Commonwealth(92)

“Is she having a party for us?” Amit asked from the backseat. At their grandmother’s house anything was possible. There were only a few parking spots left down at the end of the driveway, and so they wrestled their bags from the back and made their way through the snow.

“Merry Christmas!” Beverly said when she threw the door open. She hugged Amit first, then Ravi, then hugged them both together, each in one arm. Beverly’s seventy-eight could rival anyone else’s sixty-five. She had stayed slim and blond while having the sense to never push things too far. A life spent as a great beauty was still clearly in evidence. Behind her the house was full and overflowing, lights and pine and glasses of champagne. The Christmas tree in the living room brushed the ceiling with its highest branches and seemed to have been encrusted with diamonds and pink sapphires. Somewhere on the other side of the house someone was playing the piano. Women were laughing.

“You didn’t tell us you were having a party,” Franny said.

“We always have a Christmas Eve party,” Beverly said. She was wearing a smart red dress, three ropes of pearls. “Now would you please come in the house and not stand on the porch like a bunch of Jehovah’s Witnesses?”

Kumar and Franny pulled in their luggage and brushed the snow off their shoulders and hair. At least Kumar was wearing a suit. They had picked him up from the office on the way to the airport. But Franny and the boys looked like nothing but the disheveled travelers they were. The boys had seen guests walking around with plates heaped with food and so they dropped their bags and headed for the dining room to find the buffet. The boys were always starving.

“It isn’t Christmas Eve,” Franny said.

“Matthew’s family is going skiing in Vail for Christmas so I moved the party up. It was easier for everyone this way. Really, I think I’ll always have it on the twenty-second.”

“But you didn’t tell us.”

Kumar leaned in and kissed Beverly on the cheek. “You look beautiful,” he said, changing the subject.

“Franny!” A heavyset man past middle age wearing a red houndstooth button-up vest came and swept her up in too zealous a hug, shaking her back and forth while making growling sounds. “How’s my favorite sister?”

“That’s only because Caroline isn’t here,” Beverly said. “You should see the way he makes over Caroline.”

“Caroline gives me free legal advice,” Pete said.

“If you get sued over the holidays I’d be happy to help,” Kumar said.

Pete turned and looked at Kumar, trying to place him. His face lit up with pleasure when finally he was able to put it all together. “That’s right,” he said to Franny. “I forgot he was a lawyer too.”

“Merry Christmas, Pete,” Franny said. Surely she would burst into tears at some point in the evening. It was only a question of how long she could hold off.

“Pete and his family are going to New York to see Katie and the new baby,” Beverly said. “Did I tell you Katie had her baby?”

“Christmas in New York.” Pete smiled and his teeth made Franny think of ivory, like elephant’s tusks carved down to the size of human teeth. He was drinking eggnog from a small crystal cup. “Can you imagine that? Sure you can. You’re a city girl. Are you still in Chicago?”

“Let them go upstairs and settle in,” Beverly said to Pete. “They’ll be back in a minute. They just got off the plane.”

But then Jack Dine was there, wearing a needlepoint vest, a leaping stag rendered convincingly in small stitches. Jack had always been such a big man, tall and broad, though now he seemed no larger than his wife. “Who’s the pretty girl?” he asked, pointing to Franny.

Beverly put her arm around her husband. “Jack, this is Franny, my Franny. You remember.”

“She looks like you,” Jack said.

“And Kumar. Do you remember him?”

“He can get the bags,” Jack said, waving him away. “Go on now. Take them upstairs.”

Kumar smiled, though it would be hard to say how. He was a generous man, and the boys weren’t there to bear witness.

“Jack,” Franny said, putting her hand on her stepfather’s trembling forearm. “Kumar’s my husband.”

But Kumar was not about to miss his exit. He would take what was available. “Sir,” he said and nodded his head. Somehow, in an impossible feat of balance and strength, he managed to scoop all of it up. He looped the boys’ duffels across his chest.

“Go through the kitchen,” Jack said when Kumar had taken a single step in the direction of the sweeping staircase. The luggage was just about to overtake him, and still he turned and took the bags to the kitchen. There was a narrow back staircase that the servants had used when there were servants.

“They think they can go right through the middle of your party,” Jack said to Franny, his eyes tracking Kumar’s back. “You’ve got to watch all the time.”

“That was my husband,” Franny said. Was she choking? She had the strangest feeling in her throat.

Jack patted her hand. “Tell me what I can get the pretty lady to drink.”

“I’m fine, Jack.” Franny had thought that she had won the toss. When she heard the quarter come down on Caroline’s table, when Caroline told her to go and spend Christmas in Virginia, she thought she had gotten the better deal. Now Franny found that she was longing for her dying father, her father who was nearly dead.