It was dark and snowy and cold. This street of working-class triple-deckers, which appeared sad even on bright sunny days, looked gloomy and deserted. The house seemed to sag, its porches heavy with snow and ice, the faded green duller than she remembered. The houses in most of this neighborhood held generations of families. Grandparents on the first floor, their kids and grandchildren in the second-and third-floor apartments. But Peter’s mother lived alone on the top two floors and rented out the bottom floor to the neighbor’s youngest child and her family. Peter had gone away to college and never moved back. He’d tried to convince his mother to move to the smaller first-floor apartment, or to sell the house altogether. But she refused. This is my home, she always reminded him.
The front door opened and the Galluccis peered out. Connie Gallucci had had three babies right in a row, and she’d never lost all the baby weight. But she still dressed sexy, even now. She already had her party dress on, a garish too-tight green one, low-cut and revealing her ample cleavage. Connie’s hair was still in giant curlers. No, Vivien saw as she got closer. She’d rolled her hair in empty Campbell’s soup cans, like Vivien had seen in some fashion magazine at the hairdresser’s recently. Her husband Jimmy had gained weight, and his stomach pressed against his white sleeveless T-shirt, hanging over his belt. It was hard to believe he had been the star hockey player back in high school.
“Pete!” he said. “Ready for the shindig?”
Jimmy walked down the path to shake Peter’s hand, and then to take Kathy from Claire.
Everything about Connie and Jimmy made Claire slightly uneasy, as if she’d caught them in the middle of something private. They both exuded a sexuality she wasn’t used to. Connie always wearing low-cut blouses and too much makeup, and Jimmy with his T-shirts and hairy chest. Even now, following Jimmy up the stairs, she caught a smell of sweat and something male and unfamiliar. Peter smelled clean, of Ivory soap and Old Spice. Sometimes she caught a whiff of shoe polish on his hands. Claire used to like watching him polish his black wingtips, the way he spread newspaper carefully on the floor, buffed them with a chamois cloth, shook the bottle of black polish before spreading it in quick even strokes across his shoes. Such a simple thing, but it had seemed so masculine and sexy.
The door at the top of the stairs opened and Birdy stood there, beaming in her best Chanel suit and rope of pearls. The pearls, Claire knew, were real, a gift from a long-ago lover. The suit she suspected was a copy. But still, her mother-in-law looked lovely, her silver hair piled on top of her head, her green eyes sparkling.
She opened her arms and Peter rushed into her hug.
“Darling,” Birdy said to him. “You feel thin.”
“I don’t want to get a paunch like this guy,” Peter said, indicating Jimmy who had come in beside them.
Birdy smiled. “I’ve heard of fathers who gain weight in sympathy with their pregnant wives.”
She seemed to notice Claire for the first time.
“Darling,” she said, kissing Claire on each cheek. “Apparently my son is not one of those men.”
“No,” Claire said, avoiding Peter’s eyes. Her husband believed this baby was his, and she worried that with one look he would know he was wrong.
“I’ve got to go downstairs and get beautiful,” Jimmy was saying.
“Good luck with that,” Peter teased as Jimmy bounded noisily down the stairs.
“Well, let’s not stand here,” Birdy said. “I have a bit of champagne waiting for us in the parlor.”
“I’ll be right there,” Peter told her. “I’m going to get Kathy settled with Connie’s babysitter.”
Claire followed her mother-in-law into what she called the parlor, a formal room filled with old-fashioned furniture, all velvet and beaded and stiff.
“I’m so sorry we didn’t make it here for Christmas this year,” Claire said as soon as she sat down.
“I missed seeing you all, of course,” Birdy said, leveling her gaze right at Claire. “But I worried that something was wrong.”
“The baby,” Claire said vaguely, hoping the old woman would not question her further.
“A difficult pregnancy then?”
Claire nodded.
The truth was that she and Peter were barely able to be civil to each other at Christmas, he still wounded by her affair and Claire too upset over ending it. They had both been angry, and untethered. She’d never bothered to ask what excuse he had given his mother for their absence. The thought that perhaps he had told her the truth struck Claire, but she quickly dismissed it. Peter would never divulge that to his mother. Or to anyone, she suspected. It was too humiliating.
“Actually,” Birdy said, “Peter indicated that you two were . . . well, going through a bit of a rough patch.”
“He did?” Claire said, her throat suddenly dry.
“It happens, of course,” Birdy said, offering a silver bowl of cashews to Claire, who took a couple only to be polite, holding them in her palm rather than eating them. “Lord knows, Peter’s father and I had our moments.”
“I just don’t feel comfortable with him discussing it with anyone,” Claire managed.
“He didn’t give me the details,” Birdy said.
Claire could feel Birdy’s eyes on her, but she didn’t look up.
“Oh,” Claire said, remembering that she’d put her mother-in-law’s Christmas present in her purse. She unclasped it, and took out the slender gift, wrapped in the red and white paper with silver ribbon.
“Merry Christmas,” Claire said. “I’m sorry it’s so late.”
Birdy opened the gift, carefully sliding the ribbon off and being sure not to tear the paper.