Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [6]
“Me neither,” Mary said.
Ben took the train to Philadelphia with her for Thanksgiving. He ate turkey and played with the kids and was charming in a way she hadn’t known he could be. Isabella’s mom insisted on wrapping up loads of leftover pie for Ben. They took the train back together and he rested his hand on her thigh the whole way. The week after, she didn’t hear from him once, and she wondered if she’d imagined the whole holiday.
It got colder, but their apartment still hovered around a hundred degrees. In Rockefeller Center, families of five came to see the tree, and walked around holding hands in a line, forcing Isabella to dart around them on her way to work. It was like one big game of Red Rover, and Isabella felt sure that she was losing.
Isabella went home for Christmas alone, with two bags of dirty laundry. The night before she left, she and Ben went out to get drinks. They laughed and had fun, and as they stopped for pizza on the way home from the bar, Isabella began to think she was wrong to imagine that there was any trouble between them. Later that night, as Ben played with her hair in bed, she let out a happy sigh and he said, “My ex-girlfriend used to make me play with her hair before she fell asleep.” Isabella pulled away from him, but his fingers were tangled in her hair and he ended up pulling out a few strands.
“What?” Ben asked.
“Nothing,” Isabella said. How could she explain what he did to her? She let him lie there, holding the hair he’d torn out of her head, and think about it.
Christmas at the Mack house was loud and busy. Stuffed reindeer peeked out from the corners, and Scotch tape and snickerdoodles were everywhere. All of the grown-ups played board games while the kids ran around upstairs. It was safer that way, Isabella knew. Mack board-game nights weren’t for children.
The night before Christmas Eve, they played Scattegories, and things were already getting messy. Her brother John was mad because he’d brought Cranium to play but had been overruled. “I don’t think we should play anything that involves clay,” Brett said.
“Yeah,” Isabella said. “It might get physical.”
There were twelve players, so it was impossible to tell if anyone was cheating. Isabella’s partner, her sister-in-law Meg, chugged appletinis all night and taunted the other teams. “Whooo!” she kept squealing. “Wooohoo! We are going to kick your asses.” Then she held up her hand and made Isabella give her a high five.
Isabella’s mother had banned all premade pitchers of drinks after the pomegranate martini incident of Thanksgiving 1998, but someone must have forgotten. When Isabella had walked into the kitchen that night, she’d seen a big pitcher of unnaturally green liquid. “Appletinis,” Meg had said brightly. “Do you want one?” It was the last complete sentence she said that night. Isabella’s brother Joseph quietly ignored his appletini-loving wife, leaving Isabella to high-five her alone.
Brett had barely spoken since he’d tried to submit “whore” in the category of “things that are sticky.” Isabella’s mother had exclaimed, “Sweet Jesus” and closed her eyes in horror. Never mind that the letter for that round was H, and Isabella’s mother should have been concerned that her twenty-seven-year-old son couldn’t spell.
Molly talked about Ben, and Isabella regretted ever introducing him to her family. “He was so cute with the girls,” Molly was saying. “Just really adorable.”
Isabella saw Caroline run by in a flash of blue, and soon all of the kids were rumbling downstairs from the playroom. Most of them were in costumes, and carrying plastic teacups for reasons they never explained. Scattegories was forgotten. Molly suggested that all of the kids could sleep in Isabella’s room, as a treat, but only if Isabella agreed, of course.
“Can we, Auntie Iz?” they asked her. “Can we sleep in your room?”
Isabella looked at Molly, who didn’t look back. “Sure,” Isabella said. “You can sleep in my room.”
Caroline cheered, then tripped herself on the long blue dress she was wearing and started crying. Isabella picked