The One & Only: A Novel (51 page)

B
ecause I had no other options, I decided to go to New York after all, booking the cheapest flight I could on Christmas Eve, the last one out of Dallas, and landing at LaGuardia so late that the airport had mostly cleared out. My father had said he was sending me a car, but there he stood at the bottom of the escalator leading to baggage claim, wearing a dark suit, holding a little white placard that read:
MERRY CHRISTMAS
,
SHEA BUTTER STADIUM
!

I laughed when I saw the pet name I’d almost completely forgotten about, feeling more touched than I could ever remember feeling when it came to my dad. This would be our first Christmas together since he’d left Texas, as my mother had put it in their divorce agreement that I couldn’t go to New York until the twenty-sixth. In other words, she got Christmas with her daughter, just as he got Christmas with
his
daughter.

“Hi, Dad,” I said, grinning. “Nice sign.”

He smiled, did a funny little at-your-service bow, and tucked the card into his breast pocket. “Merry Christmas, honey.”

“Merry Christmas … You didn’t have to come out here. I could have taken a taxi.”

“It got me out of mass,” he said, winking. Upon his third marriage, Astrid had made him convert to Catholicism, but his heart wasn’t in it, any more than his heart was in being a college football fan or a Republican. They were just things he did, not
felt.

“I’m sure she’s thrilled with me,” I said as we walked toward baggage claim and the only active conveyor belt. “Gotta be that one,” I said, pointing. “Sorry. I had a carry-on, but they made me check it …”

“Yep. Carousel number three,” he said, slowing his stride and squinting up at the arrivals board. “And stop worrying about Astrid. She’s doing her thing. She’s fine.”

“Still. It’s Christmas Eve.”

“Oh,
stop
with that. I
wanted
to come. Did you decide how long you’re staying? Because I want to get reservations and tickets.”

“Tickets to what?” I said, football still on my mind. I knew the Jets and the Giants were both off, so wondered if he might be talking about the Knicks. Basketball might be a nice change of pace, actually.

“To shows, plays, the Rockettes … anything you want.”

I smiled, then spotted my frayed roller bag, swooping in to grab it.

“Let me get that for you,” he said, as I wheeled it toward him. “I’m your driver, remember?”

“Shea Butter Stadium,” I said, shaking my head and turning over my bag. “I totally forgot about that.”

My dad laughed, clearly proud of himself. “Nobody else calls you that?”

“Uh, no. Nobody’s really thinking about the Mets in Texas.”

“What about butter? They think about butter in Texas.”

I laughed and said, “What are you tryin’ to say?”

“Y’all like your fried foods,” he said, doing a shitty Southern accent.

“Yes, we do.” I smiled, following him outside, the first few seconds
of cold blasting my face and shocking me the way it always did. “Damn,” I said, pulling my only scarf across my face.

“It’s been really warm until today,” he said, which is what Yankees always say. Like we just happened to catch them in a rare moment of frigid discomfort.

“Right,” I said. “What’s warm? Thirty-five? Thirty-six?”

“No! Fifties,” he said, putting on his leather gloves as we walked. “I swear!”

“Just tell me you got a good parking spot,” I said, struggling to breathe in another gust of wind.

“Always,” he said, pointing to his black Mercedes right in front of us.

He unlocked the passenger side, then tossed my bag in the backseat and went around to his side, whistling, as if he were strolling on a golf course on a balmy day. “Twice in six weeks,” he said.

I smiled. “Yep,” I said. “Imagine that.”

“Now
that’s
a Christmas gift.”

“So I can return the tie clip?”

My dad laughed. “Yeah. Return it. I have plenty of those. Just not enough days with my little girl.”

We made small talk until we entered the orange fluorescence of the Midtown Tunnel. Then he cleared his throat and said, “So. Your mother called me.”

I felt myself tense up, staring at the dirty-tiled wall streaking past us. “When?”

“This morning.”

“Why?” I asked, glancing over at him. As if I didn’t know.

He raised his eyebrows and looked at me for a beat longer than felt safe, as I reached over to put my hand on the steering wheel.

