“Santa Claus?” Eddie says, and a lightbulb goes on over his head.
AVA
Like everyone else in America in general and New York in particular, Ava spends the weeks before Christmas shopping. Only instead of shopping for presents, Ava is shopping for clothes to take to Austria!
“I feel so selfish,” she tells Margaret.
“Don’t,” Margaret says. “This is going to be a very special trip for you, I can feel it.”
How special? Ava wants to ask. Does Margaret know something Ava doesn’t?
Ava and Margaret are on the third floor of Bergdorf Goodman, in couture. Margaret is buying Ava a gown to wear to the New Year’s Eve ball at the palace. Initially, Ava told her mother that buying something new was unnecessary; Margaret has closets filled with gowns. Ava could simply go shopping in Margaret’s closets. But Margaret insisted that this ball was worthy of a new gown, one suited and tailored to Ava’s figure, coloring, and taste.
Ava tries on fourteen gowns before she finds the winner: a strapless ivory silk gown with a gold cord belt. It’s a goddess dress with a blouson bodice and a forgiving amount of room in the skirt. The ivory is flattering to Ava’s red hair and her complexion, and Margaret has a pair of long gold Mona Assemi earrings that Ava can borrow. They buy gold sandals with a modest heel—optimal for ballroom dancing—and a tiny gold clutch purse.
“Hair and makeup on me,” Margaret says. “You’re staying at the Grand Hotel Wien, right? I’ll call the concierge tomorrow to set it up.”
“But you’re already doing so much,” Ava says. “The dress, the shoes, the purse…”
“I’m lending you my fur shrug,” Margaret says. “Don’t let me forget to drop it off.”
“And my flight,” Ava says. Potter is leaving for Vienna on Tuesday, the nineteenth, because he has business to tend to before Ava arrives, he says.
“What kind of business?” Ava asked.
“I’m starting research on my Danube novel,” he said.
And before Ava could express her delight—at Columbia, like everywhere else, it’s publish or perish, and Potter had been talking about his Danube novel for months—he added, “And I’m arranging for some surprises for you.”
Ava will fly to Vienna by herself on Thursday, the twenty-first, and Margaret has insisted on upgrading Ava’s ticket to first class.
“You haven’t lived until you’ve flown first class on an international flight,” Margaret said. “Besides, I want you to arrive refreshed.”
Ava feels like something might be up, something big. Her mother’s insistence that this trip is special, something she will want to be fresh and ready for. Potter’s tease of surprises for Ava. But Ava won’t get her hopes up; she has been disappointed too many times in her life. Nathaniel “surprised” her three years earlier with a Christmas gift of Hunter boots with matching socks. And Scott “surprised” her by getting Mz. Oliveria pregnant.
Ava wants to believe in Potter. He did manage to fix the PJ issue—with help from Harrison. When Potter came home from California, he brought a drawing that PJ had done. The drawing showed five stick figures. PJ was in the middle, Trish and Harrison were to PJ’s right, and Potter and Ava were to PJ’s left. All of the figures were holding hands and the sun was shining above them.
The drawing was more than Ava could ever have hoped for. She made Potter tape it to his fridge.
“Just let me do things for you,” Margaret says as she gives the woman her Bergdorf card. She takes a deep breath. “You know how odd it is that it’s nearly six o’clock and I don’t have to be anywhere?”
“I bet it’s odd,” Ava says.
“Odd in the best possible way,” Margaret says. “Let’s go to the café and get a cocktail.”
Over the weekend Ava packs everything she’ll need for the trip. She has three days left of teaching, and then Thursday she flies. She can’t begin to explain how excited she is. Vienna and Salzburg at Christmas! The Mozart! The marzipan! Ava hopes that one of Potter’s surprises is a Sound of Music tour while they’re in Salzburg.
The hills are alive… !
Potter’s first surprise is that he swings by Copper Hill to kiss Ava good-bye before he heads off to JFK on Tuesday. It’s three o’clock and the school day is officially over, but Ava is in the conservatory with Justice DeMarco, who is working on an independent study project. Justice is composing his own ragtime piece on the piano, which is a noble pursuit, but Justice gets frustrated easily, and he feels that any direction in which he takes the chord progression sounds derivative.
“All ragtime sounds alike,” Ava tells him in an attempt to be reassuring.
“But I want to create a new ragtime,” Justice insists. “Ragtime a hundred years later.”
It’s at this point that Potter walks in. He watches Ava at work with Justice, and Ava can’t help but notice the awestruck look on his face. It’s the expression of a man in love watching his girlfriend work.
“Excuse me one second, Justice,” Ava says.
Justice goes back to banging out the chords while jangling out a melody with his right hand, and Ava pulls Potter behind the door to her office and gives him a juicy kiss.
“I’m really going to miss you,” he says.
“It’s only two days,” she says. She gives Potter another kiss, longer and very inappropriate for the workplace, then she shoos him out. “Have a safe flight,” she says. “Text me when you land.”
“I love you,” Potter says.
“And I love you,” Ava says. She walks Potter out to the main hallway and waves to him until he disappears around the corner.
It’s ten o’clock that night, and Ava is lying in bed listening to Schubert’s Impromptu no. 3 in G-flat Major on her headphones, her eyes searching out the window for what she imagines to be the contrails of Potter’s plane.
Ava’s phone rings.
Potter? she wonders. It’s too late for it to be anyone else. His flight was supposed to take off at 9:45. He texted to say he was boarding, then again to say he was powering down. Maybe they’re delayed, sitting in an endless line of jets waiting to head to Europe, and Potter is bored and he wants to hear Ava’s voice one last time.
But when she checks her phone, she sees it’s Margaret calling.
“Mom?” Ava says.
“Oh, honey,” Margaret says.
BART
When he and Allegra have been dating for six weeks and three days, Bart receives an e-mail from the Marine Corps, and suddenly, Bart realizes, he and Allegra have to have a conversation about the future.
He takes Allegra to dinner at the Greydon House, and they are seated at one of the tucked-away tables in the bar. The Greydon House is the new hot spot on Nantucket; Bart remembers when it was his dentist’s office. It has been reimagined as a hotel and fine restaurant. The bar is dark paneled, the lighting is low, the furniture is ornate, and the overall effect is one of an exclusive club. Allegra mentioned that she has always wanted to come here, and since Bart is now in the business of Allegra wish fulfillment, he has brought her here for dinner.
He orders a cocktail called the Grey Lady, which is served in a cod-shaped mug. Normally, he doesn’t drink around Allegra, but tonight he needs to share his news and he’s not sure how he’s going to handle it.
“I got an e-mail today,” Bart says. “I’ve been approved for officer training. I report to Camp Lejeune on January thirtieth.”
Allegra nods slowly. “Where is Camp Lejeune?”
“It’s in North Carolina,” Bart says.
Allegra stares at her salad. It’s baby greens with all kinds of treasures hiding—radishes, roasted beets, pumpkin seeds. Meanwhile, Bart got the lobster bisque, which the server poured out of a pewter pitcher tableside. The food here is artwork.
“So you’re leaving?” Allegra says. “You’re leaving Nantucket?”
Bart reaches for Allegra’s hand under the table. They have been so caught up in each other, so busy enjoying the present and learning about each other’s past, that the future hasn’t mattered. But Bart did tell Allegra he wanted to go to officer training school. He told her at the very beginning, that first night at his party. Right? It seems so long ago now; Bart can’t remember. Bart’s positive he told her. She probably heard him but didn’t think twice about it because she didn’t realize they would fall so deeply, desperately in love.