CHAPTER V

O HOLY NIGHT

Christmas Eve two years later: The white lights glowed on the Christmas tree, wedged into its traditional holiday spot in the front room of the co-op, with the branches on its left side partially obstructing the door to the foyer, the way they always did. Anyone who came in and out of the front room from the foyer or vise versa invariably bumped into the protruding branches, knocking off any ornaments hanging there. That was a Berelli Christmas tradition, too.

Sal and Libby were home for the holidays. This time, from a six-month field study of the Inuits of Southern Siberia. Uncle Nick was there. Jay and his mother, Anna, were invited, too. In the middle of the sea of torn Christmas wrap and miles of curling ribbon, with opened Christmas presents they'd received stacked near wherever they were sitting, the family relaxed, sipped spiked eggnog and watched the first snow of the season fall against the tall and broad windows in the front room.

They were listening to a Christmas album Uncle Nick put on the stereo; the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. "You know," Nick said, "to make the season bright, and, I gotta say, that even ole Frankie comes up short when it comes to O Holy Night. Don't believe me? Do a comparison and listen to both versions, why doncha?" The MTC was the only Christmas album he owned, and the only Christmas album he ever cared to listen to.

The MTC's rendition of O Holy Night was now coming around for about the sixth time. Julia heard the lyrics and knew, despite the fact that everything that could've gone wrong, went wrong, they were together, healthy, to varying degrees, happy with their lot in life, and holy was exactly what the night had been. Earlier, when she went to the kitchen to get paper towel to clean up another of awful little Dante's--he was Anna's ancient but beloved Teacup poodle--awful little messes, she had seen Jay holding Anna gently by the shoulders and doing something quite like smiling at her. Anna was simultaneously wiping tears away while fumbling open a tiny box which contained Jay's Christmas present to her: a pair of exquisite diamond and pearl earrings. Julia had watched them embrace, then backed quietly out of the kitchen. Later, Julia and Libby arrived in the living room with dessert just in time to see Sal place several resounding and heartfelt kisses atopUncle Nick's bald head. They saw the affectionate way Uncle Nick caught at Sal's hand in response. That storm was over, too. And, Julia thought, looking over at Sal and Libby, who were now sitting close together on the sofa, whatever insecurities Libby had been suffering the day through about Sal's past, had evaporated in the warmth of the arm he had slung around her shoulders as they cuddled up together on the worn but comfortable sofa.

As the last strains of O Holy Night faded, Paco, his arm around Julia, raised his cup of eggnog and said, "Who's better than us?" It was Berelli family's traditional all-purpose toast.

Not anyone, Julia thought in response, and raised her cup, too. She drained it, then sat down on the floor and re-opened the boxes to take another look at the Christmas presents Paco purchased for her when he was in Los Angeles; matching rust-colored suede blazer, cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, all of which he found at a place called King's Western Wear somewhere "The Valley" which was located on the other side of some rugged and pretty hills.

It occurred to Julia that Paco's trip to Los Angeles was most likely the underlying reason for the family's discord that evening. Good or bad, small or sweeping, change was always unsettling. Paco's trip to the coast augured the sweeping kind.

***

Following dinner, much earlier that Christmas Eve, the family remained assembled around the dining room table to play May I, a card game similar to Rummy, but which required multiple decks and seven progressively difficult-to-achieve hands as its objective. Because of its careful etiquette and complex set of rules, those new to the game often felt they were involved in a croquet match with the Queen of Hearts in Alice In Wonderland. The game was something of a Berelli family obsession. In the family lore, May I was either invented, or at least improved upon, by Salvatore's father/Nick's brother, Rocky, who was much closer to Sally Red and the Buccieris than anyone in the family, apart from Nick, liked to admit. Rocky was killed in 1938 in a mob hit in the mens room of the Mulberry Street bar Paco took Julia the day he proposed to her.

Julia loved May I, was good at it, and played it with the same take-no-prisoners attitude as everyone else.

Nick had started off playing with everyone, but was ejected by Paco two rounds in, because Nick had gotten into it with Sal over a certain King of Spades.

"Yeah, it's legitimate strategy, all right," Nick shouted when Sal finagled the card, "But it ain't exactly in the spirit of the season!"

