Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Street

He says, “Teterboro it is.”

There is hellacious traffic at the Lincoln Tunnel. Margaret tries not to panic; she tries not to think . Second-guessing herself never works.

She calls Lee Kramer, the head of the network. He’s Jewish, so she’s not too worried about interrupting his Christmas Eve. But, as it turns out, he’s at a holiday party at EN, in the West Village, and it sounds like he’s had a few too many sakes. Margaret hopes this works to her advantage.

Lee says, “Great broadcast tonight. Ginny thinks you look great in red.”

Ginny, Lee’s wife, is an editor at Vogue, so Margaret can’t really object.

“Thank you,” she says. Then, “Lee, I need a huge favor.”

“For you,” he says, “anything.”

Right. Because she has done more than her share of huge favors for him. She has traveled to the epicenters of floods and earthquakes and tsunamis; she has stood before the wreckage of horrific plane crashes and school shootings. She has reported the news, grim though it has tended to be, without complaining.

“I need one of the jets at Teterboro and a pilot. The smallest jet; it’s just me.”

“To go to Hawaii? ” Lee asks.

“No, no, I had to cancel Hawaii,” Margaret says. “I’m going to Nantucket instead. To be with my kids.”

“Oh, okay,” Lee says. “Much closer. I’ll call Ned and see what he has. When do you need it?”

Margaret eyes the traffic. “In an hour?”

“Oh boy,” Lee says. “You do know it’s Christmas Eve, right? You might have better luck calling St. Nick and hitching a ride on the sleigh.” He laughs heartily. “I just made a Christmas joke. Me, a kid from Livingston, New Jersey. The rabbi would be so proud.”

“Lee?” Margaret says. “I really need this. It’s for my children.”

“Give me ten minutes,” Lee says. “Ned will call you directly.”

“Thank you,” Margaret says. “You’re a mensch.”

“That I am,” Lee says, and he hangs up.

Margaret sighs deeply. Raoul says, “You okay, Maggie?”

Only Raoul-and Kelley-call her Maggie. She smiles. “Hanging in.” She hates to tell Raoul that if she can’t fly to Nantucket tonight, she’ll have to ask him to drive her up to Hyannis. But no-she can’t do that to Raoul on Christmas Eve. She knows he always goes to midnight Mass with his granddaughter, who is a student at Hunter College. So Margaret will have to rent a car and drive herself to Hyannis, spend the night at the DoubleTree, then fly over to the island first thing in the morning.

Good-bye, Maui; good-bye, Drake; good-bye, hot-stone massage.

Then Margaret chastises herself. Bart was most likely on that convoy and is now being held prisoner somewhere in Afghanistan. Kelley Kelley Kelley Kelley Kelley Kelley -his son, his baby. Margaret has to get to him.

Stuck.

In.

Traffic.

Where are all these souls going on Christmas Eve? Why aren’t they at home with their families?

Margaret digs into her luggage-the bikinis and cover-ups and sandals and straw hat have all been rendered useless-until she finds the zipped pocket where she stashed Ava’s paper angel. She lays the paper angel in her lap. She was raised Catholic and educated by the nuns, but her faith has morphed greatly over the years-it has both faltered and deepened. She is more certain now than ever that there is something bigger out there, but she is less sure what it is. God? Allah? Karma?

Holding the paper angel on her lap brings back the best memories, but only in snippets. The first Christmas with Patty, when he was just a newborn. Margaret set him under the tree in his Moses basket, and neither she nor Kelley bought each other any gifts that year, because what could be more perfect than the gift they had created together?

The year she and Kelley drove from Manhattan to Kelley’s mother’s house, in Perrysburg, Ohio, through a blinding snowstorm, with Patrick and Kevin strapped into car seats in the back. Margaret was convinced they’d get stranded; she made Kelley promise they would never again leave Manhattan at the holidays, and they never had.

The string of years in the brownstone. There were some good memories, before Margaret’s career took off, back when she actually had time for things. Margaret used to pick the kids up from school and ogle all the shopwindows and then take them up to the seventh floor of Bergdorf’s for hot chocolate. She made sugar cookies every year with Ava: colored icing, silver balls, green and red jimmies. Kelley’s firm used to throw a whopper of a holiday party at Le Cirque-oysters and champagne and a twenty-two-piece orchestra, everyone drunk, partners’ wives doing lines of cocaine in the bathroom while wearing their furs. That had been the last rush of big-time Reagan-era prosperity-life before cell phones and the Internet. Margaret had a certain nostalgia for that time, those parties, the big hair. Patrick and Kevin used to participate in the pageant at their church on Eighty-Eighth Street. They were usually shepherds, but one year Patrick was picked to be Joseph, and Kelley and Margaret were given seats in the front pew. Margaret loved the pageant, with its menagerie of barn animals and little children dressed as angels, and the whole sanctuary bathed in candlelight. The organist would play “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” and the church walls would practically swell with the voices, young and old.

Christmas Eve-always quiche lorraine and spinach salad with hot bacon dressing, and a viewing of the movie where the little boy wants a BB gun. Margaret and Kelley would drink Golden Dreams and get pleasantly mulled before putting the kids to bed and setting out the presents.

It had all been a golden dream, Margaret thought. If only they had realized it at the time.

Margaret’s phone rings. It’s Ned, who is in charge of the four network-owned jets.

“Margaret,” he says, “I have one plane with crew ready to go, but I have to remind you, it’s meant for urgent scenarios. You know, for news stories. Lee okayed it, so I’m going to let it slide tonight, but this can’t become a habit.”

“It won’t ever happen again,” Margaret says, wishing Lee had told Ned to spare her the lecture. “I promise.”

“Anyway, the problem is that Nantucket is closing its airport at nine. I can contact them, but I’m warning you, the likelihood that they’re going to stay open for you on Christmas Eve is pretty low.” He clears his throat. “People want to get home.”

I want to get home, Margaret thinks. By no stretch of the imagination is Nantucket Island her home, although she and Kelley started going there in the summer years when the kids were small. They used to rent a house on North Liberty Street that had a screened-in porch, a charcoal grill, and no TV. It had been the perfect place to unplug, unwind, and watch the boys and Ava play endless games of badminton in the side yard. When Margaret and Kelley split, Kelley “got” Nantucket; Margaret is now just a visitor. But her children are there, and this makes it the closest thing to a home that Margaret has.

“Please check, Ned,” Margaret says. “Please. Tell the tower that once I’m on the ground, I’ll sign autographs. I’ll do photos. I’ll write their kids college recommendations.”

“Okay,” Ned says, and he hangs up.

Raoul pops in Margaret’s favorite CD by the Vienna Boys’ Choir. She leans back and wonders briefly what Drake is doing. She assumes he’ll go to Hawaii alone. He will meet someone else-a young divorcée or one of the luscious college-dropout bartenders. He will lose the intellectual stimulation that Margaret brings, but he will gain youth and vigor in bed. She can’t even summon the energy to text him, though she wishes him well.