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I don't know exactly. I guess a lot of these people have known me since I was little, and they're curious to know what kind of company I'm keeping. They'll be horrified to know that you're dating an old hag. As she says this, she slips out of her coat. It is a big gray woolen thing, and her body emerges from it like the tender insides of enormous nut. Her dress is pink, her arms bare. She looks like candy, he thinks. I'll be right back, he says. He hurries down the hallway with her coat, throws it on the bed, and is about to hurry back when the bed catches his eye. It is piled high with voluptuous winter coats, and a tremendous urge to take a swan dive into the pile comes over it. He pauses, debating it, and then remembers that his last such dive there at age 13, had produced a sharp cracking sound, after which there was always a sag in one part of the bed. Anyway, he's grown up now. When Alex returns to the foyer, Christine is gone. A quick scan locates her at the other side of the room with a woman named Julia. She's a nice lady who's been coming to the Hanukkah party year after year. She's one of several women who show up alone at these parties. They occupy an age, somewhere between the mid-40s and mid-60s, and have an upbeat but somewhat beleaguered quality. Alex has always looked at them with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation, the way someone waiting to go into a haunted house looks at the people just emerging. These are women. There are a few men who come alone too, but they're different, who have wound their way through love and marriage and children and divorce and even death. And now, he sees, find themselves blinking outside in the daylight, alone. It's strange to think that this is a group that his mother belongs to as well, though somehow she doesn't have that blinking quality. Alex arrives in time to hear Julia say to Christine, really, I'm serious. Like in those trashy romance novels, you know, when they describe the heroine's sex, you know, smooth white, porcelain fair, 20 adjectives in a row. They're describing your skin. Really? I know, I wrote one. Well, that's nice of you, said Christine. I don't think I believe you, though. Alex flashes to an image of Christine stepping into their bed with several layers of expensive and mysterious creams and mists massaged into her face. The process, which they jokingly referred to as the beauty ritual, is so elaborate that it is a struggle for Alex to stay awake through it, and often he's awakened by Christine's body in her pink pajamas, sliding into bed next to him. Hello, Alex, says Julia distractedly. I was just telling your friend that she has exactly the kind of she thinks I look like one of those women in trashy books who are innocent and pure and end up sleeping with terrible men, says Christine. That's not quite how I put it, says Julia. She's about to elaborate when a shushing sound sweeps through the room and attention moves to the baby grand piano in one corner of the room, behind which stands his mother. Everybody, she says, it's time for the singing, those who know how it goes, and there should be many of you by now, please sing along. And those who are new, there is sheets being passed around. Guests gather from all parts of the apartment, crowding into the living room, bearing chairs and drinks, and now fumbling with song sheets. Alex looks at Christine with an apologetic expression. Does this seem really weird? He says. No, she says. It seems nice. Her answer doesn't quell his anxiety and he's called over to the piano. It's time for the lighting of the candles. People sit in chairs pressed up close to one another, making an unruly semicircle around the piano. Four unfortunate guests are perched on the remains of the couch, which is elegant in its appearance, a few rips aside, but otherwise completely ruined. Anyone sitting down on it, Alex knows, is sucked down into a swirl of cushions and springs and practically lowered to the floor. He stares at two couples lined up there. Each person is trying to act as if the awkward position they've been placed in, knees up near their armpits, is not unusual. He vows not to make a nervous joke about the couch. He has made a joke about it every year for as long as he can remember. Then, with the oily loquaciousness of a lounge act. Mc, he murmurs, if anybody's missing a friend, you might want to check the couch. It's a lovely couch, but its relation to furniture is similar to the Venus fly trap's relation to flowers. Then the matches are handed to him. Silence. A little red tipped twig in his fingers, the thunderous crack of the tip against the brown flint of the matchbox. Success on the very first try. And then the horrible aching off key sound of his own voice, half chanting, half singing as he lights the middle candle and then passes its flame from candle to candle. It's the last night of Hanukkah, so all eight candles have to be lit, and he tries to get each wick going as soon as possible. Baruch atta adonai elohenu melech haolam, he croaks. Asher kit sharnu bemitzvotaf. He managed to sing with a moderate amount of vigor, telling himself that his religion seems to stipulate that such songs be sung in a discordant, wavery voice with hardly any sense