This Christmas (19 page)

She sounded so proud, too. As if she had achieved the impossible.

I repeat, I was twenty-five at the time. Twenty-five. Though I’m not sure I would have been happy to hear those words at fifteen, or any age. Especially when followed by her next sentence.

“I’m sure you’ve heard me talk about Leona Millstein…”

For a moment I had a vision of Mom trying to set me up with Leona Millstein. “I know I’ve been unlucky in love, Mom, but I haven’t decided to change my sexual orientation just yet.”

My mother clucked at me angrily. “Leona has a
son
, Miss Smarty Pants. And he lives in New York—Brooklyn, just like you!”

“What a coincidence.”

Despite my lack of enthusiasm, Mom was full steam ahead. “And guess what?”

“What?”

“He’s a high school teacher!” She giggled. “He teaches chemistry.”

“What’s so funny about that?”

“Nothing,” Mom said, switching into that carefully exaggerated tone that always heralded a joke was on the way. “Except that I was thinking that if you’re lucky, you two will go out and learn something about
chemistry
yourselves.”

A cold shiver went through me.
Chemistry with Mr. Millstein
. How was I going to get out of this?

Luckily, I didn’t have to. Leona Millstein’s darling boy called me the very next evening and immediately put me at ease. “This is the call you’ve probably been dreading,” he announced.

His dutiful long-suffering tone touched just the right chord. I laughed.

“My mother has the big idea that since we’re both from Virginia, and you’re living in Brooklyn and I’m living in Brooklyn—”

“And
you’re
a teacher and
I’m
a teacher,” I added.

His deep chuckle rumbled over the wire. “Yours too?”

“I tried to tell Mom that two teachers do not a great relationship make.”

“Right. More like the opposite. What would two teachers talk about all the time? School. Two people griping about school wouldn’t go over so swell at parties.”

“A social Titanic,” I said.

We discovered that Isaac lived one F train stop up from me on the yuppie corridor. And though neither of us harbored any intention of making our mothers giddy with happiness, who doesn’t need another person to have coffee with?

And that’s how it went for three years. A couple of times a week, we’d meet up on Court Street for coffee, or to go to the bookstore, where we both spent more of our paychecks than we should have, or to splurge on a great Italian meal in Carroll Gardens. When Isaac was so sick he couldn’t drag himself out of bed, I showed up at his apartment to heat up cans of Progresso soup for him. During the last blizzard, he slid down to my place with bags of Chinese takeout.

We had a lot more than just school in common. We both loved books and movies, armchair traveling, and food. Centering a weekend around going to a place in Park Slope that deep-fried Snickers bars seemed normal to us. We could spend entire days just strolling around New York looking in shop windows, poking around Russian grocery stores in Brighton Beach, or people watching in Prospect Park.

Did we ever feel that spark of chemistry that my mom had so hoped for? For my part, I have to admit, yes. Sometimes. It would be hard not to be sort of attracted to Isaac. He’s six feet tall and has big brown eyes and laughs at my jokes. And he’s one of those people who can’t hide anything. When he’s sad, every facial feature below his beetled brows sags. When he’s happy, the whole world knows it by the lift in his puppy-like demeanor. He’ll start swing dancing with you on Flatbush Avenue, or anywhere else. Even if you don’t know a fox-trot from a rumba. (He doesn’t, either.)

Every time he was in between girlfriends, which was often, I could feel a little tug. I wouldn’t have called Isaac great looking—he was too much of an inveterate waffle fan and too gym-o-phobic to have a bodybuilder physique. But he was one of those guys you might meet at a party when you’re alone and think, “He’d be fun to go out with.” At moments, it struck me that it would have been so easy for one of us to lean over our favorite wobbly coffee shop table and change everything.

Too easy. And what would we be trading? A fun but volatile friendship for what would have to be a doomed romance. That was the trouble with Isaac and me. We fought all the time, always over silly stuff. The fried Snickers bar episode? It actually caused an entire day of friction, because while we were eating it, Isaac happened to mention that he didn’t like Charles Dickens. (Sacrilege!) Another time we didn’t speak for two weeks after a particularly hard-fought game of Silver Screen Trivial Pursuit. Occasionally the only thing that kept us talking at all was the fact that we had our own apartments to withdraw to for a cooling-off period, like boxers retreating to their corners.

