* * *
They demolished the pie and most of the hash browns. They weren’t too bad with the cottage cheese, after all. Pretty soon all that was left was a sad lump of ice cream. When the check came, Sophie reached for her bag. Russell shook his head.
“I was planning on paying when I thought you were rich, so wouldn’t it be patronizing to let you split it now?”
Sophie laughed at that. “Wait, you thought I was rich?”
Russell quirked an eyebrow and attempted to look bashful.
“So, does that make us even?” she asked.
“Not really keeping score,” Russell said. “But it does make things interesting.” He laid a pair of twenties on the table.
“Thank you,” Sophie said. “For everything. But especially for the latkes. Those will probably be my only ones this year.”
“Why’s that?”
“Tonight is the last night of Hanukkah. The latke window is closing.”
“Aren’t you going home for the holidays?”
“I’ll be home for Christmas and New Years but no, not Hanukkah this year.”
“Why not?”
Sophie paused, wondering which way to answer that. “Two hundred and sixty-seven dollars,” she said finally.
She told him that this was how much the price of tickets dropped if she left next week. Sophie had fought with her mother about this, which was unusual. She was accustomed to frugality. It had always been that way, a matter of necessity with just the two of them and her mother’s slender income. But also because any surplus had gone to Sophie’s college fund. Then last winter, right as Sophie was filling out her applications, Luba had a stroke. She’d lingered in a sort of twilight and neither Sophie nor her mother could bear to put her in one of those public nursing homes (they were so Soviet). When she died, five months later, Sophie’s college savings was history. NYU had said yes, but Sophie’s dream school was suddenly exorbitant, even with a financial aid package. Then U of B came along with its generous offer.
Sophie’s mom hadn’t been able to fly her home for Thanksgiving. And now, this latest postponement. These were the first holidays with Luba gone. Sophie wondered if that wasn’t the real reason for the delay. Maybe her mom wanted to skip the holidays this year. Maybe Sophie did, too.
Thinking about all this, Sophie started to cry. Oh, for Christ’s sake. This most certainly qualified as a What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moment.
“You okay?” Russell asked.
“Holiday stuff,” Sophie said, wiping her nose. “I don’t even know why I’m crying. Hanukkah’s lame. Who cares if I miss it?”
Russell was looking at her. Curiously. Softly. Knowingly.
“Who says you’re missing it?”
* * *
Since they’d started this Hanukkah thing, Sophie and Russell decided to see it through, by lighting the menorah she had buried somewhere in her closet. It was Luba’s. The last time they’d used it was a year ago, just before the stroke. Hanukkah had come crazy early, colliding with Thanksgiving, so they’d had a huge feast: turkey and brisket and latkes and potatoes and donuts and pie for desert. But Sophie could only allow herself to think about that for a second. Summoning those memories was like touching a burning pot. She could do it only briefly before she had to pull away.
As they drove back to campus, Sophie realized that though she had a menorah, she didn’t have candles. They drove to the grocery store on the outskirts of town. It was empty, the aisles small, the floors dingy and scuffed. Russell pushed Sophie around in a rickety cart as the tired stock boys watched them warily. Sophie whooped with laughter. Grocery-cart derby. Who knew that would make such an excellent dating activity? (And by now, she was pretty sure this was a date.)
The candle selection was unsurprisingly pathetic. A whole shelf of plug-ins, an odd assortment of birthday numbers (4 and 7 were disproportionately represented) and some glass emergency candles, meant for blackouts and other catastrophes. Nothing that would remotely fit a menorah.
Russell had his phone out, searching for stores that would be open this late. But Sophie was already reaching for the emergency candles. “This holiday is about being adaptable,” she said. “My people are notoriously scrappy.”
“I can see that,” Russell said. “So how many we need?”
“Nine,” said Sophie. “Eight for the eight nights of Hanukah, plus an extra lighter candle. If we’re being official about it.”
There were nine emergency candles on the shelf.
