Tell Me When It Hurts

by Christine Whitehead

  “Oh, thanks ever so much,” Connor grumbled.

  “Hey, Christmas Eve is a big deal, don’t you think? When you were a kid, did you celebrate on Christmas Eve or Christmas day?”

  “Christmas day was the thing in my house. All presents opened then, big dinner around two. Visits to the neighbors in late afternoon to see their loot.”

  “We were a Christmas Eve family. Big dinner, lots of carols, a few gifts in the evening, the rest in the morning. I’ll tell you, there’s a big, big difference between Christmas Eve families and Christmas day families. Christmas Eve families, I think, want two celebrations—kind of greedy don’t you think?” She looked pensive for a moment. “Hey, McCall, were you an all-white-lights family or multicolored?” Archer asked as she began stringing lights on the tree.

  “Multi, unquestionably,” he replied.

  “Absolutely. That’s the right way. White is good for businesses but not for home. Multi, that’s the ticket.” she affirmed, nodding as if approving of her quick pupil’s correct answer.

  “You’re wound up today, aren’t you? The two-shot deal of those Christmas Eve families does sound pretty good to me, but I think we should make our own traditions, beginning this year.” Connor got up, grabbed Archer, and swung her around.

  She held on and savored the sound: our own traditions. Just then, on the radio playing softly in the background, they heard the Motown tune “You Better Shop Around.”

  “Hey, that’s not Christmas music. But I do love the Miracles,” exclaimed Archer as Connor grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into a fast Lindy hop. Dancing by firelight, she laughed, bending forward, limp in the middle from watching Connor do his fancy turns, as Alice began to jump alongside him in a frenzy, and Hadley, not to be outdone, began to run around and howl.

  CHAPTER 23

  On Christmas morning, Connor and Archer both woke early. It had snowed several inches during the night. Outside the kitchen window, the woods looked fresh. Archer started the coffee.

  After the essential first cup, they walked with the dogs through the woods, making the first tracks in the new snow. Hadley sniffed about, jumping and rolling. Alice was more cautious but seemed to love the fluffy white coolness, every few minutes stopping to bite the little snowballs that gathered on the hair of her paws.

  Back in the house, Connor built a fire while Archer made two cups of hot chocolate and set them on the coffee table. She flopped down on the floor cross-legged and reached for her cup.

  Connor went into the bedroom and came out with a little cubical baby blue box. Tiffany’s. He handed it to Archer.

  “Merry Christmas, Arch. In memory of Holly Golightly.”

  “Oh, Connor, thank you.”

  “Hey, don’t thank me yet. You haven’t opened it—you may hate it.”

  “I doubt that,” she said as she pulled the fat red bow.

  Gently, Archer opened the box and lifted the cotton covering. She gazed at it: a slim silver oval locket, shiny and chaste, on a silver chain. It was honest and simple, designed to hold memories, but not just any memories—the best of all edited memories. Lifting it from the box, she opened the delicate clasp. It would shelter two photos. She held its smooth coolness in her hands and turned it over to read the engraved back: “To Archer. Forever, Connor.”

  Archer looked up at him, her eyes moist. “It’s the best present I could ever imagine. Thank you, Connor. Now I feel funny about mine to you. I’m not sure, but . . . it’s what I have for you.”

  Archer got up and opened the middle drawer of her desk, and handed him a slim saffron-colored envelope. He took it with apprehension—Archer’s nervousness seemed to be catching.

  Turning the envelope over, he pushed the prongs of the fastener together, lifted the flap, and slid out two pieces of paper and three photocopied pictures. He set the pictures aside and began to read from the first sheet of paper:

  Dear Ms. Loh:

  In accordance with your request, we have gathered as much information as we could in the past three weeks regarding the status of one Lauren Jane Giordano. As per your request, we have used only public records and have not undertaken personal surveillance beyond the superficial. Given the limitations you circumscribed and the short time frame, we determined the following:

  Miss Giordano is nine years old, having been born on October 1, 1992, in Chicago. She is in the fourth grade at Greenwich Country School, a private school, in Evanston, Illinois, where she excels in her daily studies. Last year and this year, Miss Giordano played the flute in the school orchestra and participated in intramural soccer, where she generally plays center halfback. Her most involving extracurricular activity is horseback riding. Miss Giordano takes two lessons a week at a stable called Hawthorne Farms in Granby, Illinois, and has ridden in competitions for the past two years, based on the local newspaper clippings of horse show results.

