Local Girls by Alice Hoffman

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Alice Hoffman's latest is a collection of interwoven stories that create a tapestry almost as satisfying and fully realized as a novel. The literal power of bewitchment in her novel-turned-movie, Practical Magic, reappears here in sustained but isolated moments that pack something much more earthly but almost as potent: hope. The central character of most of the tales is Gretel Samuelson, a girl local to Franconia, in Long Island. Misfortune plagues her otherwise unremarkable middle-class life, beginning in the very first story, "Dear Diary," when her parents split up and she must ride to the rescue of her best friend, Jill ("the pretty one"). When high school boys grab a Halloween-costumed Jill, Gretel hits them, her heavy Gypsy bracelets knocking one of them flat. The girls flee, and for the first time in months, Gretel feels great. Her knockout punch strikes her first blow for freedom from sorrow, from disappointing men and the thoughtless havoc they wreak. Taking fate in her own hands, however briefly, restores to Gretel the belief that her life is her own and that love might still be "a state of mind ready to grace anyone willing to accept it. Anyone who cares."

The wish that love is something a fierce-hearted person can make out of thin air both buoys and sinks Gretel through the next ten years encompassed by these stories. Through her parents' divorce, her father's remarriage, the death of her beloved grandmother, her life remains guided best by those she loves without having to try: her mother, Franny; her mother's inseparable younger cousin, Margot; andJill,who remains her best friend until the morning Gretel finally leaves New York. Makeshift relationships that substitute for family are familiar Hoffman territory, and she paints these bonds between women with a light but unforgettable touch.

Gretel flirts with bitterness but never succumbs to it, mainly because those around her refuse its bleak but tempting hand. Franny not only loses her husband to a younger, crasser woman; she is also diagnosed with cancer and still lives out her days a hopeless romantic, wishing on stars no one else can see. Margot, herself an abandoned wife who desperately wants a child, plays her sidekick role to the hilt, stepping in to mother Gretel when Franny is too ill. In the moments these women of three different generations share, Hoffman hits her most satisfying, if lightly melancholic notes. After they trim Margot's Christmas tree together, snow falls: "We all rushed to the front window to look. It was the kind of snow that you hardly ever see, so heavy and beautiful you fall in love with winter, even though you know you'll have to shovel in the morning." The snow that feels sublime despite the fact that they'll have to shovel it in the morning stands in for the collection as a whole. Each flake shimmers with an individual beauty before letting go to a tormenting hardship that equally defines the mood of this book.

Gretel's world falls apart and remakes itself into something sturdier and true. That balance between bad luck and good, between knowing cynicism and blind belief, is lost on her brother, Jason, the only male in the collection who gets his own story. By the time Jason takes over the narrative in "The Boy Who Wrestled with Angels," however, he's exactly what he declared himself and Gretel to be when their new stepmother dumped them from her car in an opening story. "Face it," Jason says, "we're lost." On the verge of entering Harvard on scholarship, Jason decides to stay put. Perversely, remaining on local soil only leads him down a lost path, and soon he's dealing drugs behind the local deli counter. For Jason, the "local" in the book's title means a shrinking point of view. Soon the magic awaiting discovery within the quotidian — Hoffman's trademark style of epiphany — has been usurped in Jason by drug dependency and, ultimately, a self-deceiving nature.

A different kind of self-discovery also haunts this sure-to-charm collection, and that is the one that awaits us in death. While doppelgängers surround each main character here (for Gretel there's Jill, for Franny there's Margot), two of the characters, in facing death, see a familiar countenance staring back at them. Each experiences his or her own second self hovering nearby — a desolate angel from the life each dying character chose not to live escorts her to some other place. In another author's hands this depiction of death would surely feel forced, but in Hoffman's breezy prose, the twin of ourselves who fetches us from our failing bodies is more sensation than ghost, offering the reader that elusive kind of comfort that only fiction can provide.

