It had been a perfectly beautiful Christmas.
Nell sat alone on Christmas night, curled up in her elephant robe on the living room sofa. The glittering debris of crumpled wrapping paper and cat-clawed ribbons littered the room, but Nell could ignore all that by keeping the room dark. The only light came in rhythmic sparks from the tiny multicolored bulbs that blinked from the Christmas tree and their reflection in all the windows of the room. It had snowed, and everything was silent now. Nell sat alone and felt as though she were in some cozy machine gliding through space, her voyage lighted by the fleet, brief flashes of stars.
She was sipping Baileys Irish Cream liqueur, a present from Cora Donne, the biology professor for whom Nell helped choose clothes at the boutique. This drink warmed Nell doubly. It was delicious, and it made her happy to know that she had helped Cora so much that the woman had wanted to express her gratitude in this way. Nell was not, then, completely without her little influences on the world, and this was as satisfying to her thoughts as the creamy liqueur was to her tongue.
It had been a good day, much different in tone from the previous day. Then Nell had worked frantically at the boutique, helping last-minute shoppers, and had come home exhausted to shepherd her children through Christmas Eve alone. Her parents had established certain rituals in their home, which made all the Christmas Eves of Nell’s childhood memory blend into one lovely time; Nell wanted to do the same for her children. She had served them a traditional Christmas Eve meal of vegetable soup and corn bread, then listened to records of carols by the fire, sipping eggnog and eating the cookies they had decorated last week. They had hung stockings, and Jeremy read Luke 2:1–20 from the Bible, and Hannah read “ ’Twas the Night before Christmas.” Nell let the children open one present each on Christmas Eve, so that they wouldn’t die of suspense before the twenty-fifth, and the children had taken their new presents and gone to bed fairly early, hoping that would make the morning come faster.
Nell had done the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. When she was certain the children were asleep, she became Santa Claus, setting up the goodies for the children to find the next morning. Usually she enjoyed this part of the evening, but this Christmas she had had to assemble a doll crib for Hannah and it had required almost more strength and mechanical ability than she possessed. She had been stumped, trying to get Part B into Slot B. When she finally did manage to get it in, it was only by breaking a fingernail off just below the quick. That hurt a lot. She had cursed softly, and tears had come to her eyes, and she had thought to herself, oh, why wasn’t some man there to help her? Then she had remembered that the man who by rights should have been there was Marlow, and he was never any good at that sort of thing and never interested in it anyway.
This year Marlow had completely forgotten the children’s Christmas again. He had gone off to some island for his vacation, to enjoy his once-again single state, and in that state he had forgotten the children. He had forgotten Clary as well as Hannah and Jeremy; and they were all used to it by now. The children almost didn’t think of their father at Christmas. Nell wished she could let it go, the memory—the false memory. Marlow had never been good at Christmas, and she was truly happier without him.
Still, Nell had been lonely on Christmas Eve, and lonely for her children’s sake. Sometimes it seemed to her that she just could not stretch enough to accommodate all her children’s needs and desires. It was a matter of energy, of joy. When she was happy, she expanded, so that an overflowing ease was in her mothering; when she was happy, there was more than enough of her to go around. But when she was sad, she felt her soul and energies become shriveled and stingy, so that it was hard work to be cheerful or creative or kind. And this Christmas Eve, she was sad, because she was not with Andy.
Andy had not wanted to come to Arlington for Christmas for all the usual reasons: the allergy to animals, the noise and chaos of the season in the city. It had been agreed between them that Nell would try to go to Nantucket for New Year’s Eve. They would exchange Christmas presents then. He had not thought to send anything to the children. Nell had gotten angry enough to think of him as an old Scrooge, to think she just would not see him ever again, when he had confused her by calling late on Christmas Eve to tell her he loved her and missed her. The sound of his voice had been sorcery. She had been enthralled. She had not known if she was happy or sad when she finally went to sleep.
Christmas morning had been a delight, with the children nutty with joy over their presents. Nell had sat, sipping creamy coffee, listening to the carols that Jeremy insisted be played full blast, watching the children open their presents. Her parents had called from Iowa for a long Christmas Day conversation. The children had opened package after package—from Nell’s parents, from Nell, from Clary, from their friends. And Nell had fared well, too. She and Clary had not always exchanged Christmas presents, and Nell had not thought they would this year, because Clary had taken off for Michigan with Bob. But the day she left, Clary had stopped by with presents for the children and a big box for Nell.
“Don’t open it till Christmas,” she had instructed, and Nell had been glad to have that big red-foil-wrapped box sitting under the tree, waiting for her.
Inside the box, Nell discovered on Christmas morning, was a beautiful pair of white figure skates, just her size. It was a real extravagance of thought and expense on Clary’s part, and Nell was stunned. She took the skates out of the box and turned them around in her hands, looking at them, feeling the supple leather, the sharp bright blades.
“Oh, Mom, skates. Neat!” the kids said, then turned back to their own presents, not impressed. To them skates were just skates.
But to Nell this present meant all sorts of things. She had skated a lot as a child, but had not been out on the ice for years. She and Clary had talked about skating this summer, and Nell had confessed that she doubted if she’d ever skate again. What if I fell and broke an ankle or an arm? Who would take care of the children? she had said. Although I hate thinking that I’ll never skate again, she had told Clary. I used to love it so much, that feeling of effortless motion, that easy sweep and glide.
Now here were these skates from Clary, with a card saying, “Merry Christmas, Nell—now go on and glide.”
