I dreaded going back to Cambridge for Christmas. Christmas had always been painful since my mom died, and I knew what to expect: the house would be a mess, Dad would be in high dudgeon about some wrong done to him—real or imagined—and it would be up to me to create holiday spirit.
Harder then ever since all I wanted was to be with Alistair. I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing him for nearly a month, especially since I hadn’t heard from him since that magical night he told me he loved me.
It had been exam time for both of us, but I’d hoped for at least a phone call. I’d begun to despair. Lois warned me not to buy him a holiday gift. She said men sometimes dump you right before the holidays so they don’t have to buy you anything.
But all my anxiety vanished when I arrived at the Bryn Mawr train station after my last exam, and there was Alistair on the platform. He was talking to two of the Brontës and some juniors from Rhodes Hall.
I ran and threw my arms around him.
“You came! I should have known you wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye. I’m going to miss you so much.”
He looked embarrassed and pulled away. I wondered if it was because of my shabby luggage. The Rhodes juniors had sets of matching Vuitton cases.
“We’re all going to miss Alistair,” Emily said. “But we hope he’ll come to my New Year’s Eve party in Newport. It’s going to be the event of the season.”
This was the first I’d heard of a New Year’s Eve party. Maybe because I was underage. I felt the sting of being left out. I suppose I looked Cinderella-ish.
“And you must come too, Nicky,” Emily said with admirable poise if not sincerity. “Give me your phone number so I can call with details and directions. I haven’t firmed things up with my parents’ staff yet.”
We exchanged phone numbers as the train chugged into the station.
“I need your number, too,” Emily said to Alistair. “Or will you be over the pond?”
“I haven’t the foggiest,” Alistair said in a lazy tone. “But you can usually reach me at this number.” He pulled out an elegant silver case I hadn’t seen before and slid out a business card.
I got brave. “Can I have one of those, Alistair? In case there’s an emergency?”
He pretended not to hear and clicked the case shut.
“Don’t be a prick, Alistair,” Charlotte said. “I can’t believe Saint Nick doesn’t have your phone number.”
He slowly opened the case and handed me a card.
“It’s a business number, Nicky. For emergencies only. Remember that.”
I looked at the card. “Alistair Milbourne—Photographer” it said. Underneath was what looked like a local phone number. “Of course.” I turned to the Juniors. “He’s a fantastic photographer, you know. He’s going to be a photojournalist.”
Everybody giggled. “Yes. We know,” one of the Juniors said. I had that not-invited-to-the-ball feeling again.
The conductor called “all aboard” and I scrambled onto the nearest coach. The Brontës and Juniors got on behind me, but they must have gone on to the lounge car because I didn’t see them again. I sat next to a soldier with only one leg and had to lean over him to wave goodbye to Alistair.
He was waving goodbye to somebody else and didn’t see me. I wondered if he’d acted so strange because he was mad at me about something. Sometimes he’d get strange. He’d say something like “It’s going to rain tomorrow” and the next day, if it was sunny and beautiful, I’d try to do an I-told-you-so. But he’d claim he never said any such thing and get mad at me.
But I couldn’t think of anything amiss on our last date, which had ended with his declaration of love. He must have been in a bad mood about something else. Maybe he didn’t have anyplace to go for Christmas. He did say he didn’t know if he was going to England. Maybe the Gorgon was being meaner than usual.
I wondered if I should have invited him to Cambridge. It wouldn’t have been much fun for him, but probably better than being alone, ignored by a Gorgon.
Or going home to your family with only one leg. I talked to the soldier until he got off at Newark. He said his family didn’t know about his injury yet, and I found myself quietly weeping for him as I watched him lurch through the crowd, balanced on his crutches.
It was after ten PM when a taxi deposited me at the door of our house in Cambridge. The lights were off, which was weird. My dad tended to be a night owl.
I let myself in with my key and was astounded to see the place tidy and spotless—with a decorated Christmas tree gracing the living room. I knocked on the door to Dad’s study, but he didn’t answer. Maybe he’d fallen asleep working on a poem. It would be better not to disturb him.
I went to the fridge, hoping there would be something inside besides beer and old mustard, and was amazed again. I found sausages, cheese, vegetables and fresh fruit. In the bread box was a round loaf of crusty bread. I cut myself a slice and sat down at the kitchen table with some cheese and an apple. I read that day’s Boston Globe, which Dad had obviously read, but re-folded with more uncharacteristic neatness. Maybe he had finally cut down on his drinking.
With that hopeful thought, I hauled my suitcase upstairs. As I climbed, I heard something stirring. Dad must have gone to bed early. Maybe part of his new regime. I didn’t want to wake him, so I opened the door to my bedroom as quietly as I could.
But from the darkness came a scream—a woman’s scream—shrill and terrified.
