“The Chosen?”
“You’ve been away too long,” she told him.
ROSE TAKES a cart and starts off for the produce section, ignoring the hostile and questioning glances some of the other shoppers seem to direct at her. It’s mostly old people at this time of day, and she feels suddenly depressed to find herself in their company. I should be working, she tells herself. I should never have stopped. But they had kept changing the computers around on her at the office, and then her arthritis started flaring up. On top of everything else, her boss was replaced by a younger man who talked to her like she was stupid, and one morning she simply couldn’t bring herself to climb aboard the train. Now she’s here, part of a small army of retirees who watch the cashiers like hawks and stand motionless in the parking lot, poring over receipts as if they’re love letters from the glory days.
“Rose?”
Startled, Rose looks up from the bananas in her hand and sees an old woman peering at her with an expression halfway between confusion and concern. A dirty-faced toddler is crammed into the child seat of the woman’s cart, sucking regally on a lollipop.
“Rose, honey, is that you?”
Rose has to force herself to look from the child to the grandmother, to work her way past the mask of age to the real face underneath. Janet, she realizes. Janet Byrne.
“It’s me,” Rose confesses.
“My God.” Janet looks her up and down, smiling as if Rose has just told an unsuccessful joke. Janet leans forward, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I thought you were… one of them.”
Rose shakes her head, overcome by a sudden wave of embarrassment. She’d like to explain herself to Janet, to tell her about the Chosen girl — I just wanted to know how cold she was — but it all seems crazy now, nothing she feels free to discuss at the Stop & Shop. She turns her attention back to the baby, who is gazing up at her with glassy, placid eyes.
“Isn’t she precious?”
“I’m too old for this.” Janet shakes her head, but Rose can see the happiness in her eyes as she reaches forward to stroke her granddaughter’s cheek. “You forget how much work it is.”
Rose wants to tell her that she envies her fatigue, that it’s better to be tired from doing something than from doing nothing at all, but she and Janet have never been more than passing acquaintances.
“Such a pretty girl,” she says instead.
“How many do you have?” Janet asks.
“Just one. Cody. He’s eleven now. I don’t see him enough.”
“Cody.” Janet makes a face. “The names they give them. This one’s Selena.”
“Selena.” Rose wishes she’d had a little girl of her own to dress up and fawn over. Eliza they could have called her. Eliza Geraldine. They would have stayed friends, the way Rose had with her own mother. She would have kept close to home. “Such a pretty name.”
“You son’s in California, right?”
“Beverly Hills.”
“I hear he does face-lifts.”
Rose nods, though Russell’s actual specialty is breasts.
“Will he give me a discount?” Janet laughs merrily, tugging back the skin on both cheeks. For a disconcerting second, her former face rises to the surface, the slyly pretty young mother Rose remembers from Little League and PTA, the chain smoker with peasant blouses and tinted glasses.
“He’s coming for a visit soon.” Rose wants to smile, but her mouth won’t cooperate. “We’re going to celebrate Christmas in April.”
“That’s nice,” Janet replies, as her face surrenders to the forces of gravity. “That’ll be nice for you.”
“He’s very busy,” Rose adds. “His wife doesn’t like the cold weather.”
“You must be proud of him.” Janet smiles, but it’s an effort of will. Her boy, Bobby, had a drug problem and now works the stamp counter at the post office. “My son the doctor.”
“I don’t want to be a burden,” Rose explains, her voice coming out louder than she means it to. “Come when you want, that’s what I tell him. Whenever it’s convenient.”
The baby whimpers impatiently. Janet touches Rose lightly on the shoulder.
“We better go,” she says. “You take care of yourself.”
Without asking permission, Rose bends down and kisses the baby on the forehead.
“So precious,” she whispers.
RUSSELL AND his family aren’t coming for another month, but the blizzard on Saturday morning inspires her to put up the Christmas tree. It’ll be nice to have the company, a visible symbol of the holiday to lift her spirits and keep her mind focused on the visit. And besides, it’s something to do right now, something to keep her occupied through the otherwise empty hours. She doesn’t know why, but Saturday is always the longest day of the week, the day she most misses Pat’s company, though all he did the last few years of his life was lie on the couch and complain.
The plastic spruce is taller than she is, bottom-heavy and unwieldy, and Rose struggles to drag it down from the attic. It was Pat’s idea, the artificial tree. Rose always preferred real ones, fire hazard or not. But when you celebrate Christmas in April, it’s pretty much fake or nothing. At least there’s no assembly required.
After getting the tree righted in the stand — another tough job — Rose makes several trips back to the attic for boxes of ornaments, tinsel, lights, and the little wooden Nativity scene she received as a wedding present from her great-aunt Margaret. She would have preferred to wait for Cody to trim the tree, but she knows from her last visit to California — most of which he spent wearing headphones and playing video games — that he’s past the age of enjoying it.
The decorating goes slowly at first. Rose tries to ignore the lurking sense that something’s missing, that she’s performing a common household task rather than a holiday ritual, when it finally dawns on her: she forgot the music. You can’t trim a tree without music.
She opens the cabinet, finds the ancient Bing Crosby album — he’s looking pleased with himself on the cover, sporting a rakish little elf’s hat — and sets it lovingly on the turntable. That was one thing that got Cody’s attention, the fact that she owned a record player and still used it. He was as amazed as Russell had been, at about the same age, to learn that his own grandmother had killed chickens with her bare hands, snapping their necks with no more thought than he would have given to twisting off a bottle cap.
Once Bing starts crooning, everything falls into place. Suddenly it’s Christmastime, a curtain of snow falling slantwise outside the window. The individual ornaments emerge like old friends from their tissue-paper cocoons. Before long the fake tree becomes the real thing, or at least close enough to believe in. Stepping back to admire her handiwork, Rose finally admits to herself how cheated she’s been feeling the past few months, how bitterly she resents her daughter-in-law for canceling the holiday at the last minute.
It’s all right, she thinks. We’ll pretend it never happened.
THEY DECIDED to go to Hawaii instead, Rose imagines saying. She’d keep her tone neutral, let the facts speak for themselves. Can you imagine?
The Chosen girl would nod, eyes full of sympathy. Did he give a reason?
He said his wife was stressed-out. She needed a little downtime.
Stressed-out? The Chosen girl repeats the phrase as if she’d never heard it before.
She was working too hard. The real estate market is booming where they live. That’s what she does — sells real estate. She used to be a nurse. That’s how she met Russell.