But no matter what, every Christmas for three years we went home together. Isaac is Jewish, but he always takes the Christmas school break to visit his folks. And I had a car, a sputtering old dented Ford that hadn’t seen a hubcap since the week after I moved to Brooklyn. Mostly it existed to keep me panicked about finding parking spaces for it…and to take Isaac and me home.

Last year, however, when the subject of going home came up, I hedged. Isaac and I were at our favorite coffee place, the one equidistant from both our apartments. “So what day should we blast off?” he asked.

“Hm?” I lifted my teeny espresso cup to my lips. I like espresso because it gives a sort of absurd illusion of daintiness. Like grown-ups playing with children’s tea sets. “You mean, for Christmas?”

“Sure, what else?”

“Oh.”

His smile flatlined. “You mean you’re not going home this year?”

“Of course I am.”

“Well then?”

“Jason’s driving me down,” I admitted, guilt-ridden. But why? It wasn’t as if Isaac and I had signed a holiday travel contract that said
Wither thou drives
t…It was nonsense.

Except, of course, that Isaac was gaping at me as if I had just plunged a dagger into his chest.

After a stunned moment, he lowered his coffee mug onto the waxy tabletop. In an instant, the hurt in those dark eyes changed to challenge. “Doesn’t Jason’s car have a backseat?”

“It’s a fairly small car. A two-door Saab convertible.” I sighed. “Anyway, you can’t expect me to ask my boyfriend, my brand-spanking-new boyfriend, to take passengers…”

“Why not?”

I wasn’t going anywhere near that question. Jason had only met Isaac in passing, and the two had not seemed that impressed with each other. Naturally. Isaac was Jason’s polar opposite. Whereas Jason represented an up-by-his-bootstraps go-getter, Isaac was a coaster. Jason lived to get ahead, and it showed in everything he did—the well-reviewed restaurants he chose, the conservative suits he wore, the long hours he logged at the office. Isaac didn’t give a hoot what people thought of him. He wore the same cords and baggy sweaters whether he was at work or at home. I bet he even wore them on dates (yet another reason we would never fall in love). Jason was one of those guys who try to turn every conversation into a positive gain. Isaac and I spent half our time arguing—over politics, or whether we would rather vacation in Thailand or Italy (not that either of us had money to go to either place), or the latest celebrity trial, or what should happen in the next episode of
Desperate Housewives
.

In other words, Isaac was exactly like me. Eerily like me. (Only frequently irritating, which, of course, I never was.) The catch was, I don’t think Jason really realized who I was yet. I was still on my best early date behavior—always carefully made up, with my $200 haircut and clothes fresh from the cleaners. We hadn’t reached the sweatshirt Saturdays stage yet. We never argued. Our relationship was still a fragile thing, to be coddled and tended like a baby chick.

I wanted to give this relationship my best shot—which entailed showing Jason off to my perfect family and seducing him with a knockout blend of holiday wholesomeness and hoarded lingerie. My best shot did not include Jason being stuck in a car with Isaac and me, bickering.

Isaac tapped his fingers against his mug with impatience.

Each tap hit me like a pinprick of guilt. “Do
I
ever make you take me along on your dates?” I asked.

“That’s a false comparison. A drive home isn’t a date.”

“The whole weekend will be sort of an extended date,” I argued. “And the drive home is key. It’s the beginning. I don’t want anything to spoil the mood.”

“Oh, thanks,” he said. “I thought I was your friend, but now I learn I’m a mood spoiler.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Though, truthfully, I suppose it was. Isaac could be so emotional, so exasperating. He would back me into a corner like this, forcing me to say things that were better left unspoken. Then he would act wounded. “Anyway, the car will be filled with packages…”

His head snapped up as if he’d just discovered a fatal chink in my argument. “It doesn’t have a trunk?”

“A small one. It’s a Saab.”

He smirked. “I believe you dropped that brand name once in this conversation already.”

I was ready to bash him over the skull with the sugar dispenser. “I really want this to work out, Isaac. Really.”

He looked flabbergasted. “What—you think I would stand in the way of your happiness?”

“No…” Not purposefully, at least. “I just was imagining something more cozy.”