In stories like "Bake at 350ŗ," ghosts are more literal and exhibit a bitter sense of humor. Revenge, another thread weaving together Gretel's emerging sense of self, is their trump card. When Gretel's grandmother wills her own death by eating everything the doctor recommends against, she bargains for the life of Franny. When even that accomplishment isn't enough, she returns in Gretel's tumultuous imagination to practice some beyond-the-grave voodoo. The black magic she unleashes is humorous but jagged, and it's that combination that complicates the otherwise merely entertaining qualities of Local Girls. Each story is a bite-size pleasure, and the aura established by the sum of them is enjoyable, bittersweet, and lingering.

Elizabeth Haas is a writer and critic living in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

From the Publisher

The New York Times Book Review has noted, "Alice Hoffman writes quite wonderfully about the magic in our lives," and now she casts her spell over a Long Island neighborhood filled with dreamers and dreams. In a dazzling series of family portraits, Hoffman evokes the world of the Samuelsons, a family torn apart by tragedy and divorce in a world of bad judgment and fierce attachments, disappointments and devotion.

With rich, pure prose Hoffman charts the progress of Gretel Samuelson from the time she is a young girl already acquainted with betrayal and grief, until she finally leaves home. Gretel's sly, funny, knowing perspective is at the heart of this collection, as she navigates through loyalty and loss with the help of an unforgettable trio of women: her best friend, Jill, her romance-addled cousin Margot, and her mother, Franny, whose spiritual journey affects them all. Told in alternating voices, these stories are funny and lyrical, disturbing and healing, each a lesson in survival, a reminder of the ties of blood, and the power of friendship.

KLIATT

There's an old saying about life, "You have to play with the hand you're dealt." For the Samuelsons and Harringtons of small-town Franconia, New Hampshire, the deck always seems to be stacked against them. After Gretel Samuelson's father moves out and marries a younger woman, her mother Frances goes into a depression and then discovers she has cancer. Gretel, a smart, shrewd teen, becomes passionately involved with hood Sonny Garnet, the town amphetamine dealer, while her younger brother, Jason, turns from Harvard plans to drugs. Jill Harrington's mother also suffers from severe depression, and pregnant Jill quits school before her junior year, marrying Eddie LoPacca, a decent guy, though not the world's brightest. The two girls have been close "local girls" all their lives, just as Frances Samuelson and Margot Molinaro, her recently divorced cousin, have been. In fact, it is Margot who helps Frances rebuild her life by starting a catering business with her, called The Two Widows. Surprisingly, while the events in this novel are the material of classic family tragedies, the tone is rather upbeat, downright funny at times, and attitude is everything. The women—Margot and Frances, Gretel and Jill—encourage each other through the hard times of life. This sisterly bond enables them to survive "the hand they've been dealt." On the last page, when Gretel and Jill discover a firefly, Jill says, "Should I kill it?" As it flies away, Gretel says, "It decided to live." "Good for it," says Jill. "Good for us." They, too, have made that conscious decision. In our society of dysfunctional families and personal struggles, this is an important message for YAs to hear. An easy read that shouldcapture the interest of many teen readers. Reviewer: Susan G. Allison; Libn., Lewiston H.S., Lewiston, ME, September 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 5)

Library Journal

Local Girls might not be Hoffman's (Practical Magic) finest book, but it's one that lends itself brilliantly to the audio format. Billed as "stories," these are interconnected tales about the same vividly dysfunctional family. The abridgment, therefore, does not interrupt the flow, and key elements are repeated often enough that listeners can pick up any story and get the gist of the whole (though there are a few unfortunate gaps, such as how Gretel's brother actually died). The two voices, Laural Merlington and Aasne Vigesaa (one for the first person voice of Gretel, a young woman whose life is falling apart; the other for women narrating Gretel's various situations), work wonderfully, though by the second tape the supposed "working-class Long Island" accent was beginning to grate on this reviewer's ears (leaving one to think that one actress might be overplaying her role). On the plus side, that same overacting will be seen as humorous by many listeners. Recommended for most audio collections.--Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

The New York Times Book Review - Sarah Ferguson

Told in alternating voices, the stories form a scapbook of pivotal moments in the lives of Gretel and...her best friend, Jill...[at] 12, that unpredictable and dangerous age when sampling shades of lipstick and playing with dolls seem equally interesting.