While incorporating the card in his hand, Sal glanced over the rims of his glasses at Nick with a touch too much satisfaction. Nick leapt at him and actually got his hands around Sal's throat before Paco got to them. With the elegance of a fencer, his arm extended like a foil to fend off any stray blows that might inadvertently come his way, Paco stepped courageously into the fray. He grabbed Nick and frog-marched him toward the front room, then sat him down just beyond the archway in what was traditionally the "Time Out" chair. Nick remained in the chair for most of the rest of the game, although not all of it.

Quarreling was something Sal and Nick did often, on almost all topics and tumultuously, yet without real rancor. Everyone was used to it. Personally, Julia always enjoyed it, especially the part that involved watching Paco--always their loving, twinkle-in-his-eye arbiter. Of considerably less stature than his father and uncle, when Paco stood between them, a hand on each of their chests, pushing them apart, he resembled a bantam Samson, while they scowled at one another over his head, down their identical hawk-beak noses and identically near-sighted black/brown eyes. Julia enjoyed in its entirety the Berelli clan élan; their lovely pettinesses, their grand emotions, that everything, no matter what it was, was a big deal, and that its three core-members could not communicate without performing wild gesticulations with their hands. It was all so different from her own family, where no one ever yelled, and everyone practically sat on their hands, although over the years that situation was slowly improving.

That night was different though. That night, Julia felt genuine heat when Nick and Sal argued the first time, and she'd sensed actual hostility during scuffle number two. The second fracas had at its crux an incident that occurred earlier in the day, when Uncle Nick and Sal met a group of their cronies for the traditional Christmas Eve lunch and excursion to OTB in the section of Brooklyn, where both grew up.

When they were boys, Uncle Nick and Rocky devised a system for betting the ponies. The system was based on assigning numerical points to any given horse (track history, weight, sire and dam, jockey, etc.), then tallying the total and placing bets on the horse who scored highest. Without fail, Uncle Nick bet according to the dictates of this system. Usually, Sal did, too. Occasionally, however, Sal ignored the system and bet a long shot. Sal did just that earlier in the day and won a bundle. Via the system, Uncle Nick lost twice the amount Sal won. Nick was still sore about it. For a sporting man, Uncle Nick was a very poor sport.

Julia couldn't even remember how the topic of what had happened at OTB earlier in the day had even come up, but the argument went something like this . . .

Uncle Nick: "You were stupid not to use the system!"

Sal: "I get so sick of the stupid system!"

Nick: "Only you would be stupid enough to be sick of the system!"

Paco weighed in: "Uncle Nicky, just pipe down, will you? How come everything you say has to be said at the top of your lungs, huh?"

Uncle Nick (completely ignoring Paco and continuing to yell at Sal): "You were so stupid to bet that stupid three horse! My God, you probably got your Pa spinning in his grave!"

Paco: "Uncle Nicky, do I have to come back in there and give you what for, or are you gonna quiet down?"

Uncle Nick: "The stupid three horse, Sal? Jeeze!"

Paco: "Nicky, if I have to come back in there . . . "

Sal (ingenuously): "But, Nicky, I won!"

Paco, to Sal: "Pops, quit baiting him!"

Uncle Nick: "According to the system you never should've!"

Sal: "There you have it! So much for your stupid system!"

Uncle Nick: "THE SYSTEM ISN'T STUPID! YOU WERE STUPID TO WIN!"

Sal: "Not as stupid as you!

Again, Uncle Nicky hurled himself at Sal, who, without standing up, gave Uncle Nicky a shove, and again, Paco interceded, got Nick back into the chair and sat him down hard. Fuming, Nick chomped on his cigar and puffed. Paco glanced at his dad, who had remained seated during the melee, and was now contemplating the cards in his hand like a Hassidic scholar might study the Talmud.

"I'm on to you, Pops," Paco said. "I've had just about enough."

Paco almost never lost patience with his uncle or dad. He was clearly on the verge of it. Nick and Sal didn't get into it again, only because Uncle Nicky dozed off.

The business between Uncle Nick and Sal was the least unpleasant part of the evening.

"May I?" Paco said two rounds further into the game. He reached for the five of clubs on the top of the discard pile. Jay's mother, Anna, who was sitting to Jay's right, had made a tentative reach for the five card, just as Paco had. Jay offered her a lizard-like blink (she was going out of turn). Anna abruptly withdrew her hand.

