This Christmas (21 page)

I vowed that I would avoid arguing with Isaac for the rest of the trip. No matter what happened.

“Isaac’s just been cranky lately because he broke up with his girlfriend,” I said.

“Over a month ago,” Jason reminded me.

I tilted my head. “How did you know?”

“You told me.”

“I did?”

“Our first date, remember?” To prove it, he said, “Helen.”

Good heavens. He really did have a good memory. “I can’t believe I wasted part of our first date talking about Isaac’s love problems.”

He laughed. “Why not? We had to talk about something. A flaky songwriter is as good a subject as any.”

I blinked. I had forgotten Helen was a songwriter. She had aspirations of being the next Alanis Morissette. She had made a CD of her songs (accompanied by herself on guitar) that she had titled “Inspirations.”

Poor Isaac!

Just as we were finishing up, Isaac came out carrying a cup of coffee and a big bag of Funyons. (Funyons and Bugles were our favorite road food, but no way was I eating a Funyon in front of Jason.)

“Hey, do your nieces have
Frosty the Snowman?
” Isaac asked me. “The gas station has copies for three ninety-nine when you fill up.”

“Three ninety-nine? I can barely stand to watch it for free.” Though of course I always did. Every year. I cry during that one, too, but of the big Christmas specials—the Grinch, Rudolph, Peanuts, Frosty—it comes in a distant fourth. “Jimmy Durante’s always rubbed me the wrong way.”

All the creases fell out of Isaac’s face. He looked perplexed. “What’s Jimmy Durante got to do with
Frosty the Snowman?
”

Was he kidding? “He’s the narrator. He even sings the song.”

“No he doesn’t. Burl Ives does.”

“No, it’s Jimmy Durante,” I said, remembering too late that I wasn’t supposed to argue with Isaac. Anyway, there are some things you just can’t let pass. “Burl Ives sings ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’”

“Right. He’s in
Frosty
, too. He’s the snowman.”

Isaac could be so wrong. So mulishly wrong. (Like he was about Charles Dickens.) “
No
, Burl Ives is a snowman in Rudolph, but he’s not Frosty the Snowman. He’s not in
Frosty the Snowman
at all. He has nothing to do with it.”

“Well, I
know
Jimmy Durante isn’t Frosty the Snowman,” Isaac said.

How on earth did I get into this? “I never said he was! He just sings the song.”

I sent Jason a look of exasperation and discovered to my dismay that he was staring at both of us with cool detachment.
See?
His gaze seemed to say.
You argue
.

Damn.

Isaac eyed me with playful contempt and pity. “It’s just tragic when someone thinks they’re right and they’re not.”

By now I felt like hopping up and down and screeching at him.

“Um, kids?” Jason asked. He apparently wasn’t used to people coming to blows over trivia, and now he was staring at us as if we had both lost our minds.
This
was just what I had been worried about when Isaac told me he wanted to come along. “Shouldn’t we get back on the road?”

“Of course,” I said.

The minute Jason’s back was turned, I gave Isaac a swift kick.

“It was Burl Ives,”
he mouthed.

Back in the car, Isaac put in his
Bonanza
cast CD, and we were treated to Lorne Greene singing “Home for the Holidays.”

“So what’s the nocturnal setup chez Ellis while you two are there?” Isaac asked.

Jason and I shifted stiffly in our bucket seats.

“My parents have a guest room,” I reminded Isaac. He knew this.

“Doesn’t Maddie’s fiancé always stay in that room?”

“This year he can sleep on the couch,” I said.

“I thought the nieces slept on the couch.”

I decided that Isaac knew an unseemly amount about my family and its sleeping arrangements.

“Maddie’s fiancé?” Jason asked, confused. “How long have they been engaged?”

I bit my lip. I hadn’t told him that my sister was a serial bride to be. I didn’t want him to think I had compulsive engagement disorder in my genes.

“Maddie brings her boyfriends home every year. She calls them fiancés. I have no idea who will pop up this year on her arm—not that it matters. I assure you we’ll never see the guy again.”

“Disposable fiancés.” Isaac chomped down on a Funyon. “The ultimate convenience.”

“That sounds…quirky…” Jason did not seem amused.

