Aunt Adelaide had grown progressively paler as Sasha spoke, until now she was entirely without color, a woman sculpted of snow.
Then she crumbled.
Roland came trudging out of the wastes, grinning, carrying the mirror over his head. Barking loudly, Mr. Chesterton ran to meet him. Roland put down the mirror, leaning it carefully against a snowbank. Then, with the dog dancing about his knees, he hugged his sister. He was an adult now, but that was all right for so was she. “You were magnificent!” he said. “You did so much better than I ever could have.”
“I consider myself privileged to have been your friend.” Big Bill solemnly shook Sasha’s hand. “You’ll want to have this, I imagine.” He handed her a copy of The Adventures of Mr. Chesterton. On the cover, girl-Sasha and boy-Roland were open-mouthed with shock as Mr. Chesterton, hanging his head in shame, said, “Lord Snow Is A Frost Giant… And My Father!”
Sasha flipped the book open to the very last page. There, a defeated-looking Lord Snow stood before a triumphant Mr. Chesterton, weeping. A word bubble said, “You’re My Son, Chesterton. Why Won’t You Love Me?”
In the next panel, Mr. Chesterton gestured, and fragments of ice came swarming together to combine to form a glass cane in his hand. “Oh My Goodness, Father,” he said. “Of Course I Love You. I Always Have. I Simply Don’t Approve Of Your Actions of Late.”
In the penultimate panel, the cane came down on Lord Snow’s bald pate with a sharp thump. Finally, that vile creature fell back, clutching his head, and Roland, Sasha, and Mr. Chesterton strode past him, hand in hand in paw, to step through the mirror leading back to their home, their family, their parents, their lives.
Sasha could not help but smile. “It’s a sweet story,” she said. “But I’m not a child anymore.” She handed back the comic book and said, “Promise me you’ll take good care of Mr. Chesterton.”
“I always have, Miss Sasha. I always have.”
Swiftly, Sasha kissed Mr. Big Bill on the cheek. She stooped down to rub Mr. Chesterton’s head the way he particularly liked and laughed when he enthusiastically licked her face in return. Then she turned to Roland. “Are you coming? I think we’re done here.”
They stepped through the mirror.
The phone call came as it did every year when the weather turned cold and winter was in the air.
“Well, Sister Sasha? Are we on?”
“When have I ever failed you? I’ve already made the reservations.”
“Splendid.”
Sasha and Roland met in the Four Seasons as was their custom, to reminisce and talk over old times. They and their siblings were all grown now, with children of their own. But every year, when the holidays rolled around, they all put their families aside for a few hours so they could talk of things that only they four in all the world had in common. Roland and Sasha, however, were careful to always show up first.
“So. Did you put up a Winter Tree?” Sasha asked.
Roland smiled down into his martini. “Well, as always, I said we wouldn’t. And of course the children wouldn’t hear of it. Everyone has a tree, they said. Which isn’t true, but you can’t argue facts with children. I suggested — quite reasonably, I thought — that the time spent decorating a tree could be put to better use in other ways. Preparing a special dinner, perhaps, or helping out at the food bank. I tried sweetening the deal by offering to let them stay up late so they could see the moon at midnight and look for spectral reindeer. But the children wouldn’t hear of it. You’d have thought I was Ebenezer Vinegar Grinch, the way they carried on.”
Sasha laughed. “Oh, I can hear the arguments now! So you caved in.”
“To my children? I most certainly did not. But Victoria put her hands on her hips and gave me the Look. Then she told the kids, ‘Don’t listen to your father, he has no idea what he’s talking about.’ And she said to me, ‘We’ve had this conversation before, and it always ends the same way.’ So of course, there was nothing to be done, and up the tree went. How did it go with you?”
“Oh, I tried. But James gave me that puppy-dog look and, well, I just folded. As far as Stanley and Keisha were concerned, there’d never been any doubt we’d have one.”
“I hate those things,” Roland said.
“Me too. But what can you do? The world is a dangerous place, but we won’t always be there to protect them. So I suppose they have to learn. One way or another.”
“Amen, sister. Alas.”
Then Zoë and Benjamin arrived together — they’d met by chance at Grand Central Station, they said, and shared a cab — and sat down, and ordered drinks and the menus, and the conversation shifted in tone. They talked and talked, about Mother and Father and Grandmother and Great-Aunt Adelaide, and even about Mr. Chesterton, what a wonderful pup. They looked back on a common childhood that glowed in their memories as bright as the Garden of Eden, and which was, like the Garden, gone beyond retrieval, an alien land whose inhabitants were as unreachable as if they’d all been killed by elves.
It was the best part of the holidays, this conversation. It always was. They all four cherished it. They laughed until they cried.
To the Moon Alice
Mean as a sitcom
Ralph grins like a pumpkin
I’m warning you Alice
Forget it thinks Alice
I’m leaving the next time
He shakes that fat fist
Alice looks up at
A full autumn moon
The deep amber of honey
How can I get there?
Russia sent up that puppy
It can’t be so hard
Shouts come from the airshaft
Our neighbors the Nortons
Are fighting again
Ed Norton lord love him is
No rocket jockey
But knows how things work
Trixy is smarter
And sexy to boot
Now what does she see in him?
Hey Ed can you help me?
I want a surprise
For Ralph on his birthday
Can’t let him find out
That I’m planning to split
He’d tip off old Ralphie-boy
We’ll launch Brooklyn’s first moon shot
I know we can swing it
We got what it takes
We’re looking for thrust
In a ship that can boost us
To Mach twenty-six
There’s three ways to do it
Drop bombs or burn fuel
The third I forget
An A-bomb would probably
Damage our rooftop
Can we get rocket fuel?
Ed says there’s some fuel in
Cans in the sewers
He’ll swipe some tonight
He starts with the guts
Of a washing machine
Alice found in the street
Sweat-soaked Ed Norton
Grabs a-hold of a wrench
And a butylene torch
He solders a chamber
For Feynmann-type bombs
That are dropped out the back
Sly Ed builds a gantry
With tools from the sewers
While Ralph drives a bus
Alice the seamstress
Sews up a snug space suit
And a spare just in case
Up on the rooftop
The lift-off is sparked