Now here was her husband, standing at the door, winding the Christmas scarf that Alison had made for him on her Knitting Nancy. He had chosen that of all moments to head out cross-country skiing. “What a day, huh?” he said, as he laced up his boots. “Perfect snow conditions.”
She looked at him—this handsome man she loved and sometimes hated. Wrapping paper and packaging from toys were scattered everywhere. Sally had gotten hold of Toby’s new stuffed meerkat and had chewed off the ear. In another minute, when he discovered this, he’d be crying. Cam, heading toward the door, reached for his winter hat.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Eleanor said. “You’re leaving now?”
“Can’t a guy have a little fun on Christmas?” he said.
Thebûche de Noëlsat on the counter, freshly decorated. From the record player, the voices of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore: “Silver Bells.”
What happened next seemed to take place in slow motion—slow but deadly, irrevocable. She picked up the cake. With no visible trace of anger—yet—she walked to the trash bin. Threw it in. Smashed it down hard, past all recognition.
But she was only getting started. She whirled through the house then, stuffing pieces of used wrapping paper into a trash bag.
“Merry Christmas,” she said, tearing through the living room, wading in the mountain of presents she’d spent all of December picking out, wrapping. A He-Man figure, a Lite-Brite, a microscope. A baby doll.
“Happy New Year.”
Ursula and Toby just stood there watching. Alison retreated upstairs.
Eleanor had gathered up a pile of wrapping paper now. She was heading toward the fireplace.
“I was going to save that piece of ribbon for my dolls,” Ursula said quietly. Nobody else seemed able to speak.
“Count to ten, Mom,” Ursula said. Toby sat mute, studying a rock he’d picked up on their walk to the waterfall a few days before and humming the Rudolph song. Cam, pulling the hat over his ears, walked out into the snow.
33.
He Got Hold of the Reddi-Wip
She heard from Patty—working in advertising in New York City and living with her latest boyfriend, the bass guitar player with a band called Manic Depression. They were driving to Vermont to spend New Year’s skiing and wondered if they could stay over for a night on their way north.
Eleanor spent the whole morning, the day of the visit, cleaning the house. She bought scallops for a special dinner—coquilles St.-Jacques. Cam, watching her preparing the meal, a Julia Child cookbook propped on the counter, ingredients lined up—had surveyed the scene on his way to his woodshop, looking amused.
“Who are these guests of ours, anyway—Charles and Diana?”
“They live in New York City,” Eleanor said. “They’re not the macaroni and cheese type.”
“It could be an exotic experience,” he said. “Let them find out how the natives live, in the backwoods.”
But she made the Julia Child dish. Also chocolate mousse and French-cut beans amandine. Before their arrival, she sent Cam to town to buy a bottle of wine.
“What kind?” he asked her. Neither of them knew anything about wine, beyond “white” or “red.”
Expensive, she told him. The safest bet.
Patty had told Eleanor they’d get to the house around five thirty, but it was past seven when they arrived. Eleanor had gone ahead and fed the children. Toby and Ursula were having their bath, Alison upstairs with a book on some kind of computer programming language. More and more these days, that’s where Alison stayed these days: off with a book.
Patty and Philippe pulled up in a bright red Porsche. The last timeEleanor had seen Patty, she was a brunette, but her hair was platinum now. She was very thin and dressed in the kind of outfit that would have identified her, immediately, as having come from someplace other than Akersville. Eleanor wished she’d put on something besides the thrift shop Laura Ashley dress she’d chosen for the occasion.
“Come meet our guests.” Eleanor stood at the foot of the stairs, calling up to her children. She might not be thin or fashionable, or have a sports car, but she had the best thing of all: them. This was what she’d been doing with her life while her boarding school friend got to be partner at her advertising agency: making a family.
Patty and Philippe had brought a gift from the city: an orange tin full of a kind of Italian cookie that came wrapped in very thin special paper that, when you lit it on fire, floated up into the air in wispy clouds of smoke and ash. The children didn’t like the taste of the cookies so much, but Toby and Ursula kept reaching for more just so they could watch Philippe set the papers on fire. Alison—present, but still holding on to her book about MATLAB programming—kept herself apart from the group, watching.
“You didn’t tell us your name,” Philippe said to her. When she answered, he started singing the Elvis Costello song. She knew it, of course. At one point, when Philippe forgot the lyrics, she sang them herself. This was rare, for Ali. But she loved that song. It was a big thing for her, that there was a song with her name in it.
“So did Elvis Costello have the hots for you or something?” Philippe asked her. “Did you two, like, hook up at some point?”
Of their three children, Alison was the most literal, the one least capable of recognizing a joke. Philippe’s question seemed to worry Alison, as if she was afraid she might disappoint him with her answer. “I never met any famous musicians,” she said. “I’m just seven.”
