The 13th Gift: Part Two

Chapter Seven

The Seventh Day of Christmas

The clock on the mantel chimes twice: two a.m. I stand at the window watching the darkened street, praying every time I see headlights creeping toward the house that they will be Ben’s. I have been worried ever since I saw the red car speeding through the intersection on the way home from Tom’s house.

There have been too many nights like this, with me waiting at the window, enforcing no consequences when Ben comes home way later than his midnight curfew. I’m so afraid of driving him further away from me that I stay mute, not giving my son what I know he needs—parenting and love.

Shame on me.

Since Rick’s death, I have been emotionally absent from our children, blind to Nick’s nightmares, unable to fill Megan’s need for Christmas. Ben is drifting, walking alone with his grief.

If someone had asked me how we were getting along a week ago, I would have said fine, under the circumstances. I work. Pay bills. The kids attend school. Most days, someone remembers to feed the dog and cat.

But we weren’t fine, and our true friends knew it.

Now I do, too.

I have been sleepwalking for more than two months, hardly conscious of a family falling apart. It wasn’t until I nearly stumbled over that poinsettia that I began to see how much my kids needed me.

My eyes are open now.

Thanks to our true friends, Momma Bear is back. My gusto for Christmas may not be the same as in years past, but my kids will know they are not on their own. We’ll order a pizza. I’ll buy a few presents, and we will decorate our tree, provided it thaws out.

I flip the porch light on and off to make sure it is working, then patrol the house, careful not to wake Megan and Nick, who went to bed hours ago. When I reach my own closed bedroom door, I hesitate. I haven’t been in there for weeks. My clothes hang on a rack in the laundry room. I sleep on the couch. I shower in the guest bathroom. Though I tell myself there is nothing to be afraid of, the room frightens me. I have not dusted in there or vacuumed since before October 8.

Placing my hand on the doorknob, I find myself wishing one of those true friends were here beside me now. The thought surprises me, and I don’t feel so alone. I was angry when we received that first gift, now I am curious about who they are and grateful for their attention.

This room is another demon they will help me conquer.

The hinges of the door squeak as I push it open. I peek inside from the safety of the hallway, where the chill of the room is already starting to creep.

I force myself to see what my children see every time I send one of them in here to fetch a blouse from the closet, or a necklace from my jewelry box. I always have an excuse not to go myself; tonight, as I wait for my son to come home, there are no more excuses.

A thick layer of dust covers the pine frame of our king-sized waterbed. The fitted sheet Rick died on is still tucked around the mattress. His too-small slippers, with the smashed-down heels, sit next to the bathroom door. The gym bag my husband planned to pack for his hospital stay stands empty in the corner.

It is as if the room is waiting.

I tug the sheet off the bed, the pillowcases, the blankets, and stuff them into the gym bag. They will go, unwashed, to Goodwill. I fetch one of the boxes Megan emptied of Christmas decorations from the family room and carry it upstairs. The old slippers go in first, then I thin out Rick’s closet of everything except his favorite sweaters. Those I leave hidden among my own clothes. Rick’s watch, Swiss Army knife, key chain, and wedding ring go into the bottom of my jewelry box, keepsakes I will give to our kids someday. I find something else that needs to go; flushing the contents of four bottles of Rick’s heart medication down the toilet seems an appropriate end. I toss the containers in the trash.

In less than half an hour, I have erased Rick’s presence from the room. I have no idea what to do with the waterbed. I will never sleep on it again. I draw a heart in the dust with my finger on the top of its wooden frame and print Rick’s initials inside it along with mine, then I wipe away the past with lemon furniture polish.

Tomorrow, I will ask Nick to help me drain the mattress. It’s just a piece of plastic, but even it holds Christmas memories.

I can still see Ben, Nick, and Meg rushing in here on Christmas mornings to join their dad and me on this bed. After a late night of assembling trains or bikes or remote-control cars, Rick and I were usually still dozing when our Smith herd charged into the room. Pumping our water-filled mattress with their hands and knees, our kids would create a tsunami that forced us from slumber.

Small gifts stuffed into their Christmas stockings—candy, comic books, hair ribbons, maybe a wristwatch or baseball cards—got opened on our bed, while Rick waited for his coffee to brew and I for the tea kettle to boil.

Everyone would be wearing new pajamas, a tradition I started when the kids were small and began begging to open one gift on Christmas Eve. Rick always demanded the kids put on warm socks and brush their teeth, before visiting Santa land downstairs in the family room, building their anticipation.

