Paradox

Vignette 9: Henry Crawford's worst mistakes become his greatest joy.

Merry Christmas, Friends!

The Ultimate Paradox has arrived! The Infinite is finite; the Eternal is temporal; the Son of God is the Son of Man. And now anything is possible: sickness will become health; death will become life; even my flakiness will become reliability when all things are made new. Until then, we have hope that I’ll check my schedule. Christmas changes everything. In this penultimate story of my Jane Austen Shorts, Henry Crawford meets the Ultimate Paradox and gets a second chance.

Enjoy Vignette 9: “Paradox”

---

Paradox

Vignette 9

“Ring the doorbell.”

“You’re closer. You ring it.”

Mary and Henry Crawford stood on the limestone terrace outside Mr. and Mrs. Bertram’s Italianate mansion in Atlanta, facing the front door on Christmas Eve. A large wreath bristled with pine cones and live poinsettias, which made Henry wonder if they paid for a fresh wreath every day.

“Are you gonna ring it?” Henry said to his sister. “This is ridiculous. We’ve been here hundreds of times. We practically grew up here.”

“We left ten years ago, Henry. A lot has happened since then,” Mary said pointedly. “You’re not ringing it either.”

“Well, we can’t just stand here.”

“Apparently, we can.”

For the thousandth time, Henry confronted the disaster that had estranged them from the Bertrams a decade previously — from these kind people who had unofficially adopted them after their parents’ sudden death. Unable to move past this story or to rewrite the ending, he dwelled on the Bertrams’ recriminations, justly deserved after he’d seduced their married daughter Maria — and knocked her up, to put it gently. He shook his head, thinking of Maria’s subsequent divorce and the ruination of the life she had so carefully built — entirely due to his arrogance. That debacle burned in his chest as he clutched a wrapped present he’d brought for his 10-year-old son.

“Ring it, Mary.”

“You ring it. I can’t.”

Mary turned toward the boxwood shrubberies off the terrace and rolled her eyes. Never would she outlive the embarrassment over her attempted seduction of Tom Bertram, the eldest son, when she was in high school. She glanced up at her former bedroom window next to the copper drain pipe and remembered what she’d been wearing the night she’d texted him in his dorm room at Georgia Tech. He had come home and climbed the drain pipe to her window so he wouldn’t awaken anyone. The household would have remained ignorant had the pipe not broken — and had he not fallen two stories into the shrubs, barely missing the terrace balustrade. Mary had screamed, rousing the family, who discovered Tom wallowing in the crushed landscaping, unscathed because of his spectacular drunkenness.

Following her own train of thought, she said, “It’ll be funny having a dry Christmas Eve. Tom said everyone has insisted on mocktails and virgin eggnog to lash him to the wagon. You don’t care, right?”

“Right now, that is the last thing I care about,” Henry said. “Though, come to think of it, I was counting on a few drinks to get me through this.”

“Another thing I forgot to tell you.” Mary squeezed the bag of potpourri she had brought in lieu of a bottle of wine, and it crackled in its cellophane as she stalled.

“Yes?”

“Maria is engaged, and her fiancé will be here.” To head off any reaction from Henry, she hurried on. “I know that’s a relief since there will be no suggestion that y’all should pick back up where you left off or anything.”

“You know what?” said Henry. “I can’t do this.”

“What?”

“Nope. Can’t do it. It was great of Tom to invite me — that was a nice gesture since you and he are now… But I should have heard from Maria before coming. She’s the one I…. There’s no way she wants me here with her fiancé.”

“Why? Because you’re so handsome?”

Henry turned to face her. “I ruin everything, Mary.”

“You’re just scared of seeing your son.”

“Yeah, well, you know,” Henry said, turning the present over in his hands, “I haven’t ever seen him except that one time when I ran into Maria at the mall five years ago. And she looked terrified the whole time we were standing there like I was going to tell Eddie who I was — which I didn’t.” He coughed to cover a heavy sigh and cleared his throat. “This is too awkward, and I can’t do it.” Henry turned back toward the car just as the front door swung open.

Henry wheeled around as if a gun had fired and confronted the siblings Tom and Maria Bertram in the open doorway.