Nell had nearly cried, she was so touched by Clary’s thoughtfulness. She had put the skates back in the box and set it among her other presents—the soaps from the children (shell-shaped this year, to remind her of Nantucket), the perfume and check from her parents, the foil-wrapped liqueur from Cora Donne, the fruitcake from a neighbor. The skates were the nicest present she had received in years; Nell knew she could not resist using them. They seemed to have an almost symbolic power.
In the afternoon, she and the children had gone to the Andersons’ for Christmas dinner. It had been hard to drag the children away from their loot, but once at John and Katy’s, they had been mesmerized by Teddy, the Andersons’ two-month-old baby, and when the infant had finally fallen asleep, Jeremy and Hannah had occupied themselves by playing with the multitude of baby toys Teddy had received, toys they could remember playing with themselves when they were tiny. While Teddy slept, everyone else exchanged presents, then ate an enormous Christmas dinner. It was a lovely evening, so sweetened by the Andersons’ friendship that when Nell and her children left to go to their own home, Nell felt only a slight twinge of envy and despair to see Katy and John standing there in the doorway, arms wrapped around each other in good company, two adults loving each other, while Nell led her children through the snow to her cold car.
Back at home, they had put on the Christmas tree lights again and lit a fire and sat around in the living room feeling fat and smug. The children’s favorite babysitter dropped by, all fresh and glowing, to exchange gifts with the children. Then Ilona and Phillip had made a surprise visit. They gave Hannah a beautiful porcelain doll with antique clothing; Nell shuddered to think how much the doll cost and what Hannah would do to it when she played with it. They gave Jeremy an enormous Capsela set. They gave Nell a cashmere sweater.
“Oh,” Nell had cried, “this is too much. I didn’t intend to exchange presents, Ilona, you knew that, we agreed on that.”
“Oh, Nell,” Ilona said, “be quiet. We wanted to do this. God knows we can afford it. It’s a real pleasure for us—don’t take the pleasure away by grunching around in some kind of unnecessary guilt!”
Nell had stared at Ilona over the wrapping-covered boxes. She knew that Ilona would never appreciate the realities of her own single life, knew that Ilona believed Nell liked wallowing—grunching around—in misery; and that thought made her irritated enough to accept the presents. They had brought champagne, too, and so they finished off the evening sipping champagne by the fire. Even Hannah and Jeremy were allowed small amounts of champagne in the good crystal glasses; it made a perfect finish to the day.
Now everyone was gone, and the children, exhausted from pleasure, had gone to bed. Christmas was officially over. The long school holiday stretched in front of them, when Nell would leave Jeremy and Hannah with their sitter during the day and get the boutique ready for the New Year sale. And the new year would come.
How time slipped away, Nell thought, and not wanting to fall into one of her grunching around moods, she rose and put the new Elton John record—a present from the Andersons—on her stereo. Katy had wanted Nell to listen to “I’m Still Standing,” an upbeat song about surviving love. Nell thought the song would be great to exercise to, but the song she got hooked on this evening was “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues,” a song about being separated from a lover. Nell played it over and over again until she could sing along with the record. After a while, she began to cry. She put her head in her lap and sobbed. “Oh God, you dirty bastard,” she whispered into the Christmas night. “You really are going to let me live my life all alone, aren’t you?” The record finished playing and the stereo switched off automatically. Nell sat alone crying until she had to wander off into the kitchen to get tissues for her nose.
She knew that she would never love another man as she loved Andy. She never had before, she never would again. Whatever caused love, brought love, was a mystery and an unreachable thing. This much had happened to her—she had fallen truly in love with Andy—and that was beyond her control. Her only point of control in it all was in the choice to continue seeing him, knowing he would never say to her the words she wanted to hear—“I need to be with you, Nell. I choose you. Marry me”—or to stop seeing him because that knowledge hurt too much. She wanted to make the decision, needed to make it, needed the clean finality, the clarity it would bring to her life. But she did not know how to decide.
A beam of light crossed her living room windows, like a searchlight in the night. Nell went to her window and looked out, puzzled. A car had come into her driveway and parked; she saw a man getting out, his arms laden with presents. For one moment her heart leaped as hard and high as if she had been kicked. Then she realized that the man was a little too short to be Andy. She went to the door. It was Stellios.
“Merry Christmas,” he said. “Can I come in?”
“Of course, Stellios,” Nell said. She smiled and opened the door wide. “Come in. Merry Christmas.”
Stellios stomped the snow off his work boots, and shoving the presents under one arm, brushed snow off his shoulders and took off his wool cap. His dark hair fell tousled around his face.
“I’ve been thinking all day about whether or not to come over and see all of you,” he said. “And now I suppose it’s too late and the kids are in bed.”
“Well, the kids are in bed,” Nell said. “And asleep. Wiped out, you know, from the excitement. But come in anyway. I’m drinking some yummy new stuff—let me give you some. Stellios, you shouldn’t have brought presents, really.”
They went into the living room as they talked and sat down side by side on the sofa. “I know, but I wanted to,” Stellios said. “I like giving gifts, especially to children. I bought Hannah a pretty doll. And Jeremy a book. Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Lots of neat facts in there. And this is for you.”
“Oh, Stellios, thank you,” Nell said, taking the present. It was a beautifully bound copy of The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. Nell could tell how carefully Stellios had thought about these presents, these books, how he meant to show her he appreciated her as an intelligent, literate woman. She doubted if he ever read anything more demanding than the comics in the evening paper.
