Nine Inches

by Tom Perrotta

  The baby whimpers impatiently. Janet touches Rose lightly on the shoulder.

  “We better go,” she says. “You take care of yourself.”

  Without asking permission, Rose bends down and kisses the baby on the forehead.

  “So precious,” she whispers.

  RUSSELL AND his family aren’t coming for another month, but the blizzard on Saturday morning inspires her to put up the Christmas tree. It’ll be nice to have the company, a visible symbol of the holiday to lift her spirits and keep her mind focused on the visit. And besides, it’s something to do right now, something to keep her occupied through the otherwise empty hours. She doesn’t know why, but Saturday is always the longest day of the week, the day she most misses Pat’s company, though all he did the last few years of his life was lie on the couch and complain.

  The plastic spruce is taller than she is, bottom-heavy and unwieldy, and Rose struggles to drag it down from the attic. It was Pat’s idea, the artificial tree. Rose always preferred real ones, fire hazard or not. But when you celebrate Christmas in April, it’s pretty much fake or nothing. At least there’s no assembly required.

  After getting the tree righted in the stand — another tough job — Rose makes several trips back to the attic for boxes of ornaments, tinsel, lights, and the little wooden Nativity scene she received as a wedding present from her great-aunt Margaret. She would have preferred to wait for Cody to trim the tree, but she knows from her last visit to California — most of which he spent wearing headphones and playing video games — that he’s past the age of enjoying it.

  The decorating goes slowly at first. Rose tries to ignore the lurking sense that something’s missing, that she’s performing a common household task rather than a holiday ritual, when it finally dawns on her: she forgot the music. You can’t trim a tree without music.

  She opens the cabinet, finds the ancient Bing Crosby album — he’s looking pleased with himself on the cover, sporting a rakish little elf’s hat — and sets it lovingly on the turntable. That was one thing that got Cody’s attention, the fact that she owned a record player and still used it. He was as amazed as Russell had been, at about the same age, to learn that his own grandmother had killed chickens with her bare hands, snapping their necks with no more thought than he would have given to twisting off a bottle cap.

  Once Bing starts crooning, everything falls into place. Suddenly it’s Christmastime, a curtain of snow falling slantwise outside the window. The individual ornaments emerge like old friends from their tissue-paper cocoons. Before long the fake tree becomes the real thing, or at least close enough to believe in. Stepping back to admire her handiwork, Rose finally admits to herself how cheated she’s been feeling the past few months, how bitterly she resents her daughter-in-law for canceling the holiday at the last minute.

  It’s all right, she thinks. We’ll pretend it never happened.

  THEY DECIDED to go to Hawaii instead, Rose imagines saying. She’d keep her tone neutral, let the facts speak for themselves. Can you imagine?

  The Chosen girl would nod, eyes full of sympathy. Did he give a reason?

  He said his wife was stressed-out. She needed a little downtime.

  Stressed-out? The Chosen girl repeats the phrase as if she’d never heard it before.

  She was working too hard. The real estate market is booming where they live. That’s what she does — sells real estate. She used to be a nurse. That’s how she met Russell.

  Do you like her? The girl asks the question without gossipy intent. She seems to be trying to work something out.

  Rose isn’t sure how to answer. It’s as if there are two Ellens, one the mousy-haired girl from Freehold who somehow snagged herself a plastic surgeon, the other a platinum-blond businesswoman who couldn’t be bothered with anything that didn’t involve making and spending lots of money. The last time Rose saw her, she had a new Mercedes and new breasts to go with it, plus a wardrobe of revealing clothes to call attention to the upgrade, including a bikini meant for a much younger woman.

  She changed a lot, Rose would explain. After they moved to California. They live in Beverly Hills.

  That sounds pretty, says the Chosen girl.

  It is. Rose smiles. Nothing like here. Sunny and beautiful every day of the year.

  The girl seems perplexed. So why did they need to go to Hawaii?

  Rose had wondered the exact same thing. She’d wondered it many, many times.

  You’ll have to ask them, she says with a sigh. I try not to interfere.

