There was no sarcasm in it. Holly had shaken her head at her daughter’s back, not at all sure if she’d won or lost this game. Eric, of course, when he heard about the exchange, had expostulated about how precocious their daughter was, so Holly hadn’t bothered to explain to him that the whole thing had been, actually, not precocious but derivative. Tatty had understood from Holly’s reaction that she was making a little juvenile fool of herself with the questions, so she’d played the only card she had left, which was to shut the whole thing down with a shrug of the shoulders and a pat little answer. That’s all I wanted to know. But what would have been the point of trying to tell the doting daddy that? That his perfect daughter could occasionally be unoriginal, or manipulative? Unthinkable!
Now, however, whenever Tatty tried to start some imitative argument (“All the other kids are going… !”) Holly would say, “And robots don’t have souls,” and Tatiana’s nostrils would flare, and there would appear that little muscle pulsing at her jaw, and her bluish lids would draw halfway down over her dark eyes, and Holly would just smile, ending the argument, knowing that her daughter knew exactly what she meant:
You’re faking, you heard this somewhere else, you’re just mouthing these words, and I know it.
“I JUST THOUGHT you’d want me to tell you that your phone was ringing,” Tatiana said. “It might have been important, even if it was Unavailable, even on Christmas Day.”
“Honey, my cell phone gets a call from Mr. Unavailable every day. Mr. Unavailable has been trying to get in touch with me ever since caller ID was invented. Sometimes I even get a call from Mrs. Name Withheld.”
“You’re funny, Mom. I mean, you are so, so funny.”
Holly felt stung, but not surprised, that the conversation had gone from sarcastic to nasty so fast. She tried not to rise to the bait. She tried to sound genuine, asking, “Well, Tatiana, who do you think might be trying to call?”
Her daughter said nothing. Holly sighed, and looked away from her to the window. She was surprised to see that the curtains were parted. She didn’t remember doing that. Perhaps it had been Eric, before he left, and Holly hadn’t noticed it until now because the heavy snow that was falling out there was like a second layer of curtains—but made of movement. Chaotic particles. Electrical sparking.
She went to her dresser to find a pair of black tights, and said to Tatty, “Why didn’t you answer my phone, sweetheart, if you’re curious? I never said you couldn’t answer my phone. Answer my phone anytime you want.”
Still, Tatiana said nothing. She was looking up at the ceiling, unblinking, so Holly took the moment to peruse her, and noticed that Tatty was wearing the tiny opals that Pearl and Thuy had given her for her thirteenth birthday. She was going all out, wasn’t she? The opals for Pearl and Thuy, the velvet dress for Gin. It was sweet. Tatiana had always been a thoughtful child—the first on the playground to run to a fight and try to stop it, the first to comfort a crying baby or a whining puppy—but she was growing into a genuinely considerate young woman.
“That’s so nice,” Holly said, looking at her daughter’s earlobes, “that you’re wearing the opals Pearl and Thuy gave you.”
Tatiana immediately touched, as every woman does, whatever part of her was under discussion. Her earrings, her scarf, the necklace at her collarbone. Eric used to swat Holly away from her hair, saying that every time he told her it looked nice she put her hands into it and mussed it all up. But it was hard, if you weren’t facing a mirror, to be sure what was being observed about you if you couldn’t see it yourself. It was natural to try to feel it.
“I wasn’t trying to be nice,” Tatiana said. “I like the earrings.”
Holly deflated again. “I wasn’t trying to pick a fight,” she said. “I like that you thought to wear earrings that were given to you by guests we’re having over today. I know there are other earrings you own that you like, and I was trying to point out that it was a nice thing to do to choose those. But, Tatty, I’m sorry if I misunderstood.”
Tatty turned quickly on the heel of her black ballet slipper then, and she was over the threshold before she saw Holly grit her teeth at her daughter’s back.
Holly sat on the edge of the bed, and rolled one leg of the black tights up her leg. She would, she supposed, be punished all day for sleeping in on Christmas morning. Not only would her daughter be in a continuous state of disapproval, Eric’s brothers and their wives would soon be here, full of concern about their parents, which would hold the subtext of blame directed toward Holly that Eric had overslept (which would be Holly’s fault somehow) and been late to pick them up at the airport.
Why must Christmas always be at their house? Holly would have happily traveled to New Jersey or Pennsylvania or upstate New York for the holiday. She’d love to spend Christmas Day walking around Tony and Gretchen’s house—inspecting Gretchen’s silverware for sticky remains of some previous meal, holding her crystal up to the light to see if it was greasy. She’d have happily accompanied Eric to his parents’ condominium, for that matter, and cooked dinner there! She’d have happily made arrangements for all of them to meet at a resort in Florida! Or Cancún! Or Bend, Oregon!
But, it seemed, having had Christmas at Eric and Holly’s the first year they were married meant that Eric’s family would have Christmas at Holly and Eric’s forever, even if Holly was so disrespectful and irresponsible that she hadn’t even woken her husband up on Christmas morning.
Holly didn’t put shoes on, or her perfume, or her earrings, or even her watch. She went straight out to the kitchen in her stocking feet, where she found Tatty holding, and peering into, the iPhone Holly had left on the counter. A cool blue glow rose from the screen of it, and it turned Tatty’s skin to a color Holly didn’t like—the color of a sick girl, or a drowned girl.
Tatty had a beautiful complexion, which could have been called porcelain. Except that porcelain was whiter than the color of Tatty’s skin, which was more the color of crayfish bisque—or at least the crayfish bisque Holly’s mother used to make before she grew too ill to cook such things. A little grayer than bone. Creamier than ivory. Cream with a drop of violet mixed into it. In certain light, and in certain photographs, there was a tint of pale blue to Tatiana’s face—a little deeper near the temples, under her eyes. Sometimes her lips looked as if she’d just come in from the cold, deep end of the pool.
It was the most beautiful complexion Holly had ever seen. Elegant. Mildly exotic. But institutional light didn’t suit it, nor did the glow of the iPhone. “Put that down,” Holly said.
Tatty looked up, opened her mouth, unhinging her jaw slightly, and huffed. She put the cell phone down on the marble top of the kitchen island, and then gestured to it, and said, “I knew you’d be pissed. You always say, ‘Go ahead and answer my cell phone,’ but I so much as pick up your cell phone and you’re all over me.”
Holly shook her head. She was so tired of this teenage tone of voice, these reflexive accusations. How long was this phase of Tatiana’s existence going to last? “Jesus, Tatiana,” she said. “Take it down a notch, would you? I wasn’t all over you. I just—”
“No. You just reflexively reprimand me these days, that’s what! I can’t do anything right.”
“Look,” Holly said, picking up the cell phone between them. “We don’t have time for this. Did Unavailable call back?”
“No.”
“Well, if and when that happens, just answer the phone. That’s that. If the phone rings, answer the phone. Until then, you have your own phone, and please leave mine on the counter where I can find it if Daddy calls.”