Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Street

Drake doesn’t mind when Margaret is recognized-which she is, everywhere.

It’s not exactly Christmas, but it’s better than Chinese takeout in her apartment with only Ava’s paper angel for company, which is how she’s spent some holidays in the recent past.

She’s in Wardrobe-green tonight. It’s a silk boatneck sheath dress that she thinks makes her look like Vanna White, but Roger, her stylist, says they have to stay in holiday colors. He passed up a silver beaded cocktail dress because he thought it was too Audrey Hepburn.

Margaret yearns for the silver. She says, “Is there really such a thing as ‘ too Audrey Hepburn’?” But Roger won’t budge.

She says, “You do know, right, what the Nasty Blogger is going to say about this dress.”

“I have never pandered to the Nasty Blogger before,” Roger says. “And I’m not doing it tonight. You’re wearing the green, my love.”

Margaret sighs. There is a blog written by someone called Queenie229, who criticizes Margaret’s fashion choices, the color of her hair, and seems to hold a special vendetta against Margaret’s watch-a Cartier tank watch with a custom lizard band that Kelley gave her after Ava was born. If Queenie229 can’t find anything to particularly dislike about Margaret’s outfit, she will resort to picking on what she calls “that hideous watch.”

“Please, Roger,” Margaret says. “The silver.”

Roger ignores her. She takes the green Vanna sheath to the dressing room.

Darcy intercepts her in the corridor. “Message for you,” she says. “Kelley.”

“Kelley?” Margaret says. “My former husband?”

Darcy nods, and Margaret looks at the pink slip. Please call immediately. She thinks of Kelley’s son, Bart, who was deployed to Afghanistan last Friday. She thinks of the four soldiers killed that day. Oh God, no.

She hands Darcy the green Vanna dress and runs down the hall to her computer, where she brings up the names of the four dead in Afghanistan. None of them Bartholomew Quinn. Hugh exhale of relief. It’s something else, then.

She calls Kelley back, even though she really doesn’t have time.

He picks up even before the first ring is finished. “Mitzi left me,” he says. “She’s gone.”

It’s surprisingly civil, her departure. She steps out of room 10, leaving George behind, and says to Kelley, “I’ll go gather my things.”

Things? he thinks. He follows her down the hall, past rooms 8 and 9, down the main staircase-the banister wrapped in a garland of fresh greens accented with burgundy velvet bows-then into the main room, where their twelve-foot tree stands. Their tree is decorated with tasteful white lights and whimsical, handmade ornaments-many of them made by “the Christmas Club,” a group of women who lived in Mitzi’s neighborhood growing up and who fostered Mitzi’s love of this holiday-and twenty other ornaments purchased by Kelley especially for Mitzi and given to her each Christmas morning. Is she going to gather those “things”? Is she going to take the ornaments off the tree, leaving it exposed and naked? And what about her nutcracker collection, which has to be one of the most impressive nutcracker collections in all the world, standing guard on the mantel? There is the chef nutcracker, with his toque and whisk, the fireman nutcracker, with his black hat and hose, and this year a United States Marine Corps nutcracker, which Bart thoughtfully purchased for his mother before he left. Is she going to gather those “things”?

What about her crowd of Byers’ Choice carolers-the figurines she arranges and rearranges at least twice each season? At the beginning of the month, the carolers were set up on the sideboard as if attending a holiday concert in the village square-the central figures were playing instruments, and the others were gathered to watch and sing along. But now the carolers are set up as if at a bustling market. There is the cheesemonger, a girl selling gingerbread, a rosy-cheeked boy peddling wreaths. Is Mitzi going to gather those “things”? Mitzi loves those carolers; they remind her of being a child and playing with her dollhouse, a grand Victorian her father built her, with seventeen rooms. Kelley has to admit, even he has grown fond of the carolers over the years. When the box comes out of the attic and the figure of “Happy Scrooge” comes out of the box, Kelley feels a sense of delight-it’s family tradition that Happy Scrooge is Kelley’s favorite, perhaps even a twelve-inch representation of Kelley himself.

Is Mitzi going to walk away with Happy Scrooge?

Mitzi pushes through the French doors into the “back house,” where Kelley and Mitzi live with Kevin and Ava and, until this fall, Bart.

From the walk-in linen closet in the hallway, Mitzi pulls out two suitcases.

Kelley says, “Wait a minute, you already packed?”

“Yes,” she says.

“You and George have been… planning this?” Kelley says.

“I was hoping to make it through Christmas,” she said, “but it didn’t work out that way.”

“Okay, wait,” Kelley said. “Just wait!” His voice is surprisingly stern; it’s a tone from his life before, his life on Wall Street and the brownstone on East Eighty-Eighth Street, his life with Margaret and the boys and Ava, back when he was a breadwinner instead of a bread baker, an ass kicker instead of an ass kisser. Quitting his job, leaving Manhattan, marrying Mitzi the Roller Disco Queen of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, moving to Nantucket year-round, buying a bed-and-breakfast, and having another child-at the age of forty-three-have all made Kelley soft. Wimpy. A pushover. But he isn’t about to let his wife run off with 305 pounds of George the Santa Claus until he gets some answers.

“Bedroom,” he says. “Now.”

“No,” she says.

“Now,” he says, and she follows him.

Mitzi Quinn, whose real name is also Margaret, is the polar opposite of the original Margaret. Mitzi is ditzy, Kelley’s kids used to chant, and, Kelley has to admit, she does have her moments. She believes in holistic medicine and chakras and energy work and the healing power of crystals; she reads New Age self-help books, she goes to hot yoga, she never drinks anything stronger than herbal tea, she doesn’t eat beef or allow it to be cooked in the house. She is into astrological signs and the lunar calendar, due to the fact that she is a member of the population who was born on Leap Day. Mitzi wears flowing clothes, mostly silk and linen, and cashmere in the winter. Her clothes are unreasonably expensive, and she likes to wear something different every day of the month, another reason Kelley is going broke.

How did she limit herself to two suitcases? he wonders.

He says, “So, what, you’re in love with George? George the Santa Claus? You do understand how ridiculous I find this? He’s an old man!”

“He’s only sixty-six,” she says.

Sixty-six? Four years older than Kelley? Is that possible? To Kelley, George seems at least a decade older. Mitzi is only forty-six, so George is too old. But Kelley can tell this argument is futile.

“How long has it been going on?” he asks.

She stares him dead in the eye; there is no evasion or fear, only the beautiful blue-gray irises he fell for twenty-one years earlier. Mitzi has eyes like the disco ball that used to spin over the wooden rinks of her youth. Her eyes emit light and color-flashes of green, blue, silver.

“The whole time,” Mitzi says.

“What do you mean the whole time? ” Kelley says. “You mean, twelve years? Since George started staying with us?”

“Yes,” Mitzi says.

“You are KIDDING me!” Kelley shouts.