Winter Street (13 page)

She sneaks down the hall, toward the master bedroom—quickly, quietly, so as not to wake her children.

H
e wakes up with the headache of a lifetime, but someone has thoughtfully left a giant glass of ice water and a bottle of Advil by his bed. Patrick drinks down the water, and it tastes so good and so cold, and his body needs it so badly, that he decides to start his day feeling grateful.

He checks his phone. Four missed calls late last night from the temporary cell phone of Bucky Larimer and a text from that number that says,
Dude, call me.
A missed call from Gary Grimstead.

Nothing from Jennifer, which he can’t believe. They have never gone this long without speaking—not ever. He feels like his right side is missing. He can make it through anything as long as she is next to him. He closes his eyes and thinks about her. What is she doing right now? Well, it’s three hours earlier in California, so she’s sleeping. But maybe not. It’s nearly ten o’clock here, meaning seven o’clock there, so everyone is probably awake. The boys are opening presents from Santa Claus and from Grammie. Jennifer’s mother is wealthy and always too lavish; the boys might not even miss the ten million presents that remain under the tree in Boston, or the presents here for them on Nantucket. Jennifer will be drinking coffee, maybe with a splash of Baileys in it, trying to put on a brave face. They will go to the Park Tavern for brunch because Jennifer’s mother doesn’t cook.
Patrick dislikes that part of the San Francisco tradition—who goes
out
on Christmas morning?

He resists the urge to call Jennifer. She probably won’t answer anyway.

He needs coffee, more water, food. He made it from Boston to Hyannis in forty-eight minutes, getting his BMW up to 110 miles per hour on Route 3, which probably would have landed him in jail sooner than he’s already going, but for the fact that the road was free of troopers. Patrick missed one ferry; then he started drinking at the Naked Oyster and missed two more ferries before finally getting on the seven o’clock. He drank Sam Adams on the boat, and then he walked up Main Street to the inn, stopping at Murray’s Liquors and buying and consuming a split of Taittinger champagne on the way. Once here, he was welcomed into the bosom of his family and offered a shot of Jameson.

Patrick stands up. He spent the night in Bart’s room, which is still filled with Bart’s paraphernalia, including a large purple bong—a bag of weed was easily found in Bart’s underwear drawer—car magazines, a poster of Lindsay Lohan on the wall.

Lindsay Lohan?
Patrick thinks. He’s relieved Bart has joined the Marines. Anyone who publicly announces himself a fan of Lindsay Lohan needs straightening out.

Tucked into Bart’s mirror are ticket stubs from the Patriots-Broncos game this past October. Kelley probably took him up to Foxborough for it before he shipped out to Germany. Kelley was a good, involved dad like that for Bart.

Patrick steps out into the hallway, and he hears giggling. He turns around to see Kelley and a redheaded woman emerging from Kelley’s room.

Whoa!
Patrick thinks. He squints at the redhead. His mind isn’t quite clear, but it looks like his mother. It
is
his mother. She sees him, and her mouth falls open.

“Are you real?” Patrick asks.

“I’m real,” she says.

H
e’s not sure how this happened, but Christmas is everything it’s supposed to be and more. To start with, Kelley makes love to his ex-wife. Mitzi was never interested in sex at Christmas—of course, now Kelley knows that’s because for the past twelve years, she was having sex with George.

The lovemaking with Margaret is easy and comfortable and familiar—you forget, but you never really forget. Kelley does the things that Margaret likes, and she does the things that he likes. Afterward, they lie next to each other, sweating and breathless, staring up at the ceiling.

“I read in
Esquire
magazine that sixty percent of American males over fifty fantasize about sleeping with you,”
Kelley says. “But seventy-five percent fantasize about sleeping with Martha Stewart. I never really understood that. Maybe because she can cook?”

Margaret clobbers him with a pillow, and soon the two of them are laughing and wrestling and tickling each other. Margaret is ticklish behind her knees; her laughter soon turns to screams for mercy. Kelley stops because she is making so much noise. It’s a delightful, juvenile hour, the greatest gift he ever could have hoped for.

