2. Zelda
ZELDA
My sister Hedy calls while I’m on the floor with the tree lights.
“Are you free Sunday?”
“If I can get out of these.”
“Get out of what?”
I lift a loop of wire off my knee and pull the wrong end. The tangle tightens. “Your brother-in-law owns more than one ladder. None of them helps with this.”
“That has nothing to do with Sunday.”
“Come before lunch. I miss you.”
She has a shift tomorrow night and will miss Suri’s party. I tell her I’ll save her anything worth stealing from the buffet, then ask whether she thinks a whole pan of potatoes would be excessive for two people tonight.
“For you and Jeremiah? No.”
I’m smiling at the bulbs. The little potatoes he likes are in the oven. When I got home I put his work papers on the sitting-room desk so there would be room for our plates in the kitchen. He promised an evening. I don’t want to spend it asking him to clear a chair.
Hedy asks about the baby, and I tell her the mint sweets she brought have finally begun to taste good. We disagree about whether she deserves credit for the change. Then I hear the front door.
“He’s home,” I say.
“I’ll leave you to your potatoes.”
I put the phone down. Jeremiah is laughing in the hall.
“If you’d put it in the wrong box, we’d have found it in June.”
“You’d have blamed me for that too,” Candace answers.
The lights slip from my hand. I leave them on the rug and get up too quickly, one foot still tangled. By the time I free myself, she’s in the doorway with something wrapped in tissue.
“Look.”
It is the glass star from our first married Christmas. The top of the tree has been bare all week. This morning I sent her a photograph and a miserable little message about losing it.
“It was with the dinner samples,” she says. “I thought you’d want it tonight.”
The tissue is tied with green thread, the way she always wraps presents. I take it carefully. I had pictured the star broken at the bottom of a box. Here it is, cool and whole against my palm.
“Thank you.”
“I knew you’d be upset.”
I was. I am grateful. I still want her to go, and the wish makes my thank-you sound thin to my own ears. She came because I told her I’d lost something I loved. I can’t ask her why she came.
Jeremiah picks up one end of the lights. “Where do these go?”
“Around the tree, ideally.”
He looks at the knot. “Ambitious.”
I laugh despite myself. We work from opposite ends until the wire comes loose. Candace holds the star while he reaches past me to lift the lights over a branch. His hand settles at my waist. I lean back against him before I remember anyone else is here.
He kisses my neck.
“My hands are freezing,” I say, catching his at my waist.
“Keep those, then.”
Candace turns toward the mantel. My face warms. I want him to do it again. I want her to hear the affection and leave us inside it.
She sets the star down and picks up an empty ornament box.
“We can finish,” I tell her. “You’ve brought the part I couldn’t find.”
“Of course. Before I go—did you get Suri’s reply?”
“Which reply?”
“For the twenty-third. She and Dax can come.”
Jeremiah is still arranging the bulbs. He knew.
“She wrote to you?” I ask Candace.
“About the food. I can forward it.”
I had chosen Suri’s invitation myself. Written it at the kitchen table, trying to make the green ink behave. She likes getting something in the mail that isn’t a bill. I’d been looking forward to her calling.
“I sent the invitation,” I say.
“She probably answered both questions together,” Jeremiah says.
“Then ask her to answer me too.”
Candace looks at her phone. “I thought I copied you. Oh. I didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.” The words come automatically. I bite the inside of my lip. “Just copy me next time.”
“Of course.”
“Problem solved,” Jeremiah says.
He sounds so relieved to have dealt with it that I can’t get the next sentence out. The potatoes in the oven are enough for two. Now I’m wondering whether Candace has eaten, whether I’ll look mean if I don’t offer, whether this is how we’ll spend every evening I ask for.
She puts on her coat. At the door she reminds me of our first Christmas in the apartment we shared, when our tiny tree nearly fell out of her car every time I changed gears. I laugh. I remember being so cold and so happy to get it upstairs, the two of us unwrapping lights with our gloves still on.
I hug her goodbye. Her cheek is cold where it touches mine.
When the door closes, I stand with my hand on the latch until Jeremiah calls from the living room.
“Are you coming?”
I bring him the star.
“Hang it with me.”
He holds the top branch steady. I slip the thread over it and let go too soon. The star drops an inch. We both catch at it, his hand closing around mine, and I laugh in fright.
“Got it,” he says.
He used to lift me to reach the tree because finding a chair took longer than putting his hands around my waist. I press my thumb into the warm base of his palm. I love him so much in this stupid moment that I nearly leave the rest unsaid.
“We were meant to have tonight,” I say.
“We are having tonight.”
“I know. Now.”
He looks toward the closed front door. “She brought the star, Zelda.”
“I know she did. I’m glad she did.” I pull my hand out from under his. The branch trembles. “I don’t want to argue about the star.”
“Then don’t.”
I bend to pick up the tissue. If I keep folding it, I can wait until I sound less upset. He will think this is jealousy. It is jealousy, some of it. I wanted to be the woman he laughed with when he came through the door.
“At Suri’s tomorrow,” I say, “if somebody asks me something, will you let me answer?”
“I let you answer.”
“You look at Candace.”
He opens his mouth.
“You do. To see whether I’m tired, or what I meant, or whether something upset me. I’m right there.” The tissue tears between my fingers. I fold the torn bit inside. “Ask me.”
He puts down the empty box. “I talk to her because she’s your friend.”
“She is.” My eyes sting, which makes me furious with myself. I don’t want to cry over an evening that hasn’t even ended. “Sometimes I want my husband to myself. To look at me first.”
He comes closer. I let him take the tissue from me.
“Zelda.”
“I love you.” It comes out much smaller than I intended. “I miss you when you’re in the room with me. I don’t know how to say that without making you angry.”
His expression changes. He touches my face, and I turn into his palm before I can decide whether to.
“I’m not angry.”
“Then hear me tomorrow. Even if she says something different.”
“Yes.” He kisses my forehead. “I can do that.”
I hold his shirt for a moment after he lifts his head. Then he asks what smells so good from the kitchen, and I let myself be simply happy that he noticed.
The star is crooked. We leave it that way. I carry the potatoes to the table, move his phone off the chair, and sit close enough to put my knee against his.