So this was a sweet and generous thing, this gift-giving of his, and as Nell poured Stellios a glass of creamy liqueur, she wished she could love him. He was a kind man; it shouldn’t matter that he didn’t read. He was certainly handsome enough. And he was not dumb. He had learned from experience, if not from books. When his fiancée had left him, dumped him, he had not grown bitter and hard like many people would, he had not come to hate all women, to want to hurt them in return for the hurt one woman had given him. No, he had learned compassion. He had learned gentleness or, more probably, had learned how to flow with the natural gentleness inside him. He was in so many ways a lovely man, and Nell wished right then more than anything in the world that she loved him. He made her feel so special; he had chosen to be with her this evening. She had met his relatives, his friends, his crowd; she knew that there were any number of women younger and more fun than she was that he could be with now. It was puzzling to her that Stellios would choose to be with her at all when he could be with someone whose stomach was taut, who would like his jokes, and who would not accidentally use words he didn’t quite understand. It was puzzling to her—but it was also flattering. It was irresistibly flattering.
“How was your Christmas?” Nell asked. She turned to face him on the sofa, and as she did, she realized how she must look in her old elephant robe, with her face smudged from crying, and her hair, well, heaven knew what her hair looked like, she hadn’t brushed it in hours.
“It was wonderful,” Stellios said. “A feast. My aunts cooked for days. We had a huge party, many guests, wonderful food.”
Nell studied Stellios as he talked. He had sharp, slightly slanted eyes and cheekbones that gave him a lean, exotic look, softened by a mouth as full and sensual as if painted by Renoir. He was wearing a thick, intricately knit wool sweater over a turtleneck.
“Beautiful sweater,” she said. “It looks new. And handmade. A Christmas present?”
“Yes,” Stellios said, looking down at the sweater.
“From your aunt?”
Stellios grinned sheepishly. “No,” he admitted. He shrugged. “Just a woman,” he said. “A friend.”
Nell laughed. “Some friend,” she said. “Some friend to go to the trouble of knitting you that beautiful sweater.”
“Well,” Stellios grinned again, embarrassed. “I guess she kind of likes me.”
“I guess she kind of does,” Nell said. “Stellios, why aren’t you with her, the sweater-knitter, now? I mean, poor thing, she went to all that work. I bet she expected to be with you tonight?”
“Yes, well,” Stellios said. “I suppose. But I was with her last night. And most of today. I didn’t think she’d do anything like this. I mean, I told you about her in the spring, Nell. She’s a very nice girl. But … I think she’s a little boring. My family likes her more than I do. I don’t want to disappoint my family, but—I can’t be in love with her no matter how I try. And I think she loves me. I don’t want to sound arrogant, but I think she does. It is so difficult when someone likes you more than you like them. It’s sort of embarrassing. You begin to feel—pity—for the person.” Stellios was silent for a moment, and Nell could almost see an idea blooming in his head, like a flower unfolding on time-lapse film. “God,” he said. “I hope that’s not the way you feel about me. I mean, we broke off and now here I am, with gifts for you …”
Well, Nell thought, it’s all in the spirit of Christmas.… “Oh no, Stellios,” she said, for she had her own idea blossoming within her at the sight and sound and smell of this handsome, gentle-hearted man. “I have a present for you, too. Wait a moment. I’ll go get it.”
Nell slipped from the sofa and went up to her bedroom. She lit a candle there and smoothed the bed and turned back the sheets. She washed and creamed her face and put on light touches of makeup. She brushed her hair so that it flowed down around her face and shoulders. Then she took off her elephant robe and put on the black lace negligee she had worn for no man other than Andy. Stellios had never seen her in an outfit so romantic. She put on perfume and brushed her hair once more. She checked—both children were sound asleep. She went back down the stairs.
“Merry Christmas,” she said to Stellios as she entered the living room. She was rewarded by the look on his face.
“Nell,” he said, staring at her, and she could tell that he thought she was beautiful. “Nell,” he said again, and his voice broke.
He started to rise, but Nell crossed the room and pushed him back down on the sofa, placing both her hands on his shoulders. Then, keeping her hands on his shoulders and her eyes meeting his, she slowly knelt before him on the floor, her body between his blue-jeaned legs. She slowly brought her hands down from his shoulders to his chest, then to his stomach, until she came to his belt. She undid his belt and leaned forward, her hair and the lace of her gown sliding silkily over his legs. Stellios was a beautiful man, and Nell was not alone now; for a while she would not think about Andy. This Christmas night she would not think about loneliness or about the meaning of love. There were, after all, other things than love in the world—there was kindness and pleasure and the luxury of affectionate flesh.
Four days after Christmas, Nell piled her children into the old Toyota and drove off to a mammoth indoor shopping mall on the outskirts of Boston. It was a clear day, but bitterly cold, too cold for Jeremy and Hannah to play outside for long and yet they needed to get out of the house for a while. They had been good this past week, entertaining themselves with their Christmas toys while Nell worked at the boutique. Today was her day off and she was feeling cheerful. She was going to treat them all; she would buy a delicious junk-food lunch for the children at the mall and let them ride the escalators as much as they wanted while she scouted around to find some good sales. She was thinking of spending her parents’ Christmas check on some knockout dress to wear on New Year’s Eve at Andy’s.
* * *
Elizabeth O’Leary thought shopping malls were tacky, but Nell knew that what Elizabeth really disliked about them was the competition. Who wanted to face the acidly cold winter air to get to boutiques when one could enter a vast, warm, brightly lighted world like this shopping mall? On certain days the Muzak that blared from all corners irritated Nell, but today she smiled when she heard it and let it carry her along down the wide aisles of the mall with a steady stream of fellow shoppers.
The shops were still flamboyant with Christmas decorations. A ten-foot-tall Frosty the Snowman bobbed an electric smile from a toy store; the shop opposite him was luscious with a display of red, white and green evening gowns for women. The main part of the mall was full of tables, tents, and stalls from special-interest groups that had come to display their wares during this busy holiday season. Blue-haired ladies from a local church offered hand-knitted mittens and caps, hand-decorated candles, and hand-sewn aprons at their charity bazaar set up at one end of the mall. Turning a corner, Nell saw a rock-and-gem display taking up the middle of the L of the mall.