When I hear the front door open, I go downstairs to talk with my Ben. I leave the bedroom door open, hoping life will spill back into the room.

Ben stands in the entryway, leaning his back against the door. A car drives by, and its headlights cast a ray of light around the room. I see tears glistening on my child’s face. Mama Bear wants to step aside and let Mother Hen do the talking, but I think we each could use a dose of both.

“I’m glad you’re home.”

Ben jumps, startled. He wipes at his face with the sleeve of his coat.

“What are you doing up?”

“Waiting for you.”

“I’m tired. I need to go to bed.”

Ben walks toward the steps. His intent, I’m sure, is to escape to the basement.

I block his path and give him a hug.

“Neither one of us can go on like this, Ben.”

He tries to shake free, but I don’t let him.

“Not tonight, Mom. Please, not tonight.”

I pull back enough to look at his face, though he turns to avoid my gaze.

“I went to your uncle Tom’s this evening. I was stopped at Little Sugarcreek when a red car flew through the intersection.”

Ben doesn’t admit he was the driver, but guilt flashes like a neon sign from the muscles in his jaw.

“Hand over your car keys.”

“Mom …”

“Give them to me.”

Ben holds the keys in his fist, debating, and then drops them into my open palm. He will never know my fear at that moment, while I waited to see whether he would comply or defy me. His acquiescence gives me grit to keep going.

“Now sit,” I say. “You’re going to tell me what you’ve been up to tonight.”

We sit down on the couch. He says nothing.

“We can sit here all night,” I say, nudging his shoulder with mine.

The words spill out, slow at first and then building speed as if he were still driving the car.

“I had to get out of here,” he says. “I needed to drive. Robert came with me.”

“Where’d you go?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“You’re probably right.”

Ben tells me he kept a close eye on the speedometer as he cruised residential streets toward the hills on Little Sugarcreek Road. Out in the country, the hum of the car engine turned into a roar.

“I could drive that road with my eyes closed,” he says. “I must have driven it one hundred times with Dad.”

Ben tells me that he and Robert rolled down their windows and let blasts of wet December wind smack their faces.

“When the car jumped over the first hill, I felt like I was flying,” he says. “We were screaming this song.”

“Pantera. Great Southern Trendkill,” I say.

“Yeah, from that album. How’d you know?”

“I heard it.”

Ben makes a face, but he continues with the confession.

A mile or two passes before he turns onto an open stretch of country road: no hills, no stop signs, and not much traffic. If homeowners glanced out their windows as the car passed, all they would have seen is the red glow of his taillights.

“When the speedometer hit ninety, I wasn’t afraid or sad. I felt free.”

I clasp my hands together, willing them to stop shaking, and then ask, “What made you slow down?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

“It was Dad.”

Ben tells me that he and Robert, in unison, spotted a deer leap across a fence and stop in the road just ahead of them.

“I could hear Dad’s voice telling me to downshift and hit the brakes. Then as fast as that deer appeared … it was gone. There was no crash, just twenty feet of tire burn. Dad was there in the car with me, Mom, just like before.”

I wrap an arm around Ben and pull him close. This time, I know what to say.

“Your Dad is always going to be with us. He’s probably listening right now and wondering if I’m ever going to give you back these car keys.”

We sit quietly for a few minutes, but Ben wants an answer.

“So, are you?”

I toss the keys up in the air just out of his reach, and I catch them.

“Red Baron’s grounded until the first of the year, then we’re going to have a talk with the guidance counselor at the high school.”

Ben starts to argue, but changes his mind.

We talk a while longer, but our conversation turns into a duel of yawns.

“Bed?” I ask.

While I lock the front door, Ben notices the empty tree stand in the corner.

“So the tree shopping was a bust?”

“Not with your aunt Char in change. It’s in the garage thawing.”

“Out there with our busted tree stand?”

No use lying. I am caught.

“You saw that?”

“One of the legs wasn’t completely smashed. Ran over it a couple of times myself.”

For the first time, maybe ever, my teenage son and I understand each other.

We head off to bed laughing.

***

I wake to the aromas of a picnic in the woods: fresh pine and frying bacon. It’s only been a few hours since Ben and I retired for the night, but a whispered conversation up in the kitchen clues me in to the fact that my eldest son and his little sister are awake. The two of them are cooking up something that Ben doesn’t want me to know about.