The bedside lamp flashed on and at first I wondered if I’d somehow let myself into the wrong house. In the bed was a woman—not much older than me—with dark flowing hair. I’d never seen her before. She screamed again.
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to get my bearings. It looked like my room…only not. My books, old toys—all my personal treasures—were gone. “I thought this was my room, but obviously, it isn’t…” But it had to be my room. The furniture was the same. So was the old rose-printed bedspread. The roses seemed to be pulsating in the half light. I wanted to run, but I didn’t know where.
“What the hell is going on?” My father’s voice boomed from across the hall. He stood in the doorway, dressed in blue pajamas—neatly pressed.
“That woman. She’s in my bedroom,” was all I could say.
The woman chattered in a language I didn’t understand as she tied a dark woolen robe over her white nightgown.
“It’s not your room any more,” my father said. “You abandoned me, remember? This is Caterina. My housekeeper. A graduate student from Portugal.” He turned and stumbled back toward his bed as if he’d as if he had settled everything.
“Dad, why didn’t you tell me? Where am I supposed to sleep?”
He looked at my suitcase and then at me.
“Damned if I know. Try the couch. I need my rest. I’ve got exams to grade.”
Caterina gave me a reproachful look and slammed the door.
I hauled my suitcase downstairs again and tried to get comfortable on the hard, Victorian couch, shivering because there were no blankets except an old afghan I found in Dad’s study. I’ll have to admit I cried: gasping, abandoned-child tears.
After about an hour, I realized sleep was not going to happen. I stared at the Christmas tree, decorated with the ornaments my mother and I used to hang with such joy. I felt a familiar thunk in my heart—that feeling that the world would be better without me in it—the way my mother must have felt when she jumped off that cliff.
I pulled a glass ball off the tree and stomped on it. And another. And another, until there was glittering colored glass all over the antique Persian rug. I didn’t care. I hated the rug. Hated the tree. Hated the house. Hated every damned thing in my whole sorry life.
Except one. That one shining beacon that gave me the will to live: Alistair. Who might be spending as lonely a Christmas as mine. I reached in the pocket of my coat for his card, went to the kitchen phone and dialed the number.
After two rings, he answered. Himself. Not some answering service, even though it was nearly midnight. I felt a spark of hope.
But he didn’t sound pleased to hear from me. “I told you this is a business number, Nick. Emergencies only.”
“That’s what this is.” I gushed with tears and half-coherent words.
At first he tried to stop me with annoyed remarks, but after a bit he changed his tone. “What did you say about jumping off a cliff? Are there cliffs near your house?”
I backpedaled. “No, no. That was my mom. She killed herself when I was seven.” I don’t know why I’d never told him. Embarrassed, I guess. “Sometimes my Dad says she should have taken me with her. Sometimes I think so, too.”
He was quiet for a moment and then said. “You have to get out of there. Do you have a friend’s house you can go to? What about Punch?”
“Not Punch.” I said through my sniffles. “She’s Wogs’ friend, not mine.”
Wogs. She would help. She’d even invited me to Kennebunkport for Christmas—she was taking her hockey-team friend Judy—but I hadn’t considered going, since it would have meant abandoning Dad.
“I guess I could go up Maine,” I said. “Wogs invited me to Goose Hill. But I don’t know how I’d get there. I spent every penny of my December allowance getting home and buying Dad’s gift.” I stopped myself as a sob constricted my throat. “Not home. This isn’t my home any more, obviously.”
“Goose Hill in Kennebunkport?” Alistair’s voice was bright with sudden cheer. “You’re going to spend Christmas with Polly Conway at the Conway Mansion?”
I guess Goose Hill was a mansion. Not like Punch’s place, but it was one of Kennebunkport’s big old Victorians with 10 bedrooms or so and a musty old ballroom. I told him yes, but teared up again when I realized how stupid I’d been not to accept Wogs’ invitation. She had a car. I would have saved so much money riding with her and Judy.
“If you could wrangle an invitation to Goose Hill for a stray Princeton man,” Alistair said. “I could be on your doorstep by—say eight AM? No traffic at this time of night. I can breeze through New York.”
Breeze. He was going to breeze up to Cambridge to rescue me. My hero yet again.
After I managed to sleep a few hours on the horrible couch, I got up and helped myself to some sort of pudding and made sandwiches out of the bread and cheese and imported salami. Full of reckless anger, I took a couple of bottles of Bordeaux I knew my father had been saving for a special occasion.
When I heard Dad and the Portuguese person stirring upstairs, I put on my coat so I could wait outside and not have to talk to them, but just then I saw the TR-3 pull up to the curb. With his usual impeccable timing, Alistair rang the doorbell just as Dad was making his bumbly way down the stairs.
