Page 83 of Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon
Ian, bless him, is ready for this question. “Christmas is supposed to be happy,” he says. “The reindeer are pretty. These two elves are smiling and blinky. But this elf fell down, and this reflecting part is a big mess, and the colors are all off. Because even though Christmas is happy, sometimes, if you look close, it’s actually really sad.”
“So, are you gonna tell me about this sweater or what?” asks Dom, touching my shoulder.
“What, this? Well, I can tell you it’s made from one hundred percent,realMuppet fur, and I definitely didn’t get it out of the lost and found.”
He shakes his head, stoic Dom, serious as always. We’re at one of the high-top tables taking a break from dancing.
“Can I tell you a theory I’ve been working on all night?” he asks.
“Well, this should be interesting,” I say, aware that I’m flirting with Dom, and also aware that I’ve missed flirting.
He glances down at my legs. Zoe was right, people have been checking them out all night. I’d sooner do ten luge shots than admit this to my mom, but dressing up for the first time in nearly a year has been nice. Turns out when you hide, no one looks at you, and it’s exciting to be seen again.
“There’s a dress under that thing, I assume, right?” he asks.
“Insightful,” I say. “You must attend a lot of parties.”
He smiles. “Well, I’m guessing it’s a real showstopper.”
I sip whatever this drink is that Zoe brought me as heat rises from beneath my cardigan.
“But then you got here tonight,” he says, “and your showstopper of a dress made you self-conscious, so you grabbed the first thing you could find to cover up. Am I right?”
I shake my head. “Not even close.”
“You sure?”
“This was thefourththing I found,” I say. “There was also a very nice wool mitten.”
His eyes move to my chest. I’ve been neurotically closing and reclosing this stupid sweater every twenty seconds all night, but it’s fallen open now just enough.
“I watch it happen every night at the Embassy,” he says. “Couples come in, and it’s a big deal—like date night. Women put on the nicest thing they’ve got, the thing they claim they never have an occasion to wear. And they look fucking great. But then they cover up the second they sit down. A shawl or a Muppet sweater like this or their date’s jacket. It’s a shame.”
“Maybe you just need to turn the thermostat up over there,” I say. “Ladies, Dom…we get chilly.”
He nods to the window beside us, which is fogged over from the party’s collective heat, and I think,Hello, desire, my old friend. We’re as close now as we were in his wine cellar. This feels closer, though, because that was a lifetime ago.
The kids and Nadine are watchingHome Alone. It’s the scene where Macaulay Culkin is setting up all the booby traps that will eventually terrorize the Wet Bandits.
“What do you think Mr. and Mrs. McCallister did to afford a place like that in the Chicago suburbs?” I ask the group, but everyone just shrugs.
Bella is on the couch, braiding the second half of Nadine’s hair. Ian had already started his initial sketch before Meredith and I got here. He’s on the floor, sitting at the coffee table with his art pad, and I’m squatting beside him. We took maybe a dozen pictures of the neighbor’s decorations, so he’d have different angles to work from.
“The sky’s gonna be tricky,” I tell him.
We’re struggling to pick a marker from the pile scattered on the coffee table. “I know,” he says, pulling his hair.
“You think a night sky is black, but it isn’t really, is it?” I maximize the image on his iPhone for a better look at the yellows and grays.
Meredith, still in her coat, stands between the kitchen and TV room as Harry Styles sniffs her boot. “I don’t mean to alarm anyone,” she says. “But there’s a cage in here with mice in it.”
“Mhm,” says Nadine. “Those’re for you, Mouse Man.”
“Oh, right,” I say. “I’ll get those later.”
“You’ll what?” asks Meredith. “You’llgetthem?”
“He frees our mice in the forest because they can’t live with us anymore,” says Bella. “They really like peanut butter.”
