Woman Matching the Logo Seeks Way Out

At a quarter past eight, Holly had been smiling in front of a teal banner for forty minutes, zipped into a silk dress of the very same teal, and she had just realized that her husband had dressed her to match the logo.

Preston had picked it out in September, with the gala's color palette open on his laptop. Now he stood ten feet away with his back to her, talking to the Hendersons, and Holly was looking at the back of his neck: the fresh haircut, the exact spot where she'd rested her hand the first time they danced. That was in Worcester, at her cousin Colleen's wedding, when they were twenty-three. The heel of her sandal had snapped, and Preston had taken off his tie, knotted it around her ankle to hold the sole on, and asked her to dance anyway, counting the steps under his breath so he wouldn't step on her. That night Holly called her mother from the pay phone in the parking lot to tell her she was going to marry a boy who counted the steps.

Preston turned. He looked for her over Mrs. Henderson's shoulder, found her, and kept looking, his glass halfway to his mouth, not smiling. Holly lifted a hand to her hair, feeling for the loose bobby pin, and shifted half a step back in front of the banner. He raised his glass an inch and went back to the Hendersons. For one silly second her stomach had flipped the way it had at Colleen's wedding. It passed quickly.

Her cheekbones ached, a small, specific ache just below the eyes, like when she was a girl and spent whole afternoons at the county fair biting the insides of her cheeks so she wouldn't cry on the Ferris wheel. Galas didn't make her want to cry anymore. They made her want to take off her shoes and sit on the service stairs with the waiters.

“A little to the left, Mrs. Caldwell. In front of the banner. Perfect.”

She moved to the left. The banner was enormous, with silver letters: WINTER GALA TO BENEFIT ST. ANSELM CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL. And below that, smaller, though not by much: CALDWELL & PARTNERS.

Flash. Flash.

“Gorgeous,” said the photographer, who said it about everything, including a centerpiece shaped like a swan.

Holly had three lines for the evening. Preston had gone over them with her in the car in the same voice he used for the grocery list: “Thank you for coming,” “It's such a beautiful cause,” and, if anyone asked about the children at the hospital, “You'd better ask Preston, he's the one with the numbers.” They had never failed her.

She did the math, because when she was bored she did math. So far tonight, eleven people had talked to her. Fourteen had talked about her, right in front of her, as if she were a vase everyone had nice things to say about. “Holly looks stunning.” “Holly, always so elegant.” “Preston, how do you keep Holly looking exactly the same?” Team Vase was winning by three.

A circle had formed around Preston and the Hendersons, the way it always did: people holding their drinks, waiting for their minute with him. At forty-six he still had all his hair, the shoulders of a college rower, and a way of resting his hand on someone's elbow that made people write checks without quite knowing why. He knew the names of everybody's kids and of half the waiters. That afternoon he'd paid out of his own pocket for a bus so the nurses from the children's wing could come to the gala, and he hadn't told a soul; Holly knew because she'd seen the charge on the card. He would have called it a good investment.

A server went by with a tray of wagyu sliders. Holly took one to be polite and held it between her fingers, not daring to eat it in a silk dress with a photographer that quick on the trigger.

“Here, I'll take that.” The server kept her voice down. She couldn't have been more than twenty, Josh's age.

“You're an angel.”

“I know,” the girl said, and winked.

Holly let out a short laugh through her nose that had nothing gala about it.

* * *

At nine, Preston took the stage.

Holly watched him adjust the microphone with two fingers, wait for the room to go quiet, and let the quiet last one second longer than it needed to. That second was his. He'd rehearsed it.

“Good evening, everyone. I won't keep you long, because I know you're all here for dessert.”

Laughter. It always worked.

He talked about Boston's generosity and the new children's wing, “a project we're all so proud of.” Then came the part he cared about, the numbers: three hundred and forty thousand dollars last year; this year, with the auction, they hoped to break half a million. He said it in the same voice he used to announce the Patriots score at breakfast.

Holly looked around. Round tables, white tablecloths, beautiful people who'd paid twelve hundred dollars a plate to eat sea bass. On the screen behind Preston, photos of the hospital went by: a hallway, the front of the building, a freshly painted waiting room. Not a single child.