“Here,” she said to Jeremy and Hannah, giving them each a dollar. “You may buy yourselves any kind of pretty rock you can afford, but be sure you look all of them over carefully first so you get just what you want.”
Happily unaware that they were being bribed, the children ran off with their money to inspect the tables and cases glittering with semiprecious stones and metals. Nell went back to the shop that sold evening gowns and spent a long quiet time considering whether to indulge herself. Andy had not said what they would be doing on New Year’s Eve. She didn’t know if they’d go out to a restaurant for dinner, or to a party, or whether they’d simply stay at home together to see the new year in. She held a full-length red silk dress up against her and studied her reflection in the mirror. The dress was dazzling, with a rhinestone buckle at the waist and a plunging neckline. She didn’t dare try it on or she’d buy it, and it wasn’t practical, and since she didn’t know what they would be doing … She put the dress back on the rack with only a slight tang of regret. It was luxury enough to be thinking this way: to be thinking of the two of them, to be planning which dress to wear with the man she loved.
“Hey, Mom,” Jeremy said, coming up to her as she left the shop. “We’ve been looking all over for you. We want to go ride the escalators.”
“All right,” Nell said. “Look, meet me at noon at the little pizza shop. Okay? We’ll go there for lunch. And be careful. Don’t lean over the sides too far!”
“Oh, Mom!” Jeremy said. “Come on, Hannah.” And they were off.
It took Nell a few moments to stop worrying about her children. Since the accident, she had had to check a desire to follow them everywhere, crying out, “Be careful!” every step of the way. But the presence of other kids their age wandering through the mall reassured her, and finally she turned her mind to other thoughts. She drifted in and out of stores for an hour, checking to see what was on sale, buying warm tights, which Hannah desperately needed, and new socks for Jeremy—she had resisted giving them to him as a Christmas present.
She met Jeremy and Hannah at the pizza shop, and they had lunch while showing Nell the treasures they had bought at the rock exhibit. The noise level was rising in the mall now and Nell was getting a slight headache from it, but the children were still energetic and the thought of going back out into the freezing cold of the outside or back to the littered mess of her house gave Nell new strength. She agreed to tag along with the children down to the end of the mall they hadn’t yet seen.
People streamed past the three of them, young women pushing crying babies in strollers, older women wearing their wool coats buttoned up in spite of the warmth of the mall, teenagers with green hair and safety pins in their ears. Nell was smiling to herself, thinking how endlessly amusing people were, when Jeremy yelled, “Wicko! Hey, Mom, look!” and took off from her side. He was headed toward a gigantic exhibit of computer technology that was gathered in the middle of the main section of the mall under a vast metallic banner that read:
computermania!
computermagic!
come see the computer for you!
Children of all ages were grouped around tables set up with computer games, while in less frantic sections of the exhibition, grown-ups more cautiously touched keyboards and control sticks. A child-size robot with blinking lights, wearing a Santa Claus cap, rotated through the tables and booths, bleeping when he got close to any solid object, his round head whirling this way and that as he announced in an electrified monotone, “Hello. I am Roger, the Roaming Robot. Want to be my friend?”
“Hey, Mom, look. There’s Andy,” Hannah said.
“Oh,” Nell laughed. “Sweetheart, I don’t think so. Andy never leaves Nantucket.”
“Mo-om, look!” Hannah insisted.
Nell looked in the direction Hannah was pointing. And Hannah was right: There he was. He was wearing a tan corduroy sports jacket with leather elbow patches and a pair of baggy brown slacks; he was sitting on the edge of a table watching intently as a man seated at a keyboard made a graph revolve with three-dimensional reality on the screen in front of them. From time to time the man turned to say something to Andy or to take directions from him.
Nell plunged forward, making her way through the crowd, the display tables, the giant wastebaskets overflowing with green and black computer printouts. She walked so fast, so intently, that she nearly collided with Roger the Roaming Robot, who slammed to a halt and bleeped at her. Finally, she was at Andy’s side.
“Hello, Andy,” she said. Her heart was pounding so hard and so much adrenaline pulsed through her that she wouldn’t have been surprised if she had short-circuited every computer in the area.
Andy turned slowly away from the computer screen. When he saw Nell, he broke into a big grin. “Nell!” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“I think the question is what are you doing here? Off Nantucket?” Nell asked.
“Well, I flew over for the day to come to this exhibit,” Andy said. “I read an ad for it in the Globe and knew there were some things I wanted to see here.”
“But, Andy,” Nell asked. “Why didn’t you call me to tell me you’d be here? On the mainland. Why didn’t you come to see me, too?”
Andy looked genuinely puzzled. “Well,” he said, shrugging his narrow shoulders, “I guess I just didn’t think of it.”
Nell drew on all the resources and tricks she had ever learned as an actress. Andy in his bumbling honesty had hurt her so much that she needed to burst into tears—and she was not going to let herself do that. She would not cry now. Her hair was down today, falling slightly over one eye, one cheek, and with a gesture she knew to be graceful, she raised the back of her hand to sweep her hair away from her face.
“You left Nantucket to come to the Boston area and you just didn’t think of me,” she said. “God, Andy, don’t you know what an insult that is?”
“Is it?” Andy asked earnestly. “I didn’t mean for it to be.”