  Ms. Giordano’s report card consists of mostly A’s, with a B+ in applied science and a B in art. Her class behavior and citizenship are superior.

  Miss Giordano lives in a two-story saltbox-style colonial in a neighborhood of similar homes. The home is tidy and well maintained. The family appears to consist of two adults and two children, Lauren Giordano and a younger brother of about four years. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Giordano has a criminal record. The family has two vehicles: a 2000 Saab and a 1999 Plymouth Minivan.

  Miss Giordano is popular with her classmates. She is on the elementary school student council and won an award for a poetry contest in the third grade.

  We hope the above is satisfactory. With additional time and the removal of constraints, I assure you that more data can be compiled. Please feel free to call on us again. We enclose three photos that we were able to acquire.

  Respectfully yours,

  James Mason Brock,

  Personal Investigations

  Connor was absorbed in reading. He completed the second page and then looked at the three photos, each with a handwritten explanation attached on a yellow sticky note. The first was a picture of Lauren from St. Margaret’s Catholic School Sunday picnic with two other five-year-olds, sitting on a blanket near a lake. It was in color, the delicate blond girl between the two boys, squinting at the camera and smiling sweetly, holding up a bagel as if offering it to the photographer. Connor smiled and turned to the next photo.

  It showed a grinning six- or seven-year-old little girl on Santa’s lap. She wore a red snowsuit, but there was no mistaking that coquettish tilt of her head as she posed with Santa—pure Colleen McCall.

  He then turned to the third picture. A clipping from a local paper, dated this past summer, it showed Lauren on a pony named Nikki, posing with the blue ribbon for short-stirrup hunter. She had her riding helmet on. Was it his imagination, or did she have almond-shaped eyes that mimicked his own?

  “I hope I haven’t intruded,” Archer began.

  “No—oh, no, Archer, it’s a fabulous . . . a wonderful gift. You have no idea how wonderful,” Connor said, opening his arms for her and hugging her close. He felt he had no right to know about Lauren, no right to think he had any right, but he did want to know, and he had read the two thin pages greedily, hungry for more.

  * * *

  At noon, Archer and Connor got in the Jeep and headed for Litchfield, about an hour away. Archer was in a long black wool skirt with her black and white tweed sweater and low boots. Connor was in dark blue jeans, a dark green turtleneck, and green and cream tweed sweater, with brown cowboy boots. He wore his shearling coat and Stetson.

  The traffic on the back roads was light. New snow lightly covered the tree branches. Hadley and Alice were in the back, Hadley lying down and Alice pacing back and forth, finally relaxing twenty minutes into the trip.

  “So, what am I walking into?” asked Connor.

  “Oh, it’ll be fine. Ted’s a doctor, internal medicine with specialization in emergency room medicine. Sharon’s a nurse part-time. And the kids are . . . well, kids. They’re great. Y
ou’ll like them.”

  “What have you told them about me?”

  “Well, um, not much.” Archer replied, looking down.

  “How much?” he asked, sounding a little alarmed.

  “Well, actually nothing.”

  There was a long moment of silence. Connor then said slowly, “Archer, don’t you think this will be a bit of a surprise? I mean, to them you’ve been a recluse for years; Adam is gone, and now you bring me.”

  “Well, I thought rather than tell them about you, they could, you know, just see you and it would sort of take care of itself,” Archer replied uncertainly.

  “Oh, now, did you?” He paused, then gave a resigned sigh. “Well, I guess I’ll have to be particularly charming today to pull this off.”

  They pulled up twenty minutes later at a lovely old colonial, set back from the road. It had a center chimney, two big trees framing the front, and a stone path leading to the door. The house was white with black shutters. Through the left front window, Archer could see the lights of a big Christmas tree.

