Read Online Vinegar Hill by A. Manette Ansay - Free Book Online

him.
    â€œThat’s silly,” he says seriously. “People don’t eat plastic. But there are advantages to an artificial tree. Pa’s right—it won’t wilt. It won’t drop needles or drip sap. It’s not a fire hazard.”
    â€œIt’s not a Christmas tree, either.”
    â€œI remember when they bought it—must have been twenty years ago. It was before anybody had heard of an artificial tree. Everyone came over to see it and they pinched it and asked how much it cost. Artificial trees look real, Ellie. You can’t tell the difference.”
    â€œThey don’t smell real.”
    â€œWe can get some spray, some room fresher, whatever you call it.” He relaxes a little, the sheet pulling away, his bare chest smooth and hairless as a child’s. “Everybody came to see it,” he says. “Mother had me and Mitch serve them store cookies. The next year, they all got artificial trees, but we had the first one.”
    He strokes Ellen’s foot absentmindedly with his, and she knows he is thinking of that plastic tree, the one his neighbors and relatives admired so long ago. He wants to be a teenaged boy again, trailing behind his mother with a plate of cookies: not common, homemade cookies, but cookies bought at a store. Offer them a cookie, Jimmy . The old people in town still talk about what a sweet boy he was, so unlike his brother, so unlike his father. Mama’s boy .
    â€œBut how long has that tree been down there?” Ellen asks.
    â€œIt’s an artificial tree, Ellen. It’s not like it’s going to rot or anything. A live Christmas tree that’s just going to die anyway costs ten bucks. We don’t have the money, that we can buy every kind of thing we want.” His foot against hers is frenzied; abruptly, he pulls it away.
    â€œThis isn’t about money,” she says, but she knows from the angry flutter of his eyelids that this is the end of the discussion. She turns out the light and stares up at the dark ceiling; it gradually becomes visible, the white spackling pale and irregular as the surfaceof the moon. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Tonight, Fritz finally agreed to let them put up the tree, provided there would be no hassle, no commotion. I seen enough of this nonsense to last me a lifetime , he’d told James. Just cause you still got the appetite for it don’t mean I should suffer, too . And James seemed to grow smaller, his shoulders lifting with each careful breath like someone who has been crying for a long time. Don’t worry, Pa , he said, we won’t bother you .
    Thinking of this, Ellen moves closer to James, pressing her forehead against the cool, damp skin of his upper arm. He doesn’t pull away, but he doesn’t respond; it’s as if she’s falling asleep in a room of her own, something she’s never done. She slept with her mother from the time her father died until she left home for school at seventeen. Even now, when she wakes up in the night, she sometimes thinks she’s back in Mom’s room with the dog lying between them and the cats braided together at the foot of the bed. In winter, frost angels played on the windowpanes; in summer, Mom left the window open wide so the scent from the mock orange tree seeped into the sheets. During the night, neither awake nor asleep, Ellen would reach out with her foot to touch Mom’s leg, which was always there, solid and serene, and Mom, without waking, would turn toward Ellen and pat her face with her warm, rough hand. Mornings after Mom got up, there were always sisters’ beds to climb into, damp and warm and slightly sweet from the soap they used in their hair. “Aw, Ellie, it’s so early,” they’d moan, folding her into their arms. She’d doze for an extra minute or two until Mom’s voice rang up the stairwell: Girls! You got breakfast and chores, now, don’t make me come up there after you