Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Street

Mitzi doesn’t flinch, even though that is most certainly the only time Kelley has ever screamed at her. Kelley and the original Margaret used to have raging arguments with legendary cursing and yelling-once, notably, in the back of a New York City cab, when the driver dumped them out on a sketchy block near St. Mark’s Place, saying, You both crazy!

Mitzi doesn’t care for venting her anger this way; she thinks it’s unhealthy and that unkind words can cause permanent psychic damage. This is why Bart was rarely reprimanded and never, ever spanked, which has led him to grow up spoiled, which landed him in heaps of trouble as a teenager, which eventually ended with him joining the Marines (he was low on other reasonable options), and now might very well place him in the line of danger.

“No,” Mitzi says calmly. “Not kidding. Twelve years, but only when he was staying here. I mean, it’s not like I flew off to meet him in St. Tropez.”

“Is that supposed to make me FEEL BETTER?” Kelley shouts.

“Kelley,” Mitzi says.

“What?”

“Lower your voice.”

“So what now? You’re moving out? You’re going to Lenox to live with George the Santa Claus? ”

“Yes,” Mitzi says.

“And that’s it?” Kelley says. “We’re splitting? Getting divorced?”

“Yes,” Mitzi says.

Kelley can’t believe this. He can’t believe it! A thousand thoughts collide: Mitzi, a woman Kelley watched transform from the Roller Disco Queen of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, into a warm, inviting innkeeper here on Nantucket, beloved by the guests because she cared about their lives, remembered their kids’ names, and asked about their hip replacements, is leaving him. Another divorce, another failure; he can’t believe it, he didn’t even realize there was anything wrong aside from the obvious: the precarious state of their finances, and Bart in Afghanistan. Kelley can’t keep from thinking this behavior has to do with Bart; Bart is Mitzi’s north star, he is her reason. She has always put Bart’s needs and interests and desires before anyone else’s. Mitzi has been hysterical since Bart left for Germany in October, even though he was keen to go. Bart has always been a risk taker, which historically landed him in a lot of trouble. Being in the Marine Corps seems to have whipped him into shape. All of his texts and e-mails from Germany exclaimed how much he loved rules; he was thriving under strict discipline and, in fact, craved more (confirming Kelley’s theory that one always wants what one doesn’t have). Bart’s unit, the lowliest of the low, woke up at 0500 hours, and their every move was prescribed until they went to bed, at 2300 hours. Bart was, in his own words, “Slaying every goddamned dragon like St. George.” Kelley wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about, so he checked Google, which educated him. When Kelley later e-mailed, Bart confirmed that during a weekend of R &R in Munich, he had visited the Alte Pinakothek, where he had seen the Altdorfer painting of St. George slaying the dragon. The Alte Pinakothek had been recommended by Bart’s drill sergeant, Sergeant Corbo, because Germany wasn’t only beer gardens and bratwurst, it also contained culture, and the soldiers might as well avail themselves of it while they had the chance.

Bart goes to art museums now, Kelley thinks. He runs ten miles in combat boots without complaining, and he does it faster than anyone else in his unit. He scales walls, he can do a one-handed push-up, he’s learning how to box, and he knows how to shoot a variety of weapons. He speaks a little German and he wants to learn Arabic. He is using basic geometry, a subject he barely passed his sophomore year. If I had known it was going to come in handy, I would have paid closer attention! he wrote.

All of this, Kelley knows, is horrifying to Mitzi. Her baby is shooting guns! And, probably, eating hamburger! Kelley knows that Bart doesn’t tell Mitzi half of what he tells Kelley, and that Kelley is to keep certain things on the down low, between them, as father and son, as men.

Such as: Bart will be working with Afghan national security to take down insurgent strongholds and prevent a Taliban takeover when U.S. troops withdraw.

Mitzi’s acting out over Bart’s deployment makes a certain kind of sense. But she’s been boinking George for twelve years! While George was staying with them! In other words, the love affair was happening under Kelley’s own roof, under Kelley’s nose! On Christmas Eve! On Christmas Day! It has been going on every Christmas since Bart was seven or eight years old-just like in the movie Same Time, Next Year, with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn, a movie Kelley actually enjoyed when he saw it a million years ago with the original Margaret.

Margaret told Kelley not to marry Mitzi; she thought Mitzi was silly and too young. I don’t know what you’re thinking, Kelley. She’s going to want children, and you can’t even care for the ones we have now. Kelley heard Margaret loud and clear, but he surprised her-and himself-by not only marrying Mitzi but by quitting the rat race, leaving Manhattan, taking custody of the children, and moving them to Nantucket. And buying the inn, which was Mitzi’s dream.

Although, to be fair, it had been a dream for both of them. It started out, perhaps, as a grandiose gesture of love. Mitzi had stayed at the Winter Street Inn for a dozen years before she met Kelley, and she had watched it fall into decline and decrepitude. When Kelley bought the inn for her, as a wedding present, really, the idea had been that they would embark on a new life together. This inn, built in 1873, originally belonging to the town’s grocer, needed a lot of work to make it a destination of “high-end comfort”-the sumptuous marble bathrooms, the thick Turkish towels, the four-poster king-size beds made from solid cherry, the pillow-top mattresses, the original paintings by Nantucket artists. Not to mention central air-conditioning, an inn-wide stereo system, plasma TVs and iPod docking stations, and L’Occitane toiletries. Restoring the inn had been expensive and stressful.

So… it hadn’t always been the two of them holding hands, skipping along in golden sunshine, but it had been good. They renovated and restored, they advertised and marketed, they married and procreated. Kelley liked being an innkeeper. He liked his great stone hearth and his deep leather club chairs and the stairs that creaked because their treads were almost a hundred and fifty years old. He liked packing up box lunches that his guests could take to the beach. He liked tuning up the fleet of eight vintage Schwinns for their guests to ride into town. He enjoyed meeting new people and providing them with a respite from their normal lives. And he loved being a hands-on father to Bart-and, a bit belatedly, to his older kids.

Buying the inn and being with Mitzi and raising his family on Nantucket Island had brought Kelley real happiness, the kind of happiness he had been so certain he would never find again.

But now, Mitzi is leaving.

Kelley sinks onto their bed. The room smells like Christmas. At night, when they get ready for bed, Mitzi lights her favorite Fraser fir candle. A few weeks ago-the Saturday night of Stroll weekend-Kelley and Mitzi made love by the low flicker of this candle.

He didn’t know anything was wrong.

George the Santa Claus.

“Is it me? ” he asks. “Did I do something?”

Mitzi doesn’t respond, and Kelley experiences a moment of weakness in which he thinks of asking George and Mitzi to stay through Christmas. The inn needs its Santa Claus, and Kelley needs his business partner. How is he going to throw the party tomorrow night? And what about Christmas dinner?