This Christmas

by Jane Green

  “You got married and had kids,” says Caroline gently. “It happened to all of us. But aren’t you happier now? I sometimes think the same thing but then I look at my girls, and at my husband, and I know I have a great life and I wouldn’t change anything.”

  Sarah looks at Caroline for a few moments, then shrugs. What would Sarah change?

  Pretty much everything.

  They both jump as the side door closes and Eddie walks into the kitchen.

  “Hi, Caroline!” he says. He’s always liked Caroline, likes how sensible she is, how down-to-earth and practical.

  “Hey, Eddie.” She smiles at him and waves.

  “Hi, honey,” Eddie says, walking over to Sarah and leaning down to kiss her cheek, something they are both doing for show, because there is someone there.

  “How was your day?” Sarah asks in a dull monotone, feeling like a parody of herself.

  “I’d better go.” Caroline picks up her purse. “Thanks for a great evening, sweetie. I’ll call you tomorrow.” And with a final wave she’s gone.

  Sarah’s reading People magazine in bed when Eddie comes in.

  “How was book club?” he says, as he starts undressing.

  “Fine,” she says. “Good.”

  “You seem like you’ve had a bit to drink.” Eddie grins, thinking that maybe tonight he might get lucky.

  Sarah lays the magazine down, with a sigh of exasperation. “Do I ever say anything to you about the number of beers you drink every night when you get home?” she says slowly, trying to control the anger in her voice. “What difference does it make to you if I’ve had a drink? So what? Anything else you’d like to criticize while you’re at it?”

  Eddie throws his hands up in the air and shakes his head. “Forget it,” he spits. “Just forget it.”

  Five minutes later Sarah looks up at him. “Did you call the contractor today about the wall?”

  There’s a silence while Eddie tries to look for a way out. He’s been meaning to call the contractor for weeks. Sarah keeps nagging him to call, wants the wall between the kitchen and family room taken down as soon as possible, but for some reason he keeps forgetting.

  He could lie, he figures. It would be so much easier to say he left a message, but in the time he’s trying to figure out the lie, Sarah knows.

  Eddie shuffles his feet, feeling like a guilty child, feeling like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have. He hates this feeling, hates not living up to her expectations, and yet somehow he just doesn’t seem to be able to.

  He sees the way she looks at him when he walks around the bedroom naked. He knows what she’s saying when she asks him if he’s been to the gym recently. Does Sarah think he hasn’t noticed himself, how much weight he’s put on? His pants are all straining at the seams, his stomach resting over the top as he hoists them up all day long. When he shaves in the bathroom in the morning he no longer looks at his entire face but focuses on the razor, or looks into his eyes, so as not to see the increasing chins.

  He resolves, on a daily basis, to get back in shape again, to be fit, stop the beer, go back to the gym. He even bought a new pair of trainers, but work is so busy, and so stressful, and now there seems to be even more stress at home, and the only thing that makes him feel better, comforts him, and helps him step out of his life is beer. And food.

  He comes home later and later because the atmosphere is so unbearable. He comes home later and later to try to avoid yet another fight. He has become a barfly—joining colleagues after work in one of the neighborhood bars, just a few beers before heading home.

  He sees how unhappy Sarah is, and were he more enlightened, he would realize how unhappy he is, but Eddie merely drowns his feelings out and wishes that somehow, magically, things would go back to being the way they used to be.

  And, no. He still didn’t call the contractor. He shakes his head.

  “There’s a surprise,” she says sarcastically, as she pretends to read. “You forgot again.”

  Eddie snaps. “Do you have any idea how busy I am at work?” he says, his voice rising into a shout. “You’re always nagging me to do this, do that, but you have no idea what kind of a day I have at work, how there just isn’t time to do these things. Why don’t you call the contractor for Christ’s sake? It’s not like you have a job. You’re at home all the time; you could call him.”

