New Year's Eve (18 page)

Beth Rose was grinning at him. Such a wide friendly grin that he got control back and said, “Actually Lee and Kip do boring things. They make kind of a boring couple, if you ask me. What I want to do is go for a hot-air balloon ride. It costs a fortune. You want to split it with me? They leave real early Saturday or Sunday mornings and you ride up over the countryside. Do you have a camera? I don't have a good one. And we need lots of color film.”

Beth's grin faded.

He had done it all perfectly: an exciting first date, lovely timing, lovely thought. Except Beth Rose was terrified of heights. If it had been Gary asking her, she would have obeyed his suggestion: done something she simply hated because she could not risk offending Gary.

“George,” she said, “I've never heard of anything more romantic or exciting. Except that heights scare me. They really do. I could stay on the ground and watch you go up, I think, but I couldn't go with you.”

“Oh, gosh,” George said, “well, we want to do something we both want to do. But that was my only idea. What's your idea? What do you want to do?”

I've found him, Beth Rose thought. Somebody who won't drag me around.

Christopher looked at Molly's dress, with its eternally kissing couple, their tube-like lips stretched across Molly's chest. “It's obscene,” he said. “Like you.”

She glared at him. “I don't care what your opinion is, I hate those girls, and they're going to get it now.”

“I'll stop it I'll get the drugs out of their purses. I'll tell the police what you did.”

“Christopher, use your pea-sized brain. You're the one who was thrown out of college for drugs, booze, and petty thievery. You hold those drugs in your big fat football player's hand and they'll arrest you, dummy. You try to take Beth's purse, or Anne's, or Kip's, and their boyfriends will jump you. With your record, Christopher? You think the police will listen to some little tale that your girlfriend—the one you bought the flowers for, and took to a New Year's Eve dance, and all that—did it? Uh-uh, Chrissie. They'll believe me, not you. They always believe me in the end. I'm good at this kind of thing. And I'll say whatever is best for me, Chrissie. And what's best for me won't be best for you, Chrissie. You think about it, Chrissie. You want a real jail? You want a real problem? You just interfere in this, honey. Then you'll see.”

Lee just smiled. He made a circular gesture with his free hand, like a band director, bringing Anne and Con together on the downbeat. Then even his hand lost interest, and he smoothed Jamie's hair and shifted Jamie's weight a little. Anne saw herself suddenly as a chore: a pretty elegant thing Lee had picked up without intending to. He'd kept Anne because he didn't know how to throw her away.

For all the sweet nothings I said to Con, she thought, my ego depended on hurting Lee. I am sick and twisted. The nice boy, Lee, I was planning to hurt … the boy who's hurt me so much, Con, I forgive in a heartbeat.

Con, relieved by Lee's response, was filling the awkwardness by talking about Gwynnie's party, and seeing Gwynnie's house.

The kids shouted the minutes to midnight.

Anne's emotions were always near the surface. Tears rose faster than she could deal with. She unsnapped her tiny purse to get a Kleenex out. An envelope fluttered to the floor.

Jamie woke up when a noisemaker went off near his ears.

He spotted the falling envelope and jumped off Lee's lap to get it.

“Does refusing to marry me have something to do with Christopher?” said Matt.

“Christopher?” Emily repeated.

“Six months ago you had to be rescued from his evil clutches. Now you're smiling at him and wishing him a Happy New Year?”

“Oh, Matt, honestly. Christopher is less than nothing to me. I'm wishing everybody a Happy New Year. Everybody deserves one. You're the only person I'm thinking of.”

He wanted to believe her.

She said, “If I get married because I'm still running away from home, that's not good enough.”

“You'd be getting married because I want to give you a home. And that is good enough.”

“What if we had fights, Matt?”

“We'd make up.”

“What if we ran out of money?”

“We'd be more thrifty.”

“What if I had a baby?”

“We'd name it Little Emily.”

She began crying then, and they danced together, pressed up so close they squashed each other with their hugs. They did not pick up their feet, but merely shifted their weight, swaying, crying: Matt in her hair, Emily on his jacket.

