Tom Perrotta - Nine Inches

“He’s coming for a visit soon.” Rose wants to smile, but her mouth won’t cooperate. “We’re going to celebrate Christmas in April.”

“That’s nice,” Janet replies, as her face surrenders to the forces of gravity. “That’ll be nice for you.”

“He’s very busy,” Rose adds. “His wife doesn’t like the cold weather.”

“You must be proud of him.” Janet smiles, but it’s an effort of will. Her boy, Bobby, had a drug problem and now works the stamp counter at the post office. “My son the doctor.”

“I don’t want to be a burden,” Rose explains, her voice coming out louder than she means it to. “Come when you want, that’s what I tell him. Whenever it’s convenient.”

The baby whimpers impatiently. Janet touches Rose lightly on the shoulder.

“We better go,” she says. “You take care of yourself.”

Without asking permission, Rose bends down and kisses the baby on the forehead.

“So precious,” she whispers.

RUSSELL AND his family aren’t coming for another month, but the blizzard on Saturday morning inspires her to put up the Christmas tree. It’ll be nice to have the company, a visible symbol of the holiday to lift her spirits and keep her mind focused on the visit. And besides, it’s something to do right now, something to keep her occupied through the otherwise empty hours. She doesn’t know why, but Saturday is always the longest day of the week, the day she most misses Pat’s company, though all he did the last few years of his life was lie on the couch and complain.

The plastic spruce is taller than she is, bottom-heavy and unwieldy, and Rose struggles to drag it down from the attic. It was Pat’s idea, the artificial tree. Rose always preferred real ones, fire hazard or not. But when you celebrate Christmas in April, it’s pretty much fake or nothing. At least there’s no assembly required.

After getting the tree righted in the stand — another tough job — Rose makes several trips back to the attic for boxes of ornaments, tinsel, lights, and the little wooden Nativity scene she received as a wedding present from her great-aunt Margaret. She would have preferred to wait for Cody to trim the tree, but she knows from her last visit to California — most of which he spent wearing headphones and playing video games — that he’s past the age of enjoying it.

The decorating goes slowly at first. Rose tries to ignore the lurking sense that something’s missing, that she’s performing a common household task rather than a holiday ritual, when it finally dawns on her: she forgot the music. You can’t trim a tree without music.

She opens the cabinet, finds the ancient Bing Crosby album — he’s looking pleased with himself on the cover, sporting a rakish little elf’s hat — and sets it lovingly on the turntable. That was one thing that got Cody’s attention, the fact that she owned a record player and still used it. He was as amazed as Russell had been, at about the same age, to learn that his own grandmother had killed chickens with her bare hands, snapping their necks with no more thought than he would have given to twisting off a bottle cap.

Once Bing starts crooning, everything falls into place. Suddenly it’s Christmastime, a curtain of snow falling slantwise outside the window. The individual ornaments emerge like old friends from their tissue-paper cocoons. Before long the fake tree becomes the real thing, or at least close enough to believe in. Stepping back to admire her handiwork, Rose finally admits to herself how cheated she’s been feeling the past few months, how bitterly she resents her daughter-in-law for canceling the holiday at the last minute.

It’s all right, she thinks. We’ll pretend it never happened.

THEY DECIDED to go to Hawaii instead, Rose imagines saying. She’d keep her tone neutral, let the facts speak for themselves. Can you imagine?

The Chosen girl would nod, eyes full of sympathy. Did he give a reason?

He said his wife was stressed-out. She needed a little downtime.

Stressed-out? The Chosen girl repeats the phrase as if she’d never heard it before.

She was working too hard. The real estate market is booming where they live. That’s what she does — sells real estate. She used to be a nurse. That’s how she met Russell.

Do you like her? The girl asks the question without gossipy intent. She seems to be trying to work something out.

Rose isn’t sure how to answer. It’s as if there are two Ellens, one the mousy-haired girl from Freehold who somehow snagged herself a plastic surgeon, the other a platinum-blond businesswoman who couldn’t be bothered with anything that didn’t involve making and spending lots of money. The last time Rose saw her, she had a new Mercedes and new breasts to go with it, plus a wardrobe of revealing clothes to call attention to the upgrade, including a bikini meant for a much younger woman.

She changed a lot, Rose would explain. After they moved to California. They live in Beverly Hills.

That sounds pretty, says the Chosen girl.

It is. Rose smiles. Nothing like here. Sunny and beautiful every day of the year.

The girl seems perplexed. So why did they need to go to Hawaii?

Rose had wondered the exact same thing. She’d wondered it many, many times.

You’ll have to ask them, she says with a sigh. I try not to interfere.

WHEN THE tree is finished, she wraps presents in the cheerful glow of the blinking lights: a low-fat cookbook for Ellen, a nice travel kit and bathrobe for Russell, a bathing suit and package of socks for Cody. All that’s left is the Sharks jacket, but her heart sinks as she removes it from the closet. It’s a ridiculous gift, she sees that now — a warm coat in April for a boy who lives on a street lined with palm trees. She wonders if the store will let her exchange it for something that makes more sense, a baseball glove or maybe some computer games, but she needs to consult Russell before doing anything. For all she knows, her grandson already owns three baseball gloves and every computer game known to man.

She picks up the phone, punches in the numbers, then hangs up before it has a chance to ring, her heart pounding erratically. She can’t understand why she’s so nervous; all she wants is to ask a simple question. Can’t a mother ask her son a simple question?

Rose hasn’t spoken to Russell for two weeks, since the Saturday morning when she caught him on his way out to play golf. He said he’d call her back that night, but something must have come up. The time difference makes it hard for them to connect sometimes, especially with Russell’s busy schedule.

I’ll tell him about the snowstorm, she thinks, and running into Janet Byrne. I’ll tell him about the tree. She presses redial, breathing slowly and deeply, her heart beating at a more manageable rhythm.

“OH, JESUS,” Russell mutters. “I said that ? Are you sure?”

“Russell,” she says weakly. For a moment, Rose wonders if she’s losing her mind, if she imagined a conversation with her son the way she’s been imagining conversations with the Chosen girl, but in her heart she knows it’s not true. She understands the difference between being lonely and being crazy, and she remembers what he told her. “You said we’d have Christmas in April.”

“My memory’s a little fuzzy on that, Ma. What I do remember is you saying we should come when it’s convenient, and next month really isn’t convenient.”

“Isn’t it Cody’s school vacation?”

“Yeah, but that’s not the problem. It’s Ellen. She’s going into the hospital on the ninth.”