“That’s just Maddie,” I said, on the defensive now. How is it that your family can drive you absolutely nuts, but the moment someone else sounds the least bit critical, blood instantly becomes thicker than water? That’s how I was, especially with Maddie. I guess a person always feels protective of their next youngest sibling. Even when that sibling never had an honest trouble in her life to be protected from.

Isaac returned to the top of his script. “Still, with that many people in the house, things are bound to get mighty interesting. Especially at night.”

“What do you mean?” Jason asked.

Glancing in the vanity mirror, I could see Isaac smiling impishly. “You know, little feet going pitter patter after the elder Ellises have gone to bed.” And he obviously didn’t mean the little feet would belong to my nieces. “I bet that house will just be rife with Christmas canoodling.”

Jason laughed good-naturedly. I might have let out a halfhearted chuckle. True, I had my lingerie stash and plenty of holiday hope. But after Jason had waited a month for the perfect moment, I also reserved a little skepticism that our magic moment would arrive in my twin bed in my old room, which still had remnants of my teenage life strewn about. Back when I was fifteen I was obsessed with the movie
The Last of the Mohicans
. My prized possession from those days was the giant movie poster, picturing Daniel Day-Lewis running toward the camera. He was such a babe—that chest, those thighs bulging against his buckskins, that flowing hair! The poster was still there, the focal point of the room. Did we really want to consummate our love with Natty Bumppo staring down at us?

Isaac poked me on the shoulder. “Don’t tell me
you
haven’t thought about this!”

I cleared my throat. “I…uh…no.”

He laughed. “Liar.”

My face was beet red. Couldn’t he drop it?

“I promised Holly I would be a perfect gentleman,” Jason said.

I turned in shock. He had not!

Isaac asked in amazement, “You did?”

Jason nodded, then winked at me. “As always.”

I tossed a glare at the backseat. But that wink confused me. Did Jason mean he really was going to be a gentleman (drat!) or did he mean he was lying to Isaac?

Isaac looked nonplussed, and for a while there was just the sound of Lorne Greene and Isaac munching thoughtfully on his Funyons.

I was hoping that would be the end of the discussion, but I should have known better.

“You mean you two have never…?” Isaac let the question dangle.

“No,” we bit out in unison.

Isaac laughed.
Laughed
. “No wonder Holly’s been acting so crazed!”

Jason’s head snapped around to inspect me. “Crazed?”

I tossed up my hands. “I’ve been
happy
,” I said, turning on Isaac. He was grinning like a demon elf. “And don’t go criticizing me, Mr. Wiseguy. You’ve got your moods. Ever since the Helen breakup you’ve just been moping around and snapping my head off for no reason.”

Since before Thanksgiving he’d been crabby. For as long as Jason and I had been going out, I had barely been able to talk to Isaac without having an argument.

“I’ve had reason,” Isaac said.

“Well, for God’s sake,” I said, rolling me eyes, “don’t be so mysterious. Are you sick? Have you…?”

My mouth clamped shut. Blood drained out of my face.

For as long as Jason and I had been going out.

But that couldn’t be…could it?

Isaac held my gaze in the vanity mirror for a second longer before biting into another chip. “A psychological holiday slump,” he explained.

“Ah,” Jason said.

My brain reeled for a moment. Was Isaac purposefully messing with my head? Or maybe I was leaping to the wrong conclusion.

But since when did he fall prey to holiday depression?

He smiled at me in the mirror. “Haven’t you ever heard of those fabled Hanukkah blues?”

He
was
messing with my head. I suddenly lost patience with both him and the cast of
Bonanza
. With a sharp jab, I ejected Isaac’s CD and found an oldies radio station. It was playing “Frosty the Snowman.”

And the singer was Burl Ives.

Dumbstruck, I stared at the radio knobs. This was
so wrong!

I could feel Isaac’s triumphant smile beaming from the backseat. “Told you,” he said.

“It was Jimmy Durante in the television show,” I insisted.
Was I going crazy?
I appealed to Jason. “You believe me, don’t you?”

He appeared hesitant to venture into the argument. “Is it worth ruining a friendship over?”

