by Lea Geller
“Beeks. Please. Must I?”
“I don’t know, must you? How many times have you had to do this?”
“Never. I’ve never done it before. Besides, how do you know I didn’t want to do it?”
“Oh, I just know,” she said.
“Beeks, please. Exactly how humiliated do you need me to be?”
“Fair enough. No more questions,” she relented. “As for my day, I’m about to make you really jealous. I will be spending the morning in the principal’s office . . . again. Kyle spent last night writing a letter to his teacher. Dear Miss Sonia, I am sorry I burped in your face. That letter took three hours to write. Ask me how excited I am about this.”
“Why didn’t you let me write it for you? I’m adept at sounding like a misbehaving boy.”
She laughed and then said, “OK, back to the subject at hand.”
I groaned.
“Seriously, Aggie. I’m glad he’s back. I’m happy for you.”
“Thank you.” I think.
“Just promise me you’ll draw the line somewhere?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“If he asks you to FaceTime, just say no. Feeling yourself up over the phone is one thing, Aggie, but holding up a camera to it, that’s just wrong.”
“Thanks for the advice, Beeks.”
“Listen, Aggie . . . one more thing,” she said in a tentative tone I rarely heard from her.
“What?”
She paused. “Nothing. Like I said, I’m happy for you.” It was so unlike Beeks not to say every last thing on her mind (and then some), but I gladly took her reticence. “I think this is a good development,” she said.
“Thanks.”
I hope you’re right, Beeks. I really hope so.
PART THREE: WINTER
-1-
I was sitting in the living room examining the contents of a large fruit and cheese basket Ruth Moore had sent to my house that day. Jack’s imminent return had sent me in search of some exercise. Given that I’d been describing my body over the phone as completely unchanged from the days when I spent two-thirds of my time taking care of my appearance, if I didn’t do something soon, when he finally saw me in the flesh, Jack might decide I needed a little less . . . flesh. I naturally thought about yoga, but I couldn’t find anything nearby, and I didn’t have the money for classes. I needed something free and flexible. I’d seen people running past me on campus and up and down the streets of Riverdale—and they all seemed so happy and pleased with themselves. Why couldn’t I be a smug runner, too? I knew Jack didn’t approve of running, that he thought runners looked stringy and unsexy. “Nobody wants to see a runner naked,” he’d often say when a runner ran past us on the beach. That might be true, but I was willing to bet that Jack would happily take a runner’s body over mine.
I had just come back from a run across campus through something called freezing rain, and the absolute last thing I wanted to do was go anywhere. I pulled Grace out of the plastic bubble protecting her, grateful that my ridiculous stroller had a running feature, even if I’d only just started using it. My feet were so cold and wet that my toes had frozen together. I was defrosting them on the radiator, eating cheese (take that, Smug Runners!), and reading Ruth’s note.
Happy holidays, Agnes! We’re happy to have you here with us this year. Hope you’ve settled in and haven’t seen any more of your little “friends.” Best, Ruth.
It was hard to believe Christmas was so close. Frankly, I only realized we were weeks away when the boys started talking about Christmas trees in class.
Guy had said that the only thing he liked about Christmas was the tree, and Art looked at me and said, “Ms. P., did you get your tree yet?”
“Huh?”
“A Christmas tree? Do you have one?”
“Crap,” I blurted. “No. I guess I need to buy one. I’ve never bought a tree before.”
“Really?” Davey asked, looking shocked. “You never bought a tree in LA? Even a pink one?” He laughed at his own joke, a joke I’d heard many times.
“No. My husband bought our trees.”
“Oh,” he said, looking at the other boys. I saw Guy mouth the word husband to Caleb, who quickly looked at me.
“Yeah, I’ve never even had a real tree,” I added. The boys looked shocked.
I didn’t tell them that as a child, my family could never afford a real tree. I grew up with a small fake affair my parents bought before I was born and that I inherited after they died. With Jack, I had a large, gallant, but also artificial tree. It smelled like a real tree and it looked like a real tree—or at least I thought so until I first smelled a real tree at Beeks’s house—but Jack didn’t like needles. He didn’t like the way they invaded and then lingered for weeks after the tree had gone.
