JP clears his throat, his signal for That’s enough. “How’s Leo doing?”
“He’s carried the ball four times, fumbled three times,” Vivi says.
JP groans. “Are you serious?”
“He’s still Mr. Butterfingers,” Vivi says. “But at least he’s smiling.”
“Leo always smiles,” JP says. “He was smiling the day we brought him home from the hospital, remember?”
“That was gas, honey,” Vivi says and she and JP laugh. Amy stares at the field and then gives an exaggerated shiver. Or maybe she’s not exaggerating; it’s pretty chilly.
“I’m going to wait in the car,” she says, “while you two reminisce or whatever.” She heads for the parking lot.
“I tried,” Vivi says.
“She’s insecure,” JP says. “She was afraid to meet you.”
“She should have been afraid. She firebombed our family.”
“She did nothing of the sort.”
“Fine. You firebombed the family and she was complicit.” Vivi can feel the eyes of three dozen parents on her back. “But I don’t want to fight. She seems like a perfectly nice girl.”
“Thank you for being civil. I appreciate it.”
“I’m going to heaven,” Vivi says.
“I don’t know about all that,” JP says. He takes a quick peek over his shoulder at the parking lot. “But you were nice, so I’m not sure what her issue is.”
“Her issue is that we have eighteen years of history that doesn’t include her. She’s jealous.”
JP sighs. “Off to do damage control.”
“Have fun at lunch,” Vivi says. “I’ll just stay here and watch our son fumble like the absentee parent that I am.”
JP laughs and Vivi would like to kick him in the nuts. But as she watches him walk away, she has to admit, she feels sorry for him. He made a large mistake in leaving her, but he will realize this only with time.
The holidays are dismal. Vivi “has” the kids for Thanksgiving, but she doesn’t have enough space in her cottage to do a proper dinner so they go to Savannah’s and eat with the elder Hamiltons. Savannah has bought everything premade from Whole Foods and transported it from Boston; the only exceptions are the corn pudding, which Vivi brings, and the pies, which come from the Nantucket Bake Shop. Mary Catherine has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She gets confused and starts weeping halfway through dinner about her brother Patrick （he of the blended family, brood of six） who was killed in a car accident on New Year’s Eve 1999. Bob Hamilton is at a loss for what to do about Mary Catherine so he ignores her crying and pretends everything is just fine. He asks Vivi’s kids about school but then he’s too distracted by his wife to listen to their answers.
The kids are antsy and impatient to leave, and Vivi suspects Savannah would just as soon have them gone so she can tend to her mother and stop playing hostess. It pains Vivi to have the day end prematurely—the kids have informed Vivi that JP and Amy are having a romantic dinner for two at the Ships Inn because Lucinda went to Boca to spend Thanksgiving with Penny Rosen—but she can see no alternative, so she packs up four pieces of pie to go.
In the car on the way home, Willa says, “I should have eaten with the Bonhams.”
“Everything is always better at the Bonhams,” Vivi sings out.
“It is, actually,” Willa says.
“The Cowboys are playing at eight,” Leo says. “I want to watch.”
But Vivi has only the basic cable package, which somehow doesn’t include the channel broadcasting the Cowboys game, and Leo starts crying and saying he wants to go to his father’s house, and Carson piles on—why not?—asking why Vivi can’t buy a real house like their dad’s, one where they all have their own rooms so she doesn’t have to sleep in a bed with stinky Willa. Willa tells Carson she doesn’t enjoy it any more than Carson does, and things escalate from there. Everyone is in a state when they pull up in front of the cottage, and once they get inside, Vivi screams, “Pack up, kids! I’m taking you back to your father’s!” This makes her cry because she’s supposed to have them all weekend. She makes a big production of throwing the pie in the trash and this silences the kids. Willa apologizes first, then Leo, then Carson, and they all curl up on Vivi’s bed and watch A Christmas Story, which makes Vivi irate because it isn’t Christmas yet, it’s still Thanksgiving, but also happy because apparently her cable package isn’t a total loss after all.