“Absolutely!”
Isaac and I chimed in unison.

Then we burst out laughing.

“I know you’re in a hurry to get to your Frank Capra Christmas,” Isaac told me as he was climbing out of the backseat when we dropped him off. “So I won’t ask you in.”

I shivered in the cold, waiting for him to grab his bag so I could get back in the car. This was the trouble with a two-door. “You’ll come by the house? Everybody will want to see you.”

“Maybe tomorrow,” he said, playing hard to get all of a sudden. Then he leaned in the car and thanked Jason again for the ride.

“Call me!” I jumped back in, glad to be back in the warmth.

Jason idled the motor while we watched Isaac trudge up to his front door. I wondered if Isaac felt a little melancholy to be back at his parents’ house, alone again. His folks nagged him about his life as much as mine did. A strong tug of camaraderie welled up inside me, of loyalty toward Isaac and all those adults returning solo to the nest this year, even though I’d hit it lucky.

“Great guy,” Jason said.

“Mm.”

It suddenly occurred to me that Jason had never said anything bad about anybody in my hearing. He liked everybody…which was sort of puzzling. I mean, yes, he liked me. But what did it mean to be liked by someone who never met a person he
didn’t
like?

And I had to wonder…what kind of person couldn’t remember one thing he wanted and didn’t get?

As we drove through my old neighborhood I got fired up again, pointing out landmarks of my illustrious past.
My high school! Bungalow Billiards! My best friend from seventh grade Stacy Sheinman’s house!
But when we pulled up into the driveway of my parents’ place, I felt a stab of disappointment. And bewilderment. Of course it was daylight, so the fact that there were no outside lights on was not at all surprising. But I didn’t see any evidence of decoration. The house looked naked. There were no wire reindeer on the roof. The mailbox and the lampposts didn’t have bows on them. And where was the giant inflatable polar bear?

Most years when I come down, Mom and Dad and whoever else is already there come pouring out the front door before I can cut off my engine. But as we sat staring up at the white Cape Cod façade, the door remained firmly shut.

“Well, let’s get a move on,” Jason said, rousing me out of my inertia. “Time for me to face the inspection crew.”

That thought—my folks inspecting Jason, and their inevitable fawning approval—was enough to put a spring in my step as I hurried up the walkway.

“Hey,” Jason called from behind. “Shouldn’t we empty the car?”

I waved him forward. “Dad and Ted and everybody will give us a hand with that in a couple of minutes.”

His smile conveyed that this sounded like a good deal to him, and he hurried up to my side. The day had barely warmed up at all from the freezing temperature of the morning. The wind had died down since our stop in Jersey, but the world felt icy and still. There wasn’t much traffic on the street, but it was still a day before Christmas Eve, so there were probably a lot of people who were at work.

My brother’s SUV was in the driveway, though, which meant that all his gang was here.

When no one appeared in answer to the doorbell, I dropped the heavy brass acorn knocker against the door. The resulting sound seemed to echo through the neighborhood; every neighbor for blocks around would now know I had returned. But the jarring sound had no effect where we were. “That’s weird,” I said.

“That there’s no one home?” Jason asked.

That, too. But what had me really rattled was the fact that there was no wreath on the door. Had we entered some Twilight Zone where Christmas as I knew it no longer existed?

Before I could voice this troubling theory, the door’s deadbolt slid abruptly, the door swung open, and there stood Ted.

Except he didn’t look like Ted. My brother’s squared jaw, usually so smooth he could have been a Gillette spokesman, was unshaven; his hair was squashed on one side in a bad case of bed head; and his eyes were so bloodshot that the blue irises seemed almost to be glowing dully in their pools of red. He didn’t smile when he saw me. In fact, for a moment his expressionless eyes didn’t seem to recognize me. It was as if Lurch from The Addams Family had opened the door for us.

Lurch, hungover.

“Ted?”

“Oh, hi,” he said. A few seconds later the stench of his breath reached me. It was ninety proof. I looked down at his right hand, which was clutching a bottle of Jim Beam, three quarters full. He wasn’t hungover at all—he was still tanking up.

My voice wobbled as I introduced Jason. Ted was forced to switch the Jim Beam to his left hand so they could shake. “Hey,” he said, completely without enthusiasm.

