My father tugged again on the turtleneck, squinting at the Christmas tree. “I’m going to take this off,” he said. “I’m just going to tell Susan that I don’t like them. Okay? She’s going to have to deal with it.” He reached down and yanked off the sweater, revealing a T-shirt with a credit card logo written in neon across the front. It was the kind of thing you got for free for filling out an application. “Otherwise I’ll be getting turtlenecks for the rest of my life. I’m sorry if it’ll hurt her feelings. Okay? If we get married, she’ll have to know the truth.”
“Good plan,” I said. I reached under the tree for his gift and handed it up to him. “While we’re being honest about gifts, here’s yours. It’s a hat,” I said. “I knit it.”
He put his coffee mug on the carpet. “Thanks,” he said, with no sarcasm at all. He unwrapped the hat and immediately stretched it over his head. The ball was definitely lopsided. He looked silly, but if he knew it, he didn’t let on.
“Feels warm,” he said. “I like it.”
Elise nodded, eyebrows raised. “I think I like you more in that hat.”
“Thanks.” He looked at me. “So. How’s the engineer?”
Now it was my turn to be annoyed. My father knew Tim’s name by now. Tim had spent Thanksgiving break with us, staying with me at Elise’s house and gamely eating Thanksgiving dinner with my father and then my mother so no one would have hurt feelings. My father took us out for Indian food. My mother had ordered pizza. They had both liked Tim very much, which did not surprise me. What did surprise me was that each of them had later asked if the other one had liked him as well.
“He’s good,” I said. “He’s with his family. He just called, actually. He sends greetings from Illinois.”
My father nodded, impatient. That wasn’t what he wanted to know. “Is he getting offers?”
“Not yet.” I focused on picking pieces of tinsel out of the carpet. Tim would start getting offers soon. He was going to a job fair in February, where he would interview with recruiters from all over the country. He would need to make a decision, and whatever he decided wouldn’t have much to do with me. It couldn’t. I didn’t even know where I was headed for grad school. I still wouldn’t know in February. “It’s only for two years,” Tim had said, though we both knew it might be longer. “And they have these things called airplanes.” Still, we both knew the odds, and the potential Clydes and Clydettes in our future, or futures.
Elise looked up when the front door opened, a cool breeze rustling the ornaments and tinsel on the tree. Charlie appeared in the doorway, wearing a light jacket and running pants, his blond hair covered by the hat I’d knit him, his cheekbones glistening with sweat.
“How lucky am I?” he asked, still breathing hard. “Out of the office for two whole days, and the weather is downright balmy.” He pointed back at the door. “It’s already at least fifty degrees out there.” He stopped walking and pointed both hands at his head. “Or maybe I just felt warm in my new amazing hat.”
I liked Charlie. I always forgot that he was a lawyer, too. He was energetic and loud, but not combative like Elise and my father. He’d told me that when he was young, it had really never occurred to him that he would be anything other than a professional skateboarder. After his father died, he put himself through college waiting tables at a restaurant that specialized in children’s birthday parties. He still knew the words, and the accompanying hand gestures, to the restaurant’s theme song, and when he was a little tipsy, you could get him to sing them in English and also in Spanish.
“Good for you!” my father said. “Out for a run on Christmas morning!” He liked Charlie, too.
Charlie put his hands on his slim hips and peered over Elise’s shoulder. “How’s the show runner?” he asked.
“Fussy. He’s been fussy all morning.” She reached back to touch Charlie’s cheek, and pulled her hand back quickly. “Yuck,” she said, laughing a little. “Don’t get sweat on the baby.”
“I’ll take a shower.” He kissed her ear and stood. “And then I was going to run out for a bit. We’re having brunch at eleven, right? And then we’re going to your mother’s? What time do I need to be back here?”
She turned around, looking up. I couldn’t see her face. But he raised both his hands.
“On Christmas morning? Where do you have to go?”
“Why do I have to say?”
My father and I both stared at the twinkling tree, feigning sudden deafness. Two nights ago, after coming home from the Christmas party at Charlie’s firm, he and Elise had gotten into an actual fight, loud enough for me to hear in the guest room. She said she wasn’t going to his stupid parties anymore if everyone was going to treat her as if she weren’t a person, as if there were nothing interesting about her at all. He said something to her that I couldn’t hear, and she walked out of their bedroom, slamming the door behind her. He opened the door and said, “Elise, don’t slam the door.” She said she didn’t slam it, and for a while, they argued about that. The next day, when Charlie came home from work, I watched the baby while they went on a walk together. When they came back, they were in a good mood, smiling and holding hands, their cheeks pink from the cold.
Charlie crouched on the floor, between Elise and the Christmas tree. “Okay, I admit it,” he whispered. “I have to go buy presents.”