Nell could feel the computer salesman looking up at them from where he sat, hands poised on the keyboard. She looked down at the man, an older fellow in a brown suit. “Perhaps you can help,” she said icily. “My lover here seems to have more in common with robots than with human beings. Perhaps you could explain to him that people who say they love each other usually want to see each other. He’s been my lover for almost eight months now, and the one day he leaves his precious Nantucket island to come to Boston, he just doesn’t think of seeing me. Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”
The man grinned. “Well, lady, I wouldn’t forget to come see you, that’s for sure,” he said.
“Did you hear that, Andy?” Nell said. “Did you hear what he said? He wouldn’t forget to come see me.”
“Nell,” Andy said, flustered. “You don’t understand. This was strictly business. Work. Important to me.” He leaned forward and tried to put his hands on Nell’s shoulders, but she drew back. “There’s a software program I’ve been designing for months now, and I think this company’s already done it. I wanted to check the competition, don’t you see.”
The man at the computer keyboard hit a button, and the screen above him went blank. He looked up at Andy. “You’re a turkey, mister,” he said.
“You’re worse than a turkey,” Nell said to Andy. “You’re—you’re a casual user,” she announced, recalling the computer term in a flash of brilliance.
Andy looked surprised, then disgruntled. “Hell, Nell,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere private where we can sit down and talk.” He took Nell’s hand and led her to where some wooden benches circled a bed of indoor trees and plants. As they walked, Nell desperately tried to use those few seconds to plan some kind of rational speech, but she was shaking all over, and that seemed to have affected her brain. Andy’s hand on hers felt as it always had when any part of his body touched hers—it felt right, absolutely right. There was something about this man that made her want to wrap herself around him.
And yet some wild voice in her mind was screaming such a vast number of insulting things about Andy and about what kind of sucker Nell was for loving him that she couldn’t think straight. She could sense that Hannah was following them at a distance; she could sense that other people in the mall were staring at her. She knew that her anger and her fierce determination to control her shaking were making her have the kind of blazing good looks that had often served her well onstage. She was brave now because she was truly furious.
“Nell,” Andy said, turning to her. “Here, sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down,” Nell said, yanking her hand away from him, glaring at him.
“Well,” Andy said. He shoved his hands into his pants pockets so that his jacket bunched up around his arms a little. He always had such an endearingly unaware charm. “I hate to see you so upset,” he said. “I don’t understand.”
“Okay,” Nell said. “Let me see if I can make it clear to you. You say you love me. Yet you never come to see me. I always have to make the trip to see you. You’ve told me that you hate leaving Nantucket. I’ve accepted that. Yet here you are—oh shit, Andy!” Nell said, losing her logical pace. “How can you not see how insulting it is to me that you won’t make the trip to see me, but you will make the trip to see a fucking computer! You should have planned to see me, too. If you didn’t want to come to my house because of your allergies to my animals, you should have called and asked me to meet you here for lunch or dinner. If you were making the trip anyway, you should have booked a room in a hotel so we could spend some time together. You should have—oh God!”
Andy stood there looking worried and sorry, but most of all, perplexed. At last Nell couldn’t take it anymore. “You are not that dumb!” she yelled, so loud that from behind her Hannah whispered, “Mo-om.”
Andy blinked. Nell wanted to burst into tears. She wanted to jump on him, kick him in the crotch, scratch his eyes out. She wanted him to take her in his arms and kiss her for the rest of her life. She wanted to burst into tears and to blither and whine, to plead, “Oh, Andy, I love you so much, I want you so much, I’d do anything in the world for you, why can’t you love me the way I love you?”
But she would not let herself do any of those things. She held herself in control so fiercely that she thought she might explode; she held still for one long moment, thinking: Nell, are you sure about this? You’ll never see him again, Nell. Is that what you want? Don’t be rash, Nell. She stood there in the mall, quaking and glaring at Andy, thinking that she was going to end it now, and she was going to do it with some kind of pride.
“Well,” Andy said slowly, obviously trying to figure something out. “I can still do all those things, Nell. I mean I can still make a hotel reservation. And I’d like to take you out to dinner. You know how I get, my mind just goes along on one track, but, Nell, I never meant to hurt you, to make you so upset. Look, let’s get out of here and go someplace where we can be alone.”
Nell shook her head. “Oh, Andy,” she said. “You are such—” She stopped, feeling tears shimmering in her eyes. She had used up all her sassy cleverness with the term casual user and now she was just in despair. She held her hands up in front of her in a hopeless gesture, hopeless of finding the word that would express exactly what Andy was.
“A dumb fart,” Hannah prompted from behind her, her voice calm.
Nell turned to look at her daughter. Hannah grinned. Nell grinned back. She turned back to Andy.
“You are such a dumb fart,” she said. And now she really was triumphant. The tears had vanished. “You’ll never meet another woman who could love you as much as I did, as well as I could have,” she said. “Oh, Andy, you really blew it.”
Andy reached out to grab her shoulders, but Nell stepped back. “Nell,” he said. “Why are you talking this way? It’s not over for us.”
“Oh yes, yes it is,” Nell said.
“Because I came to see computers instead of seeing you? Just because of that? That’s crazy,” Andy protested.
“No, you’re crazy,” Nell said. “You’re crazy not to have loved me better. You’re crazy to have let me get away.” She knew that exits pulled more punch if they were done unexpectedly, and she knew a good exit line when she said it. So she tossed her head and turned around and took Hannah’s hand. “Come on, honey,” she said, and stalked off, majestic in her determination.
“Nell,” Andy said. He came a few steps after her. She could feel his presence. “Nell,” he repeated. “Don’t go off like this.”
Nell did not turn around. If he wants me, he’ll pursue me, she thought. In her mind she envisioned him running after her down the length of the mall. In her mind she heard him say at last, “I don’t want to lose you, Nell—marry me!”