Jason, of course, had no way to know this was very odd behavior coming from my brother. For all he knew, Ted
always
looked like Nicolas Cage in
Leaving Las Vegas
.

“Where are those nieces of mine?” I asked, in that geeked-up way people use when they’re trying to inject cheer into a morbid ambience.

Ted sagged against the doorjamb and his bloodshot eyes puddled with moisture. Apparently I had asked the wrong question. “They’re not”—his shoulders convulsed—
“coming.”

“Not coming?” I repeated, stupidly. “Where are they?”

“With…
Melinda!
” His wife’s name came out on a sob.

“But how can that be?” Ted and Melinda were such a perfect couple. They always seemed to be in perfect mental lockstep.

Ted unscrewed the top from the Jim Beam and took a swig. “She left me, Holly. She just loaded up the girls in the Escalade and drove off.”

“Oh, Ted! I’m so sorry!”

I reached out to touch his arm, but he recoiled. “She said she’d been unhappy for years.
Years
. Said I was domineering.”

I shook my head. Oh, lordy. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

“And that I was
patronizing
. How could she say such a thing?” Before I could answer, he shouted, “And where the hell did she learn to throw around words like that? Not at that gym she used to work at, that’s for damn sure!” His bleary eyes started scanning the street behind me, as if Melinda might be hiding behind a bush out there somewhere.
“Little miss aerobics instructor wasn’t tossing around ten-dollar words back before I found her!”

“Ted.”
I grabbed his arm and tugged him inside, shutting the door behind us. Then I remembered Jason. I flung the door open again. “Sorry!” I said.

He held up a hand to indicate he understood. “Maybe I should go get the bags.”

You mean you still want to stay?
I didn’t actually ask the question, but it must have been clear in my eyes. Jason smiled reassuringly. I could have thrown myself into his arms and kissed him.

But then I heard a crash behind me and whirled to discover that Ted had disappeared.
Where were Mom and Dad?
Did they know that their son was stumbling around their house in an alcoholic stupor?

I found him in his old room on the first floor, lying on the lower bunk, where Schuyler usually slept now. The room still had a striking sports motif, including posters of Larry Bird and Pete Sampras. “The girls probably hated staying in this room,” he said, in a raw, choked voice as he looked up at Larry and Pete. “I should have given Mom money to have it redone for them. At least to get new sheets without footballs on them.”

“We could still do that,” I said. “It’s not as if Schuyler and Amanda won’t visit their grandparents anymore.”

My brother emitted a low moan.

“And this is just temporary, I’m sure!” I added quickly. “All couples have problems sooner or later.”

“Not like this. She just went berserk, Holly. One minute we were having this great family evening—a Kodak moment, trimming the tree. The girls were singing along with that Chipmunks song, and Melinda seemed fine, and then I just happened to mention that I didn’t think she should use this tinsel she had bought that afternoon. We’d always used garlands on the tree before. Tinsel gets everywhere—makes a mess, really—and what if Amanda swallowed it?”

I frowned. “Why would Amanda eat tinsel?”

“
Because she’s a child
, Holly. You just don’t understand about children. You have to be careful around them.”

“But Amanda’s almost six.”

For a moment I feared I was going to be clubbed upside the head with a Jim Beam bottle.

I held up my hands in surrender, remembering whose side I was supposed to be on. “So…what happened?”

“She told me that I was being alarmist, and that she was tired of garlands. Said she thought garlands were stodgy. And I told her that stodgy was better than foolish any damn day of the week.”

“Wait,” I said, interrupting. “You mean this entire argument was over garlands versus tinsel?”

“
On the surface
it was an argument about garlands versus tinsel, but it went deeper than that, believe you me! The things she said in anger I just can’t forget.”

I suspected Ted threw a few choice words back at Melinda, too. “Still…that doesn’t sound
too
terrible,” I said. “What makes you think you can’t work it out?”

He looked at me, stunned. “After the things she said to me?”

“Patronizing? Well come on, Ted, you do like to have your way.”

“Actually, she called me a patronizing son of a bitch.”

“Oh, well…”

“And that was some of the nicer language.”

