The Accidentals(60)

“It looks really good,” I agree, plopping down next to Frederick.

“Thank you!” Alice beams. “This is just what I wanted for Christmas. All of us here together.” She hands me a piece of pie. “Now look at this.” She goes over to the mantel and opens a bag. She pulls out a stack of red velvet Christmas stockings. There are names appliquéd to each one. A minute later they hang in a row: FRANK and then ALICE and FREDERICK and RACHEL.

Mine is a brighter red than the other three, which have faded gently over the years.

“Wow,” I say. “Thank you.” My face feels hot. Alice is not going to let me ignore Christmas the way I’d brushed past the Thanksgiving holiday.

I wish Frederick and I were eating takeout food in L.A. right now, with no tree and no stockings. Somewhere in those boxes I’d put into storage from our Orlando house is another stocking with my name on it. And also one that says “Jenny.”

She’s not here to make cocoa for me on Christmas Eve, or to hide lip gloss in my stocking.

She’s not here at all, and she never will be again.

I hate Christmas now. But Alice is trying so hard that I’m going to have to pretend.

“I pulled out some things to show you,” Alice goes on, dragging a wooden chest across the rug. “I’ll bet you’ve never seen baby pictures of Frederick.”

My father rolls his eyes. “Time to break out the scotch, Dad?”

“Good a time as any.” Grandpa Frank sets his empty pie plate down and crosses the room to a set of crystal decanters.

I kneel in front of the chest, which Alice opens. “Let’s see…” She hands me an album. “Try this one. It’s my Christmas book.”

I open the cover and discover that Alice was a devoted scrapbooker well before it was cool. There are little snippets of wrapping paper, and programs from church services. “Christmas 1980,” the first page announces. And there’s a photo of two-year-old Frederick holding a wrapped gift and staring up at the camera. “Aw. What a chub you were.”

“He was a chunky little thing until puberty,” Frank says, handing a glass of smoky brown liquid to Frederick. "Then he shot up a foot and the girls started swarming like moths.”

Frederick takes a sip of his scotch and unfurls his father’s newspaper. I flip the pages of the book, watching Frederick evolve from a toddler into a school boy. His smile is recognizable even from his kindergarten days. The first picture of him with a guitar is from 1989.

Alice roots through the chest. “I saved some other things,” she says quietly. She draws out a silver baby rattle, tarnished with age. It chimes when I shake it. There are three die-cast metal cars, their paint chipped. “I thought a grandchild might use them some day,” Alice says, her voice heavy.

I roll a tiny Camaro across my palm and say nothing. On the sofa, Frederick’s newspaper is raised like a shield. When I put the toys back in the box, my eye is drawn to the words “Wildcats 1995” stamped in gold on the spine of a book. I pull out my father’s high school yearbook.

Alice chuckles. “It was a bad-hair stage,” she says. “You really do have to see that.”

I bring the yearbook back to the sofa and open it up to the senior section. “Oh my God,” I howl. Alice is right about the hair. Frederick had rock-band hair—big and long. Eddie Van Halen hair. “I wonder how much People would pay me for this?” I tease.

“I’ll kill you dead,” Frederick says from behind his paper fortress.

I nudge him with the book. “I’m saving this as blackmail. So stay on my good side.” It’s easier to ignore the tightness in my chest when I’m teasing him.





The week wears on, tugging at intervals between tension and Christmas cheer. Alice and Frederick are both unfailingly nice to me, but their discomfort with each other is palpable. My father begins to resemble a caged animal. He avoids Alice, pacing the living room while she cooks, or shutting the door to his old bedroom to make calls. Sometimes I hear the strains of his guitar from behind the door.

“Would it kill you to spend time with me?” my grandmother asks on Christmas Eve.

“Would it kill you to stop starting sentences like that?” he counters, ducking into the refrigerator to get a beer. Then he goes into the den to watch the football game with his father.

I’m teasing icing onto a gingerbread cookie with a toothpick when Frederick comes back to put his bottle in the recycling bin. “Hey.” I stop him. “I made one for you.”

He puts a hand on my hair. “You know it makes your grandmother real happy that you do this stuff with her.” His voice is like gravel.

“Here,” I say, lifting the cookie I’d set aside. “Check out his T-shirt.” I place it in Frederick’s hand.

He lets out a bark of laughter. “I never saw a gingerbread man wear an AC/DC shirt before. You got the lightning bolt and everything.” Then he gives me a kiss on the head. “Thank you, kid. Would it be rude to eat it?”

I shake my head. “Do your worst.”

“Frank?” Alice calls to my grandfather from the other room. “Cathy is here. Can you help me with the trays?”

I get up to see if they need help. A white van has pulled into the driveway, Cathy’s Catering painted on its side.