“Thanks for taking my dad home.”
“It was fine. He wasn’t in the mood to talk.”
“Do you want to leave soon?” she asked.
“No, I’m fine. I stopped by the house and let Stevie out.”
“That was smart. Well... just tell me when you’re ready.”
“Cherry, I’mfine. It’s been nice, thank you.”
Another hip-high nephew was running into the kitchen.
“Slow down,” Cherry said.
“Uncle Tom, will you play Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza with us?”
“What’s Taco... What was it again, Taco Goat Pizza?”
The kid cracked up. “It’s a game.”
“Uncle Tom’s been playing with you all day,” Cherry said. “He might need a break.”
Tom smiled at her. “I don’t mind.”
Tom had known all these kids since they were babies. He’d sat in the hospital waiting room when they were born. If you asked the little ones, they wouldn’t be able to tell you that Cherry was their aunt by blood and Tom was their uncle by situation.
This was his last Christmas with them. He wouldn’t go to any more birthday parties. He’d miss their graduations and weddings.
Cherry followed him into the family room to play Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza. (Which was a very silly card game.)
They stayed at Honny’s house long enough to have a second plate of turkey. And to hear Cherry’s mom tell the story (for the thousandth time) of going into labor with Faith on Christmas Eve. How Hope and Honny had cried because Santa didn’t come, and how Cherry told everyone at church that Santa had brought the baby, and everyone thought it was so cute, they didn’t correct her.
They stayed at Honny’s long enough that everything hard fell away. They sat at the dining room table, and Tom’s arm hung off the back of Cherry’s chair. Tom cracked open almonds and pecans, and Cherry and Hope stole them. Tom didn’t say much, but he never did. He laughed. And when everyone was trying to get Cherry to do her impression of Joy’s husband that time Joy wrecked their Prius, it was Tom who nudged her over the edge. (You had to know Joy and her husband, and to have seen the Prius, to get it.)
Hope left first, with their mom. Who hugged Tom too hard and looked too long in his eyes.
After another hour of making fun of their mom and gossiping about Hope—who’d hardly eaten, even Dan hadn’t eaten, was Dan on Ozempic now too, did Tom know lots of people on Ozempic out in Hollywood, Joy’s gynecologist was skinny now, and so was Faith’s pediatrician, plus Whoopi Goldberg, have you seen her, she looks great, they all look great, not Joy’s gynecologist, she looks gaunt—everyone stood up from the table and stretched.
Tom went to get the car while Cherry rounded up her pans and platters. All her cookies had been eaten, and all the meat pies, too, and Honny said she’d keep the leftover cheese spread. Faith stood by Cherry at the kitchen sink and squeezed her arm. “You okay, Cherish Anne?”
Cherry smiled. “I’m good.”
(That was a lie. If Cherry had been good—essentially, fundamentally, in a core and abiding way—she would probably still be married. She hadn’t been the one tobreakthings, but she suspected that she was the one who’d worn them down and made them fragile. The person who had put pressure on their relationship’s weakest points. The points of wear and past damage.) (It was also a lie in the more immediate sense: Cherry wasn’t good or all right or fine or holding up or keeping her head above water.)
Tom left the car running in the driveway and came back to the house to help Cherry out. He held on to her elbow all the way to the car.
It was cold—“bitter cold,” her mom called this weather. Cherry gotinto the car and sat on her hands. The roads were clear, but she was still glad Tom was the one driving. He turned on the radio. “You sick of Christmas carols?”
“Never,” Cherry said.
“I wasn’t prepared for Hope,” he said.
“Every time I see her, she’s lost more weight. Her eyes lookhuge. I wonder if my eyes would look that big if I lost weight...”
He glanced over at her. “Would you want them to?”
“I don’t think so. She looks like someone drew a picture of her from memory and got the eyes and mouth wrong.”
