A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee

to ask Bonifacio if there was any new word on when Ben would be getting out—if indeed he wasn’t out already; invoices from Stages went straight to the lawyer’s office, so if no one thought to tell her, she supposed, she’d have no way of knowing. Broken or ashamed as he may have been, could he really be back in the world and not have made any attempt to contact, or even check on, his child? Not that she especially wanted him to, at least not yet. She almost called Bonifacio back to ask, but then Sara’s bedroom door groaned open, and Helen dropped the phone on the couch.
    The next night at dinner, which they ate in front of the TV, Helen hit Mute and said, “Sara, remember a few months ago, we talked about moving?”
    “We did?” Sara said.
    “We did. We talked about moving to the city. Not seriously, at that point, which I guess is why you don’t remember, but anyway you allowed as how that was something you might actually like to do. Do you still feel that way?”
    Sara’s eyes were very wide. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess.”
    “Okay, then,” Helen said, “good to know,” and she relaxed back into the couch and put the sound on again, trying not to smile.
    All of a sudden it seemed that this Christmas might well be their last in that house, the only home Sara had ever known. When Helen called Mark Byrne at Rensselaer Valley Realty, the same agent who had sold the house to them fourteen years earlier, to let him know that she wanted to see about putting it back on the market—tentatively, discreetly, exploratorily—it was like he was over there pounding a For Sale sign into their lawn before she’d hung up the phone. There were offers right away—not great ones, but Helen resolved, without a word to Mark Byrne or anyone else, that she would accept the best offer they had in hand before New Year’s, no matter what it was. Time to move on.
    So in addition to her modest Christmas preparations—gifts for Sara, and a decent meal, and a clean house, and a little something for Mona and for Michael—Helen would have to scramble to find a halfway affordable apartment in Manhattan (two bedrooms, please God let them be able to afford two bedrooms, or Sara’s wrath would be ferocious) and a decent nearby public school. Exciting as it was to be able to think of a future that extended further than their next heating-oil bill, Helen felt oddly guilty as well—more nostalgic than guilty, actually, but in some ways it amounted to the same thing. For all that had gone sour within it over the last few months and years, this was their home, and the faith in the future required to walk away from it risked seeming arrogant, even reckless. What was behind you had, for better or worse, a substantiality that what was still in front of you could not exhibit. It was a big moment, and Helen found herself wanting to markit somehow rather than just slip from one season into another like an animal; and then she recalled that there was something she’d long wanted to do at Christmas to which Ben had always firmly said no.
    “Church?” Sara said. “Are you nuts?”
    “Just the Christmas Eve service,” Helen said soothingly. “For a lot of people that’s the only one they go to all year. Not the midnight mass. It starts at five, and we’ll be home for dinner. Very mellow, lots of singing. Nothing too churchy.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s something I used to do as a kid. I’d like to do it again, maybe just to remind me of that. That’s all. I’m not born again or anything. Please? For me?”
    “Okay, I’ll do it,” Sara said. “On one condition.”
    Helen was shocked. “Thank you, honey,” she said. “What condition?”
    “I want to go to the movies before. Like that afternoon. A little of your idea of Christmas Eve, a little of mine. Okay?”
    Helen beamed. “Sure. That sounds like fun. We could go see that movie A Time of Mourning that’s just opened, I know it’s at the Triplex, that’s the new