Kirkus Reviews

Ten disastrous years in the life of a family on Long Island, only partly redeemed by the shimmering prose we've come to expect from Hoffman (Here on Earth). There's really no reason why what's billed as a collection of interconnected stories shouldn't be a novel, except that the author apparently couldn't spare the time to make the narration coherently first- or third-person. (More than half the book's contents first appeared in literary periodicals or women's magazines; it appears to have been untouched since then.) Gretel Samuelson begins the tale when she and her best friend Jill are in their early teens, and by the time an omniscient narrator appears with Gretel's grandmother in the sixth installment (How to Talk to the Dead), a lot has gone wrong. Gretel's father has left and remarried; her mother has been diagnosed with cancer; her brother, Jason, a sweet, brilliant boy, seems likely to throw away his impending freshman year at Harvard in favor of drugs and drifting; even their dog has run away. Poor Grandma Frieda doesn't survive ten pages past her entrance, and the death toll mounts in subsequent chapters uneasily alternating between the nearly indistinguishable voices of Gretel and the third-party storyteller. Jason ODs; their mother finally loses her battle with cancer; Jill kills her chances of a future outside Franconia by getting pregnant, marrying the not-very-bright father, and dropping out of high school. Yes, Gretel's divorced cousin Margot ultimately gets a decent man, Gretel eventually goes to college and starts a career in publishing, and some readers may draw consolation from a few admittedly beautiful descriptive passages about the natural world. ButHoffman's trademark there's-magic-beneath-the-surface-of-our-daily-lives stance feels pretty tired here, as do the characters. The central theme—"Fate could twist you around and around, if you weren't careful"—is reiterated so often it ceases to have any impact. Hoffman remains a major talent, but she's marking time here.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0425174344
  
• ISBN-13: 9780425174340
• Format: Paperback, 208pp
• Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
• Pub. Date: May 2000
• Edition Description: Reissue
• Sales Rank: 173,956

• Table of Contents
• Interviews & Essays
• Read an Excerpt
• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Interviews & Essays

Alice Hoffman: I am fine. Thank you for having me here.

Alice Hoffman: That is such a good question; unfortunately, I don't know the answer. I guess I feel they work together and that you can try to kind of carve out your own fate, but that is all you can do -- try.

Alice Hoffman: I think when I am working on a book, I try not to read at all. I have a rhythm, and I don't want to interrupt it with the rhythm of anybody else's prose. I was influenced primarily by what I read in my childhood, mostly fairy tales. But at this point, I only read when I am on vacation.

Alice Hoffman: I guess I always feel that the environment has a life of its own, and when I am writing, the houses, weather, et cetara are almost as if they are characters for me. They are a living part of the story for me.

Alice Hoffman: I think what you say is very interesting, and thank you very much -- that was my goal, to take moments of people's lives. The book started out as a single short story, and once I wrote that story, I realized a universe had been created, and I wasn't done with the characters. I have always been interested in the form of interrelated stories, and for me this book is almost a novel, but you are right -- I wanted to take pieces of their lives, almost as if the book were a puzzle, and when you put all the pieces together, it formed a life.

Alice Hoffman: I am going to a little farm that I have and am going to write the second half of my novel and watch the birds.

Alice Hoffman: That is funny, because there used to be this attitude that it was a Fitzgerald place with money and suburban life, then it took a wrong turn with Joey Buttafucco and Amy Fisher. Suddenly there was this other side of Long Island, a side I was more familiar with growing up there. What is interesting about Long Island is that it is like Los Angeles in that it has always been a place of dreams, but I am not really aware of the European sensibility of what it means to them. To me it means a lot of Burger Kings.

Alice Hoffman: I am not sure of the answer to that. I think it is a combination -- partially fate, illness, disaster, love, disease, etc. And partially it is the way characters react to the situations. I always think two different characters can be in the same situation and react very differently. In Local Girls, I was not sure what was going to happen, which was what made it so interesting to me -- to go on that journey with them.

