The Wife Publicly Humiliated Under the Mistletoe

Chapter 1

At twenty past six, the Hadley’s atrium held more people than the fire marshal liked, and Caroline Bradshaw was pretending not to know that.

She stood at the brass rail of the mezzanine with a headset in one ear and a clipboard she didn’t need.

Below her, the crowd filled the marble floor from the Walnut Street doors to the candy counter.

People stood three deep on the second-floor balcony and four deep on the third.

Kids sat on shoulders. Somebody’s grandmother had brought a folding stool and was defending it like a border.

Above them all, under the glass dome, hung the mistletoe.

It was not a sprig. It had never been a sprig.

It was a ball of green the size of a car tire, bound in gold ribbon and hung on a single wire from the center of the dome.

It turned very slowly in the warm air coming up off the crowd.

Under it, on the atrium floor, a gold star was set into the marble.

Everybody in Philadelphia knew what the star meant.

“Choir’s lined up by the elevators,” Luz said in her ear. “Forty-two kids, one of them already crying.”

“Crying sad or crying excited?”

“He lost a mitten. It’s being handled.”

“Tell whoever’s handling it I’ll buy him ten mittens.”

“Don’t say that on the radio. They’ll all lose a mitten.”

Caroline smiled. It was the first time she’d smiled since noon, and her face felt stiff from the cold on the loading dock. She checked the clock.

The Hadley’s clock hung on the far wall of the atrium, across from the mezzanine.

It was brass and glass and nine feet tall, and it had been keeping time over this floor since 1924.

At seven o’clock it would strike. The lights would drop.

The spotlight in the booth would swing out over the crowd, and whoever it stopped on under the mistletoe would kiss, in front of everyone, and the whole building would cheer.

It was a silly tradition. It was the best night of her year.

She had been six the first time. Her father had lifted her onto his shoulders by the organ and told her to watch the light.

It had found an old man and an old woman in matching red scarves, and they had kissed like teenagers, and Caroline had screamed so loud her father’s ear rang for a day.

That was thirty years ago. Tonight was the thirtieth lighting, and her father was down there by the organ again, in a green bow tie, waving at people he’d known for forty years.

He looked up and found her. He tapped his watch and grinned.

She held up her clipboard like a sign. Working.

He laughed and turned back to the crowd.

* * *

The news crews had set up on the second-floor balcony, where they always did. Three stations this year instead of two. One of them had a camera on a long arm that swung out over the crowd, and Caroline had already spoken to its operator twice about the pipe organ.

“You hit the organ, the organ hits you,” she’d said. “It’s a hundred years old and it holds grudges.”

He had laughed. He had also moved the arm.

At six-thirty she walked the mezzanine one more time.

She checked the microphone stand. She checked the choir risers.

She checked the tape marks for the kids and the tape mark for herself, a small red X at the rail, dead center, where the spotlight booth could see her.

She had stood on that X for eight years. Before that, her father had.

At six-forty she took out her phone.

Twenty minutes, she typed to Connor. You said you’d be up here.

She watched the screen. Nothing.

She put the phone back in her pocket and told herself that was fine.

He was coming from the office, and the office was twelve blocks away, and it was the first Friday in December.

The streets outside were packed. He would be here.

He had said so on Tuesday, when she’d reminded him, and he had said so again this morning, half-asleep, when she’d kissed his shoulder at five-thirty and gone to work.

Wouldn’t miss it, he’d said into the pillow.

He had missed it last year. There had been a call with Singapore, and he’d come in at seven-fifteen, when the choir was already singing, and stood at the back of the mezzanine looking at his phone.

Caroline hadn’t said anything about it at the time.

Afterward, she hadn’t said anything either.

There had been a lot of that this year. It had piled up like mail on a table nobody used.

At six-forty-eight her phone buzzed.

On my way.

Just that. No sorry. No save me a spot. She looked at it for a moment, then turned the phone face-down against her clipboard.

“Your husband’s here,” Luz said in her ear, three minutes later.

Caroline looked down.

The Walnut Street doors had opened, and the cold came in with a group of late arrivals.

Connor was at the front of it. Even from the mezzanine he was easy to find.

