Chapter 5 #2
Caroline took three red scarves out of the case and laid them on the glass. Patricia touched each one. She took off one glove to feel the fabric between her fingers. She held the second one up to the light. She chose the third one, a deep, dark red, like the inside of a pomegranate.
“This one,” she said.
Caroline took it to the wrapping table at the end of the counter. She laid out the tissue paper, white, and folded the scarf into it. Patricia was watching her.
“Connor didn’t send me,” Patricia said.
Caroline’s hands stopped for half a second. Then they kept going.
“He doesn’t know I’m here,” Patricia said. “I haven’t spoken to him since Friday. He’s called me four times. I haven’t picked up.” She was quiet for a moment. “I watched the video. I saw my son kiss that girl in front of everybody. And I saw your face, up on the balcony, after.”
“Mezzanine,” Caroline said, before she could stop herself.
To her shock, Patricia almost smiled.
“Mezzanine,” Patricia said. “Yes.”
Caroline folded the tissue paper over the scarf. She pressed a gold Hadley’s seal on it, exactly in the center. She reached for a box.
“I’m not here to ask you to forgive him,” Patricia said. “I want to be very clear about that. I don’t think you should. Not now. I don’t know if you ever should. That’s not my business.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because there’s something you don’t know about him,” Patricia said. “And I think you should know it. For your own sake. Not for his.”
Caroline set the box down.
Patricia took off her other glove, slowly, one finger at a time. She folded the pair together and held them in one hand.
“Connor’s father left us on Christmas Eve,” she said.
“Connor was nine. We were living in a row house in Kensington. There was a tree in the front room, and presents under it that I’d paid for with money I didn’t have.
His father went out to buy milk. That’s what he said.
He went out to buy milk, and he never came back. ”
The ground floor of Hadley’s was loud with Christmas music and people and a toddler screaming somewhere near the gloves. It all went very far away.
“He didn’t disappear,” Patricia said. “That’s the part people don’t understand.
He didn’t die. He went to Pittsburgh and married a woman who owned a car dealership.
And every month for the next twenty years, he sent me a check.
Very good checks. More than enough. The checks came on the first of every month, like the electric bill, until the week he died.
” She looked at Caroline steadily. “He never called. He never came to a birthday. He never came home for Christmas. Not one time. Just checks.”
Caroline did not know what to say.
Connor had told her that his father left when he was young.
He had said it once, early on, on their third or fourth date, flatly, the way a person tells you what town they grew up in.
My dad left when I was a kid. My mom raised me.
And when Caroline had asked about it, he had changed the subject, and she had let him, and she had never asked again.
It had never seemed like her right to push.
He had never said it was on Christmas Eve.
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel sorry for my son,” Patricia said.
“He’s a grown man. He knew what he was doing on Friday.
He knows exactly what he’s done to you this year, and if he doesn’t, he’s more of a fool than I raised.
” Her voice was very cool and very clear.
“I’m telling you because I think you should know who you’re dealing with.
My son grew up believing that money is how a man shows up.
He thinks if he pays for the roof, he’s been home.
He learned it from a very good teacher.”
Caroline thought of the townhouse. She thought of the roof. You bought it. You paid for the roof. You paid for the store.
“He saved your family’s store three years ago,” Patricia said.
“I was so proud of him. And then I watched him go to fewer dinners. I watched you go to my Easter luncheon alone. I watched him not come to your windows last year.” She put her gloves in her pocket.
“I didn’t say anything. I should have. That’s on me. ”
“Patricia—”
“I told him on Sunday, in a voicemail, that I won’t see him for Christmas this year,” Patricia said. “Not until he understands the difference between paying for a thing and showing up for it. That’s all.” She opened her handbag and took out her wallet. “Now. How much is the scarf?”
Caroline rang it up with numb fingers. Patricia paid in cash. Caroline put the box in a Hadley’s bag with a red ribbon on the handle and held it out across the counter.
Patricia did not take it.
“It’s for you,” she said.
Caroline stared at her.
“You always wear one red thing,” Patricia said. “I’ve noticed that for nine years. I don’t suppose anyone’s bought you one lately.” She pulled her gloves back on. “Merry Christmas, Caroline.”
She turned and walked away across the marble, straight-backed, and out through the Walnut Street doors into the cold.
Caroline stood behind the scarf counter with the bag in her hand. The toddler near the gloves had stopped screaming. Somebody was asking her about a price. She didn’t hear it.
Christmas Eve. He had been nine years old, and his father had gone out for milk.