by Tom Perrotta
On some level, she understood that he’d danced with her out of pity. She was totally willing to admit that that was how it had started—a philanthropist and a charity case—but it had ended somewhere else entirely, her head on his shoulder, his arms wrapped tight around her, some kind of current running between their bodies, making her feel like a dead woman who’d been shocked back to life. And it wasn’t just her: She’d seen the look on his face when the lights came on, the tenderness and curiosity in his eyes, the way he kept holding her and shuffling his feet well after the music had stopped.
It was hard at first when he didn’t call—really hard—but a month is a long time, and she’d pretty much reconciled herself to the fact that it had all been a false alarm, at least until last week, when she’d passed him on her bike and everything got stirred up again. He was just standing there on Main Street with his punky-looking daughter at his side; all Nora had to do was squeeze the brakes, glide right up to them, and say, Hey, how’s it going? Then, at least, she would’ve been able to study his face, maybe get a clearer sense of what was going on. But she’d been a coward—she froze, forgot to hit the brakes, sped right past as if she were late for an appointment, as if she had someplace better to go than a house where the phone never rang and no one ever visited.
“Oh, look!” Karen said. They were cruising through the parking lot, trying to locate a space that wasn’t half a mile away from the entrance. She was pointing at a mother and daughter, the mom close to Nora’s age, the child maybe eight or nine, both of them wearing fuzzy reindeer antlers on their heads, the girl’s complete with blinking red lights. “Isn’t that adorable?”
* * *
TWO WHITE-CLAD Watchers were standing in front of the Macy’s entrance, along with a grizzled-looking guy ringing a bell for the Salvation Army. Out of politeness, Nora accepted a leaflet from one of the G.R. guys—Have you forgotten already? the cover inquired—then dropped it in a trash can conveniently situated just inside the door.
She felt a mini panic attack coming on as they passed the fragrance counter, a small animal’s sense of imminent danger. It was partly a reaction to the stench of a dozen different perfumes spritzed into the air by heavily made-up young women who seemed to think they were performing a public service, and partly a more general feeling of sensory overload brought on by the sudden onslaught of bright lights, bouncy music, and eager consumers. The blank-faced mannequins didn’t help, their paralyzed bodies decked out in the latest fashions.
It was easier to breathe once they entered the main concourse, with its high glass ceiling—the mall was built on three levels, with balconies on the upper two—and vast white floor, which reminded her of an old-fashioned train station. Beyond the central fountain, an enormous Christmas tree towered over a line of children waiting to meet Santa Claus, its angel-tipped peak rising past the first mezzanine. The tree reminded her of a ship in a bottle, so big you had to wonder how it got there.
Karen was a brutally efficient shopper, one of those people who always knows exactly what she’s looking for and where it can be found. She strode through the mall with an air of fierce concentration, eyes straight ahead, no aimless browsing or impulse buying. She was the same way in the supermarket, crossing off each item on her list with a red Sharpie, never passing the same spot twice.
“What do you think?” she asked, holding up an orange-and-blue-striped tie in the Big Guys Wearhouse. “Too bold?”
“For Chuck?”
“Who else?” She tossed the tie back onto the clearance table. “The boys never dress up.”
“Pretty soon they will. They’ll have proms and stuff, right?”
“I guess.” Karen plunged her hand back into the serpentine tangle of neckties. “They’ll have to start showering first.”
“They don’t shower?”
“They say they do. But their towels are always dry. Hmm.” She selected a more likely candidate, yellow diamonds on a field of green silk. “What do you think?”
“It’s nice.”
“I don’t know.” Karen frowned. “He’s got too many green ties as it is. He has too many ties, period. Whenever anybody asks what he wants for Christmas, he always says, Just a tie. A tie will be fine. So that’s what he gets. For birthdays and Father’s Day, too. And he always seems perfectly happy with them.” She released the tie, then glanced up at Nora. There was a sweet look on her face, affection and resignation and amusement all mixed together. “God, he’s so boring.”
“He’s not boring,” Nora said. “He’s just…”
She faltered, for lack of a better adjective.
