There never was such a Christmas dinner as they had that day.
—Little Women
I was still a little dazed when I made it downstairs. Not because Hudson had cut off my oxygen supply (it wasn’t that kind of kiss) but from the surprise. This is what you wanted, I reminded myself, trying on a smile.
“What’s wrong with your face?” Amy scowled at me across the dinner table as she unfolded her napkin and dropped it on her lap. “It’s creeping me out.”
“I think Jo looks lovely.” Mom offered a smile of her own as she deposited the tureen of green beans. “As do you, Amy dear.”
My sister fluffed her hair at this totally spontaneous compliment that was definitely not to keep her from having a meltdown.
“Beth, too,” Mom continued as she passed the platter of turkey to her left, earning a huff of outrage from her youngest. “And Meg, of course.”
Of course, because Meg was the beauty of the family, in the book and in real life. Although this Meg looked a little rough around the edges, what with the sunglasses indoors. Was our mother really so oblivious that she didn’t recognize the signs of a hangover, or was she willfully ignoring the evidence of her eldest’s post-prom partying?
“Very Anna Wintour,” Andrea said, lifting her chin at my older sister.
Mom frowned. “Should we turn down the lights?” She glanced at the clunky chandelier, forgetting that if we set the dimmer any lower, it would flicker like a strobe.
“Must have been a rough night,” I murmured.
“You know how slumber parties are.” Mom shook her head fondly. “The next day is always a killer.”
I pictured Meg and her loser friends crammed into a hotel room with gallons of cheap booze. Sometimes it really was like Mom lived in a different century.
“How was the music?” Beth asked. “My cousin plays bass in the band.”
“Name-dropper,” Amy fake coughed.
“We didn’t go to prom.” Behind the dark lenses, Meg was almost certainly rolling her eyes.
“Duh,” Amy chimed in, like this was a fact everyone who was anyone already knew.
“What do you mean you didn’t go?” I thought of the dresses, the practice hairstyles, David’s tickets. “You were in the bathroom getting ready for hours.” I’d gone for an extra-long run to avoid the big reveal.
“It’s called personal grooming, Jo. People do it every day, not just when there’s a full moon.” Meg lifted her sunglasses to give me a withering look.
I jerked back in my chair with a hiss of alarm. “What the hell is wrong with your eye?”
“And is it contagious?” Andrea added, leaning away.
The sunglasses dropped back into place. “I accidentally got some of my Natura Bisse Glyco Extreme Peel in there.”
Only the knowledge that Meg had barely passed Spanish kept me from asking if she was speaking a foreign language. “Is that why you didn’t go?”
She took a long sip of water before answering. “I never really cared about prom. That’s not my scene.”
“Then why did you steal David’s tickets?”
“What are you even talking about, Jo? David doesn’t dance, he doesn’t have a tux, and he doesn’t like parties. I did him a favor.”
“You’re a real humanitarian.”
“He could have found someone else if he really wanted to go.”
I felt a spasm of guilt, which immediately gave way to worry. Had he asked someone else? Why hadn’t I considered that possibility?
Mom set down her fork and knife with an audible clank. “Let’s talk about something else.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been grateful for my mother’s relentless cheerfulness.
“How was church?” Andrea asked, studying Beth over the rim of her wineglass.
Her interest surprised me. Maybe it was similar to Hudson’s curiosity about small-town life—a phenomenon he’d heard about but never witnessed up close.
“Fabulous.” Beth took a bite of potatoes, speaking through the mush. “We got the good band. Drums and mandolin.”
“Our Beth is very musical,” Mom informed the table at large. “I was saving this to tell you all over dessert, but we’re adding something new to the show. An actual keyboard she can play onstage! Can’t you just see it?”
Amy vibrated like a pressure cooker on the verge of blowing its top. “Where are you going to put a freaking piano?”
“It’s not a piano, per se,” Mom explained. “It’ll be one of those small, portable ones.”
“Are you talking about a synthesizer?” I couldn’t keep the fear out of my voice. That was just what we needed: a bunch of electronic bleeps and bloops adding to the mood.
“We dressed it up. To look more old-fashioned.” Mom made a vague swirling gesture that could have meant anything: tying on a bow, a sprinkle of glitter, cardboard and markers. “I was thinking we could do a sing-along at the end. Give the audience a chance to participate. What better way to spread the holiday feeling?”
