"That was the thing," she said. "It was never for me. That was the rule. My father's rule. We always won it first and then we figured out who needed it. And it was always somebody at St. Barbara's. Some kid whose dad got laid off from the mills, or whose mom was sick, or who just — wasn't going to get anything. My father would find out, he always knew, everybody told him everything in that store. And we'd wrap it up and he'd leave it on their porch on Christmas Eve, and ring the bell, and run. He was fifty-five years old and two hundred and twenty pounds and he'd run down the steps like a kid playing ding-dong-ditch, and he'd be wheezing in the car, laughing, and he'd say, 'That's a win, Gina. That's a win.'"
She was quiet for a second.
"He died two years ago. December of eighty-four. He was shoveling the walk in front of the store, the morning of the second Saturday, before we were supposed to go. His heart." She swallowed. "I didn't go last year. I couldn't. And this year I thought, okay. Okay. I'm going. I'm going to do it the way he did it. I'm going to win it first and figure out who needs it later. And I got to Halloran's and there was one left, there was just the one, and I thought — I really thought, for a second — that it was him. That he'd saved it. Like Augie saves the best tree in the back." She laughed, wetly. "And then some guy in a sweater grabbed it."
"I'm so sorry," Graham said.
"Don't be. It's stupid."
"It's not stupid."
"It's a doll. I didn't even know who it was for. I don't know anybody anymore — I mean, I know everybody, it's Bridgeport, but I don't know the way he knew. I don't know who's been laid off. I just write mattress jingles and go home." She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, carefully, so as not to ruin the soft brown wings of her liner, and failed. "And my fiancé left in March. Richie. For a dental hygienist in Cicero. So I'm twenty-six, and I'm not married, and my brother's a priest, so my mother is never getting grandchildren unless I produce them, and every time I see her she asks me about it, and every time I see Donna she asks me about it, and I just — I wanted to win something. I wanted one thing to go the way it used to go."
She stopped. She felt wrung out. She looked up.