Chapter Nineteen
Christmas dinner is at Aubrey’s childhood home again this year.
As usual, this doesn’t make sense, because the house is small and crowded and her mother is terrible at hosting.
Marie gets much too stressed in the hours leading up to the event, and Aubrey’s father has yet to care enough to lend a hand—or maybe he’s protecting his peace, it’s hard to say.
He stands there and asks what he should do, and Marie says there isn’t anything, that she prefers to do it on her own, though she starts vacuuming and gets distracted by the pillows, and the oven beeps, and nothing really gets finished until the very last minute.
Aubrey used to offer to get there early to help.
Now she doesn’t—mostly because it allows for too much questioning and not enough of the nostalgic, childlike time at home she hoped to endulge in, and also because her mother refuses to delegate, even now that Aubrey is grown.
It made her very sad to realize maybe she and her parents would be better off seeing a little less of each other as they grew older.
Then she noticed that most of her friends felt similarly about their parents to some degree, and seeing less of her mom and dad also allowed her to miss them more.
To appreciate their flaws a bit more, in a homesick sort of way.
So instead, she spends the afternoon wrapping her hastily purchased presents and getting ready with Maggie, who’s heading to her father’s place for the evening. They cramp in Maggie’s narrow bathroom and put mascara on over the sink, like they’re nineteen again, which is nice.
Maggie doesn’t bring up Arthur, at least not by name. Sometimes she asks, “So, any news?” and then Aubrey delivers the tiniest updates she’s managed to rack up, like how she’d forwarded him a video yesterday and he’d replied, “Haha!”
Earlier this week he’d sent her a picture of the harbour, and sometimes he’ll share news from Lunenburg, but Aubrey isn’t very good at coming up with responses.
It feels foreign, chatting with him. They were never lengthy texters to begin with, and Aubrey is self-conscious of everything she writes now, wondering if it’s funny enough, smart enough, witty enough, and also because something has shifted.
It’s obvious and tense and left painfully unsaid.
Every day that passes makes the distance more tangible and their last conversation harder to forget.
At times, Aubrey even wonders if she’ll ever see him again.
It doesn’t make any sense to think that, but when she tries to picture their next encounter she comes up empty, like they’re headed down separate roads now.
She’s yet to book her return ticket. She and Louise haven’t seen each other since the flight. Tonight will be a reunion of sorts. Aubrey thinks often about the months to come, wondering how to bring it up to her aunt, how to bring it up to herself in the first place.
“Have you told her you like him yet?” Maggie asks through the mirror. She’s speaking of Louise.
“Not yet,” Aubrey says with her lips parted, her head tilted back.
She scrunches her nose up and leans away from the mirror to get a better look at herself.
It feels so frivolous to do her makeup like this.
Her family already knows what she looks like the second she wakes up, when she’s so sick she can’t even get out of bed, when she’s been crying for hours.
Mascara won’t fool them into thinking she got herself a new face over in Lunenburg.
“I can’t very well just drop it into a normal conversation. ”
“Sure you can.”
“Fine. I don’t want to, then.”
Maggie’s lips twitch. She replies, amused, “Better.”
Their tubes of makeup are stacked up messily on the edge of the pedestal sink. Aubrey rummages around for some gloss. “I just don’t see why I’d tell her or anyone else until things have been figured out. There’s really nothing to even tell at this point.”
“It’s different with Louise.” It’s annoying that Maggie’s right.
Aubrey wipes her lips to reapply her gloss for the second time. It’s not coming out the way it should. “I don’t know. Things would be different if she hadn’t been pushing Arthur on me from the beginning. I can’t decide how to feel about it, that she was right. Like I messed up or something.”
“I don’t see how that’s you messing up, falling for the guy she thought would be a good fit.”
“I don’t know, it’s like I didn’t have a say in the matter. Makes me feel like I didn’t control any of it, but then after all this time, waiting for years and all, shouldn’t I get control?”
A devious smile stretches slowly on Maggie’s face while Aubrey speaks. “Falling in love is absolutely not something you control.”
