“Andy?” said his grandma, in a high, trembling voice. Andy’s stomach clenched.
“Merry Christmas,” said his grandfather. “How about letting us come out of the cold?”
“We brought you cocoa,” said his grandma, and held up a cup from Wawa for Andy to see. “And some little things for you and your mom.”
“I can’t,” said Andy, pushing the words through numb lips, and even though he felt sad, the words came out sounding angry. My house, my rules, Lori had told him, over and over. I never want them to darken my door again. The last time her parents had come over was for dinner on Christmas Eve the year before, and there had been a terrible fight, with his mom shrieking Get out of my house, and Grandma dragging Andy into the bedroom, putting her hands over his ears. But of course he’d heard all of it, the sound of the turkey platter crashing into the wall and her father saying the n-word, and saying that Lori should learn to keep her legs shut, saying You made your bed, now see how you like lying in it.
When he was little, like in nursery school, his grandparents were around a lot. His grandma would spend a Saturday with him while his mother worked, or sometimes he would stay at their house in Haddonfield for a whole weekend. His grandma would take him to her favorite bakery in South Philadelphia, where the ladies behind the counter, all dressed in white like nurses, would give him cookies with sprinkles and say things like “What a cutie!” and “Look at those lashes.”
“Is he yours?” one of the ladies had once asked, and his grandma’s face had tightened as she pulled Andy against her and said in a cold voice, “Of course he’s mine.”
Once, she’d brought him to Center City, to see the light show at Wanamaker’s and to sit on Santa’s lap. Another Christmas his grandfather gave him hockey skates, then took him to a rink. Andy had watched the other skaters, then wobbled around the rink once, going slowly, getting a feel for the ice, and before long he’d been zipping around the rink, his arms swinging easily and his blades crisscrossing in long, smooth strokes, with his grandfather waving every time he whizzed past. But then they’d stopped coming as often, and Lori’s face would get that scary, masklike look when he asked about Grandma and Grandpa. The skates had gone into the closet and stayed there until one day they’d disappeared.
The only time he could count on seeing his grandparents was at Christmas. Every year they would go to their house in Haddonfield for a feast: turkey and ham and lasagna, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole with crunchy fried onions on top, rolls and biscuits and corn bread and three kinds of pie and cannoli from the bakery: the old neighborhood, his grandma called it. Andy would get to see Uncle Paul, his mother’s brother, and his wife, Aunt Denise, and their little girls, Jessica and Heather, who’d be wearing matching party dresses with sashes and poufy skirts, and his mom would bring home a shopping bag filled with leftovers that they’d eat for a week.
A year ago, his mom had invited her parents over on Christmas Eve. She’d taken the day off from work and stayed up in the kitchen until two in the morning, squinting at cookbooks and muttering curses and kicking the oven door shut. She burned her first pan of lasagna, and when the turkey didn’t fit into the oven she’d had Andy hold it, his palms pressed against its pimpled white skin, while she’d hacked it in half and put it into two separate roasting pans. The pies had come from Acme, and the whipped cream came from a can, and there weren’t any cannoli. Andy had helped his mother carry a folding table from the Clearys’ basement and set it up in the living room. There were red and green carnations in a vase, a borrowed tablecloth on the table with the white plastic Chinet, and his mother, sweaty and pale, hurrying around and saying things like God help me and This better work and If she says one word about the plates I don’t know what I’ll do.
An hour before her parents were supposed to arrive she’d gone to shower and dress, telling Andy to vacuum the floors and do the rest of the dishes and for God’s sake make sure the bathroom was clean. The Lori who emerged from the bedroom wasn’t a Lori that Andy had ever seen before. Instead of her usual clothing, she wore a loose red sweater with long sleeves, baggy black slacks, and black shoes with barely any heel at all. Her hair was pulled back from her face, neatly braided. She’d hardly put on any makeup, and instead of dangly earrings she wore tiny gold ones in the shape of the cross.
The dinner had been fine, even though there was so little room in their apartment that when Andy’s grandpa sat on the couch his knees bumped the folding chairs around the table. His grandma had praised the food, saying again and again that she couldn’t have done better herself, even though the turkey was pink on the inside and the green bean casserole was burned on top. Grandpa had been silent, drinking beers right from the bottle after Lori told him she didn’t have mugs. Finally, after she’d served dessert and poured coffee, his mother had said, “There’s something I wanted to discuss.”