“Is everything okay?” Lindsey, boundary-free as ever, asked.
“It’s only—my son is coming over, and I haven’t seen him for a while, and he’s—he’s not very well right now. He just texted me out of the blue and said he’s in an Uber.”
As soon as she said this, the doorbell rang.
“Oh shit.”
Jane and Lindsey made haste to gather their things as quickly as possible when they heard Maggie open the door, then some agitated conversation.
“Cameron, are you okay?”
Cameron groaned impatiently. “I’m fine, Mom.”
“I have people here, so—can we go to your room?” Maggie suggested.
“I want to watch TV in the living room. You need to hide me?”
“No, I’m worried that—you look a little out of it,” Maggie said carefully, gently.
“Yeah, well I am!” Cameron shouted. “Which is exactly why I want to watch some TV in the living room.”
He veered between petulant and angry, between lucid and stoned. No wonder Maggie could handle her overwrought clients so well.
Jane and Lindsey wanted to sneak out, there was no way to avoid them still standing in the foyer.
“Lindsey, Jane—this is my son, Cameron.”
Cameron looked like he was in his mid-twenties. Even from a distance, you could tell he was a user. Ratty clothes hung from his emaciated frame. Jane’s heart broke when Maggie turned to them and smiled, failing to mask the pain welling up in her eyes.
This is why heart-opening was precarious. This is why being a fortress could be good sometimes. In theory, empathy was humanity at its best, but in reality, it was an open invitation to misery.
Cameron looked at them warily, his glassy eyes narrowing.
“Hey. How’s it going?”
Lindsey jumped right in.
“Great! We spent the day getting your mom more organized. And she has been such a great sport!” She turned to Maggie. “Happy to come back anytime.”
“Yes, we’re amazed at how efficient you are, and hope we’ve helped.” Too clinical? It was the best Jane could do.
“Yeah she’s ‘efficient,’ that’s for sure,” Cameron sneered, shooting a resentful look at his mother.
“Well, good night and Merry Christmas!” Jane exclaimed as she grabbed Lindsey’s arm and hustled her out of there.
Jane sat at her kitchen table putting final touches on the gift she’d be bringing to the Christmas party that evening. She and Teddy were attending as a couple; well, not as a couple—as friends, or somewhere in the netherworld between. She didn’t want to assume anything. It was all so high school, really—reminiscent of those Facebook and Instagram posts that updated relationship status: #shipped! #engaged! #tiedtheknot! And the truly repellant hashtags: #soinlove, #soulmates4ever.
Jane’s gift was a neatly boxed and festively wrapped selection of high-end cosmetics, facial treatments and fake eyelashes, products of no interest to Chloe, the influencer, who had urged Jane to take whatever she wanted. Jane took umbrage at her offer with its implication of charity, noblesse oblige even. It was moresatisfying to decline, saying she couldn’t take items from clients, then discreetly slip what she wanted into her tote bag. Jane never thought of the re-homing of objects as thievery. Taking something unwanted wasn’t stealing, it was adoption. It was rescue.
In any event, she had more pressing things to worry about right now. She was trying to shake off anxiety about the upcoming party. It was a White Elephant Christmas party and that meant a perfect storm: Gluttony. Greed. Forced merriment. Cloying cocktails. Finger foods. And perhaps most venal of all, gag gifts, the apogee of indulgent, pointless consumption. Gag gifts, solely meant to amuse, were never funny.
The party was an annual tradition held by Ashley and Andy Aaronson, both lawyers. Ashley worked at a big television production company, while Andy worked at a boutique entertainment law firm, and their lives were about making deals and smug Instagram-ready tableaus of insider-dom. If you asked Andy, he would say he was Jewish, and if you asked Ashley—who had “soft-converted to Judaism”—she would say she was Jew-“ish.” They had a towering tree decorated with abundant garlands and twinkling lights that dwarfed a small menorah squatting on the mantel, right over the overstuffed Christmas stockings.
Ideally, a gift should be something that both the giver and the receiver would like, but Jane had no way of knowing who would end up with what; that was the whole point of the inane game. Last year, she’d brought one of her favorite bottles of wine. She grimaced at the memory of what unfolded.
The rules of the game were simple. When it was your turn, you picked a present, at which point the person who’d brought it identified themselves. If someone had already chosen something you liked more, you could take (“steal”) it. And if your chosengift was taken from you, you could replace it by stealing someone else’s, or by taking a chance on one of the still-unopened gifts.
The house was full of young entertainment industry types. The laughing, the screaming, the shrieking—it all made Jane sink more deeply inside herself. Last year, a woman with an aggressive blunt cut and a tight smile had chosen Jane’s gift. Jane wanted to explain a little bit about the wine and why she loved it so much, but the woman seemed entirely uninterested. What did the Bible say about pearls before swine? This New Testament wisdom was appropriate given the season. Jesus knew his stuff.