Maria said, “Guys. Seriously. You know we have security cameras, right? We’ve all been in there taking bets on how long you’ll stand out here in the cold, but I couldn’t take it anymore. Henry, you’re not going to ruin anything — it was my idea to invite you. We have audio, too.” Maria looked up at her brother Tom who gazed at Mary with such longing that he appeared to want to conjoin with her there on the threshold. “Uh, Tom?” Maria said. “Are you going to invite them in?”

“Yes — please,” Tom said, opening the door wider and holding out his hand to Mary.

She reached out slowly, took it and stepped inside, turning back to Henry. “Henry, come on.”

But Henry didn’t come. “Y’all, I’m sorry. I… this isn’t going to work. Would you give this to Eddie and tell him… tell him I’m sorry.”

There was a clatter of footsteps on the marble floor inside, and four or five children weaseled their way between the adults on their way out to the expansive lawn. One of them stopped when he saw Henry and said, “Hey! You’re my dad!”

Henry was struck speechless by this encounter with his fourth grade self. The child was tall for his age and remarkably handsome with the same hair, eyes, nose — and captivating smile.

“He’s seen you on TV,” Maria said.

“Is that for me?” the child asked, pointing to the present Henry still held.

“Yes. Yes, it is,” Henry managed to say.

“Eddie, come on!!” the other children called from the lawn.

“I’ll put it under the tree for you, Eddie. You run on and play. You’ll have plenty of time with your dad later,” Maria said, taking the present from Henry.

“See you later!” Eddie said and sprinted toward the others.

“He knows about me?” Henry said.

“Yeah, I told him the whole story just a couple months ago.”

“You told a ten-year-old the whole story?”

“Oh, now you’re going to start parenting, Henry?” Maria said with a smile.

“Noooo. No, no. No. I just… What did you tell him exactly?”

“You know, I would have grabbed my coat if I’d thought we were going to have this conversation in the cold, so I’m just going to make this fast because I can tell you’re not going to come inside ‘til we get past this.” She chaffed her arms and shivered. “I told him that I was married a long time ago to a man my whole family told me I shouldn’t have married. We had nothing in common — except the money that I married him for — and I was very unhappy. The right thing to do would have been to make the best of it and learn to love him — he wasn’t bad, just terribly stupid, I told Eddie.”

Henry scoffed at the memory of that hapless husband of Maria’s whom he had duped — and then remembered to be ashamed and looked down to hide his smile.

Maria continued, shivering. “I then told Eddie that I made another big mistake attempting to correct the first one. I wanted to escape from my marriage, so I targeted a good friend who was very handsome and pretended I was married to him instead. It was wrong, and I shouldn’t have done it, but a great thing came from it — I got to have Eddie!”

With his head still bowed, Henry looked up at Maria under his brows and said, “So you targeted me? That’s very generous of you not to make me the villain of the story.”

“I only told the truth, Henry. Sorry if it emasculates you, but I invited the whole affair. It was wrong — and I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? I’m sorry!”

“Yes, I know. And as a woman, I’ve definitely borne the brunt of the scandal while your career has been built on your bad-boy reputation. (Congratulations on your Emmy, by the way.) But the fact is — women have the responsibility because we have the greater ability. We can create life. What’s an Emmy compared to that, right?” she said, indicating her son on the lawn.

Henry turned to look at Eddie throwing the football to his cousins — shouting “Go long! Go long!” — and frowned in wonder. “So… everything we did was wrong… but it turned out right?” he asked Maria. “We’re good?”

“Well… it’s funny you put it that way, but...” She shivered again and said, “Look, this is the last thing I’ll say before we go inside and have some hot chocolate and hope I don’t get sick: Wrong being made right is the meaning of Christmas. It’s happened to me, and I invited you tonight because I want you to hear the good news, too: nothing you’ve done, no matter how horrible, is bigger than Jesus’ love for you.”

Tom interjected, “She just converted and joined a church earlier this year and can’t stop talking about Jesus. Don’t let it scare you away. Come inside, Henry. I’m freezing.”

It had grown darker as they stood there, and without realizing it, Henry had stepped toward the familiar, warm marble hall, decorated for Christmas, twinkling with lights. He joined his adopted family inside and said, “You don’t let him watch me in the series that was released this week, do you? It’s a little mature, don’t you think?”

“I think that you don’t get to parent yet, Henry. Let’s get through tonight first, ok? Come meet my fiancé!” Maria said, leading the way, as Tom shut the door on the cold.

How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.
— W. H. Auden

Next and final story:

Seven Swans a-Swimming

Photo credit: Buckhead.com