This was supposed to be part of my story "Variations on a Theme of Ben and Riley," and it's part of the same continuity. But I decided it was too long to be a single chapter. So I decided to post it separately in four chapters.

CHRISTMAS EVE

It was a picture perfect postcard: the happy parents welcoming their daughter, her husband and their three grandchildren on Christmas eve. It was not merely a white Christmas: the snow was deeper than it had been in decades. A perceptive observer would notice that neither Mr. and Mrs. Perrin had reached 55. And because Mrs. Perrin had not bothered to pick up Ben and Riley from the Metro station, Riley awkwardly had to take nine year old Emma and six year old Ruth in a taxi, while Ben and three year old Mathilda had to use a bus. Meanwhile, the temperature was dropping alarmingly: it would only reach a high of -28c/-18F for Christmas day. Nevertheless Mrs. Perrin welcomed then in while Ben and Riley awkwardly brought in their luggage. Once Ben removed Mathilda's coat, she went up and hugged Mrs. Perrin's legs. "Me Grandma! Me Grandma!"

"Me Grandma?" asked a nonplussed Jennifer Perrin.

"Yes! You're Me Grandma because we have the same name! Mathilda!"

"Uh no," explained Ruth. "Grandma's name is the same as your middle name, Jennifer."

"Really?" Mathilda was not happy. "But I like Mathilda! And you're still Me Grandma!"

"Is she going to call me that for the next two and a half days?"

"Well, it's better than Fake Grandma," Ben said, referring to Bonnie's way of distinguishing the grandparents.

"Why do you have so much luggage?" asked Mr. Perrin. "You're leaving before noon on the day after Boxing Day."

"Shh!" Ben whispered. "Most of it are the Christmas parents. If you could take the girls to their room upstairs while I put them under the tree..." Soon the rest of the family was in the room of Riley's sister Rebecca. She was actually in the Caribbean with her fiancé, but she promised to skype them tomorrow. Her bed was large enough for Mathilda and Ruth, while Emma would sleep on a cot her grandfather had brought up from the basement. All this time Mathilda has been carrying her favorite toy, the pink elephant she had gotten for her second birthday. "This is where we're going to sleep tonight Mr. Heffalump." Just then a sharp yipping noise was heard. It was the Perrin's pet Chihuahua, an otherwise mild-mannered and lazy dog whose appearance was still enough to startle Ruth. "You have a dog. Cool!" said Emma. She turned to Ben who had joined them after putting the gifts under the tree. "Why can't we have a dog?"

"I'm sorry kiddo, but as I've told you before the apartment building won't allow us to keep one." There was a brief shared glance with Riley. Both knew that one reason the building didn't allow dogs was because Ben had explicitly lobbied them to keep it that way. Ruth was petrified of dogs, and was often allergic to them. Their apartment was too small for a pet, and Ben, remembering when Bonnie got Danny a dog and forced Ben to walk it every day for eight years, had no desire to repeat that experience. After showing Ben and Riley to Riley's old room everyone went downstairs to the living room. After the girls oohed and ahhed at the relatively austere Christmas tree, Emma played with the Chihuahua, Ruth kept her distance while Mathilda tugged at her father's arm. "You want the cards? I'll just get them from my coat."

A moment later he gave Mathilda two decks of cards which she took to the coffee table and started to take out. "So," asked Mrs. Perrin, "we managed to make sure that our daughter got a very good and very expensive legal education. And now that she's married you the best thing we can hope for our granddaughter is for her to become a blackjack dealer?"

"No. You see it turns out that Mathilda really likes playing with Lego..."

"I don't see the connection."

"...but she also likes chewing on them. And to avoid the swallowing and choking to death phases, we've encouraged her to play with cards until she gets over it." And indeed Mathilda did show a remarkable ability for a girl her age to make houses of cards. Meanwhile the Chihuahua had wandered away to sleep and Ruth and Emma had noted boxes of Christmas chocolates lying open. Ruth took one and winced: it was coconut.

"Ruth, there's a guide to the chocolates. You have to look at it first." And Emma quickly wolfed down a peanut cluster and a milk chocolate smoothie.

"Remember Mommy said we shouldn't have more than two before dinner. Otherwise it will spoil our appetite."

