He wanted to walk her back home, but she told him that would be suicidal.
‘Come see me tomorrow,’ he said.
‘I can’t, it’s Christmas.’
‘The next day, then.’
‘The next day,’ she said.
‘And the day after that.’
She laughed. ‘I don’t think your mom would like that. I don’t think she likes me.’
‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘Come.’
Eleanor was climbing the front steps when she heard him whispering her name. She turned back, but she couldn’t see him in the shadows.
‘Merry Christmas,’ he said.
She smiled, but didn’t answer.
CHAPTER 33
Eleanor
Eleanor slept until noon on Christmas Day. Until her mom finally came in and told her to wake up.
‘Are you okay?’ her mom asked.
‘I’m asleep.’
‘You look like you’re getting a cold.’
‘Does that mean I can go back to sleep?’
‘I guess so. Look, Eleanor …’ her mother stepped away from the door, and her voice dropped. ‘I’m going to talk to Richie about this summer. I think I can get him to change his mind about that camp.’
Eleanor opened her eyes. ‘No. No, I don’t want to go.’
‘But I thought you’d jump at the chance to get out of here.’
‘No,’ Eleanor said, ‘I don’t want to have to leave everybody … again.’ Saying it made her feel like one hundred percent jerk, but she’d say anything to spend the summer with Park. (And she wasn’t even going to tell herself that he’d probably be sick of her by then.) ‘I want to stay home,’ she said.
Her mom nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘then I won’t mention it. But if you change your mind
…’
‘I won’t,’ Eleanor said.
Her mom left the room, and Eleanor pretended to go back to sleep.
Park
He slept until noon on Christmas Day, until Josh came in and sprayed him with one of their mom’s salon water bottles.
‘Dad says that if you don’t get up, he’s going to let me have all your presents.’
Park beat Josh back with a pillow.
Everybody else was waiting for him, and the whole house smelled like turkey. His grandma wanted him to open her present first – a new
‘Kiss Me, I’m Irish’ T-shirt. A size bigger than last year’s, which meant it would be a size too big.
His parents gave him a fifty-dollar gift certificate to Drastic Plastic, the punk-rock record store downtown. (Park was surprised that they’d think of that. And he was surprised that DP sold gift certificates. Not very punk.) He also got two black sweaters he might actually wear, some Avon cologne in a bottle shaped like an electric guitar, and an empty key ring –
which his dad made sure everybody noticed.
Park’s sixteenth birthday had come and gone, and he didn’t even care anymore about getting his license and driving himself to school. He wasn’t going to give up his only guaranteed time with Eleanor.
She’d already told him that as awesome as last night was – and they both agreed it was awesome – she couldn’t risk sneaking out again.
‘Any one of my siblings could have woken up, they still could, and they would definitely tell on me. They have very confused allegiances.’
‘But if you’re quiet …’
That’s when she’d told him that, most nights, she shared a room with all of her brothers and sisters. All of them. A room about the size of his, she said, ‘minus the waterbed.’
They were sitting against the back door of the school, in a little alcove where no one would see them unless they were really looking, and where the snow didn’t fall directly on their faces. They sat next to each other, facing each other, holding hands.
There was nothing between them now. Nothing stupid and selfish just taking up space.
‘So you have two brothers and two sisters?’
‘Three brothers, one sister.’
‘What are their names?’
‘Why?’
‘I’m just curious,’ he said. ‘Is it classified?’
She sighed. ‘Ben, Maisie …’
‘Maisie?’
‘Yeah. Then Mouse – Jeremiah. He’s five.
Then the baby. Little Richie.’
Park laughed. ‘You call him “Little Richie”?’
‘Well, his dad is Big Richie, not that he’s very big either …’
‘I know, but like Little Richard? “Tutti-Frutti”?’
‘Oh my God, I never thought of that. Why haven’t I ever thought of that?’