He was taller than most people, and he held himself as he held himself everywhere, as if the room had been built around the spot where he stood.

His dark overcoat was open. The gray at his temples caught the light from the tree.

People recognized him. Of course they did.

His face was on the business pages twice a month, and three years ago it had been on the front page, under a headline about the man who saved Hadley’s.

A few people clapped. Someone called out his name.

He gave a small nod, the one he gave at board meetings.

Brittany Vail came in at his side.

She was in a camel coat with the collar turned up. Her blonde hair was cut in a sharp, sleek line just below her jaw, and she had her phone in her hand, the way she always did. She was saying something to him. He bent his head to hear her over the crowd.

“And Brittany,” Luz said, in a different voice.

“She works for him,” Caroline said.

“On a Friday night.”

“It’s budget season.”

Luz didn’t say anything to that, and Caroline didn’t like how loud the nothing was.

Below, Connor looked toward the mezzanine stairs. That was the way up. The stairs were at the side of the atrium, behind a velvet rope and a security guard, and Connor had walked up them a hundred times. He took a step that way.

Brittany touched his elbow.

She said something and pointed, not at the stairs, but at the middle of the floor, where the crowd opened up a little under the dome.

Caroline could guess the words. You’ll never get through.

Watch it from down here. Best view in the house.

Connor looked at the stairs, looked at the crowd between him and the stairs, and let Brittany lead him forward.

Caroline watched them move toward the gold star.

It meant nothing. It was a crowded room, and the center of the floor was where the space was.

Brittany liked to be seen, and the middle of the atrium was where people were seen.

Connor would stand there for ten minutes, and then he would come up the stairs, and he would stand beside her while the choir sang. That was all.

She keyed her radio. “Luz, when he gets near the stairs, tell security to let him up.”

“Copy.”

At six-fifty-five, Caroline stopped looking at her husband and started running her show.

* * *

“Good evening, Philadelphia.”

Her voice went out through the speakers and filled the dome, and the crowd roared back at her. It still gave her chills. It always would.

“Welcome to Hadley’s. Welcome to the thirtieth lighting of the mistletoe.”

More noise. The children on the risers bounced. Down by the organ, her father lifted both arms like a man at a ballgame.

“Some of you have been coming since the very first one.” She smiled down at the floor. “Some of you met your husband here. Some of you met your second husband here.” Laughter. “And some of you are about to have a very embarrassing night in front of your coworkers. We’re so glad you came.”

She gave them the rules, as she did every year. At seven o’clock, the clock would strike. The lights would drop. The spotlight would go looking. If it found you under the mistletoe, you kissed whoever you were standing with. No refunds. No do-overs. Grandmothers were allowed to kiss on the cheek.

“And if you’re standing under there with your boss,” she said, “I’m very sorry. Tradition is tradition.”

The crowd laughed again. On the second-floor balcony, the camera on the long arm swung in over the floor.

She didn’t look for Connor. She knew exactly where he was anyway, the way you can feel where a stove is in a dark kitchen.

“Thirty seconds,” Luz said in her ear.

Caroline leaned into the microphone. “Here we go. Count it down with me.”

The whole building counted. Ten. Nine. People on the balconies pressed against the rails. Eight. Seven. Parents lifted their kids. Six. Five. Somebody’s baby started to cry and then, surprised by the noise, stopped. Four. Three. The organist lifted his hands. Two.

One.

The clock struck seven.

The first bell was low and huge, and it rang through the marble under her feet. The atrium lights went down all at once. For a second there was only the big tree glowing gold at the end of the floor, and nine hundred people breathing in the dark.

Then the spotlight came on.

It came out of the booth high on the third floor, a hard white circle, and it began to move.

It slid across the balcony. It found a couple of teenagers, who shrieked and ducked.

It found a man in a Santa hat, who bowed.

The crowd laughed and yelled directions.

Left! No, back! Get the Santa! The light wandered, teasing, as it did every year, while the clock went on striking over their heads.

Four. Five.

The light slid down toward the center of the floor.

Six.

It stopped on the gold star.

Seven.

In the hard white circle under the mistletoe stood her husband and his chief of staff.

The crowd saw who it was and went wild.