A Town Divided by Christmas Page 7
People who were not, after all, strangers, though she hadn’t yet interviewed them all.
Nobody here would consider me to be a genuine citizen of this town, she thought, but nor am I a stranger to them. And yes, I worked hard to reach this point, but I also had this amazing man smoothing the way for me. How did anyone ever say no to him when he asked them to help with some community project? How had he lasted this long without being married?
Was it possible that he was right, that young women shunned him because he was balding? Bald shmald, the man at least had a fine set of teeth; surely that moved him to the front of the herd.
Then a thought popped into her mind.
He isn’t married because he was waiting for me.
That was when she dove back down into her plate, blushing, and methodically tracked down and consumed every scrap of food remaining.
7
I’m not an anthropologist, Spunky reminded herself. I’m not here to study their culture, and I have no ethical rule of non-interference. If I fall in love with the town’s main public servant, and he by some chance also falls for me, it won’t change anybody’s DNA or behavior patterns or culture or anything.
Except for that tiny lingering part of me that wants to avoid the emotional devastation of leaving here, knowing that I won’t come back and that he can’t follow me.
I’m just not a one-Christmas-season kind of girl, Spunky realized.
Having never been in love or anything close to it, she hadn’t known how it would hit her.
Now she knew.
It was all-consuming. Ever since that snowy flirty walk to Thanksgiving dinner, ever since she had cried into his shirt and felt his arm around her while he prayed for the whole gathering and watched him work magic in the lives of the people around him, all she could think about was him, except when she absolutely had to talk to somebody or do some job, and even then he would creep into her thoughts and distract her.
“Leave me alone,” she said to him when she responded to a knock on her apartment door and there he was. “I have work to do.”
His reply was to kiss her quite thoroughly and then step past her to stand over the table, looking at the charts. The one on top was the master chart, tracking the families that were most intertwined. She used yellow highlighter to draw the connections when somebody showed up in more than one place — as one family’s child, as another family’s son- or daughter-in-law.
“Good thing I know you’re not tracking our inbreeding.”
Still a little cloud-niney from the kiss, Spunky floated over to stand, not beside him — too dangerous to her ability to function mentally! — but across from him. “What I’m tracking,” she said, “is Episcopalians.”
“The rich people,” he said. “Typical historical approach.”
“The people divided by the nativity pageant in 1930,” she corrected him. “Look at all the intermarriage through the whole Episcopalian community before the church divided. And afterward, not one extra-congregational marriage.”
“Lack of exogamy going to be a problem, do you think?”
“Before the war in Bosnia, Serbs and Croats and Muslim Bosnians intermarried like crazy,” said Spunky. “Since the war, it took fifteen years before the first interfaith marriage, and it made international headlines.”
“Um, nobody’s been massacred in a football stadium in Good Shepherd.”
“Ignoring the fact that Good Shepherd has no football stadium, just two sets of bleachers at the high school, this is exactly what I’m fascinated by. Nobody’s been killed here. It isn’t a war. People don’t even hate each other, or at least everybody’s civil.”
“As long as they all stay to their side of the street, so to speak,” said Eggie.
“Atrocities, massacres in Bosnia, and fifteen years later, at least one marriage. Bad tempers and building a second church with a clock instead of a bell, plus two pageants at the same time for eighty-seven years, not a drop of blood shed, and no intermarriage.”
“In a place this small and isolated,” said Eggie, “I guess grudges last longer.”
“Eggie,” said Spunky. “There has to be more to this than arguments over who gets to play the Baby Jesus.”
“We’ll never know,” said Eggie. “All the people who were making the decisions then are dead.”
“That Christmas pageant divided this town. Probably for at least a century. What is it that nobody’s telling to the outsider who’s here to study the genes of Good Shepherd?”
Eggie stood there in silence, looking down at the chart.
Spunky knew him well enough to expect that he had already figured out how to change the subject completely, and was only hesitating because he knew she’d see through the attempt and be either angry or hurt.
To her surprise, he didn’t change the subject at all. “Spunky, you’ve finally put into words something that I’ve wondered about my whole life. I mean, even as a kid, when my parents first tried to explain why there were two Episcopalian churches in town and two Nativity pageants, I said to them, ‘Well, that’s stupid. Why don’t they just act like grownups and get back together?’”
“I am not surprised that you were a preternaturally wise child,” said Spunky.
“I am surprised that you expect a Wall Street guy to know the word ‘preternaturally.’”
“I knew that if you didn’t know the word, you would guess its meaning from context.”
“I knew the word,” said Eggie. “I just never heard anybody say it out loud.”
“So you agree with me that there has to be more to this,” said Spunky.
“I think somebody on each team must know what the real grievance was,” said Eggie, “but I will never be in the chain of custody for that secret, and neither will you.”
