This Christmas

by Jane Green

  “Well—isn’t it?” I asked. “That’s the suspenseful part if it’s a close game. And if it’s not close, who cares anyway?”

  They glared at me as if I had committed heresy, as if I had just insulted the very word sports. For the next thirty minutes, they talked about the Knicks and their chances for a championship. (Zero.) Also, their failures of the past. (Innumerable.)

  Half listening, I stared out the window at ditches and bare trees. I started nodding off.

  Then they moved on to football.

  By the time we reached the first rest stop, Jason and Isaac seemed like old buds. As Isaac trudged off to get a cup of machine coffee, I stood by the gas tank with Jason, hopping and slapping my gloved hands in a failing bid to create warmth. I longed to rush inside into the heated rest stop and inspect the aisles of unhealthy snacks as Isaac was doing, but the way things were going I was afraid this would be my only chance to talk to Jason for a while.

  “I like Isaac,” Jason said. “I don’t know why you were so hesitant to take him along on this trip.”

  I bent my head forward. “Hesitant?” I repeated, all innocence.

  I know what you’re thinking. Hesitant was a mild way to describe how I’d felt. I flat out hadn’t wanted him along. But how did Jason know that?

  “Well, I just assumed…you didn’t ask till the last minute,” Jason said. “And let’s face it. When you did ask, you didn’t sound thrilled.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t over the moon about it myself.”

  I laughed in disbelief. “You seemed so gung ho when I brought the idea up! You acted like having a passenger would make your day.”

  He gave his head a rueful shake. “I don’t know how you could think that. To tell you the truth, I’d always wondered about Isaac. I didn’t know what was going on with you two.”

  I leapt on this new tidbit. Was that why he had been reticent about sleeping together?

  “Nothing like you were imagining,” I assured him.

  He chuckled. “I can see that now. You guys argue so much it’s a miracle you’re still friends at all.”

  “We just have friendly disagreements every once in a while.”

  He looked at me as if I had gone mad. But I hadn’t, not at all; I mean, yes, Isaac and I argued, but it was mostly in fun. I didn’t want Jason to misinterpret this as genuine hostility. It was as if I had been on a month-long job interview; I didn’t want him to think that I was in any way difficult to get along with.

  I vowed that I would avoid arguing with Isaac for the rest of the trip. No matter what happened.

  “Isaac’s just been cranky lately because he broke up with his girlfriend,” I said.

  “Over a month ago,” Jason reminded me.

  I tilted my head. “How did you know?”

  “You told me.”

  “I did?”

  “Our first date, remember?” To prove it, he said, “Helen.”

  Good heavens. He really did have a good memory. “I can’t believe I wasted part of our first date talking about Isaac’s love problems.”

  He laughed. “Why not? We had to talk about something. A flaky songwriter is as good a subject as any.”

  I blinked. I had forgotten Helen was a songwriter. She had aspirations of being the next Alanis Morissette. She had made a CD of her songs (accompanied by herself on guitar) that she had titled “Inspirations.”

  Poor Isaac!

  Just as we were finishing up, Isaac came out carrying a cup of coffee and a big bag of Funyons. (Funyons and Bugles were our favorite road food, but no way was I eating a Funyon in front of Jason.)

  “Hey, do your nieces have Frosty the Snowman?” Isaac asked me. “The gas station has copies for three ninety-nine when you fill up.”

  “Three ninety-nine? I can barely stand to watch it for free.” Though of course I always did. Every year. I cry during that one, too, but of the big Christmas specials—the Grinch, Rudolph, Peanuts, Frosty—it comes in a distant fourth. “Jimmy Durante’s always rubbed me the wrong way.”

  All the creases fell out of Isaac’s face. He looked perplexed. “What’s Jimmy Durante got to do with Frosty the Snowman?”

  Was he kidding? “He’s the narrator. He even sings the song.”

  “No he doesn’t. Burl Ives does.”

  “No, it’s Jimmy Durante,” I said, remembering too late that I wasn’t supposed to argue with Isaac. Anyway, there are some things you just can’t let pass. “Burl Ives sings ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’”

  “Right. He’s in Frosty, too. He’s the snowman.”