  “Oh, I see”—Sarah puts the book down—“I’m at home all the time, doing what? Reading? Meeting the girls for lunch? Sunbathing in the backyard? You tell me how busy you are but what about what I do? I’m with the kids all day and when I’m not I’m damn well cleaning up this house and doing your laundry and making sure your life runs smoothly. I barely ask you to do anything, and the one thing I ask you to do you can’t even manage because you’re too goddamned lazy.”

  “Don’t call me lazy!” Eddie yells. “How dare you call…” And they stop as they hear a cry from the corridor.

  “Oh, shit,” mutters Sarah. “Great. Now you’ve woken Walker.” And then as she walks past him, under her breath, “Asshole.”

  “What’s the matter sweetheart?” She sits on the bed and cradles Walker. “Did you have a bad dream?” she asks hopefully.

  “No. You and Daddy were shouting,” Walker says, tears streaming down his face. “Why were you shouting?”

  “Sometimes grown-ups shout at one another,” Sarah says. “Sometimes we get angry at each other just like you and Maggie get angry. But it doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes you have to shout to make everything better. Remember when you and Tyler had that fight and you didn’t speak for a while and now you’re best friends again?” Walker nods. “Daddy and I had a little fight; that’s all.”

  “So are you friends again?” Walker says, eyes huge and scared.

  “Of course we are.” Sarah hugs him.

  “No.” Walker pulls away. “That’s too quick. You have to not be friends for a while and then you can be friends again.”

  Sounds like a plan to me, thinks Sarah, but she just squeezes Walker tight. “We are friends.”

  Sarah tucks him in, tells him she loves him, and gives him a kiss good night. As she softly closes the bedroom door, Walker calls out, “Mommy? Do you still love Daddy?”

  “Of course I do,” she says, and the words sound hollow, even to her.

  “I don’t,” Walker says suddenly, and Sarah comes back into his bedroom.

  “Yes, you do,” she says. “Sometimes you might not feel that you love him, or you might be angry with him, but you do love him, and he loves you.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Walker says calmly. “But that’s okay, Mommy, because we love each other, don’t we? You’re my best friend in the whole world.”

  “And you’re my best friend in the whole world.” She blinks the tears away from her eyes as Walker snuggles up with his Power Ranger. “Now go to sleep.”

  When Sarah gets back to her room Eddie is asleep, but she can’t fall asleep for ages. Should she tell him what Walker just said? Surely that would hurt him too much, and he probably wouldn’t believe it anyway, would think Sarah was just using it as ammunition to hurt him, but didn’t he have a right to know the effects of his not spending any time with his children? Shouldn’t he know the damage he’s causing?

  But Sarah hasn’t got the energy for another fight. She’s only just got the energy to get through each day intact. She now knows what single parents must go through, how hard it must be, and yet in some ways she thinks she has it harder because she has this added extra burden.

  Wouldn’t they all be so much better without him?

  Sarah imagines herself telling him to leave. Telling Eddie they’re leaving him. Imagines him drowning his sorrows in a sea of Sam Adams and Taco Bell burritos.

  Something in her won’t let her have that conversation—not yet. But something in her knows it’s just a matter of time, that when she reaches rock bottom she will have no other choice.

  It’s just a matter of time.


  Chapter Four

  “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  Sarah pauses, shrimp halfway to her mouth, as she looks at Eddie in alarm. Is this it? Is this how it’s going to happen? She finds herself waiting for him to tell her he’s having an affair, he’s leaving, half aware that it’s only wishful thinking, that it’s not actually going to happen like this, only in fact happens like this in the movies.

  The waiter comes over and asks if everything is okay, and Sarah forces an impatient smile as she nods. It’s not often they go out these days, and she was surprised when Eddie had suggested they go to their favorite fish restaurant this Friday, surprised because it was so rare these days that the two of them go to dinner for no reason at all.

