Over coffee they realized it was Christmas Eve, and so they separated to buy each other presents. Malcolm bought Frances a case of her preferred French wine; he also brought home a small potted Christmas tree and a single string of lights. He decorated the tree and set it on the table in the breakfast nook; he opened one of the bottles and waited for Frances to return. When she entered the apartment she was pushing a bicycle with a bow on its handlebars. She had pushed it all the way up the stairwell and was panting heavily. “Come and get it away from me, Christ, I’m dying.”
It was early evening. They drank through a first, then a second bottle of wine, and Frances became fixated on Malcolm’s lack of enthusiasm for the bicycle. Malcolm hadn’t ridden a bicycle in twenty years and it was true that at first glance he was indifferent to possess it. Frances was adamant that he should ride it that night but Malcolm didn’t want to go outside. Finally, and thanks in part to the wine, they decided he could and should ride the bicycle in the apartment. They moved the furniture to clear a path and after two false starts he was off.
His circuit consisted of a loop in his bedroom, then down the hall and through the living room to Frances’s room, another loop, and back again. The activity at the beginning required his total focus; but after a while he became more comfortable and sure of his route, and so could relax. Minutes passed with Malcolm pedaling along his path. Frances had climbed into her bed, which had been pushed to the center of her room, and Malcolm rode around her in slow circles.
“It’s a smooth rider.”
“Ding the bell.”
He dinged the bell and went away down the hall, then returned to loop his mother. Frances was quiet. Small Frank was sitting at the foot of her bed and she was smiling at him.
“What?” Malcolm asked.
“Oh,” said Frances. “I was thinking about a sailboat he bought me.”
“He bought you a sailboat?”
“For Christmas one year, yes.”
“Since when were you interested in sailboats?”
“I was never interested in sailboats. That’s what was so curious about the gift.”
“You didn’t want it?”
“I didn’t, no.” She nudged Small Frank with her foot. Small Frank dropped his head and closed his eyes. Malcolm performed a circle in silence. He narrowly avoided crashing into a side table.
“How does a person receive a sailboat?” he asked.
“He blindfolded me and brought me to the marina. Blindfold off, he pointed out a large boat and told me it was mine. It was named Sunny Disposish, and it was a very nice sailboat with a teak interior and a Jacuzzi on deck and it took about six grown men to get it going.” She shook her head. “He had offices in Southampton then, and had an idea that he and I would make the most of the commute. We were going to pieces for the first time and I suppose he thought a boat might return us to one another.”
“It’s nice that he tried.”
“It’s not not nice. You know what would have been nicer, though? If he’d not bought me a sailboat at all, but instead ceased fucking every lukewarm hole that crossed his field of vision.”
Malcolm circled the bed twice, then rode from the room. Frances heard a rattling crash, which was the sound of Malcolm jumping from the bike and onto his bed. He hadn’t eaten any dinner and was quite drunk and fell asleep almost at once; but Frances was restless, and she moved to the kitchen nook, to smoke and drink tap water, to feel her loneliness and to think of it. Small Frank had climbed onto the table, curling up at the base of the Christmas tree. In looking at its lights, Frances thought of her childhood, of her father in his robe carrying her up the stairs on Christmas Eve. He smelled of cigarettes and drink and aftershave, a combination of scents that she loved devotedly from this moment and through the span of her life. Franklin had emanated that same deadly troika when they’d met, before the alcohol had turned sour in him, and the smoke acrid.
Frances stared at the tree. She half-closed her eyes and the Christmas lights became stretched-out spears, pulsing and tilting. She held the colored bars in her gaze; when she closed her eyes further, the lights lost their integrity, jumping to a shapeless smudge of clownish pigmentation, describing nothing, impossible to romanticize.