Kelley is so incensed by this thought that he pours himself another Wild Turkey and logs on to his computer.
Mitzi has always been the one to keep up the Winter Street Inn Facebook page, but now Kelley takes matters into his own hands. He posts (to all 1,114 of their page’s “friends”): In light of my recent discovery that my wife, Mitzi, has been conducting an affair with George (Santa Claus) for the past twelve years, tonight’s party at the Winter Street Inn is canceled.
And will be canceled for the foreseeable future, he thinks. He’s going to sell the inn. God, what a relief it will be-financially and emotionally. He will list it for four million but accept three-five. He will call Eddie Pancik on the twenty-sixth; everyone on island calls him Fast Eddie, which Kelley hopes means Eddie Pancik will sell the inn quickly.
But why wait for Eddie Pancik? Kelley wonders as he finishes his drink. He goes back onto the Winter Street Inn Facebook page. His post of a few minutes earlier hasn’t garnered any “likes,” only one comment from Mrs. Gabler, who was Bart’s kindergarten teacher and who is the first person to arrive at the Christmas party every year.
Mrs. Gabler’s comment says: Is this some kind of crank call?
Crank call? Mrs. Gabler is elderly and confused. At the party, she drinks only cognac, and Kelley always keeps a bottle of Rémy Martin on hand just for her. Extravagances abound!
Kelley feels embarrassed that no one else has liked his post, but, of course, who would like it? There should be an option to dislike a post. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this?
On their Facebook page, Kelley sees, are happy photos of Christmas Eves past, and now that Kelley looks closer, he sees that nearly all the photos on the page include George in his Santa suit, and most of them have Mitzi in the slutty Mrs. Claus dress and her high black-suede boots. There are several photos of George and Mitzi together. This is disgusting! How did Kelley not notice this before?
He posts again: Winter Street Inn FSBO. $4M. Please call…
He feels better than he has in eons! He pours himself another drink and considers another cigarette but demurs. What else can he do?
He slips the gold lamé jumpsuit off the hanger. He is going to light it on fire. Not in the bedroom-with his luck, the whole house will go up in flames-but in the bathroom. In the bathtub, where the fire will be contained. The claw-foot porcelain tub with antique fixtures that Mitzi insisted on during the renovation, and which cost him four thousand dollars.
For a while, he had believed it was the best four thousand dollars he’d ever spent. He can remember dozens of times when Mitzi would lie in the tub for one of her scented baths-jasmine in the summer, sandalwood in the winter. She would pile her honey-colored curls on top of her head in a bun, and she would read poetry. Poetry was made for the bath, Mitzi believed. She was partial to Pablo Neruda. Kelley can practically hear her reciting to him from “If You Forget Me”:
“Ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated… my love feeds on your love, beloved.”
The air was filled with sweet steam; Mitzi’s skin was rosy and glowing from the heat of the water. Kelley often brought her a mug of lemon-ginger tea, and more often than not, she would emerge from the bath and let Kelley help her on with her thick, white robe. She had looked like the subject of a Degas painting but far more lovely.
My love feeds on your love, beloved.
Those days are OVER.
What else can Kelley throw on the fire? Because it’s Christmas, he can’t bring himself to torch the Mrs. Claus dress, even though the sight of it sickens him. Just as he can’t seem to get out the trash can and dump all of Mitzi’s carolers and nutcrackers. I’ll leave those for the rest of you to enjoy. More like, I’ll leave those here to torture you and make you cry.
Kelley ransacks Mitzi’s drawers. She has taken everything. She has, he realizes, taken every family photo that has Bart in it. The only photos left in the bedroom are ones of him and the three olders.
On the top shelf of the closet, he finds the accessories that go with the gold lamé jumpsuit-namely, a gold braided headband and gold wristbands, excellent in their absurdity. He throws them into the bathtub, then wishes for lighter fluid. He finds half an inch of Mitzi’s organic hair spray. Will this work? He pours the hair spray over the gold lamé mess, then hits the leg of the jumpsuit with the Kiss lighter he bought at the liquor store. The Kiss lighter resonates with Kelley’s sense of irony, and it’s even better now that he’s using the lighter to set the gold lamé jumpsuit on fire and, along with it, the vision of Mitzi dancing and skating to “Rock and Roll All Nite.” The material smolders at first and emits a toxic smell, like something coming out of Jersey City during a sanitation strike in the dog days of summer. Then the fire catches-the organic hair spray is clearly flammable. The jumpsuit curls and crinkles like aluminum foil; the bathroom fills with smoke, and Kelley hurries to open a window, but he has trouble because he installed the storm windows right before Thanksgiving, and they’re sticking tight. He turns on the bathroom fan. If the smoke alarms go, the inn will have to be evacuated, and the fire department will come, and Kelley will have some explaining to do.
There is a knock on his bedroom door, which he ignores.
He watches Mitzi’s roller disco outfit transform into something even more hideous than it was, if that were possible.
“Daddy!” Ava says. “Open up!”
Ava, his sweetheart, his only little girl. He loves her like crazy, but she has always belonged first to Margaret. In fact, her voice right now sounds just like Margaret’s.
“Daddy!” The edge of hysteria, or just extreme impatience. The same tone Margaret used to take when she had to stay late at the studio and she really needed Kelley to leave work to go pick up Ava from piano lessons or attend one of the boys’ basketball games. One of us has to be there, and it can’t be me! Well, it couldn’t be him either a lot of the time; a lot of the time, the Quinn children had neither parent representing, which was humiliating to everyone involved and ended with Kelley and Margaret fighting, each of them screaming, My job is important! Whose job was more important? They could debate that, at 110 decibels, for hours. Margaret was more visible; Kelley made more money. He asked Margaret to quit; he wanted her to stay home and parent. Why me? she said. Because you’re the mother, Kelley replied. Kelley had been doing a lot of cocaine at that time, to stay sharp, to stay awake, to constantly monitor the overseas stock markets. It was the late eighties, the administration of Bush 41, but that was no excuse. Kelley asked Margaret to quit, and what did she do? She moved out.