of rhythm. When it's over, he joins his mother on the piano bench and the room stumbles its way through the first song, his mother almost the only one to sing the words in a cloud, clear, melodic voice. At the end Alex feels a huge sense of relief mingled with regret. Everyone, he has noticed, feels uncomfortable with the singing until the last note has begun to fade, at which point everyone pretends to have enjoyed it all. It's Hanukkah. The pile of gifts under the menorah looms large and appetizing. Smells waft in from the kitchen. Very good. His mother calls out when the last mooing, mumbling words have died away. Let's try that one again. Alex feels the room's collective heart sink and he bends his head so as not to have to look at anyone. The guests launch into it again, and this time a few more voices join in. Mausor Y When it's over, his mother plays another, slightly more lively song, and then finally a last peppy one. This one is called Sevy Von, she says, and it's about a little dreidel which is very mischievous and runs through the woods and streams and goes anywhere it wants. The words woods and streams seem almost criminal to Alex. They belong to a pre ironic language that the world has long since cast aside. His mother starts to play. He stares at her fingers on the white and black keys. They aren't the world's most elegant fingers, yet they exude the maddening kind of optimism possessed by people who like to plant gardens. The lyrics of this last song are repetitive, and more and more people gradually join in the singing. His mother quickens the pace and without stopping spins the song into a second go round. For a moment, Alex lets his eyes flick upward. He sees a tableau of faces, some somber, some cheerful, some staring with concentration down at individual sheets of paper while they sit, some singing heartily to the ceiling, some outright faking it. He half glimpses Christine sitting in the corner and can't tell if her lips are moving. All the faces are bathed in a warm light from the lamps around the room. Some of the silk lampshades he knows, are ripped on the inside, and fringes of silk hang down like vines. Others are so old that they cast a yellow glow like a candle's. The moment seems to contain everything about life that is attractive and perfect and nourishing and also everything that makes one want to flee and hide under a rock and hope that someone someday might find a cure for the awkward, transparent fragility of people such as these. It is over. Gifts are distributed, a surfeit of scarves for the men, more personal items for the women, and then everyone begins to file into the study for dinner. A buffet. Alex finds Christine talking to Mrs. Zuckerman. He catches Christine's eye, but then decides to leave her alone. She and Mrs. Zuckerman seem relaxed together. A sense of lightness comes over him now that the main event is over, finally relinquishing her duties. His mother is roaming around talking to people, and Alex keeps shifting his gaze from Christine to his mother and back. They're like two live wires, separate, yet each connected to him. He is aware of an impulse to keep them apart, but doesn't know what that means. The party starts to wind down, a gradual thinning and then a sudden rush. Then it is done. The last people crowd down the hallway in a group, holding their coats and gifts. There is an awkward period in the hall while the elevator climbs and slows and everyone's attention turns to the churning, wheezing sounds it makes as it prepares to stop. They huddle in, offer a last frantic flurry of waves and goodbyes, as if they were on the deck of a departing ship. And then the door closes. Alex and his mother and Christine go back into the apartment, which is awash in ribbons and colored paper and scattered chairs and plates and half emptied wine glasses with traces of lipstick around the edges. This moment, too, has duplicated itself year after year, though now there's a variation. The cast has grown to three. Alex realizes the most difficult part of the evening is at hand. It is a foregone conclusion that he's going home with Christine, but how is he going to negotiate the transition is suddenly a mystery. Oh my, says his mother, exultant with relief. That was one of the best ones. Then she turns to Christine. Thank you so much for coming. Why are you thanking me? I should thank you. It was a really nice party. I've never been to a Hanukkah party before. It was amazingly friendly. Once again, her calm assurance, the first thing he had noticed about her, strikes Alex. She's performing a social function with this sort of talk, but there's something about her, an openness that takes it somewhere else. Her cheeks are full of color and her eyes seem unusually bright. Shall we open the presents? Says his mother. Alex stands still. The business of opening presents with his mother is so personal that he can't imagine this third party taking part. The two women look at him and he is reminded of an unpleasant experience he had not long ago with his incoherent aunt Louise, his father's sister, who lives in a nursing home in New Jersey. She has Alzheimer's. During the visit, he had waved a picture of Christine in front of her face and said, this is my girlfriend. My girlfriend. What do you think? Not