I had a few ideas, starting with wait until it’s actually Christmas.
“Indeed,” said Andrea, tipping more green beans onto her plate. I added that to my mental list of responses that could mean anything, or nothing. “Hudson was in a choir when he was young. He could have done something with his voice, if he’d kept at it. Talent without grit is fairly useless.”
“Oh. Well.” Mom looked torn between her usual impulse to agree and not wanting to dogpile on Hudson. “He’s obviously creative in other ways.”
“It’s fascinating you tell people I’m not willing to put in the work when you’re the one who crapped all over the idea of art school. Which is something I actually want to do.” Like his mother, Hudson sounded casual on the surface, but the words hit the table like spattering grease, making everyone flinch.
It was the first I’d heard about his art-school ambitions.
“A BFA is for dilettantes and dabblers.” Andrea didn’t look at Hudson. I should have felt bad for him, except it was kind of a relief not to be the only dysfunctional family in the room. “Until you have a few miles under your belt, you won’t have anything to say. At your age, it’s a waste of time. And money.”
“My father went to art school.” Hudson addressed the words to me, but the whole table heard.
“It’s like Laurie’s father eloping with an Italian pianist.” Mom smiled as if this made everything okay. Because that was definitely the cure for familial tension: comparing things to Little Women.
I shot her a skeptical look. “How do you figure?”
“That was a radical choice back then as far as society marriages were concerned.,” Mom replied. “Artists didn’t have the same cachet.”
“Except we were never married,” Andrea pointed out. “And he was barely an artist.”
Even my mother needed a few blinks to recover from that one. “Well. There are different ways to be unconventional. I think everyone at this table has a bohemian bent, after their own fashion.”
“My real masterpiece is my life. Just like in the book.” Amy narrowed her eyes at Hudson, like she expected him to argue. “As anyone who has read it knows.”
“She’s the da Vinci of manipulation,” I agreed.
Beth snickered. Amy rounded on her, nostrils flaring.
“Hypocritical, much? Book Beth is like a dark, diseased cloud hanging over everything. Nobody can have any fun while that little sicko is coughing and moaning in the corner.” Amy pretended to gag.
“How rude of her to have a terminal illness,” Beth said with heavy irony. “At least she didn’t whine about it like certain parties who acted like the world was ending when they got busted bringing illegal fruit to school.”
“Excuse you, Amy was beaten. In public. By a teacher!”
“Kinky,” Hudson murmured.
Amy glared at him. “Like you’d know.”
“Book Amy,” I reminded everyone. “The lime scene.”
“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. Or should I say, the limes?” Beth winked at Mom, who looked like she was struggling not to crack a smile.
“It’s not funny,” Amy snapped. “All y’all are jealous Book Amy’s life doesn’t suck, but she can’t help it if she’s awesome. Girlfriend knew how to work it.” Dropping back into her seat, she gave an aggressive hair flip.
“Can I just point out that you’re arguing about people who never existed?” I waited for some sign of agreement, but everyone was either angry, checked out, or taking notes. “None of those things actually happened to either of you. Obviously, since Beth is very much alive.”
“Thank you,” Beth said.
“You want to keep it real?” Amy pointed her fork at me. “I’m going to be a teacher. The awesome kind, who acts stuff out, with costumes and props. Either English or history. I haven’t made up my mind.”
“That’s wonderful,” Mom enthused. Probably she would have said the same thing if her youngest had announced plans to become a contract killer, but in this case I could tell she was genuinely excited.
“I’m really good at educating people about new things.” Amy whirled to face Hudson. “Don’t you think?”
“Sure,” he said slowly, glancing around the table to see if the rest of us knew why he’d been singled out. “Are we sharing career goals right now?”
“Why?” Andrea asked. “Do you have some?”
Ouch. And also ouch for me, because how was it possible that even Amy had figured out what she wanted to do with her life? What was next, Meg announcing a full ride to an Ivy League college?
A buzzer sounded in the kitchen. Mom slid her chair away from the table. “That’s the pie. Meg, can you give me a hand?”
All of us blinked at the empty chair where I would have sworn Meg had been sitting a second ago.
“I’ll do it,” Amy volunteered.
Beth leaped to her feet. “Let me.”
