Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
The rest of December passed as if the four weeks were only one.
Christmas trees were set up and decorated in the entrance foyer, the living room, the dining room, and the library.
Fireplace mantels were draped with evergreen garlands that would be replaced as they grew dry and discolored.
Mr. Stan Laurel with his wife Lois and Mr. Oliver Hardy with his wife Myrtle came to dinner on the fourteenth.
In their short films, Laurel had been funnier than Hardy, but at the table, at least on that occasion, Hardy was the funnier of the two.
Their wives were more amusing than either of their husbands—which made for a lovely evening but might have been why both marriages ended in divorce.
By Friday the nineteenth, beautifully wrapped gifts began to be arranged under the tree in the living room, and every morning a few more appeared as though by the visitation of elves during the night.
On the afternoon of the twenty-first, we children gathered around the breakfast table with Franklin and Loretta to receive a status report on our individual trust funds.
I was surprised that a fund had been established for me and amazed by the amount with which it had been opened.
I insisted I had no need for my own money.
Franklin counseled me that one day I certainly would have a use for it.
More would be deposited in every fund each December.
There would also be annual appreciation of the assets.
Each of us was required to decide how much to give away this year.
A charity was named, and we were expected to be generous though not irresponsible.
Brow furrowed and eyes squinted, Franklin said, “This court is now in order. Three of you rich little snots have been through this ritual in previous years, and Adiel will have a painful education in the process.”
Gertrude objected. “I don’t like being called a ‘rich little snot.’ I demand to be called a ‘rich little booger.’”
“And I,” said Isadora, “demand to be called a ‘rich little hocked up glob of phlegm.’”
“I second their demands,” Harry declared. “Those are perfect names for them.”
“And Harry,” said Gertrude, “should be called a ‘stinky rich little fart boy.’”
“Your father and I,” said Loretta, “will certainly take your demands under advisement later tonight over an illegal beverage. Adiel, do you have something else you’d rather be called than a ‘rich little snot’?”
“I’m content with that, Your Honor.”
Isadora warned, “Don’t be a suck-up, Adiel.”
“Okay. I demand to be called a ‘rich little pus pimple.’”
The ritual, the process, and the expectation of this kangaroo court was this: As each of us children suggested a figure to donate to charity, the two judges would gently and with humor mock us for being Scrooges in the making or for mistaking ourselves as Rockefellers.
Because I owned the newest fund, my suggestion of 10 percent was met with approval.
As for the other three, each ideal contribution depended on the age and success of the fund—13 percent for Harry, 15 percent for Gertrude, and 17 percent for Isadora.
The siblings, well versed in this ritual, howled at the unfairness.
Having money of one’s own was miraculous, and giving it away was more fun than I would have imagined back when I didn’t have any.
“It’s not a sin to live well if you’ve earned it,” Loretta told me.
“But it’s shameful not to share. The two most dangerous human flaws are greed and envy.
Some unfortunate people have both, and therein lies the cause of all wars, most murders, and untold suffering. ”
Harry said, “I object. Your Honor is preaching from the bench.”
“Denied.”
“I object,” said Gertrude. “I’m greedy and envious, and I don’t feel unfortunate at all.”
“Denied.”
“I object,” Isadora said, “on the grounds that I’m bored.”
“Me too,” Loretta and Franklin said in unison. “Court closed.”
During the months I’d been free from Captain, I had discovered much about families that confirmed what I learned from novels.
One of the best discoveries I made at the Bram was that if everyone in the family loved and respected one another, even the dullest tasks could be fun.
Of all that one generation might leave to the next, one of the most important legacies is laughter.
That night, I had a dream in which Captain appeared and said, The two most dangerous human flaws are greed and envy.
Therein lies the cause of most murders. I woke trembling and sweaty.
After an hour or so, I convinced myself it was a dream, not a premonition, and I settled back into an uneasy sleep.
The remaining days of that December went by faster than magic reindeer can fly.
For the first time in my life, midway between my seventeenth and eighteenth birthdays, I experienced Christmas.
It was all I could have hoped. On Wednesday, Christmas Eve, we went to church one hour before midnight for a service lit by one thousand candles.
From Thursday through the following Tuesday, the family played games together, threw balls for Rafael until he surrendered to exhaustion, and set off on delightful expeditions—including to the late Henry Huntington’s vast gardens in San Marino.
