One Week In December

by Holly Chamberlin

  She was dying to flip the bird right back at him but wasn’t stupid enough to get herself forced to the side of the road by the no doubt perfectly coiffed, painfully worked-out soccer mommy behind the wheel of her insanely large gas-guzzling vehicle, who no doubt would defend her pampered little brat of a son from any and all accusations of wrongdoing. And then threaten to sue Becca (her husband would be a celebrity lawyer, of course, or a Wall Street CEO reveling in a recent outrageous bailout) for child abuse.

  Becca gritted her teeth—her dentist had been warning her for the past year to stop gritting and grinding; Dr. Olds had said something about TMJ and subsequent surgery—and drove on.

  If that kid were her kid, there was no way he’d even think about flipping someone the bird, ever, not a classmate and certainly not a stranger, a female stranger at that. She wasn’t a fan of corporal punishment, but there were plenty of other ways to teach a kid right from wrong and to make him aware of the consequences of acting like a deviant.

  Aware of her accelerating heart rate, Becca took a deep and she hoped a calming breath—after her last blood pressure reading her doctor had strongly advised she learn and use several calming techniques—and turned on the radio. Some cool jazz would be helpful, she thought, maybe a song by Madeleine Peyroux or Jane Monheit, but all she could find in this unfortunate zone were cheesy Christmas songs. She tried another station. More cheesy Christmas songs, these fuzzy but unmistakably chipper. Again she changed the channel. Again she was disappointed. Damn it for having forgotten to bring her iPod.

  What the hell was a reindeer doing with a red nose, anyway? Did it have a drinking problem? And if any kid really did see his mama kissing Santa Claus under the mistletoe, Becca was sure he’d be in therapy for the next twenty or thirty years of his life, not singing about it like it was all a big joke.

  Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All. Yeah, like that was ever going to happen. Becca turned off the radio and glanced at her watch. She still had at least another two hours to go before reaching the dear old family homestead. Just great. Just freakin’ great. And now she had to pee.

  It could safely be said that Becca Rowan was not in a holiday mood.

  2

  Lily Rowan supposed she should feel peaceful and grateful and all those good warm and fuzzy things you’re supposed to feel at Christmastime, but she didn’t feel any of those things. All she felt was sad.

  Lily stood at one of the living room windows, watching the snow that had been falling for about an hour and thinking of how Cliff, had he been there with her, would have had his arm around her waist and his head tilted next to hers, his adorably shaggy hair shining in the candlelight.

  At this time of the year, Julie Rowan, Lily’s mother, liked to place a single white candle in each window of the house in the traditional way. The candles were not electric; Julie Rowan was conservation minded in certain ways, and seemingly unafraid of several open flames in each room in spite of the fact that her dog, a Chinook named Hank, had on more than one occasion nearly swiped a candle to the ground with his tail. But, as Julie pointed out, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades (Lily had no idea what that meant, exactly), so the candles remained on the windowsills and each night, before Julie retired for bed, the candles were carefully snuffed out with an old-fashioned, long-handled pewter candle snuffer. This prevented hot wax from splattering on the windows.

  Lily sighed and hugged herself. The reality was that Cliff wasn’t here in Maine with her this Christmas. He was back in Lexington, Massachusetts, at his parents’ house because he’d done the unthinkable and Lily had found out his crime. Cliff Jones, Lily’s boyfriend of more than three years, had cheated on her with a mutual friend, a girl they knew from economics class and someone they’d chatted with at a few parties.

  It was horrible. It was unforgivable. Lily felt—no, she knew—that she would never get over Cliff’s betrayal and that, quite probably, she would never love again, certainly not like she’d loved Cliff. Like she still loved Cliff, and that was the real problem. Because as much as she hated Cliff, she also still loved him and wanted him back, though she couldn’t imagine any circumstance under which she would take him back—assuming he wanted to come back—because once a cheater, always a cheater. That’s what she’d always believed. You got one shot with someone and if you ruined it by sleeping with someone else—like your girlfriend’s classmate!—well, that was it.