Truly, I couldn’t imagine Melinda in a screaming fight with anyone. She was the type of woman who would apologize for saying
damn
. Even if she had just suffered a third-degree burn she would say something like,
“Dang! That stove is hot!”

“Where is she now?” I asked.

“At her parents’.”

“Well, then. There’s still hope.”

“What makes you think that?”

“How long would
you
want to live with Melinda’s mother?”

My mother-in-law joke failed to squeeze a chuckle out of him. He remained gloomy, lying on the bed and clutching his bottle of whiskey like a corpse holding lilies. “I’d do anything to get her back.”

“Have you tried?”

“What?”

“To get her back.”

“How?”

“Well, for instance—and this is just a suggestion, mind you—but you could, maybe, apologize.”

He bolted upright. “What for?”

“For insulting her tinsel—or whatever you two were fighting about.”

“Hell, no, I won’t apologize! Why should I apologize for being right?”

“Ted…”

“Go away, Holly. I need to be alone.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. “You’re a mess. You’re drunk.”

“And I intend to be a lot more drunk before the day’s over.”

Oh, God. I didn’t know what to do. I had never seen Ted less than perfectly composed. Usually he was the life of the party, making eggnog for everybody and giving the girls piggyback rides around the house. I’d never witnessed a total Ted meltdown.

“Where are Mom and Dad?” I asked, in growing desperation.

“Dunno. Out. Maybe to a faculty party or something.”

I couldn’t believe they would leave Ted in this shape. Of course, maybe Ted hadn’t been in such bad condition when they left. Still, it was hard to fathom that they would be gone when they knew I was going to be home today, and bringing a friend. Mom was usually very conscientious about providing a welcome wagon for people.

I left Ted in the lower bunk and skulked out to find Jason…if he hadn’t already turned around and headed back to New York.

As I padded around looking for him, I got a strange feeling. Not that there was anything too amiss in the house. It was spotless. But that was part of the trouble, I realized. There was none of the typical holiday chaos. No messy table full of Christmas cards propped up in an impromptu display. No hastily abandoned wrapping projects in evidence, or even boughs of holly or pine decorating every available surface, as there usually was. Outside of a troublingly symmetrical and smallish tree in the living room, there was no evidence that it was Christmas at all.

Mom hadn’t decorated,
I realized with growing hysteria as I hurried from room to room. Where were the snow villages, the angel choir, the monks? What happened to all the walnut people? I skidded underneath the archway leading to the living room and gasped.

“What’s the matter?” Jason asked.

“No mistletoe!” By this time, I was almost yelling.

Jason narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“There’s
always
a sprig of mistletoe
right here
,” I insisted, jabbing my finger at the spot. There was even a little hole in the plaster where it was usually nailed in.

How was Jason supposed to kiss me underneath the mistletoe if the damn mistletoe wasn’t there?

What the hell was going on here?

“Are you okay?” Jason said, approaching me cautiously.

I admit I was breathing hard. And then I pivoted for another look at that tree, and I almost started hyperventilating. The reason the tree looked so fake was because it
was
fake! Mother had put up a dinky artificial tree. That’s why there was no scent of pine in the house. No vexing trail of Douglas fir needles trailing across the living room carpet. That’s why the house seemed so uninviting, so sterile, so
not
Norman Rockwell.

“Holly, I think you need to sit down,” Jason said.

“It’s not usually like this,” I breathed, still not quite trusting my eyes.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“This place is usually decorated within an inch of its life. And I promised you this big traditional Christmas. Mom didn’t even put up a real tree!”

Jason whirled. “Oh, I hadn’t noticed.”

How could he not have noticed? The tree wasn’t even a good fake. “She might as well have bought one of those aluminum things.”

“I
like
those aluminum things.” As I eyeballed the room in a glazed stupor, Jason put a bracing arm around my shoulders. “What about that eggnog you promised me?”

I thought about the frothy, nutmeggy concoction usually served up about this time, prepared by Ted. Then I thought about my brother all liquored up in his old bunkbed. Something told me there wasn’t a bowl of homemade eggnog waiting for us in the fridge. “Ted’s the eggnog maker, but in the condition he’s in…”