In August, at the planning meeting, she had raised her hand. Literally. She'd raised her hand, like in school, because no one was looking at her and she didn't know how else to get into the conversation.

“What if we brought in drawings by the kids?” she'd said. “From the wing that's already open. We could hang them at the entrance, or we could have them…”

“Sweetheart,” Preston had said, with a patient, very husbandly smile. “Drawings don't raise money.”

Somebody had laughed. Not meanly. The way you laugh at a dog trying to catch a Frisbee that's too big for it. Preston didn't laugh. He reached for her hand under the table, but Holly had it balled up in her lap, and he pulled his back and moved on to the next item on the agenda.

“And now,” Preston said from the stage, “let the auction begin!”

* * *

Her phone buzzed in her purse halfway through lot number seven, a weekend at a vineyard in Napa.

It was the family group chat, “Caldwell HQ,” named by Josh when he was fourteen. Emma had written first.

“Mom, quick thing. This year I'm staying in Denver with Ryan's family for Christmas. His parents invited us and we already have tickets. I know it's a bummer, but next year we'll come, I promise (heart emoji)”

Two minutes later, underneath, Josh:

“Oh, I was going to tell you guys too. I'm going skiing in Utah with the kids from my dorm, the 20th to the 2nd. It's already paid for. Sorry, Mommy. Love you guys.”

Holly read both messages three times and looked for Preston on the stage. He had just sold the vineyard for fourteen thousand dollars and was clapping with the microphone tucked under his arm. His phone was probably buzzing in his jacket pocket too; he'd look at it at midnight, in the car.

Holly typed: “So wonderful!! Have the best time, my loves, don't worry about a thing!! (two Christmas trees, a skier, and three hearts)”

She looked at it. Too many exclamation points. Too many hearts. It looked like a message from a woman trying with everything she had not to show that she cared. She deleted it.

She typed: “Okay, sweethearts. I'm going to miss you.”

That looked like a message from a woman who planned to spend Christmas Eve crying in the pantry. She deleted that one too.

In the end she sent a thumbs-up. A yellow thumbs-up, all alone, in the middle of the screen. She kept looking at it until the screen went dark on its own. Twenty-two years of Christmases (the turkey, the stockings with their names embroidered on them, the gingerbread house that collapsed on the same side every year) boiled down to a thumb.

She stood up.

“Are you all right?” asked Mrs. Henderson, who was on her third glass of champagne and had reached the affectionate stage.

“Perfect,” Holly said, smiling. Her cheekbones ached. “I'm just going to run to the powder room.”

* * *

The hotel's ladies' room was nicer than her mother's living room in Worcester: a green velvet sofa, fresh flowers, hand towels rolled up like tiny croissants, and lighting so flattering that Holly suspected it had been designed to send the guests back to the gala with their checkbooks open.

She dropped onto the sofa and took off her shoes.

She didn't cry; she never cried in public, not even in an empty bathroom. Her thing was to go very still and stare at one spot, which, according to Emma, was worse.

She unlocked her phone so she wouldn't stare at the spot. She opened Instagram the way you open the fridge at midnight: recipes, a friend from book club in Cancún, an ad for anti-aging cream that knew her better than her husband did. She scrolled without seeing anything.

And then she saw a little boy.

He was maybe seven or eight. He had on a wool hat that was too big for him and he was laughing gap-toothed with his mouth wide open while a Santa Claus put a package wrapped in brown paper into his hands. It was a strange Santa: the suit was red, sure, but it had jingle bells sewn on everywhere, on the sleeves, on the hat, along the edge of the jacket, and Holly could almost hear them through the screen. Behind them was a village of steep roofs covered in snow, half-timbered houses with colorful fronts, and a church with a pointed steeple.

It was a sponsored post. She tapped it.

“LES GRELOTS DE NOËL. First edition. Sternheim, Alsace (France). We are looking for international volunteers for our first Christmas campaign with families in need in the valley. Gift distribution, workshops, afternoon snacks, Christmas market. Lodging included in village homes. December 7 to 24. No experience necessary. Just the wanting.”

