“Ah, yes, ma’am, if you like.”
“I like. I really like.”
“I’ve ordered geese, Margaret.”
“Geese?” She stared at Valerian for suddenly she could not imagine it. Like a blank frame in a roll of film, she lost the picture that should have accompanied the word. Turkey she saw, but geese…“We have to have turkey for Christmas. This is a family Christmas, an old-fashioned family Christmas, and Michael has to have turkey.”
“If Tiny Tim could eat goose, Margaret, Michael can eat goose.”
“Turkey!” she said. “Roast turkey with the legs sticking up and a shiny brown top.” She was moving her hands to show them how it looked. “Little white socks on the feet.”
“I’ll mention it to Ondine, ma’am.”
“You will not mention it! You will tell her!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And apple pies.”
“Apple, ma’am?”
“Apple. And pumpkin.”
“We are in the Caribbean, Margaret.”
“No! I said no! If we can’t have turkey and apple pie for Christmas then maybe we shouldn’t be here at all!”
“Hand me some of my medicine, Sydney.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sydney?”
“Ma’am?”
“Will we have turkey and apple pies for Christmas dinner?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll see to it.”
“Thank you. Is Jade down yet?”
“Not yet, ma’am.”
“When she is, tell her I’ll be ready at ten.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Margaret Lenore stood up so suddenly her chair careened for a brief moment before righting itself. Quickly she was gone.
“Everything all right, Mr. Street?”
“I am going to kill you, Sydney.”
“Yes, sir.”
BEYOND the doors through which Sydney had been gliding all morning was the first kitchen. A large sunny room with two refrigerators, two steel sinks, one stove, rows of open cabinets and a solid oak table that seated six. Sydney sat down and immediately the place he took at the perfectly round table was its head. He looked out the windows and then at his wife’s arm. The flesh trembled as she wire-whisked a bowl of eggs.
“Mango all right?” she asked without turning her head.
“She ate a mouthful,” said Sydney.
“Contrary,” murmured his wife. She poured the eggs into a shallow buttered pan, and stirred them slowly with a wooden spoon.
“It’s all right, Ondine. Lucky you had one.”
“I’ll say. Even the colored people down here don’t eat mangoes.”
“Sure they do.” Sydney slipped a napkin from its ring. The pale blue linen complemented his mahogany hands.
“Yardmen,” said Ondine. “And beggars.” She poured the eggs into a frying pan of chicken livers. She was seventeen years her husband’s junior, but her hair, braided across the crown of her head, was completely white. Sydney’s hair was not as black as it appeared, but certainly not snow white like Ondine’s. She bent to check on the biscuits in the oven.
“What’s the Principal Beauty hollering about?”
“Turkey.”
Ondine looked at her husband over her shoulder. “Don’t fool with me this morning.”
“And apple pie.”
“You better get me a plane ticket out of here.” She straightened.
“Calm down, girl.”
“She want it, she can come in here and cook it. After she swim on back up to New York and get the ingredients. Where she think she is?”
