Christmas began in November. Long before Thanksgiving had appeared on the horizon, the stores were filled with Christmas decorations, and counters overflowed with brightly colored wrapping papers and greeting cards.
Brendon went around whistling Christmas carols, and their mother kept saying, “I don’t understand it. The holidays never used to start until the beginning of December. But it’s been so long since we spent Christmas here in the States that maybe I’m not remembering it correctly.”
Kirby did all her shopping in one afternoon the first week of December. She wasn’t the shopping type that Nancy was. Nancy could shop happily every day for a month or more without actually buying anything, just looking at things and wandering about and enjoying the knowledge that eventually she would decide on the perfect thing to buy.
To Kirby, such shopping was a waste of time. She made her list out beforehand. When she was ready to shop, she went straight to the right department of whatever store she had decided on and made her purchase, then went quickly on to the next one. In one Saturday between noon and two o’clock she made all her gift purchases for the entire family, including a tie for her father, although they weren’t sure just now where he was and couldn’t mail anything until they heard from him.
She was just getting ready to leave the store when something on the china counter caught her eye. There, half-hidden by the bulging side of a huge flower vase, was a swan made of smoked glass.
Kirby crossed the aisle and stood before the counter, looking down at the small, gray figurine. It was an odd thing, delicate and yet strongly posed, the long thin neck arched back as though in anger, the wings spread wide.
A salesclerk appeared from around the corner of the counter.
“May I show you something?” she asked.
“I’m looking at that swan,” Kirby said. “What’s it for? It’s not a mini-vase or something, is it?”
“No,” the girl said. “It’s just a figurine. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
“But it doesn’t have any purpose?” asked Kirby.
“No. It’s just for decoration.”
Kirby reached over and lifted the figure so she could see the price marked on the bottom.
“That’s an awful lot for something that can’t be used for anything,” she said.
She put the swan down again and looked at it a moment longer.
“Okay,” she said.
“You’ve decided to buy it?”
“Yes,” Kirby said. “I guess I have.” She wasn’t sure why. She had never in her life made a single purchase that had not been useful and well thought out ahead of time. There was something so fierce and yet so graceful about the swan that she couldn’t go away and leave it, lost behind that hideous vase.
“I’ll take it,” she said again, “and please wrap it as a gift.”
At that moment she knew that the swan was made to belong to Madame Vilar.
Kirby was dancing, Christmas week, in the Nutcracker ballet, which was being presented by the students of the Vilar Dance Studio. She had hoped for the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy until she had realized that during the solo a male dancer lifted the Fairy, and that the only boy at the studio who was good enough to do the lift was Jamie Wright.
Jamie was a thin, blond boy about the same age as she was who had been studying dance since the age of five. He had nice, muscular legs and the scrawniest arms Kirby had ever seen.
“You realize, of course, that you are too heavy to be lifted by Jamie,” Madame Vilar had said in a cool, impersonal voice, and had paused, regarding her sharply, as she waited for her reaction.
“At the next recital,” she said, “I won’t be.”
She had lost five pounds in the past six weeks and was determined to lose at least ten more by the time of the Cecchetti examinations in the spring. The part of the Fairy went to Arlene Wright, Jamie’s cousin. She was little and thin, like Nancy, and her steps were perfect, although her dancing always seemed to have a mechanical sameness about it.
The day after the parts were announced, Arlene happened to run into Kirby in the dressing room.
“Oh, Kirby,” she gushed. “I saw that you’re going to be the Snow Queen! That’s so awesome! You can dance all alone without having to worry about somebody lifting you!”
“It is nice,” Kirby said sweetly. “And you and Jamie will be just perfect together. I do hope there isn’t a breeze that night to blow the two of you off the stage.”
The other girls in the dressing room burst out laughing, and Arlene’s eyes got narrow and squinty with anger.
“You don’t need to be nasty about it,” she said coldly. “I was just trying to be gracious. A new girl like you can’t expect to get the best part. I don’t know how you got in here in the first place. Madame never takes anyone over the age of nine.”
