The Night Before (2 page)

Next came feet clumping on the stairs and Myra appeared on the landing in her usual bathrobe and slippers. Her face was as pale as paper and stitched with wrinkles beneath a straggly mess of hair that was dyed an angry ochre. A smoking Newport jagged at a right angle from her thin lips. She stopped in the living room archway and stared at the tree. Malikah clung to her mother's side.

“Where the hell'd that come from?” Myra croaked.

“Terry found it,” Nicole said.

“You mean stole it.”

“Malikah did the decorations,” Nicole said.

“She did, huh?” The turtle eyes slid the child's way. Malikah dipped her head shyly.

The old bitch couldn't totally resist Malikah's natural sweetness, but she had no time for Nicole, blaming her for Terry's problems, when he was the one who couldn't summon the backbone to stay clean without her propping him up. Nicole knew that if not for his mother, he'd be a different kind of man, the funny, bright, good-hearted one who surfaced enough to keep her hanging on. The same one who made promises from the bottom of his heart, like that he would steer clear of his old running partners and not even think about scoring. That he would make the meetings with his counselor without fail. That he'd talk to Myra about not being so rude. That this Christmas would be great.

So far, so good on that last one. They had pooled their resources and collected a small stack of gifts to arrange under the tree. Terry said it was the first real holiday they'd had since he was sixteen, and a sign of better times to come.

Myra broke into this daydream with a cough that sounded like a dull blade on rusty metal. She settled into her recliner with a bone-creaking groan. An inch of whiskey from the night remained in a dirty glass on the side table. Stale as it was, she'd get to it soon enough.

Her hand went scrabbling for the remote and the TV blared. This was Nicole's signal to evaporate and she shooed Malikah through the dining room and into the kitchen, leaving the old woman to her talk show.

Once they were safe, Malikah rounded the kitchen table to the window and stood looking at the falling snow.

Nicole said, “That's pretty, isn't it?”

The child was quiet for a few seconds. Then she glanced over her shoulder and said, “It gonna be all right, mama?”

“Don't worry, it's going to be fine,” Nicole said. She waited for Malikah to turn back to the window to let her smile fade.

Mariel had another drink, though she filled the cup only halfway, a prudent choice. She had much to do.

She called up to the kids to finish dressing, then went about preparing an antipasto the way Joe's Italian mother had instructed her. It never failed if you lined up the right ingredients - the imported deli meats and cheeses, olives, artichokes, and so on - and then laid them down in a precise order. With a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil as a last touch, the dish was always a hit at their parties.

Once she finished and covered the platter with plastic wrap, she moved on to the gifts. The two for Joe first, before he got back from wherever he had wandered. She had no idea. He had been acting extra odd over the last two weeks, secretive and silly, like a kid hiding something. Not that she paid that much attention to him. Or he to her, for that matter. These days, they spent a lot of time passing each other by.

Joe walked back to the car in a state of full marvel. First at the old man's memory; Brosman had drawn from a dusty corner of his mind the recollection of the couple who had wandered in from a snowy evening long ago and how the pretty woman had been mesmerized by the Epiphany Star. Then, like a wizard performing a special magic, he puttered and muttered for an absent minute before producing the zebrawood box from the secret place it had rested for all that time. He opened it with fingers that trembled with age.

The pendant was as Joe remembered it, untarnished by the years. “I can't believe it's still here,” he murmured.

“Maybe it's been waiting for you,” the old man said. “I guess it's your lucky night.”

The price on the item was the same and to their mutual delight, Joe counted the twelve hundred-dollar bills into the storekeeper's palm. Except for the surprise part, he wished Mariel had been there to see.

Mr. Brosman walked him to the door and they spent a moment looking out at the snow.

“Reminds me of when I was a boy,” the old man said. “Every Christmas should be like this. But then it wouldn't be so special, would it?” He patted Joe's shoulder, wished him a happy holiday, and then locked the door behind him. By the time Joe got into his car and started the wipers, the lights in the store had gone off, as if it hadn't been open at all. In a moment of panic,

he went digging into his coat pocket. The zebrawood box felt warm to his touch.

