Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [55]
“Merry Christmas, Ross,” he says.
The boy has the sleeves of his jacket pulled down over his fists for warmth, and his nose is running in the cold.
“Hello there,” McDermott says.
The boy looks up. He wipes his nose on his sleeve.
“What are you doing?” McDermott asks.
“I’m supposed to go to Tsomides Market for my mother.”
“And what happened? You lost the money?”
The boy opens his fist. McDermott counts the coins. “Then what’s the matter?”
“She told me five things to buy, but I wasn’t paying attention and now I can only remember four. If I go home with only four she’ll be mad and give me another chore to do or she’ll send me to church to say the rosary.”
McDermott knows that Franco parents send their children to church when they misbehave. Sometimes, when McDermott passes by St. André’s in the summer and the doors are open, he sees a dozen kids just sitting in the pews, holding their beads. Not such a bad deal, McDermott thinks. Sit in a quiet church for an hour, maybe even say a rosary if you have to. It beat the belt any day.
“Well, let’s see,” McDermott says. “What’s your mother making for Christmas dinner?”
“The pork-and-fish supper.”
“Is it the fish? Is it the pork?”
The boy shakes his head. He sticks his hands in the pockets of his pants.
“The coffee? . . . The flour? . . . The milk? . . . The bread?”
Still the boy shakes his head.
“Cream? . . . Lard?”
Alphonse brightens. “Sugar,” he says and seems to gain an inch of height.
“How could you forget sugar?”
Alphonse shrugs.
“You’d better run to the market.”
“Thank you,” Alphonse says.
“No need to thank me. After you take the food back to your mother, how would you like to take a trolley ride?”
“Where?” the boy asks.
“It’s a secret,” McDermott says.
Alphonse
They have good seats on the trolley, and Alphonse thinks the snow is beautiful in the sudden sunlight. It isn’t the first snowfall of the year but it’s the one that has stuck the best and already the streets are white with only trolley marks to ruin them. McDermott sits beside Alphonse and smokes a cigarette, and from time to time Alphonse sneaks a look at his face. They boarded the trolley going west, which confused Alphonse because there’s nothing in that direction from the city but pitiful farms. Maybe McDermott has a relative on a farm, Alphonse decides, and they are going visiting. That would be all right with him.
When they set out, McDermott asked Alphonse if he had a sweater because it might be cold where they were headed. Alphonse sprinted away and was back at the corner inside of four minutes with a sweater that belongs to Marie-Thérèse, who is closest to him in size, Alphonse being large for his age and Marie-Thérèse being small for hers. The sweater is light green and has a frill down the front, but if Alphonse holds his jacket closed no one can tell it’s a girl’s. Sometimes Arnaud Nadeau wears a flannel shirt to the mill that has a ruffle around the collar. It’s red plaid, and Arnaud pretends it’s a hand-me-down from his brother, but anyone can see that the shirt once belonged to his mother.
Tomorrow Alphonse’s family will go to church and have the pork-and-fish dinner, and his mother’s cousin will come to visit with her seven children and if Alphonse doesn’t get out pretty quick after the meal, he’ll be stuck inside until ten o’clock or so at night keeping his eye on his younger cousins and that will be the end of his holiday. It isn’t going to be too much of a holiday anyway, his mother said, because of the pay cut. It’s hard enough just to put food on the table, she said, and they shouldn’t think about Christmas presents this year, and she didn’t want anyone complaining. Marie-Thérèse whimpered and said that she had wanted a velvet dress so bad, and everyone else was silent thinking about the thing that they had wanted so bad too. Well, it was no use crying about it, his mother said, for once looking at Marie-Th