She Poured Out Her Heart (18 page)

In the end she chose a red sweater with a pretty scoop neckline, one of her fifteen different black skirts, and the kind of jewelry she thought of as aspirational. Low black heels. She thought she looked all right if not great, festive if not quite ready to compete with the Christmas tree. It wasn't a long drive to get to Jane and Eric's, a straight shot down the Eisenhower. There had been a recent snow and now polar cold had settled in on top of it. The traffic kicked up slush and Bonnie had to keep running her windshield wipers to clear the grime. Why did she always spend major holidays in transit, hurrying to whatever celebration would keep her from feeling like an isolated failure? Maybe someday she'd live somewhere big enough and nice enough to host her own parties and have people come to her.

Once she reached Elmhurst, she let herself enjoy the look of the place, all done up for Christmas with its lighted greenery and decorated windows, although the whole point of the suburbs seemed to be an attempt to look like what it was not. An English country village, perhaps, complete with these half-timbered mock-Tudors. An American small town circa 1910, but with good access to shopping and regional transport. No matter. The streets were plowed, the sidewalk shoveled, and the new snow was a clean layer of cold.

Jane and Eric's house was decorated with swags of colored lights across the evergreens in front, and electric candles at the windows. A wreath hung on the front door, and the woodbox next to it held some white birch logs, sprigs of holly, and a floppy-legged felt elf. Bonnie stamped her feet on the red and green door mat so as not to track any snow in, and knocked. Nobody answered, perhaps they had not heard her. Some kind of child-themed Christmas music was playing inside. She pushed the unlocked door open and entered.

The living room was empty except for a hulking decorated tree that took up a lot of the small space. It had multicolored lights and ropes of tinsel and some construction-paper chains that the kids must have pasted together. “Hello?” Bonnie put her bag of presents on the sofa and took a few steps inside. Had she arrived on the wrong night?

But no, they were all in the kitchen, “all” being Jane and Eric, two other couples, and Robbie and Grace, who were sitting at the table and making a mess with some frosted sugar cookies and red and green sugars. The adults were all watching them, either interested or pretending interest. Little Grace was paddling in the bowl of frosting and Robbie, who was older but not much tidier, was applying colored sugar by grinding it in with his knuckles.

“Bonnie, hey!” Eric spotted her and waved her over, giving her his usual half-hug and kiss on the cheek. “Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas. Where's your reindeer sweater? Hi kids. Hi Jane. Hi.” This last to the people she didn't know. Jane was trying to haul
things out of the refrigerator even though everyone was in her way. “Excuse me,” she kept saying. “Excuse me.” What were they all doing in the kitchen? Why were the kids still up?

“Bonnie, this is Ed and Allie. Jay and Carol.” Hello, hello, Bonnie said, shaking hands. Were they neighbors? Doctors? Neighbors who were doctors? She had the unhappy premonition that this would be one more goddamned party where she would be the only single person. To Jane she said, “What can I help you with?”

Jane looked oddly blurred or out of focus. Medication? She had the whole of the counter space filled with bowls and trays, wrappings of foil and plastic. “Maybe you could . . . Robbie? Grace? I said you could stay up for the party and now it's bedtime.”

Neither child looked up from the cookies. Bonnie said, “Hey guys, what if I help you put the cookies away and get cleaned up? Robbie, do you still play your astronaut game?” She didn't mind, really. The maiden aunt always had to tend to the children, and anyway it would save her from exchanging what-do-you-dos with the guests whose names she had already forgotten.

Grace was no problem. She was a sweet, quiet little girl with Jane's fair coloring and nearly translucent skin. She kissed her parents good night and headed for the stairs. Robbie was still a hell-raiser and a worldbeater and required more negotiation, more cookies, before he was ready to give in. “Come on,” Bonnie said. “I'll let you be the Russian cosmonaut.” Robbie still considered her an acceptable playmate, although the day would come when she would be demoted to a mere female. They were both delicious children, each in their separate ways, and Bonnie was grateful to Jane for having them so she could hang out with them occasionally and not have to have her own.

