Tom Perrotta - Nine Inches

Rose catches her breath. “The hospital? Oh my God.”

“Don’t worry, Ma. It’s no big deal.”

“Is she sick?”

“She’s fine. It’s an elective procedure.”

“Female trouble?” Rose whispers.

“Just some contouring,” Russell explains after a brief hesitation. “She hasn’t felt good about her thighs for a long time.”

Contouring? Rose stares dumbly at the tree across the room, the red and blue lights blinking on and off with monotonous regularity. You stupid woman, she thinks. You stupid, stupid old woman.

“Mom?” Russell says. “Are you there?”

THE TREE seems lighter as she drags it over the rug and into the hallway, though it should by rights feel a lot heavier, weighted down as it is by the metal stand and its full array of ornaments, a number of which have by now fallen from the branches and gone skittering across the floor. A small part of Rose is shocked by what she’s doing — this shaky voice in her head keeps pleading with her to stop, to get hold of herself — but the rest of her just keeps tugging and shuffling toward the door, intent on getting the thing out of the house, out of her sight.

Squeezing backward through the doorway is the hardest part — she’s got to prop the outer door open with her hip while bending and yanking at the same time — and she’s so caught up in the logistics of this maneuver that she doesn’t even remember the snow until her slipper sinks into the drift on the front stoop, and she yelps in surprise. Still, there’s nothing to do but keep going, finish what she’s started.

She descends gingerly, holding on to the railing with both hands, testing her foothold before committing to the next step. Once she’s made it down, she seizes the tree by its top branches and yanks it off the stoop in a single violent motion, scattering a spray of ornaments onto the white-blanketed lawn. After that it’s easy: she drags the tree like a child’s sled down the front walk and heaves it up onto a bank of curbside snow, where the garbagemen will be able to get it on Monday morning.

Her feet are cold and she’s not wearing a coat, but she can’t bring herself to turn around and go back inside. The snow’s coming down hard, falling in clumpy flakes that cling to her eyelashes and have to be blinked away like tears.

I’m alone, she thinks, staring down at the gaudy corpse of the tree, the candy-cane ornament she got at Woolworth’s, the little train she picked up at a yard sale, the gingerbread man who’s been around so long he doesn’t have any buttons left. Her mouth is open, her breathing fast and shallow. No more Christmas for me.

A stiff wind kicks up, but she barely notices. She’s thinking of her mother at the end, sitting with an attendant in the TV room of the nursing home, watching a program in Spanish. She’s thinking of Pat putting down his newspaper, telling her his chest feels funny. She’s thinking of her last visit to California, the inhuman bulges beneath Ellen’s tight blouse, the pride and tenderness with which Russell offered her up for inspection.

“Don’t they look great?” he asked. “We should have done this years ago.”

IT FEELS like a dream at first, the Chosen girl materializing out of the snow, emerging against the gauzy white curtain like a figure projected onto a screen, the Chosen girl and her little Chosen sister, both of them without coats. They’re veering across the not-so-recently plowed street in Rose’s direction, dragging what appear to be brand-new shovels, the kind with crooked handles and curved plastic scoops.

“Shovel your walk?” the little one inquires. Her voice is sharp, pushy even, with none of the timidity Rose expects from a girl in a kerchief. “Ten bucks. Twenty and we’ll throw in the driveway.”

Rose doesn’t answer. It’s the other one she’s looking at, the girl she knows from the bus stop and her daydreams. She’s squatting down by the tree, examining an ornament that’s fallen into the snow.

“We’ll do a good job,” the little one promises. She’s only eight or nine, too small for her grown-up shovel.

The Chosen girl rises, cupping the ornament — a red, metallic heart — in her outstretched hand, her mouth opening on a question she can’t seem to ask.

“They’re not coming,” Rose declares, her voice breaking with emotion. “She’s having an operation. An operation on her thighs.”

The Chosen girl says nothing, just stares at Rose with that look of patient suffering that never seems to leave her face.

“She can’t hear you,” the little one explains.

Of course she can’t, Rose realizes. She’s suddenly aware of an immense silence in the world, a vast cosmic hush pressing down from the sky, drifting to earth in little pieces, an illusion only shattered when the Chosen girl sniffles and makes a horrible hawking sound in the back of her throat. The poor thing. She looks bedraggled, maybe a bit feverish. Her nose is runny and her kerchief’s soaked with melted snow. Her lips have taken on a faint bluish undertone. But still she stands there, holding that heart in the palm of her hand. It seems brighter than it did a moment ago, newly polished.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Rose tells the little one. “I’ll be right back.”

SHE ONLY means to run in, grab the coat, and hurry back outside, but it doesn’t work out that way. She’s barely through the door — the warmth of her house hits her like something solid — when she steps on a glass ball, crunching it underfoot, losing her balance and falling dreamily to the floor. She’s lying there, moaning softly to herself, trying to figure out if she’s broken anything, when the phone begins to ring. She knows it’s Russell even before she hears his voice coming through the answering machine, launching into a complicated, self-pitying apology, reminding her how busy he is and how many responsibilities he has to juggle, and how nice it would be if she could just cut him a little slack instead of trying to make him feel guilty all the time.

“I’m trying, Ma. Can you at least admit that I’m trying?”

Her cheek pressed against the nubby rug, Rose wiggles her fingers, then her toes. Everything seems to be in working order. She picks herself up from the floor, dusts off her pants, and takes a few careful steps toward the closet, where the Sharks jacket is hanging. She slips it off the hanger, pleased by its bulk, only to realize that the price tag is still attached. The scissors should be right on the floor with the tape and the wrapping paper, but they’ve disappeared. Rose checks the kitchen and hallway before giving up and removing the tag with her teeth. By the time she tiptoes around the broken glass and steps outside, the girls have already gone.

Rose makes her way down to the curb to look for them, but the street is empty in both directions. Even though she’s standing right in front of it, she needs a second or two to register the fact that her Christmas tree is no longer lying on the ground like garbage. It just looks so natural the way it is now, standing upright in the snowbank, the remaining ornaments clinging stubbornly to its branches, that it’s hard to imagine that it could ever have been otherwise.

THE STORM continues all night, but the tree is still standing on Sunday morning, its branches cupping soft mounds of powder, when Rose sets off in search of the Chosen girl. She’s wearing her skirt and sweater again, but this time she cheats a little in deference to the blizzard — galoshes, a fleece jacket under the sweater, a woolen hat instead of the rain bonnet. She’s got the Sharks jacket stuffed into a red handlebag from Macy’s, along with her best winter gloves and a blue-and-green-plaid scarf.