"Well, I'll take a third one if you won't tell," and Emma happily tossed a caramel into her mouth. As it happened, neither of their parents were watching them. Riley had gone into the study to look for a book. But when she sat down she just sort of crumpled. Ben noticed her and massaged her shoulders. "Thank you Ben."

"I thought you were so happy earlier. On the metro you were playing two minute mysteries and twenty questions with Emma and Ruth."

"I was. But I was also so tired. The whole month has been so exhausting. There's so many Christmas things, and there's so many end of the year deadlines we have to meet at the office."

"I'm sorry. I should have done more to help with the Christmas things."

"No, it's not your fault. There's the whole New Year's Eve Bar party you have to do. It's a big thing, since it decides whether we have a roof over our heads next year or not."

"Still, I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about my talk with grandmother."

"Ben, you don't have to apologize about that. She's your grandmother. You're supposed to be kind to her."

"Yeah, but the first time I met after Emma was born, I learned that she had callously kicked Mom out when she got pregnant with Danny. The second time I met her she was so charming and apologetic. And all that time she was working with those crooks at your old law firm to try to get you disbarred or worse. And the third time she made an extra effort to be nice to Emma. It was bad luck I suppose that I overheard her badmouthing Ruth and Matty Jenny."

"How was she last week then?"

"Well she didn't actually do anything bad. On the other hand she didn't actually apologize for all the horrible things she's done. So I suppose it's a work in progress."

Riley took hold of Ben's hand. "You're a good man." But she couldn't suppress a sigh of exhaustion.

"Need a drink or coffee before dinner?"

"No, I can manage." At dinner Mr. Perrin asked for news about the children. "Oh, it's been a good year for all three." said Ben, and Riley clearly agreed. "Matty is a lot calmer nowadays. She almost doesn't cry at all now." Emma nodded, though she remembered four months ago when Riley and the girls all went swimming and Matty forgot Mr. Heffalump in the changing room. She screamed bloody murder for three quarters of an hour until she got it back. "Also, me and Riley are always reading to her, and we've been told that she can't read at a grade one level! Also she can now say her full name."

"Mathilda! Mathilda! Mathilda!" Mathilda said happily over her soup.

"You said you named Mathilda after the Roald Dahl novel," Mrs. Perrin pointed out.

"That's right." Ben said.

"So why is there an H in her name, when there isn't one in the book?"

"Ah. Because the clerk at the hospital thought there was, and we didn't notice the difference until a month later."

Riley spoke up. "Ruth's started grade one. She's doing very well and is one of the best students in her class."

Ruth demurred. "But the popular girls pick on me. I wish I had more friends."

Ben was sitting right by her and consoled her. "I know Ruth, but the point isn't to have the most friends, but good friends. And Xian and Amara are pretty good friends. If you are a good and loyal friend people will eventually recognize that."

"Really?"

"Really!" After all, her very existence was proof of that. "Also, Mr. Perrin, Emma's having an excellent fourth grade. She's the best student in her math class."

Emma was justifiably smug. "I showed Jonathan Chang that it's not true that only Asian boys can do Math!"

"Emma got an A- average on her last report card."

"If she's at the top of her math class, why does she only have an A- average?" Mrs. Perrin inquired.

"Well there was that science fair incident..."

"I said I was sorry!" Emma explained, or whined.

"How's your Christmas vacation so far?" Mr. Perrin asked Emma and Ruth.

Ruth's mouth was full at the moment, but Emma would have answered even if it wasn't. "Well, school only ended yesterday at noon, and it was a bit of a hassle for Mom to pick the two of us up. And daycare is closed over the Christmas vacation, but Mom and Dad are still working for most of it, so it's a bit difficult for them to juggle everything. But actually it's been pretty good so far. We don't really have a lot of room for a big tree, but we all had fun dressing the one that Daddy got. Even Mathilda helped a little. And in our Sunday School we learned Christmas treats from more than two dozen Catholic countries. And today Uncle Tucker took us to the Natural History Museum and me and Ruth were able to get in free because he was doing a special report on whether museums were overcharging children for Christmas. And Aunt Naomi took Mathilda along to the library with her own little boy. Oh, and on the Metro train over here, me and Mom had a lot of fun. She kept reading me these Two Minute Mysteries, and I was actually able to solve many of them."