“Boring,” Karen said again.
It was hard to argue with that. Chuck was a good provider, a solid, colorless guy who worked as a Quality Assurance Supervisor for Myriad Laboratories. He liked steak, Springsteen, and baseball, and had never once expressed an opinion that Nora had found remotely surprising. Always a dull moment with Chuck, Doug used to say. Of course, Doug was Mr. Unpredictable, charming and quirky, a new passion every month—Tito Puente and Bill Frisell, squash, libertarianism, Ethiopian food, sexy young women with lots of tattoos and a flair for fellatio.
“It’s the same with everything,” Karen said, examining a wide red tie with a mix of black pinstripes and wider silver stripes. “I try to get him to think outside the box, to wear a blue shirt with his gray suit, or God forbid a pink one, and he just looks at me like I’m crazy. You know what, let’s just stick with the white.”
“He likes what he likes,” Nora said. “He’s a creature of habit.”
Karen stepped away from the clearance table. Apparently the red one was a keeper.
“I guess I shouldn’t complain,” she said.
“No,” Nora agreed. “You really shouldn’t.”
* * *
ON HER way to the Food Court, Nora passed the Feel Better Store and decided to check it out. She still had twenty minutes to kill before she was supposed to rendezvous with Karen, who had slipped off for a little “private shopping time,” family code for I’m going to buy you a present and need you to get lost for a while.
Her heart was still racing when she stepped inside, her face hot with pride and embarrassment. She’d just forced herself to make a solo circuit of the big Christmas tree on the main level, where all the parents and kids were waiting to meet Santa Claus. It was another holiday challenge, an attempt to face her fear head-on, to break her shameful habit of avoiding the sight of small children whenever possible. That wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to be—shut down, defensive, giving a wide berth to anything that might remind her of what she’d lost. A similar logic had inspired her to apply for the day-care job last year, but that had been too much, too soon. This was more controlled, a one-time-only, bite-the-bullet sort of thing.
It actually went okay. The way it was set up, the kids lined up on the right, met Santa in the middle, then exited on the left. Nora approached from the exit side, walking briskly, like an ordinary shopper on her way to Nordstrom. Only one child passed, a stocky boy talking excitedly to his goateed father. Neither one of them paid the slightest attention to her. Behind them, up on the makeshift stage, an Asian boy in a dark suit was shaking hands with Santa.
The hard part came after she looped around the tree—there was a giant model train set running in a frantic circle around the trunk—and headed in the opposite direction, walking slowly along the entire length of the line, like a general reviewing her troops. The first thing she noticed was that morale was low. It was late; most of the kids looked dazed, ready to collapse. A few of the toddlers were crying or squirming in their parents’ arms, and some of the older kids seemed on the verge of making a break for the parking lot. The parents mostly looked grim, the invisible cartoon balloons above their heads filled with thoughts like, Stop your whining.… We’re almost there.… This is supposed to be fun.… You’re going to do this whether you like it or not! Nora remembered the feeling, had the pictures to prove it, both of her kids sitt
ing teary-eyed and forlorn in the lap of a defeated Santa.
There must have been thirty children in line, and only two of the boys reminded her of Jeremy, far fewer than she’d expected. There had been times in the past when almost any little boy could tear her heart out, but now she was pretty much okay as long as he wasn’t blond and very skinny with toy soldier spots on his cheeks. Just one girl made her think of Erin, and the resemblance wasn’t really physical—it was more something in her expression, a premature wisdom that seemed heartbreaking in such an innocent face. The girl—she was a thumb-sucking beauty with a wild tangle of dark hair—stared at Nora with such solemn curiosity that Nora stopped and stared right back, probably for a little too long.
“Can I help you?” her father asked, glancing up from his BlackBerry. He was around forty, gray-haired but fit-looking in a rumpled business suit.
“You have a lovely daughter,” Nora told him. “You should treasure her.”
The man placed his hand protectively on his daughter’s head.
“I do,” he replied a bit grudgingly.