“Wow,” said Sophie. “That’s almost like the actual Hanukkah miracle.” She explained the origins of the holiday, the oil in the menorah that should’ve lasted a single night lasting eight. “It’s really only a minor miracle,” she added.
Russell looked at her and cocked his head. “Not sure there is such a thing as a minor miracle.”
* * *
They drove from the store back to campus. Let It Bleed was still playing, and they put “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” on again. This time, Sophie sang along, quietly at first, then belting the words. If she was off-key, she didn’t care.
* * *
Back on campus, after Russell parked his car, they walked through the quad toward Sophie’s dorm. It was empty now, no sign of the reindeer orgy they’d escaped. That all felt like a million years ago.
“Why’d you talk to me earlier?” Sophie asked. “Was it really because of Ned Flanders?”
“Partly,” Russell said, stretching the word out in a way that made Sophie want to scratch it.
“What’s the other part?”
“You don’t remember me then?”
Remember him? She would if there was a reason to. She was sure of it. Except he was looking at her like they had a history.
“Poetry Survey.”
Sophie had only been in that class for a week. She’d hated it so much. It wasn’t even taught by a professor, but a TA with a nasal twang who had insisted on very specific interpretations of the poems. She and Sophie had gotten into it about the Yeats poem “When You Are Old.” It was yet another What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moment, a big one. One that made her question coming here.
“I regretted not going to bat for you when you had your … disagreement.”
Disagreement. More like a war of words. She and the TA had debated about one line from the poem—“How many loved your moments of glad grace”—and Sophie had found herself on the verge of tears. She’d had to leave the hall before the period ended. She’d dropped the class the next day.
“If it makes you feel better, after that, a bunch of us started challenging her,” Russell said. “‘Poetry isn’t math’ was our battle cry.”
It was what Sophie had said to the TA. A sort of retroactive relief—or maybe vindication?—crept over her. She’d had defenders in that class. Wingmen. Even if she hadn’t noticed them. Hadn’t noticed him. The truth was, she didn’t notice a lot of things at school. She kept her head down, wore blinders. It was a survival tactic. Only now did she wonder if it was a stupid survival tactic, like wearing a life jacket made of lead.
“I asked about you, after the class. Got some intel, about you being big city and all,” he said with a teasing smile. “But I never spotted you for more than a blur. Until tonight … I was debating saying something. You were looking pretty fierce, not fit for company.” He grinned again, but it was different, less oozy, more shy, and about a thousand times sexier. “But then you mentioned Ned Flanders, and I had to say something.”
“What? Is Ned like your spirit guide?”
He laughed. That big, open-chested laugh. “We lived all over, sometimes moving every year. All the places I lived, The Simpsons was like this one constant. They had it everywhere, sometimes it’d be English, sometimes dubbed, didn’t matter. It was my comfort food.”
“You make it sound sad,” Sophie said. “Living all those places sounds pretty great to me.”
“Things are not always how they seem.”
“Ever see that movie Lost In Translation?” Sophie nodded. She loved that film. “Like that, over and over. But times a thousand because I’m black in places where they just don’t get black. In Korea, they called me Obama.” He sighed. “Before Obama’s presidency, I was Michael Jordan.”
“Is that why you came to school here?” Sophie asked. “Because you knew what to expect?”
Russell looked at her a while before answering. “Yeah. Some of that. Also, to piss off my parents. They thought I was crazy for coming here, but I thought I was making a grand statement. Like, hey, this is how it’s always been for me so I’m just going to go back for more.” He laughed, a little sadder this time. “Only problem is, they never got that and even if they did, being here isn’t really punishing them. Beyond the expensive tuition.” He threw up his hands. “Well, at least they’ve got a good journalism program.”
“And an excellent liberal arts curriculum,” Sophie added.
“And beautiful big-city girls who talk to themselves about Ned Flanders.”
“Right. I read about them in the catalog,” Sophie said, a little flustered by the beautiful comment. Also by the fact that they’d reached her dorm. “This is me.”