“Okay,” he whispered at last, “you're right. I know you are. My mother and father and grandfather will be very glad.”

“I'm not glad,” Emily said. “I'm terribly, terribly sorry. I want you to ask me again next year, and the year after that and the year after that and the year after that, and then we'll have finished college and I'll say yes.”

“You mean I have to go through this four more times?”

“It'll build your character.”

“The ring will have mildew by the time you put it on.”

“Diamonds don't mildew.”

They swayed even less: they no longer heard the music.

“I love you, Matt.”

“Oh, M&M, I love you, too.”

She closed her eyes, so tired she thought she might never be able to lift her eyelids again, and somebody said, “Emily? Matt? May I break in?”

Familiar voice. How could anybody be so thoughtless as to break in on them now? Any fool could see they were inseparable. Emily sighed and forced her eyes open.

It was her father.

C
HRISTOPHER WANTED TO THROW
Molly off the top floor. Listen to her splat. At the very least shake her till her bones rattled.

He thought, If I do anything—they'll know I know.

And with my past …

And Molly's …

But if he didn't do anything … then there was no point in thinking about a New Year at all. Because he really was scum. And Emily would have been right to jump out of the car and run away from him last summer.

Molly laughed and laughed.

A pleasure to think of the girls who would be in trouble, but even more pleasure seeing him helpless. The only thing in his favor was time.

It was now just seconds before midnight.

The countdown had begun.

“Thirty-eight!” screamed five hundred throats. “Thirty-seven! Thirty-six! Thirty-five!”

He could see Anne. She and Con were next to Lee, and behind Lee was Kip with the three little boys.

Anne reached for her purse.

No, no! thought Christopher. Don't find it!

He shoved two couples out of his way. He didn't see one of the boys stagger into the wall, and hurt his hand. Christopher didn't bother to thread his way through the crowd. It was like football: dancers between him and the goal.

A little white thing fell out of Anne's purse. She didn't see it.

Oh, good, Christopher thought, I'll just pick it up and—

And little Jamie got there first.

Have to get it before Jamie shows it around! he thought. Can't have any doubt cast on Anne, can't let this thing begin at all, but especially not with her, not with all she's been through!

He could not believe how many kids there were at this dance, and all of them now packed tight so they could see the clock, and shout the countdown together. He had to shove, he lost sight of the little boys, but he could see Gwynnie, still parading on top of the couch.

He emerged between two couples he'd never seen before, grabbed Jamie's arm and wrenched the little boy's fingers apart. Yes, the packet was unquestionably what Molly had expected to incriminate Anne.

Jamie said, “That's mine! I found it first! Who are you?”

Christopher didn't want it either. It had to vanish, no questions asked.

Christopher turned and snaked through the dancers.

It was midnight.

“Happy New Year!” came the screams.

“Happy New Year!”

“Happy New Year!”

Arms came up, glasses clinked, screams ricocheted through the air. Couples linked arms, and swayed, and kissed, and created impenetrable fences of themselves as they sang and embraced. Christopher knew the meaning of the phrase “couldn't hear myself think.” His head was empty except for the chaos and screaming that entered his ears.

“Happy New Year!” A girl hugged him, and a second girl kissed him.

Oh yeah, it'll be happy, all right, he thought. Except for those of us going downtown for charges of pushing drugs.

This was like a football game: fighting past linebackers to reach the goal. Christopher put twenty couples between him and the yelling Elliotts, and dropped the packet to the floor, grinding it under his shoe in the dark. Nobody was going to stoop down to pick up a filthy little crushed piece of paper. The cleanup crew at dawn would just sweep it up with the confetti that was cascading down like snow.

One safe. Two to go.

Well, he wouldn't have far to go to find Kip.

She was chasing him.

People didn't attack her little brother and get away with it.

