J.

eremy definitely wanted to spend New Year's with Cami and her family. I suggested that he invite her to spend Christmas with my family in Colorado, but he shook his head, saying that she was too stressed about the wedding plans; she needed to be in the Hamptons as much as possible. I let Zack choose for himself. After Christmas in Colorado, he could come home for New Year's if he stayed with one of his friends' families, or he could come to the Hamptons with Jeremy and me. I was surprised, but pleased, when he decided to come with us. So I paid the airline's ticket penalty and changed our tickets so that all three of us could fly directly from Colorado to New York.

When I told Rose that we were coming, there was no trace of the desperate relief I expected to hear. Maybe I had read too much into the tone of her invitation. Maybe she had simply been tired. Maybe I had been the needy one, and that's what I had needed to hear.

A few days later she called me back. "I need to apologize and explain. After I heard from you, I tried to get reservations for Mike and Claudia-"

I blinked. I hadn't known that she was going to invite them. She didn't need to. New Year's Eve was not a *must do' holiday in our family.

"-And there is nothing anywhere close. They'd be driving for miles and staying in a very ordinary motel. So I had to ask them to stay at the house. It would look so inhospitable not to. They have to know we have the s.p.a.ce."

So she had already invited them. She wasn't asking my permission.

And why should she have to? It was her house, wasn't it?

"I hope that this won't be too awkward for you," she finished.

"For me? Oh, goodness, I'll be fine. Don't worry about me."

T.

he time between Thanksgiving and Christmas had always been particularly busy for our family because Mike's birthday was in early December. In the three years between his leaving and my moving, I'd always invited him to have dinner with Zack and me. Left to himself, he wouldn't have celebrated the day.

But this year was different. I couldn't invite him without Claudia, and I didn't want to invite her. I didn't have room to store twelve metallic-thread quilted placemats with a matching table runner. So I said nothing, and eventually Mike invited Zack to go to dinner with Claudia and him that night.

A few days before Mike's birthday, Rose called me to apologize for the "Christmas trip," but Cami needed to spend the entire holiday on wedding plans.

"I know. That's what Jeremy said. I never thought that she was coming to Colorado with us."

"Oh, no, not that trip. Hasn't Claudia called you?"

"No."

Apparently Claudia had a notion to surprise Mike on his birthday with a trip to one of the Virgin Islands before they went to the Hamptons for New Year's. She'd called Rose to see if she could get a ticket for Cami.

"She wasn't planning on taking my boys, was she?" I asked.

"She said Mike has them for Christmas."

"For Christmas Day. And Christmas Eve too if he wants. But on the evening of the twenty-fifth, I'm taking them to Colorado to go skiing. We're meeting Dad and my brother Chuck's family."

"Oh, I was supposed to know that, wasn't I?" Rose sighed. "I can't keep track of my own plans anymore, much less other people's."

"And Mike knows about the Colorado trip too."

"He doesn't know anything about the Virgin Islands. It's a surprise. I a.s.sumed that Claudia had cleared it with you."

"Well, she didn't. I wonder if I should tell her about it."

"That's totally up to you," Rose said. "I didn't mean to be the intermediary."

Rose had called me as I was walking out the door for work, so I couldn't have called Claudia then. My shifts were particularly grueling, so I didn't think about Rose's call again until the morning of Mike's birthday when I was reminding Zack that he was to meet Mike and Claudia at the restaurant.

"Will Dad pay if I have to put the car in a lot?"

"Of course."

I watched him hoist his backpack and trudge out the door. I wondered what I would have done if I had remembered Rose's call. Would I have gotten in touch with Claudia? I didn't know. Surely it would have been her place to call me. I double checked my e-mail inbox-the messages acc.u.mulated while I was working-and there was nothing from her. She must have dropped the plan.

I spent most of the day in the kitchen. A giant blue plywood stork had appeared in the front yard of a family down the street. Although I had spoken to them only a time or two, I prepared three different entrees for them to put in the freezer. The new mother was desperately grateful. The baby was asleep, so I didn't get to hold him, but the mom told me to stop by anytime between one and four a.m.; he was always awake then.

Sooner than I'd expected, I heard Zack's car in the drive, followed by the sound of a second car. I went to the door. Mike had followed Zack home.

Zack started talking right away. "We're going skiing at Christmas with Grandpa and Uncle Chuck, aren't we?"

I nodded. "We leave the night of the twenty-fifth."

Mike followed him up the steps. "May I come in for a minute?"

In the living room, he looked tired and hara.s.sed. "When I told Claudia that I'd have the boys for Christmas, she misunderstood. So she made some travel arrangements and hoped to include them."

