Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Street

On May 18, Margaret emerged from the courthouse sweating and irate and dreading the interminable subway ride from the bottom of Manhattan to the top.

There was a man dressed in a black suit and white shirt on the steps of the courthouse, holding a placard with her name on it: Margaret Pryor .

Margaret was confused. He looked like one of the chauffeurs who pick up fancy people at the airport.

Margaret said, “Are you looking for me?”

“Yes, miss,” he said. “Follow me.”

Margaret didn’t want to follow a strange man. For all she knew, this was an abduction. Margaret had a friend at NYU, Leo, who was somehow related to John Gotti.

Mob, Margaret thought. Or possibly something worse? Possibly one or both of her parents had died, and her wealthy aunt Susan had sent this driver?

She tentatively followed the man in the black suit to a white stretch limousine waiting on the street.

Mob .

The back door opened from the inside, and Margaret felt a luscious blast of real air-conditioning.

She poked her head in and gasped. Kelley sat in the back, wearing his ripped khaki shorts and a Meat Loaf T-shirt. He had a bottle of champagne on ice and a dozen roses wrapped in cellophane.

“What…?” Margaret said.

“I got the job!” he said.

Margaret climbed into the limousine, kissed Kelley, and congratulated him profusely. Then she began sucking on an ice cube.

“I can’t believe you got a limo!” she said.

Kelley popped the champagne. “I only got it to drive us home,” he said. “So we’d better drink this fast.”

But as it turned out, they had one stop to make before they reached their squalid apartment uptown. The driver pulled up in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was where Margaret and Kelley had first met.

“Oh,” Margaret said. She didn’t want to be a spoilsport, but she wasn’t in the mood for the Miró exhibit or the Temple of Dendur.

Kelley pulled a box out of the pocket of his disintegrating shorts and presented her with a small but sparkling diamond.

“Marry me,” Kelley said. “Please, please, Margaret, marry me.”

Margaret smiles at the memory. Their kids call it the Quarter-Pounder Proposal, because it’s heavy on the cheese . Proposed to in a white stretch limo by a guy wearing a Meat Loaf T-shirt, offering roses he bought at the Korean deli? But what Margaret has never been able to explain to their kids is how sweet and earnest Kelley was on that day. She and Kelley were young, they were poor-but with their prospects improving-and they were in love. The air-conditioning had felt so delicious, the ice on her tongue, divine.

Kelley could teach Drake a thing or two, Margaret thinks.

As she and Margaret prepare the standing rib roast and the rest of the meal, Ava tells her mother about the gift of Hunter boots with matching socks.

“Matching socks?” Margaret says. “Maybe I’ll get a pair. Do you remember how when it snows in the city, the slush puddles up, and you step off the street corner and almost drown?”

“You can have mine,” Ava says. She sighs. “Nathaniel doesn’t love me.”

“It’s not the most romantic gift,” Margaret says.

Then Ava tells her mother about kissing Scott in the kitchen. Ava has been thinking about the kissing more than she thought she would. She finds herself checking the clock, wishing for time to move more quickly so that Scott will get here. She wonders if Scott will be brave enough to kiss her again; she worries he won’t be. If she wants to kiss him, she might have to instigate it.

But she doesn’t tell her mother this. What she says is: I was pretty drunk last night, and I let Scott Skyler kiss me.

Margaret says, “Scott Skyler, your assistant principal?”

Ava nods.

Margaret chops the woody ends off the asparagus. “I never did have an affair with any of my bosses,” she says. “I’ve always felt proud of that.”

Ava says, “I’m pretty confused.”

Margaret says, “I’m not a relationship expert. Clearly. But I’ve dated a lot of men since your father and I split, and, in my experience, the more you push a man away, the more fervently he comes after you. If I were in your shoes, I would call Nathaniel and tell him it’s over.”

Ava would no sooner break up with Nathaniel than she would set her piano on fire.

But then, as she and Margaret cut the stems off the fresh spinach and crisp the bacon for the hot bacon dressing, and as Margaret makes cranberry-thyme butter for the snowflake rolls (she did a segment on The Chew with Rachael Ray, and look what she learned!), Ava thinks to herself, What if I did?

He passed out in Kirsten’s den? He didn’t call because he decided to hang out? He gave her rubber rain boots for Christmas? If Ava stays with Nathaniel, things will never improve. It will always be her chasing him. Does she want that?

No, she does not.

When she and her mother are finished in the kitchen, Ava goes into the bedroom to call Nathaniel.

He answers on the first ring. “Looking good, Billy Ray,” he says sleepily. She must have woken him up from a nap. He’s tired because he barely slept the night before. Still, Ava is temporarily derailed by the vision of Nathaniel entangled in the covers of his childhood bed, and so she plays along.

“Feeling good, Louis,” she says.

“Whatcha doin’?” he asks. “Did you have a nice Christmas? Did you like your present?”

“The boots?” she says. “Very practical, thank you.”

“You always wear little ballet shoes, even in the rain and snow,” he says. “And I worry about you. I don’t want you to get sick. I need you around.”

She says, “Yeah, well, about that.”

“About what?” he says.

“About needing me around.” Ava takes a deep breath. “Listen, this isn’t working out for me.”

“What isn’t?” he says. “Are you mad because I came home? ”

“This relationship,” Ava says. “You and me, me and you, us together-it isn’t making me happy.”

“Because I came home. Because you think I came back to see Kirsten, which I did not . I mean, she’s an old friend, and she’s at a low point, but I can’t help her, and I’m certainly not going to rekindle any kind of romance with her. That was over long ago, and over is over, especially in this case.”

Ava’s heart relaxes at those words, and she nearly abandons ship. Nathaniel hasn’t talked this frankly to her about his emotional state, ever. But Ava is on a mission here, and once she’s on a mission, she won’t be derailed.

“This isn’t about you and Kirsten,” Ava says. “This is about you and me. I need more-more love, more affection, more intimacy, more of a sense that we have a future.”

“What do you mean by ‘future’?” Nathaniel asks. “Do you mean you want to get married? ”

He makes it sound preposterous, as though marriage were the equivalent of running the Boston Marathon backward or enrolling in clown school.

“That’s how the human race has made it this far,” Ava says. “They marry and they procreate.”

Silence on Nathaniel’s end. She has scared him to death. She is right to proceed. Instead of feeling like all her blood is pooling at her feet, she feels empowered. She’s wasted nearly two years of her precious twenties swimming in a pool of unrequited love.

She says, “Scott Skyler has been around a lot the past couple days. Last night he wore the Santa suit, since George stole Mitzi away from my dad.”

“So… what?” Nathaniel says. “This isn’t about Kirsten, after all? This is about Scott? I’m well aware, Ava, that Scott is crazy about you. But I thought you were immune to that.”