by Tom Perrotta
“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” he said. “It’s Christmas. You should be with your family. Just for tonight. See how it feels.”
Laurie cast a worried glance in the direction of the bathroom, wondering what was taking Meg so long.
“Your friend can stay, too,” Kevin went on. “I can make up the bed in the guest room if she wants. She can go back in the morning.”
Laurie wondered what that meant: She can go back in the morning. Did that mean she herself would remain? Was he asking her to move back home? She shook her head, sadly but firmly, trying to make it clear that she wasn’t here for a conjugal visit.
“Sorry,” he said, finally getting the hint and removing that distracting hand from her arm. “I’m just feeling kinda down tonight. It’s nice to have some company.”
Laurie nodded. She felt sorry for him, she really did. Kevin had always loved the holidays, all that mandatory family togetherness.
“This is a little frustrating,” he told her. “I wish you would talk to me. I’m your husband. I’d like to hear your voice.”
Laurie felt her resolve weakening. She was on the verge of opening her mouth, saying something like, I know, it’s ridiculous, undoing eight months of hard work in a single moment of weakness, but before she could do it, the toilet flushed. A moment after that, the bathroom door swung open. And then, just as Meg came into view, smiling an apology, the phone buzzed in Kevin’s hand. He flipped it open without checking the display.
“Hello?” he said.
* * *
NORA WAS so startled by the sound of his voice that she couldn’t bring herself to speak. She’d somehow convinced herself, with the help of two glasses of wine on a mostly empty stomach, that Kevin wouldn’t be home, that she could just leave a brief message on his voice mail and make a clean getaway.
“Hello?” he said again, sounding more confused than irritated. “Who’s there?”
She was tempted to hang up, or pretend that she’d dialed the wrong number, but then she got hold of herself. I’m a grown woman, she thought, not a twelve-year-old making a prank call.
“It’s Nora,” she said. “Nora Durst. We danced at the dance.”
“I remember.” His tone was a little flatter than she might have hoped, a bit guarded. “How are you?”
“I’m okay. How about you?”
“Fine,” he said, but not like he meant it. “Just, uh, enjoying the holiday.”
“Same here,” she said, but not like she meant it, either.
“So…?”
His not-quite-question hung there for a few seconds, long enough for Nora to take a sip of wine and mentally review the speech she’d rehearsed in the bathtub: You want to go out for coffee sometime? I’m free most afternoons. She had it all figured out. Afternoons were low-pressure, and so was coffee. If you met for coffee in the afternoon, you could pretend it wasn’t even a date.
“I was wondering,” she said. “You want to go to Florida?”
“Florida?” He sounded just as surprised as she was.
“Yeah.” The word had just tumbled out of her mouth, but it was the right one, the one she’d meant. She wanted Florida, not coffee. “I don’t know about you, but I could use some sun. It gets so depressing up here.”
“And you want me to…?”
“If you want to,” she told him. “If you’re free.”
“Wow.” He didn’t sound unhappy. “What kinda time frame are we talking about?”
“I don’t know. Is tomorrow too soon?”
“The day after would be better.” He paused, then said, “Listen, I can’t really talk right now. Can I call you later?”
* * *
KEVIN TRIED to look nonchalant as he pocketed the phone, but it was hard with Laurie and her friend staring at him with such frank curiosity, as if he owed them an explanation.
“Just an acquaintance,” he muttered. “No one you know.”
Laurie clearly didn’t believe him, but what was he supposed to say? A woman I barely know asked me to go to Florida and I think I just said yes? He didn’t quite believe it himself. He’d only been off the phone for a few seconds and already it seemed like there must be some kind of mistake—an elaborate misunderstanding, or possibly even a practical joke. What he needed to do was call Nora back and get a few things clarified, but he couldn’t do that until he was alone, and he had no idea how long he was going to have to wait for that. Laurie and her sidekick looked like they’d be happy to stand there and stare at him for the rest of the evening.
“So.” He clapped his hands softly, trying to change the subject. “Is anybody hungry?”
* * *
LAURIE WALKED slowly toward Main Street, lagging a step or two behind Meg, enjoying the unfamiliar sluggishness that comes with a full belly. The meal hadn’t been fancy—there were no leftovers from an afternoon feast, the way there should have been on Christmas night—but it was delicious nonetheless. They’d devoured everything Kevin put in front of them—baby carrots, bowls of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup sprinkled with oyster crackers, salami and American cheese sandwiches on white bread—and then topped it off with a bag of Hershey’s Kisses and a cup of fresh hot coffee.
They were approaching the corner when she heard footsteps, and Kevin’s voice calling her name. She turned to see him jogging down the middle of the street, no coat or hat, waving one arm in the air as if he were trying to flag down a taxi.
“You forgot this,” he said when he caught up. There was a little box in his hand, the orphaned present she’d noticed under the tree. “I mean, I did. It’s for you. From Jill.”
Laurie knew that much just from looking at it. A gift from Kevin would have been sloppier, a lumpy, slapdash affair with as few frills as possible. But the box he was holding had been wrapped with care, the paper taut, the corners sharp, the ribbon curled between scissors and thumb.
