Honeytrap Page 10

  Daniel and Helen smiled at each other. “Kids,” she said, the one word an explanation. “Do you have any of your own yet?”

  “Not yet. The job keeps me on the road too much to meet any nice girls,” he said, and became aware too late that the comment sounded like an invitation.

  “You’ll find someone,” she told him. “A nice boy like you? There have to be a dozen girls who would be happy to follow their G-man around the country.”

  And she wasn’t one of them: she had never wanted to leave Shinocqua. Daniel smiled too, to show that he understood. “I’d stay and chat, but I’ve got other cookie deliveries to make.”

  “Of course,” Helen said. “Give my love to your mother. Merry Christmas, Daniel!”

  “Merry Christmas!”

  The snow crunched beneath his boots as he walked home. He was remembering that final summer before he left for college. God, how tragic they thought they were, their young love sundered by fate; or rather by the fact that Daniel wasn’t sure he wanted to go to college already married, and Helen was quite sure that she did not want to leave Shinocqua for four years in married student housing.

  But neither of them admitted any of that until Christmas break. That summer, they clung to each other and cried and swore that they would do anything to stay together, and drove out to the Point to make love in the moonlight on the shores of Lake Michigan. Helen wore a red checked dress with big red buttons down the front, easily undone.

  They meant to do it on the beach, but it began to spit rain, so they retreated to the car and lost their virginity together in the backseat. Helen gave him one of the buttons from her dress, and Daniel placed it solemnly in his treasure box (a shoebox really) with all the other sentimental detritus of young love: notes, ticket stubs, the boutonnière (carefully dried) that she had pinned to his tuxedo for prom.

  After the Point, Daniel had asked his mother for Grandma’s engagement ring, which was meant to go to Daniel’s fiancée. “Danny,” his mother said, “listen to me. You know we think Helen is a wonderful girl. But you’re so young, and you’re going to learn so much about yourself in college, and you need to give yourself room to grow.”

  He wondered if she might have said something different if she had known exactly what he would discover about himself at college.

  Would he have ever realized he was queer if he had married Helen? Maybe not; and in that moment, as he crunched through the hard icy snow, the possibility seemed seductive, a vision of simple, wholesome life, with no secrets to keep.

  They could have gotten married the summer after graduation, as so many of their classmates had. Four years in married student housing while Daniel was in college, then back to Shinocqua, where they would have settled down, a respectable married couple with two or three kids. Growing old together, hand in hand on the porch swing.

  Paul had been right when he complained that Daniel wasn’t serious. Even in his romantic daydreams, Daniel had never been able to imagine their relationship lasting more than a year or two. Maybe he could have invited Paul home for Christmas, once or twice, but the welcome would have definitely chilled after that, the questions grow more pointed. Shouldn’t Daniel be looking for a nice girl to marry?

  And perhaps they could have gotten an apartment together, for a while. But if they kept it too long, people would start to talk. Promotions would slow down, and then stop. Perhaps dismissal from the Bureau, in the end.

  Hadn’t he been relieved, after all, when he and Paul broke up? Not just because he was tired of Paul’s obsession with the ancient Greeks, Paul’s jealousy whenever Daniel noticed a pretty waitress. Daniel hadn’t wanted it to end on such a sour note, but he had wanted it to end.

  He had never had the courage – or the cruelty? – well, the single-minded devotion to Paul to sacrifice his job and his family for him.

  Daniel had reached the house now, and he practiced a smile until it felt natural before he went inside. If visiting Helen made him look sad, it would only make his mother think more seriously about her half-joking plan to get them back together.

  But when he came inside, his mother was distracted. “Anna called while you were gone,” she said. “She and Joseph won’t be getting in till dinner. He’s got some things to catch up on down at his office…”

  Typical Joseph. “But Anna and I have been cutting down the Christmas tree together since Anna was five,” Daniel objected.