  WHEN THE tree is finished, she wraps presents in the cheerful glow of the blinking lights: a low-fat cookbook for Ellen, a nice travel kit and bathrobe for Russell, a bathing suit and package of socks for Cody. All that’s left is the Sharks jacket, but her heart sinks as she removes it from the closet. It’s a ridiculous gift, she sees that now — a warm coat in April for a boy who lives on a street lined with palm trees. She wonders if the store will let her exchange it for something that makes more sense, a baseball glove or maybe some computer games, but she needs to consult Russell before doing anything. For all she knows, her grandson already owns three baseball gloves and every computer game known to man.

  She picks up the phone, punches in the numbers, then hangs up before it has a chance to ring, her heart pounding erratically. She can’t understand why she’s so nervous; all she wants is to ask a simple question. Can’t a mother ask her son a simple question?

  Rose hasn’t spoken to Russell for two weeks, since the Saturday morning when she caught him on his way out to play golf. He said he’d call her back that night, but something must have come up. The time difference makes it hard for them to connect sometimes, especially with Russell’s busy schedule.

  I’ll tell him about the snowstorm, she thinks, and running into Janet Byrne. I’ll tell him about the tree. She presses redial, breathing slowly and deeply, her heart beating at a more manageable rhythm.

  “OH, JESUS,” Russell mutters. “I said that? Are you sure?”

  “Russell,” she says weakly. For a moment, Rose wonders if she’s losing her mind, if she imagined a conversation with her son the way she’s been imagining conversations with the Chosen girl, but in her heart she knows it’s not true. She understands the difference between being lonely and being crazy, and she remembers what he told her. “You said we’d have Christmas in April.”

  “My memory’s a little fuzzy on that, Ma. What I do remember is you saying we should come when it’s convenient, and next month really isn’t convenient.”

  “Isn’t it Cody’s school vacation?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the problem. It’s Ellen. She’s going into the hospital on the ninth.”

  Rose catches her breath. “The hospital? Oh my God.”

  “Don’t worry, Ma. It’s no big deal.”

  “Is she sick?”

  “She’s fine. It’s an elective procedure.”

  “Female trouble?” Rose whispers.

  “Just some contouring,” Russell explains after a brief hesitation. “She hasn’t felt good about her thighs for a long time.”

  Contouring? Rose stares dumbly at the tree across the room, the red and blue lights blinking on and off with monotonous regularity. You stupid woman, she thinks. You stupid, stupid old woman.

  “Mom?” Russell says. “Are you there?”

  THE TREE seems lighter as she drags it over the rug and into the hallway, though it should by rights feel a lot heavier, weighted down as it is by the metal stand and its full array of ornaments, a number of which have by now fallen from the branches and gone skittering across the floor. A small part of Rose is shocked by what she’s doing — this shaky voice in her head keeps pleading with her to stop, to get hold of herself — but the rest of her just keeps tugging and shuffling toward the door, intent on getting the thing out of the house, out of her sight.

  Squeezing backward through the doorway is the hardest part — she’s got to prop the outer door open with her hip while ben
ding and yanking at the same time — and she’s so caught up in the logistics of this maneuver that she doesn’t even remember the snow until her slipper sinks into the drift on the front stoop, and she yelps in surprise. Still, there’s nothing to do but keep going, finish what she’s started.

  She descends gingerly, holding on to the railing with both hands, testing her foothold before committing to the next step. Once she’s made it down, she seizes the tree by its top branches and yanks it off the stoop in a single violent motion, scattering a spray of ornaments onto the white-blanketed lawn. After that it’s easy: she drags the tree like a child’s sled down the front walk and heaves it up onto a bank of curbside snow, where the garbagemen will be able to get it on Monday morning.

  Her feet are cold and she’s not wearing a coat, but she can’t bring herself to turn around and go back inside. The snow’s coming down hard, falling in clumpy flakes that cling to her eyelashes and have to be blinked away like tears.