The kids tried to dash out the door, but Mariel snapped them back and made them stand for inspection. She didn't have to worry about Christian. He had spent his upstairs time finding something nice to wear, then combing his hair and brushing his teeth. Hannah was the one who required checking. She was her father's daughter and would leave the house wearing a patchwork of whatever she first laid hands on or struck her odd fancy. Sometimes the ensemble worked and sometimes she looked ridiculous.

Tonight she had chosen well and came up with something like a Dickens character, with a blouse, vest, pedal-pushers, knee socks, saddle shoes, and a cute hat.

They were jumping up and down, eager to leave. Betsy had come up with the idea of starting the kids' party early and letting them burn off their energies and wind down to TV and games in the basement in time for the parents to arrive for the grown-up fun.

Mariel let them bolt, then watched as they skittered down the walk and into the street, the snow now packed by passing cars. They left an echoing silence in their wake and she stood still for a while, lost in her thoughts.

During the drive home, Joe mulled strategies for presenting the Epiphany Star and the news of the book option. He settled on laying a sweet trap. Instead of just handing her the gift, he'd leave it with the copy of the check and the crumpled slip from the ATM and then hide to watch as she made the discovery.

Like a thief casing a joint, he plotted the house in his head and settled on the kitchen table. He could wait in the darkness of the dining room for the delicious instant when she realized that her loser of a husband had just knocked one out of the park. If he staged it correctly, her face would be cast in the light of the hanging lamp, an image he'd hold in his mind forever.

Would she believe her eyes when she happened upon the zebrawood box? Would she even remember that long-ago visit to Brosman's?

Of course she would; Mariel forgot nothing. Over the years, she had counted his failures like beads, recording every one of them, though to her credit this was not out of spite. He knew the mental list was a shield against expecting too much and having her discontent sour into resentment.

Even so, in his most honest moments, he guessed if it wasn't for his parenting, she would have set him adrift years ago. She valued that. It was also true that she had once admired his refusal to give up on his books, never lording it over him that she was the primary breadwinner. Those sands had shifted over time, too. With the sales of the first novel dead (how that was about to change!) and the other two unable to earn back even their modest advances in spite of great reviews, her respect for his craft had worn thin. Now and then, he caught her watching him work with her brow stitched with petulant lines, as if broadcasting her impatience with his silliness. When he proffered some word of blind hope about one of the books, she would respond with a roll of her eyes and a sigh, just as she did when she was exasperated with one of the kids.

Joe decided he would accept her apology, verbal or unspoken, graciously.

Hannah and Christian would hear the incredible news come morning, to go with the presents their parents would wrap during the wee hours as they polished off the pricey bottle of pinot. The thought reminded him of the first night that they had slept together and he wondered if his good luck meant some of that magic would be revived, too.

Turning on to his street, he saw sliding, tumbling, snow-crusted children in front of every house and slowed to a crawl. The looks on their ruddy faces and their joyous laughter as they went careening through the clouds of fluttering white brought a small throb in his chest. Brosman was right: this was how Christmas was supposed to be. Given the state of the climate, it might not happen again while these kids were young.

His next-door neighbor Don was in his driveway, fiddling with his snow blower. God forbid a few flakes marred the beauty of his newly-resealed macadam. He straightened as Joe pulled into the garage, offering a wave and his customary frown. Don owned two vehicles, a Lexus and some SUV thing the size of a tour bus, and was perpetually offended by Joe's rundown import.

Well, fuck you and your gas hogs,
Joe muttered. Old Don was in for a surprise, too. Not that Joe had ever cared what he thought.

He found Mariel dashing about in dizzy circles, her cell phone on and off her ear as she hurried from room to room, getting ready for their Christmas Eve and morning. Her greeting was a small, blank smile cast in his general direction. He took a bottle of water from the fridge and watched for her a few moments. She was still a handsome woman, though in the last couple years she had gone a little hard around the edges in both her looks and her temperament. They had been an odd match, something like the princess and the stable boy; and yet he could fairly say that he still loved her, and guessed that they spent more time engaged in carnal acts than most couples who had been married as long.

