Friends and Strangers

by J. Courtney Sullivan

She offered them all coffee. When she went to the kitchen to fix it, her father-in-law ducked into the room, put his hands on her shoulders, and whispered, “Courage.”

  Elisabeth smiled.

  “Thanks, George,” she said.

  They took their places in the living room like actors in a play—her father and Gloria on the sofa, thighs touching; Andrew’s parents in matching armchairs, five feet apart. The rest of them sat on chairs pulled in from the dining room, all arranged around Gil, who was seated on a blanket on the floor, their little king. From time to time, one of them scooped him up, unable to resist, and everyone else glowed with jealousy.

  Faye played the expert. She said things like, “Don’t forget to support his head,” and “He loves to be bounced—no, not that hard. Here, like this.”

  Elisabeth’s mother kept sneaking glances at her father and Gloria. She had placed the bags from Saks around her chair as if building a wall between herself and anyone who might wish to do her harm. Eventually, she gave them to their intended recipients. A Burberry scarf for Andrew, leather driving gloves for Elisabeth. Gifts you might buy for someone you wanted to impress but had never met before.

  George and Faye handed out scratch-off tickets tucked inside plain white envelopes. It was what they did every year, but now, for the first time, Elisabeth thought it had a whiff of desperation about it. This was precisely what was wrong with Christmas. It was ridiculous that they felt obliged to spend any amount of money, given the state of their finances.

  Her father kept saying, “Let Gloria hold the baby. Gloria hasn’t had a turn.”

  Charlotte rarely looked up from her phone.

  They brought Gil gifts meant for a three-year-old—plastic dinosaur figurines, a tricycle. The saving grace was how much he adored their adoration, giving his biggest, flirtiest smile to them all, and laughing when Charlotte reached into one of the Saks bags, pulled out a red bow, and stuck it to his shirt.

  When all the packages had been opened, Elisabeth’s father said to her mother, “Janey, how’s California? I miss it sometimes.”

  “It’s fine,” she said. “I’d ask how Arizona is, but, well, it’s Arizona.”

  “You used to beg me to send you to Canyon Ranch.”

  “For a weekend. But long term? Arizona is where sad old men go to die.”

  Elisabeth tensed, wondering if this was banter or the start of something. Over the years, watching them, anticipating their moods and moves, had become her addiction. It didn’t go away because they were divorced.

  But her father chuckled.

  “Come visit,” he said.

  “Oh, Michael,” her mother said.

  Elisabeth thought there was a hint of warmth behind the words.

  She looked from one parent to the other, and for a moment they were a family again. Not that they’d ever been a very good one, but still, it was something.

  She had to squeeze her eyes shut to rid herself of this notion.

  Her whole life, she had viewed their marriage as somehow above all others, even though it was worse than most. Her parents had cultivated this, acting as if suffering was the proof of a superior union.

  It had been one of the great lessons of her life, learning that this was not so. She wondered now if she had learned it at all, or if it was something she knew, but could not fully believe.

  “You may have a point about Arizona,” he said. “But I suppose I am an old man, after all. We love it, don’t we, Gloria?”

  “I’ve been in Tucson since ’83,” Gloria said. “There hasn’t been a morning since that I haven’t hiked Sabino Canyon.”

  “How nice,” said Elisabeth’s mother, a woman who would no sooner hike than shave her head.

  “We eat dinner under the stars almost every night,” Gloria went on. “Which reminds me. Andrew, when will we get one of your famous grills? I can’t think of a better place for one than Arizona. We have three hundred sunny days a year.”

  “Are you on the tourism board?” Elisabeth’s mother asked. “Are you a paid spokesperson?”

  Elisabeth and Charlotte locked eyes.

  “We’re still working on a prototype,” Andrew said. “It will be ready soon, I hope. We’ve hit a few snags, but we’re getting there.”

  “I read once that two-thirds of all inventors never see any profits,” Elisabeth’s father said, like it was merely an interesting factoid, nothing to do with them.

  Andrew got up to check on the food, which he said would be ready soon.

  Elisabeth took Gil into the den upstairs to nurse.

  So far, the day had had its strained moments, but it was going better than she’d imagined. She attributed this to Gil. His presence was a balm. One thing everyone could agree on.

  Once they had established a peaceful rhythm, Elisabeth closed her eyes.

  She had almost drifted off to sleep when a voice said, “You’re still doing that?”

  Her mother.

  Elisabeth kept her eyes shut.

  “Yup.”

  “I’m having bad flashbacks just looking at you.”

  “Then don’t look.” Elisabeth opened her eyes. “What flashbacks? I didn’t think you breastfed.”

  “Charlotte, no. But I breastfed you forever.”

  She found that she was happy to be wrong.

  “You did?”

  “Yes. For like, a month.” Her mother paused. “You look wonderful, by the way. Your body just bounced right back.”

  Elisabeth bristled at this. She didn’t respond, but her mother went on talking anyway.

  “Of course, that’s what usually happens the first time. It’s like your body is willing to put up with all that once, but after the second time—forget it. You’re a saggy balloon for life.”