  Still. Cliff. Lily missed him, his broad shoulders (in truth they were kind of bony) and his fantastic smile (albeit a fairly crooked one), and his ability to make her laugh (Lily was the only one on whom this magic seemed to work; Cliff’s buddies found him somewhat dull but tolerated his company for the way he threw around his cash; no one knew where he got the cash because he didn’t have a job, but no one hesitated to take it).

  Cliff was supposed to have joined the Rowan family for Christmas but, given the circumstances, Lily had come alone, taking the bus from Boston to Portland, where her father, Steve, had picked her up just the day before. They’d had lunch at Becky’s Diner on Commercial Street before heading north, and the tuna melt and hot chocolate Lily had ordered made her feel just a little bit better about being without the love of her life for Christmas.

  Lily sighed again and turned away from the window. Her grandmother was giving the swags of pine draped along the mantelpiece a final adjustment. Nora might be eighty-six years old but to Lily she would always be—well, ageless. Just—Grandma. It was she who’d decorated most of the first floor, with fresh pine branches and small sprigs of mistletoe and folk-art-inspired wooden Santa Claus statues. She had a knack for making an already cozy space even cozier, a pleasant moment somehow truly happy. Lily appreciated that quality in her grandmother and hoped that she would become half the woman Nora was. And that meant being caring and sympathetic and, when required, tough enough to stop a self-indulgent flood of tears.

  Lily remembered the night she had learned of Cliff’s perfidy. She’d called her grandmother in hysterics. She hadn’t even thought about the possibility that she might have gotten Nora out of bed, or that Nora might have been busy at some important task. No. When Lily needed Nora she simply reached out. She’d always been closer to her grandmother than to her mother, at least for as long as she could remember, which was back to the time when her older sister Becca went to live for a year with their brother, David, and his wife. Anyway, that night Nora had managed to calm Lily’s grief with a few well-considered words of advice and a few genuine endearments. Lily had even managed to sleep through the rest of the night without disturbing dreams of violent revenge against her errant boyfriend.

  If some people found it odd or unusual that two people, two women of the same family but so far apart in age, could be so close, that was not Lily’s concern. Besides, she wasn’t looking for a hip older companion; she wasn’t in need of a cool, Botoxed grandma in low-rise jeans and a page on My-Space. Instead, in Nora, Lily found just what she did need—the maternal warmth her mother didn’t quite provide, the wisdom of someone who’d learned from the experiences she’d lived, and the common sense that comes only from having survived the making of plenty of mistakes.

  Nora retreated into the kitchen just as Steve Rowan came down the front stairs and reached for a navy blue parka on the coatrack.

  “Where are you going, Dad?” Lily asked.

  “Just out to my studio for a bit. I had a brainstorm about my project.” He smiled. “Well, I think it was a brainstorm. I want to go and find out.”

  Lily assured him of his brilliance as a photographer, and he was gone. Lily thought that her father looked very tired and worn. She worried about him a little; sometimes he seemed so much older than her mother though they were only months apart. Lily knew her father had worked very hard for his family, spending long hours at the firm and often working all weekend. In fact, it was his dedication to the law that had inspired her to apply to law school. She hadn’t made a final decision on which area of law she wa
nted to specialize in, but she thought that elder law sounded interesting. Or maybe probate, though she knew that some estate settlements could be angrily contested. She didn’t think she had the stomach to be a criminal defense attorney or, for that matter, a divorce attorney. The idea of counseling a person on how to make the life of another person miserable—even if he or she deserved it—didn’t appeal to her in the least.

  Julie Rowan came into the living room, put her hands on her hips, and sighed.

  “Now where in the world did I put my glasses?”

  Lily smiled. Her mother was far from scatterbrained, but for some reason Lily couldn’t fathom, she liked to pretend that she was. Lily thought it was kind of an endearing quirk.

  “They’re on your head, Mom.”

  Julie patted the top of her head and laughed. “Of course! I knew that all along.”

