Nine Inches (23 page)

THEY DECIDED
to go to Hawaii instead,
Rose imagines saying. She’d keep her tone neutral, let the facts speak for themselves.
Can you imagine?

Th
e Chosen girl would nod, eyes full of sympathy.
Did he give a reason?

He said his wife was stressed-out. She needed a little downtime.

Stressed-out?
Th
e Chosen girl repeats the phrase as if she’d never heard it before.

She was working too hard.
Th
e real estate market is booming where they live.
Th
at’s what she does — sells real estate. She used to be a nurse.
Th
at’s how she met Russell.

Do you like her?
Th
e girl asks the question without gossipy intent. She seems to be trying to work something out.

Rose isn’t sure how to answer. It’s as if there are two Ellens, one the mousy-haired girl from Freehold who somehow snagged herself a plastic surgeon, the other a platinum-blond businesswoman who couldn’t be bothered with anything that didn’t involve making and spending lots of money.
Th
e last time Rose saw her, she had a new Mercedes and new breasts to go with it, plus a wardrobe of revealing clothes to call attention to the upgrade, including a bikini meant for a much younger woman.

She changed a lot,
Rose would explain.
A
ft
er they moved to California.
Th
ey live in Beverly Hills.

Th
at sounds pretty,
says the Chosen girl.

It is.
Rose smiles.
Nothing like here. Sunny and beautiful every day of the year.

Th
e girl seems perplexed.
So why did they need to go to Hawaii?

Rose had wondered the exact same thing. She’d wondered it many, many times.

You’ll have to ask them,
she says with a sigh.
I try not to interfere.

WHEN THE
tree is
fi
nished, she wraps presents in the cheerful glow of the blinking lights: a low-fat cookbook for Ellen, a nice travel kit and bathrobe for Russell, a bathing suit and package of socks for Cody. All that’s le
ft
is the Sharks jacket, but her heart sinks as she removes it from the closet. It’s a ridiculous gi
ft
, she sees that now — a warm coat in April for a boy who lives on a street lined with palm trees. She wonders if the store will let her exchange it for something that makes more sense, a baseball glove or maybe some computer games, but she needs to consult Russell before doing anything. For all she knows, her grandson already owns three baseball gloves and every computer game known to man.

She picks up the phone, punches in the numbers, then hangs up before it has a chance to ring, her heart pounding erratically. She can’t understand why she’s so nervous; all she wants is to ask a simple question. Can’t a mother ask her son a simple question?

Rose hasn’t spoken to Russell for two weeks, since the Saturday morning when she caught him on his way out to play golf. He said he’d call her back that night, but something must have come up.
Th
e time di
ff
erence makes it hard for them to connect sometimes, especially with Russell’s busy schedule.

I’ll tell him about the snowstorm,
she thinks,
and running into Janet Byrne. I’ll tell him about the tree.
She presses redial, breathing slowly and deeply, her heart beating at a more manageable rhythm.

“OH, JESUS,”
Russell mutters. “I said
that
? Are you sure?”

“Russell,” she says weakly. For a moment, Rose wonders if she’s losing her mind, if she imagined a conversation with her son the way she’s been imagining conversations with the Chosen girl, but in her heart she knows it’s not true. She understands the di
ff
erence between being lonely and being crazy, and she remembers what he told her. “You said we’d have Christmas in April.”

“My memory’s a little fuzzy on that, Ma. What I do remember is you saying we should come when it’s convenient, and next month really isn’t convenient.”

“Isn’t it Cody’s school vacation?”

“Yeah, but that’s not the problem. It’s Ellen. She’s going into the hospital on the ninth.”

Rose catches her breath. “
Th
e hospital? Oh my God.”

“Don’t worry, Ma. It’s no big deal.”

“Is she sick?”

“She’s
fi
ne. It’s an elective procedure.”

“Female trouble?” Rose whispers.

“Just some contouring,” Russell explains a
ft
er a brief hesitation. “She hasn’t felt good about her thighs for a long time.”

Contouring?
Rose stares dumbly at the tree across the room, the red and blue lights blinking on and o
ff
with monotonous regularity.
You stupid woman,
she thinks.
You stupid, stupid old woman.

“Mom?” Russell says. “Are you there?”

THE TREE
seems lighter as she drags it over the rug and into the hallway, though it should by rights feel a lot heavier, weighted down as it is by the metal stand and its full array of ornaments, a number of which have by now fallen from the branches and gone skittering across the
fl
oor. A small part of Rose is shocked by what she’s doing — this shaky voice in her head keeps pleading with her to stop, to get hold of herself — but the rest of her just keeps tugging and shu
ffl
ing toward the door, intent on getting the thing out of the house, out of her sight.

Squeezing backward through the doorway is the hardest part — she’s got to prop the outer door open with her hip while bending and yanking at the same time — and she’s so caught up in the logistics of this maneuver that she doesn’t even remember the snow until her slipper sinks into the dri
ft
on the front stoop, and she yelps in surprise. Still, there’s nothing to do but keep going,
fi
nish what she’s started.

She descends gingerly, holding on to the railing with both hands, testing her foothold before committing to the next step. Once she’s made it down, she seizes the tree by its top branches and yanks it o
ff
the stoop in a single violent motion, scattering a spray of ornaments onto the white-blanketed lawn. A
ft
er that it’s easy: she drags the tree like a child’s sled down the front walk and heaves it up onto a bank of curbside snow, where the garbagemen will be able to get it on Monday morning.

Her feet are cold and she’s not wearing a coat, but she can’t bring herself to turn around and go back inside.
Th
e snow’s coming down hard, falling in clumpy
fl
akes that cling to her eyelashes and have to be blinked away like tears.