"Oh, I loved reading those when I was your age."

"Yes," agreed Mrs. Perrin with a complete lack of enthusiasm, "I remember."

"And how about the two of you?" Mr. Perrin asked Ben and Riley.

"Oh work has been going well, for both of us." Ben added. "Riley has met this state legislator, Sasha Richmond, and she's been helping Riley get extra business and contacts." Ben remembered one more thing. "Baby, could you stand up?"

Riley did so, and Ben also got up: "Ta-Da!" he gestured.

"What am I supposed to be looking at?" Mrs. Perrin asked.

"Riley finally lost all the weight she gained when she had Matty. She weighs no more than the day I married her."

"Oh. I thought you looked scrawnier than usual." And through dinner Mrs. Perrin managed to find ways to belittle Riley's clothes, her taste in music, and the amount of money she was earning. She also didn't like Riley's hair, which as usual varied between short and shorter than usual.

Mr. Perrin spoke up. "Your hair was longer when you had Ruth. I personally liked it like that. Why did you change it?"

"Well, actually I suppose that was my fault," said Ben.

"It's your fault that your wife cuts her hair like a lesbian?" asked Mrs. Perrin.

"Let me explain," Riley offered. "After I had Ruth, I had gained some weight. And I was so busy I didn't get my hair cut. And of course, since I was nursing my breasts were larger. And I had come down with a slight cold so my voice was lower than usual."

"Where is this going?" Mrs. Perrin muttered impatiently.

"Well, one early morning in May, and you have to understand the light was poor, I had awoken and wanted to cuddle with Ben, and in that kind of light and given that he was barely awake, well, well…"

"Well what?"

"Well, I kind of reminded him of his mother."

Mr. Perrin found this very funny, and Mrs. Perrin found this hilarious, especially when Riley added that Ben had fallen out of bed in shock. "He was very apologetic, effusively so, but I decided it was time for a haircut."

Mrs. Perrin did not spend the entire dinner criticizing Riley. She also spoke about Rebecca, and not just that she was richer than Riley and that her fiancé was as well. "Do you remember when I told you about the turquoise locket that my mother had?"

"Of course, mom. It's an old family heirloom, along with a lot of other things that you especially liked when you were growing up in Connecticut. But weren't the locket and all the other things accidentally lost when the family moved to New Jersey when you were eight?"

"Yes, it was. But a few weeks ago Rebecca was in New Haven and she noticed the locket, and a lot of other things that had been packed in the same box in an antiques shop."

"So, she got the locket and everything else?"

"Well not in so many words. But she did say that she had gotten me a very special Christmas gift."

After dinner, Ben sat down to read the novel he was working on, Victory. "Since when do you read novels?" Mrs. Perrin snidely wondered.

"He's always been reading books." Emma replied. "I've never known him without a book."

Mrs. Perrin did not find this plausible, but went back to washing the dishes. Meanwhile Mathilda was making another house of cards, while Ruth looked at the snow outside. "Wow, it's really coming down. There's so much of it."

Emma approached her sister. "Yeah, it's an actual White Christmas. Shame it's going to be so cold tomorrow."

Ruth looked up at Emma. "I heard last week in school that the world was heating up, and that in poor countries people were going to run out of water. Soon there wouldn't be any snow. I don't understand. How could the world run out of snow?"

Emma turned her mind back to a week earlier. Riley had just had another stressful day. As she looked over yet another list that was absolutely vital to deal with Emma came up and asked her mother if there was anything she could get her for Christmas. Emma was genuinely unselfish when she asked this, but it occurred to her that it was only reasonable that she get something extra special in return...

"Actually Emma, there is one thing you can give me for Christmas. It would be beautiful if you did this for me, and it wouldn't cost you a thing. If you could just spend the next couple of weeks being nice to your sister and not do anything to upset her, that would be the loveliest thing you could do."

Emma bristled. "I'm not a bad sister! I love Mathilda, and I'd never do anything to hurt her!"

"You know perfectly well I'm talking about Ruth."

"I don't treat Ruth badly! If you looked at the Calvocoressi sisters, they're so much worse!"