  Julie was a warm person overall, if not sentimental, and she’d always been a devoted mother. But the truth was that by the time Lily came along—and quite a surprise she’d been—Julie’s energy for the little girl was limited. Then, a few years later, when everything had happened with Becca, well, Lily might have been little more than an afterthought in the course of Julie’s days. But there’d been Nora to fill any emotional gap left by Julie’s preoccupations, and Lily had thrived. If she hadn’t exactly been spoiled, she had been pampered, but it seemed to have done her no great harm. If a little naïve, Lily was also kindhearted; if a little sheltered, she was also eager to learn.

  Nora joined them and together the three women conducted a last-minute check of the house to be sure it was ready to receive its guests. Lily had learned that the house had been constructed in a very traditional New England style that some called a “telescope house.” The original part of the building had contained the two rooms now used as the living room and dining room, as well as the kitchen. The center stairs, still in existence, had led to the second floor; originally that had consisted of four small, equal-sized bedrooms. Above that was the attic that had once been used as the children’s bedrooms and, if there were any, the servants’ quarters.

  Over the years, and long before the Rowans had bought the place, an addition had been put on that was a smaller version of the original. This had contained the bathrooms and additional bedrooms; one of those rooms now served as the den, and another, as Nora’s bedroom. Lily didn’t know exactly what other work had been done over the years to result in the house her family occupied now, but she thought the overall affect was very pleasing.

  The exterior of the house was just as pleasing in its overall simplicity—white clapboard with no decoration; four-over-four windows; a fairly steeply sloped shingle roof. Unlike other, extreme versions of the telescope house, the barn sat about an eighth of a mile from the house. In the few years before retirement, Steve had begun a renovation that transformed the barn into a photography studio and workshop. It was now a clean, well-lighted space (Lily couldn’t place the phrase but knew she’d heard it somewhere) to which her father enjoyed retreating.

  When it had been determined that fires were roaring in every fireplace (originally, the house had had one in every room) and that food was warming in the oven, the women turned to a review of the sleeping arrangements.

  “Nora, of course, will be in her own room,” Julie said.

  “Of course,” her mother-in-law said. “There’s no point in even trying to dislodge an old woman from her domain.”

  “Or an old married couple from theirs, so Steve and I will be in our room. Rain will bunk with you, Lily, all right?”

  Lily nodded. “Sure. It’ll be nice to get some girl time with her.”

  “David and Naomi are in the Lupine Room, and Olivia and James will be in the Queen Anne’s Lace Room.” Julie had stenciled flowers on the doors of these rooms and enjoyed referring to them by their flowery names. She and her husband slept in the Peony Room. Steve did not share his wife’s enthusiasm for this pretension, but he said nothing. He believed that everyone had a right to her quirks and hobbies. “And I’m putting the twins in the Foxglove Room.”

  “The old sewing room?” Lily said. “But what about Becca? That’s where she usually sleeps.”

  “Oh, I thought I’d ask her if she’d mind sleeping on the couch in the den. Naomi called the other day. It seems the boys have been clamoring to sleep in their own room and not on the floor of their parents’ room. They grow up so quickly, kids these days. Anyway, I’m sure Becca won’t mind sleeping in the den. There’s just not enough room in there for two air mattresses!”

  Lily wasn’t at all sure that Becca would be happy about the new arrangement. She guessed that her sister would agree with good grace but knew that underneath she’d be seething. The last few times Becca had been with the family, Lily had sensed something she could barely articulate, some notion that Becca didn’t feel like one of them, like a Rowan, that in some way she felt alienated. But maybe Lily had misread her older sister. That wouldn’t be surprising. Becca was kind of distant with everybody, kind of hard to figure out. Lily hadn’t once heard Becca mention a friend, and now the thought occurred to her that maybe Becca didn’t have any friends.

  “It’s hard to believe,” Nora was saying, “that the family hasn’t seen Becca since last Christmas.”

  “But, Grandma, she’s visited David and Naomi.”