Russell took her hand. It was warm. “Ready to get your Hanukkah on?”
“Okily dokily,” Sophie said.
* * *
The suite was empty. Kaitlynn, Madison, and Cheryl had already left for the holidays, though they’d littered the suite with holiday cheer. Being in here alone with Russell, Sophie was suddenly knee-shakingly nervous, so she started talking in the same rapid-fire bap-bap-bap as Madison’s blinking lights. “And here is our fake tree, threaded with the traditional offerings of popcorn and candy canes. And you’ll notice the tinsel everywhere, not sure what that symbolizes, and that Santa balloon is made out of vintage Mylar. And if you breathe deep, you’ll catch a whiff of pine-scented potpourri. Welcome to the land where Christmas threw up.”
She was trying to carry on the joke of the Rudolph sweaters. But maybe it was a testament to how far they’d come tonight that the joke fell flat.
“Show me where you live,” Russell said softly.
Sophie’s quarter of the suite was like that thing on Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the other. No posters or corkboards with friendship collages. On her bookshelf she had a framed shot of Zora, an old shot of Luba looking glamorous and kind of mean, and a picture of her and her mother on a gondola in Venice. They’d had the same gondolier a bunch of times and he’d taken to calling her Sophia, crooning a song in Italian to her.
Russell was looking at the picture. “That was when my mom was in the Venice Biennale, a really big art show,” Sophie explained. Growing up, there’d been so many times she’d wished her mom could be a lawyer or a banker or a producer, the kind of jobs some of her friends’ parents had. But when her mother had been invited to show at the prestigious Biennale, and Luba had sold a ring so Sophie could accompany her, she’d been so proud of her mother, the artist. Glad that she’d stuck to her guns. It didn’t hurt that the trip had been magical: the gondola rides, the tiny zigzag of canals and alleys, the packed art galleries, and more than any of that, the feeling of some kind of portal of possibility opening. She hadn’t felt that way in a long time. She was feeling that way tonight.
“What kind of art does your mom make?” Russell asked.
“Sculptures. Though not the traditional kind with clay or marble. She works in abstract forms.” She reached to her top shelf and pulled down a small cube, all tangled wires and glass fragments. “Most of her work is on a much larger scale,” Sophie explained. “Like one piece could fill this room. Alas, my roommate Cheryl said she needed a bed so we couldn’t keep one here.”
For a second, she imagined Cheryl’s horrified expression if she had brought one of her mother’s larger, stranger installations. But then she remembered that Cheryl had seemed to admire her mom’s smaller piece. She’d held it a long time the first time she’d seen it, much as Russell was doing now. “Your mom makes sculptures,” she’d said. “My mom organizes bake sales.” Sophie had taken it as a veiled big-city comment, yet another sign of her otherness, but only now did she wonder if perhaps she hadn’t missed Cheryl’s droll brand of sarcasm.
Russell turned the piece in his hand, seeing how the light played into the angles. “My grandmother used to make these things … not sure if you’d call them sculptures or what, out of wood and sea grass. On Saint Vincent. Ever heard of it?”
“It’s an island in the Caribbean, right?” Sophie said.
“Yeah. It’s where my mom’s from. She came to the States for college, met my dad, and never went back. I used to go spend summers on the island with my grandmother. In this little house, painted in island colors, my grandma said, and there were always cousins running around, chickens and goats, too.”
Russell was smiling at the memory. Sophie smiled along with him.
“Then my father started sending me to camp during the summers: tennis camp, sailing camp, golf camp. We only go to Saint Vincent for vacation now, every year for Christmas. Last few years, we’ve stayed at a fancy resort, like tourists. And people treat us different. Like tourists. Even my own people.” He set down the sculpture, his expression wistful and yearning. “Except for my grandmother.”