Alice Hoffman: I don't think this family is tight-lipped. They seem to scream, rant, and rave, et cetera. For me, it was not a conscious decision. It just sort of came alive for me. I realized halfway through that the model was more Hansel And Gretel than Faulkner. It feels to me as if I am telling a modern fairy tale about a brother and sister lost in suburbia.

Alice Hoffman: Interesting question. Part of me feels they are in it together, and even though they make very different choices, they both succeed in the end. Jill, who seems as if she is ruining her life, does exactly what her mother doesn't want her to do, which is get pregnant very young. They both don't follow the traditional path set out for them, and that is just because different people find their happiness in different ways.

Alice Hoffman: There has only been one -- "Practical Magic" -- and I liked it very much. I thought the women in it were terrific. It is not the book, but it is fun to see.

Alice Hoffman: Thank you so much -- I really appreciate that. I am not one who does much for research. That book took place in Martha's Vineyard, and I had never been there before, until afterward, and it turned out to be very accurate. I did some research on agoraphobia, but I am happy it came out accurate. Thank you for that comment.

Alice Hoffman: Absolutely! I think that is part of the reason I wrote this book; it was a dark part in my life, and I wrote it to remind myself of all the reasons to live, and one of those reasons was laughter and remembering how to enjoy yourself.

Alice Hoffman: I do write full-time, and I write every day, but I have been doing it for 25 years, so I don't know if I am prolific or just old.

Alice Hoffman: It wasn't conscious, but what I wanted to do with these stories is to give an overview of this family, and I think we could really see Gretel if we saw her from every perspective, from first and third person. These stories just felt right being told in this manner, and that story just felt right being told that way.

Alice Hoffman: I think I see it as it happens. For me it is the process of writing that moves the fiction. I start with certain elements like characters or place, but when the novel starts to come alive I almost feel as if I am channeling it. Then for other drafts I have to do work, but the first time around it is as if I am playing the piano and the song just comes out.

Alice Hoffman: Thanks, I wish I were, but I am not touring with this book. I am working on another book. Sorry.

Alice Hoffman: I have to say my biggest literary hero is Grace Paley. I looked to her in both literature and the social actions she was involved with. I was very influenced by the children's books that I read.

Alice Hoffman: I guess probably everybody is untrustworthy when they are consumed by love. Good point!

Alice Hoffman: The Catcher In The Rye, Mary Poppins, and the Bible.

Alice Hoffman: I guess that is part of the puzzle. Margot is just an optimist -- horrible things happen to her and she continues to see good in life, fall in love, et cetera. Jason responds to shakedowns in his life by just shutting down. Partially, I think that is just their natures: One is full of hope and one wasn't.

Alice Hoffman: Thank you so much. I appreciate those kinds words; it means a lot to me.

Alice Hoffman: I just really appreciate your response, kind words, and the attention you gave my work; it is great to be in touch with you. Thank you for having me here.

Read an Excerpt

Read a Sample Chapter

One thing I've learned is that strange things do happen. They happen all the time. Today, for instance, my best friend Jill's cat spoke. We were making brownies in the kitchen when we heard it say, Let me out. Well, we rushed to the back door and did exactly that. We experienced a miracle and now we're looking for more, although Franconia, the town we live in, is not known for such things. Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. One house separates our houses but we act as if it doesn't exist. We met before we were born and we'll probably still know each other after we die. At least, that's the way we're planning it.

My mother and I left for Atlantic City so quickly I didn't have time to call Jill. We told people we were on our way to visit an old aunt, but really our departure had something to do with love, or the lack of it, and the aunt doesn't even exist. I know other people whose mothers suddenly pack up when their fathers drink or scream, but for us this is more serious. My mother doesn't do things like go to Atlantic City. She doesn't order room service and cry. She once told me that anyone who gets married had better like herself, because there's nobody else in this world that she'll ever really know, not truly.