  His mother sighed. “She’ll be here in time to help decorate the tree, at least. I was hoping you and Gennady could chop it down this year? Gennady, it’s a Christmas tradition for Daniel and Anna to cut down our Christmas tree at the old Hawthorne place.”

  Gennady was midway through a piece of cinnamon toast, but he pushed back his chair obligingly. “Yes, yes. I wish to see this old Hawthorne place.”

  “Ha! Yes, come see our country estate,” Daniel scoffed.

  “It’s just a woodlot, Gennady,” his mother said. “Daniel’s father sold off the farmland for money to buy his practice, but no one wanted this section. It’s too hilly even to pasture cows.” She clasped her hands together. “I’ll have hot chocolate ready for you when you get back. I usually make it with a little cinnamon, Gennady. Anna read somewhere that they make it like that in Mexico, and when we tried it we liked it so much that we started to make it like that every Christmas. But I can make plain hot chocolate for you if you like.”

  “No, no,” Gennady assured her. “I’m happy to try this Mexican hot chocolate.”

  ***

  “What is your sister like?” Gennady asked.

  They were driving through the countryside toward the woodlot, and the sun shown so brightly that even the tired snow sparkled. “Well, let’s see,” Daniel said. “Anna’s very bright, very creative – you should have seen the Christmas cookie decoration schemes she used to come up with. One year she modeled the cookies after Dala horses – she made her own cookie cutter and everything… She painted a bunch of ornaments in that style, too.”

  That was the year John had beaten Daniel up, right before college broke up for Christmas vacation. Daniel rubbed his right ear.

  “That was Anna’s senior year. There were so many cookies she had to rope me in to help decorate.” Daniel had complained long and loudly. Everything had irritated him that Christmas: everyone kept joshing him about his black eye, and it was a strain keeping up the pretense that he’d gotten it in a fair fight. “Anna made boxes for all her friends and all her beaux, and boy, did she have a lot of both.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “A lot like me, if I were a girl.”

  “Ah. She must be very beautiful, then.”

  Daniel stared straight ahead through the windshield. Then he said, still not looking at Gennady, “People are going to misunderstand if you say things like that.”

  “Is Joseph very jealous?”

  Daniel was embarrassed. That was not the kind of misunderstanding he had in mind. But it was also true, so Daniel said, “Yes. I think the reason they’re coming so late is that Joseph isn’t happy there’s going to be a man who isn’t a relative in the house.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gennady said.

  “No, it’s not your fault. He’s just like that. Honestly, I don’t think he likes coming to our family Christmases in the first place. He’d rather have her to himself.”

  “Well.” Gennady sounded disapproving. “Maybe she should divorce him.”

  Daniel had entertained this thought himself. But it startled him to hear Gennady suggest divorce so forthrightly, without even lowering his voice, and he did not know how to respond.

  Fortunately, they had reached the woodlot, so Daniel busied himself in parking the car by the side of the road. The air stung Daniel’s face as they got out. It was colder here than in town. “Here we are. Chateau Hawthorne. The footmen will take your bags.”

  “Is there a house here?” Gennady asked.

  “On the woodlot, no. There was a farmhouse on the land Dad sol
d.”

  “The farmhouse where you slept on the sleeping porch?”

  Daniel was rooting around in the trunk for his father’s old hacksaw. “No. That belonged to my mom’s parents.” He found the hacksaw and slammed the trunk shut. “C’mon. We saw a few good spruces this way last year. We’ll probably find one just the right size if the deer haven’t gotten them. I’d better talk to Ma about leasing the hunting rights before the deer overrun the place… Dad always used to take care of that sort of thing.”

  The voracious deer had eaten most of the underbrush, so they walked through the snowy forest almost as easily as if it were a park. Daniel led the way uphill toward the spruce grove where he and Anna usually got the tree, but he paused when Gennady said, “Is this the sort of tree we want?”

  Daniel considered the spruce with an expert eye. “That’s a little too tall for the living room ceiling. We want room for the star on top.”