Bonnie got heavy-headed, sleepy Grace settled into her pink bed in her pink pink room, then sat on the floor of Robbie's room with him and played the astronaut game. This was a made-up contest involving a model of the international space station and its crew, who were always
subverting the spirit of scientific cooperation by smashing into each other and knocking each other out of orbit and into the vacuum of space, although, unlike space, there were many sound effects.

Bonnie might have been content to sit there all evening, engaging in interstellar mayhem, but the doorbell kept ringing and she knew she had to get downstairs. “OK, kiddo. How about you get in bed and take your astronaut with you?”

“My astronaut's the best! Yours is a wuss!”

“Yeah, well my astronaut got better grades in school. Good night, sweetie.”

Descending, she noted that the music had changed over, from songs about reindeer and snowmen to something resembling choir music. Christmas anthems, presumably, as sung in some high church setting. It seemed like the wrong choice for a party, and once she reached the bottom of the stairs she could tell instantly that the party had not jelled.

There were people standing around in pairs—she'd been right about that part—holding drinks and plates of food. Surely some of these couples knew each other, or at least knew the person they were standing next to. But there was a general dearth of conversation, as if they were attending some sort of well-fed holiday visitation. Bonnie fixed her expression in a pleasant half-smile and made her way through the guests, looking for Jane.

Passing through the dining room, she was impressed, no, daunted, by what Jane had done with the food. If not an entire seafood buffet, there was at least chilled shrimp and pickled herring. A platter of cold sliced roast beef and fixings for sandwiches. Different bowls and trays, cheeses, salads, casseroles. Asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, mushrooms entombed in phyllo. The guests were milling and nudging each other around the table, intent on getting as much as possible onto their plates without looking too piggy.

Good God, the dessert table. Jane must have been baking in her sleep for weeks. There were frosted snowflake cookies, date bars, chocolate
stars, jelly tots, coconut snowballs. Red and green cupcakes. A Bundt cake on a pedestal stand. A jar of multicolored candy canes. How had she managed to keep the kids out of it all?

The bar had been set up in the kitchen, and that was where she found Eric, drinking bottled beer and talking with a couple of other men. Jane must have been in the bathroom.

Eric waved her over. “Are the kids locked up yet, I mean, settled in?”

“Such a kidder. Grace is out like a light. Robbie might bounce around for a while.”

“Thanks. I'll go check on them in a sec. Have a drink, you've earned it.” He reached for a bottle of red wine. “The usual?”

“Sure.” She was all about the usual. That was, of course, a self-pitying thought, and she tried halfheartedly to bat it away. The two men nearby were still deep in conversation. Neither of them had registered her presence with as much as a glance, which told her she'd dressed in acceptable camouflage. “Thanks,” she said, accepting a glass from Eric. “The food looks great. I bet Jane's been cooking up a storm.”

“Yeah, you bet. OK, I'm going to go check on the kids.” A layer of something distant and unreadable settled over his face. If they'd been alone, she would have asked him if everything was all right, meaning it didn't seem to be, but he patted her shoulder and hurried off. She raised her glass and tried to look serene and self-possessed, rather than a stranded wallflower. She looked around the kitchen, hoping for some chore to occupy herself with, but everything had been cleared away. The sink and countertops, refrigerator and stovetop, had all been wiped down. Whatever Jane's doctor was giving her, she wanted some herself.

Trying to maneuver, she bumped into one of the talking men. Sorry, they both said. Sorry. They glanced at each other, waiting to see if a conversation would take hold. Nice party, or something like that. He said, “Hi, I'm Ron Madjiak.”

“Bonnie Abrams.” She extended her hand and they shook. At least he
knew enough to wait for the lady, in this case her, to offer to shake. It was one of those etiquette things that nobody much followed anymore, but that she got huffy about. He was older, forties, blond and heavy-set. His wedding ring sent out a beam like a lighthouse beacon. She said, “Let me guess. You're a doctor.”

He spread his hands. “You got me.”

“Are you a heart guy like Eric?”

The other man leaned into their conversation. “He's
the
heart guy,” he informed Bonnie. “We're in the presence of greatness. This man can unhook your wires, jump-start your battery, and put it all back inside your chest, smoother than peeling a peach.” He clapped Ron on the back and headed off for the food tables.

