Dovey cranked up Shakira and lured everyone into the living room, dancing around in her slinky silver sweater and a Santa hat bobby-pinned onto her mop of brown curls. The children quickly abandoned the cookies for the living room too, bedazzled to witness a celebration in their home involving adults. Cordie anchored herself to the middle of the floor, bouncing to the music, and loudly sang “Rudolph” over whatever else was playing, hamming for applause. Dellarobia felt young and fearless again watching Dovey snap her fingers and pump her elbows, walking around tipping bourbon into everyone’s eggnog. And flirting, Dovey being Dovey. Applying a full-court press to Pete, even though fully apprised of his marital status. They were just having fun, and if someone ended up with the SpongeBob glass, Dellarobia didn’t care. She hadn’t had a cigarette for hours, and did feel at a certain point as if she might chew up the carpet, but this was overshadowed by her sense of accomplishment. She’d thrown a party.
They had a Christmas tree, too. She went off-road on that one. She’d scoured the house for cash, shaking out purses and jeans and coat pockets, digging through rubber-band drawers, even running her fingers around all the grubby cupholders in the car. Her search had turned up a thrilling number of small bills, eight ones and a couple of fives, which she pleated into little fans. Not butterflies exactly, she didn’t want to go there, but they looked festive. The students got into helping her fold the dollars, and pulled more from their own pockets for the cause. Mako knew how to make a bird with a long neck and bill. As a kid he’d helped with a project of folding a thousand of these little birds, which they were led to believe would contribute to world peace. It was that kind of school, he said. The birds looked pretty. When her family saw what Dellarobia was doing here, she would need some world peace. Hester would go through the roof.
Dovey produced a twenty, on loan, and circulated herself. She dropped Pete like a hot potato when she found a partner who could do the Mashed Potato. The bump, the pony, the jitterbug, the two-step, holy smokes, Ovid Byron could even moonwalk. They rolled up the rug so he could slide backward across the floor in his wool socks, his head thrown back, eyes closed, smooth as silk. Preston nearly swooned. Mako danced like a robot, and Bonnie just flung her arms around and had a good time. Dovey had brought her iPod and cable, the girl was truly a party in a box, so they went from Michael Jackson to Coldplay to Diamond Rio to Chumbawamba, and that’s how things were going when Cub got home from work. Dellarobia heard him drop his lunch cooler and open the fridge before fully registering the commotion. He appeared in the living room doorway.
“Dellarobia, what in the heck?”
“Merry Christmas!” they all yelled.
Dellarobia had fended off Dovey’s bourbon, as she had her kids to think about, and the half Valium she’d taken for courage had definitely expired. Yet something made her weak in the knees. She gripped the stepladder carefully and turned around to give Cub a wide smile, showing some teeth. “We’re celebrating the true meaning of Christmas.”
She was covering the tree with dollars. After they ran out of bills, they bent paper clips into hooks and taped these onto pennies, dimes, and quarters in endless supply. Preston dashed from the tree to Mako and Bonnie to collect the taped coins and hang them on the branches, reaching so high his flannel shirt hiked up, showing his skinny little belly. Preston didn’t know about Money Tree industries, and was as hazy as anyone else on the connection between Christmas trees and Baby Jesus, probably too young to grasp the full extent of Dellarobia’s insurrection. But maybe not. Between the contagion of his mother’s mischief and the showing off, he was acting a little crazed.
She watched Cub study the domestic scene, taking everything in, working up to whatever he was going to make of it. Irony would never be Cub’s long suit, but religious blasphemy he could probably pick out of a lineup. He seemed to be getting incensed.
“What the hell kind of priorities are you teaching those kids?” he finally asked.
Preston jumped up and down. “Dad, lookit! We put a twenty on top.”
8
Circumference of the Earth
Santa brought Preston the watch he wanted, just like Mako’s. It was Mako’s. He’d knocked on the kitchen door the morning he and the other students were leaving town, and handed her the watch as a gift for Preston. Dellarobia was floored, but Mako insisted. His thanks for the repaired zipper. He claimed it was not an expensive watch. He had a better one at home, he said, and showed her some of the functions on this one that no longer worked. As if she could tell. He wanted it to go to Preston, who called it the “science watch.” Dellarobia had worried about her son being a pest, but now could see the flattery angle for Mako, who must not have little brothers at home pining for his hand-me-downs. She promised she would tell Preston on Christmas morning that the watch was from Mako, his hero.
But the day came, and she broke the promise. Preston tore into the wrapping paper, shouting, “Yesss! I knew it! Santa’s real!” Stammering a little, overexcited, he said he had done an experiment: intentionally, he had not told his parents what he wanted. It never occurred to him that a kindergarten teacher might leak information, or that Mako might have guessed. The watch in his hands was Preston’s proof that Santa had read his mind. Dellarobia found she could not revoke a delusion that made him so happy. “So fantasy won the day,” was how she put it to Dovey.
“As usual,” Dovey agreed.
“He’s so smart, it’s scary,” Dellarobia said. “What kind of child does experiments to test the existence of Santa Claus? Next he’s going to ask me how Santa gets all the way around the world in one night.”
Dovey folded the last towel in the laundry basket. “Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behavior in children, and medicate it in adults? That’s so random. It’s like this whole shady setup.”
“True. At what age do you cross over the line and say, ‘Now I’ll face reality?’ ”
“When you get there, send me a postcard,” Dovey sang.
Dellarobia thought, but did not say: There’s usually a pregnancy test involved. She rarely acknowledged the gulf between her life and Dovey’s, but it did exist. She separated the clothes into stacks on her bed and tucked hers and Cub’s into the bureau drawers. She and Dovey were spending a morning together in the same spirit that had brought them together since childhood, shoring up one another’s psyches against routine wear and tear. Even in the old days they mostly hung out at Dellarobia’s house, without all those wild little brothers to contend with. After fifth grade, Dellarobia’s household only had the late father and the sad mother, so it was quiet and they could rule.