“She would’ve killed me,” he added, breathing harder than she would’ve expected after such a short run.
Laurie accepted the gift, but made no move to open it. She could see that he wanted to stay and watch, but she didn’t think it was a good idea. They’d already had enough of a family Christmas, way more than was good for them.
“All right,” he said, taking the hint. “I’m glad I caught you. And thanks again for coming.”
He started for home, and they continued on to Main Street, stopping beneath a streetlight near Hickory Road to open the present. Meg stood close, watching with an eager expression as Laurie methodically undid her daughter’s work, pulling off the ribbon, breaking the tape, stripping off the paper. She guessed that the box contained jewelry, but when she removed the top, what she found was a cheap plastic lighter resting on a bed of cotton. Nothing fancy, just a red Bic disposable with three words painted on the barrel in what must have been Wite-Out.
Don’t Forget Me.
Meg took out her cigarettes and they each lit up, taking turns with the new lighter. It was a really sweet gift, and Laurie couldn’t help crying a little, picturing her daughter at the kitchen table, inscribing that neat, heartfelt message with a tiny brush. It was an object to treasure, full of sentimental value, which is why she had no choice but to kneel down and drop it into the first storm drain they saw, poking it through the grate like a coin into a slot. It fell for what seemed like a long time, and hardly made a sound when it landed.
Part Four
BE MY VALENTINE
A BETTER-THAN-AVERAGE GIRLFRIEND
THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS WERE PACKED for the January town meeting. Kevin had been home from Florida for two weeks by then, so he was a little surprised by the number of comments he received about his tan.
“Looking good, Mr. Mayor!”
“Little fun in the sun, huh?”
“Were you near Boca? My uncle’s got a place there.”
“I could use a vacation!”
Was I that pale? he wondered, taking his seat at the center of the long table at the front of the room, b
etween Councilman DiFazio and Councilwoman Herrera. Or were people responding to something deeper than the ruddy glow of his skin, an inner change that they couldn’t otherwise account for?
In any case, Kevin was delighted by the healthy turnout, a vast improvement on December’s dismal showing, which had consisted of no more than a dozen of the usual suspects, most of them tightwad senior citizens opposed to all government spending—federal, state, and local—except for the Social Security and Medicare they depended on to get by. The only attendee under forty had been the reporter for the Messenger, a pretty girl fresh out of college who kept nodding off over her laptop.
He gaveled the meeting to order at seven on the dot, not bothering with the customary five-minute delay to accommodate the stragglers. He wanted to stick to the schedule for once, keep things moving, and adjourn as close to nine as possible. He’d told Nora to expect him around then, and didn’t want to keep her waiting.
“Welcome,” he said. “It’s good to see you all here, especially on such a cold winter night. As most of you know, I’m Mayor Garvey and these good-looking folks up here on either side of me are your town council.”
There was a polite smattering of applause, and then Councilman DiFazio rose to lead them all in the Pledge of Allegiance, which they recited in a rushed, vaguely embarrassed mumble. Kevin asked everyone to remain standing for a moment of silence in honor of Ted Figueroa, the recently deceased brother-in-law of Councilwoman Carney and a prominent figure in the world of Mapleton youth sports.
“Many of us knew Ted as a legendary coach and guiding force behind the Saturday Morning Basketball Program, which he co-directed for two decades, long after his own kids had grown up. He was a dedicated, generous man, and I know I speak for all of us when I say he’ll be sorely missed.”
He hung his head and counted slowly to ten, which someone had once told him was the rule of thumb for a moment of silence. Personally, he hadn’t been all that crazy about Ted Figueroa—the guy was an asshole, in fact, an ultra-competitive coach who cherry-picked the best players for his own teams and almost always won the championship—but this wasn’t the time or place for honesty about the dead.
“All right,” he said, after they’d taken their seats. “Our first order of business is approval of the minutes from the December meeting. Is there a motion to approve?”
Councilman Reynaud made the motion. Councilwoman Chen seconded.
“All in favor?” Kevin asked. The ayes were unanimous. “The motion carries.”
* * *
IN HER younger days, during the all-too-brief window of freedom between her first kiss and her engagement to Doug, Nora had come to think of herself as a top-notch girlfriend. At her current remove—half a lifetime and another world away—she found it difficult to reconstruct the origins of this belief. It was possible that she’d read an article in Glamour on “Ten Essential Girlfriend Skills” and realized that she’d mastered eight of them. Or maybe she’d taken “The Ultimate Good Girlfriend Quiz” in Elle and scored in the top category: You’re a Keeper! But it was just as likely that the habit of self-esteem was so deeply ingrained in her psyche that it simply hadn’t occurred to her to think otherwise. After all, Nora was pretty, she was smart, her jeans fit well, her hair was straight and shiny. Of course she was a better girlfriend than most. She was a better everything than most.
This conviction was such an integral part of her self-image that she’d actually spoken it out loud during a mortifying breakup argument with her favorite college boyfriend. Brian was a charismatic philosophy major whose library pallor and pudgy waistline—he cultivated a European disdain for exercise—didn’t detract in the least from his brainy appeal. He and Nora had been a serious couple for most of sophomore year—they referred to themselves as “best friends and soul mates”—until Brian decided, upon his return from Spring Break, that they should start seeing other people.