A big, happy reunion follows. Patrick sees Margaret first—he catches her coming out of Kelley’s bedroom—and he throws her over his shoulder and carries her out to the main room. Kevin and Isabelle wander out, and Kevin gives a whoop and picks Margaret up off the ground also.

She says, “I haven’t been picked up and thrown around this much since my cheerleading days at Michigan.”

Kelley says, “You weren’t a cheerleader at Michigan.”

“Let me have my fantasies,” she says.

“I thought that’s what I just did,” Kelley says.

Ava emerges from the back. She slept with Margaret the night before, but she looks grumpy now at having to share her.

Kelley lights a fire and enlists Kevin to make a batch of Golden Dreams. If they’re going to have a nostalgic Quinn Family Christmas, then they are going whole hog.

Kevin says, “I know you and Mom used to drink them, but I have no idea what goes into one.”

Kevin looks to Margaret. “What’s in a Golden Dream?”

Margaret is curled up on the sofa with a dazed look that Kelley hopes is postcoital bliss.

“Galliano, Cointreau, orange juice, and cream,” she says.

The woman forgets nothing,
Kelley thinks. She is the smartest human being he has ever met.

Kevin nods. “On it.”

Ava says, “I dropped the ball on Christmas dinner. I ordered the rib roast, but I forgot to go pick it up. And now I’m sure the store is closed.”

“I picked it up yesterday,” Isabelle says. “They called with a reminder, so I went to get it.”

“Oh, thank you!” Ava says.

“In a little while, I’ll help you prepare it,” Margaret says. “Are we having Yorkshire pudding?”

“Of course,” Ava says. “And roasted asparagus and spinach salad.”

“I’ll do my hot bacon dressing for the salad,” Margaret says.

“What man in his right mind would rather sleep with Martha Stewart?” Kelley says.

They all drink and open presents. One person opens at a time—Quinn family tradition, so that it lasts longer. It’s admittedly easier to accomplish this without the grandchildren around. Patrick’s boys are ten-, eight-, and six-year-old weapons of mass destruction. The other person who never obeyed present-opening protocol was Bart. Even in his late teens, he would come down and rip open all his presents at once.

Mitzi never reprimanded him, of course.

The year they gave him a brand-new Jeep Sahara in metallic royal blue with a massive silver ribbon wrapped around it counts as the worst Christmas on record. Bart was thrilled; he was straight out of central casting, a seventeen-year-old kid jumping up and down, hooting and hollering, hugging Mitzi, hugging Kelley, saying
Oh man, oh man, you guys rock!
Ava, Kevin, and Patrick, however, had stared at the Jeep in disbelief. None of them had said a word, but Kelley heard their thoughts.

A brand-new Jeep for a seventeen-year-old kid who hasn’t made the honor roll since sixth grade, who smashed up the last car—Mitzi’s Volvo station wagon—so that all it was good for was the demolition derby, a kid who you know drinks and smokes dope. You’re giving HIM a brand-new Jeep, when none of us got so much as a new bicycle?

Kelley hadn’t wanted to give Bart the Jeep, but Mitzi insisted. She believed that if Bart was given something he really loved and treasured, he would take care of it, thereby learning an important lesson about responsibility.

Bart drove the Jeep into Miacomet Pond in June, and the water was brackish enough that the engine block seized.

Totaled.

Then, five months later, he did the number on Kelley and Mitzi’s LR3, busting a hole in the airport fence and breaking his best friend’s leg.

No wonder Kelley is going broke.

How can Mitzi possibly argue that Bart did not need the Marines?

The Christmas of the Jeep—two years earlier—Patrick, Kevin, and Ava gave Kelley and Mitzi the silent treatment all throughout Christmas dinner, leaving poor Jennifer to make chitchat with Mitzi, Kelley, and Bart. Oh, and George, Kelley remembers now; of course George was there. They all ate the goose Mitzi had prepared, which had been unusually stringy that year.

