“So you can take your drink with you in the pool!” Maisie’s excitement exposed her hand; clearly, this purchase had been her choice.
“Thanks, you two. And there’s four, so we can each have a drink when we swim.” He enveloped Grant, then Maisie, in big bear hugs before turning his attention to Clara. “Not to worry. They like Shirley Temples for the pool, seven maraschino cherries each.”
Clara actually laughed.
“Now you, now you, now you.” Patrick pointed to two identical gifts under the tree. “Grant, hand one to your sister and the other is for you. Doesn’t matter which, they’re both the same. I was going to give you these at the end of the summer, but I guess now seems like as good a time as any.”
Grant handed one of the flat boxes to Maisie.
“Ready, set, go!”
The kids had the paper off in a flash, revealing plain white gift boxes. Inside each was a layer of red tissue, and under that was a framed photo of their mother that Patrick had taken on the roof of their dorm building soon after they started college. The photographs caught Sara mid-laugh, her thick, reddish hair cascading effortlessly behind her; back then she would spend up to an hour blowing it straight. Behind them, Boston. It was right before they were caught by campus police, if Patrick recalled correctly. There was a write-up of the incident in the campus police blotter that ran in the student newspaper and, for a second at least, they felt infamous.
“Do you know who that is?”
Maisie grasped her frame with both hands like a student driver grips a steering wheel. “Mom.” Her eyes were fixed on the photo. It was from deep in his archives; Patrick was quite sure the kids had never seen it.
“Laugh,” Patrick had said as he focused his camera on Sara. The sad truth of “magic hour” was that it was a misnomer; it lasted only a few perfect minutes.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why? Because we just broke onto the roof. We should look like outlaws.”
“Jesse James laughed?”
“He laughed in the face of authority!”
Sara sneered at him. “Some outlaws we are. We were stuck in the stairwell for an hour.”
“Well, that was my fault,” Patrick admitted. “Doorknobs confuse me.”
Sara looked at her new friend with awe. “You’re so dumb and you’re going to be rewarded for it, because dumb men fail upward.”
“Would you just laugh?” he implored.
“It’s not funny.”
Patrick rolled his eyes. “Fake laugh, then. Like I’m fake crying.”
Since the light was on her face, Patrick was backlit and she couldn’t quite make out the expression on his, especially as it was blocked by the camera. “I hate you.”
“You love me.”
“I hate you because I love you.” She laughed for real and Patrick snapped the picture.
“That one’s going in a frame.”
Patrick studied Maisie as she regarded the photograph. “Your mom was so pretty, wasn’t she? She was only ten years older in that photo than you are now.”
Grant scrutinized his gift before smiling, then handed it to his aunt for a look. Clara held it up to the table lamp beside her and glanced up at Patrick warmly. Grant nestled under his uncle’s arm. Clara mouthed, Beautiful. He might have been mistaken, but there was something glistening in her eyes akin to pride.
“Merry Christmas, family.”
Guncle Rule number eleven: Make the yuletide gay.
SIXTEEN
Patrick fussed around his living room, picking up stray bits of wrapping paper and ribbon and even a well-hidden cup with the remnants of some cocktail from the party that was—Good god, could that be possible?—just the night before. Clara sat with a cup of tea, her legs curled beside her on the couch. The kids crashed hard; they’d been up far too late for the party and having Christmas as a follow-up wasn’t exactly resetting the clock—if there was even such a thing as normal anymore. Before bed, Clara spent a good half hour brushing chlorine snarls out of a patient Maisie’s hair. She whispered, “Mom used to do that,” barely able to muster the words for her aunt. Her eyes were wet, perhaps from discomfort, but it wasn’t hard to imagine Maisie herself as a tangle of throbbing memories. Patrick had read to an exhausted Grant, who complained when his uncle skipped a page. “Why do you need me to read this to you if you already have it memorized?” Grant answered by simply making a fist around his uncle’s shirt and holding on tight. Patrick decided not to care that it would wrinkle.
“You did a good job, getting them to bed.” Clara seemed genuinely impressed.
“We’ll see if they stay down.” Patrick wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “They’ve been sneaking into my room at night to sleep at the foot of my bed.”
Clara placed her hand over her heart and inhaled sharply.
“How can you drink hot tea?” Patrick asked, indicating her mug. “It’s ninety degrees outside.”
“It’s your air-conditioning. I’m not used to it. I’m cold.”
“Would you like me to get you a blanket?” Patrick mindlessly worked to untie a knot from a piece of ribbon.
“There, right there.” Clara set her tea down on the coffee table. “Everything out of your mouth is a criticism.”
“I offered to get you a blanket. That was me being nice! You’re an uninvited guest in my home. I want you to be comfortable.”
“That’s not you being nice, that’s you thinking it ridiculous that I could be cold in the California desert.” Clara crossed her arms and rubbed her bare biceps; yoga had been paying off, her arms were the one thing she didn’t hate about her body.
“When I have a criticism, you’ll know it.” Patrick loosened the ribbon just enough to slip a finger through
