The Leftovers

open them all—but the girls didn’t seem to mind. They took their time with each gift, studying the box and removing the paper with great deliberation, as if you got extra points for neatness. They tried on the clothing right there in the living room, modeling shirts and sweaters over their pajama tops—in Aimee’s case, a precariously thin sleeveless T-shirt—telling each other how great they looked, even making a big deal over stuff like warm socks and fuzzy slippers, having such a good time that Kevin wished he’d gotten a few more gifts for both of them, just to prolong the fun.
    “Cool!” Aimee said, tugging on the woolen hat Kevin had found at Mike’s Sporting Goods, the kind with goofy-looking earflaps that snapped beneath the chin. She wore it low on her forehead, almost level with her eyebrows, but it looked good on her all the same, just like everything else. “I can use one of these.”
    She got up from the couch, her arms unfolding as she approached, and gave him a thank-you hug. She did this after every gift, to the point where it had become a kind of joke, a rhythmic punctuation to the proceedings. It was a little easier for him now that her skimpy morning ensemble had been augmented by a new sweater, a scarf, the hat, and a pair of mittens.
    “You guys are so sweet to me,” she said, and for a second, Kevin thought she might start to cry. “I can’t remember the last time I had such a nice Christmas.”
    Kevin got a few things, too, though only after suffering through the usual round of complaints about how hard it was to buy presents for a man his age, as if adult males were completely self-sufficient beings, as if a penis and a five o’clock shadow were all they would ever need to get by. Jill gave him a biography about the early years of Teddy Roosevelt, and Aimee got him a pair of spring-loaded hand exercisers, because she knew he liked to work out. The girls also presented him with two identical packages, dense little objects wrapped in silver paper. Inside the one from Jill was a novelty mug that proclaimed him #1 DAD .
    “Wow,” he said. “Thanks. I knew I was in the top ten, but I didn’t think I’d made it all the way to number one.”
    Aimee’s mug was exactly the same, except that this one was labeled WORLD’S BEST MAYOR .
    “We should celebrate Christmas more often,” he said. “It’s good for my self-esteem.”
    The girls started cleaning up after that, gathering the used wrapping paper and discarded packaging, jamming the debris into a plastic garbage bag. Kevin pointed at the solitary gift under the tree, a little box tied with ribbon that looked like it might contain jewelry.
    “What about that one?”
    Jill looked up. There was a red adhesive bow plastered to her scalp, making her look like a large, troubled baby.
    “It’s for Mom,” she said, watching him closely. “In case she stops by.”
    Kevin nodded, as if this made perfect sense to him.
    “That’s really thoughtful,” he told her.
    *   *   *
    THEY RANG Gary’s doorbell but no one answered. Meg shrugged and took a seat on the cold concrete stoop, content to wait in plain sight for her ex-fiancé to return from wherever he happened to be on Christmas morning. Laurie sat down beside her, doing her best to ignore the dull sense of dread that had plagued her since they’d set out from Ginkgo Street. She didn’t want to be here, and she didn’t want to go to the next stop on their itinerary, either.
    Unfortunately, their instructions were clear. It was their job to visit their loved ones, to do what they could to disrupt the cozy rhythms and rituals of the holiday. Laurie could see the point of this in the grand scheme of things: If the G.R. had one essential mission, it was to resist the so-called Return to Normalcy, the day-to-day process of forgetting the Rapture, or, at the very least, of consigning it to the past, treating it as a part of the ongoing fabric of human history, rather than the cataclysm that had brought history to an end.
    It wasn’t that the G.R. had anything special against Christmas—they disliked holidays across the board—nor were they enemies of Jesus Christ, as many people mistakenly assumed. The Jesus issue was a little confusing, Laurie had to admit that. She’d struggled with it herself before joining, puzzled by the way the G.R. seemed to embrace so many elements of Christian theology—the Rapture and Tribulation, of course, but also the inherent