After helping to clear the table, Eric relieved his mother of the baby and he and Mike retired to the parlor, leaving the women to dispose of the dishes and leftovers. While Eric introduced Emily to the wonder of Christmas tree lights, Mike carried in an armload of wood and set about building a fire. Other than his dad’s running commentary on the progress he was making, neither of them said much. There seemed to be even more than the usual awkwardness between them, an odd kind of constraint. Almost, Eric thought, as if he knows.
“Okay, I think that’s going pretty good,” Mike said. He rose and replaced the screen, then turned, dusting his hands. His smile as he came to join Eric beside the tree was tentative; regret tore at his heart. “What do you think? Should we make some popcorn to go with that eggnog your mom made?”
“I don’t know, Dad, I’m pretty full.”
“Yeah, okay. Maybe later.” His father stood beside him in silence, thumbs hooked in the back pockets of his jeans. After a moment he said, “Nice tree this year, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” said Eric, “it’s a nice one.”
Mike gave him a sideways look and cleared his throat. “Thanks for the book gift certificate, by the way. Came in yesterday’s e-mail-your mother’s, too. Forgot to mention it.”
Eric lifted a shoulder and watched the tree lights reflected in the baby’s eyes. “Yeah, well, I know you both always like books.”
Mike rubbed the back of his neck and smiled ruefully as he surveyed the pile of presents under the tree. “With so few of us, I never can quite figure out how we always wind up with so many presents. Of course, some of ’em are for tomorrow-for Wood and Chris and Caity. And there’re the ones Ellie and Quinn sent for everybody, too.” He glanced over at Eric. “Where’s the one you made for Devon? I don’t see it here.”
Eric brushed that aside with a quick shake of his head and muttered gruffly, “I’m going to give it to her later. I thought it might be kind of…” He coughed, knowing he couldn’t explain.
“I understand,” his dad said quietly.
Eric gave him a startled look, then a longer one. And he wondered if somehow his dad really did understand, though he couldn’t think how that could be.
He thought about how it would be if he could put his arms around his father and tell him…not so much that he loved him-he was sure both he and Mom already knew that-but how sorry he was that he’d been a rebellious, ungrateful pain-in-the-butt growing up. Tell him how much he appreciated the freedom he’d been given to leave and make his own way, and how deeply he regretted the years he’d stayed at a distance. Maybe try to explain that he’d kept that distance because he’d been afraid of the pull this place had on him-something he’d only just found out himself. He thought how it would be if he could tell his dad everything. About Devon, and why he had to leave again. Then, at least, he’d be able to say goodbye.
“Dad,” he began. But he could hear his mother’s voice in the hallway, now. He caught a breath and with an aching void where his heart should be, ducked his head and kissed his little girl’s head to hide the brightness in his eyes.
Everyone was trying so hard to be kind. Devon didn’t know how much more she’d be able to stand.
There was more food-popcorn and eggnog and those spicy molasses cookies-more reminiscences, and more schmaltzy Christmas music on the stereo. Lucy again begged “the young people” to sing, and this time-out of guilt, perhaps?-Devon allowed herself to be talked into joining Mike and Eric in singing “Silent Night.” She sang the melody, since it was the only part she knew, joining her unspectacular soprano with Mike’s pleasant baritone. As before, after the first few notes, Eric slipped into the harmony. Lucy sat sideways in the recliner and rocked Emily and beamed at them all, while her eyes grew shiny with happy tears.
After that, they opened gifts, taking their time about it, exclaiming, laughing…sometimes crying-over each and every one. Lucy’s gift to Mike was a set of videos on the Vietnam War. Mike’s gift to her was tickets for a February Valentine’s cruise to Hawaii, which Lucy loudly protested, though everyone in the room could see that she was surprised and deeply touched. Their daughter Rose Ellen and her husband had sent a videocam attachment for Mike’s computer. “We got us one, too,” they’d written on the card, “so we can see each other when we e- mail.”
