And of course that was it, exactly. Teri had seen it in her ex-husband's face when they had last met a week earlier, staring out at her from the front of the Volvo.
"Don't you want to come in for a minute? It's so cold."
Brendan shook his head. "I'm not cold," he said, his voice tight. He continued to stare resolutely at the steering column. "Is he ready? I have to get going."
"He's ready." Teri looked at the house, where Peter stood impassively on the steps, then turned back to the car. "Will Tony be there?"
"You got a problem with Tony, take it up with your lawyer." Brendan's knuckles whitened as he clasped the wheel. "I don't give a—"
"I am not being hostile." Teri's voice shook. "I'm glad Tony's there. At least Tony is capable of something resembling an emotion. At least Tony remembers what time of year it is. You know why you don't feel the cold, Brendan? Do you know why?"
Brendan turned the key in the ignition. "Get him in the car. I'm leaving."
"Because—"
He tapped the accelerator. The engine roared. On the porch Peter began to cry. Without a word Teri walked back to the house and got her son.
"You have a good time, sweetheart," she murmured as she buckled him into his car seat. He had stopped crying almost immediately, and she tucked a scarf around his shoulders. "You have a good time with your Daddy …"
She drew away from the car and stared at Brendan in the front seat. In the back Peter pushed off the scarf, letting it drop to the floor. "You could do something with him, you know." Her voice was perfectly calm now. "He's doing so well at school these days. You could take him to see the White House tree, or Santa out at White Flint. Peggy said that might be a good idea. She said—"
Fuck what she said, thought Brendan. He glanced back to make sure Peter was buckled, then rolled up the window. He had already started to pull away when Teri ran up beside him and pounded at the glass.
"What?" He stopped and rolled the window down a crack. "Now what?"
"I wanted to make sure you hadn't forgotten and made other plans for next week."
"What's next week?"
"Christmas." Teri's smiled tightened. "You said you wanted to have him Christmas Eve—last summer, remember? When we—"
"I remember."
"I thought—I hoped that we could all be together. To give some, some continuity. For Peter. I asked Kevin and Eileen—"
"Oh, Christ—"
"And I wanted you to ask Tony for me. If you don't mind." Teri's voice had taken on the same brisk oldest-daughter tone she used with her elderly clients. "If you don't want to stay you don't have to. They're going to come after church, mid-morning. You can just drop him off if you want. Or you're welcome to stay."
"We'll see. I'll let Tony know."
But tonight, walking up the sidewalk towards his apartment, he remembered that he never had let Tony know. Not that he suspected him of having any big plans for the holiday. Occasionally Brendan could hear music from behind the closed door of his room, Tony playing guitar and singing softly to himself; but that seemed to have stopped with the onset of the holiday season. Unemployment didn't just suit Tony better than any job he'd had since fronting the Maronis. It was as though he had actually found another job, one that involved getting up each morning promptly at six <FONTSIZE=-1A.M., showering, shaving, dressing in black jeans and T-shirt and leather jacket, then eating a modest bowl of Grape-Nuts before getting down to work.
Which, in Tony's case, seemed to consist of watching every single Christmas special that every single television station on Earth chose to air between the first and twenty-fifth of December. No program was too obscure or too terrible for Tony's viewing pleasure—not The House Without a Christmas Tree or The Bishop's Wife; not Andy Williams' Christmas Special, or Elvis's, the King Family's, and Barbara Mandrell's; not A Very Brady Christmas! or Mickey's Extra Special Christmas Eve or The Little Drummer Boy Returns.
And certainly not Rudolph, the Grinch, Charlie Brown, Frosty the Snowman or Mr. Magoo. Tony had It's a Wonderful Life committed to memory; what was harder to take was that Tony knew every word of Santa Claus Versus the Martians, as well as The Christmas That Almost Wasn't and Fuzzy the Christmas Donkey.
"That one ought to be called The Christmas Jackass," Brendan had snapped one morning when he woke to find Tony already sitting transfixed on the living room couch, steaming coffee mug beside him.
"You should check this out." Tony shot a quick grin at Brendan, then hunched closer to the edge of the sofa. "Shh, this is the sad part—"
Now, as he hurried up the steps, Brendan saw the familiar blue-grey wash of light through his apartment window, the telltale flicker of shadow on the wall behind the sofa where he knew he would find Tony in the exact same place he had left him that morning.
Only this time when Brendan walked inside it was different. On the floor, staring at the television with the same rapt expression, was Peter.
"Peter." Brendan shut the door and dropped his briefcase. "Tony? What's going on?"
Tony looked up and smiled. "Oh, hey, man! You're home early. That's good, I'm glad—"
"What's he doing here? What happened?" Brendan quickly stepped over a small mountain of Peter's things, knapsack and overnight bags, his pillow, his lunchbox, his duck. "What—"
"There was a problem …"
"Problem?" He knelt beside his son, fighting the need to hold him, to shout at Tony gazing at them calmly from the couch. Peter edged away, making a small humming sound, his gaze fixed on the TV. "What problem? What happened? Is he—"
"No, no—Teri had the problem. She tried calling you but she couldn't get through—"
Brendan sighed with relief, then nodded. "Right—Ashley left this afternoon, she'll be gone till next week. But—"
"I dunno, some client thing? Teri said she'd call from the airport—"
Right on cue the phone rang. Brendan grabbed it.
"Brendan." Brendan could hear her swallow, fighting tears. "Jesus, Brendan. I called and called—"
"I know. What happened?"
"Oh, Christ, some stupid thing. Well, not really—old Mr. Wright died, everyone was expecting it but not right before Christmas, I mean he was ninety-three. But I have to go out there to deal with his wife and ex-wife and his sister and his kids. I'm at Dulles now, this case is a mess, you remember me telling you—"
"But Peter's okay?"
"Peter's fine. He really likes Tony, doesn't he?"
"Yeah, yeah, sure. So what's the deal here?"
Silence. He heard airport noises in the background, the squawk and boom of flight announcements. "The deal is, Brendan, that I have to be out of town on business right now. And—"
"How long?"
"Just till tomorrow. It was impossible to get a flight, they're completely booked, but—"
"And Peter's schedule? All this talk you had about how fucking important it is for everything to be—"
"Look, Brendan, stuff happens. You can't control everything. Or maybe you can, but I can't. Peter is with me every hour, every day, every week—"