“And in the meanwhile, the dueling pageants are Good Shepherd’s only claim to fame,” said Spunky. “I’m surprised nobody’s got some Hong King company to make a bunch of two-pageant snow globes to sell to tourists.”
Eggie shook his head. “I’ve let it be known over the years that if any merchant starts commercializing our town’s division, they will suddenly find themselves dealing with all kinds of inspections and infractions and fines and liens. Nobody’s going to have a vested interest in keeping it going.”
“So you’re tougher than you look,” said Spunky.
“I don’t look tough at all,” said Eggie. “You look tough.”
“I think women aren’t ever called ‘tough.’ I think the term for us is feisty. Witchy.”
“Spunky,” said Eggie, adding to the list.
Spunky frowned. “That moves me from the realm of toughness to the playpen of cuteness.”
“Cute as a bug,” said Eggie.
“My rule is never to hit anybody,” said Spunky. “Please don’t goad me into changing that policy.”
“Still figuring out what kind of bug you’re as cute as,” said Eggie. “A mantis? A hornet? A horned dung beetle?”
That took her aback. “Not just a beetle, but a dung beetle? Not just a dung beetle, but a horned dung beetle?”
“World’s strongest insect,” said Eggie. “It can lift the equivalent of me lifting six full double-decker buses. I’ll find you the reference online if you don’t believe me. I promise it wasn’t in a Buzzfeed slideshow.”
“I can’t lift more than two buses at a time, empty,” said Spunky.
Eggie ignored her. “Technically the bullet ant has a more painful sting than a hornet, but nobody knows what a bullet ant is, and we know hornets well enough that getting a bunch of people mad is ‘stirring up a hornet’s nest.’”
“You are a font of information today,” said Spunky.
Eggie looked rueful. “I’m trying to find at least one thing you didn’t already know every day, so that you’ll keep conversing with me.”
“You didn’t know that as a child I didn’t believe that the town division was really about the babies.”
“Eggie, what are we doing?”
“Standing across a table from each other pretending that we haven’t fallen in love like a couple of moonstruck teenagers.”
“I know that you’re not moving away from this town,” said Spunky.
“Seems unlikely, in the foreseeable future,” said Eggie.
“And after this grant, I don’t know what career path I could possibly follow that would ever bring me within a hundred miles of here.”
“You could open a Taco Bell franchise,” said Eggie. “We don’t have a single Mexican food establishment here. When Taco Bell opened in Romania a few years ago, it became the most successful business in the whole country. I made a lot of money from that. Lines around the block. We’re like Romania here — starved for ground beef and hot sauce.”
“I don’t love you enough to get into the food service business just to stay nearby,” said Spunky. “There isn’t enough love in the history of the world to get a woman as smart as me to do that.”
“That’s why I only dated stupid women,” said Eggie. “Till now.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve never had a date,” said Spunky.
“We’ve had dozens of dinners together, we’ve worked together on how many projects now? And don’t forget walking in the woods on a snowy afternoon.”
“Not one of those was a date,” said Spunky. “Most of the time I had no idea you were coming.”
“But I knew I was going to see you, and I spent the day counting the hours and minutes till then, so to me it was a date.”
Spunky tried not to smile. “You were dating me, but I wasn’t dating you?”
“There’s no point in looking for precision” said Eggie. “This isn’t physics, it’s propagation of the species.”
“We haven’t done any propagating,” said Spunky.
“All the hormones pumping through us, telling us that we must find a way to live with each other forever, preferably in close physical contact, evolved in order to propagate the species. So even if we fail to propagate, our genes insist on making us try. Right, O Expert on the Human Genome?”
“The more we know about genetics,” said Spunky, “the less we understand about love.”
“That’s so disappointing,” said Eggie.
“It’s like religion,” said Spunky. “Some things we have to learn on our own.”
“On my own? Then what was Sunday school about for all those years?”
“It wasn’t about love,” said Spunky.
“If I climb over the table to kiss you,” said Eggie, “I’ll make a mess of all these charts you’ve been working so hard on.”
“Then I suggest you stay on the floor and propel yourself around the table, using feet.”
“Do you have any idea how long that will take?” asked Eggie.
She walked around the table with all the dignity of a doctor about to give a favorable prognosis to a patient. Not hurrying, but unable to conceal her eagerness. “I can’t marry you,” said Spunky.
“What language are you speaking now?” asked Eggie. “I don’t understand a word.”
Then she reached him and words were pretty much impossible for a while.
8
Work went on. Interviews happened. More and more people found time during holiday preparations to come down and get swabbed. Elyon managed to look at the screen between meals and see what the computer was finding in its searches through the growing Good Shepherd database. The Professor seemed to be happy with the progress they were making.
Everybody in town seemed to accept that Spunky and Eggie were a couple, and now that it was true, nobody teased them about it. Teasing an unmarried couple about being in love is how a community pushes them to marry. Spunky understood that in general, any culture that didn’t encourage procreation was going to be out-propagated by another culture that did. But in particular, between her and Eggie, there was still a lot of territory to cover.
