A Multitude of Sins

Créche

Faith is not driving them, her mother, Esther is.

In the car, it’s the five of them. The family, on their way to Snow Mountain Highlands, to ski. Sandusky, Ohio, to northern Michigan. It’s Christmas, or nearly. No one wants to spend Christmas alone.

The five include Faith, who’s the motion-picture lawyer, arrived from California; her mother, Esther, who’s sixty-four and has, over the years, become much too fat. There’s Roger, Faith’s sister Daisy’s estranged husband, a guidance counselor at Sandusky JFK; and Roger’s two girls: Jane and Marjorie, ages eight and six. Daisy — the girls’ mom — is a presence, but not along. She’s in rehab in a large midwestern city that is not Chicago or Detroit.

Outside, beyond the long, treeless expanse of whitely frozen winterscape, Lake Michigan itself becomes suddenly visible, pale blue with a thin veneer of fog just above its metallic surface. The girls are chatting in the back seat. Roger is beside them reading Skier magazine.

Florida would’ve been a much nicer holiday alternative, Faith thinks. EPCOT for the girls. The Space Center. Satellite Beach. Fresh pompano. The ocean. She’s paying for everything and doesn’t even like to ski. But it’s been a hard year for everyone, and somebody has to take charge. If they’d gone to Florida, she’d have ended up broke.

Her basic character strength, Faith thinks, watching what seems to be a nuclear power plant coming up on the left, is the same feature that makes her a first-rate lawyer: an undeterrable willingness to see things as capable of being made better, and an addiction to thoroughness. If someone at the studio, a V.P. in marketing, for example, wishes to exit from a totally binding yet surprisingly uncomfortable obligation — say, a legal contract — then Faith’s your girl. Faith the doer. Faith the blond beauty with smarts. Your very own optimist. A client’s dream with great tits. Her own tits. Just give her a day on your problem.

Her sister Daisy is the perfect case in point. Daisy has been able to admit her serious methamphetamine problem, but only after her biker boyfriend, Vince, had been made a guest of the state of Ohio. And here Faith has had a role to play, beginning with phone calls to attorneys, a restraining order, then later the police and handcuffs for Vince. Daisy, strung out and thoroughly bruised, finally proved to be a credible witness, once convinced she would not be killed.

Going through Daisy’s apartment with their mother, in search of clothes Daisy could wear with dignity into rehab, Faith found dildos; six in all — one even under the kitchen sink. These she put in a plastic Grand Union bag and left in the neighbor’s street garbage just so her mother wouldn’t know. Her mother is up-to-date, but not necessarily interested in dildos. For Daisy’s going-in outfit, they eventually settled on a nice, dark jersey shift and some new white Adidas.

The downside of the character issue, the non-lawyer side, Faith understands, is the fact that she’s almost thirty-seven and nothing’s very solid in her life. She is very patient (with assholes), very good to help behind the scenes (with assholes). Her glass is always half full. Stand and ameliorate could be her motto. Anticipate change. The skills of the law, again, only partly in sync with the requirements of life.

A tall silver smokestack with blinking white lights on top and several gray megaphone-shaped cooling pots around it now passes on the left. Dense, chalky smoke drifts out of each pot. Lake Michigan, beyond, looks like a blue-white desert. It has snowed for three days, but has stopped now.

“What’s that big thing?” Jane or possibly Marjorie says, peering out the back-seat window. It is too warm in the cranberry-colored Suburban Faith rented at the Cleveland airport especially for the trip. The girls are both chewing watermelon-smelling gum. Everyone could get carsick.

“That’s a rocket ship ready to blast off to outer space. Would you girls like to hitch a ride on it?” Roger, the brother-in-law, says to his daughters. Roger is the friendly-funny neighbor in a family sitcom, although not that funny. He is small and blandly handsome and wears a brush cut and black horn-rimmed glasses. And he is loathsome — though in subtle ways, like some TV actors Faith has known. He is also thirty-seven and prefers pastel cardigans and Hush Puppies. Daisy has been very, very unfaithful to him.

“It is not a rocket ship,” says Jane, the older child, putting her forehead to the foggy window, then pulling back to consider the smudge mark she’s left.

“It’s a pickle,” Marjorie says.

“And shut up,” Jane says. “That’s a nasty expression.”

“No it’s not,” Marjorie says.

“Is that a word your mother taught you?” Roger asks and smirks. He is in the back seat with them. “I bet it is. That’s her legacy. Pickle.” On the cover of Skier is a photograph of Hermann Maier, wearing an electric red outfit, slaloming down Mount Everest. The headline says, GOING TO EXTREMES.

“It better not be,” Faith’s mother says from behind the wheel. She has her seat pushed way back to accommodate her stomach.

“Okay. Two more guesses,” Roger says.

“It’s an atom plant where they make electricity,” Faith says, and smiles back at the nieces, who are staring out at the smokestacks, losing interest. “We use it to heat our houses.”

“But we don’t like them,” Esther says. Esther’s been green since before it was chic.

“Why?” Jane says.

“Because they threaten our precious environment, that’s why,” Esther answers.

“What’s ‘our precious environment’?” Jane says insincerely.

“The air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink.” Once Esther taught eighth-grade science, but not in years.

“Don’t you girls learn anything in school?” Roger is flipping pages in his Skier. For some mysterious reason, Faith has noticed, Roger is quite tanned.

“Their father could always instruct them,” Esther says. “He’s in education.”

“Guidance,” Roger says. “But touché.”

“What’s touché?” Jane says, wrinkling her nose.

“It’s a term used in fencing,” Faith says. She likes both girls immensely, and would happily punish Roger for speaking to them with sarcasm.

“What’s fencing,” Marjorie asks.

“It’s a town in Michigan where they make fences,” Roger says. “Fencing, Michigan. It’s near Lansing.”

“No it’s not,” Faith says.

“Well then, you tell them,” Roger says. “You know everything. You’re the lawyer.”

“It’s a game you play with swords,” Faith says. “Only no one gets killed. It’s fun.” In every respect, she despises Roger and wishes he’d stayed in Sandusky. But she couldn’t ask the little girls without him. Letting her pay for everything is Roger’s way of saying thanks.

