"Pete, sugar, there's one more for you," Mama says, fishing a present from under the tree and handing it to her grandson.
"Oh, thanks, Gram. It's very...nice." He lifts a canary yellow sweater from the shreds of paper in his lap and pulls it on over his Death Note t-shirt with a grimace.
"Now your outsides finally match your insides," I tease. He looks daggers at me.
We're almost through opening presents; most everyone is surrounded by a pile of socks. Mama is caressing her new blender. Daddy flexes his fingers through a pair of supple work gloves. I smile down at my bright white Nikes, vowing never to wear them near any cow pies, and start cutting my headphones out of the packaging.
"I brought a few things," Allie says sheepishly. She runs upstairs and comes back with a grocery bag full of presents, which she hands out to everyone but Gilberto. She starts to apologize, but he waves her off, smiling.
"You can get me something next year."
I unwrap a little box and take off the lid; inside is the constellation Pegasus hand-embroidered in a silver hoop. I would have loved it seven years ago. Pete is thumbing appreciatively through a pack of Copic markers, while Mama unscrews and sniffs several jars of Stonewall Kitchen preserves. Lyle and Blake each hold up a fleece-lined bomber hat, but neither puts it on. Daddy runs his finger along the polished wood handle of a new pocketknife; Dan eyes it enviously, ignoring an early edition of The Sirens of Titan in his lap. Felicity, who has also received a book (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead), does only a slightly better job of masking her disappointment.
"Thanks," we all say with varying levels of sincerity.
Allie's cheeks start to glow in the pooling silence. The tantum takes her hand.
"I thought I'd give this to you later," he says, drawing an envelope from his jacket pocket. "But why wait? Merry Christmas."
She slits open the top of the envelope and extracts a sheet of folded paper, gasping in delight. I read it over her shoulder: it's an order confirmation for two plane tickets flying round trip from JFK to CDG (wherever that is). Allie kisses Jack on the cheek, and he looks far too pleased with himself. The way she's gazing at him is almost indecent.
Daddy clears his throat.
"Oh, sorry—it's tickets to Paris!" Allie effuses, remembering her stoic audience. "Jack knows I've always wanted to go—we took this art history survey class sophomore year, and I wouldn't stop askin' him if the Sainte Chapelle was really that magical in person, and if the banks of the Seine still looked how Seurat painted them, with the people loungin' so carefree—I knew he'd been before..."
Dan slinks upstairs as she raves about the Tuileries, looking as sickly as I feel.
YOU ARE READING
The Floating Cradle
Science FictionSixteen-year-old Sarah hasn't seen her sister Allie in nearly a decade thanks to a family feud she can hardly remember. But the world waits for no grudge; around the time of Sarah's birth, a race of aliens known as the tanta made first contact with...