“I don’t want to see anyone else,” she told him.
“That’s fine,” he said. “But what if I do?”
“Then it’s over between us. I’m not gonna share you.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Because I’m already seeing someone.”
“What?” Nora was genuinely baffled. “Why would you do that?”
“What do you mean? Why does anyone see anyone?”
“I mean, why would you need to?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“I’m a really good girlfriend,” she told him. “You know that, don’t you?”
He studied her for a few seconds, almost as if he were seeing her for the first time. There was something disconcertingly impersonal in his gaze, a kind of scientific detachment.
“You’re okay,” he conceded, a bit grudgingly. “Definitely above average.”
After she graduated, this story became one of her favorite college anecdotes. She told it so much that it eventually became a running gag in her marriage. Whenever she did something thoughtful—picked up Doug’s shirts at the cleaners, cooked him an elaborate dinner for no apparent reason, gave him a back rub when he came home from work—he would scrutinize her for a moment or two, stroking his chin like a philosophy major.
“It’s true,” he’d say, with an air of mild astonishment. “You really are a better-than-average girlfriend.”
“Damn right,” she’d reply. “I’m in the fifty-third percentile.”
The joke seemed a little less funny these days, or maybe just funny in a different way, now that she was trying to be Kevin Garvey’s girlfriend and doing such a crappy job of it. Not because she didn’t like him—that wasn’t the problem at all—but because she couldn’t remember how to play a role that had once been second nature. What did a girlfriend say? What did she do? It felt a lot like her honeymoon in Paris, when she suddenly realized that she couldn’t speak a word of French, even though she’d studied the language for all four years of high school.
It’s so frustrating, she told Doug. I used to know this stuff.
She wanted to say the same thing to Kevin, to let him know that she was just a little rusty, that one of these days it would all come back to her.
Je m’appelle Nora. Comment vous appellez-vous?
I’m a really good girlfriend.
* * *
COUNCIL MEETINGS were a bit like church, Kevin thought, a familiar sequence of rituals—Appointments, Resignations and Retirements, Announcements (“Congratulations to Brownie Troop 173, whose second annual gingerbread cookie fund-raiser netted over three hundred dollars for Fuzzy Amigos International, a charity that sends stuffed animals to impoverished indigenous children in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru…”), Proclamations (“February twenty-fifth is hereby proclaimed to be Dine Out in Mapleton Day!”), Permit Applications, Budgetary Resolutions, Committee Reports, and Pending Ordinances—that was both tedious and oddly comforting at the same time.
They moved through the agenda at a pretty good clip—the only speed bumps were the committee reports on Buildings and Grounds (too much detail on the paving contract selection process for municipal lot #3) and Public Safety (an evasive summary of the stalled investigation into the Falzone murder, followed by extensive discussion of the need for more nighttime police presence in and around Greenway Park)—and managed to conclude official business a little ahead of schedule.
“All right,” Kevin told the audience. “It’s your turn. The floor’s open for Public Comment.”
In theory, Kevin was eager to hear directly from his constituents. He said so all the time: “We’re here to serve you. And we can’t do that if we don’t know what’s on your mind. The most important job we can do is listen to your concerns and criticisms, and find innovative, cost-effective ways of addressing them.” He liked to think of the Public Comment period as high school civics in action—self-government on a truly intimate scale, a face-to-face dialogue between the voters and the people they’d elected, democracy as the founders had intended it.
In practice, though,
Public Comment was usually a bit of a freak show, a forum for cranks and monomaniacs to air their petty grievances and existential laments, most of which fell far outside the purview of municipal government. One of the regular speakers felt the need to provide her fellow citizens with monthly updates on a complicated billing dispute she was having with her health insurance provider. Another felt passionately about the abolition of Daylight Saving Time within the borders of Mapleton, an admittedly unorthodox move that he hoped would inspire other towns and states to follow suit. A frail elderly man frequently expressed his unhappiness with the poor delivery service provided by the Daily Journal, a newspaper that had ceased publication more than twenty years ago. For a while the council had tried to screen the speakers, barring those whose comments failed to address “relevant local issues,” but this policy caused so many hurt feelings that it was quickly abandoned. Now they were back to the old system, informally known as “One Nut, One Speech.”
The first person to address the January meeting was a young father from Rainier Road who complained about the speeding cars that used his street as a cut-through during evening rush hour, and wondered why the police were so lax in enforcing the traffic laws.
“What’s it gonna take for you people to do something?” he asked. “Is some little kid gonna have to die?”
Councilwoman Carney, chair of the Public Safety Committee, assured the man that the police were planning a major traffic safety initiative for the summer driving season, a campaign that would include both a public information component and a robust enforcement component. In the meantime, she would personally ask Chief Rogers to keep an eye on Rainier Road and the surrounding streets at evening rush hour.
The next speaker was a friendly-looking middle-aged woman on crutches who wanted to know why so many sidewalks in Mapleton weren’t properly shoveled after snowstorms. She herself had slipped on a patch of ice on Watley Terrace and had torn her ACL.