“So. There you are, little girls. You heard it here first,” Roger says in a nice-nasty voice, continuing to read. “All your lives now you’ll remember where you heard fencing explained first and by whom. When you’re at Harvard …”

“You didn’t know,” Jane says.

“That’s wrong. I did know. I absolutely knew,” Roger says. “I was just having some fun. Christmas is a fun time, don’t you know?”

Faith’s love life has not been going well. She has always wanted children-with-marriage, but neither of these things has quite happened. Either the men she’s liked haven’t liked children, or else the men who loved her and wanted to give her all she longed for haven’t seemed worth it. Practicing law for a movie studio has therefore become very engrossing. Time has gone by. A series of mostly courteous men has entered but then departed — all for one reason or another unworkable: married, frightened, divorced, all three together. “Lucky” is how she has chiefly seen herself. She goes to the gym every day, drives an expensive car, lives alone in Venice Beach in a rental owned by a teenage movie star who is a friend’s brother and who has HIV. A deal.

Late last spring she met a man. A stock market hotsytotsy with a house on Nantucket. Jack. Jack flew to Nantucket from the city in his own plane, had never been married at age roughly forty-six. She came east a few times and flew up with him, met his stern-looking sisters, the pretty, socialite mom. There was a big blue rambling beach house facing the sea, with rose hedges, sandy pathways to secret dunes where you could swim naked — something she especially enjoyed, though the sisters were astounded. The father was there, but was sick and would soon die, so life and plans were generally on hold. Jack did beaucoup business in London. Money was not a problem. Maybe when the father departed they could be married, Jack had almost suggested. But until then, she could travel with him whenever she could get away — scale back a little on the expectation side. He wanted children, could get to California often. It could work.

One night a woman called. Greta, she said her name was. Greta was in love with Jack. She and Jack had had a fight, but he still loved her, she said. It turned out Greta had pictures of Faith and Jack together. Who knew who took them? A little bird. One was a picture of Faith and Jack exiting Jack’s building on Beekman Place. Another was of Jack helping Faith out of a yellow taxi. One was of Faith, alone, at the Park Avenue Café eating seared swordfish. One was of Jack and Faith kissing in the front seat of an unrecognizable car — also in New York.

Jack liked particular kinds of sex in very particular kinds of ways, Greta said on the phone. She guessed Faith knew all about that by now. But “best not make long-range plans” was somehow the message. Other calls were placed, messages left on her voice mail, prints arrived by FedEx.

When asked, Jack conceded there was a problem. But he would solve it, tout de suite (though she needed to understand he was preoccupied with his father’s approaching death). Jack was a tall, smooth-faced, handsome man with a shock of lustrous, mahogany-colored hair. Like a clothing model. He smiled and everyone felt better. He’d gone to public high school, Harvard, played squash, rowed, debated, looked good in a brown suit and oldish shoes. He was trustworthy. It still seemed workable.

But Greta called more times. She sent pictures of herself and Jack together. Recent pictures, since Faith had come on board. It was harder than he’d imagined to get untangled, Jack admitted. Faith would need to be patient. Greta was, after all, someone he’d once “cared about very much.” Might’ve even married. Didn’t wish to hurt. She had problems, yes. But he wouldn’t just throw her over. He wasn’t that kind of man, something she, Faith, would be glad about in the long run. Meanwhile, there was the sick patriarch. And his mother. And the sisters. That had been plenty.

Snow Mountain Highlands is a smaller ski resort, but nice. Family, not flash. Faith’s mother found it as a “Holiday Getaway” in the Erie Weekly. The package includes a condo, weekend lift tickets, and coupons for three days of Swedish smorgasbord in the Bavarian-style lodge. The deal, however, is for two people only. The rest have to pay. Faith will sleep with her mother in the “Master Suite.” Roger can share the twin with the girls.

Two years ago, when sister Daisy began to take an interest in Vince, the biker, Roger simply “receded.” Her and Roger’s sex life had long ago lost its effervescence, Daisy confided. They had started off well enough as a model couple in a suburb of Sandusky, but eventually — after some years and two kids — happiness ended and Daisy had been won over by Vince, who liked amphetamines and more importantly sold them. Vince’s arrival was when sex had gotten really good, Daisy said. Faith believes Daisy envied her movie connections and movie lifestyle and the Jaguar convertible, and basically threw her own life away (at least until rehab) as a way of simulating Faith’s, only with a biker. Eventually Daisy left home and gained forty-five pounds on a body that was already voluptuous, if short. Last summer, at the beach at Middle Bass, Daisy in a rage actually punched Faith in the chest when she suggested that Daisy might lose some weight, ditch Vince and consider coming home to her family. Not a diplomatic suggestion, she later decided. “I’m not like you,” Daisy screamed, right out on the sandy beach. “I fuck for pleasure. Not for business.” Then she waddled into the tepid surf of Lake Erie, wearing a pink one-piece that boasted a frilly skirtlet. By then, Roger had the girls, courtesy of a court order.

In the condo now, Esther has been watching her soaps, but has stopped to play double solitaire and have a glass of wine by the big picture window that looks down toward the crowded ski slope and the ice rink. Roger is actually there on the bunny slope with Jane and Marjorie, though it’s impossible to distinguish them. Red suits. Yellow suits. Lots of dads with kids. All of it soundless.

Faith has had a sauna and is now thinking about phoning Jack, wherever Jack is. Nantucket. New York. London. She has no particular message to leave. Later she plans to do the Nordic Trail under moonlight. Just to be a full participant, to set a good example. For this she has brought LA purchases: loden knickers, a green-and-brown-and-red sweater knitted in the Himalayas, socks from Norway. No way does she plan to get cold.

Esther plays cards at high speed with two decks, her short fat fingers flipping cards and snapping them down as if she hates the game and wants it to be over. Her eyes are intent. She has put on a cream-colored neck brace because the tension of driving has aggravated an old work-related injury. And she is now wearing a big Hawaii-print orange muumuu. How long, Faith wonders, has she been wearing these tents? Twenty years, at least. Since Faith’s own father — Esther’s husband — kicked the bucket.

“Maybe I’ll go to Europe,” Esther says, flicking cards ferociously. “That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Faith is at the window, observing the expert slope. Smooth, wide pastures of snow, framed by copses of beautiful spruces. Several skiers are zigzagging their way down, doing their best to appear stylish. Years ago, she came here with her high-school boyfriend, Eddie, a.k.a. “Fast Eddie,” which in some respects he was. Neither of them liked to ski, nor did they get out of bed to try. Now, skiing reminds her of golf — a golf course made of snow.