Kelley doesn’t want to dwell on the less-than-stellar Christmases of the past; nor does he want to beat himself up for his parenting mistakes. What parent
doesn’t
screw up every once in a while?

Patrick gets a tie and a biography of Alexander Hamilton.

Kevin gets a series of boxes within boxes that ends in an envelope of cash—five hundred dollars (in years past it has been a thousand dollars, but Kelley can only do what he can do)—and everyone laughs because this trick, presents nested like Russian dolls, is tradition. It’s followed by the requisite remembering of the year Kevin gave Patrick a box of extra-large condoms and Ava, only eleven years old at the time, didn’t know what they were.

Then it’s Kelley’s turn to open his gift from Margaret. It’s a small box; he knows what it is, as she gets him the same thing every year. In previous years, he’s opened his gift from Margaret privately, all by himself in the quiet of his
bedroom, while Mitzi was busy with other things (busy with George, Kelley now realizes), because Mitzi does not appreciate that Margaret still sends him a gift.

“What can it be?” Kelley asks, and Margaret gives her low, throaty chuckle, known to all her faithful viewers.

It’s a beautifully tied fly, even more gorgeous than the ones from the past. Margaret once interviewed the foremost saltwater fly fisherman in the world; he lives in Islamorada, and now this guy makes one fly a year for Kelley. The fly is to go with the fly-fishing rod that Margaret bought for Kelley the last Christmas they were still together, back when they vowed to spend less time at work and more time having fun. Kelley had gotten Margaret a mask, fins, and snorkel, which he is certain she has never used, just as he has never used his fly-fishing rod.

But wait.

Not true.

He actually
did
use the rod once, on a warm, still day in September sixteen or seventeen years earlier, but he caught such hell from Mitzi about taking an
entire afternoon to himself
when they had a
three-year-old
and an
inn under construction
that Kelley never went fly-fishing again. Blissfully unaware of this, Margaret keeps giving him a fly every Christmas; he has a box of them in the back of his sock drawer. When viewed together, they are as colorful and exquisite as the crown jewels.

“Thank you,” Kelley says, and he leans over to kiss Margaret chastely, as everyone is watching.

Maybe in his retirement: fly-fishing.

Ava gets a sweater.

Patrick gets another tie.

Kevin gets new running shoes.

Kelley gets a whisk and a new potato peeler of good, sturdy Danish design.

Margaret has an envelope to open that is from “the kids” (meaning Ava procured it, Patrick paid for it, and Kevin signed his name to the card). It’s two tickets to see
The Book of Mormon,
tenth-row orchestra seats. Margaret claps her hands with delight and kisses each of the kids, and Isabelle too, and thanks them a dozen times.

“You do know you’re impossible to buy for,” Ava says.

Margaret beams. “This is just the perfect gift. And Saturday night—
primo marveloso!
” She really does look as happy—well, as happy as a kid on Christmas, even though she can go to any Broadway show on opening night and sit in the front row center.

“Who will you take with you?” Kelley asks.

Margaret shrugs. “Probably Drake, if he’s still speaking to me.”

“Drake?” Kelley says. He feels a pinch of jealousy. “Who’s Drake?”

“Friend of mine,” she says. “Pediatric brain surgeon at Sloan Kettering.”

“Slacker,” Kelley says.

Ava opens a sweater.

Kevin opens a subscription to
Sports Illustrated.

Patrick opens another tie.

By the end of the morning, the pitcher of Golden Dreams is gone and the plate of muffins has been devoured. Ava plays some good, old-fashioned religious carols on the piano, and they all sing “O Holy Night,” “We Three Kings,” “The First Noel,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Margaret has a rich alto that blends beautifully with Isabelle’s clear soprano. Patrick is the strongest of the men. Together they sound pretty good, Kelley thinks. Or maybe he’s just had one too many Golden Dreams.

