Flying Solo(24)

Since she hadn’t ever opened the box, with its picture of a heart-shaped waffle, she pasted a big label right on the outside, wrote the office address on it, and moved it to the pile she was planning to take to the post office. It joined several checks she would be mailing to people who had sent money, a few other boxes (including a “popcorn concierge” she had looked up online and discovered cost sixty dollars for five “varietals”), and all of the apology cards she would send to the people on Chris’s list, whose gifts he was returning.

Surrounded by boxes and envelopes, with labels and scraps of tape sticking to her socks, surveying the evidence of her mistakes, Laurie pulled her phone out of her pocket and texted June. Damn, there is so much stuff here, Junie. Why did we invite so many people? I should have just married him.

Next time just ask for money, came the response.

Next time LOL, she typed back.

Do you need to hop on the phone?

June was in grad school, and she always had a lot of work to do whenever she wasn’t up to her neck in her kids. No, keep studying, she answered. Just tell me that it’s impossible that there are an infinite number of gifts in this dining room, even though it seems like there are.

Definitely mathematically impossible. I should know, because grad school!

Grad school for history!

Still counts. I’m officially smart.

Laurie sent back three hearts and returned her attention to the rest of the boxes. She picked up a squared-off package with a Florida address on it that she was fairly confident was from a former colleague of her father’s. She thought it might be a candy dish, or maybe a ceramic animal or something. She ripped off the brown paper and found a plain white cardboard box. Inside, a heavy piece of crystal about the size of a grapefruit sat on a dark wooden stand. On the ball, it said, CHRIS & LAURIE, 8-28-21, HERE’S TO THE FUTURE.

“Oh,” she muttered. “It’s a crystal ball.” This was custom. It couldn’t be returned to the store. Someone had told her that she didn’t have to return items that were personalized, since they’d have no value, but someone else had told her that everything had to go back, no matter what. She would have immediately sent it back, except that in this moment, the idea that someone she didn’t know had sent her a large and heavy glass object for which they simply expected her to find room in her house, despite the fact that she didn’t even know who they were, rankled. Intellectually, she knew it was kind, but it felt entitled, as if a near-stranger were claiming a piece of her mantel, her cupboard, her coffee table. Did they really think she would want this, or did they somehow relish playing a role in this little ritual in which people ceremonially force unwanted bric-a-brac on one another as a way of getting revenge for having to sit through an unsatisfying meal in company they did not choose? Did it matter that now they would not have to sit through the meal after all?

She set the crystal ball on the floor. Her hand crept over to the hammer she’d used earlier to rehang her picture of Mount Katahdin where Chris had put his Foo Fighters poster during the months he’d lived there. She held the hammer, moved it back and forth from one hand to the other, tapped the carpeted floor very gently with the head of it. The mental picture of the ball shattering, the glass flying, the explosive crash sounding—it was interrupted only by the thought that she should probably put on safety goggles. Did she have any safety goggles? Were there any with the tools downstairs? Did she still have her swim goggles?

Just then, the phone rang. She put the hammer down to pick it up. “Hi, Dot.”

Dot still had a landline in her kitchen, and Laurie could hear her puttering around, turning the faucet on and off, probably pouring some water into the little flowering plants on the windowsill. “Hello, honeybun. I’m just calling to yoo-hoo at you, I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Of course not. I’m just sending back wedding presents.”

“Mm, how’s that going?”

“Boring and painful, so, a typical Friday night.”

Dot laughed. “You know, it’s just awful that after everything else, now you’ve got to go to the post office. I can’t stand the post office. They’re always out of parking and there’s always someone in front of me with an armload of packages that have to be insured. One of them told me she sells buttons on eBay. She insures the buttons. Can you imagine?”

“They must be pretty good buttons.” Laurie leaned back against the wall. “How are you?”

“Not bad for ninety-three,” she said—her usual answer. “I saw the DiCaprio movie. Where he’s that cat burglar.”

“Oh, how was that?”

“It was very boring,” Dot said. “I know he’s an artist now, but I really liked him better when he was going down with the ship.” Laurie could hear her pouring wine. “How are the boys?” Laurie was the official communicator for all her siblings. The boys weren’t big on the phone.

“Patrick got promoted at the hospital. He’s the head of something now, but I forget what. I think Scott’s paternity leave is just about up—did he send you the pictures of Lilac in the Batman pajamas?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, you should definitely have those, so I’ll send them after we hang up. Joey won some kind of a softball tournament with his team at work. And Ryan is starting a run in a play. Off-Broadway, something about the Cuban Missile Crisis. He and Lisa just got a bigger apartment; she’s making the costumes for that Our Town revival.”