When I lament to Sophie about the holidays, she makes a sour face.
“I don’t approve of the sentiment,” she says, shuddering, “but I do enjoy the decorations. Some of them, anyway. The trees are my favorite. Beautiful.”
“Yeah.” I sigh.
“You should celebrate the winter solstice with me,” she says. “I’ll throw us a marvelous party.”
“That sounds nice.”
“What is it, pet? You still look down.”
“I’ve always liked New Year’s. Staying up until midnight. Making resolutions. But it’s pretty pathetic if you’re single.”
She balks. “Please, Annie Crane, never say anything like that again. We’re celebrating.”
We decide Sophie will host me for the winter solstice, and I’ll host her for New Year’s Eve.
In preparation, I buy garland and string lights and sparkly silver pinecones. I buy two bottles of champagne. I have to go back out to buy a stepladder and thumbtacks to adhere the lights to the walls. I go out a third time to get replacement champagne, since I drink one of the bottles to ease the stress and agitation of hanging the lights.
But of course, Sophie puts me to shame. When I arrive at her house for the winter solstice, she opens the door for me in an extravagant purple gown. It has intricate beading and embroidery, a corset back and a long train. Her hair is in a braided updo laced with flowers. A whole flower arrangement, actually. The way she has it, it’s like the flowers are growing out of her head.
There are more flowers. Everywhere, on every surface. Massive arrangements. There are candles. There’s a roasted chicken, and sweet potatoes and carrots and an apple slaw. For dessert, she made a fruitcake with a maple glaze. There’s blackberry wine.
“Only for special occasions,” she tells me as she pours me a generous glass.
After dinner, around nine o’clock, Sophie brings me upstairs to give me a present. It’s a dress, nearly identical to hers, except mine is a warm pink.
“Thank you! Thank you!” I say, as I go into her closet to put it on. When I reemerge in the dress, I do a spin, and Sophie throws a hand over her brow from the drama of it all.
“Gorgeous,” she says. “My Annie.”
She made Ralph an outfit as well. He wears a small navy bow tie and top hat.
“You look very handsome,” I tell him.
He beams.
We go down to the ballroom and drink another bottle of blackberry wine and dance by candlelight. I don’t know if it’s the wine or the intimacy of wearing matching dresses, but something possesses me with the courage to ask.
“Can I ask you something?” I shout over the music. We’re listening to Britney again, Sophie’s favorite.
“Yes, darling,” she says.
“How does it work?”
“How does what work, pet?”
“The . . . the . . . I don’t know! Like, how did I project graffiti onto the bathroom stall? How did I do that thing with the bones? It wasn’t intentional. It just happened.”
“Strange, isn’t it?” she says. “How things just happen.”
She grabs my hands and spins me around and around.
“Sophie.”
We stop spinning. She cradles my face in her palms. “You have to surrender, Annie.”
“To what?”
“No, no,” she says, laughing. “You must surrender everything for everything.”
She twirls away from me.
I realize she isn’t going to elaborate.
So I surrender to the night. I surrender to dancing wildly and to blackberry wine. I pour a drop out for Ralph. He drinks it, hiccups, stumbles a few steps, then passes out on his back.
Just shy of midnight, Sophie leads me out to the backyard. There’s a bonfire. I’m drunk, and through my eyes, the world is opaque, the sky velvety, lush, constellations like strings of pearls. I watch Sophie lay wreaths of winter jasmine. She circles around the fire like the obedient hands of a clock. She’s barefoot.
There’s this moment when, through the fine ribbons of smoke and curtains of yellow flames, I think I see her, though I also feel her next to me, braiding flowers into my hair.
“There’s someone else,” I tell her. “Who is it?”
She isn’t there to answer. Only her shadow. Beside me. Somehow independent of her. Untethered, tucking a pansy behind my ear.
* * *
—
I wake up the next morning with a dry mouth and a hangover.
“Dear, dear,” Sophie says, looking particularly radiant over a breakfast of eggs and fresh biscuits. She can’t have slept much, so I don’t know how she looks so well rested. She made me a face cream with rose hip and orange peel. She said it was the one she used, and it made my skin soft, but sadly, it did not make me ethereally beautiful.