Page 44 of Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon
“I’m all right. Grace, you’re cold. Don’t you have a—?”
“It’s inside,” I say.
“You should go back. You’re gonna get pneumonia.”
“That’s not how pneumonia works,” I say. “I just wanted to thank you for doing the food. Everyone’s gonna love it.”
Dom runs his hand through his hair. “Oh, yeah, no problem.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, though,” I say. “I know we haven’t really talked much since…”
“Traditions are important, Gracey.” He nods at the gyro place two doors over from Edgar Allan’s, which is fully decorated for the holidays. “ ’Tis the season, right?”
Two weeks before Tim died, Dom came to our house with a bottle of chianti. He was there to hang out and watch the Ravens, but really he was there to say goodbye. I think about that now: Dom’s blue eyes glistening as he left.
Dom looks over at the Italian Embassy. “I gotta get back,” he says. “Five more minutes and those morons’ll fuck up my risotto. Good to see you, though.”
“Yeah, you, too.”
“What do you think Mom and Dad evenwantfor Christmas?” asks Cal.
I tell him I have no idea. “They’re at an age where they don’t wantthings,” I say.
We’re in Cal’s truck again. Kelsey’s in her car seat. We’re listening to a channel on Sirius XM called Kidz Bop where children sing pop songs. It’s like the soundtrack to a nightmare, but Kelsey is totally into it.
“I saw online that you can get people a snack-of-the-month subscription,” Cal says. “Like every month you’ll get gourmet pretzels or, like, dehydrated fruit or something. Maybe that?”
He veers around someone who’s making an unbelievably illegal left turn.
“I can’t tell if that’s a great idea or literally the worst idea,” I say.
“Same,” he says. “Society needs to normalize adults giving their parents cash for Christmas. Like, ‘Love you, Mom and Dad. Here’s a hundred-and-fifty bucks.’ ”
Cal called this morning and invited me to go Christmas shopping. In years past, we’d do this sort of thing online and Venmo each other,but he insisted that I need to go places like a functioning member of society might.
“Oh, by the way,” I say. “I forgot to mention this when we were mousetrap shopping. But I went by the row house the other night.”
Cal looks at me, then back at the road. “Whoa. Really? How was it? Did you go in?”
“No,” I say. “I just stood outside, then left. It was okay. Sad.”
He swats my thigh. “That’s not nothing, man. That’s progress. What made you go?”
I look out the window and tell him that I don’t know, but that’s not true.
I thought about Grace this morning while I was brushing my teeth, then again when I was walking around my neighborhood, because I think she’d get a kick out of the dancing Santa. I think about Brynn all the time, like a TV that I can’t turn off. The few times I’ve been with Grace, though—watching movies and running around Lake Roland Park—I’ve at least been able to turn the volume down. She’s like a little vacation from being sad.
“Was your neighbor there?” Cal asks. “You know, the old guy?”
“Mr. Ross? Yeah.”
“He spies on me whenever I check on the place,” says Cal. “Bet he’s got bodies over there, like, buried under the floorboards.”
“His shovel victims,” I say, and Cal smiles at myHome Alonereference.
We pull into a sprawling new retail space that I only kind of knew was here. Baltimore is an eclectic mix of historically significant hundred-year-old buildings and brand-new shopping plazas. This place, a few miles from my apartment, is a classy version of the latter, with a Whole Foods, some restaurants, and a ton of boutique shops.
We park and get out of the truck, and I bear witness to the wrangling required to get Kelsey into her BabyBjörn.