"Then she's going to be disappointed. She hasn't made any definite plans, has she?"

"Well, actually, yes. She didn't buy their plane tickets, but she has rented a large house in St. Thomas and arranged some activities. She booked us on a private charter boat for a couple of day trips. She's put a lot of effort into this." He did not look at all excited. "Believe me, Darcy, I knew nothing about it . . . so I was wondering if just this once you could be flexible."

I've never known anyone to stick with a "just this once" pledge. "Mike, my dad paid for our tickets. You know there's no way I'm going to tell him that the boys aren't coming."

"What about if they came a few days later? On the twenty-seventh or so. I'd pay for all the ticket changes."

It would probably take them much of a day to get from St. Thomas to Colorado. "Chuck only has the house until the thirtieth. And then we're going straight to Rose and Guy's for New Year's. Mike, this is not going to work. I am not going to truncate my dad's time with the boys . . . or theirs with their cousins."

"Just this once, Darcy . . . please."

"No."

"Dad, I told you this is what she would say." Zack sounded a little triumphant. "There was no reason for you to follow me home."

I winced. Zack should have kept his mouth shut.

"You may be right about that, Zack," Mike said too slowly, too patiently, "but you could have been more considerate of Claudia's feelings."

"Me? What did I do wrong?" The triumph drained from his voice. He turned to me. "Mom, I was fine. Okay, I didn't like it when I saw her sitting there all puffed up-you know how people get when they think they're about to give you the treat of a lifetime and they can't wait until you're groveling with joy-I admit that that rubs me the wrong way."

I knew that about him. He was always surprising me- completely, even deliberately failing when I expected him to do something, but coming through when it never occurred to me that he would. He hated having people expect something from him. The minute he started to smell expectations, he went running in the other direction.

"So I looked inside the envelope," he continued. "She had given them to me and Dad at the same time, and once I figured out why I was looking at a picture of a big house on the ocean, I thanked her, and I was really nice, saying that it looked like a great trip, but that Jeremy and I couldn't go."

I couldn't see anything wrong with that.

"But you didn't have to say it right then," Mike said. "You could have waited and let me handle it later."

"I could have," Zack answered, "but I didn't."

"Let's not make this about Zack," I said. "Claudia made a mistake. I can understand her wanting to arrange a surprise for you, but she should have checked on the boys' schedules first. She should have talked to me."

"It wasn't anything personal," Mike defended her. "She wasn't deliberately ignoring you. She's never had to deal with family situations before."

"She knew enough to call Rose to see if Cami could come."

He paused. "You knew about this?"

Oh, Darcy, why can't you keep your mouth shut? "Only through Rose."

"Then why didn't you do something? Why didn't you call Claudia and stop her?"

"For all I knew, once Rose said Cami couldn't go, Claudia bailed on the whole idea. Why was it my responsibility to get involved?"

"Oh, come on, Darcy. You're not afraid of getting involved. Didn't you call what's-her-name's mom when you were afraid that she and Jeremy were going to start having s.e.x?'

Zack had been trying to ease out of the room, but he was suddenly alert. "You did what?'

"It was a long time ago," I answered, trying to keep the conversation from hopping down this particular bunny trail.

"Have you ever called a girl's mother about me?"

"There's no right answer to that," I replied. "Either you will be mad at me if I did call or offended if I didn't."

He grinned. "That's true, but which is it?"

"I hover less with you than with him."

"You just think I can't get laid."

"Zack!" Mike exploded. "That's no way to talk to your mother."

"Oh, come on, Dad. I haven't done anything wrong here. Claudia screwed up, not Mom or me."

"And if Claudia's really determined to have a happy-family-on-the-beach Christmas," I put in, "why don't you take your mother?"

I.

had, as I often do, spoken without thinking. If I'd had a reason for making that remark about his mother, it was to make Mike feel guilty. And it would work. So I was expecting some self-justifying phone calls in which he tried to get me to excuse him for not taking his mother. I decided right away that I was going to let him off the hook. No one knows better than me how challenging your mother can be, I was going to say. She is a treat best enjoyed on her home turf.

But then I heard that Mike and Claudia were taking Marge with them.

I would not have wished that on anyone.

T.

he boys and I had a great time in Colorado. Chuck and his wife have two daughters; Suzanne was nine, Sabine six, and the girls adored their big cousins. All of us, even Dad and little Sabine, skied or s...o...b..arded all day. We ate in every night, preparing everything from my mother's recipes. Her beef Stroganoff used canned mushrooms, dried onion soup, and cream-of-mushroom soup. I thought it was overly salted with a chemical aftertaste, but my father was thrilled.

"This dish brings back so many wonderful memories," he said with a sigh.