“She said you won’t return her calls.”

“That is a fact.”

“Because she disapproved of Clive?”

“Because she was a
bitch
about the whole thing,” I said. “She’s so judgmental it’s scary …”

“She can be.”

“But, listen, Dad, I really don’t want to talk about all of that. I came here to escape it.”

“Oh? I thought it was to see your old man,” he said lightly.

I smiled. “You’re not my ‘old man.’ Somebody’s ‘old man’ uses a phone book to look up a number … drives thirty-five in a fifty … wears Velcro Hush Puppies. You’re wearing Gucci loafers.”

“So that precludes me from being your old man?”

“Yes. It most definitely does. But it doesn’t preclude you from being my dad,” I said, feeling unusually charitable and grateful toward him.

“Got it,” he said, smiling, as we exited the tunnel, spilling onto a strangely quiet Third Avenue.

“So I guess you heard I got shitcanned, too?”

He nodded. “But you probably don’t want to talk about that either?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Well, let me know if you change your mind … I have some ideas on that front.”

“Maybe later,” I said. “Let’s get through Christmas first.”

“Let’s get
through
Christmas?” he said. “Okay, Ebenezer.”

“Bah, humbug,” I said, only pretending to be joking.

Christmas Day was a surprisingly pleasant one, spent in the luxury of my dad and Astrid’s Fifth Avenue pad. Bronwyn and Wiley were in St. Moritz skiing, so it was just the three of us, and Astrid was on her best behavior, a restrained, humble version of herself. She must have known a little of what was going on in my life, but kept her conversation general, avoiding her usual nosy questions, and not once bringing up my job or Walker. It was almost as if my father had warned or bribed her—or enrolled her in a crash course in discretion.

Right after dinner (which Astrid had catered), she gently raised the
subject of Ryan, very tactfully addressing our breakup and asking how I was doing.

“I’m doing fine. Thanks, Astrid,” I said, feeling sincere.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out. But for what it’s worth … I think that would have been really hard. Having such a famous husband. Women throwing themselves at him. And, you know … just living in the spotlight.”

I smiled and said, “Oh, c’mon, Astrid! You know you thrive in the spotlight!”

“Okay. Okay.
I
think it would be
marvelous
! But I have the feeling that
you
would have hated it,” she said as my father refilled all of our wine glasses. I searched for the hidden dig, out of cynical habit, just as she added, “I admire that about you. You like to keep things so … simple.”

I gave her a look.

“In a good way.”

“Authentic,” my dad chimed in.

“Yes, that’s what I meant,” Astrid said, nodding effusively. “Authentic, that’s it.”

“Well, thanks, guys,” I said, taking a long sip of my wine, thinking of Ryan and the short email he had sent me a few days ago. There was no mention of wanting to get back together, only a few lines thanking me and telling me that he was seeing a therapist and working through his issues. I had written back that I was so happy to hear it, then wished him luck in the playoffs—and in life. Although I didn’t believe that Ryan was capable of rape, I did believe the rest of Tish’s story, and Blakeslee’s, too, sure that he had been as rough with them as he had been with me. Yet I surprisingly felt no bitterness toward him, only relief that I was no longer with him, and hope that he really could change. I reached up now to touch my diamond earrings, the first time I had worn them since our breakup, and said, “Ryan’s not a bad guy. Just not for me.”

After that, Astrid changed the subject to Bronwyn’s fertility treatments, explaining that she’d be heading to Cornell in February for
her second round of in vitro. This was news to me, and I said how sorry I was to hear that she was having trouble. As Astrid prattled on about the process, I covertly checked my phone for the hundredth time that day, still hoping to hear something from Coach on Christmas. But there was nothing from him. Nothing from anyone in Walker, for that matter, except for Miller, who had sent me a text that said,
Merry Christmas to my favorite ho ho ho!
I had written back,
Why is a Christmas tree better than a man? Because it stays up, has cute balls, and looks good with the lights on!