“Maybe I’ll take the girls out of school and treat us all to Venice,” Esther goes on. “I’m sure Roger would be relieved.”

Faith has spotted Roger and the girls on the bunny slope. Blue, green and yellow suits, respectively. He is pointing, giving detailed instructions to his daughters about ski etiquette. Just like any dad. She thinks she sees him laughing. It is hard to think of Roger as an average parent.

“They’re too young for Venice,” Faith says, putting her small, good-looking nose near the surprisingly warm windowpane. From outside, she hears the rasp of a snow shovel and muffled voices.

“Maybe I’ll take you to Europe, then,” Esther says. “Maybe when Daisy clears rehab we can all three take in Europe. I always planned for that.”

Faith likes her mother. Her mother is no fool, yet still seeks ways to be generous. But Faith cannot complete a picture that includes herself, her enlarged mother and Daisy on the Champs-Elysées or the Grand Canal. “That’s a nice idea,” she says. She is standing beside her mother’s chair, looking down at the top of her head, hearing her breathe. Her mother’s head is small. Its hair is dark gray and short and sparse, and not especially clean. She has affected a very wide part straight down the middle. Her mother looks like the fat lady in the circus, but wearing a neck brace.

“I was reading what it takes to live to a hundred,” Esther says, neatening the cards on the glass table top in front of her belly. Faith has begun thinking of Jack and what a peculiar species of creep he is. Jack Matthews still wears the Lobb cap-toe shoes he had made for him in college. Ugly, pretentious English shoes. “You have to be physically active,” her mother continues. “And you have to be an optimist, which I am. You have to stay interested in things, which I more or less do. And you have to handle loss well.”

With all her concentration Faith tries not to wonder how she ranks on this scale. “Do you want to be a hundred?”

“Oh, yes,” her mother says. “You just can’t imagine it, that’s all. You’re too young. And beautiful. And talented.” No irony. Irony is not her mother’s specialty.

Outside, one of the men shoveling snow can be heard to say, “Hi, we’re the Weather Channel.” He’s speaking to someone watching them through another window from yet another condo.

“Colder’n a well-digger’s dick, you bet,” a second man’s voice says. “That’s today’s forecast.”

“Dicks, dicks, and more dicks,” her mother says pleasantly. “That’s it, isn’t it? The male appliance. The whole mystery.”

“So I’m told,” Faith says, and thinks about Fast Eddie.

“They were all women, though,” her mother says.

“Who?”

“All the people who lived to be a hundred. You could do all the other things right. But you still needed to be a woman to survive.”

“Good for us,” Faith says.

“Right. The lucky few.”

This will be the girls’ first Christmas without a tree or their mother. Though Faith has attempted to improvise around this by arranging presents at the base of the large, plastic rubber-tree plant stationed against one of the empty white walls of the small living room. The tree was already here. She has brought with her a few Christmas balls, a gold star and a string of lights that promise to blink. “Christmas in Manila” could be a possible theme.

Outside, the day is growing dim. Faith’s mother is napping. Following his ski lesson, Roger has gone down to The Warming Shed for a mulled wine. The girls are seated on the couch side by side, wearing their Lanz of Salzburg flannel nighties with matching smiling monkey-face slippers. Green and yellow again, but with printed white snowflakes. They have taken their baths together, with Faith to supervise, then insisted on putting on their nighties early for their nap. They seem perfect angels and perfectly wasted on their parents. Faith has decided to pay their college tuitions. Even to Harvard.

“We know how to ski now,” Jane says primly. They’re watching Faith trim the plastic rubber-tree plant. First the blinking lights, though there’s no plug-in close enough, then the six balls (one for each family member). Last will come the gold star. Faith understands she is trying for too much. Though why not try for too much. It’s Christmas. “Marjorie wants to go to the Olympics,” Jane adds.

Jane has watched the Olympics on TV, but Marjorie was too young. It is Jane’s power position. Marjorie looks at her sister without expression, as if no one can observe her staring.

“I’m sure she’ll win a medal,” Faith says, on her knees, fiddling with the fragile strand of tiny peaked bulbs she already knows will not light up. “Would you two like to help me?” She smiles at both of them.

“No,” Jane says.

“No,” Marjorie says immediately after.

“I don’t blame you,” Faith says.

“Is Mommy coming here?” Marjorie blinks, then crosses her tiny, pale ankles. She is sleepy and could possibly cry.

“No, sweet,” Faith says. “This Christmas Mommy is doing herself a favor. So she can’t do one for us.”

“What about Vince?” Jane says authoritatively. Vince is ground that has been gone over several times before now, and carefully. Mrs. Argenbright, the girls’ therapist, has taken special pains with the Vince subject. The girls have the skinny on Mr. Vince but want to be given it again, since they like Vince more than their father.

“Vince is a guest of the state of Ohio, right now,” Faith says. “You remember that? It’s like he’s in college.”

“He’s not in college,” Jane says.

“Does he have a tree where he is,” Marjorie asks.

“Not in any real sense, at least not in his room like you do,” Faith says. “Let’s talk about happier things than our friend Vince, okay?” She is stringing bulbs now, on her knees.

The room doesn’t include much furniture, and what there is conforms to the Danish modern style. A raised, metal-hooded, red-enamel fireplace device has a paper message from the condo owners taped to it, advising that smoke damage will cause renters to lose their security deposit and subject them to legal actions. These particular owners, Esther has learned, are residents of Grosse Pointe Farms and are people of Russian extraction. There’s, of course, no firewood except what the Danish furniture could offer. So smoke is unlikely. Baseboards supply everything.

“I think you two should guess what you’re getting for Christmas,” Faith says, carefully draping lightless lights onto the stiff plastic branches of the rubber tree. Taking pains.

“In-lines. I already know,” Jane says and crosses her ankles like her sister. They are a jury disguised as an audience. “I don’t have to wear a helmet, though.”

“But are you sure of that?” Faith glances over her shoulder and gives them a smile she’s seen movie stars give to strangers. “You could always be wrong.”

“I’d better be right,” Jane says unpleasantly, with a frown very much like her mom’s.