There was another pause.
“What? I’ve been busy.”
“You waited a little long for that. It’s Christmas Day. Nothing will be open.”
There was a longer pause. My father looked out the window and announced, maybe to me, that it really did look warm out, especially for December.
“Okay. Go. Fine.” Miles gurgled from her lap. “But don’t get me anything. I don’t want a present from a gas station.”
I agreed with my father, facing him. It did look warm outside!
“Elise. I have been very busy. You know that. Why are you giving me a hard time?”
“You could do gift cards.” My father pointed at Charlie. “You can find them everywhere, even on a holiday. I’ve done gift cards for years. Saves time, and everybody likes them.”
Charlie nodded, polite and quick, and turned his gaze back to Elise.
“Fine,” she whispered. “But just so you know, I’ve been busy, too. I got about four hours of sleep last night, in case you don’t remember. And now I have to prepare brunch for five people. While feeding a sixth. And I still haven’t taken a shower. So I’ll be a little busy, too.”
I leaned forward. She did look tired, the skin beneath her eyes puffed up. “I can help,” I said. “You were going to make French toast, right? I can do that. And I’ll set the table. I’ll tidy up.”
They both looked at me. Charlie smiled. “I’ll watch Miles when I get back.” He smoothed his hand down the back of her hair. “You can take a nap.”
My father waved his hand. “Don’t worry about cooking for me and Susan. We’re still not eating carbs. I brought some almonds. We’ll just eat those.”
Elise looked at him and said nothing.
“So you’ll be okay?” Charlie asked. He was already standing up, but he would wait for her answer before he turned away. From all I knew of him, I believed he would have waited even if my father and I hadn’t been there.
She nodded, looking down at Miles, who was peaceful now, happy. Charlie leaned over to kiss the top of her head before he turned and bounded up the stairs.
The dorm was locked up for winter break, of course. When we first saw my mother on the other side of the glass front door, she mouthed for us to wait, holding up a chain with maybe fifteen keys on it. She slid the biggest key into the lock and, using both hands, turned it until we heard a click. I was the one carrying the bag of presents, but as soon as she pulled the door open, she leaned out and nuzzled Miles, who was wearing a Santa hat and riding face-forward in a carrier strapped to Charlie’s chest.
When we got inside, Elise looked around with a wrinkled nose and clutched a bottle of wine close to her coat. “It is a little spooky in here.” She peered past the unmanned front desk into the big lobby, which was only lit by two flickering exit signs. All of the heavy mauve curtains were pulled shut.
“Are you the only one here? In the whole building?”
“I hope I am.” My mother tossed the key ring in the air and caught it in both hands. When she saw our anxious faces, she laughed. “It’s fine. It’s only weird when I have to come in at night. Once I’m in my apartment, it’s okay. It feels the same as when the kids are here.”
I smiled to myself, looking around. Even an assistant hall director was not supposed to call the residents in her dorm “kids.” She’d been at summer training with me, and she, too, had been strongly encouraged by Student Housing to refer to the college students in her building only as men and women. She probably did call them men and women when she was working. She was every bit as conscientious about the job as Gordon Goodman had thought she would be when he’d advised her to apply for it. But now her guard was down, and the truth came out: in her mind, they were just kids.
“At least it’s smaller than my building,” I said. I still had on my hat and my coat. It was colder in the entry than it was outside. Apparently, they’d shut off the heat for break. “This one is only half as big, right?”
She nodded, fingering a rope of gold garland that lined the outer edge of the front desk. An easel sat next to the elevator, and the large sheet of paper clipped to it read “HAVE A HAPPY AND SAFE HOLIDAY!” in my mother’s neat and even handwriting.
“Just four hundred in this one.” She smiled, putting the keys in the pocket of her robe. “And I’d say only seven of them regularly cause me trouble.” She turned her attention to Charlie, putting her arm through his. “Hello, handsome,” she said.
“Hello, Natalie.” He looked down at her and smiled. At Thanksgiving, he’d called her “Mother Von Holten,” and she’d told him never to do it again.
She looked at Miles and clicked her tongue. “Let’s get the baby into my apartment. It’s a lot warmer in there.”
It was. She had a space heater in her living room, and steam covered the bottom half of the big window. The air smelled spicy and good. A covered dish sat on a hot plate in the middle of the table, which was set for four with matching plates and napkins. Charlie walked over and lifted the lid of the dish to peek inside.
“Lasagna!” He used one of Miles’s little hands to give a thumbs-up. I couldn’t tell if my brother-in-law was really excited about the lasagna. Just three hours earlier, we’d had brunch with my father and Susan O’Dell. It was possible Charlie was hungry again. I wasn’t. But my mother said she wanted to cook for us, so I’d come determined to eat.
