"Six-one," said Graham. "Why?"
Gina had warned him about Vince. She had warned him about her mother too, who had met Graham at the door of the church basement at ten-thirty, looked him up and down for a full ten seconds, said, "You're thin. You need to eat," and handed him a plate of pizzelle, and then followed him around the basement for twenty minutes refilling it. She had warned him about Aunt Philomena, who had asked him within the first five minutes if he was Catholic, and when he said Episcopalian, had crossed herself and said, "Well, that's close, that's almost," in the voice of a doctor delivering a cautiously optimistic prognosis.
She had not warned him about the Santa suit, because she had not known.
It was the same suit her father had worn. It hung in a garment bag in the rectory closet with mothballs in the pockets, and it was red velvet gone a little bald at the elbows, with white fur trim gone yellow with age, and a belt with a brass buckle her father had polished every year with brass polish and an old undershirt. It was much too wide for Graham. They stuffed two couch cushions down the front of it. The beard was elastic and itchy. The boots were Uncle Carmine's, a size too small.
Gina stood in the doorway of the rectory closet and watched Vince help him into the coat, and she had to turn around and look at the hallway wall for a minute.
When she turned back, Graham was looking at her over the beard. Only his eyes showed, gray-green behind the tortoiseshell glasses, which he had refused to take off — "Santa can wear glasses, Santa is very old" — and his eyes said: Is this all right? Is this too much? Tell me and I'll take it off.
She crossed the closet and straightened his hat.
"You look ridiculous," she said.