“Keep it down. You’ll wake her,” he says with a voice so deep it bellows down the stairwell. Megan giggles.

“I can’t wait for her to see it. I just can’t wait,” she says.

Figuring I’m about to be served breakfast in bed—or, on couch, such as it is—I close my eyes and relax, until they decide it’s time to eat. I figure Ben is trying to earn back his car keys. I won’t tell him it’s not going to work until after the meal. I close my eyes and drift back to sleep.

A half hour later, Megan holds a slice of cooked bacon under my nose.

When I open my eyes, she eats the meat and then runs back upstairs hollering, “Breakfast.”

Upstairs, it’s not the eggs, or the bacon, or even the toast that surprises me. It’s the tree. Our somewhat lopsided evergreen stands in front of the living room window, covered in strands of tiny white lights.

“Who did this?”

Megan beams. “It was Ben.”

Beside the tree, a box labeled “Dad’s stuff” stands empty, except for Rick’s measuring tape.

Rick had been the tree-lighting aficionado of the family, with arms long enough to reach to the very top of any tree, a feat he ensured before the purchase of a pine. He painstakingly untangled the mess of twisted strands that I had hastily packed the previous year. Once assured every bulb lighted, Rick measured the distance between light strings as he wrapped them around the tree. He would have measured the distance between ornaments if I had let him.

Less than twenty-four hours ago, Ben was disavowing all things holiday related. Today he’s lighting the tree. I should be shocked, but I’m not. Unexpected events are becoming the norm in our house, especially when it comes to Christmas.

“You did this?” I ask Ben. I want to hear it from him.

Ben leaves the room for a moment and comes back holding one of the six cups from the gift givers, filled with orange juice.

“They’ve been trying to help us through Christmas. My attitude has been … sort of … undermining their efforts,” he says. “Next year, we can all put the lights on the tree together. This time, I needed it to be just me and Dad.”

I nod an affirmative to Ben and take deep breaths so I don’t cry.

“Don’t you go getting another cold,” Megan says. “It’s way too close to Christmas.”

“Do you like the tree by the picture window, instead of downstairs in the family room like always?” Ben asks. “I think it makes the house merrier from the outside.”

“When did my kids get so smart?” I ask myself, then to Ben, “Good job.”

“How about we eat,” he says, and then he shouts a warning to his sleeping brother. “Bacon will be gone in sixty seconds.”

Nick is the first one seated at the table.

Use of the plastic Christmas cups with our morning meal turns all our thoughts to the identity of our true friends and the gift we expect to receive sometime today.

“What’s the seventh gift in the song?” Megan asks, but none of us is sure.

Nick volunteers to look up the lyrics to “The Twelve Days of Christmas” after the last piece of bacon disappears off the plate. He prints out a copy of the song and returns to the table, where Ben, Megan, and I are still debating whether one of their art teachers could be a suspect. Refusing to sing the words of the song as his sister requests, Nick reads off the list of gifts.

“Seven swans a-swimming, eight maids a-milking, nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, and twelve drummers drumming. Geez, definitely not what I would be sending to a true love.”

We all stare at Nick. My mouth is hanging open.

“So, what would you be sending, and to whom?” Ben asks, but we all want to know.

“Not saying I plan to send anything to anybody, but if I did, I’d send cool stuff: candy, video games, DVDs.”

“That would be awfully expensive,” I say. “I like the gifts we’ve been receiving. They’re big enough to show someone cares without being too much.”

Nick mulls over the idea.

“Just in case we get Swedish fish or Goldfish crackers tonight, instead of seven swimming swans, I got dibs,” he says.

I volunteer to wash the dishes and send the kids to their rooms with plastic bags to fill with any outgrown clothes or toys. I plan to make a trip to the Goodwill donation trailer today to deposit the items we boxed up from the basement and Rick’s things. I don’t want to give myself a chance to change my mind and keep them.

I’m clearing away the remains of our breakfast, when I get a telephone call from an old friend of Rick’s. Terry Molnar had worked at Gem City Engineering with my husband for years.

“The guys at the shop bought some Christmas presents for the kids. I’d like to drop them off.”

We arrange to meet later in the week. I don’t mention the anonymous gifts or the cards. I decide to wait until Terry’s here at the house to tell him about them, so I can see his reaction.

It’s all beginning to make sense.