  Isaac could be so wrong. So mulishly wrong. (Like he was about Charles Dickens.) “No, Burl Ives is a snowman in Rudolph, but he’s not Frosty the Snowman. He’s not in Frosty the Snowman at all. He has nothing to do with it.”

  “Well, I know Jimmy Durante isn’t Frosty the Snowman,” Isaac said.

  How on earth did I get into this? “I never said he was! He just sings the song.”

  I sent Jason a look of exasperation and discovered to my dismay that he was staring at both of us with cool detachment. See? His gaze seemed to say. You argue.

  Damn.

  Isaac eyed me with playful contempt and pity. “It’s just tragic when someone thinks they’re right and they’re not.”

  By now I felt like hopping up and down and screeching at him.

  “Um, kids?” Jason asked. He apparently wasn’t used to people coming to blows over trivia, and now he was staring at us as if we had both lost our minds. This was just what I had been worried about when Isaac told me he wanted to come along. “Shouldn’t we get back on the road?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  The minute Jason’s back was turned, I gave Isaac a swift kick.

  “It was Burl Ives,” he mouthed.

  Back in the car, Isaac put in his Bonanza cast CD, and we were treated to Lorne Greene singing “Home for the Holidays.”

  “So what’s the nocturnal setup chez Ellis while you two are there?” Isaac asked.

  Jason and I shifted stiffly in our bucket seats.

  “My parents have a guest room,” I reminded Isaac. He knew this.

  “Doesn’t Maddie’s fiancé always stay in that room?”

  “This year he can sleep on the couch,” I said.

  “I thought the nieces slept on the couch.”

  I decided that Isaac knew an unseemly amount about my family and its sleeping arrangements.

  “Maddie’s fiancé?” Jason asked, confused. “How long have they been engaged?”

  I bit my lip. I hadn’t told him that my sister was a serial bride to be. I didn’t want him to think I had compulsive engagement disorder in my genes.

  “Maddie brings her boyfriends home every year. She calls them fiancés. I have no idea who will pop up this year on her arm—not that it matters. I assure you we’ll never see the guy again.”

  “Disposable fiancés.” Isaac chomped down on a Funyon. “The ultimate convenience.”

  “That sounds…quirky…” Jason did not seem amused.

  “That’s just Maddie,” I said, on the defensive now. How is it that your family can drive you absolutely nuts, but the moment someone else sounds the least bit critical, blood instantly becomes thicker than water? That’s how I was, especially with Maddie. I guess a person always feels protective of their next youngest sibling. Even when that sibling never had an honest trouble in her life to be protected from.

  Isaac returned to the top of his script. “Still, with that many people in the house, things are bound to get mighty interesting. Especially at night.”

  “What do you mean?” Jason asked.

  Glancing in the vanity mirror, I could see Isaac smiling impishly. “You know, little feet going pitter patter after the elder Ellises have gone to bed.” And he obviously didn’t mean the little feet would belong to my nieces. “I bet that house will just be rife with Christmas canoodling.”

  Jason laughe
d good-naturedly. I might have let out a halfhearted chuckle. True, I had my lingerie stash and plenty of holiday hope. But after Jason had waited a month for the perfect moment, I also reserved a little skepticism that our magic moment would arrive in my twin bed in my old room, which still had remnants of my teenage life strewn about. Back when I was fifteen I was obsessed with the movie The Last of the Mohicans. My prized possession from those days was the giant movie poster, picturing Daniel Day-Lewis running toward the camera. He was such a babe—that chest, those thighs bulging against his buckskins, that flowing hair! The poster was still there, the focal point of the room. Did we really want to consummate our love with Natty Bumppo staring down at us?

  Isaac poked me on the shoulder. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about this!”

  I cleared my throat. “I…uh…no.”

  He laughed. “Liar.”

  My face was beet red. Couldn’t he drop it?

  “I promised Holly I would be a perfect gentleman,” Jason said.

  I turned in shock. He had not!