  She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Tell me the truth—do you think your father looks bad? I think he does. That Gloria is positively fat. She must eat a dozen doughnuts while she’s hiking every morning.”

  Elisabeth laughed in spite of herself. She noticed now that her mother had moved on from coffee to a glass of red wine.

  It was true that Gloria was larger than she’d imagined. Not fat, really. But not toned and tightened. Not her father’s usual type. Her face was weathered, tan and wrinkled from living in the desert for so long. Elisabeth didn’t think she had any makeup on. Gloria’s gray hair hung down past her shoulders in messy waves that looked like they had never encountered a blow-dryer. Maybe not even a brush.

  Elisabeth figured all this probably bothered her mother more than if he had arrived with some gorgeous twenty-five-year-old. His interest in Gloria ran counter to her belief that beauty was all that mattered, that it could keep a woman safe.

  “It must be hard for you, seeing Dad with her,” Elisabeth said.

  Her mother shrugged. “Exclusivity was never a privilege I enjoyed, even when we were married. Though it’s true, I never had to spend Christmas with one of his mistresses before.”

  Elisabeth resisted the urge to say that Gloria wasn’t his mistress. She was his partner. They had been together for two years.

  “We’d better get back downstairs,” she said.

  “I’ll take my friend, please,” her mother said, once again reaching for Gil.

  Elisabeth handed him over.

  “Why didn’t you come sooner to see him?” she said.

  “I wasn’t invited,” her mother said.

  “That’s not true. You don’t need an invitation. You never even expressed an interest.”

  “Well, I’m here now. Isn’t that enough?”

  It wasn’t, but Elisabeth supposed it had to be.

  When they descended the staircase, Charlotte stood in front of the open front door, hugging a guy with long blond dreadlocks. He wore shorts and a short-sleeved polo shirt, as if weather traveled wi
th a person, rather than changing from place to place.

  Elisabeth wanted to tell them to stop letting the heat out, or the cold air in, whichever it was.

  She said, “You must be Davey. Welcome.”

  He smiled back.

  “Mom, Davey is the mastermind behind all the gorgeous photos of me online,” Charlotte said. “He has the patience of a saint.”

  Davey shrugged. “It’s not hard, when your subject is as exquisite as this.”

  Elisabeth had never considered that there was someone else there, snapping the photo, in those seemingly solitary moments when Charlotte contemplated the meaning of life while standing on a deserted beach in revealing swimwear.

  “You’re right in time for lunch,” Elisabeth said. “Hope you’re hungry.”

  * * *

  —

  Andrew had made a ham and au gratin potatoes and string beans and rolls. He baked three pies for dessert. Everyone gathered in the dining room, where he had set the table the previous day, as his mother always did at Christmas.

  “This looks so pretty,” Faye said. “You two have outdone yourselves.”

  Elisabeth’s own mother was staring down at her manicure.

  In front of Faye, Elisabeth had often been embarrassed by their relative extravagance. Faye knew how much they’d spent on the bathroom renovation, because she came right out and asked Andrew, and then declared it a fortune. Every time they got a new piece of furniture, Faye asked where it was from, and no matter what the response, she said, “Oof. Pricey.” They joked that they could tell her something came from a dumpster and her answer would remain the same.

  Now Elisabeth sensed her mother assessing the house and finding it shabby, small. It could fit into a corner of the one she’d grown up in. In a way, she felt proud of this. Her mother had always wanted more than everyone else. Elisabeth was content with less.

  “It feels funny, having Christmas somewhere other than our house for the first time since Andrew was born,” Faye said. “Come to think of it, we’ll never spend a holiday there again.”

  Her eyes watered.

  Elisabeth wanted to say that this probably wasn’t the case, but she figured Faye would rather not be reminded that the house had been on the market for three weeks, without a single offer.

  “But,” Faye said, sitting up straight, “old traditions must give way if new ones are to blossom.”

  It sounded like something from a fortune cookie.

  “We thought it would be nice for the baby to spend his first Christmas at home,” Andrew said, like this was news, when they had discussed it ten times already.

  “Did you get a Christmas card from your aunt Betsy?” Faye said. “She asked me if you got it when we talked this morning.”

  “I think so?” Andrew said.

  “Our Christmas card this year was a picture of us in front of a cactus, with a Santa hat on top,” Gloria said. When no one reacted, she added, “Of the cactus.”

  Elisabeth had somehow missed that. She wondered if her father was supposed to have sent it, or if they’d been left off the list on purpose.

  “Sam sent us a Christmas card,” George said. “Wasn’t that sweet.”

  “That’s right,” Elisabeth said. “She asked me for your address.”

  “Somebody raised that girl right,” George said.

  “Who’s Sam?” said Elisabeth’s father.

  “Gil’s babysitter,” Elisabeth said.

  “I heard from her over email two mornings back,” George said.

  “You did?”

  This bugged her for some reason. Elisabeth had been trying to respect Sam’s space. She hadn’t reached out at all.

  “Why are you emailing their babysitter?” Elisabeth’s mother said.

  “We’re in a discussion group together,” George said. “A civics thing. It was sort of related to that.”

  “How so?” said Elisabeth’s mother, clearly thinking George had a more sinister reason for emailing Sam. She looked directly at Faye.

