by Greg Johnson
Guiltily, wondering if Carter would have minded, Thom decided not to argue with Mr. and Mrs. Dawes over the issue; he didn’t see the point. Dead was dead, he’d always believed, and what remained was for the living. Thom did explain to Mrs. Dawes that he and Carter’s other friends preferred their own service here in Atlanta, where they had known him, and she had seemed to understand. Of course, Thom told her, she and her husband were welcome, but she’d said without hesitating that one service was all she could take. Thom didn’t blame her, and once that topic was exhausted he’d found himself prolonging the conversation, knowing that most likely he would never see or speak to Mrs. Dawes again. The idea saddened him. Before they hung up she said, in a low, husky murmur, “Thank you, darling Thom, for being such a good friend to our son.” Taken aback, Thom could only say, his own voice lowered, “You’re welcome.”
Later that same day Thom and Connie decided to postpone the trip to Key West, too. Christmas was practically here, and they’d made no plans; Thom had been correct in assuming Connie hadn’t booked reservations but had merely “intended to.” Key West would be jammed with revelers during the holidays and none of Carter’s friends were in the mood for that. “Let’s wait until January,” Connie said. “The town will be quieter, and we can just relax.”
Thom had agreed, though the postponement meant Abby could not join them. She’d scheduled a new flight for her return to Philadelphia: she had to leave the day after New Year’s, since her classes started the following Monday. She’d made a reservation for him, too, and gave him the flight number so he could call and buy his ticket. Thom had thanked her and said he would call, but of course he hadn’t. The agent, Abby had remarked, glancing off, had said the flights were filling up quickly, since people were returning home after the holidays, so of course Thom was procrastinating with the idea that no seat would be available. Or so he imagined, for he didn’t understand his own inertia. Actually, he did want to return with Abby, make amends, see his mother; now that they’d talked on the phone, their reunion no longer loomed as such an ordeal. Yes, he told himself, he wanted to go back. But still he had not bought the ticket.
Watching Abby fly off without him held no appeal, either. He would drive home from the airport alone, and his normal routine would resume, his life continuing except his best friend would not be here. This nearly intolerable idea darkened his mind on these already dark and insomniac nights.
One good thing: his new boyfriend from Athens, whom Thom had all but written off, had started phoning again. The fall semester was over for him, and he apologized profusely for being “dilatory,” as he put it—he’d had papers to write, he was student-teaching; he knew these were just excuses, but he’d really like to see more of Thom during the holiday break. Would that be all right? he’d asked. And Thom said, yes, that would be all right.
The next Saturday, he and Chip shopped all day at Lenox Square. Since they’d both been so busy the past few weeks they hadn’t given a thought to Christmas. Since Thom planned to shop mostly for Abby, he’d felt relieved that she had other plans. In recent days, she often had other plans, a fact that intrigued and perplexed him. She’d begun calling up old friends from high school and having dinner out, as she put it, “with the girls,” though her reports of these evenings, when Thom quizzed her the next day, were oddly vague.
“We just went out for dinner and then a movie…”
“Which restaurant?” Thom asked.
“Oh, that place up on Peachtree, I can’t remember the name…”
Thom laughed. “There are dozens of places ‘up on Peachtree,’” he said. “Half the restaurants in Atlanta are ‘up on Peachtree.’ And which movie?”
“Oh, I can’t remember the title, some silly comedy Amber wanted to see, one of those movies you forget the minute you leave the theater…”
The next evening, he’d come home and find her dressed in one of her familiar outfits, her hair and makeup carefully done; she’d started painting her nails, too, which she hadn’t done even back in high school.
“Wow, jungle red,” he said, laughing.
“What?”
“Your nail polish, is that new?”
“Oh, I guess so, it matches the lipstick…”
Evidently she’d bought new perfume, too, a heady, almost cloying scent that didn’t seem quite like Abby. After they chatted for a while, Abby would grab the keys to her newly rented car—an extravagance that seemed unlike her, he’d thought, but she’d insisted on getting it—and would hurry out the front door.