They reached the doorway at the same time. After a few back-and-forth elbow jabs, the bottleneck gave way, sending them staggering into the next room.
“This should be good.” Hudson could have been talking about the explosive potential of Amy and Beth working together, the fast-approaching nightmare of school tours (now with synthesizer sing-along), or the faux homemade dessert. It didn’t really matter, since all of it was inevitable. Death, taxes, and the Christmas scene from Little Women.
Under the table, his leg pressed against mine. Maybe if I focused on the one thing in my life that was going okay, I could ignore the looming apocalypse. Grab a little happiness while I had the chance. Even Louisa May Alcott managed a few weeks’ escape from her life of drudgery, if the rumors of a secret affair were to be believed. I wondered if Andrea knew about that.
“So, Jo.” Andrea wiped her mouth with a Christmas napkin before setting it next to her plate. “Give us a preview of tomorrow. Is there anything in particular we should be looking for?”
Behind the sinking feeling there was a flicker of pleasure that Andrea had waited until everyone else left the room to ask. The silly people are gone; we can speak freely.
“We start with Christmas morning, for the little kids. The first scene in the book.”
“‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.’” Andrea delivered the line in her usual monotone. No melancholy falsetto for her.
“Yeah.” I felt like a character in a war movie describing the ambush that slaughtered her platoon. “The whole presents-for-Marmee, giving-away-our-breakfast-to-the-Hummels bit.”
Hudson looked puzzled.
“Where the baby dies on Beth’s lap and then it’s like, ‘Hello, PTSD, my old friend’?” This was one of my (many) complaints about Little Women. Everybody acted like it was the original Hallmark movie, but some seriously disturbed business went down in that book. Dead pets, dead neighbors, Beth’s undiagnosed mental illness, an entire freaking war—nobody ever mentioned those parts.
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t sound very certain.
“Then in the afternoon we do the play within the play.” That part was significantly less familiar to most people, since it gets glossed over in the book.
“Interesting,” Andrea said, adding another entry to my list of Ambiguous Comments. “Anything else?”
“There’s the bus ride.” That was probably the highlight of the day, especially when they got to escape this place and go back to school.
“Here we are,” Mom announced, placing the pie at the center of the table.
“That looks delicious,” Andrea said as Beth set down a stack of plates and spoons. Amy nudged it aside to deposit a half gallon of vanilla ice cream.
“It’s just your basic apple pie, nothing fancy.” Mom ducked her head modestly, like she was trying to downplay her mad baking skills for fear of making the rest of us feel bad.
Hudson tipped his head back as he sniffed. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a pie that wasn’t from Whole Foods.”
Leaning across the table, Andrea patted his hand. “Both of your arms seem to be working.”
Mom cleared her throat. “Guess what? Beth has offered to play for us if anyone wants to sing carols in the parlor after dinner.”
It’s a fricking living room. I didn’t say it out loud, because—contrary to popular belief—I didn’t share every critical thought that passed through my brain.
“Ah.” The look on Andrea’s face was a blend of In what universe is that remotely appealing? and unwilling curiosity. The kind people feel when they drive past the scene of an accident. “Regrettably, we’ll need to head back to the motel.”
My mother’s face fell, like even she recognized the lack of sincerity.
“I want to make sure we’re ready for the big day,” Andrea added. “Tomorrow is so crucial. It’s really the apotheosis of our time here.”
Whatever that meant. It sounded a little like apocalypse to me, which would be accurate, but Mom perked up, thrilled as always by hyperbole.
“Very true,” she agreed, dishing out pie. “Everyone should get to bed early tonight.”
I had a brief, beautiful dream of escaping the musical portion of the evening, until Mom said, “We’ll do a quick song or two as a family, then hit the hay.”
Beth started humming “Deck the Halls,” an impressive trick with a mouth full of pie and ice cream.
“Weren’t you listening? She said family,” Amy hissed at her stage sister.
Beth hummed louder. Not to be outdone, Amy launched into a weirdly aggressive rendition of “Silent Night.”
As their voices climbed in volume, competing for dominance, Hudson leaned against me. “This is festive.”
“Joy to the world,” I grumbled, stabbing my pie.
Andrea poured the rest of the wine into her glass before raising it in a toast. “God bless us, every one.”