People hugged and screamed. They exchanged Happy New Years with strangers. But not Kip. She was not happy at all. “And just what was that all about?” Kip screamed at the top of her lungs. She grabbed his jacket so hard he thought it would rip. “You outweigh my little brother by two hundred pounds! What did you take away from him? He says it was in Anne's purse! What did you steal?”

“I was just playing games, Kip, it was just a doughnut.”

Kip moved into her attack stance. Hands on hips, head thrown back, brown hair almost bristling, she yelled, “Don't you try to con me, Christopher Vann. It was no doughnut. You tell me what you were doing or I'm calling the police.”

But it was not necessary to call the police.

They stood in the door.

Matt did not stop holding Emily.

She did not stop holding him.

“Daddy?”

He had dressed up. He was wearing a tuxedo, too, and a black cummerbund and a bright scarlet bowtie. He looked better than he had in years: shaved, bright-eyed, smelling of woodsy cologne. She had not seen him in weeks.

He said, “I was watching New Year's Eve in New York City on the television. All those people outside waiting for the Big Apple to drop.”

She and Matt were holding each other up.

He said, “I've been a rotten father to you, Em. I didn't used to be. When you were a little girl, I was a great dad. But—uh—times got hard, and I didn't get tough with them. I took it out on you. And Em—I can't start another year with my little girl mad at me. I came to say I'm sorry.”

And somehow she was hugging him then, instead of Matt, and sobbing against his jacket this time, and his hands were patting her roughly, and his tears falling in her hair.

He said, “Your mother and I were terrible to you. We should have taken it out on each other, not you. You had nothing to do with it. But you were there. I'm sorry, honey.”

“It's okay, Daddy. It really is.” She pulled away from him then and put her arm back around Matt. She and Matt faced him—a matched pair—and he the outsider.

For Matt it was peace. She knew she could count on Matt at any time, in any situation.

For Mr. Edmundson it was sadness. He was forgiven but not wanted. She had found a boy—a mere teenager—who was more to her than her own father. He said, “Are you all right, Em?”

“I'm fine, Daddy.”

“The Stephenses being good to you?” He knew they were. More than he had been in years.

“Yes.”

He heard himself thanking Matthew O'Connor for taking care of her all these months. He heard Matthew say that nobody needed to take care of Emily, she could take care of herself. He thought: I threw my daughter out. She matured early because I locked the door.

He said, “Emily, I'd like you to come home. I've had the house cleaned, a professional team came in and did it, and I've hired a cleaning woman one day a week, and you don't have to worry that you'll walk in the door and I'll yell at you to scrub something. I'd—I'd like my daughter home again. Please.”

Emily's eyes filled with tears. Home. Magic word. Lovely word. She could not manage to speak. But she nodded.

And then she stunned him completely by saying, “Matt proposed to me tonight, Daddy.”

Her father was prepared for any statement but that. “You mean, proposed
marriage
?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Edmundson regained his physical balance. Taking a deep breath he extended his hand to Matt. “Congratulations, Matthew.”

“She turned me down,” Matt said.

Mr. Edmundson found himself laughing. He had not laughed in a long time. And certainly not over his unpredictable—and yes, much loved—daughter. “Women are like that,” he said to Matt. “A person never quite knows what's going on.”

“I turned him down because I love him,” Emily said.

“Typical,” Mr. Edmundson said. How quickly it had all happened. He and his daughter had made their peace, decided on their living quarters, and now he was a middle-aged man in the midst of a teenage dance. “Em, I feel better already. Situation normal, all fouled up. Listen, I'll just sit here on this couch next to”—

Gwynnie had fastened her wig back on.

She smiled up at him.

Jamie was doing a balance beam act on the sofa back.

—“next to these people,” Mr. Edmundson said doubtfully, “and you two dance. I'll watch.”

Matt just sighed.

Emily put her arms around him. She danced him away, toward the windows that were wearing draperies of snow. “I really and truly do love you and nobody else, and forever and ever more,” she said.

“Liar,” Matt said. But he grinned. Sort of.

“Until the universe ends,” she told him. “Until the galaxy closes down.”