Is Mitzi going to walk away with Happy Scrooge?

Mitzi pushes through the French doors into the “back house,” where Kelley and Mitzi live with Kevin and Ava and, until this fall, Bart.

From the walk-in linen closet in the hallway, Mitzi pulls out two suitcases.

Kelley says, “Wait a minute, you already packed?”

“Yes,” she says.

“You and George have been… planning this?” Kelley says.

“I was hoping to make it through Christmas,” she said, “but it didn’t work out that way.”

“Okay, wait,” Kelley said. “Just wait!” His voice is surprisingly stern; it’s a tone from his life before, his life on Wall Street and the brownstone on East Eighty-Eighth Street, his life with Margaret and the boys and Ava, back when he was a breadwinner instead of a bread baker, an ass kicker instead of an ass kisser. Quitting his job, leaving Manhattan, marrying Mitzi the Roller Disco Queen of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, moving to Nantucket year-round, buying a bed-and-breakfast, and having another child—at the age of forty-three—have all made Kelley soft. Wimpy. A pushover. But he isn’t about to let his wife run off with 305 pounds of George the Santa Claus until he gets some answers.

“Bedroom,” he says. “Now.”

“No,” she says.

“Now,” he says, and she follows him.

Mitzi Quinn, whose real name is also Margaret, is the polar opposite of the original Margaret. Mitzi is ditzy, Kelley’s kids used to chant, and, Kelley has to admit, she does have her moments. She believes in holistic medicine and chakras and energy work and the healing power of crystals; she reads New Age self-help books, she goes to hot yoga, she never drinks anything stronger than herbal tea, she doesn’t eat beef or allow it to be cooked in the house. She is into astrological signs and the lunar calendar, due to the fact that she is a member of the population who was born on Leap Day. Mitzi wears flowing clothes, mostly silk and linen, and cashmere in the winter. Her clothes are unreasonably expensive, and she likes to wear something different every day of the month, another reason Kelley is going broke.

How did she limit herself to two suitcases? he wonders.

He says, “So, what, you’re in love with George? George the Santa Claus? You do understand how ridiculous I find this? He’s an old man!”

“He’s only sixty-six,” she says.

Sixty-six? Four years older than Kelley? Is that possible? To Kelley, George seems at least a decade older. Mitzi is only forty-six, so George is too old. But Kelley can tell this argument is futile.

“How long has it been going on?” he asks.

She stares him dead in the eye; there is no evasion or fear, only the beautiful blue-gray irises he fell for twenty-one years earlier. Mitzi has eyes like the disco ball that used to spin over the wooden rinks of her youth. Her eyes emit light and color—flashes of green, blue, silver.

“The whole time,” Mitzi says.

“What do you mean the whole time?” Kelley says. “You mean, twelve years? Since George started staying with us?”

“Yes,” Mitzi says.

“You are KIDDING me!” Kelley shouts.

Mitzi doesn’t flinch, even though that is most certainly the only time Kelley has ever screamed at her. Kelley and the original Margaret used to have raging arguments with legendary cursing and yelling—once, notably, in the back of a New York City cab, when the driver dumped them out on a sketchy block near St. Mark’s Place, saying, You both crazy!

Mitzi doesn’t care for venting her anger this way; she thinks it’s unhealthy and that unkind words can cause permanent psychic damage. This is why Bart was rarely reprimanded and never, ever spanked, which has led him to grow up spoiled, which landed him in heaps of trouble as a teenager, which eventually ended with him joining the Marines (he was low on other reasonable options), and now might very well place him in the line of danger.

“No,” Mitzi says calmly. “Not kidding. Twelve years, but only when he was staying here. I mean, it’s not like I flew off to meet him in St. Tropez.”

“Is that supposed to make me FEEL BETTER?” Kelley shouts.

“Kelley,” Mitzi says.

“What?”

“Lower your voice.”

“So what now? You’re moving out? You’re going to Lenox to live with George the Santa Claus?”

“Yes,” Mitzi says.

“And that’s it?” Kelley says. “We’re splitting? Getting divorced?”

“Yes,” Mitzi says.

Kelley can’t believe this. He can’t believe it! A thousand thoughts collide: Mitzi, a woman Kelley watched transform from the Roller Disco Queen of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, into a warm, inviting innkeeper here on Nantucket, beloved by the guests because she cared about their lives, remembered their kids’ names, and asked about their hip replacements, is leaving him. Another divorce, another failure; he can’t believe it, he didn’t even realize there was anything wrong aside from the obvious: the precarious state of their finances, and Bart in Afghanistan. Kelley can’t keep from thinking this behavior has to do with Bart; Bart is Mitzi’s north star, he is her reason. She has always put Bart’s needs and interests and desires before anyone else’s. Mitzi has been hysterical since Bart left for Germany in October, even though he was keen to go. Bart has always been a risk taker, which historically landed him in a lot of trouble. Being in the Marine Corps seems to have whipped him into shape. All of his texts and e-mails from Germany exclaimed how much he loved rules; he was thriving under strict discipline and, in fact, craved more (confirming Kelley’s theory that one always wants what one doesn’t have). Bart’s unit, the lowliest of the low, woke up at 0500 hours, and their every move was prescribed until they went to bed, at 2300 hours. Bart was, in his own words, “Slaying every goddamned dragon like St. George.” Kelley wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about, so he checked Google, which educated him. When Kelley later e-mailed, Bart confirmed that during a weekend of R&R in Munich, he had visited the Alte Pinakothek, where he had seen the Altdorfer painting of St. George slaying the dragon. The Alte Pinakothek had been recommended by Bart’s drill sergeant, Sergeant Corbo, because Germany wasn’t only beer gardens and bratwurst, it also contained culture, and the soldiers might as well avail themselves of it while they had the chance.