said. I wondered what Pa would have been like if Margaret had lived.

Ma set her water glass down with a thud, "I think someone stole my snow globe."

"From last night?" He mumbled through a mouthful of potato.

"Yes, from last night. Just keep an ear out at work. Maybe someone was just really drunk and though it would be funny to take it."

Pa shrugged, "Sure. We'll get to the bottom of this."

Ma looked at him, her fork midway in the air, then continued eating. Dinner passed bit by dry bit. I ate in small bites, glancing at the empty fourth table setting. Pa lay his fork and knife at the edge of his plate and said, "Thank you for dinner, dear." Ma smiled a tad and rose to clear the plates.

"Hey, kid, why don't you come have a drink with me?" Pa jerked his head towards the parlor.

"Uh, okay. Let me help Ma with the dishes first."

"I'll get them. Go ahead." Ma said.

What on earth did Pa want with me in the parlor? And a drink after a hangover? Oh well, hair of the holiday dog. I followed him across the hall to his dark hideout and sat in the stiff black horsehair Victorian mistake across from Pa's chair by the window. The Victorian armchair composed half of Ma's dowry, the needlepoint tablecloth the other.

Pa poured me a finger of gin. I took it, looked at it, hesitated to drink it. He huffed as he sat heavily back in his seat and repositioned himself a few times.

"Pa, why is Ma so obsessed with that snow globe? I mean, doesn't she have other reminders of Margaret?"

Pa shrugged, sighed, and shook his head. We sipped in silence, as if waiting for a bell to ring. Finally, he asked, "How long are you staying?"

"I'm not sure. How long areyou staying?" I glared, the courage-in-a-glass steeling my nerves.

He met my stare, "For the duration." With a grunt, he pushed himself up out of his chair to get the gin from the liquor cart. He topped off both of our drinks and placed the bottle crookedly on the radiator. The rising warm air animated the delicate curtains, as if a woman dangled her legs beneath them.

I raised my glass to my lips, studying the curtains instead of looking at him.

"I know you don't like me," he started.

I looked at him, then down at my glass, "Well..."

"No. I know you don't like me. Plenty of reasons not to." Swig. Thank God he forgot about winking. "Your mother and I aren't a match made in Heaven. We all know that. We make it work, though. What I did, what I am, made an unpleasant situation, but it prevented a worse one."

Worse situation?

He fidgeted with his glass, passing it from one hand to the other, watching it lovingly. He took a deep breath, "Your father...,"

My father? The warm fuzz of the gin turned to frost and stone.

"...your father and I used to be close until he got your mother pregnant and left. I don't hate my brother, but I don't respect a coward. Anyway, I married Ma because she had nothing and no where to go. Jim wasn't likely to come back, so it was the right thing to do. She never got over him. Anyway, it wasme who sent Ma the snow globe to remind her of you after Margaret was born. I even faked a card with Jim's signature." He looked at me with dry, steady eyes, "Daniella, Uncle Jim is your father."

***

Next morning, I packed my bag. I went downstairs and called the bus station for the next bus to downtown Nyack. Ma heard me and said nothing. I had some time to kill and could not stay in the house. I looked at Ma as I put on my coat near the back door in the kitchen, "There's a bus at one-thirty. I'm going to get some fresh air for now."

Ma nodded.

I slipped out the door and walked beneath the black walnut to the neglected flower patch in the backyard. The fallen birdbath used to stand tall among pansies and marigolds in Margaret's plot. I took a deep breath of frosty December air, thinking that Margaret might appreciate a nice, neat garden for Christmas. I smiled, got on my knees and started pulling the straw-like yellow grasses out of the ground not yet frozen. I remembered Margaret's disappointment when summer heat wilted the pansies, and her delight when cool days of fall revived them. Ma never took much to Margaret's dirty fingernails from the garden, and chided her stiffly once for losing a button from her Sunday-best black cardigan out here, possibly while wrestling an adult-sized rake to do its job. I shook my head. No one's perfect. Children fight to get out in the world and assert themselves. Sometimes they don't make it.

A large clump of earth came up with a handful of grass. I beat it a few times on the ground to loosen the soil, then used my fingers to loosen the remaining dirt from the roots. My finger touched something too perfectly round and smooth for a rock. And flat. I paused. After eleven years, it couldn't be. Working the object from the tangled roots, I nearly dropped it when I saw it. A black Bakelite button. Blinking against tears, I looked to the cerulean sky, "I'm so sorry, Margaret. We miss you." White, ghostly breath dissipated in the air.

Inside, I washed my hands and the button in the empty kitchen. I slipped the button into my pocket, then fetched my bag and the globe, still wrapped in the red bandana. Downstairs, Ma was sitting in in the parlor, in Pa's chair. I tiptoed into the dining room and placed the globe in the ring of holly. Then, my knees weak, I went into the parlor to say goodbye. Ma had a glass of something clear in her hand.

"Where's Pa?"

"Work."

"Oh. I guess I'm gonna go now."

She took a deep breath and nodded, "Yes. Call when you get home."

I placed my hand lightly on her shoulder, "I will." I started to walk away, then stopped. I reached into my pocket, took out the button, and lay it on the arm of Mom's chair.

"By the way, Margaret says hello."