“I’m happy for you,” Nora said. And then she walked away, before she had a chance to add anything that would upset him or ruin her own day, the way she had too many times in the past.
* * *
THE FEEL Better Store had an interesting motto—Everything You Need for the Rest of Your Life—but it turned out to be one of those yuppie emporia specializing in self-indulgent products for people who had way too much to begin with, things like heated slippers and bathroom scales that offered hearty personalized congratulations when you met your weight-loss goals and constructive personalized criticism when you didn’t. Even so, Nora made a long, slow journey through the interior, examining the hand-cranked emergency radios, programmable pillows, and noiseless nose-hair trimmers, appreciating the pleasantly austere environment—New Age soundscapes instead of Christmas carols—and the advanced age of the clientele. No beautiful little kids staring at you in the Feel Better Store, just middle-aged men and women nodding politely to one another as they loaded up on towel warmers and high-tech wine accessories.
She didn’t notice the chair until she was on her way out. It occupied its own dim corner of the showroom, an ordinary-looking brown leather recliner resting like a throne on a low, carpeted pedestal, bathed in the soft glow of an overhead light. She wandered over for a closer look and was startled to discover that it cost nearly ten thousand dollars.
“It’s worth it,” the salesman told her. He had sidled up and spoken before she even realized he was there. “That’s the best chair in the world.”
“It better be,” Nora said with a laugh.
The salesman nodded thoughtfully. He was a shaggy-haired, youngish guy in an expensive suit, the kind of suit you didn’t expect to see on someone who worked at the mall. He leaned forward, as if to tell her a secret.
“It’s a massage chair,” he said. “You like massages?”
Nora frowned—this was a complicated question. She used to love massages. She’d had a standing twice-a-month Integrative Bodywork appointment with Arno, a squat Austrian genius who worked out of the spa in her health club. An hour with him, and it didn’t matter what ailed her—PMS, bad knee, mediocre marriage—she felt reborn, able to meet the world with positive energy and an open heart. She’d tried going back to him about a year ago, but found that she could no longer stand to be touched so intimately.
“They’re okay,” she replied.
The salesman smiled and gestured toward the chair.
“Try it,” he said. “You can thank me later.”
* * *
NORA WAS alarmed at first, the way the headrest lurched so violently into motion, the hard rubber balls—or whatever they were—swirling up against the soft leather upholstery, digging into the knotty muscles surrounding her spine, grabby fingerlike devices pinching at her neck and shoulders. The vibrating seat cushion was undulating indecently, shooting warm, intermittent pulses of electricity into her butt and thighs. It was all too much until the salesman showed her how to work the control pad. She experimented with the settings—speed, temperature, intensity—until she hit upon the optimal combination, then cranked up the leg rest, closed her eyes, and surrendered.
“Pretty nice, huh?” the salesman observed.
“Mmmm,” Nora agreed.
“Bet you didn’t realize how tense you were. This is a stressful time of year.” When she didn’t reply, he added, “Take your time. Ten minutes of this and you’ll be as good as new.”
Whatever, Nora thought, too pleased by the chair to be irritated by the man’s presumption. It really was a remarkable piece of equipment, unlike anything she’d ever tried before. In a normal massage, what you experienced was a slightly alarming sense of being pressed down, your body flattening against the table, your face mashed into the hole, a powerful, if mostly benevolent, force manhandling you from above. This was just the opposite, all the energy surging from below, your body rising and softening, nothing holding you down but air.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the idea of a ten-thousand-dollar massage chair would have seemed obscene to her, a shameful form of self-indulgence. But really, when you thought about it, it wasn’t that high a price to pay for something so therapeutic, especially if you spread out the cost over ten or twenty years. In the end, a massage chair wasn’t all that different from a hot tub or a Rolex or a sports car, any of the other luxury items people bought to cheer themselves up, many of them more cheerful than Nora to begin with.
