Terrence had to go into the bathroom for a minute after that, and run the water.
***
His mother came at two, the way she had every Christmas since his father died, in her long camel coat with a sweet potato pie in a foil-covered dish and a shopping bag of presents she had wrapped in newspaper comics, because Odessa Hollis had been wrapping in the funny pages since 1971 and was not about to stop for anybody.
She came in stamping snow off her boots and calling out "Merry Christmas, merry Christmas, where are my babies," and Brielle hurtled into her, and Odessa caught her and rocked her and looked over her head into the living room.
She was seventy-two years old and had raised four boys and taught third grade for thirty-one years in the Canton public schools, and Terrence watched her read the room in about four seconds flat. The brown packages, still mostly wrapped, with their loose bows. The grandson on the sofa under a blanket, holding something small and red, not getting up. The daughter-in-law nowhere. Her son's face.
"Well," she said, and set the pie down on the hall table. "Somebody better put the coffee on."
Renee came down after a while and said hello and Merry Christmas, Mama Odessa, and took the pie into the kitchen and stayed there with the oven and the ham. Odessa sat down on the sofa next to Jonah. She did not try to pick him up. She looked at the Santa in his hands and said, "Who's your friend?" and Jonah looked at her for a long moment and then, very slightly, turned it so she could see the brass key.
"Oh, he winds up," Odessa said. "My land. Can he dance?"
Jonah wound it. Crick, crick, crick. He set it on the cushion between them and it waddled on the soft fabric and fell over, legs going, and his grandmother laughed, a big warm laugh, and Jonah watched her laugh and did not smile, but he leaned an inch toward her.
After the ham, when the kids were on the floor with the comics-paper presents, Odessa said, "Terrence, help me get the rest of my things out of the car," and there were no more things in the car, and they both knew it.
They stood on the porch in the cold with their breath going up. He told her. He did not leave out his own part, and when he got to the tags on the sofa he had to stop.
Odessa listened with her arms folded inside her coat. When he was done she was quiet for a while, looking at the snow on the Pruitts' lawn across the street.
"His birthday," she said finally. "In May. I told you then. You remember what I told you?"