But that was only in her mind. In reality, she felt the invisible bond between her and Andy stretching as she walked, until it snapped and broke in two.
“He’s standing back by the computers, Mom,” Hannah said.
“I know,” Nell said, her head held high.
“How do you know?” Hannah nagged. “You don’t have eyes in the back of your head.”
“Sometimes I do,” Nell replied. “Sometimes I really do.”
She strode down the mall, full of energy, purpose, and determination, a madwoman among all the lazy strolling holiday shoppers. Her mind was wild with words and images. At the last moment, before she came to the door leading out to the icy parking lot, she heard someone running toward her. She could feel the crowds of people parting as someone pushed through to her. There was one last nearly ecstatic moment when Nell felt Andy rushing to her, finally desperate with need, and then Nell heard her son yelling, “Hey, Mom! Wait a minute. Where are you going? How come you didn’t come get me?” And she turned to find that her pursuer had been her son. Andy was nowhere to be seen.
No one spoke while they ran through the freezing air and crammed themselves into the cold Toyota. They sat, teeth chattering, waiting for the engine to warm the little car. Hannah was in the front seat, buckled in with a safety belt so that she could turn only halfway around to see Jeremy.
“Mom broke up with Andy,” Hannah said to her brother. “She was wicked good.”
“Andy? Andy was there? I didn’t see him,” Jeremy protested. “Hey, Mom, why did you break up with Andy?”
“It’s a long story,” Nell said. “I guess you could say I broke up with him because he cares more for computers than for me.”
“Boy, is he stupid,” Jeremy said loyally.
“Mom called him a dumb fart,” Hannah said gleefully.
“She did?” Jeremy grinned. “Mom, did you really say that right to him?”
“I did,” Nell said, grinning back. “I really did. I said, ‘Andy, you are a dumb fart.’ ”
“Wow!” Jeremy said, laughing. “I bet no one’s ever called him that before.”
Hannah and Jeremy got into one of their contagious laughing fits then, saying “dumb fart” whenever they needed inspiration for a fresh burst of laughter. Nell drove home smiling. Her children were right, she knew: Without them she might have told Andy he was an insensitive egotist or a selfish fool or any number of other things that he had undoubtedly been called by other women. She doubted very much that anyone had called him a dumb fart before. It was such a nice, short, definite, disgusting phrase. Nell was pleased with herself for using it. She was very pleased with herself for breaking up with Andy. She would have hated herself if she had weakened.
At home, she distributed the new underwear to her children and told them to put it away before playing. They ran off, eager to call friends, start games, watch TV. Nell went into the kitchen and fixed herself a celebratory glass of white wine. She stood very still for a moment, holding the wine in her mouth, then letting it slide down inside her, and she waited for a similar cold tang of grief to join the taste of wine. But there was no grief now. She had no tears. She realized that only when she had felt hope had there been sorrow. Now she had neither. Andy was truly gone from her life, and she felt her life expand with his absence, the way a stage expands with light and sound once the heavy curtain has been raised.
New Year’s Eve, even the cats were sick. Fred and Medusa were disgusting, slinking around the house with watery mucus streaming out of their eyes, staining their fur. Fred even had laryngitis; when he opened his mouth to meow, he could only squeak. It would have been a funny sight if it weren’t so pathetic and if the children hadn’t been feeling as bad as he did. Hannah and Jeremy were both sick, too. They both had a fever, runny nose, congested head, upset stomach, aching arms and ankles, sore throat, the works. Nell had called the doctor, who had said nothing could be done but to wait it out—it was yet another new flu bug. A very contagious flu bug. Nell was so tired and achy tonight that she was afraid she had caught it, too.
* * *
For two days now she had been the soul of patience and sympathy, carrying trays with aspirin and ginger ale and chicken broth to her children, rubbing their backs, coddling and cuddling them. But now she was exhausted, and when they crabbed because the orange liquid medicine she gave them tasted so foul, she heard herself snap, “Shut up, damnit, and take this stuff or I’ll kill you.”
God, what a nasty-mouthed mean old mother I am, Nell thought, carrying the sticky spoon back down to the kitchen. But she knew instinctively that her bad temper came as a sign of relief—the children were over the worst part. They were sick, but not dangerously sick anymore. They would be tired and cranky for the next few days, but they were going to get well. They were not going to die. And that was really the only thing that mattered.
Thank God, Nell thought, for her children. They drove her crazy, but they saved her life. When she looked at them, she thought, I have done this much in the world, I have made these children and kept them safe and healthy and taught them to be good, and that is a wonderful thing.
Someday, Nell thought, these children will leave me. They’ll go off to college, to work, to marry. I’ll be really alone then. I’ll manage—I’ll even enjoy it. I’ll be able to travel, to have more freedom. We’ll learn to live without one another. But for now—for now, thank heavens, they were still little children who had to live with her, who needed her love, and who gave love back so naturally.
Nell poured herself a huge glass of orange juice and carried it upstairs with a handful of chewable Vitamin C. If she could help it, she was going to stay well. She peeked into the children’s bedrooms—both Hannah and Jeremy had drifted off into sleep already, carried away on waves of the decongestant medicine. It was nine-thirty. Nell left all the doors open so she could hear the children if they called her. At least they were old enough now to call her if they needed her; she no longer had to spend the night on the floor wrapped in a blanket, only half sleeping, trying through the night to monitor the breathing of a sick child.
Now Nell crawled into her own bed. The sheets were gritty with crumbs from sandwiches. She didn’t care, she was too tired to care. She didn’t even particularly care that when the new year came she would probably be asleep instead of celebrating its arrival. She would be sleeping truly alone tonight—she had shut Fred and Medusa in the kitchen for once. Her tolerance for her animals had ended earlier in the day, when Fred had butted his sickly head against her stomach, leaving a long trail of greenish eye-slime on her sweatshirt. Nell didn’t want to awaken to the sound of either cat throwing up or sneezing. She didn’t want to feel any material rubbing off a cat and onto her during the night. The cats would get well, too, she knew, but until then, she didn’t want to sleep with them.