“Santa’s bringing me a disc player,” Marjorie says. “It’ll come in a small box. I won’t even recognize it.”

“You two’re too smart for your britches,” Faith says. She is quickly finished stringing Christmas lights. “But you don’t know what I brought you.” Among other things, she has brought a disc player and an expensive pair of in-line skates. They are in the Suburban and will be returned back in LA. She has also brought movie videos. Twenty in all, including Star Wars and Sleeping Beauty. Daisy has sent them each $50.

“You know,” Faith says, “I remember once a long, long time ago, my dad and I and your mom went out in the woods and cut a tree for Christmas. We didn’t buy a tree, we cut one down with an axe.”

Jane and Marjorie stare at her as if they’ve read this story someplace. The TV is not turned on in the room. Perhaps, Faith thinks, they don’t understand someone talking to them — live action presenting its own unique continuity problems.

“Do you want to hear the story?”

“Yes,” Marjorie, the younger sister, says. Jane sits watchful and silent on the green Danish sofa. Behind her on the bare white wall is a framed print of Bruegel’s Return of the Hunters, which is, after all, Christmas-y.

“Well,” Faith says. “Your mother and I — we were only nine and ten — picked out the tree we desperately wanted to be our tree, but our dad said no, that tree was too tall to fit inside our house. We should choose another one. But we both said, ‘No, this one’s perfect. This is the best one.’ It was green and pretty and had a perfect Christmas shape. So our dad cut it down with his axe, and we dragged it out through the woods and tied it on top of our car and brought it back to Sandusky.” Both girls are sleepy now. There has been too much excitement, or else not enough. Their mother is in rehab. Their dad’s an asshole. They’re in someplace called Michigan. Who wouldn’t be sleepy?

“Do you want to know what happened after that?” Faith says. “When we got the tree inside?”

“Yes,” Marjorie says politely.

“It was too big,” Faith says. “It was much, much too tall. It couldn’t even stand up in our living room. And it was too wide. And our dad got really mad at us because we’d killed a beautiful living tree for a selfish reason, and because we hadn’t listened to him and thought we knew everything just because we knew what we wanted.”

Faith suddenly doesn’t know why she’s telling this story to these innocent sweeties who do not need another object lesson. So she simply stops. In the real story, of course, her father took the tree and threw it out the door into the back yard where it stayed for a week and turned brown. There was crying and accusations. Her father went straight to a bar and got drunk. Later, their mother went to the Kiwanis lot and bought a small tree that fit and which the three of them trimmed without the aid of their father. It was waiting, all lighted, when he came home smashed. The story had always been one others found humor in. This time the humor seems lacking.

“Do you want to know how the story turned out?” Faith says, smiling brightly for the girls’ benefit, but feeling defeated.

“I do,” Marjorie says. Jane says nothing.

“Well, we put it outside in the yard and put lights on it so our neighbors could share our big tree with us. And we bought a smaller tree for the house at the Kiwanis. It was a sad story that turned out good.”

“I don’t believe that,” Jane says.

“Well you should believe it,” Faith says, “because it’s true. Christmases are special. They always turn out wonderfully if you just give them a chance and use your imagination.”

Jane shakes her head as Marjorie nods hers. Marjorie wants to believe. Jane, Faith thinks, is a classic older child. Like herself.

“Did you know,”—this was one of Greta’s cute messages left for her on her voice mail in Los Angeles—“did you know that Jack hates—hates—to have his dick sucked? Hates it with a passion. Of course you didn’t. How could you? He always lies about it. Oh well. But if you’re wondering why he never comes, that’s why. It’s a big turn-off for him. I personally think it’s his mother’s fault, not that she ever did it to him, of course. By the way, that was a nice dress last Friday. Really great tits. I can see why Jack likes you. Take care.”

At seven, when the girls wake up from their naps and everyone is hungry at once, Faith’s mother offers to take the two hostile Indians for a pizza, then on to the skating rink, while Roger and Faith share the smorgasbord coupons in the Lodge.

Very few diners have chosen the long, harshly lit, rather sour-smelling Tyrol Room. Most guests are outside awaiting the Pageant of the Lights, in which members of the ski patrol descend the expert slope each night, holding flaming torches. It is a thing of beauty but takes time getting started. At the very top of the hill a giant Norway spruce has been illuminated in the Yuletide tradition, just as in the untrue version of Faith’s story. All of this is viewable from inside the Tyrol Room via a great picture window.

Faith does not want to eat with Roger, who is hungover from his gluhwein and a nap. Conversation that she would find offensive could easily occur; something on the subject of her sister, the girls’ mother — Roger’s (still) wife. But she’s trying to keep up a Christmas spirit. Do for others, etc.

Roger, she knows, dislikes her, possibly envies her, and also is attracted to her. Once, several years ago, he confided to her that he’d very much like to fuck her ears flat. He was drunk, and Daisy hadn’t long before had Jane. Faith found a way not to specifically acknowledge his offer. Later he told her he thought she was a lesbian. Having her know that just must’ve seemed like a good idea. A class act is The Roger.

The long, echoing dining hall has criss-crossed ceiling beams painted pink and light green and purple, a scheme apparently appropriate to Bavaria. There are long green-painted tables with pink and purple plastic folding chairs meant to promote an informal good time and family fun. Somewhere else in the lodge, Faith is certain, there is a better place to eat where you don’t pay with coupons and nothing’s pink or purple.

Faith is wearing a shiny black Lycra bodysuit, over which she has put on her loden knickers and Norway socks. She looks superb, she believes. With anyone but Roger this would be fun, or at least a hoot.

Roger sits across the long table, too far away to talk easily. In a room that can conveniently hold five hundred souls, there are perhaps fifteen scattered diners. No one is eating family style, only solos and twos. Young lodge employees in paper caps wait dismally behind the long smorgasbord steam table. Metal heat lamps with orange beams are steadily over-cooking the prime rib, of which Roger has taken a goodly portion. Faith has chosen only a few green lettuce leaves, a beet round, two tiny ears of yellow corn and no salad dressing. The sour smell of the Tyrol Room makes eating almost impossible.

“Do you know what I worry about?” Roger says, sawing around a triangle of glaucal gray roast beef fat, using a comically small knife. His tone implies he and Faith eat here together often and are just picking up where they’ve left off; as if they didn’t hold each other in complete contempt.