“You were being gracious?” Kirby said. “Oh, I misunderstood, then. In that case, I take it back. I hope there will be a breeze that night.” She smiled her wide, sweet smile right at Arlene and picked up her toe shoes and walked out past the laughing girls and went to the practice room for her private lesson with Madame Vilar.
Actually, being in recital was fun no matter what role you were dancing. The rehearsals and the costume fittings were as exciting for a Snow Queen as for a Fairy, and after the initial disappointment was over, Kirby began to be sorry she had been so mean. She watched Arlene dancing and knew that it was not good dancing; she also knew, and this was the sad part, that there was very little Arlene could do to make it better. The steps were right, and the timing, and all the movements, and yet Arlene Wright dancing was simply that—Arlene Wright, not the Sugar Plum Fairy. The magical thing that happened to Kirby when she danced, that turned her into whatever it was that the music was saying, did not happen to Arlene.
Poor thing, Kirby thought when she realized this. Poor, scrawny Arlene. No wonder she doesn’t like me. If I were her, I wouldn’t like me, either.
She decided to be nice to Arlene from then on, whether she cared for her or not, and to applaud her dance as hard as she could, even standing in the wings.
From the first of December on, the little beach house was overflowing with Christmas. Every day Elizabeth found something new to do to make it even more festive. She decorated with greens and Florida holly and had Mr. Duncan climb a ladder and string lights outside in the flame vine.
She seemed like a child herself as she rushed about hanging ribbons and wreaths and moving furniture to make room for the Christmas tree.
“An old-fashioned Christmas!” she kept saying. “In our own home! Not just some old hotel room! We’ll have a tree-trimming party and go caroling and make holiday cookies and everything! Now you kids will have a chance to have the same kind of holiday I had when I was growing up!”
Nancy was sitting on the sofa examining the greeting cards the Garretts would mail out.
They showed a scene of a Southern Christmas with a decorated tree framing a picture window that looked out at snowy Florida beaches and waving palms.
Nancy opened the top card and read the inscription.
“You don’t have Dad’s name here,” she said.
Her mother looked up from the centerpiece she was making.
“No, dear,” she said. “Dad will be sending his own cards.”
“Will our names be on his card, too?”
“Probably not,” Elizabeth said. “I think the children’s names usually go on the card of the parent they’re living with; the one who has custody.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. It was the first time any of them had heard that word spoken.
Kirby looked at Nancy and saw that her face had gone pale.
“You mean it’s final?” Nancy asked in a flat voice. “You’re really divorced?”
Elizabeth nodded. “You know that, dear. I told you when I filed the settlement agreement.”
“But I thought it took ages! You always read about people who are waiting for their divorces! I thought it would be years!” Nancy exclaimed in horror.
“Not in Florida,” Elizabeth told them. “It differs from state to state. I thought you realized.” Her gentle face filled with pain. “Please, dear, don’t look so shocked. I thought you were beginning to accept the idea. I thought you were becoming adjusted.”
“I’m adjusted,” Brendon said. “I like living here. Dad couldn’t be dragging us around with him, anyway, if he’s taking war pictures.”
“I’ll never adjust,” Nancy said vehemently. “Never, as long as I live!”
Later that night she asked Kirby tearfully, “Are you ‘adjusted’? I mean, really?”
“I think so,” Kirby said. She paused, thinking about it so that she could be sure she was answering honestly. “I felt funny when Mom said that word, ‘custody.’ It was so official, sort of, and so final. But when I see the way she’s settled down here, how happy she seems and how many good friends she has, I feel better about it. She fits here, Nance. She never really did fit trailing along after Dad.”
“I don’t think you love Dad the way I do,” Nancy said. “You couldn’t and still feel that way.”