Sophie closed her eyes. She could picture his grandmother, a beautiful lined face, hands tough with years of solid work, a stern manner that masked a deep ferocious love. After a bit, the image of his grandmother merged with Luba, who she pictured last year, broom in hand, swatting the smoke alarm after it went haywire from all the latke frying. Instead of pushing the memory away, she let it wash over. She was surprised to find that it didn’t burn. She could hold on to it. Then she opened her eyes. “Is your grandmother still alive?” she asked.
“Yeah.” Russell smiled.
“Are you going to see her?” It suddenly felt very important to her that he was.
“Flying down Sunday,” he said. “Looking forward to it.” He paused. “And dreading it. You know? Holiday stuff.”
“It’ll be okay,” she told him, but the words ricocheted back to her. It’ll be okay. That’s what people had been telling Sophie for a while now. After Luba died. It would be okay; time heals. After she started college. It would be okay; leaving home is an adjustment. Sophie hadn’t believed it. You can’t undo loss. You can’t unmake a mistake.
But now she was wondering if a garden of memories might not grow over the hole of losing Luba. And if college wasn’t a little like that first swim every summer—no matter how much Sophie looked forward to it, she still had to get used to the chilly water. Maybe anywhere Sophie had gone this year would’ve felt like a Bumfuckville.
Because this Bumfuckville had diners dropped from Oz. It had wingmen who had her back in poetry class. It had people like Cheryl, who, come to think of it, was pretty big-citily sarcastic herself. And it had guys like Russell.
What if the mistake wasn’t coming here, but being blind to any of that?
What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? she thought to herself for the umpteenth time. But it felt different now. If she’d made a mistake, there was time to fix it. And more than that, she was looking forward to fixing it.
* * *
They unplugged all the Christmas lights and laid the candles out in a vaguely menorah-like shape on the ground. Sophie found Luba’s menorah and put it out, too. They lit the candles. Where there was darkness, now, a warm glow of light.
“Normally you’d say a prayer in Hebrew,” Sophie said. “But I kind of think we’re doing our own thing, right? So I’m going to offer my thanks to that dumb caroling concert tonight.”
“Okay then,” Russell said. “I offer mine to reindeer sweaters.”
Sophie chuckled. “To cars with butt warmers.”
<
br /> “And butts in butt warmers.”
“To hash browns,” Sophie said.
“Don’t forget pie.”
“Pie with cheese.”
Russell pulled Sophie into his lap. He was tall and she could sit in the fold of his legs, her own legs crossed under her.
“To perfect fits,” Russell murmured.
“And imperfect fits,” Sophie said.
Sophie reached up to touch Russell’s lips, and he grasped her fingers, kissing them, one by one: thumb, index, middle, ring, pinky, and back again.
“To Ned Flanders,” Russell said.
“Oh, yes, a thousand times to Ned Flanders. We should devote the holiday to him,” Sophie said.
Russell lifted up her hair and kissed her on the bony ridge of her neck. She shivered. “To the Rolling Stones,” he murmured. At that moment, not even Mick Jagger could’ve sounded sexier.
“And not always getting what you want,” Sophie said.
“But sometimes getting what you need,” Russell said.
She kissed his lips then. They tasted of apples and cheese, of the revelation of things you never imagined going so well together. She tasted meting ice cream, too, melting defenses, herself melting into Russell.
She kissed him, not knowing if the kiss would go on for a minute, an hour, the whole night. She kissed him not knowing what would happen next semester, next year. But at the moment, none of that seemed to matter. The kiss was what mattered. Not just the kiss, but what the kiss said. What it unlocked. What the night unlocked. What they had unlocked.
Tomorrow would be different. Sophie understood this.
There really was no such thing as a minor miracle.
The whole mess started when I lit the church on fire.
To be precise, I didn’t strike a match, and it wasn’t the church proper, but the barn beside it. The one that Main Street Methodist used to store all the equipment for the annual Christmas pageant. Well, the barn they used to use.
Put this on your list of things to know: the combination of tinsel, baby angel wings, and manger hay burns like weed at a Miley Cyrus concert.
My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories Page 21
