Winter Solstice (Winter #4)(70)
If Allegra refuses, will Bart leave anyway? Will he say good-bye to this girl, this new love, this person who is rapidly becoming Bart’s best friend on top of everything else?
No. He’ll stay. He won’t want to, but he will stay on Nantucket for Allegra.
Allegra smiles at him. “I feel like my parents will say it’s too soon. They’ll say we barely know each other…”
“It is soon, I realize that,” Bart says.
“But I don’t care!” Allegra says. “I’ll go with you wherever you want. North Carolina, Alaska, Germany, Mars.”
“You will?” Bart says.
“Yes,” Allegra says. “I will.”
Bart drops Allegra off that night, then sits outside her house on Lily Street until he sees the light go off in her bedroom. He is so happy he’s dizzy. Allegra will come with him. He doesn’t have to be alone ever again.
Bart floats up the side steps of the inn until he smells smoke and sees the glowing tip of his mother’s cigarette in the dark.
He can’t wait to tell Mitzi the news. It will make her so happy.
“Mom?” he says.
As he gets closer, he hears Mitzi crying. “We’re losing him,” she says.
MARGARET
This year Margaret is all about Christmastime.
She buys a tree from the Korean deli on the corner. It’s small, but it’s the first tree Margaret has owned since she and Kelley and the kids left the brownstone on East Eighty-Eighth Street.
Of course, one can’t buy only a tree, Margaret realizes, once her doorman helps her get it upstairs. She has to buy a stand. And lights. And ornaments. She goes to Duane Reade but keeps her sunglasses on in the store so as not to be recognized. It’s far worse being recognized now than it ever was when she was working. First of all, when she was working, she rarely ventured out on the street to do everyday errands like this. Second of all, the general population of New York seemed cognizant of the fact that Margaret Quinn was busy and therefore not to be interrupted for photos, political opinion sharing, or reminiscing. Now that Margaret is retired, she has become fair game. When people recognize her, they want to stop and tell her how much they loved her broadcasts, how much she meant to them, how the “new girl” has an annoying lisp. Then they start to talk about Trump, and this is when Margaret always excuses herself.
She gets a tree stand at Duane Reade as well as a box of four hundred white lights. She inspects the boxes of ornaments, but the offerings look sad and cheap. New York is the center of gross consumerism. Surely there must be a store—or many stores—dedicated solely to Christmas ornaments.
It’s Always Christmas in New York, on Mulberry Street down in Little Italy, Google tells her. And the Christmas Cottage, on Seventh Avenue.
The next day at the Christmas Cottage, Margaret fills her basket with ornaments. She and Kelley used to collect ornaments when they traveled, and they added those to the ornaments Kelley inherited from his mother, Frances, in Perrysburg and Margaret’s from her family. They topped the tree with the angel they had bought from the shop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, commemorating the day they met. That’s how one is supposed to acquire ornaments, Margaret thinks: bit by bit, with each ornament telling a story.
But oh well! Whatever ornaments Margaret used to have went with Kelley to Nantucket. And she and Drake need ornaments, so Margaret continues to pick and choose the prettiest, most tasteful ornaments she can find. The story behind all of these ornaments will be the same: These are the ornaments I bought at Christmas Cottage on Seventh Avenue once I retired from CBS and rediscovered Christmas.
That very same afternoon Margaret decides that she is going to string popcorn and cranberries into a garland. She figures out how to do this using Martha Stewart’s website. Martha Stewart is a goddess, Margaret realizes. The breadth and depth of her empire takes one’s breath away.
The garland requires another trip to Duane Reade—for fishing line and a sewing kit—as well as a trip to Gristedes for the popcorn, cranberries, and vegetable oil. Nope, forget the popcorn and oil; Margaret buys two packages of Jiffy Pop instead. She has fond memories of watching the foil dome rise over Melanie Jerrod’s hot plate in the dorm at the University of Michigan.
By the time Drake gets home from the hospital that night, Margaret has made two pans of Jiffy Pop, which when combined with two bags of cranberries, yielded thirty feet of garland. She poked herself with the needle innumerable times, but the garland looks just as it is supposed to. Margaret has Johnny Mathis carols playing, and for supper she has made a pot of cheese fondue! Not only did she carefully melt the Gruyère, Emmenthaler, wine, and kirsch, she also cubed and toasted a baguette and sliced up summer sausage for dipping. The recipe for fondue was also on Martha’s website. It suggested drinking a crisp Riesling, as the dryness of the wine offsets the richness of the fondue.
“Look!” Margaret says as she hands Drake a chilled glass of Riesling. “I made garland. And I bought ornaments! We can decorate the tree, then eat.”
“I can’t believe this,” Drake says. “You were so productive today.”
“Wasn’t I?” Margaret says. It’s astonishing how much one can accomplish when one doesn’t have to work. And Margaret didn’t check the news all day, not even once.