  She had arranged a baby-sitter, had met Eddie at the train station, and now here they were, halfway through their shrimp cocktails, and Eddie looking like he’s about to drop a bombshell.

  Sarah puts the shrimp back on the plate and raises an eyebrow in anticipation, waiting for him to go on.

  Eddie takes a deep breath. Good Lord, Sarah thinks. Maybe I am right. Maybe he is leaving. And relief washes over her.

  “You know that building we’re buying in Chicago?”

  Sarah nods, although she doesn’t. They don’t tend to talk about work anymore. About anything anymore.

  “Well, it’s become complicated. The lawyer in the Chicago office just left and they need someone who’s there to take things over, and they want me to go.” Eddie looks at Sarah expectantly.

  “Right.” She nods, waiting for him to continue.

  “So, I haven’t really got a choice,” he says. “They want me to take his position in Chicago, and obviously it’s not really commutable, so…” he trails off.

  “So you’re moving to Chicago?”

  “Well, that’s what we have to talk about,” Eddie says, unable to read what Sarah’s thinking. “I know you love this town,” he says, “but Chicago’s a great city, and one of my colleagues offered to send me information about the schools there, and the thing is it may even be temporary. They want to see how things work out with this deal, but I think you would really like Chicago—”

  “Whoa”—Sarah raises a hand—“let me just take this in. They want you to go to Chicago and you want us to come with you?”

  Eddie looks wounded. “Of course I want you to come with me. You’re my family.”

  Sarah looks at him in amazement. Is he really that obtuse? Is he not, surely, as unhappy as she? Why would he want them to come with him? This is it, she realizes. It’s now or never. God has presented this opportunity to her on a platter and how can she not take it and run with it.

  She takes a deep breath, wondering how to say it, how it could be so hard to say when she has rehearsed this moment for weeks, months, when she thought she knew exactly which words to say, and how to say them.

  She would be kind, but firm, she had decided, all those long, lonely nights lying in bed and planning for her single future. She would tell him it was best for the children, and even though he might not be able to see it now, he would eventually realize that it was best for all of them. He deserved more happiness, she would say. They both deserved more happiness.

  “Eddie,” she starts, all her preparation having flown out the window, “do you really think it would be a good idea if we come?”

  Eddie looks confused for a moment. What is she trying to say? “Well, I guess I could work something out, maybe three days a week in Chicago and home for weekends—”

  “Eddie—” Sarah stops him by placing a hand on his. Now this feels familiar. Now this scenario is turning into the one she had thought about, the one she had planned for. “Eddie,” she says again, “stop. Do you have any idea how unhappy I am?”

  The blood drains from Eddie’s face. Now he knows where this is going.

  “Eddie,” she says softly, “do you remember what it was like when we were first married? Do you remember how happy we were? How we used to make each other laugh, and how we always used to say how lucky we were that we were each married to our best friend?

  “When was the last time we laughed, Eddie? When was the last time we had any fun together? Or even talked, for Christ’s sake, without it ending in a huge row, in us screaming at one another?”

  “Yeah,” Eddie says finally. “But all couples go through bad times, Sarah. This is just a patch. It will get better.”

  “This is a patch that’s lasted for three years,” Sarah says, not unkindly. “Eddie, it’s not going to get better; it’s only going to get worse. Listen, you are a great guy, but I think we’re just not the right match anymore. We’ve grown apart and, frankly, I want what’s best for the children, and they hardly see you anymore; they hardly know you.”

  Eddie is silent. He can see Sarah has made up her mind. What is there left to say?

  “I think this is God’s way of telling us we should have a trial separation,” Sarah says quietly. “This has happened for a reason. I’m not saying it’s necessarily over, but face it, neither of us can carry on the way it’s been going. You going to Chicago will give us both time to think about what we really want.”