I’m alone,
she thinks, staring down at the gaudy corpse of the tree, the candy-cane ornament she got at Woolworth’s, the little train she picked up at a yard sale, the gingerbread man who’s been around so long he doesn’t have any buttons le
ft
. Her mouth is open, her breathing fast and shallow.
No more Christmas for me.

A sti
ff
wind kicks up, but she barely notices. She’s thinking of her mother at the end, sitting with an attendant in the TV room of the nursing home, watching a program in Spanish. She’s thinking of Pat putting down his newspaper, telling her his chest feels funny. She’s thinking of her last visit to California, the inhuman bulges beneath Ellen’s tight blouse, the pride and tenderness with which Russell o
ff
ered her up for inspection.

“Don’t they look great?” he asked. “We should have done this years ago.”

•••

IT FEELS
like a dream at
fi
rst, the Chosen girl materializing out of the snow, emerging against the gauzy white curtain like a
fi
gure projected onto a screen, the Chosen girl and her little Chosen sister, both of them without coats.
Th
ey’re veering across the not-so-recently plowed street in Rose’s direction, dragging what appear to be brand-new shovels, the kind with crooked handles and curved plastic scoops.

“Shovel your walk?” the little one inquires. Her voice is sharp, pushy even, with none of the timidity Rose expects from a girl in a kerchief. “Ten bucks. Twenty and we’ll throw in the driveway.”

Rose doesn’t answer. It’s the other one she’s looking at, the girl she knows from the bus stop and her daydreams. She’s squatting down by the tree, examining an ornament that’s fallen into the snow.

“We’ll do a good job,” the little one promises. She’s only eight or nine, too small for her grown-up shovel.

Th
e Chosen girl rises, cupping the ornament — a red, metallic heart — in her outstretched hand, her mouth opening on a question she can’t seem to ask.

“
Th
ey’re not coming,” Rose declares, her voice breaking with emotion. “She’s having an operation. An operation on her thighs.”

Th
e Chosen girl says nothing, just stares at Rose with that look of patient su
ff
ering that never seems to leave her face.

“She can’t hear you,” the little one explains.

Of course she can’t,
Rose realizes. She’s suddenly aware of an immense silence in the world, a vast cosmic hush pressing down from the sky, dri
ft
ing to earth in little pieces, an illusion only shattered when the Chosen girl sni
ffl
es and makes a horrible hawking sound in the back of her throat.
Th
e poor thing. She looks bedraggled, maybe a bit feverish. Her nose is runny and her kerchief’s soaked with melted snow. Her lips have taken on a faint bluish undertone. But still she stands there, holding that heart in the palm of her hand. It seems brighter than it did a moment ago, newly polished.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Rose tells the little one. “I’ll be right back.”

SHE ONLY
means to run in, grab the coat, and hurry back outside, but it doesn’t work out that way. She’s barely through the door — the warmth of her house hits her like something solid — when she steps on a glass ball, crunching it underfoot, losing her balance and falling dreamily to the
fl
oor. She’s lying there, moaning so
ft
ly to herself, trying to
fi
gure out if she’s broken anything, when the phone begins to ring. She knows it’s Russell even before she hears his voice coming through the answering machine, launching into a complicated, self-pitying apology, reminding her how busy he is and how many responsibilities he has to juggle, and how nice it would be if she could just cut him a little slack instead of trying to make him feel guilty all the time.

“I’m trying, Ma. Can you at least admit that I’m trying?”

Her cheek pressed against the nubby rug, Rose wiggles her
fi
ngers, then her toes. Everything seems to be in working order. She picks herself up from the
fl
oor, dusts o
ff
her pants, and takes a few careful steps toward the closet, where the Sharks jacket is hanging. She slips it o
ff
the hanger, pleased by its bulk, only to realize that the price tag is still attached.
Th
e scissors should be right on the
fl
oor with the tape and the wrapping paper, but they’ve disappeared. Rose checks the kitchen and hallway before giving up and removing the tag with her teeth. By the time she tiptoes around the broken glass and steps outside, the girls have already gone.

Rose makes her way down to the curb to look for them, but the street is empty in both directions. Even though she’s standing right in front of it, she needs a second or two to register the fact that her Christmas tree is no longer lying on the ground like garbage. It just looks so natural the way it is now, standing upright in the snowbank, the remaining ornaments clinging stubbornly to its branches, that it’s hard to imagine that it could ever have been otherwise.

THE STORM
continues all night, but the tree is still standing on Sunday morning, its branches cupping so
ft
mounds of powder, when Rose sets o
ff
in search of the Chosen girl. She’s wearing her skirt and sweater again, but this time she cheats a little in deference to the blizzard — galoshes, a
fl
eece jacket under the sweater, a woolen hat instead of the rain bonnet. She’s got the Sharks jacket stu
ff
ed into a red handlebag from Macy’s, along with her best winter gloves and a blue-and-green-plaid scarf.

Th
e walk is longer and more treacherous than she anticipated — almost no one has shoveled yet — and she doesn’t reach her destination until a few minutes a
ft
er nine. She feels weak, a bit disoriented.
Th
ere’s nothing about the Chosen house that marks it as a place of worship. No cross, no sign, no parking lot. Just a shabby gray Colonial with cracked asphalt shingles and a boarded-up attic window tucked between the Quik-Chek and the Army Recruiting Center on a busy stretch of Grand Avenue.

Rose doesn’t imagine outsiders are welcome at the service, and her determination falters.
Maybe I should stand here until it’s over,
she thinks.
Give the girl the bag on her way out, tell her parents not to let her out of the house without a coat anymore.
But then she notices the freshly cleared and sanded walk leading up to the front steps, the two shovels resting against the porch railing, and it all comes back to her: the girl’s blank face, her chattering teeth and chapped hands, her soggy kerchief and snow-crusted sneakers. And deaf on top of that.