Besides, who would even know? Karen, maybe, but Karen wouldn’t care. She was always encouraging Nora to pamper herself, buy some new shoes or a piece of jewelry, take a cruise, spend a week at Canyon Ranch. Not to mention that Nora would let her sister use the chair anytime she wanted. They could make it a regular thing, a Wednesday-night massage date. And even if the neighbors did find out, what did Nora care? What were they gonna do, say mean things and hurt her feelings?
Good luck with that, she thought.
No, the only thing holding her back was the thought of what would happen if she actually owned the chair, if she could feel this good anytime she wanted. What would happen if there were no other customers milling around, no salesman hovering nearby, no Karen to meet in five or ten minutes? What if it were just Nora in an empty house, the whole night ahead of her, and no reason to hit the off switch?
THE BALZER METHOD
ON CHRISTMAS MORNING THEY WATCHED a PowerPoint presentation, the eighteen female residents of Blue House gathered in the chilly basement meeting room. That was how they did it for now, simultaneous showings in each house within the compound, as well as the various outposts scattered throughout town. There had been some talk within the Mapleton Chapter about the necessity of building or acquiring a structure large enough to accommodate the entire membership, but Laurie preferred it this way—more intimate and communal, less like a church. Organized religion had failed; the G.R. had nothing to gain by turning into a new one.
The lights went out and the first slide appeared on the wall, a photo of a wreath hanging on the door of a generic suburban house.
TODAY IS “CHRISTMAS.”
Laurie shot a quick sidelong glance at Meg, who still looked a bit shaky. They’d stayed up late the night before, working through Meg’s conflicted feelings about the holiday season, the way it made her miss her family and friends and question her commitment to her new life. She’d even found herself wishing that she’d waited to join the G.R., so she could have had one last Christmas with her loved ones, just for old times’ sake. Laurie told her it was natural to feel nostalgia at this time of year, that it was similar to the pain amputees felt in a phantom limb. The thing was gone, but it was still somehow a part of you, at least for a little while.
The second slide showed a shabby Christmas tree festooned with a few meager scraps of tinsel, lying by the curb on a bed of dirty snow, waiting for a garbage truck to cart it away.
“
CHRISTMAS” IS MEANINGLESS.
Meg sniffled softly, like a child trying to be brave. During last night’s Unburdening, she’d told Laurie about a vision she’d had when she was four or five years old. Unable to sleep on Christmas Eve, she’d tiptoed downstairs and seen a fat bearded man standing in front of her family’s tree, checking items off a list. He wasn’t wearing a red suit—it was more like a blue bus driver’s uniform—but she still recognized him as Santa Claus. She watched him for a while, then snuck back upstairs, her body filled with an ecstatic sense of wonder and confirmation. As a teenager, she convinced herself that the whole thing had been a dream, but it had seemed real at the time, so real that she reported it to her family the next morning as a simple fact. They still jokingly referred to it that way, as though it were a documented historical event—the Night Meg Saw Santa.
In the slide that followed, a group of young carolers stood in a semicircle, their mouths open, their eyes shining with joy.
WE WON’T JOIN THE CELEBRATION.
Laurie barely remembered her own childhood Christmases. Being a parent had obscured all that; what stuck in her memory was the excitement on the faces of her own kids, their contagious holiday pleasure. That was something Meg would never get to experience. Laurie assured her that it was okay to feel anger about that, and healthy to acknowledge and express her anger, much better than feeding it with denial.
The vow of silence forbade laughter as well as speech, but a few people forgot themselves and chuckled at the next slide, a house lit up like a Vegas bordello, the front yard crowded with random yuletide statuary—a nativity scene, a herd of reindeer, an inflatable Grinch, some elves and toy soldiers and angels and a plastic snowman, plus a sour, top-hatted fellow who must have been Ebenezer Scrooge.
“CHRISTMAS” IS A DISTRACTION. WE CAN NO LONGER AFFORD TO BE DISTRACTED.
Laurie had watched a lot of PowerPoints over the past six months, and had even helped to put a few of them together. They were an essential mode of communication within the G.R., a kind of portable, preacherless sermon. She understood the structure by now, knew that they always took a turn somewhere in the middle, away from the topic at hand to the only subject that really mattered.