It had looked like such a promising New Year’s Eve. Nell had been up for it in every way. She had been invited to a huge party at Ilona’s and had asked Stellios to go with her. She had found a silver sequined tube top at a secondhand shop that looked great with an old long black velvet skirt. She had planned to greet the new year looking as gorgeous as she could, dancing the night away in Stellios’s arms, drinking Ilona and Phillip’s first-class champagne, putting into practice Ilona’s new philosophy of “saying yes to life!”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever said no to life,” Nell had said to Ilona when her friend exploded with her newly found catchword and religion. “I mean, after all, here I am,” Nell had said.
“Oh, don’t be so literal,” Ilona had cajoled. “Don’t be so stuffy. You know what I mean. I mean, grab life by the balls and run with it!”
“What?” Nell had asked, aghast. “Ilona, aren’t you mixing your metaphors?”
But Ilona was in too good a mood to be sensible. She had come into the boutique to buy a special dress for the party she and Phillip were giving New Year’s Eve—a party with a live band and a champagne fountain and catered breakfast at dawn. Ilona looked through dresses, trying to get Nell to share her excitement. She kept saying things like, “You’ve got to grab your joy where you find it! You can’t always wait for it to come to you, you have to create it! You’ve got to start saying yes to life!”
The season has scrambled your brain, Nell thought, but she was glad that Ilona was so cheerful. And Nell had been looking forward to the big party. But Cora Donne had invited Nell to a New Year’s Day brunch, and Nell wanted to go there even more than to Ilona’s. She knew who Ilona’s crowd would be, but Cora’s guests would be all new faces to Nell, new people, mostly professors from the university where Cora taught. Cora had hinted to Nell that there would be quite a few single men at her party who would be delighted to meet Nell. They’ll probably be stodgy old intellectuals, Nell thought cynically, but she was still excited about going. She was gladly missing Ilona’s party so that she could go to sleep early and fight off the flu. She wanted to be fresh and bright-eyed for the new day.
The new day. The new year. Nell stretched out all over her bed, loving the soft warmth, and smiled at the thought of tomorrow. She felt so clean about it all. She felt so fresh.
For the past two days she had worried about her scene with Andy in the same way the dog worried her leather bone, poking at the thought of it over and over again, twisting it around, wondering if it had been the right thing to do. She had half thought, half wished that Andy would, in a mad flare of desperate passion, rush to Arlington, pound on her door, take her in his arms and, eyes swollen with allergies, declare eternal love for her.
At the least, she had thought he would call her. But he hadn’t. Last night, as Nell sat by the fire listening to the music with her flu-sedated children, she had felt all her sorrow turn into a numb exhaustion much like apathy and all her love for Andy become disdain, an emotion too weakened by the memory of love to be real contempt. She supposed that finally what she felt for him was pity. He had said he loved her, but either he was lying, in which case he was a creep, or he was telling the truth but could do little to show his love. In that case he was a limited man. Oh, he was a limited man. He did not know his daughter’s size or favorite color, he had found no charm in her children, he was even allergic to animals! She thought of how his enormous, sparsely furnished house spread around him like a protective bubble around a person allergic to the world. She thought of him making his careful, precise, repetitive movements in that house as he worked with his computers or made his meticulous gourmet meals. He did not have to deal with the real world because of his family’s money; he would never have to get messy or dirty. If they had married and lived together, it would have ended in disaster, Nell could see that now. He would not be able to bear the fuss and bother of her life, the children, animals, friends, drama, action—and she would have been driven, sooner or later, to screaming at him: “For God’s sake, stop organizing the food and just cook it!”
Nell thought that perhaps she had fallen in love with Andy in much the same way she had fallen in love with severe black suits when she was seventeen and punk hairstyles when she was thirty-five—all yearnings for what was inappropriate for her, for what was basically wrong, for what would never work. She knew she had made the right choice in breaking off with Andy. She felt like some small country that had declared its independence from some dictatorial nation. Perhaps she’d no longer get shipments of sugar from that country—but she could learn to do without sugar. In her new freedom, she’d learn to love honey.
She had been only slightly melancholy last night. The cats had snoozed, drugged by the heat, on the hearth; the dog had gnawed on a new rubber bone; the children had read books, Christmas gifts, and littered the floor with used tissues. They drank hot chocolate. Hannah had asked, “Do you miss Andy, Mommy? Are you sad?”
Nell decided to be honest. They had seen a lot this summer. She didn’t want to pretend that nothing of importance had happened. “I’m a little sad,” she said. “Not broken-hearted, but a little sad. You know, I had kind of wanted to marry Andy.”
“Why?” Jeremy asked, surprised.
Nell had to be so careful here. She needed to explain to them in terms they would understand just how she had felt about Andy without at the same time inadvertently insulting Marlow or making light of the marriage she had had with him. She thought a moment. Finally, she said, “Well, you know, there are very few people in the world that you like enough to live with. And if you meet someone you like that much and love that much, then it’s as if you’ve found a home. And that’s nice. That feels good. But if the other person doesn’t want to live with you, then it’s sad. But then you go off and make your own home somewhere else.”
“You have a home with us,” Jeremy said.
Nell looked at her son. “Yes,” she said. “I do. You children are my home, and I love you and I like you and it’s wonderful living with you. But you know someday you’ll go away—to college, to get jobs, to marry and live with a husband or wife. Then you’ll have new homes, your own homes.”
