This is Christmas Eve, a Friday. Next day, Christmas at Mom and Ronnie's seems perfunctory. Nelson drives over to Mt. Judge in the morning, retrieving the Corolla from the curb on Almond Street, where it sits parked for days. The 7-Eleven is open, even as children are opening the presents brought by an omniscient, omnipresent Santa Claus. Weiser Square and the city park are deserted but for a blowing plastic bag and a vagrant stooped pedestrian studying his shadow on this wanly sunny holy day. The mall before the viaduct is a dead-empty lake of striped asphalt. GREEN MILE TOY II ANNA KING GALAX QUEST.
Mom is hard to give to and always was. He used to give her candy, knowing she'd right away let him share it. As he got older his mind had to keep darting away from dainty things, underwear and stockings for her legs that he knew she was proud of. In his childhood they were held up with garters attached to a girdle and had darker widths at the top that were stirring to glimpse. Pantyhose on the other hand had that darker patch in the crotch, shaped like a big lima bean. Once in his teens he gave her some L'eggs and even they, pulled filmy from their egg-shaped containers, made him blush. This year he is strapped-eighty-five a week for his room, three sixty a month to Pru as child support, extras like the mini-fridge he bought to keep his milk from going sour don't leave much from a weekly salary hardly four C's after everybody's tax bite-so he settles on a dozen Top-Flites for Ronnie, even though Dad always said he had a sledge-hammer swing, and for Mom a Better Your Bridge computer program, imagining her up there using the machine in the little room that used to be Mom-mom Springer's sewing room. But Ronnie says, here in this living room where everything has been pushed around to make room for the Christmas tree, that he doesn't want to risk overloading his hardware and crashing the whole memory with all his financial records in it, back to the Seventies.
To ease this rejection, Mom says, "Honestly, Nelson, I doubt if I could use the program, it looks too complicated, I have trouble following even what Doris explains to me, so patiently every time."
"All right, I'll take it back," he snaps, "and get you something else. How about a sexy nightie?" To him she has given flannel pajamas and a cable-knit maroon sweater, as if to keep him warm away from her presence.
Ronnie has come up with a strange gift, some kind of a needle:
The Art of Happiness, by the Dalai Lama and an American doctor. Nelson is startled because, in unwrapping, the saintly Asian on the jacket at first peek suggests his late father, not so much physically as in the aura of sly alertness, a tentative tricky lovable something in the guarded smile. Ron explains, in his insurance-selling voice, "I thought since you disdain the Christian religion maybe something along other lines would appeal to you. It's very important, Nelson, to have a spiritual outlet in our lives. There's a tremendous, worldwide upwelling of spirituality to greet the new millennium."
He sounds like he's quoting somebody. Nelson checks the book for any mark to indicate it had been remaindered, and sees none. Ronnie paid full price for this odd gift. "The Dalai Lama," Nelson says. How kindly the tentative, watchful face, in its tinted square glasses, smiles out at him: a father he might have had. "Thanks, Ron," he says. "I'll look into it during my lonely nights." Maybe it's a peace offering but there's no need; after that phone conversation after the Thanksgiving blow-up Nelson feels right with Ron, as right as he'll ever get. Ron is just one more or less well-meaning American bozo, balling Mom or not. Once the testosterone goes, you're left with a limp and a spiritual outlet.
He wants to get out of the house before Ron Junior and Margie and the three kids arrive for the midday feast. He's feasted enough with these people for one year. Alex is staying in Virginia with his broken family but Georgie is coming over from New York on the Bieber bus. Ron and Mom tell Nelson again he would be more than welcome to stay, they'll set another place, but after Thanksgiving he knows that wherever he's at home it's not with his stepbrothers.
At the door, his mother says, "Oh, I nearly forgot. Some woman called early this morning. That Esther who runs your clinic. I said to her, didn't she know this was Christmas morning? She said she did, but she'd like you to call her nevertheless. She was quite short with me; these Jews are so touchy."
"I can't imagine why. I'll call her from my place. Thanks, Mom. Merry Christmas. My love to all those other Harrisons." He kisses her little dry cheek and thinks how she seems to be shrivelling. Osteoporosis, like they keep advertising on television. Everything leaches our bones. The neighbor couple are out in the side yard with their boy and his new, red-runnered sled, though there's not a flake of snow on the grass. The sun makes all the decorations on the way back to Brewer, all the lights and tinsel and the plastic Santa Clauses and red-nosed reindeer, look washed-out, leached of joy. He stops at the 7-Eleven and picks up a frozen shepherd's pie and coffee in a seasonal plastic cup with a holly-leaf-and-berry pattern. They make pretty good coffee, actually. Drawing on his slender social-work Spanish, he says "Feliz Navidad" to the frizzy-haired girl behind the counter. She responds with a smile, dazzling in her dusky face, and a ribbon of responding Spanish of which Nelson only understands "Muchath graciath, theňor, "the "s"s thickened by her tongue-stud.
Back in his room, Nelson sips the coffee and dials Esther's home number. He gets the husband-a mellifluous, condescending, lawyerly voice. He is rich; Esther doesn't need the money; she runs the Center because she loves mankind. When she comes on she sounds subdued, even shaky. "Nelson, I thought you should know, since you worked with the DiLorenzo boy."
"Know what?" But the flutter of premonition has already risen in his chest. He just saw Michael yesterday, at the fringe of the crowd around the piano, trying to join in. He had wished him a happy holiday. The boy had responded, "O.K., sir," and looked away. He had neglected to shave. But he had begun to participate in groups, overcoming his distaste for the other clients. He wanted to get better.
"He committed suicide. In the night. They found him this morning. DiLorenzo himself called the Center. He was in shock but talked about suing us and Birkits."
That inner space where he had once felt a knife sliding as he tried to empathize with Michael turns more slippery; Nelson feels he is reaching down to bring something back but his hands are soapy and he cannot bring it back, it sinks. You will be nada. "Oh my God," he tells Esther. "No. How did he do it?"
"With a plastic suit-bag. Tied around his neck with a necktie. Sending his parents some kind of message, you could theorize. 'You want dry-cleaning, here's dry-cleaning.'"
"We lost him. I feel I lost him."
"Nelson, don't be egotistical. We do our best, but we can't do it all. I just wanted you to hear about Michael before it's in the Sunday papers. Everybody uses Perfect; it'll be news." She is brave and crisp but her Center has taken a blow, a black mark.
"How serious do you think the father was about suing?"
"Who knows? The man is a doer, he needs to act."
"He kept an appointment with us the day of the hurricane. He trusted us. I should have spotted something, I did drop a note to Howie about the meds. The Trilafon wasn't quieting the voices."
"Don't do this to yourself, Nelson. It is not your fault."
That's what they all say. That's what he said to them. But when she hangs up the boy is still dead. Sealed under black glass, gliding feet first to nowhere. Nelson pictures Mrs. DiLorenzo lying in a darkened room, the daughters flying in from their disrupted Christmases, the girlishly handsome young face smeared on the inside of an adhesive bubble like an astronaut's helmet. The strength it must take not to rip the smothering plastic with your fingernails, the furious determination to smother the voices and silence their obscenities.