bad. Huh? Aunt Louise rarely said anything, so Alex was in the habit of keeping up both sides of the conversation in her presence. But this time she swerved briefly back into the cantankerous and acerbic woman she had been for so many years, and her face took on an alarmed and vaguely contemptuous expression. Eve, she said. It's Eve. No, no, said Alex, horrified. It's my but his aunt's eyes removed themselves again, and he was left staring at the photograph, struck by the idea that he had managed to find a woman who resembled his mother when she was younger. He saw it quite suddenly, the same broad, smooth forehead, the pencil thin eyebrows, the elegant nose, but most of all the mouth, that half smile that was an expression neither of happiness nor sadness, coldness nor affection, but of a private and elusive pleasure. Now, staring back at these two faces, he feels unsecure how best to prevent the three of them opening gifts together. Christine would tear hers open, and his mother would unpeel each piece of tape to preserve the wrapping, and he would sit in the middle, feeling embarrassed. I'll do the dishes, he suddenly offers. There are all these dishes, and I can't leave you with them. It's not fair. Let's just clean up first. For the first time in his life, he's glad that his mother doesn't have a dishwasher. In moments he is in his official dishwashing posture, his forehead pressed to the cabinet above the sink, while his hands and arms work and he enters a dishwashing trance. Christine and his mother move about the apartment, gathering dishes and glasses and silver and bringing them to him. Nearly an hour has passed before the last spoon has been rinsed and dried. Christine and his mother are sitting at the kitchen table, talking, their faces pleasant and relaxed. Well, alex says finally, I guess that's that. All right, says his mother. The air is filled with departure. She smiles brightly, but Alex feels there's something slightly forced about it. The gifts still lie unopened. I'll get our coats, he says, and goes to retrieve them. As he and Christine are leaving, Alex finds that the living room looks like a stage set after the play is over and the actors have all gone home. Chairs stand at odd angles to one another, and remnants of the party are scattered about. The menorah, which had presided grandly over the event, now sits quietly, its eight candles burnt down. The neat pile of unopened gifts that lie at its base. His gifts for his mother, hers for him, and those brought by the guests, seem like an oversight. The idea of his mother left alone on this stage is suddenly excruciating to him, and his departing manner is almost abrupt. All right, that was great, he says. I'll call you tomorrow. We'll do the present soon. Thank you so much, Eve, says Christine, and the sound of his mother's name on her lips surprises him. The two women embrace warmly, pausing in each other's arms, almost as if commiseration. He's entirely outside of this moment, and he peers at them curiously, wondering what is happening. They have more in common with each other than either has with him, two women and a bystander. Then he bends to kiss his mother's warm cheek. Out in the hall, a vague dizziness overtakes him as the dial beside the elevator slowly turns toward the number of their floor. The door opens. He and Christine step in. It closes behind them, his mother's face momentarily visible through the small rectangular window in the elevator door. Bye, calls Christine. The elevator starts down. Goodbye, comes the reply, but his mother's face has disappeared. It is a cold, clear winter night, and the streets are hard, windswept, and empty. Alex and Christine walk hand in hand toward West End Avenue, the sound of their shoes echoing against the pavement. What do you think? Alex said in a minute. It was nice, christine said. They walk in silence for a few more steps. There was something heartwarming about it, and sort of heartrending, too, the way all those people seem so friendly and kind and your mother being so enthusiastic. It's almost enough to make you optimistic about people. Almost, says Alex. She says nothing more, and for a moment he hates her. They wait on the deserted corner until an empty taxi screeches to a stop in front of them. They clamber in and head downtown toward Christine's apartment. It's an old taxi with ancient shocks and windows that don't quite close. The smell is pleasant, though old leather and some previous passengers perfume. Alex and Christine huddle against each other in the back seat. Alex? She says at one point. Yeah, he replies, but she doesn't say anything else. The cold wind whistles through the doors. Every block or so they hit a bump and the cab rises off the ground as though it had just flown over the crest of a hill. The glow of each passing street light falls across Christine's face and then recedes. Alex reflects on the impossibility of his relationship with her, the doom and despair that await him, and the heartbreak. He misses the familiar warmth and security of the apartment he has just left. Yet his departure was inevitable, a thrilling turn of events. He holds Christine tight as they go over a bump, up goes the taxi in a smooth, effortless glide, and a tiny smile comes over Alex's face. As they hang in midair.
