On Christmas morning, Kelley and Avery tiptoe down the stairs to find a wire crate in front of the fire. In the crate is a black Labrador puppy.
A puppy!
They name him Jack, after the late president, and the whole family is cheered, even Frances.
Santa is real!
It’s 1971. Kelley and Avery are teenagers. On Christmas Eve, they climb out onto the roof under their dormer window and share a joint. Avery sings “Joy to the World”—the Three Dog Night version. Jeremiah was a bullfrog. He is a great singer, and a star athlete as well. His grades put Kelley’s to shame. Kelley should hate him, but he doesn’t. He loves his brother with all his heart.
In the morning, they sleep in. In fact, Frances has to rap on their bedroom door to wake them. Presents have ceased to matter. What Kelley really wants is a bong, but he can hardly ask his parents for that and, as it turns out, Santa isn’t real.
But their mother is real and she has made eggs Benedict and eggnog French toast, she tells them. Because it’s Christmas, she says, she warmed the syrup and doubled up on the hollandaise.
Kelley and Avery race each other down the stairs.
It’s 1977 and Kelley and Margaret have a baby. They dress him up in a tiny Santa suit and stick him in the baby swing while they make Golden Dreams. The Golden Dream is a cocktail recipe Margaret found in Good Housekeeping. She wants to drink them every Christmas, she says. They’re a family now. They need traditions.
It’s 1986 and Kelley and Margaret have two little boys and a brand-new baby girl. Ronald Reagan is Santa Claus. Kelley is making a fortune trading petroleum futures. He and Margaret are able to buy a brownstone on East Eighty-Eighth Street, eighty-four blocks north of the brownstone Avery bought the year before with his partner, Marcus.
On Christmas, Kelley presents Margaret with a Cartier tank watch.
“This is too extravagant,” Margaret says.
“No,” Kelley says. “‘Too extravagant’ are the guys on the trading floor who go to Norma’s for breakfast and order the zillion-dollar omelet.”
“But this house is my present,” Margaret says.
“This house is our shelter,” Kelley says. “The watch is for you. You have put your career on hold in order to give me all of these beautiful, healthy children, including our new princess.”
He fastens the watch onto Margaret’s wrist.
“I’ll never take it off,” she says.
It’s 1987 and the stock market has just crashed. Kelley knows two men who have killed themselves in the past month. Kelley wanted to give Margaret carte blanche to decorate the brownstone with a real interior designer but now he thinks they’d better save their money.
They buy the boys a Nintendo, and Ava gets every shiny, beeping, talking toy that Fisher-Price makes. They decide they won’t buy gifts for each other. But they do have Golden Dreams.
It’s 1993 and Kelley can feel his marriage unraveling. How this happened, he isn’t quite sure. Work is killing him; he has to do twice as much to make the same money. He has to stay awake to watch the overseas market, so he has a coke habit, just like everyone else in his firm.
As the kids get older, there are bills, bills, and more bills: private school for the boys, a piano teacher for Ava. Margaret wants to work full-time but if she does that, who will run the household and care for the children? They are not getting a nanny. Kelley was raised by his mother, and his children will be raised by their mother. When Margaret calls him a chauvinist and a dinosaur, he goes to the office.
To cover for the dismal state of his marriage, Kelley suggests spending Christmas at Round Hill in Jamaica. It turns out to be seven days of heaven. They have a villa with its own pool; they eat jerk chicken and listen to reggae and do the limbo on the beach. Margaret and Kelley substitute rum punch for the Golden Dreams. Traditions are made to be broken, Kelley says.
It’s 2001 and the world has forever changed. The towers have come down; air travel will never feel safe again; Bush has declared war on Afghanistan.
Bart is five years old, a student at the Children’s House of Nantucket, a Montessori program where sharing is not required. If Bart is working on something—everything is called work at Montessori—and he doesn’t want to be interrupted by another child, he has been taught to say “Maybe another day.”
Bart uses this phrase at home any time he wants to be defiant. On Christmas Eve when Kelley and Mitzi dress him up for five o’clock Mass, he says, “Maybe another day.” When they tell him to finish his steamed snow peas, he says, “Maybe another day.” When they try to put him to bed early because Santa is coming, he says, “Maybe another day.”
Ava is sixteen. She doesn’t like Bart to bother her when she’s playing the piano because he bangs the keys. But on Christmas, she lets him lean against her as she plays “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Silent Night.” He falls asleep in her lap as she plays “Away in a Manger,” and Mitzi carries him to bed.
It’s 2010, the afternoon of Christmas Eve, and Kelley has accompanied some guests of the inn to the red-ticket drawing in town. It’s a Nantucket tradition, but Mitzi has just announced that she hates it. She finds it mercenary, a huge crowd gathering on Main Street… why? To see if they’ve won money. She’s going to stay home instead and have a cup of tea with George the Santa Claus, she says.
Kelley points out that it’s a Chamber of Commerce function and they are members, so he’s going to represent. He also has four pockets filled with red tickets and he’s not going to lie—he would love to be the five-thousand-dollar winner. The inn is losing money every minute. Even a thousand dollars would help. If they call his name, he vows he will donate 10 percent to the Nantucket Food Pantry.
He doesn’t win but nevertheless, the gathering is festive, primarily because he bumps into Fast Eddie Pancik on the street, and he lets Kelley nip from his flask.
When Kelley gets home, warmed by the whiskey and the holiday cheer, he can’t find Mitzi. She’s not in the kitchen preparing for their now-annual Christmas Eve soiree, and she’s not in the bedroom getting ready. He calls out for her. Nothing. Her car is still in the driveway. She’s in the inn somewhere.
He finds her rushing down the back stairway in her Mrs. Claus dress and high black suede boots. She looks flushed.
“Where have you been?” he asks.
“Me?” she says. “Nowhere.”
Kelley wakes up with a start.
He’s still alive—good. There was something life-passing-before-his-eyes about the dreams he was just having. He should never have invoked A Christmas Carol during his toast. He must have awoken the Ghost of Christmas Past.
The bedroom is dark; the house quiet. Is the party over? Yes, Mitzi is asleep next to him, her breathing steady and deep.
Kelley needs his pain meds and a large glass of ice water. Gingerly, he gets to his feet. He’s still in his tuxedo, minus his shoes, jacket, and tie.
He tiptoes out into the hallway, remembering himself and Avery so many years ago.
The party has been cleaned up, the furniture returned to its usual spots. That must have taken a lot of people a bunch of time, and Kelley feels guilty for not helping. He’ll make it up to everyone in the morning by cooking a big breakfast: a cheese strata, bacon and sausage; blueberry cornmeal pancakes; eggnog French toast; fresh-squeezed juice; and, of course, Golden Dreams.
“Dad?”
Kelley jumps. Bart is sitting by himself on the sofa with Mitzi’s military-man nutcracker on the coffee table in front of him. There is still a log burning in the fireplace, but the only other light comes from the twinkling tree and the letters J-O-Y glowing over the mantel.
Kelley sits down on the sofa, then realizes that Bart is crying.
“Dad,” Bart says again, but his voice breaks.
“I know you’re a big man now,” Kelley says. “But I hope you’re not too old to let your dad hold you.” He opens his arms and Bart crawls into them, just as he used to when he was a little boy, ruined by Montessori. He cries against Kelley’s chest and Kelley rubs his son’s back. God only knows what he’s been through, what he’s seen; brothers in arms killed, for certain, and maybe worse. It’ll all come out—but not right now. Now, Bart needs good old-fashioned comfort. Eventually, his cries subside; he wipes his face on the bottom of Kelley’s tuxedo shirt.