“I do love him,” Kirby said. “It’s just that he and Mom have made their decision, and it’s their lives. It would be nice if it were different, if Dad were a quiet, settled-down sort of man like Mr. Duncan—”
“Like Mr. Duncan!” Nancy’s shriek of outrage shook the room. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life! How can you even say their names in the same breath—how can you compare stupid Thomas Duncan to Richard Brendon Garrett! I don’t care if the divorce is final, that doesn’t mean anything. People get divorced and marry each other again. It happens all the time! Look at celebrities—they’re always doing it! Once Mom sees how lonely and miserable it is not to be married, she’ll go back to Dad!”
“I don’t know about that,” Kirby said. “She’s like a bird that’s been looking for a nest and finally found it. She’s got a home, and her job, and friends, and us…” Her voice wandered off. Her mind had gone slipping away without her and was dancing the Snow Queen. She was leaping and whirling across a stage in a deluge of snowflakes, and her parents and Nancy and everyone else in the world were left far behind.
The weeks before Christmas were filled with rehearsals, and on December 23 there were two performances of the Nutcracker, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. Nancy and Brendon attended the matinee. They came backstage afterward, their faces flushed with anger.
“How could Madame Vilar have given the Fairy part to that stringy girl!” Nancy exclaimed without even bothering to lower her voice. “She’s crazy, that’s what she is! You’re a much better dancer!”
“Hush, Nance.” Kirby glanced quickly around to see if her sister had been overheard. “You can’t say things like that, even if you think them. Madame has her reasons for what she does. She has to balance the entire cast.”
“Oh, please,” Nancy said. “You always think Madame is perfect, no matter what. That Wright girl looks like a piece of string.”
“She dances like a windup toy,” Brendon said, to his sisters’ surprise. It wasn’t a Brendon-like comment, and he had never seemed to notice much about dancing before.
They both grumbled about it all the way home, and their mother, who was attending the evening performance with Mr. Duncan, said, “Don’t ruin the whole experience for me, you two. If Kirby isn’t upset, I don’t know why we should be.”
The evening performance was primarily for adults, and they did not go backstage, but waited out front in the entrance hall. Kirby changed out of her costume and hung it on a rack in the dressing room. Then she took the package containing the glass swan and left it on the desk in the little front room that Madame used as her office.
By the time she reached the hall where her mother was waiting, many of the other parents had already left. Elizabeth Garrett and Tom Duncan were standing together over by the doorway. They were so engrossed in conversation that they did not see Kirby when she entered the room. Elizabeth was wearing a new red dress in honor of the season. The color was reflected in her cheeks, and her eyes were shining. She was talking gaily and animatedly, and Thomas Duncan was gazing down at her, smiling. His face held a look that Kirby could read half a room away.
Oh my god, he’s in love with her, she thought. Mr. Duncan is in love with Mom!
So that was why Nancy had never been able to like him! She had sensed the emotion there from the very beginning. “There’s a different feeling about him!” she had cried on that first night he had come to their home.
And Mom, Kirby wondered, does Mom feel it? She looks so special tonight, so bright and sparkly—
And at that moment, Elizabeth looked up and saw her, and broke off what she was saying.
“Darling!” she cried, holding out her arms to Kirby. “You were wonderful, just wonderful! You were a beautiful Snow Queen, and I was so proud of you!” Hurrying forward, she caught her daughter in a tight hug.
“She’s right, Kirby. You were excellent.” Mr. Duncan held out his hand. “Congratulations. I had no idea you were so accomplished.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kirby said as she took his hand. Then she raised her eyes and looked for a long moment at his face. It was a pleasant face; not handsome, but nice to look at. An ordinary type of face with sandy hair and light eyes, true and a little shy behind horn-rimmed glasses.
She pictured her father with his great laugh roaring up out of the depths of him, the force of his personality shooting out like sparklers in all directions.
Poor Mr. Duncan, she thought. It’s not fair. It really isn’t.
Because now that she was with them, she could see that the glow on her mother’s face was for Christmas and for friendship, and for her pride in a daughter who had danced the Snow Queen. If the potential for love was there, Elizabeth still did not know it, and with Nancy so determinedly against it, there was little chance that she would ever find out.