Do you like her? The girl asks the question without gossipy intent. She seems to be trying to work something out.
Rose isn’t sure how to answer. It’s as if there are two Ellens, one the mousy-haired girl from Freehold who somehow snagged herself a plastic surgeon, the other a platinum-blond businesswoman who couldn’t be bothered with anything that didn’t involve making and spending lots of money. The last time Rose saw her, she had a new Mercedes and new breasts to go with it, plus a wardrobe of revealing clothes to call attention to the upgrade, including a bikini meant for a much younger woman.
She changed a lot, Rose would explain. After they moved to California. They live in Beverly Hills.
That sounds pretty, says the Chosen girl.
It is. Rose smiles. Nothing like here. Sunny and beautiful every day of the year.
The girl seems perplexed. So why did they need to go to Hawaii?
Rose had wondered the exact same thing. She’d wondered it many, many times.
You’ll have to ask them, she says with a sigh. I try not to interfere.
WHEN THE tree is finished, she wraps presents in the cheerful glow of the blinking lights: a low-fat cookbook for Ellen, a nice travel kit and bathrobe for Russell, a bathing suit and package of socks for Cody. All that’s left is the Sharks jacket, but her heart sinks as she removes it from the closet. It’s a ridiculous gift, she sees that now — a warm coat in April for a boy who lives on a street lined with palm trees. She wonders if the store will let her exchange it for something that makes more sense, a baseball glove or maybe some computer games, but she needs to consult Russell before doing anything. For all she knows, her grandson already owns three baseball gloves and every computer game known to man.
She picks up the phone, punches in the numbers, then hangs up before it has a chance to ring, her heart pounding erratically. She can’t understand why she’s so nervous; all she wants is to ask a simple question. Can’t a mother ask her son a simple question?
Rose hasn’t spoken to Russell for two weeks, since the Saturday morning when she caught him on his way out to play golf. He said he’d call her back that night, but something must have come up. The time difference makes it hard for them to connect sometimes, especially with Russell’s busy schedule.
I’ll tell him about the snowstorm, she thinks, and running into Janet Byrne. I’ll tell him about the tree. She presses redial, breathing slowly and deeply, her heart beating at a more manageable rhythm.
“OH, JESUS,” Russell mutters. “I said that? Are you sure?”
“Russell,” she says weakly. For a moment, Rose wonders if she’s losing her mind, if she imagined a conversation with her son the way she’s been imagining conversations with the Chosen girl, but in her heart she knows it’s not true. She understands the difference between being lonely and being crazy, and she remembers what he told her. “You said we’d have Christmas in April.”
“My memory’s a little fuzzy on that, Ma. What I do remember is you saying we should come when it’s convenient, and next month really isn’t convenient.”
“Isn’t it Cody’s school vacation?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the problem. It’s Ellen. She’s going into the hospital on the ninth.”
Rose catches her breath. “The hospital? Oh my God.”
“Don’t worry, Ma. It’s no big deal.”
“Is she sick?”
“She’s fine. It’s an elective procedure.”
“Female trouble?” Rose whispers.
“Just some contouring,” Russell explains after a brief hesitation. “She hasn’t felt good about her thighs for a long time.”
Contouring? Rose stares dumbly at the tree across the room, the red and blue lights blinking on and off with monotonous regularity. You stupid woman, she thinks. You stupid, stupid old woman.
“Mom?” Russell says. “Are you there?”
THE TREE seems lighter as she drags it over the rug and into the hallway, though it should by rights feel a lot heavier, weighted down as it is by the metal stand and its full array of ornaments, a number of which have by now fallen from the branches and gone skittering across the floor. A small part of Rose is shocked by what she’s doing — this shaky voice in her head keeps pleading with her to stop, to get hold of herself — but the rest of her just keeps tugging and shuffling toward the door, intent on getting the thing out of the house, out of her sight.
Squeezing backward through the doorway is the hardest part — she’s got to prop the outer door open with her hip while bending and yanking at the same time — and she’s so caught up in the logistics of this maneuver that she doesn’t even remember the snow until her slipper sinks into the drift on the front stoop, and she yelps in surprise. Still, there’s nothing to do but keep going, finish what she’s started.
She descends gingerly, holding on to the railing with both hands, testing her foothold before committing to the next step. Once she’s made it down, she seizes the tree by its top branches and yanks it off the stoop in a single violent motion, scattering a spray of ornaments onto the white-blanketed lawn. After that it’s easy: she drags the tree like a child’s sled down the front walk and heaves it up onto a bank of curbside snow, where the garbagemen will be able to get it on Monday morning.
Her feet are cold and she’s not wearing a coat, but she can’t bring herself to turn around and go back inside. The snow’s coming down hard, falling in clumpy flakes that cling to her eyelashes and have to be blinked away like tears.
I’m alone, she thinks, staring down at the gaudy corpse of the tree, the candy-cane ornament she got at Woolworth’s, the little train she picked up at a yard sale, the gingerbread man who’s been around so long he doesn’t have any buttons left. Her mouth is open, her breathing fast and shallow. No more Christmas for me.
A stiff wind kicks up, but she barely notices. She’s thinking of her mother at the end, sitting with an attendant in the TV room of the nursing home, watching a program in Spanish. She’s thinking of Pat putting down his newspaper, telling her his chest feels funny. She’s thinking of her last visit to California, the inhuman bulges beneath Ellen’s tight blouse, the pride and tenderness with which Russell offered her up for inspection.
“Don’t they look great?” he asked. “We should have done this years ago.”
IT FEELS like a dream at first, the Chosen girl materializing out of the snow, emerging against the gauzy white curtain like a figure projected onto a screen, the Chosen girl and her little Chosen sister, both of them without coats. They’re veering across the not-so-recently plowed street in Rose’s direction, dragging what appear to be brand-new shovels, the kind with crooked handles and curved plastic scoops.
“Shovel your walk?” the little one inquires. Her voice is sharp, pushy even, with none of the timidity Rose expects from a girl in a kerchief. “Ten bucks. Twenty and we’ll throw in the driveway.”
Rose doesn’t answer. It’s the other one she’s looking at, the girl she knows from the bus stop and her daydreams. She’s squatting down by the tree, examining an ornament that’s fallen into the snow.
“We’ll do a good job,” the little one promises. She’s only eight or nine, too small for her grown-up shovel.