In the middle of our family harmony, I had to wonder about Claudia, Mike, and Marge, a threesome vacationing together in St. Thomas. What kind of time were they having? Any ill feelings I had for Claudia didn't justify my sticking her with Marge for a week, and as the boys and I were flying from Colorado to New York, I decided that I wanted to apologize to her.

It would be awkward. She and I had never had a private conversation, and in public we exchanged only meaningless pleasantries.

I was in the middle seat between the boys. What do you think of Claudia . . . No, no, of course, she's nice enough, but what do you really think? . . . Yes, Dad seems happy, and he's dressing better, but what do you really think? . . . Remember that night she wouldn't borrow shoes to play flashlight tag, what did you think of that?

Fortunately they were both asleep, and I couldn't badger them into telling me what I wanted to hear.

In New York Guy had arranged for a car service to bring us from the airport. We got stuck in traffic, so we arrived later than planned, but as soon as I got myself settled in the room over the garage, I went to find Claudia, knowing that she and Mike had arrived earlier in the day.

She was in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher. She seemed to have staked this out as her particular job. I didn't like that. She was invading my territory. Surely everyone would agree that the kitchen was mine.

Her nubby gray slacks were, I supposed, the color of driftwood, and the soft yellow of her shirt had to be a color in her conch sh.e.l.l. If I hadn't known about her brand, I would have thought it was a perfectly normal outfit. But knowing that she had been thinking about the brand when she chose that shade of gray made it all seem a little creepy. She had just returned from a week in the Virgin Islands, but there was no sign of sun on her face or hands.

Who was she? I had no idea where she had grown up, who her family was, where she had gone to school. I wasn't a sn.o.b; one of our best nurses had come from a trailer park, another had worked her way off the welfare rolls. I didn't care what her background was; it just seemed strange not to know. She must have wanted it that way. She wanted people to see what she had become. She had invented herself; she had created a brand.

What else did she want? Mike, my boys, Cami's family, and this big house in the Hamptons. She was playing musical chairs with me, and she was going to make sure that I ended up standing along the wall.

Suddenly I felt that behind the cool, elegant wardrobe, the real Claudia was a garishly colored Bobo doll, one of those inflatable vinyl clowns whose bottoms were weighted so that when you punched them, they always popped back up, their eyes bulging and their stupid painted-on grins leering. It wouldn't matter what I did to keep this woman from trying to take a place-my place- in my family; she would bounce right back. The harder I hit, the faster she would recoil.

But that did not change the fact that I owed her an apology.

So I got to it. "Claudia, I think that something I said ended up with Mike suggesting you take his mother to St. Thomas. I didn't mean it to. I don't think Marge does very well away from home."

Claudia looked down at the ironstone cream pitcher she was rinsing. "She smokes."

"Don't you hate that?" Marge's smoking had always made our visits to her difficult. When the boys were little, she would go outside to smoke, claiming that she never smoked in the house. But clearly she did-the smell of her curtains attested to that-and the change in routine made her jittery.

"We had to change planes." Claudia's voice was tight. "Flying on December twenty-third is difficult enough, but when you have to find someplace to smoke between flights . . . we almost missed our connection." She fitted the cream pitcher over one of the p.r.o.ngs in the dishwasher and then glanced at her watch. "And that is not the way I travel."

"When you fly with her, you have to change in Charlotte." I was surprised that Mike hadn't remembered that. "North Carolina lets people smoke in airports."

Claudia picked up a mug, emptied the old coffee out of it, and rinsed it. Before putting it into the dishwasher, she ran a soapy sponge around the rim, then rinsed it again. So much for Managed Perfectionism. This was Perfectionism Run Amok. "Has Marge ever talked about what she wants to do when she has to leave her house?"

I shook my head. "No, but Mike and I split up more than three years ago. She might not have been thinking about that then."

"Oh."

That was all Claudia said, but I got it. Was Marge Van Aiken hinting, in that snarky way of hers, that she and her Parliament Lights were looking for somewhere to live? If so, Claudia's s.p.a.cious, immaculate house would be appealing.

No one on earth, not even Claudia, deserved that.

But in about thirty seconds my sympathy for Claudia faded. She needed to wake up. A man Mike's age was a package deal. On one hand, he came with two handsome sons, one of whom was about to marry into a family with a house in the Hamptons. On the other hand, he had a difficult, demanding mother whose long-term care he would eventually have to figure out. Family life was full of the kind of compromises that Claudia Postlewaite probably was not used to making.

First thing the next morning, I volunteered to do a grocery-store run. I didn't have a car, so Rose went to get the keys to her Mercedes even though I wasn't wild about driving someone else's very big, very expensive car on unfamilar roads.