  Isaac asked in amazement, “You did?”

  Jason nodded, then winked at me. “As always.”

  I tossed a glare at the backseat. But that wink confused me. Did Jason mean he really was going to be a gentleman (drat!) or did he mean he was lying to Isaac?

  Isaac looked nonplussed, and for a while there was just the sound of Lorne Greene and Isaac munching thoughtfully on his Funyons.

  I was hoping that would be the end of the discussion, but I should have known better.

  “You mean you two have never…?” Isaac let the question dangle.

  “No,” we bit out in unison.

  Isaac laughed. Laughed. “No wonder Holly’s been acting so crazed!”

  Jason’s head snapped around to inspect me. “Crazed?”

  I tossed up my hands. “I’ve been happy,” I said, turning on Isaac. He was grinning like a demon elf. “And don’t go criticizing me, Mr. Wiseguy. You’ve got your moods. Ever since the Helen breakup you’ve just been moping around and snapping my head off for no reason.”

  Since before Thanksgiving he’d been crabby. For as long as Jason and I had been going out, I had barely been able to talk to Isaac without having an argument.

  “I’ve had reason,” Isaac said.

  “Well, for God’s sake,” I said, rolling me eyes, “don’t be so mysterious. Are you sick? Have you…?”

  My mouth clamped shut. Blood drained out of my face.

  For as long as Jason and I had been going out.

  But that couldn’t be…could it?

  Isaac held my gaze in the vanity mirror for a second longer before biting into another chip. “A psychological holiday slump,” he explained.

  “Ah,” Jason said.

  My brain reeled for a moment. Was Isaac purposefully messing with my head? Or maybe I was leaping to the wrong conclusion.

  But since when did he fall prey to holiday depression?

  He smiled at me in the mirror. “Haven’t you ever heard of those fabled Hanukkah blues?”

  He was messing with my head. I suddenly lost patience with both him and the cast of Bonanza. With a sharp jab, I ejected Isaac’s CD and found an oldies radio station. It was playing “Frosty the Snowman.”

  And the singer was Burl Ives.

  Dumbstruck, I stared at the radio knobs. This was so wrong!

  I could feel Isaac’s triumphant smile beaming from the backseat. “Told you,” he said.

  “It was Jimmy Durante in the television show,” I insisted. Was I going crazy? I appealed to Jason. “You believe me, don’t you?”

  He appeared hesitant to venture into the argument. “Is it worth ruining a friendship over?”

  “Absolutely!” Isaac and I chimed in unison.

  Then we burst out laughing.

  Chapter Three

  “I know you’re in a hurry to get to your Frank Capra Christmas,” Isaac told me as he was climbing out of the backseat when we dropped him off. “So I won’t ask you in.”

  I shivered in the cold, waiting for him to grab his bag so I could get back in the car. This was the trouble with a two-door. “You’ll come by the house? Everybody will want to see you.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” he said, playing hard to get all of a sudden. Then he leaned in the car and thanked Jason again for the ride.

  “Call me!” I jumped back in, glad to be back in the warmth.

  Jason idled the motor while we watched Isaac trudge up to his front door. I wondered if Isaac felt a little melancholy to be back at his parents’ house, alone again. His folks nagged him about his life as much as mine did. A strong tug of camaraderie welled up inside me, of loyalty toward Isaac and all those adults returning solo to the nest this year, even though I’d hit it lucky.

  “Great guy,” Jason said.

  “Mm.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that Jason had never said anything bad about anybody in my hearing. He liked everybody…which was sort of puzzling. I mean, yes, he liked me. But what did it mean to be liked by someone who never met a person he didn’t like?

  And I had to wonder…what kind of person couldn’t remember one thing he wanted and didn’t get?

  As we drove through my old neighborhood I got fired up again, pointing out landmarks of my illustrious past. My high school! Bungalow Billiards! My best friend from seventh grade Stacy Sheinman’s house! But when we pulled up into the driveway of my parents’ place, I felt a stab of disappointment. And bewilderment. Of course it was daylight, so the fact that there were no outside lights on was not at all surprising. But I didn’t see any evidence of decoration. The house looked naked. There were no wire reindeer on the roof. The mailbox and the lampposts didn’t have bows on them. And where was the giant inflatable polar bear?

