“She can take care of herself,” Potter says. “I’m just going to love her.”
Nathaniel looks at Scott. “Drink?” he says.
“Heck, yeah,” Scott says, and the two head to the bar.
Potter turns to Ava. “Dance?”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she says.
KELLEY
He should have been the happiest man alive, but he simply doesn’t feel well. His head aches, there’s a loud buzzing in his left ear, and splotches are appearing in front of him-there are amorphous blue blobs in the upper right corner of his vision. He can see the party is a raging success. Ava and Potter are dancing; so is Isabelle and her father, Kevin and Margaret, Patrick and Madame Beaulieu, Jennifer and Drake, and George and Mary Rose-who, Kelley has just found out, have gotten engaged. Bart is busy charming Mrs. Gabler, his old kindergarten teacher, who must think better of him now that he is a war hero. Kelley watches as Mitzi saves him, pulling Bart onto the dance floor. Kelley has always been mesmerized by Mitzi’s beauty-quirky though it is-but he can honestly say that he has never seen Mitzi look as luminous as she does tonight. She has her son back. Kelley is sure nothing else will ever matter as much.
They aren’t following any kind of usual wedding protocol, although when this song ends, Kelley will saber the champagne as he does every year on Christmas Eve, and then Kevin and Isabelle will dance to “The Christmas Song.”
Kelley gets ready. He pulls the magnum of Taittinger out of the ice and finds his saber. Then he signals the bandleader, who ends the song and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, our gracious host, Kelley Quinn, will now saber the champagne.”
The crowd cheers, Monsieur Beaulieu is especially enthusiastic-probably because he’s French. Kelley worries he’ll fumble the ball somehow; there are a million ways to screw up a sabering even under the best of circumstances, never mind when one is afflicted with brain cancer.
Kelley opens the front door of the inn. Out on Winter Street, the scene is tranquiclass="underline" snow, streetlights, the neighbors’ antique homes buttoned up and quiet. Kelley finds the spot on the neck of the bottle that he must hit just so, and he drags the back of the saber against it.
Kelley turns to the crowd. He focuses on Mitzi’s face, a beacon. She winks at him. The wink is like magic; immediately, Kelley feels thirty-nine again. He is dating the roller-disco queen of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. He is virile, strong, confident. He can do this.
In one fluid motion, Kelley slices off the top of the bottle. The crowd cheers. A server hands Kelley a flute that Kelley fills and then raises to the crowd.
“To Kevin and Isabelle. May they carry the love and the joy of this evening in their hearts for all the days of their marriage. God bless us, every one.”
The bandleader sings, “‘Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,’” and the guests form a ring around the floor while Kevin and Isabelle have their first dance. The first of many, many dances, Kelley hopes.
His work is done, he thinks. And now, he must lie down.
He can hear the party continuing on the other side of his closed bedroom door, but within minutes of lying down in the dark, Kelley is transported elsewhere.
The year is 1958. Kelley is six years old. He lives with his parents in Perrysburg, Ohio. His father works for Owens Corning; they have had a good year. Kelley and his brother, Avery, tiptoe down the stairs on Christmas morning to find that Santa has left them bicycles-a red two-wheeler with training wheels for Kelley and a blue tricycle for Avery. Kelley had sat on Santa’s lap at Lasalle and Koch in Toledo the week before, but he had been too shy to ask for a bike and so he’d said he wanted candy and the board game Monopoly.
In his stocking, Kelley finds candy canes, chocolates wrapped in foil, ribbon candy, sugared orange slices, licorice sticks, jelly beans, caramels, root beer barrels, butterscotch drops, Mary Janes, and Necco wafers. And under the tree is a long, flat box that turns out to be… Monopoly.
Santa is real!
It’s 1963. The president has been dead for two weeks. Kelley’s mother, Frances Quinn, is in mourning and says she doesn’t want to celebrate Christmas. Kelley can’t stand to think of his little brother, Avery, going without Christmas, so he takes over Matt Zacchio’s paper route for two weeks. Perrysburg is experiencing subfreezing temperatures and Matt is eager to hand the route over temporarily. Kelley makes thirty dollars and buys Avery what looks like a briefcase, but when the case is opened, it reveals art supplies: colored pencils, crayons, markers, pastels, and paints with different-size horsehair brushes. For the first time, Kelley understands what is meant by the saying “It is better to give than to receive.”
On Christmas morning, Kelley and Avery tiptoe down the stairs to find a wire crate in front of the fire. In the crate is a black Labrador puppy.
A puppy!
They name him Jack, after the late president, and the whole family is cheered, even Frances.
Santa is real!
It’s 1971. Kelley and Avery are teenagers. On Christmas Eve, they climb out onto the roof under their dormer window and share a joint. Avery sings “Joy to the World”-the Three Dog Night version. Jeremiah was a bullfrog. He is a great singer, and a star athlete as well. His grades put Kelley’s to shame. Kelley should hate him, but he doesn’t. He loves his brother with all his heart.
In the morning, they sleep in. In fact, Frances has to rap on their bedroom door to wake them. Presents have ceased to matter. What Kelley really wants is a bong, but he can hardly ask his parents for that and, as it turns out, Santa isn’t real.
But their mother is real and she has made eggs Benedict and eggnog French toast, she tells them. Because it’s Christmas, she says, she warmed the syrup and doubled up on the hollandaise.
Kelley and Avery race each other down the stairs.
It’s 1977 and Kelley and Margaret have a baby. They dress him up in a tiny Santa suit and stick him in the baby swing while they make Golden Dreams. The Golden Dream is a cocktail recipe Margaret found in Good Housekeeping. She wants to drink them every Christmas, she says. They’re a family now. They need traditions.
It’s 1986 and Kelley and Margaret have two little boys and a brand-new baby girl. Ronald Reagan is Santa Claus. Kelley is making a fortune trading petroleum futures. He and Margaret are able to buy a brownstone on East Eighty-Eighth Street, eighty-four blocks north of the brownstone Avery bought the year before with his partner, Marcus.
On Christmas, Kelley presents Margaret with a Cartier tank watch.
“This is too extravagant,” Margaret says.
“No,” Kelley says. “‘Too extravagant’ are the guys on the trading floor who go to Norma’s for breakfast and order the zillion-dollar omelet.”
“But this house is my present,” Margaret says.
“This house is our shelter,” Kelley says. “The watch is for you. You have put your career on hold in order to give me all of these beautiful, healthy children, including our new princess.”
He fastens the watch onto Margaret’s wrist.
“I’ll never take it off,” she says.
It’s 1987 and the stock market has just crashed. Kelley knows two men who have killed themselves in the past month. Kelley wanted to give Margaret carte blanche to decorate the brownstone with a real interior designer but now he thinks they’d better save their money.
They buy the boys a Nintendo, and Ava gets every shiny, beeping, talking toy that Fisher-Price makes. They decide they won’t buy gifts for each other. But they do have Golden Dreams.