“Shall I wait up?” he called after her, with an ironic smile, but Abby left the cloud of her perfume for a reply.
He and Chip spent hours at Lenox Square. Chip shopped for his large, extended family, which included many nephews and nieces; tomorrow he was leaving to spend Christmas down in Albany. Thom had snooped in Abby’s closet the night before to find out her sizes, deciding that more than anything his sister needed clothes. These past few weeks she’d been recycling the same four or five outfits, and when she’d decided to prolong her stay and Thom had suggested that Lucille could ship more of her clothes down, she’d laughed. “Except for some jeans and a tired old bathrobe, what I’ve been wearing is it.” So he bought a diamond-patterned silver and blue sweater at Neiman-Marcus, and in Rich’s he found an ice-blue silk blouse to go with the sweater. He chose a few more casual blouses and, aided by young salesgirl who had begun flirting with him when she learned he was shopping for his sister, he bought some wool slacks that contrasted with the blouses, and a couple of scarves, and some pieces of costume jewelry. When he saw the total—more than $600—he felt a little faint, but he handed over the charge card without hesitation.
“You and your sister must be close,” Chip said, as they reentered the mall. His tone was almost reverent. Chip had spent less than twenty dollars apiece on his eight or nine gifts.
“This year, we are,” Thom said. “This year is kind of special.”
Only a few days later, on the twenty-fourth, as he and Abby were getting the condo ready for his cocktail party, did the idea occur to him that he should have bought something for his mother. Abby, who stood near the fireplace decorating the six-foot Douglas fir Thom had gotten around to buying yesterday, said casually that she’d Fed-Exed a package to Lucille a few days earlier. In the dining nook, arranging stacks of plates and napkins, Thom went pale and stopped his work; he took a deep breath. Mitzi and Chloe, who had been troubling Abby’s ankles as she circled the tree, had followed Thom over here; the clink of silverware always attracted them. Every few seconds Chloe gave a soft, interrogative whimper.
“I guess I should have, too,” he said, uncertainly.
Abby looked over. “Oh, I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I know the two of you haven’t…well, I don’t think she’d bought a gift for you. I mean, the two of you haven’t settled anything.”
“I know,” Thom said guiltily. “But that might have been a start.” He joined her next to the tree, reaching into the battered Macy’s shopping bag full of ornaments he’d hauled out of his storage bin down in the basement. He added, with the same casualness Abby had affected, “Have you spoken to her lately?”
“Not in a while,” Abby said.
Then what were all the phone calls she kept scurrying into his room to make, closing the door behind her?
“Really?” Thom said.
“The last time we talked, I did ask her to ship some things down—some shoes and gloves, a few other things I was tired of doing without. We had kind of an argument over that.”
Thom strained to imagine this. His sister, “arguing.”
“Guess I’m really a persona non grata now,” Thom said. “On top of everything, I’ve lured you down here and kept you all to myself.”
Abby stared. “It wasn’t that. She’s angrier at me, I think, than she ever was at you.”
She’d lifted one of the angel ornaments out of the tree, a dark-tressed figurine swathed in white, blowing a tiny
trumpet. A few years ago, an ephemeral boyfriend Thom happened to be dating around Christmas had given him the ornament, saying with a twinkling smile that it reminded him of Thom. Abby’s hand paused at several branches and finally hung the angel just beneath the treetop ornament they’d bought at Lenox, an enormous gold star that Thom, sock-footed on a kitchen chair, had put there the night before.
Abby said, “Sometimes I think she knows me better than—than I know myself.”
Alarmed, Thom saw that her eyes had filled, her lower lip starting to quiver. What on earth was she talking about? He was still wondering how to reply when the doorbell rang.
Mitzi and Chloe shifted into attack mode, barking hysterically as they stampeded toward the door.
Thom glanced at his watch: quarter till six. He’d asked Connie to bring Warren and Pace around six o’clock, an hour before the other guests were due. Whenever Thom gave a party he liked a few close friends to arrive early so they’d have a chance to talk. Connie, for all his habitual lateness, was seldom late for parties.