  Most years when I come down, Mom and Dad and whoever else is already there come pouring out the front door before I can cut off my engine. But as we sat staring up at the white Cape Cod façade, the door remained firmly shut.

  “Well, let’s get a move on,” Jason said, rousing me out of my inertia. “Time for me to face the inspection crew.”

  That thought—my folks inspecting Jason, and their inevitable fawning approval—was enough to put a spring in my step as I hurried up the walkway.

  “Hey,” Jason called from behind. “Shouldn’t we empty the car?”

  I waved him forward. “Dad and Ted and everybody will give us a hand with that in a couple of minutes.”

  His smile conveyed that this sounded like a good deal to him, and he hurried up to my side. The day had barely warmed up at all from the freezing temperature of the morning. The wind had died down since our stop in Jersey, but the world felt icy and still. There wasn’t much traffic on the street, but it was still a day before Christmas Eve, so there were probably a lot of people who were at work.

  My brother’s SUV was in the driveway, though, which meant that all his gang was here.

  When no one appeared in answer to the doorbell, I dropped the heavy brass acorn knocker against the door. The resulting sound seemed to echo through the neighborhood; every neighbor for blocks around would now know I had returned. But the jarring sound had no effect where we were. “That’s weird,” I said.

  “That there’s no one home?” Jason asked.

  That, too. But what had me really rattled was the fact that there was no wreath on the door. Had we entered some Twilight Zone where Christmas as I knew it no longer existed?

  Before I could voice this troubling theory, the door’s deadbolt slid abruptly, the door swung open, and there stood Ted.

  Except he didn’t look like Ted. My brother’s squared jaw, usually so smooth he could have been a Gillette spokesman, was unshaven; his hair was squashed on one side in a bad case of bed head; and his eyes were so bloodshot that the blue irises seemed almost to be glowing dully in their pools of red. He didn’t smile when he saw me. In fact, for a moment his expressionless eyes didn’t seem to recognize me. It was as if L
urch from The Addams Family had opened the door for us.

  Lurch, hungover.

  “Ted?”

  “Oh, hi,” he said. A few seconds later the stench of his breath reached me. It was ninety proof. I looked down at his right hand, which was clutching a bottle of Jim Beam, three quarters full. He wasn’t hungover at all—he was still tanking up.

  My voice wobbled as I introduced Jason. Ted was forced to switch the Jim Beam to his left hand so they could shake. “Hey,” he said, completely without enthusiasm.

  Jason, of course, had no way to know this was very odd behavior coming from my brother. For all he knew, Ted always looked like Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas.

  “Where are those nieces of mine?” I asked, in that geeked-up way people use when they’re trying to inject cheer into a morbid ambience.

  Ted sagged against the doorjamb and his bloodshot eyes puddled with moisture. Apparently I had asked the wrong question. “They’re not”—his shoulders convulsed—“coming.”

  “Not coming?” I repeated, stupidly. “Where are they?”

  “With…Melinda!” His wife’s name came out on a sob.

  “But how can that be?” Ted and Melinda were such a perfect couple. They always seemed to be in perfect mental lockstep.

  Ted unscrewed the top from the Jim Beam and took a swig. “She left me, Holly. She just loaded up the girls in the Escalade and drove off.”

  “Oh, Ted! I’m so sorry!”

  I reached out to touch his arm, but he recoiled. “She said she’d been unhappy for years. Years. Said I was domineering.”

  I shook my head. Oh, lordy. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “And that I was patronizing. How could she say such a thing?” Before I could answer, he shouted, “And where the hell did she learn to throw around words like that? Not at that gym she used to work at, that’s for damn sure!” His bleary eyes started scanning the street behind me, as if Melinda might be hiding behind a bush out there somewhere. “Little miss aerobics instructor wasn’t tossing around ten-dollar words back before I found her!”