As the night wore on, I missed Coach more and more, and tried to dull the pain with Barolo and cheesecake. The two-thousand-dollar check from Astrid and my dad helped, too, and I calculated that it would buy me a couple of months in my job hunt. Feeling slightly embarrassed, I went through the motions of saying it was too much, but Astrid reassured me that she had spent just as much on a handbag for Bronwyn, then kindly added, “And I assume you’d want to select your own.” As if anyone in the room believed that I’d spend that kind of cash on a
purse.
It was absurd, but to each her own, so I smiled and said, “Well, thank you. Really. This is so generous of you both, and I appreciate it. Especially this month.” It actually felt good to receive such a nice gift from my dad without the weight of the chip on my shoulder.

Then, after I gave them my gifts (earrings from Lucy’s store for Astrid and plaid socks and a coffee table book on cigars for my dad), we opened another bottle of wine and hunkered down to watch
A Christmas Story.
It didn’t seem like the sort of movie my dad would appreciate, but he cracked up over every single “You’ll shoot your eye out” and lost his mind during the tongue-on-the-flagpole scene. He told me that his brother, my only uncle, had done the same thing when he was little and that it really
does
stick. Then, right when Ralphie got his decoder ring in the mail, my phone finally rang, Lucy’s home number appearing on the screen.

“Don’t pause it. I’ll be right back,” I said, scrambling for the safety of my lush guest suite before answering.

“Weren’t you going to call?” she asked as soon as I said hello. She sounded wounded, which ticked me off a little. She had plenty of reason to be sad today, but no standing to be miffed at me.

“Sorry. The day just got away from me,” I said, a ridiculous statement given how slowly the minutes had dragged.

“I know. Ours, too,” she said. “So how was your Christmas?”

“Lovely,” I said, a word I never use.

She called me on it. “Lovely? You’ve been hanging out with Astrid too much.”

“She actually hasn’t been too bad this time,” I said. “It’s like she got a personality lift with her last cosmetic surgery.”

Lucy laughed.

I hesitated, at a loss for a few seconds, before I came up with “Was Santa good to Caroline?”

“Yes. Very,” she said.

“Good. Good,” I said, another awkward pause following. “Tell her I love her.”

“I will,” she said. “You want to talk to your mom? She came over a little bit ago …”

I started to say no, then made myself say yes, bristling when I heard her voice on the other end of the line.

“Hi, honey. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Mom.”

“This is the first one in your life that I haven’t seen you. It doesn’t even feel like Christmas.”

“Yeah. It’s a little weird,” I said. “But it’s nice … being in New York and stuff …” I considered calling her out for talking to my dad but secretly liked the idea of the two of them becoming a united front on my behalf, completely unlike the tenor of my entire childhood. So I let it slide.

I heard Caroline’s high-pitched voice in the background, then Coach’s low laughter. My heart ached as my mother and I said goodbye, and she gave the phone back to Lucy.

“Hi,” Lucy said.

“Hi,” I said, straining to hear Coach again, both relieved and distraught that he had sounded so chipper.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked, trying not to sound as flippant as I felt.

Lucy mumbled something I couldn’t make out, then said, “Hey. My dad’s here, too. Did you want to say hello?”

“Um, that’s okay,” I said, my throat tightening. “Just tell him I said Merry Christmas.”

“I definitely will,” she said.

“Okay. Well, I better get back to the movie …”

“Oh … okay. What are you watching?” she said, clearly not ready to hang up.
“It’s a Wonderful Life?”

I resisted the urge to tell her that was
her
father’s favorite movie, not mine, and instead said, “No.
A Christmas Story.
You know. ‘You’ll shoot your eye out.’ ”

“Ha. Yeah. Right … Well … enjoy the movie. And your night,” she said.

“You, too.”

“And what about the game? Have you decided about the game?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”

“Okay. We miss and love you. Merry Christmas, Shea.”

“Love you, too, Luce. Merry Christmas,” I said, hanging up and thinking,
Ain’t nothin’ merry about this Christmas. Nothing wonderful about this life.

I was being dramatic, for sure. But then again, getting your heart broken at Christmastime
is
pretty fucking dramatic.