“How’d you cook it?” He looked around. “You don’t have an oven.”
“There’s a kitchen on the second floor.” She nodded down at the wine Elise was still carrying. “I have a mini-fridge, however. So I’ll take that.” Elise gave her the bottle, and my mother looked at the label and smiled. “Ah,” she said. “Very nice.”
She’d gone to a lot of trouble; that was clear. In addition to traveling up and down a flight of stairs who knew how many times to cook the lasagna, she’d done some decorating. Her apartment always looked cozy, though it was really just two dorm rooms linked by a door in the wall between them. The only real difference between her apartment and any other room in the building, besides the extra space, was that she had her own small bathroom. But in November, she’d gotten herself a nice twill couch that looked like something an adult would have, and she’d put up pretty curtains. I knew the table on which the lasagna sat was just a folding card table she’d found on sale at a drugstore, but today she’d covered it with red fabric that was maybe not meant to be a tablecloth, but looked good anyway. White Christmas lights blinked around her potted ficus, and she’d hung mistletoe by the window. When Charlie accidentally walked under it, she jogged across the room and kissed his cheek, and then ducked to kiss Miles as well.
“Hey.” I tapped on the edge of the big salad bowl, which was oddly curved, and painted a beautiful shade of green. “Is this what Gordon’s daughter gave you?”
“Yes! Can you believe it?” She was squeezing Miles’s dangling feet, making sure they were warm. “I only met her that one time she came to visit. I told her I liked what she did, what I’d seen in Gordon’s office. And then she mailed that to me as soon as she got home. Wasn’t that nice?”
Elise and I exchanged glances. When my mother wasn’t looking, Charlie bobbed his eyebrows and grinned. I had told them both how often I’d seen my mother and Gordon Goodman eating together in the dining hall. Maybe they were just friends, comparing the horror stories and complaints that any two middle-aged people living among the young would have. I asked her about him once, and she’d brushed me off. She said she wasn’t thinking of any of that right now. But I had my suspicions, or maybe just hope. Perhaps Gordon’s daughter did, too.
“I’m going to hop into my room and get dressed,” she said. “It’ll take me a minute. Veronica, honey, would you turn on some music? My CD player is behind you on the sill.”
She went into the other room, shutting the door behind her. I pushed the button on her little plastic stereo. It was Christmas music, “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” Miles, still suspended from his father’s chest, started swinging his arms and legs. Charlie and I started to shimmy, too, trying to egg him on. But Elise seemed somber, staring at the table or, specifically, at the hot plate under the lasagna. She lifted the red fabric and, seeing the card table, pursed her lips.
“Don’t say anything about the ring,” she whispered. She looked at the space heater and swallowed. “And definitely don’t say anything about a wedding on a beach.”
Charlie and I both nodded. There was no reason to bring up my father’s engagement, at least not today. At the same time, I wasn’t sure my mother would be as upset as Elise seemed to think she would be. News of a beach wedding might annoy her, given her current income, but I just didn’t think that she would think about it for very long. Because of our strange circumstance, living and working so closely to one another, I got to see our mother in the day-today routine of her new life, and I knew more about it than Elise did. My mother and I were not chummy. We had decided that during the school year, we would keep our distance from each other, and live our respective lives. But I often saw her in the dining hall, though we didn’t eat together. Sometimes she would set her tray diagonally across from whomever she found sitting alone, striking up conversation, just in case the alone person wanted to talk. Sometimes she sat with Gordon, and sometimes with another woman who was the assistant hall director from another dorm, who looked even older than my mother.
I don’t mean to say that my mother looked particularly old. She only did in comparison to almost everyone around her, all of us needy and unknowingly needy kids. She was aware of her age, she said, the clock ticking all the time. She worried about retirement. She would get some money from my father, but not enough to live on indefinitely. She was unsure if she would be able to pull it off, starting again so late in the game. In another year, she would have a master’s in counseling and residence life, and then she could be an actual director, and make a little more money, and still get free room and board. Still, she said, she would have to live simply. Saving for her seventies, she called it. She had to make up for lost time.
In some ways, however—to me, at least—almost from the day she started her new job, she looked younger than she had in some time. Or maybe she just seemed happier, now that so much of what she was good at was being put to efficient use. Early one morning in September, a freshman in her dorm had crawled out onto the ledge of the sixth floor, wrapped only in a blanket, shivering, and refused to come back inside. The police had been called, and an ambulance. But it was my mother, leaning out the window, who talked with him for almost an hour, and convinced him to come back in. I don’t know what she said to him, or what he said to her. She wasn’t allowed to give me the details, or his name, even after his parents arrived to take him home or wherever it was that he went to try to get better.
So maybe it wasn’t that my mother seemed happier. It might be more accurate to say she seemed to have found her calling, or at least her second wind.