Jack’s tree came decorated and was delivered by men who manicured it yearly to fit the living space, even though artificial trees don’t grow. (The same men removed the tree and presumably stored it somewhere for the following year.) The next day a different team, this time of women, would arrive at our house to decorate the tree. They would string lights, add garlands, and, finally, hang ornaments. All of it, the lights, the garlands, the ornaments, it was all monochromatic—and all a neutral color—gold, silver, chrome, or ivory. An exception was made for occasional ornaments, so each year I ordered anniversary ornaments for us, and then last year I ordered one in anticipation of Grace.
“You can’t control a real tree,” he said on our first Christmas together, a couple of months after we’d met and just after we’d gotten engaged.
“Why would you want to control a tree?” I asked, almost laughing at the idea.
“For the same reason you’d want to control anything,” he said, pulling me closer. God, that man smelled good. I hadn’t spoken to him since our botched racy phone call, but I could still smell him. “If you can control something, make it fit your specifications, get it just the way you want it, why not do it?”
I remember feeling his hands slide under my shirt. I don’t remember what happened next. Actually, I do. But I couldn’t risk drifting into fantasy in front of the boys, so I shook the memory from my mind.
-2-
The doorbell woke me at five the next morning. I leaped out of bed, grabbed a sweatshirt, and flew downstairs. Before I opened the door, I checked my reflection. If this was Jack, he was going to be sorely disappointed when he saw me.
I opened the door. Not Jack. Instead, I saw Caleb, Art, Guy, and Davey, and a patchy and very harassed-looking evergreen tree.
“Surprise!” they yelled. I shot a panicked look toward Stacey’s house, but it was too dark and too early for her to be up and lurking. I pulled the boys into the foyer.
“Here’s your tree,” Guy said proudly, trying to drag the tree in behind them. All four boys got together and gave the poor tree one final yank into the foyer.
“Boys? What is this?”
“A brother of one of the security guards sells trees. We pooled our money and got this delivered to the guard gate this morning,” Art announced proudly.
“You can’t not have a Christmas tree,” said Guy. “Everyone needs a tree.”
I looked at the plucked tree, many of whose branches were likely strewn across campus. What branches remained had been bent and twisted in the journey. It was a little pathetic, but it was trying hard not to be. Kind of like the boys.
“So true,” I said. “Everyone needs a tree.”
I let them help me install the tree between the brown couch and the bay window, and we all stood back to admire it.
“Looks good,” said Davey.
“Looks perfect. Thank you, boys.” I smiled at all four of them. “I appreciate that you did all this for me.” In just a few short months, I had gone from being someone who had everything done for her to someone who had to fight back tears when anyone helped at all.
“Oh, we forgot!” said Art, grabbing his backpack and opening it. “We have these, too!�
� He pulled out a garbage bag and handed it to me. “They threw in some ornaments because we said you probably didn’t have any.”
“You guys are the best,” I said. “You’re so awesome that I’m giving you something in return.” I ran into the kitchen and came back with some cans in my hand. “Kale strawberry and my new favorite, plum carrot.” I handed the boys the cans of veggie puffs, and they all laughed.
“I’m not so sure this is a fair trade,” said Caleb.
After I ushered them out, I went upstairs to get dressed. I checked my phone. I had five missed calls from a blocked number. Jack seemed only to be calling me when I couldn’t talk, as if he knew, somehow, that I’d be unavailable. I was happy and proud of my boys. I didn’t want to be, but I was annoyed. I sighed and threw down the phone.
Grace and I went to a day-care winter holiday party, which had the double distinction of being both potluck and nut-free. I signed up to bring an entrée, then completely forgot about it. I texted Beeks in a panic.
Potluck emergency. Need a dish to bring to day-care party in an hour.
She replied quickly. Easy. Boil some pasta, then melt cheese over the meat sticks. Put it in a dish and call it a casserole.
Really?
Yup. Just shove the dish in the middle of the table and act like you’ve never seen it before. No one will suspect a thing.
I made some pasta, then opened four jars of meat sticks, drained the viscous goo, and dumped it all into a yellow casserole dish that must have belonged to the previous tenant of my town house. I tossed some shredded mozzarella on top and nuked the dish for thirty seconds.