“Mm. Yeah. I just—I like not anyone knowing about it for now. Until things are figured out. I want to get it right, whatever this is. Especially with Louise. I think I just owe it to us. Like maybe these past few months being so weird and uncomfortable weren’t so bad if there’s something good that comes from it. ”
“I get what you’re saying, really. Just don’t let the possibility of a happy ending stop you from doing things today.
Because happy endings are an illusion. Not in a cynical way, it’s just never really the end.
There’s always a next chapter. So you deserve to mend things with Louise no matter what happens.
Grow from it, you know what I mean. Not because of Arthur.
Because of you two, figuring shit out on your own. ”
They meet eyes in the mirror again and Aubrey allows herself a small, tentative smile. “I’ve got to get dressed,” she says, and Maggie leans away from the mirror to admire her work.
Aubrey’s one of the first to arrive at her parents’ house, second only to her brother, whose car is already parked in the driveway.
She knocks once and nudges the door open so she doesn’t have to stand in the cold, with her presents stacked under her arms and her heels digging in the snow piled on the porch.
Behind her, a taxi is driving away. “Hello!” she shouts as she steps inside.
At the same time, Ben turns the corner off the kitchen, leading a stunning Asian woman by the hand.
“Well, shit!” Ben quickly reaches out for a one-armed hug, the other glued to his companion. He says, with a sigh of relief, “About time you got here.”
“Mm, this is promising” Aubrey chuckles, squeezed in her brother’s embrace. It’s so rare they hug like this that she doesn’t move. She and the woman meet eyes and share a polite smile over Ben’s shoulder.
When they step back, her brother says in a very solemn tone, “This is Annie. Annie, my sister Aubrey.”
Annie’s teeth are so white, and her hair moves like she’s in a commercial.
“Glad to meet you, Annie,” Aubrey replies, and turns to Ben. “It’s so nice you told me all about your girlfriend you’re bringing home for the holidays.” She wants to say newest girlfriend. She doesn’t.
Ben screws up his face. “Sorry, yeah. We weren’t sure she’d make it, and the last few weeks have been so hectic—Annie’s just changed jobs, and, well.”
“I’m so glad to be here,” Annie offers. Aubrey watches Ben’s hand on her hip, Annie’s shoulder poking into his.
It’s a familiar vision, her brother with a woman, but it feels different this time, the way he looks at her.
It’s always a bit strange, seeing her younger brother figure life out so fast and so well.
Aubrey allows herself to hope that Annie will stick around, with only a hint of envy.
Ben takes Annie upstairs to show her the rest of the house. Their voices grow distant as Aubrey takes off her boots and her coat, just in time for a familiar face to emerge from the powder room to her right.
She goes to offer a greeting but cuts herself off when she notices Louise is already chatting to someone on the phone.
“Yes, well, good to hear,” her aunt is saying as she clicks the light shut behind her.
“Have you had a look at the plants as well? It’s—no, well, just see if they look a bit sad. You’ll be able to tell.”
When Louise looks up, Aubrey stills. She’s not sure why. It’s as if she’s intruding in her own home, like she’s not meant to show up like this. But Louise nods and raises her fingers in a wave. “I’ve got to go now, Aubrey’s arrived. Mm. Anything I should tell her on your behalf?”
Aubrey turns to hang her coat in the ridiculous little closet off the entrance door.
She pretends not to listen but she’s not very good at it.
Whoever Louise is speaking to knows who she is, maybe has something to tell her on their behalf.
She can’t think of who it could be except maybe for one person, and surely it’s not him.
Surely these two people don’t speak on the phone like this, on Christmas Eve.
She tucks her hair behind her ear as if many pairs of eyes are on her.
Then she picks up her presents and carries them through the archway on her left, over to the living room.
She can still hear Louise behind her. “What about happy holidays, something like that? Have you lost your manners or something?”
Footsteps come up behind Aubrey as she sets the presents in a much-too-calculated manner under the tree. Then Louise says, “Well, don’t you look stunning.”
“A few days without seeing each other is all it takes to impress you?”
They share matching smiles and fall into the routine of a hug, a squeeze. Against Aubrey’s shoulder, Louise says, “Artie sends his holiday wishes, by the way.”
When Aubrey steps back, she smoothes down her dress and says, “You’re chatting him up on the phone now, are you?”