‘Hey.’ Susie appears at the doorway as Leo dashes back inside to tell Nate I’ve arrived, a huge fresh Christmas wreath in her hands. Silver ornaments on her sweater, lipstick as red as the candy-cane ribbons around the porch.
‘I don’t know which is more festive, you or the house.’ I smile. She’s let her hair grow long enough to wear it in a ponytail, and I feel a lump in my throat when she turns around to hang the wreath because she reminds me of the cute college student I fell hard for. I watch her for a long second, clearing my throat as I pull myself together.
‘Here, let me do that,’ I say because she’s struggling to get it on the hook.
I lift the mistletoe wreath from her and hang it carefully on the hook I banged in a few years ago. Susie and I stand alongside each other and survey the wide, picture-perfect, fire-engine red front door. A solid family home. A family together for the holidays.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she says.
I look down at her. ‘Me too.’
The kids are in bed, the gifts are wrapped beneath the tree, and Susie and I are at either end of the couch with an empty bottle of red between us on the coffee table. It’s been a bittersweet kind of day; food prep for tomorrow’s lunch with a soundtrack of nostalgic Christmas music, a movie in the den before bed with the kids in new Christmas PJs, bowls of popcorn balanced on our knees. It’s as if we’ve made a silent agreement to sweep the fact that we’re separated under the table. The boys’ eyes were over-bright and their voices unnaturally pitched around the dinner table earlier, hope painfully high as their watchful eyes flickered constantly between us. Is this the wrong thing to do? Are we setting them up for post-Christmas heartache? God, I hope not. I’m already dreading leaving them again tomorrow evening when Walt and Marie arrive for a few days. Back to the condo of doom. I’ve made myself a Christmas promise: whatever else happens, that place has to go.
‘I’ve seen this movie a million times,’ Susie says, stretching.
‘Everyone’s seen Gremlins a million times,’ I say. ‘That’s kind of its charm.’
On screen, the evil gremlin ringleader is locked in a deadly kitchen battle with the mother of the house.
‘You know what? I think we watched this on our first Christmas Eve in this house,’ she says.
I remember. ‘We had that hand-me-down TV with the line down the centre of the screen and couldn’t afford to replace it.’ We’d spent every dollar we could scrape together on the down payment for the house.
She smiles, looking down into her wine glass. ‘It was worth the stretch to buy this place.’
‘No arguments there,’ I say. ‘This is a great house for the boys to grow up in.’
She nods, thoughtful. ‘They miss you.’
‘I miss them too,’ I say. ‘Every day.’
‘I know you do,’ she sighs, bending forward to slide her glass on to the table. Her sweater rides up, revealing the familiar small brown birthmark at the base of her spine. I swallow a mouthful of wine and look away.
‘I got you something,’ she says, pulling a gift-wrapped box from behind a cushion.
‘Susie, I didn’t …’
‘It’s nothing big,’ she says quickly, scooting closer to hand it to me.
I haven’t bought Susie a gift. Not because I didn’t consider it, I just couldn’t get my head around the gift-buying etiquette for your ex who’s currently dating her boss. There’s no handbook for that, is there? Robert has a pronounced grey streak in his hair; it’s an effort not to compare him to the gremlin currently tearing up the TV.
I put my glass down and accept Susie’s gift. ‘Thank you.’
I open it; it’s a photograph in a black frame. I look at it for a few quiet seconds, and then I look back at Susie.
‘One of my favourite days ever,’ she says.
Taken the summer before last, it’s a black-and-white shot of the four of us by the lake. Walt took it one warm evening; I remember the day so vividly I can almost smell the barbecue and feel the burn of the old rope swing on my palms. Nate is gangly on my hip, his head dropped on my shoulder, Leo’s arms are wrapped around Susie’s waist beside me. We’re all laughing at some off-screen joke.
‘We used to laugh like that a lot,’ I say, remembering.
When I look at her again, fat tears gather in her eyes. ‘I don’t know how to not love you, Mack,’ she says.
I’ve sensed a thaw in Susie in recent weeks. Invitations to stay for coffee when I come over to collect the boys, an occasional hand on my shoulder, a fresh batch of lemon cookies she knows I like. It’s more than gestures too – her gaze holds mine over the kids’ heads sometimes, reminding me of times when that lingering look told me she couldn’t wait to be alone later.