I can’t believe I never considered the guys from Gem City as our gift givers. Rick had worked there for more than twenty years. Many of his coworkers had also been close friends.

I decide to keep my suspicions to myself. If I’m right, I don’t want to spoil the surprise for the kids. Before Terry’s arrival, I will grant one of Megan’s Christmas wishes. I will bring our collection of Santa figures out of hiding tomorrow.

***

It’s nearly four o’clock by the time I load the trunk of my car with our giveaways and drive to Goodwill. The donation trailer is locked, but people have stacked an assortment of bags and boxes filled with clothes, toys, and household bric-a-brac underneath the trailer to give them protection from the weather.

A man is digging through the stockpile.

Holding a doll with wild white hair, he spits on his finger and tries to wipe a smudge off its face. I assume it didn’t work. He tosses the doll back into a box and continues his search.

I’m unsure whether to get out of the car or wait until he leaves. Then I get an idea. I walk over and talk to him.

“How old is your daughter?” I ask.

He stands up and turns to face me.

“She’s eight,” he says, looking down. “Did something stupid at work. Lost my job. I was hoping to find something to put under the tree.”

“Any luck?”

He shakes his head.

“Most of what people give, no one would want.”

I had felt that way a few days ago, and suddenly I am overwhelmed by a desire to make sure this man knows he is not the only one feeling desperate during these holidays.

I tell him about the gifts we’ve been receiving, the cards, the mystery, my anger when we found the poinsettia, and how I packed up the sheets my husband died on last night. He listens even though an icy wind blows and large, wet snowflakes are falling. I speak with no pauses, just words strung together like rosary beads.

When I finally take a breath, he looks at me and smiles.

“I guess some gifts are worth giving,” he says.

He extends a hand for me to shake. “My name is Charles.”

“I’m Jo. How about you help me unload some things from my trunk?”

Charles follows me over to the car. We unload bags from the basement first, then my bedroom. I save a Hello Kitty beach bag stuffed with a cornucopia of Megan’s outgrown girly apparel: fuzzy pink pajamas, skirts, a few sweaters, blue jeans, and basketball shorts. A bracelet-making kit that my daughter never opened, several stuffed animals, and a book on hair braiding stick out of the top.

The man looks at me and says, “Wow.”

“I’ve done some stupid things in my life, too,” I tell him.

“You don’t mind if I take these home?”

“I would mind if you didn’t.”

He stands rummaging through the bag, then stops and says, “Merry Christmas.”

For the first time this holiday season, I say the same.

“Merry Christmas, Charles.”

The words feel right.

***

When I return home, the house is empty. I go down to the basement, look in the bedrooms. Not a creature is stirring.

I check the garage. The engine on Ben’s car is cold, so I go back into the house and punch his cell number into my phone. I hear it ringing faintly, then the clatter of footsteps on the roof.

Raccoons had raided bags of stale bread from a neighbor’s garbage last summer, choosing our roof as their banquet hall and their commode. It was disgusting. Rick and I had walked the block asking neighbors to place heavy rocks on their trash cans to prevent the little rascals from getting inside. With their food supply cut off, the raccoons got the message and moved on.

My first thought when I hear the noise on the roof: they’re back.

I run to the back door via the dining room but find a ladder is blocking my exit. I can’t open the door without knocking it down, and I panic thinking my children may be on the roof trying to shoo away an animal that could carry rabies.

Outside, I find reindeer and raccoons aren’t the only animals taken with rooftops.

Nick is climbing over the roof near the ridge. Ben stands at the top of the extension ladder, evidently giving his brother directions. My sweet little Megan is holding the ladder steady.

Nick has been a roof climber since before he turned five. He never needed a ladder; he had death-gripping toes and strong arms. It had scared me breathless the first time I caught him up there, but I’ve gotten used to it over the years; when he was little he called the roof his “office.” He’s always climbing something, but I draw the line at the rooftop in winter.

“Everybody freeze.”

Nick loses his footing and slides. My heart jumps out of my chest, but he just laughs.

“Whoaaaa,” he says, stopping his fall just above the gutters. He chooses to shimmy down a deck post instead of using the ladder, which is still occupied by Ben.

“I told you it wouldn’t be bad,” Ben says, addressing his brother as if I wasn’t there. “It’s not that slippery, and it’s snowing.”

Megan looks at me and wilts.

“I told them not to do it. I told them you would be angry.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Ben says. “How was it, Nick?”