  Eddie sits in shock. Of course he knew things were bad, but how did they ever get this bad? His parents had fought about the same amount as he and Sarah, and he didn’t remember ever seeing any open affection between them, but they never thought about a trial separation. They stayed married until his mother died of ovarian cancer at seventy-nine, after which time his father started referring to her in Godlike tones: the most wonderful woman in the world; the love of his life.

  “It’s for the best,” Sarah says gently, thrown slightly by the shock on Eddie’s face—didn’t he know? Didn’t he guess it was all going to end this way? And a trial separation is really a way for Sarah to soften the blow—everyone knows a trial separation means it’s over, but Sarah can’t quite kill all his hope in one blow—what would be the point?

  “We’ll tell the children in the morning,” she says, as the waiter comes over to collect their half-eaten plates. “We’ll have to make sure they know we still love them and it’s nothing to do with them.”

  Eddie watches her mouth move in a daze.

  How does a marriage end so quickly? So quietly? So conveniently? How did they ever get here?

  The first time Eddie saw Sarah was at a Halloween party in their neighborhood bar. Ninety percent of the women had gone as sexy nurses, sexy witches, sexy devils. If Eddie had a dollar for every pair of fishnet stockings he saw that night, he had joked to his friend Todd, he would be a rich man.

  And then Sarah had turned around, and Eddie and Todd had cracked up laughing.

  “She must be new here,” Todd had said, slapping his friend on the back with mirth.

  “Or maybe no one explained to her how the women here dress on Halloween.”

  It wasn’t true that Sarah had misunderstood the unspoken rules of Halloween; it was that she was fed up with following them. She knew that all of her friends tried to look as sexy as possible, and up until this year she had done the same thing, but some Machiavellian impulse had stopped her from donning her red patent platform boots and satin devil’s tail tonight.

  Tonight Sarah had come as a corpse or, to be more specific, as she had explained to her horrified doorman who had turned from waving good-bye to a group of gorgeous witches and Queen Malificents, she was one of the evil dead.

  “Uh huh,” had said the doorman, who wasn’t even sure who this horror was until she spoke. God, he had thought when he realized it was the girl from apartment 26. Such a pretty girl, why did she choose to look like this on Halloween?

  Sarah had blacked out half her teeth, had turned her skin to a deathly shade of gray, complete with sunken eye sockets and hollow cheeks. She was wearing filthy, ragged clothes, and to cap it off her hair was hanging in greasy tendrils.

  The truth was that Sarah had decided she was sick of New York’s dating scene. She was sick
of the men, sick of the scene, and was absolutely determined to stay single for a while. This was her statement, she had decided. This was her way of absolutely, positively ensuring she didn’t get drunk and do anything stupid on Halloween, for who in his right mind would look at her like this? She was going to meet her girlfriends, have a few drinks, and have a great time.

  “A hundred bucks if you get her phone number,” Todd had nudged Eddie, indulging in their ongoing game that had started when they were frat boys in school together.

  “Oh, no way,” Eddie had groaned, his eye already on a luscious redhead on the other side of the room. But once the gauntlet had been thrown down the rule was it had to be picked up. Goddamnit.

  Eddie had walked up to Sarah and said, “Nice costume.”

  “Go screw yourself.” She had smiled pleasantly at him and turned away as her girlfriends giggled.

  “What?” Eddie, resplendent in his Superman costume, was not used to being turned down, and particularly not when he could have done so much better. Hell, he was only doing this for a dare.

  “Go screw yourself.” Sarah had turned and smiled a toothless smile, and Eddie had jumped in front of her, his cape billowing, and had raised a hand in Superman’s salute.

  “Young lady,” he had said in a deep, powerful voice, “if this was Clark Kent talking to you, you would have every right to tell him to go screw himself, but it is Superman, the most powerful superhero in America, and”—he had pulled a green plastic crystal out of his belt, brandishing it high—“by the laws of kryptonite I command you to have a drink with me.”

  The room had erupted in applause, including Sarah’s friends, and although she rolled her eyes, she had to admit she was impressed.