  Gennady considered the tree gravely. “And the branches are crooked. It must have straight limbs to hold the ornaments,” Gennady said, and smiled when Daniel looked surprised. “We have holiday trees too. For New Year’s. I suppose it is the German influence again.”

  They hiked through snow dotted with deer tracks. Daniel’s thighs burned from the steep slope. “You and your sister have been getting the tree since you were five years old?” Gennady asked.

  “Yes. Well, since Anna was five. We always went out with my dad, except when he was away for the war, of course. But after that, he took us every year until he died.” Daniel paused, momentarily lost in memory. “That was a couple of years ago. Just before Christmas. Anna and I almost didn’t go get the tree that year…”

  “I didn’t know your father died so recently.”

  “Yes. A heart attack. It was very sudden,” Daniel said. A lump rose in his throat. “We used to spend a lot of time out here,” he said, excusing his emotion to himself as much as explaining to Gennady. “Not just for the Christmas tree. Dad was my Boy Scout troop leader, and always brought the troop out here to camp. He meant to donate the land to the Boy Scouts when he died, but Pete Gardner gave them a camp first, the rascal.”

  “You must miss him.”

  “Yes,” said Daniel, although the words caught him on the raw. He did miss his father, and he had been devastated when he died. But at the same time…

  At the same time, a part of him had been relieved, because this meant that his father would never know. No matter what happened, he would be spared the knowledge that his son was a deviant.

  Daniel cleared his throat, and said roughly, “Here’s the spruce grove.”

  They considered trees in silence for a while. Then Gennady said, “We think my father died in the war. He was in one of the early armies, one of the ones that was encircled and wiped out.”

  “I’m sorry,” Daniel said.

  “It’s all right. This was very common, many of my classmates lost their fathers too. And, after all, we all had Comrade Stalin.”

  Daniel stared at him. Gennady looked back, bland and serious. But the look on Daniel’s face must have proved too much for him, because Gennady burst into laughter.

  Daniel laughed too, almost wild with relief. “That was a joke?”

  “Your face! I’m sorry.” Gennady laughed some more. “A joke and not a joke. Oh, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Americans can’t understand about Stalin.”

  “Try me,” Daniel suggested.

  But Gennady looked grave again, and didn’t answer. “What about this one?” he said instead, gesturing at a tree. “Good straight branches for ornaments.

  “Oh! Yes, that’s just about the right height. If you’ll hold it steady, I’ll saw.”

  Daniel knelt to saw through the trunk. The branches made a screen between them, so that Daniel could barely see Gennady, only the tips of his boots. He was about halfway through the trunk when Gennady’s voice filtered through the branches. “Did you have any friends whose fathers beat them? Really, really beat them.”

  Daniel heard an echo of Paul’s voice, after Daniel noticed the tiny scars on his back left behind by the thin metal tongue of a belt. He was trying to beat the devil out of me, Paul said, flat and distant, as Daniel touched the marks; and Daniel had put his arms around Paul, and held him, and for once Paul had let himself be held.

  “Why do you ask?” Daniel asked.

  “Perhaps that will help you understand about Stalin. How we all loved Stalin,” Gennady said, “because we were so afraid of him. No, you can’t understand this,” he answered himself. “You’re an American, you always think it should be possible to stand and fight.”

  This was an awkward conversation to have on his knees while sawing through a tree trunk. “I know you can’t always fight,” Daniel said, and thought of John again. Daniel had been too stunned to fight back. He had just let John hit him.

  “Or at least to flee,” Gennady said. “You think that if you are afraid it should be possible to do something, to fight back or get away. But sometimes it isn’t, sometimes there is nothing to do but endure, and then people fall in love with the thing that they fear because there is no other way to protect themselves. They hope that if they love perhaps they will be loved in return. Do you see?”

  But Daniel couldn’t answer: the saw was about to break through. “Brace yourself, Gennady, the tree’s about to go.”

  The saw jerked through the last bit of trunk. The tree fell into Gennady’s arms, and Gennady held it upright as Daniel clambered to his feet to help steady it.