When I walked into the day-care building, I was immediately greeted by a table of food, complete with signage—FUDGY GLUTEN-FREE BROWNIES BAKED BY JAKE’S MOM, ELLA, and BROCCOLI BITES BAKED BY JORDANA’S DAD, LUKE. I’d be damned if I was going to let someone write CHEESY PASTA WITH MEAT FINGERS MICROWAVED BY GRACE’S MOM, AGNES. I skipped the signage and hid my plate at the back of the table.
Grace seemed completely comfortable in her surroundings, which put me quickly at ease, even though I’d held back from so many of the parents so far. While she crawled in and out of a plastic climbing structure, I sat on the play mat alongside her and talked to the parents, some for the very first time. We played a game I would soon learn was incredibly popular at day-care gatherings: “I was so tired, I . . .” We went around and said the worst thing we’d each done that week while in the throes of parental exhaustion. Tom, a dad of twins, said he was so tired he brushed his teeth with his wife’s face wash.
“Big deal,” said Ella. “I’m so tired that I’ve given up face wash. I just swab my cheeks with a baby wipe.”
“I can one-up you,” chimed in Gabby, whose daughter, Lyla, was also in Grace’s day-care group. “I was so tired I cleaned Lyla’s butt with a Clorox wipe.” She was soon bested by a dad who accidentally put hand sanitizer on a diaper rash. We all laughed. Everything about this group was different from my Santa Monica baby group, and at the same time, everything was the same. Only the diamond earrings were smaller. OK, there were no diamond earrings. I felt more at home than I had in a long time.
Later on, I opened the boys’ bag of ornaments and tinsel and dumped it out onto the floor in front of the tree. As if on cue, Grace crawled right into the mess and began shoving things into her mouth. I scooped her up and carried her on my hip as I hung the ornaments. I hummed Christmas songs and we held the tinsel together, my hand guiding hers as we threw it onto the tree. She watched closely as I hung the ornaments on the few branches strong enough to hold them—the drag across campus had taken its toll on the tree. Each ornament was a little off—chipped, cracked, missing a hook—and no two were alike.
This small, understated tree took me back to Modesto and to my parents. Back then, a decorated tree also meant one with a handful of mismatched ornaments clinging desperately to branches and a few scattered strands of tinsel. If we needed new ornaments, we’d wait until the day after Christmas to buy them from the local drugstore, when they were stashed in discount bins by the cashier.
I hadn’t thought to bring any ornaments with me. I wasn’t thinking about Christmas when I left California in August. I expected to be back in Santa Monica by now, hanging Grace’s first Christmas ornament, putting her in an expensive, highly impractical dress she’d wear once—twice if you count the Christmas picture.
There was no Christmas picture this year. There was no first Christmas ornament. There was no Christmas dress. This year, on Grace’s first Christmas, she wasn’t going to see Jack’s tree in all its monochromatic glory. I couldn’t call him, and I kept missing his calls. No, we weren’t going to see Jack’s tree, and barring some surprise, I was pretty sure we weren’t going to see Jack, either.
-3-
Beeks called me on Christmas morning. I could smell the tree all the way up in my bed. I sat back against my pillow and inhaled the pine. Grace was watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on my phone and picking at a bowl of multicolored goldfish crackers I’d discovered in the inner aisles of the supermarket. It was quiet and I had nowhere to be. I was planning on spending most of the day in much the same way.
Grace looked puzzled and showed me the phone when Rudolph was interrupted by Beeks’s face and contact info.
“Merry Christmas,” Beeks said as I put the phone to my ear.
“Right back at you, Beeks,” I replied.
“I wish we weren’t going to my in-laws’,” she said. “I really wish you were coming here.”
I didn’t. The memory of Thanksgiving was still too fresh. Even if Beeks could promise me a Lindsey-free Christmas in her apartment, I didn’t think I was ready to go back.
“Don’t feel bad,” I said. “This is the first time in a few years that I don’t have to spend Christmas with Don, Cheryl, and their ungrateful children. Honestly, the thought of watching Christmas movies in my pajamas with Grace is glorious.”
“I get it,” she said. “I’d rather be on the couch with you, Grace, and that reindeer.” Beeks knew that I’d been watching the Claymation Rudolph on Christmas mornings since I was a kid. “Instead, I’m here making sure the boys don’t throw Christmas cookies out the windows again.”