She ended her call, snapped the cover of her phone closed, and looked his way. “So?”

Joe stifled the grin that was lurking behind his eyes and came up with a vague shrug. “I got most of the things on the list,” he said. “But I'm going back out. A couple more stores and then I'll go grab a drink with Billy.”

“Of course. What's Christmas without boozing with Billy?”

It came out a little snide, but Joe was in too good a mood to let it bother him and just laughed. Mariel responded with a smile that was not unkind. “So I can expect you when?”

“I don't know. Eight, maybe. Not before.”

“I've got an errand to run, but I'll be back by then,” she said. “I made the antipasto, so we can just go.” She was turning away when he touched her shoulder and planted a quiet kiss on her mouth. “Well,” she said, blinking. The sudden affection had caught her off guard.

“It's Christmas Eve,” he said.

He did catch up with Billy. That much of what he told Mariel was correct. Her claim that no holiday was the same without his old friend's barroom cheer was also true. Though she did not mean it as a compliment.

Billy Alden was the type girls adored when they were young, single, and wild and dismissed or despised forever after. He was a first-class maniac and true gypsy, and so he remained the kind of magnetic force who could tempt even the most stalwart husband into delinquency. More than a few of the women in their social circle had waited out his clownish impositions, steaming in private until the rings were on their fingers so they could say, “All right, get rid of him.”

Some of the husbands did just that. Joe stood firm. He had known Billy since grade school and loved him like an errant brother. For her part, Mariel had resigned herself to his presence, though she hadn't allowed him around the house since the night he made a drunken pass at her mother. She told Joe she found it ridiculous that a man well into middle age went by “Billy.” What was he, seven? A circus midget? That was as far as her nagging went. The man was like an old car that got towed from one garage to the next, never running quite right, an eyesore but a harmless hobby.

Joe found the eyesore hunkered down in a booth at the Delaware Tavern, his home away from home. Melinda, the pretty red-haired waitress that Billy lusted after, came out from behind the bar.

“Joe,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

“I'll have a gimlet,” Joe said. “And make it with Grey Goose.” Melinda murmured her surprise. Joe glanced Billy's way. “And my friend will have?”

Billy raised an eyebrow. “You still got that bottle of single-malt? Lag… Laga…”

“Lagavulin?” Melinda said. “That's forty-five dollars a pour.”

Joe flicked one of his hundreds onto Melinda's tray. “And have something for yourself,” he said.

The barmaid stared at the crisp bill. “You win the lottery?”

“Let's just say it's my lucky night.” Joe slid into the booth. He allowed a moment of silent drama before producing the zebrawood box, a sleight-of-hand artist presenting a dove from a hat.

Billy studied the pendant and said, “I really wanted the '67 Telecaster from that vintage store in Philly. But thanks. I love you, too.” His red face opened into the impish grin that women had once found irresistible. “Is that it, man? Really?”

“Still there, after twelve years. And that ain't all.” He laid a copy of the check alongside it.

“That's his signature?” Billy said.

“His manager's,” Joe explained. “These guys don't sign the checks. But it's the real deal. The money's in the bank.” He spent another few dumbstruck seconds mulling the proof of what had transpired in the last weeks. Sensing the weight of the moment, Billy refrained from grabbing the pendant in one of his paws or making a crude joke. A muted flash of envy for Joe's happy ending crossed his green eyes and then went away, replaced by deep kindness.

“Merry Christmas. You deserve it, bro.” He shook his head over the pendant nestled in the little box and the copy of the check and said, “Man, she is going to fuck you blind.”

Once the kids were gone and the presents wrapped and arranged under the tree, Mariel treated herself to another drink. The Junghaus on the dining room wall chimed twice for the half-hour. She studied the face of the clock, musing about all the time it had marked since they received it as a wedding present from Joe's father, who had brought it back from Germany.