Alistair gave me a lovely kiss and then studied my face.
“Your eyes are puffy. But I have just the cure for that.”
He nodded in Dad’s direction as if Dad were the gardener or something as he picked up my suitcase. He started out the door, but stopped. I could see his knuckles go white where they gripped the doorknob, although he showed no other sign of emotion. With sudden intensity, he turned back to Dad.
“Mr. Conway,” he said. “You are not a good enough poet to get away with being such a terrible human being.”
He ushered me out in front of him, leaving my dumbfounded father standing in the chilly open doorway.
If the awkwardness at the Bryn Mawr train station had spawned any doubts about the wonderfulness of Alistair Milbourne, they evaporated at that moment.
As I got into the car, I blew a kiss back at my father, still standing in the cold in his pajamas, looking like some senile old guy in a nursing home who couldn’t remember who he was.
“Have a Merry Christmas!” I said in a cheery sing-song voice. Then under my breath, I said “you asshole.”
Alistair laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘asshole,’ Saint Nick.”
“Desperate times call for desperate language.” I felt giddy and free. “But I wish I’d slapped him in his selfish, miserable face. Can I tell you how much I love you for what you said to him?”
“You may.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I suppose I was projecting. There have been so many times when I’ve wished I could talk that way to my father. Unfortunately, I don’t even know who the asshole is.”
Once we were in the car, he reached across me and popped open the glove compartment. “Speaking of assholes…” He pulled out a tube of ointment. “Preparation H. The best thing in the world for puffy eyes.” He dabbed ointment onto my lids. “In fifteen minutes, you’ll look as if the mediocre poet F. Nicholson Conway never made you cry. And let’s hope he never will again.”
I dabbed my eyes the hemorrhoid cream and babbled my gratitude at him for the cream, the rescue, his bravery at confronting my father, everything. He finally silenced me with a squeeze to my shoulder.
“I had to come, Nick. And now we have to talk about it. Were you seriously thinking of killing yourself?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid if I told him that suicidal thoughts were pretty much a permanent fixture in my subconscious, he’d be disgusted with me.
“You were, weren’t you? You think about it a lot?”
It was scary how he seemed to read my mind.
“Me too,” he said. “That’s why I’m drawn to you. We both live at three o’clock in the morning. Do you know that Fitzgerald quote?”
I couldn’t speak. I was overwhelmed with the privilege of seeing this unguarded, vulnerable side of him.
He gave a bitter smile. “Fitzgerald said, ‘In the real dark night of the soul, it’s always three o’clock in the morning’.”
He put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me to him. “We have to help each other survive our abysmal parenting, don’t we?”
He understood me. Saw me. We were two of a kind. I had never loved him as much as I loved him at that moment.
We had already crossed the New Hampshire border before Alistair mentioned that he was hungry. “But I refuse to eat at a Howard Johnson’s or a MacDonald’s” he said. “I simply can’t digest food inside offensive architecture.”
I told him about the picnic I’d put together from the treats in my father’s refrigerator. He laughed and took an exit aptly named “Breakfast Hill.”
Although it was a warmish day for December, the landscape was covered in a layer of snow, and I certainly hadn’t expected us to eat outdoors, but Alistair spotted a rest area with picnic tables and pulled over. With a sweep of his arm, he brushed the snow from one of the benches and motioned for me to sit down.
“We’re going to freeze off our derrières,” I said, handing him a sandwich.
“Didn’t you say you brought wine?” He bit into the crusty bread and nodded his approval. “That should warm us up.”
“It’s nine-thirty in the morning.” The sandwich was incredibly good.
“That wouldn’t bother you a bit if you were French.”
Alistair pulled one of the bottles out of the bag with a flourish. But when he looked at it, he nearly choked on his salami.
“Chateau Margaux 1953?” He studied the bottle again and reached into the bag for the other. “You took two bottles of Chateau Margaux from your father?”
I nodded, a little apprehensive.
He let out a belly laugh.
“Then I’d say you have indeed slapped that asshole in his selfish, miserable face. Each of these bottles is worth a thousand dollars—probably more.”
He pulled out a Swiss Army knife and stabbed its corkscrew into a bottle neck.
I cringed. I knew the bottles were important to Dad, and that no matter how drunk he got, he’d never touched them. But I didn’t know why. I grabbed Alistair’s arm to stop him. I’d never done anything so wicked.
But just then the cork popped out. Alistair ran to the car and came back with his two silver shot glasses.
“These will have to do for wine glasses, I’m afraid.”
He poured himself a taste.
“Rich undergrowth. Flowers. Red berries. And a hint of leather, I’d say. Rich, powerful, but understated. A superb and elegant wine, Miss Conway.”
He held out a glass for me. Never before—or perhaps since—have I tasted wine so delicious.