“Again?” I asked.
“Yup. Last year, they opened a bathroom window and threw a whole batch down at people on the street, one at a time, like pretty little bombs.”
“Could have been worse,” I said. “Could have been a fruitcake.”
Beeks laughed. “Listen,” she said, her voice modulating to the key of serious business. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you.” She paused. “I know what I said to Lindsey was wrong, but Aggie, it was hard.”
“What was hard?” I asked, straightening up in bed, readying myself to hear what Beeks wanted to say but couldn’t last time we spoke.
“It was hard for me to see you with Jack. Not because I didn’t like him. I did like him. He’s a likable guy. You were the hard part, Aggie. It was hard to see you.”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” I said.
“I mean that it was hard to watch you with Jack.”
“Why, Beeks? Was it so hard for you to see me happy?” I felt my heart beating faster.
“That’s not fair. Think about it, Aggie. Think about how we met, right before we both got out of Modesto. When I think about you, I think about that feeling, that ticket in my hand, that ticket out of town. I think about how it felt that summer before college. We thought that anything was possible, even if it wasn’t. It wasn’t hard to see you happy and married, Aggie. It wasn’t even hard to see you not working. It was just really hard to see you stop trying.”
“Trying what? What had I stopped trying to do?”
“You stopped trying to be the person you wanted to be when we met, when we left Modesto, the person who couldn’t wait to be in charge of herself and her own life. You could have still gotten married and been that person, Aggie. You could even hav
e stopped working and been that person. But you didn’t even try. You just stopped. And I can’t help but wonder how Jack let you.”
Grace was trying to climb off the side of the bed. With one hand I clutched her; with the other I held my phone.
“Honestly, Beeks, I don’t think Christmas morning is the best time for us to talk about what a disappointment I’ve been to you.”
“That’s not fair,” she said. “That isn’t what I’m saying, and you know it.”
“Then what are you saying?” I charged, clinging to Grace.
“I’m saying it’s more complicated than me not liking Jack or not liking the fact that your life changed,” Beeks said quietly. “It’s not as simple as that.”
“Well, you got your way, Beeks,” I said, sounding angrier than I’d intended. “It’s Christmas and I’m alone. We don’t need to talk about the person I was with Jack, because like it or not, he’s not here.” I looked up at my dusty ceiling, throwing my head back and blinking away angry tears. “Oh, and there are cobwebs growing in the corners of my room. So later today I’ll grab a broom, stand on my bed, and take a whack at them. Good enough for you? Is this the me you prefer?”
“Aggie . . .”
“No, Beeks. I don’t want to spend Christmas morning defending my choices to you.”
“I love you, Aggie,” she said before I could say anything else.
“Merry Christmas, Beeks. I’ll call you later,” I said, which was code for I can’t talk about this anymore. We hung up, and I handed the phone back to Grace so she could resume her reindeer watching. I took some deep breaths, willing myself to calm down.
Grace gave me another puzzled look as her program was interrupted for a second time. She showed me the phone.
Merry Christmas, darling.
I pulled the phone up to my nose and smelled it. God, I was desperate. I closed my eyes and waited for a response. Please let him be close. I had some Jack memories I kept in the front of my mind so that I could access them whenever I needed. I flipped through them and landed on the story of how we met. I’d been walking down the street when I saw Marc Owen, an ex-boyfriend from college, walking toward me. I desperately wanted to avoid Marc. It had been a couple of years since I’d seen him, and our breakup was messy—so messy that Beeks referred to him as “stalker boy.” Before Marc got too close, I ducked into a sushi restaurant. Marc followed. I looked around frantically and immediately spotted Jack at the sushi bar. He was hard to miss. It’s hard to overlook thick, wavy, dirty-blond hair, strong cheekbones, and enormous hazel eyes. His was an older, distinguished, and not just handsome but beautiful face. Beeks always said that Jack looked like an actor who could easily play the president of the United States on TV. I stared at his handsome, presidential face, and I made a beeline. He looked up at me, and I spoke to him as if we knew each other, as if he’d seen me before, as if I wasn’t a complete stranger.