  “Well, of course,” Julie said. “That’s to be expected. But the rest of us haven’t seen her. She’s always had some excuse or other not to show up for a gathering.”

  “She does work very hard,” Lily said, though in fact she didn’t know much about her sister’s work or how much Becca claimed about her hectic schedule was true. Not that she suspected her sister of lying about it—why would she lie?—but the fact was that Lily and Becca weren’t close and never really had been. At least, not that Lily could recall.

  The phone rang and Julie hurried off to the kitchen to answer it. When she returned a few moments later it was to announce that Olivia and James had decided to drive up from their home in Framingham, Massachusetts, the next day. They hadn’t been able to close up the office early enough and didn’t want to risk driving in a storm.

  “That would be James’s decision,” Nora said. “I suspect Olivia would be willing to move Heaven and Earth to get here tonight.”

  “Did you see that e-mail Olivia sent last week?” Lily asked. “The one about wanting us all to sign up with some ancestor research Web site?”

  “Your grandmother and I aren’t online, my dear. The only computer around here is the one in your father’s studio.”

  “Oh. Right. Anyway, I was wondering where Olivia got her fascination with the family’s history. With genealogy and the family tree and all that.”

  Nora shook her head. “It’s more like an obsession, it seems to me. Mark my words, she’ll spend most of the time this holiday rummaging up in the attic, looking for whatever it is she’s looking for.”

  “Ghosts?” Lily wondered aloud. “The real kind, not something from a horror movie.”

  Nora smiled. “I’m not sure there’s a difference, is there? Anyway, mark my words, she’s looking for something.”

  “Treasure,” Lily suggested, only half joking. “I bet she thinks there’s treasure buried somewhere in the attic walls.”

  Julie removed the place settings she’d put out for her oldest daughter and her husband. “I think she’s looking for answers. But I’m not sure to which questions.”

  “Skeletons! Every family supposedly has skeletons in their closets. Maybe Olivia’s looking for scandalous secrets.”

  “Well, she won’t find any evidence of scandalous secrets in a pile of old junk,” Julie said.

  The three women quietly finished setting the table for dinner. The tablecloth was a cheerful affair Julie had picked up at Marshalls on her last visit to Boston; it was decorated with images of massive red poinsettias and bordered with lacy, intertwining pine branches. The napkins, large white squares, were embroidered aro
und the edges with depictions of holly clusters. The fact that they were still brilliantly white amazed Lily. Laundry wasn’t one of her strong suits. And the thought of ironing made her squirm. She had heard that in “the old days,” some women actually ironed their husbands’ underwear and their babies’ cloth diapers. Well, disposable diapers had solved one problem, but there was no way the ironing of underwear was going to happen in her household!

  “Whatever happened to the idea of James and Olivia adopting a baby?” Lily asked suddenly, prompted by the thought of diapers. “Wasn’t there some talk about that a year or two ago? Or am I imagining it?”

  “You’re not imagining it,” Lily’s mother replied. “James spoke to me about the possibility once or twice, after it was clear that Olivia wasn’t going to be able to sustain a pregnancy. But then, I heard nothing more. And it’s not a topic I feel comfortable bringing up, especially with someone as—tense—as Olivia.”

  “Of course not. I was just wondering.”

  “That woman can be prickly,” Nora said, as if to herself. Then: “Well, I’d better tend to the cinnamon rolls if they’re going to be ready for dinner. You know how David likes my cinnamon rolls.”

  Yes, thought Lily with yet another sigh. And Cliff, the love of her life, had liked Nora’s cinnamon rolls, too.

  3

  “Are we there yet?”

  “Are we there yet?”

  David didn’t reply. Why the boys thought it so hysterically funny to drive their father to the brink of insanity by chanting that question—in unison—over and over and over again, David just didn’t know. He knew the reference. Michael and Malcolm had picked it up from The Simpsons. He just didn’t know why they should find it so funny. David, it had been pointed out to him, didn’t have a great sense of humor.

  “Okay, guys,” he said wearily. “I get it.”

  “There’s nothing to get, Dad!”