Sea Glass_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [60]
When they reach the corner of Alfred and Rose, McDermott and the boy get out of the car. He hands the boy a small package wrapped in brown paper. He puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You have a good Christmas,” he says and watches as Alphonse sprints around the corner.
McDermott walks back to the car and leans on the driver’s-side door.
“He’s happy,” McDermott says.
“What did you give him?”
“A pocketknife. It’s for fishing. For cleaning fish.”
“You take him on outings?”
“Once in a while. I feel kind of sorry for the kid.” He pauses. “Hey, thanks for the ride. How long is your trip home?”
“Not far,” she says. “Only to the beach.”
“So you live on the beach.”
“I do.”
“Lucky you.”
“I don’t know. Not this time of year.”
“Still, though.”
“Still, though,” she says, smiling.
“How will you spend Christmas?” he asks.
“We’ll get up late,” she says. “Then we’ll wander into the living room and open our presents. What about you?”
“I’ll go to my sister’s. It’ll be chaos. My brothers won’t like their presents. The usual.” He pauses. “What do you want for Christmas?”
“A baby,” she says without hesitation. “And you?” she asks.
“Peace and quiet,” he says.
She laughs and he tries to laugh with her, but his mouth is nearly frozen. Jesus God, he feels happy. It’s Christmas Eve and he doesn’t have to work tomorrow and the city is almost beautiful and when the weather gets warmer there will be a strike, and in a gesture that shakes him right down to his socks, the woman reaches over and touches his hand briefly where it rests on the window.
“I’m sure you’ll get what you want,” she says.
With effort, McDermott pushes himself from the beach wagon and watches as the woman pulls away from the curb and turns the corner. He raises the collar of his leather jacket and looks up at the stars. He says a quick prayer — for Eileen, for the boy, for the woman in the car, and even for his brothers, who are a handful — and then he shakes his head and laughs. He hasn’t said a real prayer — a hopeful prayer, a message direct from himself to God — since he was a kid.
Honora
Honora drives through the marshes, shaking her head. She can’t imagine why she told that man that she wanted a baby, nor why she touched his hand. It’s because of Christmas, she decides; it makes you do impulsive things — like telling Vivian she’d drive her to the airport. She’s glad she did; it was good to get out of the house. She thinks about the boy, his possessiveness, his pride. The rapt expression on his face at the airport. His grin when the man gave him the present. The way the man had to look at her, to watch her speak her words.
She hopes now that Sexton isn’t too upset that she wasn’t there to greet him. She will explain, and she is certain that he will understand. She steers the beach wagon around a corner, waiting for the sight of the house and the Buick parked out front, but when she completes the turn, she is so startled by what she sees — or, rather, by what she doesn’t see — that she inadvertently takes her foot off the clutch and stalls the automobile.
There are no lights on in the house, and the Buick isn’t there.
She tells herself that Sexton has gone out to the store to buy coffee. That he has run out of gas and has had to walk to a filling station. That there were too many cars on Route 1, and he had no way to get in touch with her. That he left her present on a counter in a department store and had to go back to find it.
She doesn’t believe a word of it.
She puts the car in gear and completes the turn. She parks in front of the house, where normally the Buick would be. She steps up onto the granite slab. The door is shiny in the moonlight. She moves into the hallway and thinks of the first time she and Sexton ever entered this house. The hallway is brighter now, the peeling wallpaper with the