  They pulled into the driveway, and Connor let the dogs out. They ran around the car, chased each other, and finally fell into line behind Archer. She was laughing and carrying a stack of neatly wrapped gifts. Connor slammed the Jeep’s rear door shut and hefted the bigger group of presents.

  Archer lifted the heavy brass knocker and rapped twice. She could hear laughter and someone running to the door. A breathless Julie flung the door open. She had on a bright red sweater, and her blond hair was in a ponytail with a red velvet ribbon.

  “Aunt Archer! Hi! Merry Christmas! Hi, Hadley. And who are you?” Julie asked the fluffy black dog following Hadley.

  “Julie, Merry Christmas, darling,” said Archer. “That’s Alice. And that, coming up the path, is the human attached to Alice—his name’s Connor.” She pointed to Connor, who was slipping up the path with his pile of presents.

  Connor entered with a gust of cold air. Archer thought, if Wyoming were a person, this was what it would look like: crisp and clean and a little wild.

  “Hi,” he said, walking into the spacious front hall with its yellow floral print wallpaper. “You must be Julie. I’m Connor. Merry Christmas!”

  Sharon speeded from the kitchen to greet Archer. She had a white and red checked apron over black corduroy pants and a bright yellow turtleneck sweater.

  “Hi! Hey, Arch, how were the roads? Merry Christmas, baby sister.” She spied Connor. “Oh, hi, I’m Sharon.”

  “Hi! Connor McCall, a friend of Archer’s.”

  Sharon and Connor shook hands and smiled. Sharon looked at Archer, her eyes curious, and then said, “Can I get you a drink, Connor?”

  “Oh, just some soda would be fine, thanks,” he replied, hunkering down in the living room to put the presents under the tree. The fireplace was crackling merrily, and the room looked festive. After placing the gifts in piles, he moved to the back of the house, where voices were chattering gaily.

  “Arch, who is that?” Sharon whispered once they were in the family room away from the men. “You never mentioned anyone. What gives?”

  “He’s cute. He looks like a cowboy,” said Julie, giggling conspiratorially.

  “He is kind of a cowboy, actually. He owns the three hundred acres next to me, and we met last fall when he came here from Wyoming to check it out. We’ve become good friends over the months, and he has no family, so I thought he’d have some fun here.”

  “Is this like a romance or something?” said Sharon, obviously excited.

  Archer squirmed. “Shar, don’t get carried away. We met. We get along well and have become good friends. If there are further developments, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Hey, Shar, help!” yelled Ted from the kitchen. “Should I put the meat in now or wait another fifteen minutes?”

  Sharon rolled her eyes. “He can manage forty patients in the ER, but a simple meal overwhelms him.”

  Sharon, Julie, and Archer all moved into the kitchen. Connor and Ted were chatting about Ted’s recent effort to form a consortium with other doctors for a complete interactive referral system. Connor already had sketched Ted a business plan, marketing options, and sales projections on a long white pad.

  “Hey, Archer, this guy is more than a cowboy—he knows a lot of business stuff,” said Ted, leaning on the granite countertop, sipping eggnog, fascinated with the diagram Connor had made.

  “Yeah, well, that’s what Harvard Business School does to you,” said Archer. You can never shake that stuff even when you try to bury it in sheepskins.”

  Ted and Sharon looked puzzled, but they smiled. Connor, seeing their bewilderment, quickly explained the sheep reference. Julie and David thought it was simply too cool for words.

  From there, the late afternoon and evening swung along. The roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and salad were delicious. Archer was sparkling and talkative.

  “So, what I want to know, Sharon, said Connor, over coffee and apple pie, “is if anyone ever called Archer ‘Archie.’”

  “Ha! No one who lived to tell the tale!” Archer broke in.

  “Actually, no one ever did,” Sharon said. “She was always just Archer, or Arch. Daddy sometimes called her Scout—you know, after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird—but that’s about it. She was scary even as a kid. No one messed with her.”

  “I believe that.”

  As evening grew late, Connor and Archer got up to say their good-byes, and Sharon packed some dessert for them. Archer gave Julie and David a hug, and both kids hugged the two dogs.

  “I love Alice and Hadley,” declared Julie. “Mom, can we get a dog?”