"I want it," Jay said to Paco, and nabbed the five card for himself, but he continued to hose his mother with disdain.

"Jay, I didn't mean to do anything . . ." Anna started to say in defense of an action no one but Jay cared about.

A confident woman normally--Anna was the top-selling saleswoman in the lingerie department at Saks Fifth Avenue and had been for fifteen years--this wispy, Elizabeth Arden redhead was always painfully atwitter whenever she was around Jay. Jay's contempt for her was something he rarely bothered to hide. Worse yet, there was sometimes such a poisonous undercurrent beneath Jay's contempt that was so potent, it made it really painful to watch, especially because Anna was so defenseless. Any confrontation between Sal and Nick, no matter how heated, was, in comparison. a trifling matter.

The reason for Jay's chronic discord with his mother was Anna's habit of acquiring and discarding husbands (thus far, five of them, Jay's father being number one in the sequence). Despite her good intentions toward Jay when he was growing up--he never lacked for clothes, food, shelter, tuition, carfare--somehow in the wild gyrations of Anna's romantic Tilt-A-Whirl, Jay had never been able to capture her attentions in a way that satisfied him.

"You never do . . . mean to," Jay said. "But you can count. So just wait your damn turn. Why do you always have to screw up and embarrass me?"

Anna flushed. Dante was in her lap. She gave the geriatric poodle a squeeze.

Jay offered her a thin smile with a hatchet hidden in it. "Why don't you have that disgusting and smelly little beast put down? No one said you could bring him here."

This was in reference to the fact that just before dinner Julia was required to remove the "little gift" Dante deposited in the hallway.

"Oh, Julia, forgive him," Anna had said. "He's so old. I'm afraid his control isn't what it used to be." Julia had been annoyed by the poodle's presence anyway. So were Moses and Shadrach, who were sulking under the bed. Now that Jay was pillorying Anna for Dante's lapse, Julia felt terrible.

Anna gathered the cards from the table. She formed them into a tight little pack with the same efficiency she probably showed when reshelving expensive lingerie at Saks during a 50%-off sale. But Jay still wasn't finished with her. "One of the best things about leaving New York is leaving you, you know?" he said.

Anna was mortified. Her hands fluttered above the cards for a moment, then she pushed back her chair and got up.

"Anna," Paco said, "You know how he gets. Don't listen to him."

Anna offered Paco a wavery smile. Then, with Dante under her arm like a urine-leaking football, she fled to the kitchen. Over the rims of his newly-acquired, light-flashing, gold-rimmed glasses, Paco eyed Jay. Julia had seen him give this look to Jay on many occasions. It always made her think of Zeus, Mt. Olympus and thunderbolts.

Over time, a private dialect had developed between Paco and Jay. It was highly symbolic, intuitive and full of nuance. As far as Julia could determine, it was the aggregate product of growing up male of Italian extraction in Brooklyn, their shared semi-motherless status, an appreciation of all aspects of graphic design.

There was really only one aspect of their dialect Julia felt she ever completely understood. In typography there are both serif and sans serif styles: Serif type faces have tiny flourishes at the ends of most letters. Sans serif faces don't. When it came to judging matters of design, Paco and Jay occasionally chose a face with serif for a given type solution, though generally they both agreed that the sans serif faces had more clarity. Over the years, Paco and Jay expanded the terms and used them to classify the people they met and the people around them. In that case, being sans serif was always a bad thing. Sans serif individuals were ungenerous, uncaring, unevolved, or had otherwise wronged anyone in the family; Lou The Goo for instance, Paco's mother, sometimes, Jay's mother, Anna. On the other hand, Sal, Libby, Uncle Nick were serif in the extreme; so was Julia (at least in Paco's estimation). Although Jay thought Julia fluctuated between the two. Renee was definitely serif, and Julia and Renee' parents were on their way. Eventually, Julia, herself, succumbed to classifying people in her life and the new ones she encountered in the same way.

In response to that very particular look from Paco, Jay--who knew he'd just behaved sans serif in the extreme--excused himself and headed for the kitchen to do what he could to mollify Anna.