They put a rigid five-minute cap on any activity that Eggie’s mother would have called “necking,” because, as Eggie explained, “We’re marrying folk, in our family. No child should grow up doing the arithmetic on his birth date vis-a-vis his parents’ anniversary.”
But the restriction wasn’t really about protecting children that would probably never be conceived. The restriction was to avoid making any commitment, spoken or implied. Eggie and Spunky were “keeping company,” as Miz Eliza put it when Spunky interviewed her.
“What about Jozette and Elyon?” asked Spunky.
“What about them?” asked Miz Eliza.
“Are they keeping company?” asked Spunky.
“Are you his sister or something?” asked Miz Eliza. “Because Jozette thinks of you as her main rival in trying to win the boy’s heart.”
“As far as I’ve ever been concerned, Elyon’s heart, now that we know it exists, is for any taker. I never would have guessed it, but Elyon seems to really care for your daughter.”
“As his non-sister,” said Miz Eliza, “what chance does Jozette have to be happy with him?”
“It depends on how adaptable she is,” said Spunky.
“Meaning?”
“His brain is going to take him into a top-flight math or econ department in a major university. Academic life is full of constant status wars, and the spouses play right along with the actual professors. Jozette’s smart but she’s not educated at the level that other faculty wives will be. Can she adapt? Can she hold her own?”
Miz Eliza smiled. “Nobody ever beats Jozette at anything,” said Miz eliza. “Because until she wins, the game can’t end.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. But you have to remember — Jozette is the first bosom that has ever danced before Elyon’s eyes. I can’t promise he’ll be faithful in the long run.
“That’s Jozette’s problem,” Miz Eliza said thoughtfully. “For all I know, she might be planning to marry up farther down the road. Marriage isn’t about controlling the future, it’s about making a plain statement about present intentions.”
Spunky took this observation to heart. Present intentions are all we ever have. Nothing is under our control, in the end.
Which is why The Professor’s call on the seventeenth of December didn’t come as a shock. As soon as he told her that she and Elyon should pack up and come home immediately, she laughed. “Of course,” she said.
“What do you mean, of course?” asked The Professor.
“Because we’re making such progress and doing so well. Of course the plug’s getting pulled.”
“You’re awfully young to have such a bitter outlook.”
“My outlook is fine. It conforms to reality. Why are we shutting down? We’re doing a good job here.”
“Yes, you are. But the study depends on having at least three different locations that reach the threshold level of participation, and you’re the only one I sent out that’s reaching that threshold.”
“You never told me what our threshold was.”
“Two reasons, for that, Spunk. First, I didn’t know that there was a threshold until my first benchmark with the foundation. Second, I wouldn’t have told you anyway, because I find that when people know there’s a threshold, they work hard until they get to that threshold and stop.”
“I don’t work that way.”
“You’re human, Spunk, so in fact you do, even when you think you don’t. Come on back.”
“What is it that you’re not telling me?” asked Spunky.
“Come on back and I’ll tell you in person that I’m not holding anything back.”
“Will it be any tru
er then than it is now?” asked Spunky.
“Are you trying to burn all your bridges right now, Spunk?”
Spunky got downstairs only to find Elyon already boxing up the equipment. “The Professor called you first?” she asked.
“I called him,” said Elyon, “because eighty percent is a rational threshold for an excellent study.”
“The goal was a hundred percent.”
“And we’re at ninety,” said Elyon.
“Why did you rattle his cage?”
“I wanted to make sure we’d still be here at Christmas.”
“How did that work out?” asked Spunky.
“He pulled the plug.”
“Does this make any sense to you?” asked Spunky.
“None at all.”
“Do you like this turn of events?”
“She’ll stop loving me if I go away now,” said Elyon. Spunky had never heard such misery in his voice.
“If she’s smart, she’ll keep loving you till you do something asinine like breaking up with her.”
“Spunky, she’s not smart,” said Elyon.
“She’s not math smart,” said Spunky. “But she’s way more human smart than you are. For instance, I bet she knows that the issue here isn’t whether she’ll still love you.”
“Then what is the issue?”
“If you’re still going to love her, then there is no issue.”
“You mean she thinks I’ll stop loving her?”
“That’s right, Elyon. And do you know why she thinks that?”
“No. I keep my word. I’ve never broken my word to her.”
“Because you’re a man, Elyon. She knows you’ll keep thinking of her as long as she lets you look down her blouse.”
“I do not —”
Spunky didn’t let him finish his outraged protest. “Elyon, if it isn’t just temporary physical attraction due to daily proximity, if you really are committed to her, then she’ll certainly wait until you send for her to come and marry you.”
“Send for her where?” asked Elyon. “I don’t have any income except this study, and if the study’s over, I’m broke.”