Franny picked up a pale-yellow petit four, the color of a newly hatched chick, and ate it in a single bite. It wasn’t very good, but it was so pretty that it didn’t matter. “None,” she said. “Zero.”
Beverly looked at her daughter and the look on her face was a pure expression of love. “I wanted two girls,” she said. “You and your sister. I wanted exactly what I had. Other people’s children are too hard.”
If her mother hadn’t been so pretty none of it would have happened, but being pretty was nothing to blame her for. “I’m going out there,” Franny said, and got up.
Her mother looked down at the plate of tiny cakes. “I’m going to divide them by color,” she said, pushing them all onto the table with the side of her hand. “I think I’d like them better that way.”
Franny found Ravi and Amit in the basement watching The Matrix on a television set the size of a single mattress.
“That’s rated R,” she said.
The boys looked at her. “For the violence,” Ravi said. “Not sex.”
“And it’s Christmas,” Amit said, operating on the logic of wishes.
Franny stood behind them and watched as the black-coated men dipped backwards to avoid being split in half by bullets and then popped up again. If it was going to give them nightmares the damage was already done.
“Mama, have you seen it before?” Amit asked.
Franny shook her head. “It’s too scary for me.”
“I’ll sleep in your room with you,” her younger boy said, “if you’re scared.”
“If you make us stop now,” Ravi said, “we’ll never know what happens.”
Franny watched for another minute. She was probably right, it probably was too scary for her. “Your father fell asleep,” she said. “Wait a little while and then go take him a plate for dinner, okay?”
Pleased by their small victory, they nodded their heads.
“And don’t tell him about the movie.”
Franny went back upstairs and did one full loop around the room but there were so few people she remembered. She hadn’t lived in Arlington since she’d left for college. The wives of Jack Dine’s three sons all wanted to talk to her but none of them particularly wanted to talk to one another. The wife of the son she liked the most was the wife she like the least, and the wife of the son she liked the least was the wife she greatly preferred. What was interesting though, not that any of it was interesting at all, was that the wife of the son she had the hardest time remembering was also the wife she had the hardest time remembering.
At some point in the evening before even a single guest had departed, Franny found herself back in the foyer, and there, without looking for it, she saw her own handbag on the floor, slightly behind the umbrella stand. She must have dropped it there when she came in, putting the luggage down, and without a thought she picked it up and went out the door.
The dress she’d brought for the party, the party she’d thought was still two days away, was not red. It was a dark blue velvet with long sleeves but still it was no match for the cold, as her shoes were no match for the snow. It didn’t make any difference. She had left the party, slipped away after everyone had seen her. “Where’s Franny?” they would say, and the answer would be, “I think she’s in the kitchen. I just saw her in the other room.”
The cars were all covered in snow, and hers was a rental, rented in the dark no less. She didn’t know what color it was because she’d never actually seen it. It was an SUV, she remembered that, but all the cars were SUVs, as if SUVs, like vests for men, had been a requirement of the invitation. She went down the hill at the end of the drive and when she was in what she thought might have been the general vicinity, she hit the automatic key. A horn beeped just to the left of her and the lights came on. She brushed off the windows with her wrist and got inside. Once she got the heater running she called Bert.
“I thought I’d come by and say hello if it isn’t too late.” She worked to keep her voice casual because she felt frantic.
Bert was always up late. She had to discourage him from calling the house after ten o’clock at night. “Wonderful!” he said, as if he’d been waiting for exactly this call. “Just be careful in the snow.”
Bert still lived in the last house he and Beverly had lived in together, the same house she and Caroline had lived in during high school, the house that Albie had come to for a year after Caroline was gone. It wasn’t that far from where Beverly lived with Jack Dine, maybe five miles, but in Arlington it was possible to live five miles from someone and never see them again.
He was waiting for her on the front porch when she pulled up, the front door of the house open behind him. He had put on his coat to come outside. Bert was as old as the rest of them but age arrived at different rates of speed, in different ways. Coming up the walk in the dark, the porch light bright above his head, Franny thought that Bert Cousins still looked like himself.
“The ghost of Christmas past,” he said when she stepped into his arms.
“I should have called you sooner,” Franny said. “It’s all been sort of last-minute.”
Bert did not invite her in, nor did he let her go. He only stood there holding Franny to his chest. Always she was the baby he had carried around Fix Keating’s party, the most beautiful baby he had ever seen. “Last-minute works for me,” he said.
“Come on,” she said. “I’m freezing.”
Inside the door she took off her shoes.
“I made a fire in the den when you called. It hasn’t really caught yet but it’s starting.”
Franny remembered the first time she’d ever been inside this house. She must have been thirteen. The den was why they’d bought the place, the big stone hearth, the fireplace big enough for a witch’s pot, the way the room looked out over the pool. She thought it was a palace then. Bert had no business keeping this house, it was entirely too big for one person. But on this night Franny was grateful he’d held on to it, if only so she could come home.
“Let me get you a drink,” he said.
“Maybe just some tea,” she said. “I’m driving.” She stood up on the hearth and flexed her stocking feet on the warm stones. She and Albie would come downstairs in the winter late at night when they were in high school and open up the flue when it was too cold to go outside and smoke. They would lean back into the fireplace with their cigarettes and blow the smoke up the chimney. They would drink Bert’s gin and throw away the empty bottles in the kitchen trash with impunity. If either parent noticed the dwindling stock in the liquor cabinet or the way the empties were piling up, neither one of them ever mentioned it.
“Have a drink, Franny. It’s Christmas.”
“It’s December twenty-second. Why does everyone keep telling me it’s Christmas?”
“Barmaid’s gin and tonic.”
Franny looked at him. “Barmaid’s,” she said sternly. Bert had shown her that trick when she was a girl and would play bartender for their parties. If a guest was already drunk she should pour a glass of tonic and ice and then float a little gin on the top without mixing it up. The first sip would be too strong, Bert told her, and that’s all that mattered. After the first sip drunks didn’t pay attention.
“If you get sloppy you can sleep in your old room.”
“My mother would love that.” It was always a trick getting out to see Bert. For all the times that Beverly had forgiven him, she couldn’t understand that Franny and Caroline might forgive him as well.
“How is your mother?” Bert asked. He handed Franny her drink, and the first sip—straight gin—was right on the money.
“My mother is exactly herself,” Franny said.
Bert pressed his lips together and nodded. “I would expect nothing less. I hear old Jack Dine is slipping though, that she’s having a hard time taking care of him. I hate to think of her having to deal with that.”
“It’s what we’ll all have to deal with sooner or later.”
“Maybe I’ll give her a call, just to see how she’s doing.”