“No,” Faith says. “What?” Roger, she notices, has managed to hang on to his red smorgasbord coupon. The rule is you leave your coupon in the basket by the bread sticks. Clever Roger. Why, she wonders, is Roger tanned?

Roger smiles as though there’s a lewd aspect to whatever it is that worries him. “I worry that Daisy’s going to get so fixed up in rehab that she’ll forget everything that’s happened and want to be married again. To me, I mean. You know?” Roger chews as he talks. He wishes to seem earnest, his smile a serious, imploring, vacuous smile. This is Roger leveling. Roger owning up.

“That probably won’t happen,” Faith says. “I just have a feeling.” She no longer wishes to look at her fragmentary salad. She does not have an eating disorder and could never have one.

“Maybe not.” Roger nods. “I’d like to get out of guidance pretty soon, though. Start something new. Turn the page.”

In truth, Roger is not bad-looking, only oppressively regular: small chin, small nose, small hands, small straight teeth — nothing unusual except his brown eyes are too narrow, as if he had Ukrainian blood. Daisy married him — she said — because of his alarmingly big dick. That — or more importantly, the lack of that — was in her view why many other marriages failed. When all else gave way, that would be there. Vince’s, she’d shared, was even bigger. Ergo. It was to this particular quest that Daisy had dedicated her life. This, instead of college.

“What exactly would you like to do next?” Faith says. She is thinking how nice it would be if Daisy came out of rehab and had forgotten everything. A return to how things were when they still sort of worked often seemed a good solution.

“Well, it probably sounds crazy,” Roger says, chewing, “but there’s a company in Tennessee that takes apart jetliners for scrap. There’s big money in it. I imagine it’s how the movie business got started. Just some hare-brained scheme.” Roger pokes at macaroni salad with his fork. A single Swedish meatball remains on his plate.

“It doesn’t sound crazy,” Faith lies, then looks longingly at the smorgasbord table. Maybe she’s hungry, after all. But is the table full of food the smorgasbord, or is eating the food the smorgasbord?

Roger, she notices, has casually slipped his meal coupon into a pocket.

“Well, do you think you’re going to do that?” Faith asks with reference to the genius plan of dismantling jet airplanes for big bucks.

“With the girls in school, it’d be hard,” Roger admits soberly, ignoring what would seem to be the obvious — that it is not a genius plan.

Faith gazes away again. She realizes no one else in the big room is dressed the way she is, which reminds her of who she is. She is not Snow Mountain Highlands (even if she once was). She is not Sandusky. She is not even Ohio. She is Hollywood. A fortress.

“I could take the girls for a while,” she suddenly says. “I really wouldn’t mind.” She thinks of sweet Marjorie and sweet, unhappy Jane sitting on the Danish modern couch in their sweet nighties and monkey-face slippers, watching her trim the plastic rubber-tree plant. At the same moment, she thinks of Roger and Daisy being killed in an automobile crash on their triumphant way back from rehab. You can’t help what you think.

“Where would they go to school?” Roger says, becoming alert to something unexpected. Something he might like.

“I’m sorry?” Faith says and flashes Roger, big-dick, narrow-eyed Roger a second movie star’s smile. She has let herself become distracted by the thought of his timely death.

“I mean, like, where would they go to school?” Roger blinks. He is that alert.

“I don’t know. Hollywood High, I guess. They have schools in California. I could find one.”

“I’d have to think about it,” Roger lies decisively.

“Okay, do,” Faith says. Now that she has said this, without any previous thought of ever saying it, it becomes part of everyday reality. Soon she will become Jane and Marjorie’s parent. Easy as that. “When you get settled in Tennessee you could have them back,” she says without conviction.

“They probably wouldn’t want to come back by then,” Roger says. “Tennessee’d seem pretty dull.”

“Ohio’s dull. They like that.”

“True,” Roger says.

No one has thought to mention Daisy in promoting this new arrangement. Though Daisy, the mother, is committed elsewhere for the next little patch. And Roger needs to get his life jump-started, needs to put “guidance” in the rearview mirror. First things first.

The Pageant of the Lights has gotten under way outside now — a ribbon of swaying torches gliding soundlessly down the expert slope like an overflow of human lava. All is preternaturally visible through the panoramic window. A large, bundled crowd of spectators has assembled at the bottom of the slope behind some snow fences, many holding candles in scraps of paper like at a Grateful Dead concert. All other artificial light is extinguished, except for the Yuletide spruce at the top. The young smorgasbord attendants, in their aprons and paper caps, have gathered at the window to witness the event yet again. Some are snickering. Someone remembers to turn the lights off in the Tyrol Room. Dinner is suspended.

“Do you downhill,” Roger asks, leaning over his empty plate in the half darkness. He is whispering, for some reason. Things could really turn out great, Faith understands him to be thinking: Eighty-six the girls. Dismantle plenty of jets. Just be friendly and it’ll happen.

“No, never,” Faith says, dreamily watching the torchbearers schussing side to side, a gradual, sinuous, drama-less tour downward. “It scares me.”

“You’d get used to it.” Roger unexpectedly reaches across the table to where her hands rest on either side of her uneaten salad. He touches, then pats, one of these hands. “And by the way,” Roger says. “Thanks. I mean it. Thanks a lot.”

Back in the condo all is serene. Esther and the girls are still at the skating rink. Roger has wandered back to The Warming Shed. He has a girlfriend in Port Clinton, a former high-school counselee, now divorced. He will be calling her, telling her about his new Tennessee plans, adding that he wishes she were here at Snow Mountain Highlands with him and that his family could be in Rwanda. Bobbie, her name is.

A call to Jack is definitely in order. But first Faith decides to slide the newly trimmed rubber-tree plant nearer the window, where there’s an outlet. When she plugs in, most of the little white lights pop cheerily on. Only a few do not, and in the box are replacements. This is progress. Later, tomorrow, they can affix the star on top — her father’s favorite ritual. “Now it’s time for the star,” he’d always say. “The star of the wise men.” Her father had been a musician, a woodwind specialist. A man of talents, and of course a drunk. A specialist also in women who were not his wife. He had taught committedly at a junior college to make all their ends meet. He had wanted Faith to become a lawyer, so naturally she became one. Daisy he had no specific plans for, so naturally she became a drunk and sometime later, an energetic nymphomaniac. Eventually he died, at home. The paterfamilias. After that, but not until, her mother began to put weight on. “Well, there’s my size, of course,” was how she usually expressed it. She took it as a given: increase being the natural consequence of loss.

