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with Mona’s father, round and red and Santa-like, hovering and topping off everyone’s drink; not with Connor so close to the Total Sexual Predator.
    Mona’s mother balances on tiptoes to grab an upside-down shoe box lid from the top of the refrigerator.
    â€œEveryone who spends Christmas Eve in our house has to hang an ornament on the tree,” she says, and Jack realizes the things on the box lid are little crafty projects fashioned from pipe cleaners, glitter, and molded plastic: things likely learned from the home and garden channel, a channel he always skips. “Usually we insist everyone make their own ornament, but Mo thought you boys wouldn’t want to. So with you all getting here so close to dinner anyway, the girls and I went ahead and made ornaments for you.”
    Jack looks at Melanie with her Dostoevsky; he can’t imagine she had much to do with the ornament making.
    â€œWe weren’t sure what your major was,” Mrs. Lockridge says to Connor. “But Mo said you loved skiing, so Frankie and I came up with this.”
    She hands Connor a pair of Popsicle stick skis with poles fashioned from mini-marshmallows and toothpicks, everything painted and shellacked. Holding the wire hook between his long thumb and forefinger, Connor thanks Mona’s mother with so much sincerity he may actually mean it.
    â€œThe poles were my idea.” Frankie winks at Connor, and Jack is pretty sure the
Jaws
theme plays somewhere.
    The ornament they’ve made for Jack is a palm-size, construction-paper Constitution—a document he hasn’t had much use for since passing Con Law six years ago, certainly nothing he needs at the lawyer factory. A more fitting representation of his life would be a mini-carton of sesame beef from the twenty-four-hour Chinese place across from his office.
    â€œThis is great,” Jack says. “I’ve never had my own ornament before.”
    â€œThe joys of Christmas at Chez Lockridge,” Melanie offers, but even she shuffles with the rest of them to the living room, where the massive tree narrows into the ceiling plaster.
    There’s a weird moment when Jack, Connor, and Mona are supposed to find spots on the tree not already occupied by lights, figurines, popcorn and cereal chains, to hang their ornaments. Mona easily makes a place for hers—a pair of pink ceramic ballet slippers, remnants of some long-extinguished dancer fantasy she has never mentioned. Connor, likewise, threads the wire over a green branch and silver foil slivers. With seven sets of eyes on his back, Jack tries twice to hook his Constitution, but it keeps falling onto the packages stacked at the tree’s base. Finally, Mona puts her small, cold hand on top of his and helps.
    â€œThere you go,” Mona’s father says. “You make a good team.”
    Jack nods and worries about Mona’s family, who have a better understanding of Connor, who likes to ski and doesn’t have a major, than they do of him.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    Four hours later Mona is shuffling Jack from one cluster of wine-drinking guests to the next. Some are colleagues of her father, others additional carrot-topped family, but they all have questions. It’s as though he’s on a never-ending job interview. So many “what kind of law?”s, and “where abouts are you from?”s, and a bunch of “you went to school where?”s.
    Making things all the more challenging, he’s lapsing into a turkey coma from the multicourse dinner, and Mona’s father keeps freshening Jack’s mug of Baileys and coffee. If that weren’t enough to contend with, his brother, fresh glass of eggnog in hand, dances somewhere between fast and slow with Frankie to “It’s a Wonderful World.” In April Connor will turn nineteen, but with his dental-floss frame and too-long-in-the-front black hair, he could pass for fourteen—far too young to be