“You wouldn’t even know I was there, I swear.”

Right
. “No.”

“Please?”

“What is the big deal?” I asked. “There are other ways to get to Virginia. Planes, for instance. Planes are quick.”

“And expensive.”

I couldn’t argue with that. But I still wasn’t going to give in.

His body twisted into a curve and his face became an extravagant pout. “So you’re sloughing me off for Little Orphan Jason.”

“I’m not sloughing you off.”

“Breaking with time-honored tradition at the first sign of a heartthrob.”

“Well…wouldn’t you?”

He arched a brow at me. But note that he did not contradict me. “Does Jason know you’re a heartless bitch? Does he know that you’re the type of woman who would leave her lonely Jewish friend stranded on Christmas? Does he?”

I suddenly had an idea. I should have thought of it before. “Look, why don’t you take my car?”

Isaac recoiled, almost as if I had slapped him.

I couldn’t believe it. I was offering him my own car and he looked offended. “What?” I asked.

“You must
really
not want me along.”

“
Isaac
…”

“Listen, wouldn’t you rather have someone with you, in case things don’t go so great? What if you and Jason have nothing to talk about for three hours?”

“You think I’ll be struck dumb?”

“You should just think of me as your personal cruise director. I’ll be in the backseat, jollying you two along, making sure the ride goes smoothly.”

I lifted my eyes to meet his gaze. I still wasn’t convinced this was wise. And I doubted Jason would be thrilled at the idea of a backseat chaperone.

“Just ask him,” Isaac said. “Didn’t you say you were going to see him tomorrow?”

I bit my lip. “We’re going shopping.”

“You already went shopping. What is this, round two?”

“We have something specific in mind this time.”

His face went slack. And pale. “Oh my god. Is there something you haven’t told me? Is he buying you a ring?”

My cheeks heated up. I shouldn’t have said anything. “It’s not like that.”

“Well then, what?”

“It’s
nothing
.”

No way Isaac was letting this one go now. “How can it be nothing? It’s got to be something. Jewelry…”

“I said, it’s nothing like that.”

“Tropical fruit-flavored condoms?”

If only
. “For heaven’s sake. We’re just going to look for matching sweaters to wear at home.”

Isaac nearly fell out of his chair. “After all the times I’ve heard you rant about that sister of yours and her boyfriends doing dorky things like that!”

“It’s not dorky; it’s cute.”

He leveled a disbelieving look on me.

“Okay, it
is
dorky,” I admitted. “But that’s why I want to do it.”

“To rub Maddie’s face in your good fortune?”

Exactly.

“She probably won’t even notice,” I said. “You know how wrapped in herself and her own guys she gets.”

He snorted. “Her
fiancés
.”

My sister always called these men she brought home her fiancés. I could never be certain whether this was for the sake of my parents—who might feel more comfortable with their youngest dragging strange men home if she were engaged to them—or whether men actually tended to propose to her in time for the holidays, only to be shed later like an old winter coat. Isaac was always curious about Maddie. I half expected that he was just waiting for the day when she showed up for Christmas alone so he could sweep her off her feet himself.

“Okay,” he said, circling back to topic A. “So when you’re shopping, that would be the perfect time to ask Jason if he’s interested in a threesome.”

I crossed my arms.

He grinned. “I kid. A threesome in his car, I meant.”

I didn’t respond.

“Please?”

If you could have seen those eyes. They were like Saint Bernard eyes staring up at me. Expectant. Needy. I remembered suddenly that Isaac hadn’t been having such a great time lately. He had broken up with his last girlfriend, Helen, about the same time I met Jason. Even though Helen hadn’t seemed like all that great a catch to me, and I think they had only gone out for two months, tops, I didn’t need any reminding how long and lonely the Thanksgiving–New Year’s stretch could seem when you were dateless. And because of Jason, I hadn’t been spending as much time with Isaac as I usually did.

And here I was being…well, selfish. He was right about that. What kind of friend was I?

In any case, I was helpless against the raw pleading in those eyes. “Okay. I’ll ask.”

Jason couldn’t have been more thrilled. “Sure, why not?” he responded immediately to my question, which I had managed to choke out only after a belabored preamble of hemming and hawing. He didn’t show a moment’s hesitation. “The more the merrier!”