He pulled her hands to his chest. He still hadn’t managed to touch Eleanor anywhere below the chin or above the elbow. He didn’t think she’d necessarily stop him if he tried, but what if she did? That’d be awful. Anyway, her hands and her face were excellent.
‘Do you guys get along?’
‘Sometimes … They’re all crazy.’
‘How can a five-year-old be crazy?’
‘Oh my God, Mouse? He’s the craziest of them all. He’s always got a hammer or a jackrab-bit or something stuck in his back pocket, and he refuses to wear a shirt.’
Park laughed. ‘How is Maisie crazy?’
‘Well, she’s mean. For starters. And she fights like a street person. Like, take-off-your-earrings fights.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Eight. No, nine.’
‘What about Ben?’
‘Ben …’ She looked away. ‘You’ve seen Ben. He’s almost Josh’s age. He needs a haircut.’
‘Does Richie hate them, too?’
Eleanor pushed Park’s hands forward. ‘Why do you want to talk about this?’
He pushed back. ‘ Because. It’s your life. Because I’m interested. It’s like you’ve got all these weird barriers set up, like you only want me to have access to this tiny part of you …’
‘Yes,’ she said, crossing her arms. ‘Barriers.
Caution tape. I’m doing you a favor.’
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘I can handle it.’ He put his thumb between her eyebrows and tried to smooth out the frown. ‘This whole stupid fight was about keeping secrets.’
‘Keeping secrets about your demonic ex-girlfriend. I don’t have any demonic ex-anythings.’
‘Does Richie hate your brothers and sister, too?’
‘Stop saying his name.’ She was whispering.
‘I’m sorry.’ Park whispered back.
‘He hates everybody, I think.’
‘Not your mom.’
‘Especially her.’
‘Is he mean to her?’
Eleanor rolled her eyes and wiped her cheek with her sweater sleeve. ‘Uh. Yeah.’
Park took her hands again. ‘Why doesn’t she leave?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think she can …
I don’t think there’s enough of her left.’
‘Is she scared of him?’ he asked.
‘Yeah …’
‘Are you scared of him?’
‘Me?’
‘I know you’re scared of getting kicked out, but are you scared of him?’
‘No.’ She lifted up her chin. ‘No … I just have to lay low, you know? Like as long as I stay out of his way, I’m fine. I just have to be invisible.’
Park smiled.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘You. Invisible.’
She smiled. He let go of her hands and held her face. Her cheeks were cold, and her eyes were fathomless in the dark.
She was all he could see.
Eventually it was too cold to stay out there. Even the insides of their mouths were freezing.
Eleanor
Richie said Eleanor had to come out of her room for Christmas dinner. Fine. She really was getting a cold, so at least it didn’t seem like she’d been faking it all day.
Dinner was awesome. Her mom could really cook when she had actual food to work with. (Something other than legumes.)
They had turkey with stuffing, and mashed potatoes swimming with dill and butter. For dessert there was rice pudding and pepper cookies, which her mom only ever made on Christmas.
At least that had been the rule back when her mom used to make all kinds of cookies, all year long. The little kids didn’t know what they were missing now. When Eleanor and Ben were little, their mom baked constantly. There were always fresh cookies in the kitchen when Eleanor got home from school. And real breakfast every morning … Eggs and bacon, or pancakes and sausage, or oatmeal with cream and brown sugar.
Eleanor used to think that that was why she was so fat. But look at her now, she was starving all the time, and she was still enormous.
They all tore into Christmas dinner like it was their last meal, which it practically was, at least for a while. Ben ate both of the turkey legs, and Mouse ate an entire plate of mashed potatoes.
Richie had been drinking all day again, so he was all kinds of festive at dinner – laughing too much and too loud. But you couldn’t enjoy the fact that he was in a good mood, because it was the kind of good mood that was just on the edge of a bad one. They were all waiting for him to cross over …
Which he did, as soon as he realized there was no pumpkin pie.
