Zanna's Gift: A Life in Christmases by Orson Scott Card

Author:Orson Scott Card [Card, Orson Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Family Life, Holidays, Inspirational
ISBN: 9780765383549
Google: qvg3cRC6mvIC
Amazon: 0765383543
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2009-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

9

The Pullmans were an American family and their grown-up children did what Americans were doing in the 1950s: They moved, not from neighborhood to neighborhood or town to town, but from state to state, and Bug even had a stint in Germany working for a company that was trying to redesign its product to appeal to American consumers.

Most Christmases, though, one or another of the kids would come home, so Mr. and Mrs. Pullman were rarely without company during the holidays. And on the mantel, presiding over Christmas, there was always a photograph of Zanna’s gift—at first the sepia-toned Polaroid, and later a framed color photograph. Each of the brothers had their own, just like it.

There were also a couple of family reunions, with Davy, Bug, and Zanna bringing all their kids back to the family home—usually in the summer, though, because the house was too small and the parents too old to have so many kids cooped up inside. The cousins all knew each other, and by any standard the family stayed close no matter how farflung their residences were.

The best part about family reunions, Zanna thought, was getting to know her brothers’ kids. It was also, unfortunately, the worst part. At first Zanna tried to find, in each child, whatever aspect of them came from a particular parent. Oh, that’s how Bug was at that age—but this other trait must come from Bug’s wife Sylvia.

Only it didn’t hold up, not really. Each girl was her own self, each boy found his own way. You couldn’t look at children and hope to see much of their parents beyond their physical appearance, and not always that. They came, as Wordsworth said, “trailing clouds of glory.” Along with a few clouds of other things not quite so glorious. The adventure was to find out who they were.

Bug’s third child and oldest boy, Todd—not named Ernest because Davy had already taken the name for his first son—he was a problem. What was it that made a perfectly normal, healthy boy with parents who doted on him into a such a lying little sneak?

That was a horrible thing to think of him, Zanna knew, but she had never actually heard him say anything that didn’t have some kind of lie hidden in it somewhere. Though it hadn’t become obvious until her own children were involved and she had to sort out the difference between her own child’s version of events and Todd’s. The first few times it happened, she had actually taken Todd’s word over her own children’s. Todd was so convincing, and her kids’ versions were so outrageous.

Until the family reunion when she was coming back from the public restroom at the park where they were having their big family picnic, and she actually saw Todd drop to his knees in a patch of mud. There was no one around him; he just plopped in it and then used his hands to get back up and wiped them on his pants.

Strange boy, that’s what Zanna thought.

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