  “For a while now, Sam’s been wanting to help the women who work in her campus dining hall,” George said. “I guess one of them has a small child. And this young woman was more or less denied access to childcare at the college. She told Sam, and now Sam’s more fired up than ever to do something.”

  “I didn’t hear about that,” Elisabeth said.

  “It just happened,” George said. “Right when Sam was about to head home for the holiday. She wants to write a letter to the president of the college. She really admires that woman.”

  “I know,” Elisabeth said.

  Out of curiosity, after hearing Sam lavish praise upon her, Elisabeth had looked Shirley Washington up online. The woman had been on the board of directors at Goldman Sachs during the financial crisis. She made half a million a year from it. She left in 2009, with seven million in stock, after being on the committee that doled out generous severance packages to criminal bankers. She was not the saint Sam imagined her to be.

  Elisabeth was surprised that it hadn’t become more of a campus scandal. From the stories published in the Gazette at the time, it seemed that alums of the college had demanded that Shirley Washington donate her ill-gotten earnings. But she didn’t, nor did she ever publicly comment. Eventually, the story just went away. She gave a speech about the inherent selflessness of women, and the speech went viral. By the time Sam arrived at the college a year later, all signs of outrage had vanished.

  “The babysitter is in a civics group with George?” Elisabeth’s mother said now, to no one in particular.

  “Yes. She’s a fellow activist,” George said.

  “I didn’t realize you were one,” Elisabeth’s father said.

  “It’s a fairly recent development. Have the kids told you about my theory? The Hollow Tree?”

  “Dad,” Andrew said, shaking his head. “No.”

  “What is it?” said Davey, who hadn’t said anything since announcing that their house smelled just like his grandmother’s.

  “Take, for example, my wife, Faye,” George said.

  “Why me?” Faye said.

  George raised a hand. “Let me say my piece. Faye’s a grade school teacher, has been for forty years. The first time they did one of those active-shooter drills at the school, she called me crying after. She knew it wasn’t real, but she said going through the motions almost killed her. Tell them, Faye.”

  “Dad, this isn’t very Christmasy,” Andrew said.

  “No, tell us,” Davey said.

  “We had to practice squeezing into the supply closet and keeping still,” Faye said matter-of-factly. “Then the children had to lie on the floor and pretend to be dead. I told them, ‘This is how we’ll stay safe if someone dangerous brings a gun to school.’ They’re seven.”

  “Shit,” Davey said.

  “Now the school does these drills every three months,” George said. “They are as routine a part of Faye’s schedule as lice checks or class-picture day. This is our country’s solution to the problem of guns. Teachers hiding in a closet with all their kids. My wife as a human shield. Instead of following the money and going after the crooked lobbyists like they should.”

  “This is why I prefer to live on-island,” Charlotte said. “It’s a simple way of life. None of the corruption and violence that pollute America. No one we know cares about material things. We live for the authentic experience. Right, Davey?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, but I think that’s right,” Davey said.

  George nodded, but the look on his face said he wasn’t buying it. Elisabeth recalled the epic rant he went on some months ago, when they described to him what an influencer was.

  “Teaching on the whole is so much worse than it was when Faye started,” George said now. “The young ones in her school have mas
ter’s degrees, but they all work second jobs to get by. Once you could raise a family on a teacher’s salary, but not anymore. The state of some of her students is pitiful. Faye has always had to supply a few each year with paper and pencils, but now it’s toothbrushes, deodorant, sometimes money for the cafeteria.”

  “That’s messed up,” Davey said.

  “Yes, it is,” George said.

  That bit of encouragement was all he needed to keep on.

  “Even yesterday, Faye and I were at the grocery store checkout and this woman about our age zipped the bacon past the scanner, and Faye saw that it cost five dollars,” he said. “So she said to the woman, ‘I thought that was on sale.’ The woman seemed offended. She said, ‘It is on sale. That’s a good price.’ When we were walking out of there, what did you say to me, Faye?”

  Faye shook her head. “I can’t remember.”

  “You said, ‘That used to be a job for teenagers. When did grown women start doing it? And what jobs do teenagers have now?’ ”

  “Yeah,” Davey said, nodding. “Hell yeah.”

  Elisabeth wondered if he was stoned.

  “What does that have to do with guns?” Charlotte said.

  “It has to do with the state this country is in,” George said. “Those are two small examples of hundreds. Thousands. I look through the papers every day and cut out articles about how the average American is getting screwed. You look at them side by side, you start to see a pattern. This morning even, there’s a story about people going bankrupt from medical bills on the front page of the Gazette. On Christmas Day. There’s no end to it.”

  Elisabeth’s father cocked his head to the side. She could tell he was thinking it over. She appreciated this, as she knew George looked up to him, in a way. Despite his many flaws, her father was successful, well educated, worldly.

  “You sound a little nuts, George,” he said at last.

  “Dad!” Elisabeth said.

  “Michael!” said both her mother and Gloria.

  Poor George looked like he’d been hit from behind. Elisabeth sent him an apologetic smile. For years now, George had been the closest thing she had to a father figure. How dare her father treat him like that?