“Play ‘Silent Night,’ ” Kelley says.

“I will later,” Ava says. “Right now, Mommy and I have to cook.”

Margaret and Ava go back to the kitchen to prepare the standing rib roast, and Isabelle and Kevin snuggle up on the sofa. Patrick is subdued; he plops into the big armchair and starts reading the biography of Alexander Hamilton that Kelley got him. Patrick checks his phone every time he turns the page. Kelley is sure he’s waiting for Jen to call. It’s Christmas—she
will
call, right? No matter what Patty has done, a man deserves to talk to his children on Christmas.

This gets Kelley thinking about Bart, which threatens his good mood. He sits in front of the fire. Bart has only been out of communication for six days, and what else would Kelley expect? He’s fighting a
war
in
Afghanistan
. Still, Kelley
worries. Bart is nineteen, a child still; he’s only been shaving for four years and driving for two. He has done drugs and deflowered virgins and seen the band Kings of Leon something like fifteen times, but he is by no means worldly.

Where are you, Bart?
Kelley wonders.
What are you doing?

Thinking about Bart leads Kelley to thinking about Mitzi. What is
she
doing this Christmas? Does she miss Kelley? Miss the other kids? Miss the inn? Miss her nutcrackers? Miss her carolers? There are at least half a dozen presents for her under the tree from Kelley: the Eileen Fisher sweater she asked for, a platter shaped like a scallop shell, a pair of Alexis Bittar earrings, a gift certificate for a manicure and pedicure, and this year’s ornament—a silver ring containing a needlepoint replica of the Winter Street Inn, exact down to the flower boxes and pineapple door knocker. None of the gifts are extravagant—he doesn’t really have the money anymore to be extravagant—but they’re thoughtful. He knows that all Mitzi really wants for Christmas is for Bart to be safe.

He decides, for several reasons, to call her—the most convincing reason is that it feels like the right thing to do. It’s Christmas, and she’s his wife.

My love feeds on your love, beloved.

He will never stop loving her. He thinks of Mitzi wearing a peach dress at his brother’s funeral, Mitzi lying in the bath with her hair piled on top of her head, curled tendrils framing her face.

He dials her cell phone, figuring he’ll end up leaving a
message—she’s terrible when it comes to answering her cell phone—but she picks up on the first ring.

“Kelley?”

“Hi,” he says, casually, almost cheerfully. “Merry Christmas.”

“Oh,” she says. “Thanks? Merry Christmas to you, too.”

“Where are you?” he says. He realizes he never asked George yesterday where they were staying. He supposes he thought they might be sleeping in the back of the 1931 Model A fire engine.

“I’m at the Castle,” she says.

“The Castle” is their name for the behemoth luxury hotel that summarily stole all of Winter Street’s business. The building is opulent and beautifully appointed; it has a pool, a bar-restaurant, a spa, and a state-of-the-art fitness center. Kelley can’t compete with that. People love amenities. Amenities trump home-baked muffins and four-poster beds any day of the week.

“You got a room at the Castle,” Kelley says. He is close to hanging up. He might feel more betrayed about Mitzi’s staying at the Castle than he does about George.

“It has no soul,” Mitzi says. “Just like we always thought.”

Of course it has no soul!
Kelley thinks. He can’t
believe
she is paying
money
to stay there. And he does
not
appreciate her use of the pronoun “we.”

“Have you heard from Bart?” he asks. This is all he really needs to know.

“No,” she says. “Have you?”

“No,” he says.

They sit on the phone for a second in silence. He is terrified about the safety of his son; Mitzi must be a thousand times worse.

“Listen,” he says, “would you and George like to come for Christmas dinner?”

Mitzi starts to cry. This comes as no surprise; she cries at AT&T long-distance commercials.

“I’d love to,” she says. “Oh, thank you, Kelley! You have made my Christmas! What time should we come?”

“Come at five,” Kelley says.

“We’ll be there,” she says.