    We stayed in our room in Atlantic City for three days, and didn't go outside once, thanks to room service. We ate like pigs and didn't even bother to brush our teeth until my mother's cousin Margot, who got a divorce last summer and changed the color of her hair to give herself an emotional lift, came to get us. She drove to New Jersey in the Ford Mustang convertible that she refused to let her ex have, since he'd taken her very soul and raked it over redhot coals.

    "Get dressed right now," she told us.

    We were wearing our bathrobes and watching an old cowboy movie, which, for some reason, made my mother cry. Maybe it was all those men on horseback who were so steadfast and loyal. Their own men had disappointed them, but somehow Margot and my mother both had hope for improvement. Frankly, I had more faith in the horses.

    "I mean now, Frances," Margot said, and because she meant business, my mother actually dressed and put on some lipstick and we went to a Chinese restaurant where the drinks came with little paper umbrellas, which I kept as a souvenir.

    Listen to me, Gretel, Margot told me when we'd gone back to the room to pack and my mother was finally out of earshot. When a marriage breaks up, it's the children who suffer, so baby, hold on tight. That's why Margot was relieved that she and Tony had never had children, although she became teary whenever she saw a baby.

    "Margot is my best friend, but she's completely full of baloney," my mother whispered as we were throwing our suitcases into the trunk. "Take it all with a grain of salt. Maybe even a whole shaker."

    Say what you want about the Mustang, it may be gorgeous, but it has very little trunk space. I had to sit in the back seat with the hair dryer and the makeup case on my lap all the way to Franconia, but that didn't stop me from keeping my fingers crossed and wishing we'd wind up someplace other than home.

We're in Florida for one week, the week when the turtles die on the beach and there are jellyfish in the ocean. As soon as we checked into the hotel, my brother, Jason, who likes to pretend he's not part of our family, went out to study tide pools and no one has seen him since. My parents are here to try to revitalize their marriage, which seems a pretty impossible feat to all outside observers. Gretel honey, don't get high hopes, Margot had already warned me when she took me shopping for a bathing suit, a mission which can give anyone with a less than perfect body a complete nervous breakdown. When it's over, it's over, Margot told me, and I had the distinct feeling that she was right.

    Long before the plane touched down in Miami we could hear our parents arguing, and at the hotel they locked themselves in their room. If you ask me, working so hard at being married can backfire. It certainly is making my father nastier than usual. Not that his bad temper affects me. I keep my own counsel. I go my own way. I order room service and eat Linzer tortes and shrimp scampi alone in the room I was supposed to be sharing with Jason, not that he was ever planning to show up. Even though I was across the hall from my parents, I could still hear them fighting.

I went out to the beach late, later than I'd be allowed to if anyone knew I was alive. That's where I met Jonathan Rabbit, who is now in love with me. He is known as Jack Rabbit, which makes me laugh out loud. Doesn't it figure that the boy who fell for me would be a rodent? He lives in Atlanta and is in the ninth grade, and frankly he's terribly boring. I let him kiss me once, but believe me, I did not hear bells. I only heard the jellyfish sloshing around in the water and the noisy beat of Jack Rabbit's heart.

Florida didn't do anything for my family, but at least it's starting to be spring. Jill and I are keeping our eyes open for miracles. Jack Rabbit calls me constantly and that is something of a miracle. He writes so often you'd think his fingers would start to cramp up. I bring his letters to school, so everyone is well aware that I have a boyfriend in Atlanta. They'll never meet him. They'll never know it's actually possible for a boy to be so boring you'd agree to kiss him just to get him to shut up. I should get paid to listen to him when he calls on the phone. I should get a dollar fifty an hour. Minimum.

    Jill told me that when you're really in love, you know right away. I'm not exactly sure how this happens. Is it like a flash of lightning? Like an angel tapping you on the shoulder? Or is it similar to choosing a puppy? You think you're picking the cutest one, but really you wind up going home with the one who keeps insisting on climbing into your lap. That's how we got our dog, Revolver. We thought he was so crazy about us, but it turned out that Labrador retrievers adore everyone. Well, maybe that's what love is, a state of mind ready to grace anyone willing to accept it. Anyone who cares.