Whether to call Jack, though, in London or New York. (Nantucket is out, and Jack never keeps his cell phone on except for business hours.) Where is Jack? In London it was after midnight. In New York it was the same as here. Half past eight. And what message to leave? She could just say she was lonely; or that she had chest pains, or worrisome test results. (These would need to clear up mysteriously.)

But London, first. The flat in Sloane Terrace, half a block from the tube. They’d eaten breakfast at the Oriel, then Jack had gone off to work in The City while she did the Tate, the Bacons her specialty. So far from Snow Mountain Highlands — this being her sensation when dialing — a call going a great, great distance.

Ring-jing, ring-jing, ring-jing, ring-jing, ring-jing. Nothing.

There was a second number, for messages only, but she’d forgotten it. Call again to allow for a misdial. Ring-jing, ring-jing, ring-jing …

New York, then. East Fiftieth. Far, far east. The nice, small slice of river view. The bolthole he’d had since college. His freshman numerals framed. 1971. She’d gone to the trouble to have the bedroom redone. White everything. A smiling and tanned picture of herself from the boat, framed in red leather. Another of the two of them together at Cabo, on the beach. All similarly long distances from Snow Mountain Highlands.

Ring, ring, ring, ring. Then click. “Hi, this is Jack.”—she almost says “Hi” back—“I’m not here right now, etc., etc., etc.,” then a beep.

“Merry Christmas, it’s me. Ummmm, Faith.” She’s stuck, but not at all flustered. She could just as well tell him everything. This happened today: the atomic energy smokestacks, the plastic rubber-tree plant, the Pageant of the Lights, the smorgasbord, Eddie from years back, the girls’ planned move to California. All things Christmas-y. “Ummm, I just wanted to say that I’m … fine, and that I trust — make that hope—that I hope you are too. I’ll be back home — at the beach, that is — after Christmas. I’d love — make that like — to hear from you. I’m in Snow Mountain Highlands. In Michigan.” She pauses, discussing with herself if there was further news worth relating. There isn’t. Then she realizes (too late) she’s treating his voice mail like her dictaphone. There’s no revising. Too bad. Her mistake. “Well, goodbye,” she says, realizing this sounds a bit stiff, but doesn’t revise. With them it’s all over anyway. Who cares? She called.

Out on the Nordic Trail i, lights, soft white ones not unlike the Christmas tree lights in the condo, have been strung in selected fir boughs — bright enough that you’d never get lost in the dark, dim enough not to spoil the mysterious effect.

She does not actually enjoy this kind of skiing either. Not really. Not with all the tiresome waxing, the stiff rental shoes, the long inconvenient skis, the sweaty underneath, the chance that all this could eventuate in catching cold and missing work. The gym is better. Major heat, then quick you’re clean and back in the car, back in the office. Back on the phone. She is a sport, but definitely not a sports nut. Still, this is not terrifying.

No one accompanies her on nighttime Nordic Trail 1, the Pageant of the Lights having lured away the other skiers. Two Japanese were conversing at the trail head, small beige men in bright chartreuse Lycras — smooth, serious faces, giant thighs, blunt, no-nonsense arms — commencing the rigorous course, “The Beast,” Nordic Trail 3. On their rounded, stocking-capped heads they’d worn tiny lights like coal miners to light their way. They have disappeared immediately.

Here the snow virtually hums to the sound of her sliding strokes. A full moon rides behind filigree clouds as she strides forward in the near-darkness of crusted woods. There is wind she can hear high up in the tallest pines and hemlocks, but at ground level there’s none, just cold radiating off the metallic snow. Only her ears actually feel cold, that and the sweat line of her hair. Her heartbeat barely registers. She is in shape.

For an instant she hears distant music, a singing voice with orchestral accompaniment. She pauses to listen. The music’s pulse travels through the trees. Strange. Possibly it’s Roger, she thinks, between deep breaths; Roger onstage in the karaoke bar, singing his greatest hits to other lonelies in the dark. “Blue Bayou,” “Layla,” “Tommy,” “Try to Remember.” Roger at a safe distance. Her hair, she realizes, is shining in the moonlight. If she were being watched, she would at least look good.

But wouldn’t it be romantic to peer down from these woods through the dark and spy some shining, many-winged lodge lying below, windows ablaze, like an exotic casino from some Paul Muni movie. Graceful skaters adrift on a lighted rink. A garlanded lift still in stately motion, a few, last alpinists taking their silken, torchless float before lights-out. The great tree shining from the summit.

Except, this is not a particularly pretty part of Michigan. Nothing’s to see — dark trunks, cold dead falls, swags of heavy snow hung in the spruce boughs.

And she is stiffening. Just that fast. New muscles being visited. Best not to go so far.

Daisy, her sister, comes to mind. Daisy, who will soon exit the hospital with a whole new view of life. Inside, there’s of course been the 12-step ritual to accompany the normal curriculum of deprivation and regret. And someone, somewhere, at some time possibly even decades back, will definitely turn out to have touched Daisy in ways inappropriate and detrimental to her well-being, and at an all-too-tender age. And not just once, but many times, over a series of terrible, silent years. The culprit possibly an older, suspicious neighborhood youth — a loner — or a far too avuncular school librarian. Even the paterfamilias will come under posthumous scrutiny (the historical perspective, as always, unprovable and therefore indisputable).

And certain sacrifices of dignity will naturally be requested of everyone then, due to this rich new news from the past: a world so much more lethal than anyone believed, nothing being the way we thought it was; so much hidden from view; if anyone had only known, could’ve spoken out and opened up the lines of communication, could’ve trusted, confided, blah, blah, blah. Their mother will, necessarily, have suspected nothing, but unquestionably should’ve. Perhaps Daisy, herself, will have suggested that Faith is a lesbian. The snowball effect. No one safe, no one innocent.

Up ahead, in the shadows, a mile into the trek, Shelter 1 sits to the right of Nordic Trail 1—a darkened clump in a small clearing, a place to rest and wait for the others to catch up (if there were others). A perfect place to turn back.