"I think they're going to be okay," Julia said a few moments later, emerging from the kitchen, then bending down to clean up the trail of urine Dante left on Anna's chair and on the floor from the dining room to the kitchen.

"You're so beautifully tan, Paco," Libby said as Paco collected the cards and began dividing them back into the decks they belonged in. Julia realized this was about the first time Libby had spoken all evening. Ordinarily so breezy, tonight, she seemed decidedly glum.

"I spent an afternoon at Zuma beach when I was in LA," Paco said.

"Sounds exotic," said Libby.

"It's pretty," said Paco, but the most exotic thing is having most of your clothes off and lying in the sun in December."

"I could throw myself you’re finally getting down to this," Sal said.

"Well, just remain, Pops, 'cause we are," Paco said. In the Berelli family vernacular, "to throw oneself" was the expression of surprise or shock; both the pleasant and unpleasant kind. "To remain," of course, meant to remain calm, unruffled . . .quiet.

"Yeah?" Sal said eyeing Jay who'd just come in from the kitchen, "I'll believe it when I see it."

From the beginning of Jay's induction into the Berelli clan, while Sal felt a certain fondness for Jay, he had never in his protective-parental bones trusted him. Although Sal was all for his Paco opening his own advertising agency, which had always been Paco's dream, he didn't want Paco to do it with Jay. But for Paco, embarking on this enterprise with Jay was an integral part of the dream and had been since Paco's association with Jay began at the High School of Art and Design, then continued on through college at Otis/Parsons. With Jay at Redbook in a position parallel to Paco's at Elle, both felt they had reached a point in their careers when their expertise and reputations would make the dreamed-of venture a success.

"Believe it, " said Jay. "I've been calling my connections on the coast at the movie studios and the record companies lining up work."

Sal nodded and glanced skeptically at Paco, "Does this venture of yours depend on his connections?"

"Not entirely," Paco said. "I've made a couple of contacts of my own. A friend from college is pretty high up in the advertising department at one of the major studios."

Sal shrugged. "So where is this office space you rented out there?"

"Melrose and Robertson," Paco said.

"Right on the cusp of Beverly Hills," Jay added.

To pay for the office space, Paco plunked down the I-swear-it's-clean-Sal five Gs Uncle Nick awarded Paco and Julia at their wedding. Jay had yet to pay his share back to Paco.

"What about you, Jules?" Libby said. "Glad to be going?"

"Yes," Julia said. "I really am."

"What about leaving your job?" Libby said.

"I'm looking forward to that, too," Julia said. "I don't enjoy the travel as much as I used to. It'll be fun working with Paco…And of course, Jay, too."

Jay was cognizant of the pause before Julia added his name.

"What will you be doing?" Libby said.

Julia noticed that when Sal reached for Libby's hand right then, Libby moved it out of his reach. Looking dejected and bewildered, Sal sat back in his chair. He, too, except for the fights with Nick, had been uncharacteristically quiet through much of the evening.

"I'll be their account rep," Julia said, "bidding jobs and bringing them in. Traffic managing, too. I'll have the responsibility of making sure the projects we have in-house go out on time and on budget." Before Julia got to the end of her job she realized Libby wasn't paying attention.

"Too bad you don't have previous experience at any of that," Jay said to Julia. Julia and Paco both looked at Jay. Paco made a clucking noise, full of disapproval over the turn the conversation was taking. He was often the arbiter between Jay and Julia, too, who, much to Paco's continuing disappointment, had little use for each other.

Unruffled by Jay's doubts about her ability, and looking straight at him, Julia said, "Don't worry. I'm a fast learner." Julia was going to be an equal partner in the nascent firm of Berelli & Russo, and that was a sore point for Jay.

Sal and Uncle Nick, Jay and Anna, Jay and Julia, and something was obviously wrong between Sal and Libby; the entire evening had been a disaster. And there was another disturbing part still to come.

Following the aborted game of May I, Julia thought it would be a good idea to proceed to desert. Alone in the kitchen with Libby, Julia was slicing the strawberry-rhubarb pie she baked. They were about to serve it in the front room so everyone could enjoy it while they all opened their presents. Libby was wrapping the leftover pork roast in aluminum foil. Julia jumped when Libby put the foil back and slammed the drawer shut.

"Lib, what is going on?" Julia said.

