Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,97

blushed, which made Elisabeth smile.

Charlotte was exasperating, but still, they laughed a lot that night. Everyone was in good spirits. They told old stories that Andrew had never heard.

Elisabeth’s parents got in late. They had each booked a room at the Hotel Calvin, without consulting her or each other. Around ten, they both texted at the same time to say they’d had a run-in in the lobby while checking in, and wasn’t that just their luck?

Elisabeth showed the messages to Charlotte, who rolled her eyes.

“Those two deserve each other,” she said. “I don’t mean that as a compliment.”

“I’m really happy you’re here,” Elisabeth said.

“Me too,” Charlotte said with a smile. She put her arm around Elisabeth’s shoulder.

* * *

—

The next morning, Christmas Day, everyone arrived at once.

Elisabeth saw them through the window, getting out of their cars and coming up the walkway. Her in-laws; her father and his girlfriend, who had, surprisingly, a retirement-age hippie vibe about her; Charlotte in black leather pants and a fuzzy white sweater, no coat; and, bringing up the rear, their mother, thinner than ever and impeccably dressed in a skirt-suit and heels, like a member of Congress attending the State of the Union. Elisabeth knew from Charlotte that she had recently gotten Botox, a chin lift, and something called CoolSculpting, which promised to freeze off her nonexistent fat deposits. She was carrying seven shopping bags from Saks.

Elisabeth took a deep breath. It was too much. She had imagined receiving them one at a time. She wanted to hide, but opened the door instead.

“Merry Christmas,” they all said, doing their best impersonation of a real family.

They crowded into the front hall. Andrew took everyone’s coats. Elisabeth’s mother regarded Gil in her arms and said, “Now there you are,” as if she’d been looking for him all these months. She reached out to hold him, which surprised Elisabeth.

Elisabeth passed the baby over and felt moved in some small way when Gil touched her mother’s face and the two of them smiled at each other.

“These are my grandfather’s curls,” her mother said. “He had blond ringlets in all his childhood photographs. Remember?”

“No,” Elisabeth said. She couldn’t recall ever seeing a photograph of her great-grandfather.

She wondered for the millionth time why her mother hadn’t come sooner. Why she was the rare woman for whom meeting her first grandchild was not a high priority. Now that she was here, she seemed to love him.

Elisabeth’s father intruded on the moment.

“Pleasure to meet you, young man,” he said, like Gil was the new guy at the office. She half expected him to shake the baby’s hand.

“Say hi to Gloria,” he said to Elisabeth.

“Sorry, yes, hi,” Elisabeth said. “Great to meet you.”

It was, in fact, one of the more awkward situations she’d ever been in. Her parents meeting her firstborn child, the two of them in the same small space, but not together anymore. And this woman, a stranger, whom Elisabeth was expected to treat with grace, because she was an adult and the host of this gathering.

She offered them all coffee. When she went to the kitchen to fix it, her father-in-law ducked into the room, put his hands on her shoulders, and whispered, “Courage.”

Elisabeth smiled.

“Thanks, George,” she said.

They took their places in the living room like actors in a play—her father and Gloria on the sofa, thighs touching; Andrew’s parents in matching armchairs, five feet apart. The rest of them sat on chairs pulled in from the dining room, all arranged around Gil, who was seated on a blanket on the floor, their little king. From time to time, one of them scooped him up, unable to resist, and everyone else glowed with jealousy.

Faye played the expert. She said things like, “Don’t forget to support his head,” and “He loves to be bounced—no, not that hard. Here, like this.”

Elisabeth’s mother kept sneaking glances at her father and Gloria. She had placed the bags from Saks around her chair as if building a wall between herself and anyone who might wish to do her harm. Eventually, she gave them to their intended recipients. A Burberry scarf for Andrew, leather driving gloves for Elisabeth. Gifts you might buy for someone you wanted to impress but had never met before.

George and Faye handed out scratch-off tickets tucked inside plain white envelopes. It was what they did every year, but now, for the first time, Elisabeth thought it had a whiff of desperation about it. This was precisely what was wrong with