Cammy found these visits more and more impossible. As a child she had been told what to do and think, and then when she got married her parents had backed off entirely, so that in the first year of her marriage she found herself in the odd position of advising her mother and father. Then, at some point, they had managed to turn the tables again, and now all of them were back to “Go.” They argued with each other and made pronouncements instead of having conversations.
She decided to go running with Peter and pulled her parka off a hanger in the closet. She was still having trouble zipping it outside, and Peter helped by pulling the material down tightly in front. It only made her feel more helpless. He saw her expression and nuzzled her hair. “What do you expect from them?” he said, as the zipper went up. She thought, He asks questions he knows I won’t bother to answer.
Snow was falling. They were walking through a Christmas-card scene that she hadn’t believed in in years; she half expected carolers around the corner. When Peter turned left, she guessed that they were heading for the park on Mass. Avenue. They passed a huge white clapboard house with real candles glowing in all the windows. “Some place,” Peter said. “Look at that wreath.” The wreath that hung on the front door was so thick that it was convex; it looked as if someone had uprooted a big boxwood and cut a hole in the center. Peter made a snowball and threw it, almost getting a bull’s-eye.
“Are you crazy?” she said, grabbing at his hand. “What are you going to do if they open the door?”
“Listen,” he said, “if they lived in New York the wreath would be stolen. This way, everybody can enjoy throwing snowballs at it.”
On the corner, a man stood staring down at a small brown dog wearing a plaid coat. The blond man standing next to him said, “I told you so. She may be blind, but she still loves it out in the snow.” The other man patted the shivering dog, and they continued on their walk.
Christmas in Cambridge. Soon it would be Christmas Eve, time to open the gifts. As usual, she and Peter would be given something practical (stocks), and something frivolous (glasses too fragile for the dishwasher). Then there would be one personal present for each of them: probably a piece of gold jewelry for Cammy and a silk tie for Peter. Cammy occasionally wore one of the ties when she dressed like a nineteen-forties businessman. Peter thought the ties were slightly effeminate—he never liked them. The year before, when her parents gave her a lapis ring, he had pulled it off her finger to examine it on Christmas night, in bed, then pushed it on his little finger and wiggled it, making a Clara Bow mouth and pretending to be gay. He had been trying to show her how ridiculous he would look wearing a wedding ring. They had been married three years then, and some part of her was still so sentimental that she asked him from time to time if he wouldn’t reconsider and wear a wedding ring. It wasn’t that she thought a ring would be any sort of guarantee. They had lived together for two years before they suddenly decided to get married, but before the wedding they had agreed that it was naive to expect a lifetime of fidelity. If either one became interested in someone else, they would handle the situation in whatever way they felt best, but there would be no flaunting of the other person, and they wouldn’t talk about it.