“Then what will you do, Mommy?” Hannah asked, alarmed.
“You can come live with me and my wife,” Jeremy offered.
Nell smiled. “Thanks, Jeremy,” she said. “But no, I won’t come live with you; you’ll have grown-up lives. But don’t worry. I’ll have my own home by then. I’m making my own home now.”
“Daddy’s divorcing Charlotte,” Hannah said. “So he’s leaving his home.”
“Yes.” Nell smiled. “That’s true. Well, your daddy’s sort of a wanderer. He likes the travel, the adventure; he doesn’t need a home. Some people don’t.”
“Maybe Andy’s a wanderer too,” Hannah said.
“Or a hermit,” Jeremy said.
“Well, whatever he is,” Nell said, “he’s out of our lives now, and I’ll be blue for a while, but don’t worry. Just bear with me while I get over it—like you’re getting over the flu.”
“Mom,” Hannah said. “I’ve got an idea! When I get married, I’ll throw you the bouquet! Then you’ll get married and we’ll all have homes.”
Nell looked at Hannah, who had a red nose and watery eyes. My sophisticated, optimistic children, she thought. “That’s a great idea, Hannah,” she said. “That’s thoughtful of you. But, sweetie, don’t worry. Even if I never get married again—and I’m pretty certain I won’t—I’ll still be happy. I’ll make my own home. I really can do that. I am doing that.”
And it was true. Here she was, on New Year’s Eve, in her own house, her own bed, her own room. It hadn’t always been this way. There had been years when Marlow had possessed this room, too, had thrown his clothes down on the floor for her to pick up and wash, had scattered his papers around the room and claimed his share of the bed. When the children were small, they had also possessed this room, by right of necessity; there had been soiled diapers, sticky bottles of orange juice, stuffed animals, half-gnawed crackers everywhere.
The room was pretty much all hers now. From time to time one of the children left a shoe or a book, but they were old enough to keep their belongings in their own rooms, and this bedroom was now Nell’s own private place. Only her clothes hung in the closet or were scattered over the back of the chair, only the magazines and books she was interested in took up the extra space in the bed, and recently she had driven a nail into the wall and hung her ice skates there, as if they were some kind of symbol or trophy or good luck charm.
She had gone skating three times since Christmas, and each time had been better than before. The first time out she had made Jeremy hold one hand and Hannah the other as she went out onto the ice—but suddenly, to her surprise, it all came back. She was wobbly in the beginning, but by the end of the two hours she was impressing her children with her speed and spins. It all came back to her. They played rock music at the rink she went to—the same sort of music she exercised to—and as she skimmed across the glistening white ice, she had been at once lost and found in the matching of music and movement. She liked skating along alone, at her own speed, folding into a spin whenever she felt like it, racing past her children, coming up behind them, passing them with a laugh, skating backward and making faces at them. She liked the occasional admiring glance she saw tossed her way by men who skated past. She liked the way her red fuzzy scarf flipped when she turned, the way her hands, encased in red fuzzy mittens, darted gracefully along with her, like giant cardinals. She knew she looked pretty, skating along in her blue jeans and sweater and red hat, scarf, and mittens; she knew she was a cheerful sight. She liked all that, being pretty and being seen.
But more, she liked the feeling of gliding on ice, the way her legs worked for her, how reliable her body was, after all. She liked the way she could disappear from the outer world into a world of her own, so that she became simply muscles and limbs that were taut and cooperative; she loved speeding, spinning, dancing on cold ice as if the music she heard became the movements she made. For a while on the ice, she was in a state of grace; she felt as if she were the very definition of grace. There was no time in her life when she was happier or more herself than when skating in her own glistening, private world. She would slice the ice with her blades, hear the responsive shushhh … she would glide.
Nell was using her parents’ check to buy membership in the skating club so that she could use the rink twice a week. She had decided it was good therapy for her—physical and mental therapy. It had been a very long time since she had skated in her youth, but those times were with her somehow, there in the very strength of her ankles, there in the tension of her legs. Just so, she knew, all the years of her life were somehow with her now in the form of strength and agility; she could not remember them all, did not want to remember some of them, but she was what she was because of them. Now she was going to take skating lessons. She was going to improve herself. She was not going to stop or rest. And the ice skates hung on her bedroom wall, a testament to her determination.
She didn’t feel like skating tonight, though. She was tired, and she could feel an ominous tickle in the back of her throat. She could almost sense cold germs thriving and multiplying in the air around her. She didn’t want to get sick—she had too much to do. She drank the rest of her orange juice in one long swallow, then slid down beneath her blankets. She wanted to be well tomorrow.
Yet she felt the need for some small sense of occasion, some slight celebration. She had had to phone Ilona to tell her she was too sick to come to her party. She had canceled her date with Stellios, who had been very disappointed. He had wanted to bring champagne to her house that night so that the two of them could welcome the new year together. But she had told him no, she was too sick, too groggy for champagne or company. She had promised to see him as soon as she was well.
In fact she was glad she had the flu. She was glad to be spending this New Year’s Eve by herself. It was honest this way. She did not want to gaze soulfully into Stellios’s eyes and pretend they were facing the new year together. She wanted to do exactly what she was doing: greet this coming year surrounded only by those things that were genuinely hers—her animals, her children, her house, her memories.
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind,” Nell sang softly to herself. She grinned while she sang, thinking: What a goofy thing to do, singing to herself in bed! “We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet for auld lang syne,” she sang.
Her song floated out into the night air and disappeared. She reached out her arm and switched off the light. She snuggled down into bed, content. Nell turned onto her side, closed her eyes, and fell asleep, alone.