She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan Page A

you were in Vietnam?” I said.
    â€œYeah.” Santa sat on a chair by the fire, warmed himself.
    â€œMarines. Since Tet.” He shook his head as if the words should mean something to me. “After I got back I lived in California for a while. Man, some wild times out
there
!”
    A small puddle formed around Santa’s boots.
    â€œShould have called first, I guess,” he said.
    He looked around, examining our furniture, which didn’t really fill the place. His eyes fell on the piano.
    â€œWas that you playing before?” he said.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWhat was that? Sounded all right.”
    â€œJust like a jam,” I said. I thought about it for a second. “You want me to play you something?”
    â€œWhatever,” Santa said. He held the bottle of Jack Daniel’s toward me. “You want some of this, kid?”
    â€œNo thanks,” I said. I went back to the piano and sat on the bench. “You want to hear anything in particular?”
    â€œNah,” Santa said.
    For the third time that night, my hands fell on the keys. I started playing “Mrs. Robinson,” a crazy jam in the key of G. Santa put his feet up on the ottoman and drank some Jack Daniel’s. He looked up at the oil painting of my grandfather.
    I sang.
Look around you. All you see / Are sympathetic eyes. / Stroll
around the grounds until you feel at home. . . .
    It took me about twenty minutes to get done with all three verses and the chorus and three more long jams. Finally I finished.
    Santa applauded.
Thank you, Philadelphia. Thank you all very much.
    â€œSounds all right, kid,” Santa said. He stood up, put the cap back on his whiskey. “Well, I gotta go. Merry Christmas and all.”
    â€œMerry Christmas,” I said.
    Santa went outside into the rain. I stood in the front hallway until I heard his car drive off.
    Upstairs, the hallway was full of light. Onion was up. It sounded as if she were in the bathroom.
    â€œOnion?” I said, and opened the door.
    She was sitting on a green stool, drying herself with a bluish white towel. She’d been taking a bath, of all things. One hand was raised in the air. I could just see the vague shadow of her pink nipple at the upper perimeter of the towel. An orange robe belonging to my grandmother was draped across the green stool. The room was thick with the steam from her bath, giving everything a shimmering, twinkling quality. The old blue tub stood behind her, still full of water. The crazy wallpaper of the Hunts surrounded her—rippling patterns of pink and purple and white.
    Onion’s hair was tied up in a bun over her head. She looked perfect, like a painting by Degas. Sitting there, drying herself, one arm raised, she looked immortal, the embodiment of what Goethe called the “feminine eternal.” This vision of her filled me with a profound, aching sorrow.
    The raised arm dropped to her side, and she looked up at me. “Hey,” she said.
    â€œHey,” I said.
    â€œLike, what happened?”
    She seemed embarrassed.
    â€œYou passed out,” I said.
    She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She turned toward me, and I saw the blue bruise on her upper arm again. “Whoo-hoo. Maybe I’m fuckin’ insane.”
    â€œYou’re all right,” I said.
    â€œI don’t know about that,” Onion said. She gathered up her clothes, and I watched her put them on. “Did you, like, carry me up here?”
    I nodded. “Whoo-hoo,” she said. “Weird.”
    We stood in the pink-and-purple room for a long time, not saying anything. She was still wet.
    Onion looked at her watch and shrugged. “Oughta get going, I guess,” she said.
    â€œYou have to go?” I said as if I didn’t know the answer.
    â€œYeah,” she said. “Listen, I’m sorry, you know? Maybe some other time we could . . .” Her voice trailed