When he arrived home, minutes after us, he made her come back outside onto the porch. And he switched on his lights.
Julie gasped at the glorious bower that Stefan had created at our house for Christmas, with all the fairy lights, garlanding and only-slightly-dinged British-inspired gewgaws left over from his jobs decorating lavish private homes, businesses and a country club or two.
It continued, outside to inside.
“You’re a genius,” she said.
“I am indeed, Jujubees. Whatever a person can do with some fourteen-dollar light strings and some baling wire, I am that genius.”
“I mean it. This looks professional.”
“I am a professional. I’m a professional landscaper.”
“You know what I mean. I mean, it looks Hollywood, Stefano. It looks Hollywood.”
She was right. It was still weeks before Christmas but we noticed cars slowing down to look at our house—not just for the customary reasons. In early November, Stefan banished me and Jep for an afternoon of shopping and a long dinner out. We were gone for five hours. Then, when he heard the sound of our car, he powered the whole thing on.
It felt as though we were entering a private fairyland. Jep said some of the same things Julie was saying now.
“You don’t have to give me another thing for Christmas,” he told Stefan. “When I was a little kid, you know I lived in England for a while with my parents. And this is what the village looked like...”
“Writtle,” Stefan said proudly. “I know. I looked it up. I looked in your boxes of old pictures. They went all out for Christmas, like a Dickens story. I did this trying to resemble that. I can’t believe you actually think it worked.”
Jep had tears in his eyes. They were tears of pride, for Stefan, but I think also that he wished that he, and by extension Stefan, saw his parents more than a couple of weeks every year. His mom always wanted to come at Christmas; but his father always insisted on summers. I honestly didn’t know why Paula went along with John when he preferred going to Italy or Spain for Christmas, although Jep’s sister and her family usually joined them, at a time of year Jep simply couldn’t be away. After his father retired, the Christiansens were planning on moving back to the States, but that wouldn’t be for several years. Jep’s dad and mom were hale in their sixties. I hoped that there would be at least one chance for us to go to see them there...to see the place in London they lived now, and also that village called Writtle...with Stefan, before they moved back.
After inspecting all the decorations, Jep added, “You know, this will be our first Christmas at home in a while.”
Stefan looked downcast then. “I know, and I’m sorry I wrecked it while I was away, if I didn’t wreck it forever.”
It was Jep I felt sorry for then. The last thing he’d meant was to lace Stefan’s contentment with guilt over the past holidays. While Stefan was in prison, we’d made the trek to Black Creek to partake with the prisoners of the only decent meal they were offered all year and from there, our dispirited progress to the home of a family member, there to try to escape the harsh sounds of the demonstrators and our stony solitary state. He fumbled to make amends. “I didn’t mean that. Wait, son. Look. Take this as my clumsy way of saying, even if all we had was a wreath on the door, even if we didn’t have a door, I would be glad you were home.”
But it took a while for Stefan to smile easily again: His guilt was like a spring always close to the surface.
“This is gorgeous, it’s exquisite,” Julie said now. “You, lad, have a tremendous eye.”
“I’m going to tell you how he managed this, because he won’t...”
“Mom, I’m not fourteen years old.”
“Indulge me,” I told him. “What he did was go around and offer to buy all the leftover lights that his clients weren’t going to use on their houses and businesses this year, but I think only one lady took money for them. The rest just gave them to him.”
“So intrepid,” Julie said. “Well, now I’m going to have to go home and settle for less. Next year, I’m your first client, is that clear? I mean, before Thanksgiving.” Julie’s mini-mansion was always decorated by a team of pros who came with their own cherry pickers and extension ladders.
“It’s a date,” Stefan agreed.
“I have something for you,” Julie said now. She reached into her big leather bag and brought out a box. “Merry Christmas,” she said. It was my name in Greek wrought in gold on a pendant, a diamond in the middle of the circle of the first letter. “Thea was a Titan. She gave birth to the sun and the moon and the dawn.”
“I think she married her brother, though.”
“It’s a good thing you only have sisters, Mom,” Stefan said.
“Details, details,” said Julie.
Julie had a version of the same thing for Stefan, a charm of his name, in Greek, on a slender but masculine gold bracelet.
“I hate to think what that cost,” I dithered.
“I don’t,” Stefan said. “It’s very wow, Jujubees. But sleekly wow. Very much like I picture myself.”
“That’s what I told them. Go for sleek wow!”
Julie’s gift from me, from Stefan and me, was a bright blue shawl of the softest cashmere, which Stefan had knitted. She marveled. It was a pretty marvelous shawl.
Stefan said then, “I got to scoot.”
“Hot date?”
“Several, in a row tonight. I have to keep up my strength.”
When he was gone, Julie said, “He still hanging out with that kid he knew growing up?”
“Yep, Will Brent, and Will’s friends. You won’t believe it, but they actually went winter camping last week. It was that one really cold clear night, last Friday. Stefan said it was one of the worst experiences of his life, that you had to keep anything you didn’t want to freeze inside your sleeping bag, so you were cold even though you would have been warm.” They got out pans to cook in the morning, but the eggs and milk were frozen. When the sun came up, one of the guys told them they could throw everything in his van, that it would probably thaw out by July, and they all went to the pancake house we had gone the day Stefan was released.
Julie asked, “Any of those friends girls?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I would be surprised if they weren’t. Will’s a nurse, and a lot of the other student nurses are girls.”
“What does he say?”
“I would not go to that topic with him wearing a bulletproof vest, Jules.”
It wasn’t as though I hadn’t thought about that myself, but when I did think about it, it seemed like getting off a flight of stairs and climbing K2. I didn’t even know how to bring it up with my son again, because any way I did would be borderline creepy. I also didn’t know what the whole public revelation about his rival for Belinda’s affection being a girl had wrought in his consciousness. It was one thing his knowing; it was another everyone knowing. And not for nothing, it spelled motive with a capital M.
That very night, speaking of synchronicity—which I was not and never would—Stefan came home early. “What did you do?”
“We went to Molinaro’s for dinner and then back to Katie Molinaro’s and played Ping-Pong.”
“It’s her family’s restaurant?”
“It is. I didn’t realize I knew her and her sister in high school. They live up on Wapheton. I mean, her family does. She lives downtown now. She’s a nursing student. She has a very deluxe condo at Capitol Place, and the game room has like, a nickel bar and an Olympic-size pool and ten pool tables and all these big-screen TVs. They even have a sort of bar for kids where they can get milkshakes and candy and stuff. It’s very nice. I would take Julie’s son Ernie there sometime. He would think it was heaven.”