  I’m alone, she thinks, staring down at the gaudy corpse of the tree, the candy-cane ornament she got at Woolworth’s, the little train she picked up at a yard sale, the gingerbread man who’s been around so long he doesn’t have any buttons left. Her mouth is open, her breathing fast and shallow. No more Christmas for me.

  A stiff wind kicks up, but she barely notices. She’s thinking of her mother at the end, sitting with an attendant in the TV room of the nursing home, watching a program in Spanish. She’s thinking of Pat putting down his newspaper, telling her his chest feels funny. She’s thinking of her last visit to California, the inhuman bulges beneath Ellen’s tight blouse, the pride and tenderness with which Russell offered her up for inspection.

  “Don’t they look great?” he asked. “We should have done this years ago.”

  •••

  IT FEELS like a dream at first, the Chosen girl materializing out of the snow, emerging against the gauzy white curtain like a figure projected onto a screen, the Chosen girl and her little Chosen sister, both of them without coats. They’re veering across the not-so-recently plowed street in Rose’s direction, dragging what appear to be brand-new shovels, the kind with crooked handles and curved plastic scoops.

  “Shovel your walk?” the little one inquires. Her voice is sharp, pushy even, with none of the timidity Rose expects from a girl in a kerchief. “Ten bucks. Twenty and we’ll throw in the driveway.”

  Rose doesn’t answer. It’s the other one she’s looking at, the girl she knows from the bus stop and her daydreams. She’s squatting down by the tree, examining an ornament that’s fallen into the snow.

  “We’ll do a good job,” the little one promises. She’s only eight or nine, too small for her grown-up shovel.

  The Chosen girl rises, cupping the ornament — a red, metallic heart — in her outstretched hand, her mouth opening on a question she can’t seem to ask.

  “They’re not coming,” Rose declares, her voice breaking with emotion. “She’s having an operation. An operation on her thighs.”

  The Chosen girl says nothing, just stares at Rose with that look of patient suffering that never seems to leave her face.

  “She can’t hear you,” the little one explains.

  Of course she can’t, Rose realizes. She’s suddenly aware of an immense silence in the world, a vast cosmic hush pressing down from the sky, drifting to earth in little pieces, an illusion only shattered when the Chosen girl sniffles and makes a horrible hawking sound in the back of her throat. The poor thing. She looks bedraggled, maybe a bit feverish. Her nose is runny and her kerchief’s soaked with melted snow. Her lips have taken on a faint bluish undertone. But still she stands there, holding that heart in the palm of her hand. It seems brighter than it did a moment ago, newly polished.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” Rose tells the little one. “I’ll be right back.”

  SHE ONLY means to run in, grab the coat, and hurry back outside, but it doesn’t work out that way. She’s barely through the door — the warmth of her house hits her like something solid — when she steps on a glass ball, crunching it underfoot, losing her balance and falling dreamily to the floor. She’s lying there, moaning softly to herself, trying to figure out if she’s broken anything, when the phone begins to ring. She knows it’s Russell even before she hears his voice coming through the answering machine, launching into a complicated, self-pitying apology, reminding her how busy he is and how many responsibilities he has to juggle, and how nice it would be if she could just cut him a little slack instead of trying to make him feel guilty all the time.

  “I’m trying, Ma. Can you at least admit that I’m trying?”

  Her cheek pressed against the nubby rug, Rose wiggles her fingers, then her toes. Everything seems to be in working order. She picks herself up from the floor, dusts off her pants, and takes a few careful steps toward the closet, where the Sharks jacket is hanging. She slips it off the hanger, pleased by its bulk, only to realize that the price tag is still attached. The scissors should be right on the floor with the tape and the wrapping paper, but they’ve disappeared. Rose checks the kitchen and hallway before giving up and removing the tag with her teeth. By the time she tiptoes around the broken glass and steps outside, the girls have already gone.

  Rose makes her way down to the curb to look for them, but the street is empty in both directions. Even though she’s standing right in front of it, she needs a second or two to register the fact that her Christmas tree is no longer lying on the ground like garbage. It just looks so natural the way it is now, standing upright in the snowbank, the remaining ornaments clinging stubbornly to its branches, that it’s hard to imagine that it could ever have been otherwise.