‘What the f**k is this?’ he said, flicking his spoon in the ris ala mande.
‘It’s rice pudding,’ Ben said, stupid with turkey.
‘I know it’s pudding,’ Richie said. ‘Where’s the pumpkin pie, Sabrina?’ he shouted into the kitchen. ‘I told you to make a real Christmas dinner. I gave you money for a real Christmas dinner.’
Her mother stood in the doorway to the kitchen. She still hadn’t sat down to eat. ‘It’s …’
It’s a traditional Danish Christmas dessert, Eleanor thought. My grandmother made it, and her grandmother made it, and it’s better than pumpkin pie. It’s special.
‘It’s … just that I forgot to buy pumpkin,’ her mother said.
‘How could you forget the f**king pumpkin on Christmas,’ Richie said, hurling the stainless-steel bowl of rice pudding. It hit the wall near her mother and sprayed weepy chunks everywhere.
Everyone but Richie stayed still.
He stood up unsteadily from his chair. ‘I’m going to go buy some pumpkin pie … so this family can have a real f**king Christmas dinner.’
He walked to the back door.
As soon as they heard his truck tear out, Eleanor’s mom picked up the bowl with what was left of the rice pudding, then skimmed the top off the pile of pudding on the floor.
‘Who wants cherry sauce?’ she said.
They all did.
Eleanor cleaned up the rest of the pudding, and Ben turned on the TV. They watched The Grinch and Frosty the Snowman, and A Christmas Carol.
Their mom even sat down to watch with them.
Eleanor couldn’t help but think that if the Ghost of Christmas Past showed up, he’d be disgusted with their whole situation. But Eleanor felt full and happy when she fell asleep.
CHAPTER 34
Eleanor
Park’s mom didn’t seem surprised to see Eleanor the next day. He must have warned them she was coming.
‘Eleanor,’ his mom said extra nicely, ‘Merry Christmas, come in.’
When Eleanor walked into the living room, Park had just gotten out of the shower, which was embarrassing for some reason. His hair was wet and his T-shirt was kind of sticking to him. He was really happy to see her. That was obvious.
(And nice.)
She didn’t know what to do with his present, so when he walked over to her, she shoved it at him. He smiled, surprised. ‘This is for me?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s …’ She couldn’t think of anything funny to say. ‘Yeah, it’s for you.’
‘You didn’t have to get me anything.’
‘I didn’t. Really.’
‘Can I open it?’
She still couldn’t think of anything funny, so she nodded. At least his family was in the kitchen, so nobody was watching them.
The present was wrapped in stationery.
Eleanor’s favorite stationery, watercolor paintings of fairies and flowers.
Park peeled off the paper carefully and looked at the book. It was The Catcher in the Rye. A really old edition. Eleanor had decided to leave the dust jacket on because it was neat-looking, even though it still had a thrift-shop price scrawled on the front with grease pencil.
‘I know it’s pretentious,’ she said. ‘I was going to give you Watership Down, but that’s about rabbits, and not everybody wants to read about rabbits …’
He looked at the book, smiling. For a terrible second, she thought he was going to open the front cover. And she really didn’t want him to read what she’d written. (Not while she was standing right there.)
‘Is this your book?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, but I’ve already read it.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, grinning at her. When he was really happy, his eyes disappeared into his cheeks. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said, looking down.
‘Just don’t kill John Lennon or anything.’
‘Come here,’ he said, pulling on the front of her jacket.
She followed him to his room but stopped at the door like there was an invisible fence. Park set the book on his bed, then grabbed two small boxes off a shelf. They were both wrapped in Christmas paper with big red bows.
He came and stood in the doorway with her; she leaned back against the jamb.
‘This one is from my mom,’ he said, holding up a box. ‘It’s perfume. Please don’t wear it.’ His eyes flicked down for a second, then back up at her. ‘This one is from me.’
‘You didn’t have to get me a present,’ she said.