Shelter 1 is nothing fancy, a simple rustic school-bus enclosure open on one side and hewn from logs. Out on the snow lie crusts of dinner rolls, a wedge of pizza, some wadded tissues, three beer cans — treats for the forest creatures — each casting its tiny shadow upon the white surface.

Although seated in the gloomy inside on a plank bench are not school kids, but Roger, the brother-in-law, in his powder-blue ski suit and hiking boots. He is not singing karaoke after all. She noticed no boot tracks up the trail. Roger is more resourceful than at first he seems.

“It’s eff-ing cold up here.” Roger speaks from within the shadows of Shelter 1. He is not wearing his black glasses now, and is barely visible, though she senses he’s smiling — his brown eyes even narrower.

“What are you doing up here, Roger,” Faith asks.

“Oh,” Roger says out of the gloom. “I just thought I’d come up.” He crosses his arms and extends his hiking boots into the snow-light like some species of high-school toughie.

“What for?” Her knees are both knotted and weak from exertion. Her heart has begun thumping. Perspiration is cold on her lip. Temperatures are in the low twenties. In winter the most innocent places turn lethal.

“Nothing ventured,” Roger says. He is mocking her.

“This is where I’m turning around,” Faith ventures. “Would you like to go back down the hill with me?” What she wishes for is more light. Much more light. A bulb in the shelter would be very good. Bad things happen in the dark that would prove unthinkable in the light.

“Life leads you to some pretty interesting places, doesn’t it, Faith?”

She would like to smile and not feel menaced by Roger, who should be with his daughters.

“I guess,” she says. She can smell alcohol in the dry air. He is drunk and is winging all of this. A bad concurrence.

“You’re very pretty. Very pretty. The big lawyer,” Roger says. “Why don’t you come in here?”

“Oh, no thank you,” Faith says. Roger is loathsome, but he is also family, and she feels paralyzed by not knowing what to do — a most unusual situation. She wishes to be more agile on her skis, to leap upward and discover herself turned around and already gliding away.

“I always thought that in the right situation, we could have some big-time fun,” Roger goes on.

“Roger, this isn’t a good thing to be doing,” whatever he’s doing. She wants to glare at him, then understands her knees are quivering. She feels very, very tall on her skis, unusually accessible.

“It is a good thing to be doing,” Roger says. “It’s what I came up here for. Some fun.”

“I don’t want us to do anything up here, Roger,” Faith says. “Is that all right?” This, she realizes, is what fear feels like — the way you’d feel in a late-night parking structure, or jogging alone in an isolated factory area, or entering your house in the wee hours, fumbling for your key. Accessible. And then, suddenly, there would be someone. Bingo. A man with oppressively ordinary looks who lacks a plan.

“Nope, nope. That’s absolutely not all right.” Roger stands up but stays in the sheltered darkness. “The lawyer,” he says again, still grinning.

“I’m just going to turn around,” Faith says, and very unsteadily begins to move her long left ski up out of its track, and then, leaning on her poles, her right ski up and out of its track. It is dizzying, and her calves ache, and it is complicated not to cross her ski tips. But it is essential to remain standing. To fall would mean surrender. What is the skiing expression? Tele … Tele-something. She wishes she could tele-something. Tele-something the hell away from here. Her thighs burn. In California, she thinks, she is an officer of the court. A public official, sworn to uphold the law — though not to enforce it. She is a force for good.

“You look stupid standing there,” Roger says stupidly.

She intends to say nothing more. There is nothing really to say. Talk is not cheap now, and she is concentrating very hard. For a moment she thinks she hears music again, music far away. It can’t be.

“When you get all the way around,” Roger says, “then I want to show you something.” He does not say what. In her mind — moving her skis inches at a time, her ankles heavy— in her mind she says “Then what?” but doesn’t say that.

“I really hate your eff-ing family,” Roger says. His boots go crunch on the snow. She glances over her shoulder, but to look at him is too much. He is approaching. She will fall and then dramatic, regrettable things will happen. In a gesture he possibly deems dramatic, Roger — though she cannot see it — unzips his blue snowsuit front. He intends her to hear this noise. She is three quarters turned around. She could see him over her left shoulder if she chose to. Have a look, see what all the excitement’s about. She is sweating. Underneath she is drenched.

“Yep, life leads you to some pretty interesting situations.” He is repeating himself. There is another zipping noise. This is big-time fun in Roger’s worldview.

“Yes,” she says, “it does.” She has come almost fully around now.

She hears Roger laugh a little chuckle, an un-humorous “hunh.” Then he says, “Almost.” She hears his boots squeeze. She feels his actual self close beside her. This undoubtedly will help to underscore how much he hates her family.

Then there are voices — saving voices — behind her. She cannot help looking over her left shoulder now and up the trail where it climbs into the dark trees. There is a light, followed by another light, like stars coming down from on high. Voices, words, language she doesn’t quite understand. Japanese. She does not look at Roger, but simply slides one ski, her left one, forward into its track, lets her right one follow and find its way, pushes on her poles. And in just that small allotment of time and with that amount of effort she is away. She thinks she hears Roger say something, another “hunh,” a kind of grunting sound, but she can’t be sure.

In the condo everyone is sleeping. The plastic rubber-tree lights are twinkling. They reflect from the window that faces the ski hill, which now is dark. Someone, Faith notices (her mother), has devoted much time to replacing the spent bulbs so the tree can fully twinkle. The gold star, the star that led the wise men, is lying on the coffee table like a starfish, waiting to be properly affixed.

Marjorie, the younger, sweeter sister, is asleep on the orange couch, under the Bruegel scene. She has left her bed to sleep near the tree, brought her quilted pink coverlet with her.

Naturally Faith has locked Roger out. Roger can die alone and cold in the snow. Or he can sleep in a doorway or by a steam pipe somewhere in the Snow Mountain Highlands complex and explain his situation to the security staff. Roger will not sleep with his pretty daughters this night. She is taking a hand in things now. These girls are hers. Though, how naive of her not to know that an offer to take the girls would immediately be translated by Roger into an invitation to fuck him. She has been in California too long, has fallen out of touch with things middle American. How strange that Roger, too, would say, “Eff-ing.” He probably also says “X-mas.”