“Wow,” Bonnie said. She tried to be more eloquently impressed. “That's something.”

Ron looked modestly bored. Or boredly modest. “It's not exactly like peeling a peach.”

“I wouldn't think so.”

“I'm the head of Cardiology at Northwestern.”

“Eric's boss?”

“Mentor. Supervisor,” he corrected. “He's a great guy.”

“Yes, he is.” It was her turn to offer something. “I'm an old friend of Jane's.”

Slight puzzlement on Ron's big blond face. “Jane?”

“Your hostess.” Where was Jane, anyway? And then, because Bonnie did not want to launch into a narrative of what it was, exactly, that she did, because it was all too involved and sometimes she told people she was a bartender or an aerobics instructor instead, she said, “This music isn't really doing it for me. I'm going to see if I can find ‘Deck the Halls' or something.”

Bonnie hadn't expected him to follow her, but he did. She knew where the sound system was inside a cabinet in the living room, and she
apologized her way past a few people who were trying to keep a grip on their plates and drinks. “What we need,” she said to Ron, “is something in between ‘Have a Holly Jolly Christmas' and a bunch of chanting monks.”

“Let's see what we can do.” Ron bent over the console. One of those take-charge guys.

She was used to it in Eric, she guessed that surgeons had to have that kind of confidence bordering on arrogance. He dialed through the playlists. Blips and squeaks of sound. Then an uptempo version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with a bit of a swing beat. “What do you think?”

“Good. More energy. Thanks.” Bonnie nodded, taking her leave, and passed through to the dining room. She wondered if she ought to replenish the shrimp or the meat plates. They were getting a lot of heavy use. She went back into the kitchen to see if there might be extra supplies. In the refrigerator, a number of plastic containers, plastic bags, items triple wrapped in plastic. Carefully disassembling the stacks, she turned around with her hands full.

Ron was standing behind her. “Here, let me get that.”

“Thanks.” She felt a mild, cautionary buzz. Where was Mrs. Ron anyway? “You know what would be great? Could you break open another bag of ice for the drink tub? If it won't mess up your hands. I mean, I know surgeons are supposed to be real careful.”

“We're still allowed to fix drinks.” He reached around her to get to the freezer, his arm grazing her hair. Hmm. She laughed, ha ha, at his little joke and took the extra food out to refill the platters. The party was loosening up a bit, more people chitchatting, sitting down, getting comfortable. But it didn't yet have the kind of alcohol-fueled energy that made for a rowdy good time. Why had she come in the first place? She didn't know any of these people, aside from Eric and Jane, and she was unlikely to know them by the end of the evening. Where were Eric and Jane anyway?

Bonnie squeezed her way past the too-big Christmas tree, out to the hallway and the staircase. She stood at its foot, listening. Maybe one of
the kids needed something, maybe they were both reassuring Robbie that Santa Claus was real, no matter what the mouthy kid in his kindergarten class said. Turning away, she almost bumped into Ron.

“You forgot your drink,” he said, holding out her wineglass.

“Oh, thank you.” She took it, drank. A dreary familiar feeling overcame her. Another horndog man who would have to be entertained, chatted up, deflected, oh help. “So why cardiology? Why that instead of, say, gastroenterology, or dermatology?” A man and his job. It was surefire. She settled back to listen. The music had switched over to “I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas.”

“I guess I like a challenge. Cardiac care has come such a long way, and there are constant innovations. It keeps you hopping.” Ron took another pull of his drink. He was wearing a buttondown shirt with a pink stripe and a V-neck navy sweater, preppy clothes that he should have put aside a decade or two ago. You could see through the overlay of middle age to the dashing young man he must have been. She didn't much like him. She didn't much dislike him. He said, “I bet you think I went into it for the money. People think that a lot, though they don't come right out and say it.”

“Well, did you?” She had only the idlest of curiosities.

“That was part of it. I don't mind saying.” He smiled. Wanting credit for honesty. Oh, boredom. “But see,” he went on, “there's a little more to it than that. Everybody in my family has heart problems. Father. Grandfather. Uncle. Brother. Well, the men have heart problems. Look at my face. Go ahead. See if you can spot the heart attack predictor.”