“Speaking of movies.” Hall slumps down the wall, head lolling from one shoulder to the other. I’ve never seen him so stressed. “How are you going to back up this ruse? This pretend movie you just invented?”
“Can’t you simply... make a movie? Make your hand go swishety-swish andbam!It’s on Netflix.My Eyre Ladies, starring Bettie Hughes and Kat Dennings. Produced by Hall... Andaise.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Because hollandaise is a sauce?”
“Because cinema is sacred to me.”
I sigh, preparing to make my case, but an open-handed slap on the door interrupts. My grandmother never knocks. She likes to hit doors as if they’ve just mistaken her for Jane Fonda (they’ve been in a bitter feud for three decades). “What are you doing in there?” Grandma demands, trying the door handle. Hall evaporates the boulder, I stuffLeon of Naplesback into its box, and we step far away from the door as my daunting grandmother (a beautiful and intimidating woman, five feet ten inches, somewhere between the ages of seventy and one hundred and four, her hair now in victory rolls) sweeps in. She likes to tell her granddaughters that older fashions are classier, as if none of us have seen posters of her enormous ’80s perm and spandex bodysuits.
“Isaid, what are you doing?” she repeats crisply, sizing up our blood pressures and temperatures with one sweep. “Are you searching for the necklace?”
“No?” Maybe now I am. “What necklace? How many carats does it have?”
“There is no necklace. Never you mind.” She analyzes me. “I thought you were taller.”
“I’m five seven.”
“Because you don’t drink enough water. Just look at that crepey skin around your eyes! We must take care of our face.” Before I can come up with a reply, she’s already twisting, heading back downstairs. “Follow me. No more lurking in my tower like weird little Rapunzels.”
Hall and I don’t dare argue. We trail a healthy distance from Grandma (the black lace train of her cloak is seven feet long), who leads us past a number of small bedrooms where my family members are busy unpacking their suitcases. Kaia gets the third floor to herself, thanks to the migraine-inducing incense she burns all hours of the day. “Barely have enough room for you all, and yet you continue reproducing,” she grumbles. “What is this, the Four Seasons?”
“We can stay at a hotel, if you want,” I offer, thinking this will be a great excuse to stay out of the house as much as possible, but Grandma holds up her bejeweled hand and snaps her fingers closed like a conductor quieting her orchestra.
“Where are your manners, child? Staying at a hotel is rude.”
Hall sneaks a glance at me, absolutely petrified. Clearly, he thought she’d be more like her spunky, pigtailed character from the olden-days sitcomHere Come the Warrens. Her role as Maggie Warren catapulted her to stardom, and her catchphrase was “You dare me to?” But if you say that to Grandma in real life, she locks you in the pantry and makes you listen through the door as she donates your inheritance to Scott Disick’s Patreon.
“Here you are,” Grandma barks, slamming a door wide open. The room is cramped, dim, with an odor of disuse. It comes with a single twin bed and one flat pillow. For comparison, Grandma has a temperature-controlled trophy room with four well-lit velvet stages that could each roomily support a hearse. Which one of them does. It’s filled with all the awards she got for her guest stint onCSI: Minneapolis.
“This is so small, though,” I hear myself whine, two seconds before I think better of it.
“Take it up with your older sister! If she and that man keep copulating, there’ll be kids coming out of the vents.” She brandishes her arms.
“I don’t have any kids,” I say haughtily, mentally stepping over Athena’s fallen body.
“That’s because you haven’t found a man who wants to have them with you,” Grandma replies, as if my devoted fiancé Hall isn’t right here. “Not much to brag about, mm?”
“Can I have my own room?” I beg right as she starts to leave. “We’ll put Hall on the couch.”
“No! The couch is too comfortable. Somebody’s bound to get pregnant on it—no guests are allowed to sleep on the couch. And don’t be a diva about sharing a bedroom, Bettie. It’s not like you’re saving yourselves for marriage.”
I begin to insist that we are, but it’s too late. She’s already gone, door slammed behind her, scolding Minnesota Moon for using too many consonants.
Hall and I carefully meet each other’s eyes.
“This is... cozy.”
“I can make it a bit more comfortable,” he assures me. Thetwin bed leaps up, a wooden ladder shooting out of it. Another bed pops into being right below, one outfitted in a red bedspread, the other in green. I watch the furniture connect, pillows fluffing themselves and sliding into silk covers with our names stitched onto them.
“Bunk beds?”
“Bunk beds make the most out of a small space.” He tucks-and-rolls onto the bottom bunk, a yellow legal pad appearing in his hands. All around us, the room begins to decorate itself. He’s definitely a man who needs a certain atmosphere in order to be at peace. “So here’s our itinerary of activities to complete in the days leading up to December twenty-fifth: Make ornaments out of Popsicle sticks. Make tissue paper wreaths. Play cold-weather sports. Go sledding. Build a snowman. Have a snowball fight. All indisputable classics.”
“There’s not enough snow on the ground for that right now,” I remind him, jerking my chin toward the window. We had a warm afternoon, so most of it’s melted.
“Oh, that can be fixed.” With a flourish of his hand, snow begins to cascade from the sky, sticking to the panes. Hall tugs on his collar, and the reindeer tie he copied from the weatherman loops itself around his neck. “Expect a foot by morning.”