  They were looking at each other through the tree branches. Gennady searched Daniel’s face, his gray eyes serious, almost worried.

  “But you don’t love Stalin now,” Daniel said.

  Gennady’s expression shifted into mockery. “Oh, I don’t know. Can you ever stop loving someone you really loved?”

  Daniel was aghast. “My mother was talking about romantic love,” he protested. “And also, I think that yes, sometimes people do stop loving someone that they used to really love. And I don’t believe,” he added stoutly, “that a love compelled by fear is real love anyway.”

  “Of course it’s real. You just don’t want to believe it because you Americans have made love your god and you believe God must be perfect. No, you can’t understand,” Gennady said, and shifted the tree so the branches obscured his face again. “You’ve watched too many Hollywood movies, you don’t live in reality anymore. You think love is the most powerful thing in the world. But really it’s fear, because fear can compel love. Come on, Daniel,” he said, and hefted the tree. “Let’s get this tree back to the car.”

  ***

  Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Oscar had already arrived when Daniel and Gennady got back with the tree. But Anna did not arrive in time for dinner, although the roast got dry in the oven as they waited for her.

  It wasn’t till they were drinking after dinner coffees that Anna swept in with her son Toby. “Joseph had to take care of some things at the office,” she explained, her voice bright and brittle as an icicle. “So we agreed he’d follow along when he could.”

  “That’s fine. We’re just so glad you’re here,” Ma said. “Do you want a cup of coffee, dear? You’re just in time to decorate the tree, too.”

  “Oh, you’ve already gotten the tree!” said Anna, and looked for a moment like she might cry. But then she forced a smile, and accepted a cup of coffee, and chattered away with a bright hard pretense at gaiety.

  It hurt Daniel to watch, so he excused himself to begin untangling the Christmas tree lights. He and Anna could have a real talk while they decorated the Christmas tree.

  But when Anna joined him not long after, she had Gennady in tow. “Mom’s taken Toby up to bed,” Anna said. “I asked Gennady to help decorate the tree. You don’t mind, do you, Daniel?”

  “Of course not,” he said, although he was annoyed: he suspected she had brought Gennady along specifically to avoid talking to Daniel alone. “Why don’t you two sort out the
ornaments while I finish these blasted lights? Gennady, you don’t have to let Anna tell you the history of every single ornament if you don’t want to.”

  “But of course I want to,” said Gennady, with a bright impish smile at Anna.

  She looked very pretty that night, with her cheeks flushed and a sprig of holly in her dark hair. As she unpacked the Christmas ornaments, Gennady kept glancing at her admiringly, and Daniel watched Gennady watch Anna.

  Then Gennady caught Daniel looking, and smiled at him. Daniel looked away and busied himself in twisting the lights around the tree.

  Anna opened box after box of ornaments: delicate glass icicles, cut-paper snowflakes, little wooden horses. Gennady galloped one of the horses across the rag rug, which made Anna laugh. “I painted these myself,” she said. “So they’d look like those Swedish horses, you know, Dala horses. My best friend when I was ten came from a Swedish family and they had the most beautiful painted wooden horses.”

  “You are very talented,” Gennady told her.

  “Oh! Well, I was, I guess, before I got married.” She gave an abrupt awkward laugh, and opened the next box of ornaments. “Oh Daniel! Do you remember the year we made these beaded Christmas tree balls?”

  Daniel stood atop a stool wrapping the Christmas lights to the very pinnacle of the tree, but he looked over to see Anna holding up a scarlet ball worked in patterns of gold beads. “You mean the year that you forced me to make ornaments and then redid the ones I made because they weren’t good enough?” Daniel said.

  “Only one of them!” Anna protested.

  “It’s good that you kept him in line,” Gennady said with false gravity. “Otherwise he would be insufferable.”

  “You’re both insufferable,” Daniel said. He got off his stool and plugged in the Christmas lights.

  A minor Christmas miracle occurred: all the lights came on, no bulbs blown out. The soft white lights gleamed on the Christmas tree.