"Emma, this isn't the Calvocoressi household. You shouldn't tease her so much."

Emma was about to say that if only Ruth wasn't such a crybaby. But she resisted the urge to talk back. "Fine. I promise." Now looking over her sister, Emma gently reassured her. "Don't worry about it. The world isn't going to run out of snow this winter."

"I wonder what's on television tonight?" Mr. Perrin asked. But his wife had finished drying the dishes and came into the living room. "Meet Me in Saint Louis is going to start on TCM in fifteen minutes. So we're watching that." Mr. Perrin sighed. For the 11,498th night in a row, the Perrins were not going to watch his Goodfellas tape.

"Didn't we all see that a couple of years ago?" Ben asked.

"Ben, Ruth and Emma have seen that The Incredibles DVD 78 times since April. It won't hurt them to see this movie again." Riley replied.

And so they watched the movie. They didn't have a bad time, though when Mathilda completed a particularly interesting house of cards and Riley pointed this out to her mother, Mrs. Perrin told her to shush. When it was finally over, it was time for bed. "Those poor snowmen," Ruth whimpered.

"Don't worry Ruth, they weren't real." Emma replied.

"What?"

"It would be too expensive to take a whole year to film the movie. So those were artificial snowmen made up on the backlot. No real snowmen were hurt in the making of the film."

"Oh, that's a relief!"

"You are so gullible" Emma said to herself as they went up the stairs.

Mrs. Perrin remonstrated her daughter. "I, for one, am getting a good sleep tonight. So you are going to make quite clear to your children that we are certainly not getting up at the crack of dawn to open presents. In fact I will be very upset if I hear anything from them before 8:30."

"I'll make sure. But it is well past their bedtime." As the Perrins went to their own bedroom, Mr. Perrin looked back at the girls entering Rebecca's room. "That seems a little harsh."

More to herself, Jennifer Perrin replied. "Not really. When I realized almost twenty years ago that Riley had a crush on Ben, I thought he was precisely the sort of guy would knock her up with a bastard child." As her husband entered the bathroom and as Ben went down the stairs to get something, she muttered "But even I didn't think he would do that after he married her."

Soon the girls were in their pajamas and in bed, and after both parents reminded them not to get up too early, and certainly not badger their loving grandparents, Ben spoke up. "Well it's Christmas Eve. Time for another Wheeler Christmas tradition." And they all sang "Silent night," except for Mathilda. Nevertheless, this year she was able to hum along for the first time. Ben and Riley kissed their children good night and turned the light off.

"Psst, Emma?"

"What is it Ruth?"

"Jenny's talking to herself. How do I get her to be quiet?"

"You didn't notice that before? She always does that."

"And me and Mr. Heffalump were on the big airship and there were lots of apples everywhere and even the clothes were made of apples, and the beds were made of apples and there were lots of rainbows and even more rainbows..."

"Relax Ruth. Mathilda drops off fairly quickly."

"...and there were lots of bubbles and the airship joined other airships and they all sought the land of magic tops and Jacob's ladders and we took two apples and then..." and indeed Mathilda fell asleep.

After filling the children's stockings with special gifts that would hopefully keep them occupied until Mrs. Perrin awoke next morning, Ben and Riley got ready for bed. While ordinarily Riley wore fairly conservative pajamas in the winter, this evening, to help save on luggage space, both just wore their underclothing. "It's still snowing outside. It's very pretty," Riley said.

Ben nodded. "Whatever else you can say about New Jersey, it certainly looks a lot better under two feet of snow." They looked wordlessly at the scene outside their window for a minute. "I remember when we were first here for Christmas after we married. I can't believe that your mother insisted I sleep on the couch downstairs. I mean not only were we married, but you were five months pregnant. And I don't want to belabor the point, or your weight, but it was kind of hard to miss."

"If we'd been engaged, you'd totally be trying to sneak into my bed."

"Well yeah," and Ben gave Riley a chaste kiss. "But that's only to be expected." They turned off the lights, and got into bed. Riley was on her side, and Ben embraced her from behind. After a couple of minutes, Ben's right hand snuck under Riley's T-Shirt.

"Don't. My parents are in the next room."

"Sorry," as he removed his hand.

"You don't have to be sorry. This just isn't the right time."