“Listen, I made that reservation,” he told Abby. He would call the airlines first thing in the morning. “As for Mom, I’ll stress that none of this is your fault. Please don’t worry, honey. I’ll explain everything.”
Abby touched at her eyes with the fingertips of both hands. “You probably should,” she said, “but I don’t think I want to.”
“Want to…?”
“I don’t think I want to go back, at all.”
Too shocked to respond, Thom merely stared. After the bell rang a second time, inspiring a new volley of ear-piercing yelps from the dogs, the unlocked door swung open and Connie stepped inside, shivering, straight-armed with gift-wrapped packages stacked to his chin. Warren and Pace followed close behind. As usual, Mitzi and Chloe swirled minnow-like among the perplexed human legs, almost bringing down Warren as he quick-stepped to avoid Mitzi; the others laughed.
“The dachshund trot!” Connie cried. “I’d think you’d have learned it by now, Warren.”
With the swish of one hip Connie slammed the door, fanning a blast of frigid air through the room. He dropped the packages onto the coffee table, then stooped to greet the dogs.
“My little precious babies, yes they are, all ready for Santa Claus to come, yes they are, yes they are,” he cooed.
He’d been drinking, Thom thought. He watched with mingled pleasure and alarm as Connie punctuated the dogs’ excited yips with air kisses, rubbing his gloved hands along the quivering lengths of their bodies as they competed, leaping and cavorting, to lick his face.
Awkwardly, the others stood gazing down at this display. When the silence finally registered Connie glanced up, with a tilted smirk.
“Hey there, you two! Merry Christmas and all that!”
“Yeah, Merry Christmas!” Warren said happily. His boyish cheeks were flushed from the cold, or perhaps he’d been drinking, too; he seemed unusually cheerful.
“Ditto!” Pace grinned.
So their celebration began, as Connie chattered to Abby about the tree, saying how pretty it was, and they all traded the wry remarks people made this time of year about the traffic, the weather, how impossible it was to get everything done. Beneath their talk, which was forgettable enough, there was a heightened excitement, a childlike anticipation, that even Carter’s death and their array of other problems had not repressed. Thom had gone back to the kitchen to uncork the first bottle of champagne, chiding himself. This was Christmas, after all, so why shouldn’t everyone feel cheerful, or at least behave as if they did? They deserved a little reprieve, didn’t they?
I don’t think I want to go hack, at all.
Abby’s extraordinary confession puzzled and excited him, and of course tomorrow they would talk, and plan, and figure out everything—or so Thom told himself, halfway through the second glass of Perrier-Jouët. Abby’s mood had changed as well, her delicate cheekbones flushed pink, her eyes bright with laughter. For a while they stood around the tree, drinking and sampling the hors d’oeuvres ordered from An Affair to Remember (what a rip-off, he thought, but ‘twas the season), and then they lounged around the living room, laughing as the dogs jumped from chair to sofa, lap to lap. Eventually they ended up in the kitchen, as party guests must, waiting idly for the others to arrive and watching as Thom heated a new batch of hors d’oeuvres and opened another bottle of champagne. They debated whether they should exchange gifts as soon as their cocktail guests departed and then venture out for dinner, or should they leave for dinner immediately—not that they’d begun the arduous process of selecting the restaurant—and open gifts as the pièce de résistance (as Connie exclaimed, his French pronunciation comically exaggerated) of the evening?
They couldn’t decide; they considered one plan, then someone suggested another; and as they talked Mitzi and Chloe’s toenails clicked along the kitchen tiles in frantic rhythms, eager for the warming focaccia and Cajun chicken wings. A few minutes later, with nothing decided, they returned to the living room to sample more appetizers and down another flute of champagne.
Thom stood near the fireplace, which he’d stoked for the third or fourth time, and smiled down at Abby, who sat slumped in the middle of the sofa—jammed between Connie on one side, Pace and Warren on the other—holding her empty glass cocked at a strange angle.