We baked cookies together, prepared meals, and dealt with basic housekeeping because the staff was off on holiday through the first of January; none of it seemed like work because we were doing it together.
Chef Luigi Lattuada, who was vacationing at a seaside hotel in Mexico, sent telegrams for five days—December 26th through the 30th.
They were addressed not to Franklin and Loretta, but to me and the siblings.
As none of us had received a telegram before, the first one was flat-out magical and the next four were highly anticipated.
The messages were, in the order received: having a wonderful time without you; I do not miss you at all; when I dreamed you checked into the hotel, I woke screaming; if you come here I will throw myself off a cliff into the sea; on second thought, if you come here I will throw you off a cliff into the sea.
Each of the five was signed, your much-loved chef.
One thing was certain—in addition to being a fabulous chef, when Mr. Lattuada was in a joking mood, he sure knew his audience.
On New Year’s Eve, after dinner, we enjoyed glasses of lightly spiked eggnog in the library while listening to recordings by Duke Ellington and his twelve-piece band.
At eight o’clock—eleven on the East Coast—Franklin tuned the radio to Chick Webb and his band performing in Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom.
There was no stopping this jazz, this swing style.
If you heard it once, you knew it was going to be the music of our lives, which it proved to be throughout the 1930s and the war.
At midnight, we were in the gardens with a supply of sparklers, carving the darkness with blades of glittering light.
The hissing and crackling, the gunpowder smoke, the scent of the chemicals that gave the sparks color, the minims of light like fireflies born and at once gone—it was exciting and lovely from the moment Franklin lit the first until the final encrusted length of wire sputtered away its last feeble sparks.
Loretta said it was time for bed, whereupon much groaning and pleading and general consternation arose from us.
We were as awake as we had ever been! Surely we could not sleep for hours yet!
The stroke of midnight brought a new day, yes, but it also closed the old world and opened a new one.
We needed hours to adjust to these new circumstances.
Loretta smiled and gave us fifteen minutes as she and Franklin retired for the night.
We members of the Clyde Tombaugh Club had earlier agreed to conduct a secret post-midnight ghost hunt after the adults went to bed.
Previous ghost hunts had not turned up anything supernatural.
The siblings were willing to consider that no one had yet died in the Bram and that they might have let their imagination spin a bit out of control.
However, Mr. Reinhardt had poisoned mice and rats on occasion, mostly in and around the garage.
It was disquieting to think that a horde of rat ghosts might be slinking through the house at night, looking for ways to get even with us.
If that might be the case, the wise thing was to get proof of them to persuade a rodent exorcist to banish their spirits from the Bram.
With that fanciful theory to build a game around, the night should have been ours.
However, as we stood in the dark gardens where the astringent smell of sparklers was slowly fading, weariness came over us quicker than we expected.
The long day had been so tiring that we decided to postpone the rodent ghost hunt until later in the month.
We went to our rooms, slightly miffed at ourselves for lacking the energy to fulfill our rebellious intentions.
Rafael spent the first few hours of 1931 snoring in my bed.
I dreamed of a ghostly Pied Piper leading multitudes of red-eyed rat spirits through the dark rooms and hallways while we slept.
When I saw the Piper’s ghost was that of Captain, I began to issue soft cries of alarm.
Although I didn’t at once wake myself, I disturbed the slumber of the shepherd.
He snuggled against me with his head on my shoulder and licked my neck until I woke with a gasp and sat up from my pillows.
After an absence of months, Captain had crept back into my dreams twice in two weeks. As before, I told myself that these visitations meant nothing. In fact, considering how long I’d lived under the yoke of the freak-show master, I should have had horrid dreams of him every night.
A small electric night-light in the form of a candle relieved the worst of the darkness.
In that dim glow, I denied Captain any hold on me by calmly lying down again.
I turned on my side, now face-to-face with Rafael.
His habit was to maintain eye contact as long as I did.
I repeatedly smoothed one gloved hand along his flank and said, “I sometimes wonder if we once traveled far together on the road from Nineveh to Media.” He thumped his tail three times on the mattress, but I didn’t know what to make of that.
I worried about what ill fortune might befall my new family, but the following three years were good for the Fairchild clan. We enjoyed a period of warmth and honey, even though events beyond the walls of Bramley Hall seemed always to be moving toward something cold and bitter.