School's out. Hurray. Life, however, is still so boring that I'm writing to Jack Rabbit every day. I go to the pool with Jill and take along my notebook and write until I think I'm going blind, then jump into the deep end. We are not going on vacation because no one in my house is talking to each other, so going anywhere together is definitely out. My brother's on the summer science team at the high school, so he's never home. My father is on an exercise kick and has joined a gym, so he's never around either.

    My mother and Margot and I spend a lot of time going to movies. It's dark and it's cool and no one knows if you're crying, except for the person sitting directly beside you. Margot buys me anything I want, even Jordan almonds, which are so terrible for your teeth. She's the kind of person who knows about love. She has men calling her in the middle of the night, but they're all no good, or so she says. Just like Jill, she insists she'll know when she meets the right man. But unlike Jill, she tells me exactly what love's evidence is. I'll just want to kiss him till I die. To me, this doesn't sound like something to hope for, but people seem to hope for it all the same.

Jill is camping with her parents, and has sent me a postcard that it has happened. The miracle we've been searching for, the great event, the angel's secret. It's love, it really is. It's the boy in the tent next to hers who she sneaks out to meet after her parents are asleep. I sit on my front stoop while Jill is away and think things over. I've smartened up and am no longer waiting for the mailman. Jack Rabbit isn't writing anymore. He went to camp to be a junior counselor and I guess he broke his arm or fell in love with somebody new. Doesn't it figure that I would miss his letters like crazy? Sometimes I read the old ones late at night, and I wonder what was I thinking when I got them. How could I have thought he was boring? Well, I'm the boring one now. When Jill comes back I may have to lie to her. I may tell her Jack Rabbit died in a canoeing accident. My name was the last word he said, or so they tell me. My name brought him comfort with his last dying breath.

Jill and I are not in the same class at school. We never are. The administration doesn't want people who like each other to be together. They think it builds character when they stick people who hate one another in the same room, day after day, and nobody winds up getting killed or maimed. I'm not supposed to know that Jill's mother is seeing a psychiatrist, just as Jill is not supposed to know my parents are no longer sleeping in the same room. My mother spends her nights on a quilt on my floor, and she doesn't cry until she thinks I'm asleep.

    Recently, Margot and I went out for ice cream. We had butterscotch sundaes with vanilla ice cream. Margot asked for my advice. She had spotted my father at an expensive restaurant, the kind he'd never take us to, with some woman she'd never seen before and she didn't know whether or not to tell my mother. I have never been much of a tattletale myself, although I understand that there are times when the truth serves its purpose. This didn't seem to be one of those times. For all we knew, this woman could be some business associate, although Margot and I probably would have both been willing to bet our lives that she wasn't.

    Don't tell. That was the advice I came up with. My mother was already crying and sleeping on the floor, what good would the truth do her now? Margot didn't eat any of her sundae, and when she offered it to me I realized I was sick to my stomach. I think I've pretty much figured out that in this world, it's better to stick to hot fudge.

On Halloween Jill wore all black and made ears out of felt which she glued to a plastic headband. She was a black cat. She had a tail that was braided out of three silk scarves. I borrowed thirty silver bangle bracelets from my grandmother. I was a fortune-teller. We should have suspected something when we saw the moon. It was orange and so big we couldn't believe it. It was like we could take one big step, and there we'd be: moon girls who had fallen off the rim of the world. My brother laughed at us. Weren't we a little too old for trick-or-treating? Well of course we were, but we didn't care. We went up and down the block, collecting candy; then we walked beyond the high school through the field so we could smoke cigarettes beside the creek. Jill had stolen the cigarettes from her mother's purse, and I had gotten the matches from my grandmother.

    "As long as you're not smoking cigarettes," my grandmother had said to me, which pretty much ruined the whole thing. I couldn't enjoy a single puff. Grandma Frieda was visiting for the weekend and she had the ability to put a hex on any form of high jinks. She was sleeping on my floor too, and it was getting pretty crowded there in my room. I could never find my sneakers. I couldn't find my underwear. Every night, as I fell asleep, I'd hear bits of whispered conversation, and every single one seemed to include the word sorrow.