Libby pushed her thin and straight brown hair behind her tiny ears and turned her hazel eyes on Julia. "It's her."

Julia felt no need to ask the identity of her, since there was only one person that the family always and only referred to as her or she. Julia added an extra dollop of whipped cream to the pie she had sliced for Uncle Nick.

"Does Paco ever talk about what happened?" Libby said. She piled a few serving bowls in the sink without bothering to rinse them.

"Never."

"Sal either. It's the one dark place he has, and it's got big NO TRESPASSING signs posted about every two feet."

"Paco, too," Julia said. "I did see a picture of her once. I found it at the back of one of the dressing table drawers when Paco and I took over the master bedroom."

"And?"

"Paco's got her eyes. More than that. There's a pretty strong resemblance. When I gave the picture to Paco, he tore it up. I was surprised he didn't perform a ritual burning."

Libby smiled. "We had something similar happen this morning. Down in the storeroom. Sal was annoyed that no one thought to put up that hideous cotton-batten snowman Paco made in like kindergarten or something."

Julia nodded. It was now hanging on the co-op's front door.

"We went down to hunt for it. Rummaging around down there, guess what we discovered? Her hair. From the first time she cut it. It was tied with a bit of orange ribbon. The look on Sal's face. He came about as close to really throwing himself as I’ve ever seen." Libby began to cry. Julia put her arms around the mother-in-law who was only about five years older than Julia was, herself. "He doesn't love me the way he loved her, Jules," Libby said.

"That could be a good thing."

"I'll never know, will I?" Libby moved away. "Sometimes, I feel like just getting on a plane and going out there to meet her. I want to know what the attraction was. At the same time, I love Sal so much, and Paco, too, I'd like to shake that woman until she explains to my satisfaction exactly why she did she what she did to them, and was it worth it?"

FROM THE JOURNAL OF SALVATORE BERELLI

September 6, 1960

This morning as I assisted Dewey in moving a herd of sheep to a lower pasture, he let me know that he’s received permission from the elders of his clan (Bear) to sponsor my induction into the tribe. That Dewey's esteem for me is so high, makes me tremble. I hold him in the same esteem, and have done so since five minutes into our first meeting, when I was here with the other grad students last summer.

He’s very handsome and very savvy about people. He's also something of a mystic and a journeyman healer. He doesn't say much, but what he does say, and the way he says it, makes you want to listen. I don't know what he likes so much about me. I blab on and on about everything in his language, which I'm still learning and making awful blunders as I go (he's learning mine, as well. He's a very quick study). He's strong and tough and steady and dedicated to his life, with a crystal clear picture of exactly who he is, his place in the universe and what the future holds. I, on the otherhand, am all contradiction; part macho twerp, part over-emotional aesthete; part Brooklyn street kid, part would-be scholar, but one who can't even settle on a topic for his dissertation. I guess we just get a kick out of each other.

My induction will be the traditional nine-day ordeal of prayer and fasting. I will spend much of it in the kiva, where we were tonight, and much of it in darkness. When my renaissance is complete, I will emerge from this black womb into the light through the kiva's spipapuni--top entryway--which also represents the sacred gateway through which the people of the First World (we're now in the "Fourth World") originally emerged from the Underworld. The real sipapuni is thought to be located somewhere near the juncture of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers, closer to the Grand Canyon. The sipapuni is also to where the breath-bodies, the souls of the dead, return. My renaissance is to occur during Kel-muya, the November moon.

Dewey also talked a little more about the lovely Juanita. She’s regarded as something of a "progressive" here on First Mesa. That's because she's already a potter of some note and is in contact with certain arts and craft dealers from Flagstaff, Phoenix, Tucson and as far away as Los Angeles. The money is good (not as good as it should be). Although her clan is in desperate need of the income in order to recover from crop failure and disease within the herd in past years, they strongly disapprove of her contact with the outer world because they are highly suspicious of all Whites and shun them completely. Her father (a village elder) is particularly bitter, has been since 1943 when the gov't ceded the tribe the expected 600,000-plus acres, but denied them use of the 1.8 million additional acres they believed were theirs from a grant made in 1882. The Dineh (Navaho) now occupy that land. The legal battle between the two tribes rages on and will, I estimate, for years to come.

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