Holly read the ad three times, the way she'd read her children's messages, and zoomed in on the photo until the gap-toothed boy filled the whole screen.

Not a single child, she thought. All night, not one.

Her thumb was hovering over the Learn More button and she wasn't quite breathing right. It was the same feeling as that time, at nineteen, when she'd cut her own bangs in front of the mirror in the dorm bathroom.

“Just the wanting,” the ad said.

She had the wanting, all right. She'd spent her whole life wanting small things (to hang up a few drawings, to choose her own dress, to finish a sentence in a meeting) and putting them away in the same drawer, the way you save plastic bags in case you ever need them. Barefoot on a velvet sofa, it occurred to her that the drawer was full.

The bathroom door opened and two women came in laughing. Holly put her shoes back on and returned to the gala with her smile in place.

But her purse didn't hang the same.

* * *

At ten past one in the morning, Preston was asleep.

When they left the hotel he'd draped his jacket over her shoulders without getting off the phone, the way he always did when she was cold, even though she never told him she was cold. He just knew. It was one of the few things about her he always knew. In the car he had checked the family chat, as she'd predicted, and said, “Well, they're grown. We'll get a break.” Then he'd gone quiet for a long time, his phone dark on his thigh. At a red light on Commonwealth Avenue he turned to her and looked at her the same way he had in the ballroom, over Mrs. Henderson's shoulder. He said, “Holls,” and nothing else. Someone honked behind them. Preston pulled away, loosened his tie, and announced, “Five hundred and twelve thousand, Holls. Five hundred and twelve. Next year I'm raising their rate.”

Now he was snoring with one hand on his chest, like a satisfied pharaoh.

Holly was in the kitchen in her pajamas, with a cold glass of milk and her laptop open on the marble island. She could hear the fridge, which had a discreet, expensive hum.

The form for Les Grelots de Noël (sleigh bells, the name meant) was in French and in a machine-translated English that Holly found endearing.

Name: Holly Caldwell.

Age: 45.

Country: United States.

Do you speak French?

Holly hesitated. She'd taken two years of it in high school. She remembered “croissant,” “bonjour,” and a song about a shepherdess and a rain shower. She typed: “A little.” She deleted it and typed: “Very little, but I learn fast.” She deleted that and typed: “No. But I'll give it everything I've got.” That one she left.

Volunteer experience: “I've been doing charity galas for twenty years.” She reread the sentence and added: “But I've never done anything with my hands. I'd like to start.”

Why do you want to take part?

The cursor blinked. Holly typed and deleted four times before she settled on: “Because in your photo there's a little boy laughing, and at the galas I go to there are never any children.”

It was a strange thing to put on a form. She left it.

She was about to hit send when she saw the last question, at the bottom of the page, in smaller print.

Traveling alone or with a companion?

Holly thought about Preston snoring upstairs, about her kids scattered between Utah and Denver, about her book club friends, who would go to Cancún and send her pictures of cocktails. There was no one to ask.

A woman from St. Jude's parish came to mind, tall, with a very tight bun, who ran the toy drive every November with a clipboard. They'd met the year before, when Holly showed up with so many bags of wrapped toys they wouldn't fit in the boxes. Instead of thanking her, the woman had told her, very seriously, to bring them unwrapped next year. And as Holly was leaving, mortified, the woman called after her from the door: “Hey. Thank you. I mean it.”

Her name was Grace. A week later they ended up in line together at the bakery on Charles Street, and Grace, without any preamble, asked her if she was in a hurry. They'd had coffee almost every Thursday since.

That woman would know how to do this, she thought. That woman could organize an entire village.

It was an absurd idea. They talked about books and about the priest who went on too long in his homilies. Holly knew that Grace was married to a journalist and that she took her coffee black. She didn't know if she was happy. She'd never asked.

Holly checked the box for “with a companion.”

She finished the milk in one swallow, turned off the light, and went up to bed with a feeling she couldn't put a name to until she was lying in the dark next to Preston.

It was fear. And underneath it, an urge to laugh that kept her awake until three.