    Jill had been practicing and knew how to blow smoke rings. She was blowing a misty ring when some guys from the high school intent on trouble approached. Jill looked older than she was, and even in costume, you could tell she was beautiful. The high school guys tried to kiss her, and when she refused, they grabbed her. The whole thing happened so fast I just sat there, as though I were the audience and the whole thing was a play. And then it wasn't. I hit one of the guys, and all of my silver bracelets were so heavy he fell backwards. The shock of me smashing one of them gave us time to run. We ran and ran, like we really could get to the moon if we had to. We ran until we turned into smoke; we could float across lawns and drift under windows and doors.

    "I can't believe you did that," Jill said when we finally made it home. She had lost her tail and her ears, but her face was shining. "You hit him."

    I felt great for days.

We don't do holidays. We go to my grandma Frieda's for Passover, but we skip Chanukah, which my father insists is trivial, and Thanksgiving, which he considers a meaningless ritual. We do, however, spend every Christmas at Margot's house. It's a holiday she feels entitled to celebrate since she was married to Tony Molinaro for all those years. My father never goes to Margot's, and this year Jason wasn't there either. It was just us, and we decorated the tree with all of Tony's mother's beautiful old ornaments. There's an angel that's always been my favorite, fashioned out of silvery glass. When Tony's mother was alive she assured me it would bring good luck to whoever hung it on the tree. Tony's mother always preferred Margot to her own son, and when they broke up she took to her bed and was dead by the following spring.

    Even after Margot and Tony divorced, Margot always included her ex-mother-in-law in the festivities. Tony's mother must have been at least ninety. Her hands shook as she held out the angel. "Here's the thing about luck," she told me on her last Christmas. "You don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective."

    This year we made a toast to the old lady and Margot actually cried. Right as we finished the tree, snow started to fall. We all rushed to the front window to look. It was the kind of snow that you hardly ever see, so heavy and beautiful you fall in love with winter, even though you know you'll have to shovel in the morning.

    Margot had made a turkey with stuffing, a noodle kugel, and a white cake topped with coconut that looked like the snow outside. After dinner, she and my mother put on aprons and did the dishes and laughed. I let them listen to Elvis's Blue Christmas; I hardly ever saw my mother having a good time, so how could I complain?

    In Jill's family Christmas was a big deal, and I knew when I went over to her house in the morning she'd have a dozen great presents to show me and I'd have to try not to be jealous. Jill and I had given each other bottles of White Musk, our favorite scent. I envied Jill just about everything, but I didn't feel jealous right then, listening to Elvis in Margot's house. Truthfully, there was nowhere else I'd rather be. Lucky for us, Margot lived right around the corner from us. Her house was our house, and vice versa, unless my father was at home. Margot and my mother intended to be neighbors forever; they had dozens of plans, but not all of their plans were working out.

    I'd overheard my father talking on the phone. He was intending to leave as soon as the weather got better. As soon as he could break the news to us, he'd be gone. He was in a holding pattern, that's what he said, but he wasn't holding on to us, that much was certain. I didn't tell my mother what I'd learned. I didn't tell anyone. I wanted to see Margot and my mother dance in the kitchen when the dishes were done and drying on the rack. I wanted to see them throw their aprons on the floor.

    That night, when we walked home, my mother put her arm around me and told me to wish on a star. She still believed in things like that. We stood there in the snow, and try as I might, I didn't see a single star. But I lied. I said that I did, and I wished anyway. We stood there while my mother tried in vain to see that same star. My fingers were freezing, so I put my hands in my pockets. The angel was there. I knew that if I tried to thank Margot, she'd tell me to cut it out, she'd say it was nothing, but it was definitely something to me.

    It was late, but we could hear traffic on the Southern State Parkway, even though it was Christmas, and snowing so hard. You had to wonder who all these people in their cars were leaving behind and who they were driving toward, and if they knew that in the distance, the echo of their tires on the asphalt sounded like a river, and that to someone like me, it could seem like the miracle I'd been looking for.