Mike and Lucy gave Eric a huge boxful of darkroom supplies. “You can take them with you,” Lucy hastened to assure him, looking anxiously into her son’s face “You don’t have to use them here.”
Eric leaned awkwardly across the space between them to hug her and murmur, “Thanks, Mom.” Devon felt a lump in her throat.
In addition to gift certificates from an on-line bookstore, Eric gave each of his parents a framed photograph of himself holding Emily, small enough to sit on a desktop or dresser, or to join the collection on the mantelpiece. When she unwrapped hers, Lucy wiped away tears and blew her nose, and Devon, watching and doggedly smiling, felt her face would crack.
Lucy scolded as she accepted the small flat box wrapped in candy cane paper from Devon, but her face lit with a smile when she lifted the tissue paper and saw the scarf inside. “Oh, Devon, it’s beautiful,” she cried as she held the square of richly colored silk to her cheek. Then her eyes began to sparkle. “Great minds think alike,” she murmured, handing Devon a small flat box decorated with Santa Clauses.
Inside, Devon found a scarf in a lovely shade of green, with an all-over print featuring tiny snowmen. “So you’ll remember the Christmas you spent with us,” Lucy said in her brisk, blunt way. Devon’s eyes stung as she tied the scarf around her neck. Lucy put hers on, too, though it clashed gloriously with the poinsettia print on her sweater.
Mike gave Devon a pair of fur-lined leather gloves, because, he said, “The first thing Lucy noticed about you was that you didn’t have any.” He seemed pleased with the electronic pocket planner she gave him.
Devon was relieved that there was no gift for her from Eric, since she hadn’t anything for him, either. But at the same time, when all the gifts had been distributed and opened-including way too many for Emily-she felt a kind of void, a sense of disappointment.
She thought of the mistletoe, and Mike sweeping Lucy into a classic Rhett Butler embrace. She thought of her vision of this same parlor filled with warmth and laughter and love, and of all those things embodied in a pair of arms wrapping themselves around her from behind…a whisper, sweet as music in her ear.
I have to talk to him, she thought-and remembered she’d had the very same thought at the beginning, that morning after she’d first met Eric. She’d told herself then that she needed to learn more about the man who was her clients’ adversary-get to know him. Now-what was it?-four days later, he seemed more of a mystery to her than ever.
She almost wished they could go back to the way things had been then-even the open hostility of those first moments. Those had been honest, straightforward emotions, at least. Then had come confusion-the confrontation in the barn, Eric’s terrible accusations, and finally, what had seemed like the beginnings of a grudging acceptance of her. And later, that first evening with his family in the parlor…Eric stringing tree lights with his father, sitting so close to Devon on the couch, challenging her, teasing, taunting her.
So much had happened since then. So much had changed. But what did I do, Devon wondered, to make him so distant? What did I do to make him hate me?
I have to talk to him about this, she thought. She had to. But when? Tomorrow was Christmas; there would be company-Eric’s cousin and her parents. It would almost have to be tonight.
She lingered, nervous with both resolve and dread, helping Lucy pick up wrapping paper and ribbon and tidy up the parlor, thinking she would catch Eric after his parents had gone to bed. But he excused himself, said good-night and went upstairs while Devon was carrying the popcorn and eggnog dishes and leftovers to the kitchen.
Later, she promised herself, dizzy and twanging with unspent tension.
Eric sat on the edge of his bed and stared down at the large flat Christmas-wrapped package in his hands. It wasn’t particularly pretty paper, now he really looked at it, kind of a muddy gold with sprays of evergreens and pinecones on it. But it had been that or Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer-the only pieces of wrapping paper left that were big enough to accommodate a 16 x 20 inch picture frame. What he was wondering now was why he’d bothered.
For the better part of two days, as he worked to put together the collage, searching through piles of photo albums, picking out scenes from his own childhood and his mother’s and copying them on his dad’s computer, he’d thought a lot about what he was doing, and why…daring to fantasize about what Devon might say when he gave it to her.
