“Do it, do it, do it. Ruin everything right now,” the voices in her head chorused. “Tell her all about it. Do it, do it, do it.” But Lizzie refused to listen to them.
Right after dinner, they all went together to choose a Christmas tree. Elaine, Allan told Lizzie, was always inclined to take the first really tall and bushy one she saw; it was how she shopped for everything: quickly and decisively. Allan insisted on walking through the entire lot before he’d finally reach a decision on what tree he wanted. Elaine pointed out to Lizzie that the tree they finally bought was exactly the one that she’d chosen in the first five minutes of arriving at the tree lot. Everyone laughed, including Allan. By the time they got home and George and Allan had the tree set up in the living room, there was just time for more cookies and hot chocolate before they all trooped upstairs to bed. Lizzie thought that this was close to a perfect day, certainly the best since Jack left.
December 23
The morning and most of the afternoon were devoted to decorating the tree. Lizzie expected Elaine to bring out boxes of ornaments—family heirlooms, perhaps—but learned that each year the Goldrosens made everything that went on the tree. Allan left for work, weighted down with many bags of cookies for the staff and patients, but George, Elaine, and Lizzie sat around the kitchen table—there was still a lovely tinge of cookie in the air—cutting Christmas wrapping paper into strips so they could put together chains to hang on the tree. Lizzie remembered making chains in elementary school using construction paper, which had been much harder to work with.
Elaine said, “You know, Lizzie, George will tell you that I’m terrible at arts-and-crafts projects. And he’s right. I don’t do this sort of thing at all the rest of the year. It’s just that I love all the ephemera of Christmas, and I’ve always liked the idea of having a do-it-yourself holiday, or at least as much as we can do ourselves.”
“She’s not kidding about her craft skills,” George added. “Her favorite book when we were growing up was Easy Halloween Costumes You Don’t Have to Sew.”
Elaine chuckled. “I always thought I should buy dozens of copies of it and give them out at baby showers. I am very adept at stapling, if I do say so myself.”
“You were the best, Mom. Too bad there wasn’t a stapling contest you could enter.”
“Did you and Todd help make decorations when you were little, George?”
“Oh, absolutely.” George started laughing. “One year, when Todd was seven and I was five, Mom left us alone when the doorbell rang—who was it, some delivery guy? Or was it a phone call?—and we had a paste fight while she was gone. We covered our hands with it and then chased each around the house trying to smear it on each other. There was paste absolutely everywhere—the walls, toys, our faces, clothes, beds, refrigerator. Mom was not happy with us. I remember that too.”
“It was a call from your grandmother, wondering what time we’d get to Stillwater the next day, and then she went on and on about the jewelry store and did I want this necklace that they’d special ordered for someone who never picked it up? I couldn’t get off the phone. I kept trying to tell her I had to go and she kept talking over me. I knew something was going on with you two boys. And all these years later, I sometimes still find dried blobs of paste around, stuck to something totally unexpected, like the bottom of the waffle iron. I guess it’s also a sign that I never clean thoroughly enough either.”
“And even after that, Mom was so desperate for help that she put up with us.”
“It’s more that it’s no fun doing this alone. The fun is being together, like we are now.” Later they strung popcorn and cranberries into more chains to loop around the tree and on the mantel. George was quite deft at this part of the work. (It was why he would go on to be such a good dentist: patience and skill.) Lizzie could imagine him and Todd poking at each other with their needles, with much popcorn being eaten and/or spilled, and fresh cranberries rolling across the kitchen floor, waiting to be squashed by sock-clad feet.
On that first visit, when all the chain making and stringing was done, George took Lizzie on a short tour of his past. The bowling alley in West Tulsa, he said, which was ultimately the reason they were together, here, now, at this very moment, went out of business long ago, but they drove to the strip mall where it used to be. “Look—I think that’s the same gaming store where Todd used to skip out on bowling to play Dungeons and Dragons,” he said. “Who’d have thought that it’d still be around?” His high school was closed for vacation, so they couldn’t go in, but Lizzie couldn’t help comparing the spaciousness of the large campus—with its lower, middle, and upper schools spread out over several acres of well-manicured lawn—to the cramped, creaky, and much older building where she’d spent her high school years. They went for a walk along the Arkansas River. It didn’t, Lizzie told George somewhat belligerently, even compare with the Huron. George readily agreed.
“But it’s pretty neat that we both grew up with rivers in our lives, isn’t it?”
All this “we”-ness with George was making Lizzie uncomfortable. She tried to find a neutral subject.
“Your mother’s great.”
“Yes,” George answered immediately, “she is. She thinks you’re pretty wonderful too,” he added.
The voices in Lizzie’s head jumped in quickly, as though they’d been waiting for just this opportunity: “And here I thought George’s mother was a lot smarter than that. If she really knew this kid she wouldn’t like her at all.”
“Really?” Lizzie said, obscurely pleased but wondering if the voices didn’t know better than George. “She doesn’t really know me.”
“C’mon, Lizzie. I know you and I think you’re entirely wonderful. Really.”
Oh, George, Lizzie said to herself. You don’t know me at all. If you did, you would never use the adjective “wonderful” to describe me.