At the ice rink, two teams are playing hockey under high white lights. A red team opposes a black team. Net cages have been brought on, the larger rink walled down to regulation size and shape. A few spectators stand watching — wives and girlfriends. Boyne City versus Petoskey; Cadillac versus Sheboygan, or some such. The little girls’ own white skates are piled by the door she has now safely locked with a dead bolt.

It would be good to put the star on, she thinks. “Now it’s time for the star.” Who knows what tomorrow will bring? The arrival of wise men couldn’t hurt.

So, with the flimsy star, which is made of slick aluminum paper and is large and gold and weightless and five-pointed, Faith stands on the Danish dining-table chair and fits the slotted fastener onto the topmost leaf of the rubber-tree plant. It is not a perfect fit by any means, there being no sprig at the pinnacle, so that the star doesn’t stand up as much as it leans off the top in a sad, comic, but also victorious way. (This use was never envisioned by the Filipino tree-makers.) Tomorrow others can all add to the tree, invent ornaments from absurd or inspirational raw materials. Tomorrow Roger himself will be rehabilitated, and become everyone’s best friend. Except hers.

Marjorie’s eyes have opened, though she has not stirred on the couch. For a moment, but only for a moment, she appears dead. “I went to sleep,” she says softly and blinks her brown eyes.

“Oh, I saw you,” Faith smiles. “I thought you were another Christmas present. I thought Santa had been here early and left you for me.” She takes a careful seat on the spindly coffee table, close beside Marjorie — in case there would be some worry to express, a gloomy dream to relate. A fear. She smooths her hand through Marjorie’s warm hair.

Marjorie takes a deep breath and lets air go out smoothly through her nostrils. “Jane’s asleep,” she says.

“And how would you like to go back to bed?” Faith whispers. Possibly she hears a soft tap on the door — the door she has dead-bolted. The door she will not open. The door beyond which the world and trouble wait. Marjorie’s eyes wander toward the sound, then swim again with sleep. She is safe.

“Leave the tree on,” Marjorie instructs, though asleep.

“Sure, okay, sure,” Faith says. “The tree stays. We keep the tree.”

She eases her hand under Marjorie, who, by old habit, reaches, caresses her neck. In an instant she has Marjorie in her arms, pink coverlet and all, carrying her altogether effortlessly into the darkened bedroom where her sister sleeps on one of the twin beds. Carefully she lowers Marjorie onto the empty bed and re-covers her. Again she thinks she hears soft tapping, though it stops. She believes it will not come again this night.

Jane is sleeping with her face to the wall, her breathing deep and audible. Jane is the good sleeper, Marjorie the less reliable one. Faith stands in the middle of the dark, windowless room, between the twin beds, the blinking Christmas lights haunting the stillness that has come at such expense. The room smells musty and dank, as if it’s been closed for months and opened just for this purpose, this night, these children. If only briefly she is reminded of Christmases she might’ve once called her own. “Okay,” she whispers. “Okay, okay, okay.”

Faith undresses in the Master Suite, too tired to shower. Her mother sleeps on one side of their shared bed. She is a small mountain, visibly breathing beneath the covers. A glass of red wine, half drunk, sits on the bed table beside her molded neck brace. A picture of a white sailboat on a calm blue ocean hangs over the bed. Faith half closes the door to undress, the blinking Christmas lights shielded.

She will wear pajamas tonight, for her mother’s sake. She has bought a new pair. White, pure silk, smooth as water. Blue silk piping.

And here is the unexpected sight of herself in the cheap, wavy door mirror. All good. Just the small pale scar where a cyst was notched from her left breast, a meaningless scar no one would see. But a good effect still. Thin, hard thighs. A small nice belly. Boy’s hips. The whole package, nothing to complain about.

There’s need of a glass of water. Always take a glass of water to bed, never a glass of red wine. When she passes by the living-room window, her destination the tiny kitchen, she sees that the hockey game is now over. It is after midnight. The players are shaking hands on the ice, others are skating in wide circles. On the expert slope above the rink, lights have been turned on again. Machines with headlights groom the snow at treacherous angles and great risk.

And she sees Roger. He is halfway between the ice rink and the condos, walking back in his powder-blue suit. He has watched the hockey game, no doubt. Roger stops and looks up at her where she stands in the window in her white pjs, the Christmas tree lights blinking as her background. He stops and stares. He has found his black-frame glasses. His mouth is moving, but he makes no gesture. There is no room at this inn for Roger.

In bed, her mother is even larger. A great heat source, vaguely damp when Faith touches her back. Her mother is wearing blue gingham, a nightdress not so different from the muumuu she wears in daylight. She smells unexpectedly good. Rich.

How long, Faith wonders, has it been since she’s slept with her mother. A hundred years? Twenty? But good that it would seem so normal.

She has left the door open in case the girls should call, in case they wake up and are afraid, in case they miss their father. The Christmas lights blink off and on merrily beyond the doorway. She can hear snow slide off the roof, an automobile with chains jingling softly somewhere out of sight. She has intended to call for messages but let it slip.

And how long ago, she wonders, was her mother slim and pretty? The sixties? Not so long ago, really. She had been a girl then. They — the sixties — always seem so close. Though to her mother probably not.

Blink, blink, blink, the lights blink.

Marriage. Yes, naturally she would think of that now. Though maybe marriage was only a long plain of self-revelation at the end of which there’s someone else who doesn’t know you very well. That would be a message she could’ve left for Jack. “Dear Jack, I now know that marriage is a long plain at the end of which there’s etc., etc., etc.” You always thought of these things too late. Somewhere, Faith hears more faint music, “Away in a Manger,” played prettily on chimes. It is music to sleep to.

And how would they deal with tomorrow? Not the eternal tomorrow, but the promised, practical one. Her thighs feel stiff, yet she is slowly relaxing. Her mother, the mountain beside her, is facing away. How indeed? Roger would be rehabilitated tomorrow, yes, yes. There will be board games. Changes of outfits. Phone calls placed. She will find the time to ask her mother if anyone had ever been abused, and find out, happily, not. Unusual looks will be passed between and among everyone. Certain names, words will be in short supply, for the sake of all. The girls will again learn to ski and to enjoy it. Jokes will be told. They will feel better, be a family again. Christmas takes care of its own.