Thom laughed. “You look like a corrupt sorority girl.”
Abby said, “Hah. Is there any other kind?”
Pace narrowed his eyes in a villainous leer. “Yeah, ready to give the drunken frat boys a good time.”
“Pace, you bitch!” Connie cried, delighted. “That’s a case of projection if I ever heard one!”
“Where are those drunken frat boys when we need them?” Warren asked, smiling.
Connie cleared his throat. “OK, enough of this palaver. Let’s make a toast,” he said.
Abby lifted her glass. “To Christmases past, and passing, and to come,” she announced.
“Honey, that’s so poetic,” Connie said, in a marveling voice. He thrust his own glass into the air, sloshing a few drops onto the carpet. “And to our friends, the ones we have and the ones we’ve lost.”
A brief silence. Thom felt a warm sheen of moisture stinging his eyes. At last year’s Christmas party, of course, Carter had been with them.
“That’s it—to friendship,” Pace said.
“Absolutely,” said Warren.
They leaned forward, clinking glasses. Thom couldn’t quite meet the others’ eyes; he was afraid he might get silly, make a fool of himself. He edged closer to the fire; relished its warmth caressing his back, his legs. He sipped the champagne, keeping his eyes cast down, holding inside his chest a cauldron of emotion, a swirling of intense grief, intenser joy.
I don’t think I want to go back, at all.
And neither did he.
Chapter 5
“Is this love?” she kept asking.
She’d decided it had little to do with sex. The sex was wonderful, he was the most efficient and considerate of lovers, yet her emotions rose above the physical snarls of their lovemaking in the way the soul—as the nuns at St. Jude’s had insisted—transcended the body after death.
During the act itself she could not, did not want to “think” at all. But in the moments before their passion gathered force and especially during the long moony afterglow as they traced fingertip lines along an arm or rib cage, or down a still trembling, heated thigh, her awareness hovered above his carved rosewood four-poster, an antique inherited from his grandmother, gazing down upon them with the questions Is it? Could it be? After so many years? When she had resigned herself even before Graham, even before she and her mother had moved to Philadelphia, to the role of Good Daughter, if not the cliché of Good Daughter as Dried-up Catholic Spinster, rosary beads melding to her chilled bony fingers? Those questions and more, so many more, she could scarcely acknowledge, much less answer.
A few mornings after they’d met at Pace’s party, he had
telephoned, the pleasantly stilted British accent recognizable at once, though not the lowered, chastened voice.
“Abby, can you forgive me?”
It was ten-thirty in the morning; Thom had left for work an hour before; she was alone in the condo, feeling unmoored and disconsolate, no longer quite sure what she was doing in Atlanta. She hadn’t known how to answer Philip’s question. He had humiliated her, yes, but she considered that her own fault. She’d been credulous, naive. She’d been a little drunk. Why should she have trusted an impossibly handsome stranger dressed in black, a man who had flattered her absurdly? Lying sleepless that night she had punished herself with masochistic notions: a straight man at a gay party, what options did he have? At another party, one populated with beautiful, laughing women, he’d never have glanced her way. She’d been a moment’s whim, a way of passing the time. She’d been presentable, but not beautiful. She hadn’t been laughing.
“Of course,” she breathed into the phone, aware that her heart was racing. “Of course, but where did you go…?”
His tone changed, his vast relief audible in his abrupt exhalation of breath and sudden laugh. She heard herself laugh, too, as though listening to some other woman.
Together for several hours each afternoon, they talked with the harassed urgency of lovers from whom everything is about to be snatched away. They went everywhere, the Botanical Gardens and the High Museum and the symphony, to Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza and the Galleria where they didn’t “shop,” exactly, but simply wandered through the vast open spaces thronged with holiday crowds. Holding hands. Letting the window displays and the horde of shoppers blur to a brightly hued insignificance. They seldom released their attention, even their vision, past one another. They walked and talked in a sphere of imperturbable quiet where they focused on each other’s words and, as though some invisible glass shield had encircled them, stayed deaf to everything else.