  “Honey, you know we’re out sometimes for twelve hours, and it’s not fair to the dog. Archer, honey, you be careful going home. Call me over the weekend. Connor, I am so glad to meet you! Please come back.”

  Archer turned to her niece and nephew and said, “Now, you guys come and see us soon. We’ll take a walk in the woods and watch movies with the girls. I love you guys,” she said, waving good-bye.

  Connor shook hands with Ted, gave Sharon a kiss on the cheek, and hugged each of the kids. He took Archer’s arm in a proprietary gesture and guided her down the snowy path to the car. Connor opened the door for Archer, opened the back of the Jeep for the dogs, and then got into the driver’s seat. He looked over at Archer. She was smiling at him.

  “See, it went fine,” she said, a smug grin on her face.

  “Okay, smarty-pants, I liked your family,” replied Connor. “Hey, what can I say? It worked.”

  CHAPTER 24

  January was cold but mostly sunny. There was little snow, and Connor and Archer could run or hike most days. Connor spent most afternoons during the week working on an article about Rambouillet sheep for Agricultural Digest. He had outlined most of it but needed a library to check a few facts and beef up—or rather “sheep up,” as Archer suggested—some of his references. They planned a trip to a college library, then lunch.

  One afternoon at the end of January, while Connor was in town picking up the mail, Archer sat by the fire reading. She turned the book over on her lap and leaned her head on the high-backed chair. Until a few months ago, she had only enough energy to get through the day—no more, no less. Now she had more. At times she felt almost restless. She rarely drank to get to sleep anymore, and she awoke clear-headed and almost, well . . . cheerful. “Honor Annie; don’t just grieve her,” Connor had said.

  What would Annie be like now? she wondered. She would be eighteen this coming May. Daydreaming was a luxury Archer rarely allowed herself—too much potential for taking that path back downward to serious depression. Still, she wondered. Would they have had one those tense mother-daughter relationships, like the one she and her mother had had, with doors slamming, recriminations flying, miscommunication at best, no communication at worst? Somehow, she doubted it.

  With Annie, the tight connection had been there early, although not, as some mothers claimed,
the moment she laid eyes on her bawling baby girl. Archer’s first sight of Annie came after twenty-two hours of labor. Beyond being utterly wrung out, she had been woozily pleased, but that was about all.

  It was what came afterward that cemented the bond: Annie’s squeals and upraised arms when her mother came through the door at night; those stubby legs sticking out as she sat, enraptured, high up on the aging Clique, the horse trotting gently, keeping safe the little girl entrusted to him; Annie beaming out at her and Adam, stumbling over the word “incense” in the church pageant, her hair plaited in uneven, almost horizontal braids she had insisted on making herself. It was all those little vignettes, each one barely a blip at the time, that had grown into a ferocious, roaring love unlike anything Archer had ever known before or ever would again.

  Archer got up and went over to the kitchen counter. She opened a drawer and grabbed her PDA. Tapping her way to her subfolder on lawyers, she moved to the “C’s” and found it: Rachel Cohen, 555-278-3303.

  She dialed the number, her fingers drumming on the counter. It was Thursday, and most family lawyers, unless they had a trial, were in their offices.

  “Good afternoon, Center for Child Advocacy.”

  “Attorney Cohen, please.”

  “Attorney Cohen is on the other line—oh . . . she just hung up. May I say who’s calling?”

  “Uh, yes—Archer Loh.”

  On hold, Archer waited. Rachel was one of the best people she knew. A fine lawyer who, by choice, remained with the Center for Child Advocacy, she was underpaid and underappreciated. She worked diligently, head down, to improve the lot of children whose parents were in the midst of divorce. Rachel was fifty years old, with long, curly gray hair that she usually wore in a wiry halo around her head or, when she went to court, wrapped in a tight, tidy bun. Undeterred by the judges who had no understanding of her mission, and buoyed by those who did, Rachel approached life with spirit, a sense of humor, and an unsentimental love of kids. She and Archer had started at Legal Aid together, but Rachel had stayed in the nonprofit sector long after Archer switched to the big-income cases of private practice.