“Maybe we can get a second tree, a younger girlfriend to complete his midlife crisis,” he says between laughs.
David goes to set up the stand while I head for the half bath to minister to the tiny cuts on my fingers. There are no bandages in the medicine cabinet, but I know David keeps some in his sock drawer, ready to use with his black dress shoes that give him blisters.
In the sock drawer, there aren’t any Band-Aids, but there is a black velvet box nestled among his neatly organized selection of socks, all paired with their mates.
My heart rate ticks up.
This might not be what you think it is, I tell myself.
Even as a fluttery, nervous feeling takes up in my stomach, I cling to the idea that the box is a pair of cuff links or a Christmas gift for his mother. Maybe a nice pendant necklace or a pair of earrings. Just please don’t be a ring. I don’t feel ready for it to be a ring. I realize from years of rom-coms and women’s magazines packed with recipes for “engagement chicken”—a roast chicken to make for your boyfriend in hopes of conjuring this exact moment—that this isn’t the correct reaction. But it does shed some light on why things got so heated on Thanksgiving. Maybe it wasn’t about Christmas at all. Maybe it was because David already bought a ring.
After a glance toward the door to make sure David is occupied—he’s squatting in the corner of the living room trying to get the tree into the stand by himself—I flip open the lid to the box.
Inside is a pointy oval-shaped diamond on a simple gold band. The only thing I can think to compare the shape to is a vagina.
What the fuck?
For a second, my nervousness is replaced with sheer confusion. I’ve never been the type to fantasize about my dream engagement ring, but I’m positive this isn’t it. What about this ring reminds David of me? If I wasn’t sure David isn’t the cheating type, I might think the ring was meant for someone else.
Suddenly, my breath grows quick and shallow. Doesn’t he know me at all? How could he think this is the ring I’d want?
“Hannah? Can I get your help for a sec?” he yells from the living room. I clutch my chest as if he’d walked in on me wearing a wedding veil and waltzing with a photo of him. I pop the lid of the ring box closed and slam the drawer shut with my hip.
In the living room, he asks me to hold the tree straight while he screws it into the base. I do so while staring mutely at the wall trying to untangle my thoughts about the vagina ring from my thoughts about an engagement, but I can’t.
David is so focused on the tree, he doesn’t notice my withdrawal. After the stump is screwed in, he puts the Beach Boys Christmas album on the record player and sinks down next to me on the brown leather sectional. He wraps an arm around me and pulls me into his side. “This is my dad’s favorite Christmas album.” He gives a contented sigh as we stare at the slightly crooked tree that’s noticeably sparser in the top left quadrant.
Our decorating has reached its anticlimactic conclusion since we don’t own any Christmas ornaments. But after a minute, David hoists himself off the couch.
“Where are you going?” I ask accusingly. For a second I stop breathing, wondering if he’s going to get the ring, but he passes the bedroom and heads for a seldom-used hall closet. The closet is a vertical junk drawer packed with ski gear, board games, plastic bins of loose charging cables whose purposes have been long forgotten, and the sleek white boxes from every Apple product we’ve ever owned, which we agree we don’t need but also cannot bring ourselves to throw away. The only items of note in there are our suitcases, and my panic shifts from a proposal to a fear he’s leaving. I don’t want that either! Why can’t things stay exactly as they are? Things are good how they are. Steady.
Instead, he pulls out a medium-sized cardboard box with fragile written on the side in his mother’s looping cursive and two packages of string lights.
“My mom sent us some things to get us started,” he tells me. “I’ve been nervous all week that you were going to find them and ruin the surprise.”
“Nope, I had no idea,” I tell him. But what I really want to know is when he plans to employ his other surprise, the one I did stumble on, and why he picked that particular—hideous—ring.
He sets the box down in front of me. Inside are a few sealed boxes of glittery red and gold balls; a selection of ornaments David made as a kid, including a photo of him and his brothers in a popsicle-stick frame; and, wrapped in tissue paper, a half dozen of June’s beloved Christopher Radko ornaments. I recognize them because I scoffed at the price—$103 for Perfectly Plaid Santa—when we bought one for her as our joint gift last Christmas. Her willingness to part with them feels akin to an engraved invitation to the family.
“It was really nice of her to send these,” I tell him, and lever myself off the couch to hang a sparkly snowman ornament on the tree, so he doesn’t mistake this for his moment to propose.
Meanwhile, David methodically adds a hook to the photo ornament of him and his brothers—the three of them match in holiday sweater vests; he smiles with the crooked buck teeth he had before braces gave him the straight, even smile he has today. “I was wondering,” he asks, then hesitates for a moment. “What kind of Christmas ornaments did you have as a kid?”
“Well, my mom always did all white ornaments. Sometimes a few gold ones, too, but nothing else,” I tell him as I remove the tape sealing the package of glittery red ornaments.
“Should we get some white ornaments in her honor?” he asks.
I laugh. “Oh god, no! It’s a nice suggestion, but definitely not. I was terrified of her tree. We weren’t allowed to touch it, but I did anyway, and I was so scared Santa would find out. I always tried to wake up a little early on Christmas morning to sneak downstairs and make sure there were still presents for me and that I hadn’t made the naughty list.”
He sticks out his bottom lip in an exaggerated pout. “Sweet baby Hannah.”
“I know,” I say, laughing. Warmth spreads through me thinking about the Christmases of my youth. I hadn’t thought about the fussy white trees in ages. I’m glad to be able to share this memory with David.
“Okay, here’s an idea.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “What if, instead, we become a kooky-tree family.”
“I like it!” I tell him.
I try to hold on to the contented feeling while we decorate the tree to the sounds of Brian Wilson crooning that it will be a blue Christmas without you, but the ring keeps popping into my mind. And telling myself not to think about the ring only makes me think about it more. Rings with cartoonishly large Disney character feet cha-cha through my brain, taunting me.
When we finish, we collapse back onto the couch to admire our handiwork. “Well, we definitely have our work cut out for us,” David remarks. “This tree does not look kooky at all. In fact, it looks like the kind of tree that has a mortgage and drives a Honda Accord.” I laugh, already excited about the prospect of hunting down more ornaments to make this tree ours.
“How about you pour some wine while I start dinner?” David asks.
“Sounds perfect,” I say. Relief courses through me as he heads toward the kitchen. Braised chicken feels like a fairly unlikely place to hide a ring.