  THE STORM continues all night, but the tree is still standing on Sunday morning, its branches cupping soft mounds of powder, when Rose sets off in search of the Chosen girl. She’s wearing her skirt and sweater again, but this time she cheats a little in deference to the blizzard — galoshes, a fleece jacket under the sweater, a woolen hat instead of the rain bonnet. She’s got the Sharks jacket stuffed into a red handlebag from Macy’s, along with her best winter gloves and a blue-and-green-plaid scarf.

  The walk is longer and more treacherous than she anticipated — almost no one has shoveled yet — and she doesn’t reach her destination until a few minutes after nine. She feels weak, a bit disoriented. There’s nothing about the Chosen house that marks it as a place of worship. No cross, no sign, no parking lot. Just a shabby gray Colonial with cracked asphalt shingles and a boarded-up attic window tucked between the Quik-Chek and the Army Recruiting Center on a busy stretch of Grand Avenue.

  Rose doesn’t imagine outsiders are welcome at the service, and her determination falters. Maybe I should stand here until it’s over, she thinks. Give the girl the bag on her way out, tell her parents not to let her out of the house without a coat anymore. But then she notices the freshly cleared and sanded walk leading up to the front steps, the two shovels resting against the porch railing, and it all comes back to her: the girl’s blank face, her chattering teeth and chapped hands, her soggy kerchief and snow-crusted sneakers. And deaf on top of that.

  You poor thing. It’s a sin the way they treat you.

  And now she’s doing it, not even thinking, just marching up the steps, feeling strong and purposeful, reaching for the doorknob. Pulling it open. Stepping inside. The warmth and the faces. Oh my.

  Rose has never seen anything quite like this. The floor is bare. No curtains on the windows. The Chosen are seated in folding chairs in a large, otherwise empty room, the men and boys in business suits on one side, the women and girls in kerchiefs and long skirts on the other, each one more drab-looking than the next. There are more of them than Rose realized — the room is packed, the air a bit close — and all their faces are turned in her direction, their expressions welcoming, as if they’ve been expecting her. A tall, bearded man rises and relieves her of the bag.

  “It’s for the girl,” Rose whispers. “So she won’t be cold.”
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  “Thank you.” The man is wiry and hungry-looking, his suit jacket a little short in the sleeves.

  Rose’s errand is done and she knows she should be going, but the bearded man is guiding her with one hand toward an empty chair on the women’s side, as though she’s an invited guest.

  “Sit,” he tells her.

  Rose obeys. She feels suddenly exhausted, incapable of arguing or facing the cold outside. The woman beside her, whom Rose recognizes from the Stop & Shop, greets her with a quiet nod. The Chosen girl and her sister are sitting two rows ahead, a little to the right. The girl glances at Rose, her eyes crinkling with worry. She looks a lot better than she did yesterday, her hair freshly washed, her kerchief bright and dry. Rose smiles back, clenching and unclenching her hands to speed their thawing.

  As if a secret signal’s been given, the Chosen all turn to face forward, though there’s nothing in front of them but a blank white wall. After a moment or two, a soft murmur rises in the room, a strange melodic mumbling that fills the air like background noise at a party. It doesn’t grow louder, and it doesn’t die out; it just keeps winding around and around on itself, never resolving, repeating the same uncertain notes of praise and lament. Rose closes her eyes and listens closely. Hard as she tries, she can’t quite decide if it’s a prayer or a song she’s hearing, or just a lot of people muttering to themselves. All she really knows — and it comes to her as something of a surprise — is that her own lips are moving, too, her voice blending in with everyone else’s, the words tumbling out of her like she’s known them all her life.

  THE TEST-TAKER

  THE TEXT ARRIVED LATE ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON, AT the last possible minute.

  Tomorrow morning, it said.

  I cursed under my breath. I’d been planning on getting drunk that night, but work was work, and Kyle expected us to be available. You’d have to have a pretty good excuse for saying no, an infectious disease or a death in the immediate family. A potential hangover wasn’t going to cut it.