The women remind me of how my mom was with her friends. What would she be like if she were still alive today? I count the years on my fingers to figure out how old she’d be: fifty-seven. Fifteen years since she died. This Christmas she’ll have been gone for as many Christmases in my life as she was alive for, and the thought makes me unbearably sad. Over time, missing her has softened to a dull thrum in the back of my chest, but every once in a while, like now, it floods through me at full volume.
I still picture her as she was before she got sick: smiling out from a sign on a bus bench advertising her as edison’s favorite real estate agent. She wanted the ad to say “top real estate agent,” which wasn’t technically true. However, she was the undisputed queen of the town’s gossip mill, which made her a favorite with certain types. The year of her diagnosis, she got the Rachel haircut, which even then she was a few years late to—Jennifer Aniston was already onto her sleek flat-iron phase—but she was incredibly proud of the haircut nonetheless. I imagine she’d have updated it by now if she were alive, but my mental image of her is frozen in time. An eternal Rachel Greene.
Rolf’s is like that, too; never changes. Year-round, every available square inch of ceiling and wall space is covered in faux pine and dripping with Christmas ornaments and fake plastic icicles. Rolf’s found its niche and sticks with it. I respect that.
I check my phone to see if anyone has texted, and I find a message from Finn: Running late. I have news!
With Finn, “having news” could be anything from seeing Timothée Chalamet on the subway to meeting the love of his life to discovering a sandwich place with a really good buffalo chicken wrap. Everything is news with him. But spotting Priya and Theo enter the bar, chatting animatedly, puts a pin in my speculation.
* * *
? ? ?
?An hour later, Finn bursts through the door in a cloud of apologies for his lateness and makes his way to the booth where we relocated to spare Theo the flirtations of the women at the bar.
“Sorry! Sorry!” Finn clucks as he unwinds his scarf and hangs it on a hook at the end of the booth. He leans in and gives Priya a double cheek kiss and then scootches into my side of the booth. He finds my hand on the bench and gives it a squeeze. I always breathe easier when the four of us are in the same place.
“So, you have news?” Theo prompts him.
“Big news!” Finn looks around the table to make sure everyone is giving him their undivided attention. “I got a new job! At Netflix! Working on shows for actual fucking adults!”
Priya shrieks and leaps out of her seat to wrap her arms around Finn’s neck.
“This calls for champagne!” Theo announces.
“This is incredible! You’re incredible!” I tell him, my excitement rendering me unable to find words other than “incredible.”
“This isn’t exactly the side of the entertainment industry I envisioned for myself, I was picturing myself more as the talent, but it’s still a step up. So that’s something.” Despite his dismissive comment, Finn is beaming at our reactions to his news.
Finn has worked as an associate development executive at ToonIn for the past three and a half years, helping to select which shows get picked to air and shepherding them through the production process. For the better part of that time, he’s been locked in a heated rivalry with Sparky MD, a cartoon puppy who is, for reasons that are never explained, also a doctor for humans. Finn passed on a pitch for the show six months into his tenure, and Sparky MD went on to become the number-one show at their rival network.
These days, Sparky has a ubiquitous presence, popping up on billboards and children’s backpacks. Once we were picking up my birth control prescription at Duane Reade when Finn spotted Sparky MD Band-Aids next to the register. He marched outside in a huff. I found him pacing on the sidewalk out front. “It doesn’t even make sense!” he raged. “Sparky can’t talk! How does he tell people their diagnosis?!”
Unfortunately, none of the shows Finn had greenlit held a candle to Sparky’s success. This new job is long overdue—he could use a clean slate. I’m proud of Finn. I’m also relieved I’ll never have to hear about Sparky MD ever again.
“I didn’t even know you were looking for new jobs,” I tell him.
“I didn’t want to say anything in case it didn’t work out,” Finn says. “I didn’t want to worry you for nothing.”
“Worried? Why would I be worried? This is great! I’m so happy for you.”
He fiddles with a groove in the table, avoiding eye contact. “Because the job is in LA,” he says to the wood.
I blink rapidly trying to process this new information. I see Priya’s lips moving, asking Finn a follow-up question, but I can’t hear it above the roar of static in my brain.
Sometimes I wake up at 4:00 a.m., an old habit from years of working on a morning radio show. I lie in bed trying not to move, so I don’t wake up David, and I make mental lists of all my worries. I worry about work deadlines or a snappy comment I made to David when I was hangry, but mostly I worry about my friends. I worry Theo will grow bored with New York and decide not to return from a trip to Paris or Bangkok or Sydney, or wherever he happens to be at the moment. I worry Priya will decide to follow whichever man she’s dating; her men are always so transient. Last I heard, she was dating a chef who ran a series of pop-up dinner parties in airstream trailers across the country. But I never even thought to worry about Finn leaving.
And now he is.
Once the initial wave of shock recedes, I realize I’m also angry. Angry Finn didn’t tell me separately before he told Theo and Priya. The delivery stings almost as much as the news itself.
Maybe we aren’t as okay as I thought.
My attention snaps back to the conversation to find everyone staring at me.
“You look kind of pale. Are you feeling sick?” Priya asks.
“I’m fine, totally fine! Just surprised!” I gulp my drink to buy time and get a noseful of champagne bubbles. I start coughing, which only draws more attention. Now the surrounding tables are staring, too.
A hush falls over the table. I need a distraction. A subject change. I need people to stop staring at me and give me a moment to process. So I overcompensate. “Christmas!” I blurt.
My friends give me puzzled looks like I’m a robot short-circuiting.
“Since Finn is moving, this might be our last Christmas together.” I forge ahead. “We have to make it our best one ever!”
“Are we doing that this year?” Priya asks.
Finn gives a noncommittal hum.
“Of course we’re doing Christmas this year!” Finn and I have done Christmas together every year for a decade, Priya has been there for six, Theo for five. How can they think we wouldn’t do Christmas this year?
“The last couple years, Christmas has been . . .” Priya trails off. She doesn’t need to continue; we were there, too.
“But everything’s fine now! And we have to do it this year . . . for Finn!” I sling my arm around his shoulder to illustrate how okay everything is. It has to be.
four
Hannah
Christmas #5, 2012