“Oh, is it time?”
“But it wouldn’t hurt to put a dress on.”
Elizabeth shrugged and uncoiled from the couch. “All right, back in a minute,” she said, and padded out of the room in her rundown moccasins. She left behind her a silence that spread and hardened, until Mrs. Emerson came to herself and sat straighter in her chair.
“I was just thinking,” she said. “This is the first Christmas we’ll be spending without your father.”
“That’s true,” said Timothy.
“He always did love Christmas so. Just like a child.”
“I remember he did.”
Matthew said nothing at all, although he was the one who had been closest to their father. Sometimes Timothy had trouble even picturing what their father had looked like. He was a forgettable man. He had come up from nothing, from nowhere, married a Roland Park debutante and made a fortune in real estate — a line of work so beneath notice that no one had ever thought of suggesting it for his sons, least of all Mr. Emerson himself. Only strangers considered him important. “At the settlement on our house,” Timothy had once heard someone say, “things got so tangled I thought they never would straighten out. Fortunately I happen to know Billy Emerson personally. I just popped in his office and said, ‘Billy—’ “—as if Billy Emerson were a name worth dropping. That conversation had made Timothy stop and think. Was there something about his father that he had overlooked? Something he should reconsider? But his father’s only talent, after all, was for making money. Money sprang up around whatever he touched, a fact that he seemed to take for granted. He never mentioned it, at least not to his family. “Money is essential,” Mrs. Emerson said, “but not important.” Her children had no trouble understanding her.
“When you were all little,” Mrs. Emerson said now, “he used to take you to visit Santa Claus. Do you remember that? Urging you all to make lists beforehand, practically sitting in Santa’s lap himself just to overhear what you asked for. And all of you so hard-headed you never believed in Santa for an instant, not a one of you. Remember, Matthew?”
But if Matthew remembered he didn’t say so. He was slumped in one corner of the couch, examining the helmet Elizabeth had left behind. He straightened the chin-strap, tucked the ear-flaps in, pulled them out again and then held the helmet up on the tip of a finger to frown at it.
“He would have had that yard lit up like the Fourth of July, if I hadn’t begged him not to,” Mrs. Emerson said. “Always so fond of Randolph. Rudolph. The reindeer. I don’t know why. And birthdays! How he loved birthdays!” She narrowed her eyes at Timothy, who shifted his weight uneasily. “I don’t suppose you remember what day it is tomorrow,” she said.
“It’s my birthday,” said Timothy.
“It’s your birthday. Andrew’s and your birthday. Will you be spending it with us?”
“I don’t think so, Mother.”
“Andrew likes birthdays.” She pulled off a ruby ring and twisted it in the firelight. “He always sends me a dozen roses, thanking me for having him.”
“How do you know? Maybe he’s congratulating you.”
“You would be.” She shoved the ring back on. “I used to give you double birthday parties, remember that?”
“Yes,” said Timothy, and remembered Andrew, thin and frantic and overexcited, aiming a sputtery breath at his side of the cake, suffering even then from some jerkiness of mind which Timothy had feared a twin could catch like a cold.
“I sent him his presents in plenty of time,” said Mrs. Emerson. “How is school going, dear?”
For what she feared was that twins had to split a single share of intelligence between them — something she had read in a long-ago ladies’ magazine and never forgotten, even after the twins had turned out to be the brightest of her children. Timothy had spent too long assuming she was right to be able to laugh it off. “You asked me that yesterday,” he said.
“Oh, did I?”
“Do you imagine you should still be signing my report cards?”
“Timothy, dear, I was only interested.”
“That’s more than I am,” Timothy said. “I think it’s all a bore.”
“Oh, how can you say that? Medical school?”
“It’s a bore.”
“Well, it was your decision, not mine. I was never the kind of mother to interfere in her children’s lives.” “Oh, Lord.”
“Now, let’s just sit and enjoy the fire. Shall we? You’ve done a very good job with it, Matthew. I believe the last time you built a fire you left the flue shut.”
The last time Matthew had built a fire was when their father died, in June, and their mother kept insisting the house was cold. Oh, everything she said nowadays was attached to other things by long gluey strands, calling up other days, none of them good, touching off chords, opening doors. All he could do was tip his head back against his chair and sink into his own private tunnel while she pattered on.
“I’m ready,” Elizabeth said.
She had changed into a bulky wool dress that fit haphazardly, and nearly all of her hair was caught up by one flaking gilt barrette. Her nylons were wrinkled at the ankles and her squashed-looking black pumps curled at the toes. She swung her vinyl handbag like a waitress just getting off work. Mrs. Emerson looked up at her and sighed, sharply. But Matthew gave Elizabeth a happy smile, and she stood in front of him smiling back until Timothy rose abruptly and took her hand. “Come on, come on,” he said. “We’re late already.”
“Elizabeth, dear, your hair is falling down,” Mrs. Emerson said.
They had a long drive ahead — past the city limits, out on a superhighway filmed with slippery snow. Elizabeth had to keep clearing the mist off the inside of the windshield. When she wasn’t doing that she was switching radio stations — from one song to the other, in the middle of a note, which was something Timothy rarely did himself. He felt an obligation to hear songs through to the end, even if he didn’t like them. He also finished books that bored him, and had never in his life walked out on a movie. The fact that he and Elizabeth were so different, even on this small point, deepened the sense of uneasiness that had been growing in him all evening. Here they were out on a snowy road, probably driving to their deaths, and he didn’t know anything about this girl. Everything he asked her was batted back at him, or turned into a joke. “Elizabeth,” he said, “why is it we never have a serious conversation?”