“I thought maybe once she died I’d get Christmas,” says Alice’s mother on the phone from San Francisco.
Alice lights a cigarette, attaches and inserts her earbuds as she pulls out of the Food Town parking lot. “Mother, stop,” she says.
“It’s not like she might hear.”
“You order in lo mein for Christmas.”
“We order lo mein because we’re all alone. Because our only child isn’t here.”
“We got Chinese food every year.”
“The only ritual you ever cared about was that woman’s.”
“Mom. She’s dead. You can say her name.”
“Helen. Fine. You only ever liked Helen and her absurd, simplistic rituals; never me and mine.”
Alice does not plan to but she turns left instead of right, down toward Quinn and Maddie’s condo complex instead of back up toward her and Henry’s house. She parks where she always parks, just out of view of their basement windows, pulls long on her cigarette. She can’t see them; Quinn mostly keeps the curtains closed, but Alice still comes sometimes to sit, to look for them. Alice is Maddie’s social worker. Quinn lost custody for six months after an accidental overdose, and it’s Alice’s job to check on them. She comes here more than to the other families she checks in with. Henry works out in the barn most of every day, and sometimes Alice drives around for hours; she parks out here, tries to get a glimpse of Maddie, as if her vigilance can keep her safe.
Quinn had work today, Alice knows, but Maddie had no school, and she thought maybe they might be here. But all the lights are off.
“Don’t think I don’t know what she thought,” says Alice’s mother, still talking about Helen.
Alice can no longer stomach her mother’s truculence. “How’s Dad, Mom?” she says.
“He’s Dad.”
“Is he home? Can I talk to him?”
“He’s at work.”
An older woman pulls into the spot next to Alice; Alice smiles at her and pulls out. She turns the car back up the long hill to the house. “Henry needs to be with his siblings this year,” she says to her mother.
“Your whole life is built around what Henry needs.”
“Please don’t explain my life to me.”
“I’m trying to make sure you get to live it.”
“You mean like you did?” This is an old fight, too worn out to hit too sharply—shorthand for all the ways that neither woman would have chosen what the other has, for all the ways that neither of them is what the other might have wished she were.
“We’ll see you on the twenty-eighth, then?”
“Henry has to work, but I’ll be there.”
“Did your husband get a job?”
“Henry’s working on his work.”
“So, then, he’s available to come see us for a few days, because he does not get paid for what he does?”
“Can we please not do this?”
“I just think it’s ridiculous that he’s going to miss my New Year’s party because he’s building trinkets in the backyard barn that my dead mother made available to him.”
“He’s an artist, Mother.”
“You’re an artist, Alice. What has Henry ever done with his art?” Her mother says the word “art” like it’s alleged.
“I’m not an artist anymore.”
“Of course. A social worker.”
“I have to go, Mom.”
“The twenty-eighth, then, both of you. I’ll send Dad to pick you up.”
Alice feels too tired. “Merry Christmas, Mom.”
“Of course.”
When she gets back home she walks behind the house, leaving the groceries in the car. She watches Henry’s shadow move as if suspended on the ceiling of the barn. He’s built scaffolding to work up there, though they don’t talk about what he’s constructing. She thinks of going to ask him to come inside and sit with her—to hold her, help her. But she doesn’t; she has a strange fear of going into this space that is now only his, this space she’s not sure she believes in anymore. She lights another cigarette and checks her texts, hoping she might have one from Maddie. Just her sisters-in-law, though: Kate telling her she’s bringing an extra air mattress, asking about blankets, whether or not she needs to bring more flour; Tess reminding her of Colin’s peanut allergy. Alice makes a list, on her phone, of all the work she still has to do to make the house ready for Henry’s siblings, takes a last drag of her cigarette, goes around to get the groceries from the car.
“Walrus!” Quinn says. They pop both their teeth out of their mouths as if they’re tusks, flap their arms and hands; they bark, twist their bodies like they’re gliding on the ground.
They walk from Quinn’s work, where they have gone together because there was no school and Quinn didn’t have a sitter. Maddie sat for hours behind Quinn’s law-office reception desk—while Quinn answered phones and greeted people, she read her book, then googled on the phone she got from the social worker when she got bored. Now they play the game they often play on their walk home, Animals. Maddie likes it because she loves animals, Quinn likes it because she likes being the sort of mom who will pretend to be a walrus or a horse out on the street regardless of the people who might watch.
“Spider,” Maddie says, her words mangled because her teeth are still out of her mouth.
Quinn spreads her arms out wide over her head and straightens her back. Maddie goes on tiptoe, bringing her hands close to her chest, fingers working like they’re weaving a web.
“Unicorn,” says Quinn, and Maddie neighs and makes hooves out of her hands; both of them prance, heads up high and bounding down the hill, rolling their necks.
“Dragon,” Maddie says. They spread their arms. Maddie opens her mouth wide and hisses hot air from her throat, spitting fire.
“Octopus,” says Quinn, and they both wiggle, loosening and rolling their bodies and their limbs. “Do octopuses—octopi?—make any sounds?” Quinn asks.
“Octopuses,” Maddie says. “No sound.”
They’re almost home, off the main street. Quinn thinks she sees the social worker’s car parked near their place, but then the car pulls out, drives off. Quinn squints but she can’t tell if the car is Alice’s; her eyes feel worn out from all the time in front of screens at work. She has two bags slung over the same shoulder: all the snacks she packed for Maddie, the books she brought, her wallet, keys, and phone. They pass an older couple, and Quinn stops wobbling her limbs as she notices them watch her and Maddie too close, too long—looking. Imminent danger, she thinks, which is the language that they used the first time they took Maddie from her, the language that runs through her brain a thousand times a day.
“Peregrine falcon!” Maddie says—her favorite. The couple has walked past them. The path is straight down a hill, the sidewalk cleared of snow, and both Quinn and Maddie spread their wings out wide and high and fly straight down.
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