A Carol Christmas (25 page)

I turned my head and peered out from under my arm at my angel snow globe on the bed stand. The inscription on Gabe’s card wavered at the back of my brain.
Think of me
.

“I’d rather not, thank you,” I muttered.

I reached out and picked up the globe and shook it, ushering in a glittery storm. My little angel stood with her face transfixed heavenward, unmoved by the stuff swirling around her.
That would be me today
, I decided, calm and immune to whatever my family chose to swirl around me.

Oh, that it would only be glitter.

My door flew open, and Keira leaned her head in. “Are you getting up any time before next Christmas?” she demanded.

I set the snow globe back and threw off the covers. “Did you run out of things to play with in your Christmas stocking?”

“Only old people sleep in on Christmas Day,” she retorted and left.

“Old people and grownups,” I called after her. I don’t know why I bothered. I would never win the battle for more sleep. The baby of the family was awake and ready to play. That meant the rest of us had to be too.

I took a shower and put on some jeans and a black sweater, then told myself I was ready to face the day. The smell of coffee beckoned me down the hall, and Christmas music greeted me as I entered the living room—both courtesy of my sister. A whiff of bayberry and vanilla caught my attention, and I saw Keira had lit Mom’s candles. The tree lights were already on, giving the room a soft glow. Keira was a big believer in setting the stage for Christmas morning, and I had to admit, she’d set it well. Looking at the tree with all the presents, smelling the old, familiar smells, I could almost believe I was ten years old again.

Keira was already parked on a kitchen stool, dressed for the day in jeans and a white blouse that showed off a large tear drop of glimmering, blue gemstone.

I moved in for a closer look. “Is that a blue topaz?”

She nodded, and that was when I noticed matching drops dangling from her ears. First an engagement ring the size of a small country and now this. I got a sudden flash of insight into how that matter of Cain and Abel came about.
Don’t be petty
, I told myself, trying to rinse the green out of my eyes.

“Spencer gave it to me,” she said.

Well, there was a surprise. Maybe we could clone Spencer, I thought, I’d like to have a man to buy expensive jewelry for me.

Hey, you got a snow globe
. Considering the way I’d been treating Gabe, a snow globe was pretty generous.

Mom joined us now, looking comfy in her bathrobe. “That is quite the set,” she said, her own eyes looking a little green.

Keira held up the pendant dangling over her chest and examined it. “It’s a bribe.”

Mom stared at Keir like her body had been taken over by aliens. “What?”

“He’s hoping I’ll compromise on the house.”

“If you sold all the jewelry he’s given you, you could buy the house outright,” Mom cracked.

My sister had lost her sense of humor since the last time I saw her. “Funny, Mom,” she said grumpily and took a sip of coffee.

“So, what did you get him?” I asked.

Her enthusiasm returned. “Oh, this is so fun. There’s this company called Hollywood Is Calling, and for practically nothing you can get a celebrity to call and deliver a message to someone.”

“A celebrity? Like who?” Mom asked.

“Like someone from one of those old seventies TV shows. They’ve got the guy who was the principal on
Saved by the Bell''

“That’s who you got?” I asked. She’d gotten blue topaz and Spencer had gotten Mr. Belding?

“No, I got Mary Ann from
Gilligan’s Island
.” She held up her hand and snapped her fingers. “Points for me.”

“Something for you,” I muttered.

“Hey, Spencer loved it. She called him at his parents’ when I was over there last night and wished him a Merry Christmas from the island.”

“If she had a phone she should have used it to make a call and get off the island,” Mom said in disgust.

“She was going to make that call next,” Keir said with a grin.”

So, Keira received an expensive necklace and earring set and Spencer got a two-minute call from Mary Ann. Somebody got a bargain.

“I need more coffee,” Mom said.

It was pushing nine and she was still in her bathrobe, visiting with us and guzzling java, when the doorbell rang. “Oh, my gosh, I’m not even dressed!” she cried. “Somebody get the door.”

I remembered the days when Mom would sit around all day in her bathrobe. Of course, she was married then so had no motivation to spruce up.

I sighed. I wished she hadn’t invited Mr. Winkler over.

Keira went for the door, so I stayed parked at the kitchen counter and poured more coffee down my throat.

“Hi, Gram,” I heard my sister say. “Mom,” she hollered, “Ben and Gram are here.”

As they moved toward the kitchen I heard Gram telling Keira, “I hope you haven’t made breakfast yet. I’ve got my homemade cinnamon rolls.”

Hockey-puck cinnamon rolls, right up there with Gram’s Prune Whip. I quickly grabbed for the cereal. If I were already eating, I’d have an excuse not to eat the hockey pucks.

“Ben, you can put those presents under the tree for me,” Gram added. And then she was in the kitchen, catching me right in the middle of pouring cereal into a bowl.

“Hello, everyone,” she sang. “Oh, Andie. You don’t want cereal, not on Christmas morning.” She plucked the box from my hand. “Not when we have homemade cinnamon rolls.”

Behind her Keira was smirking. She could well afford to. She’d probably wolfed down something while I was showering.

My grandma was holding the plate out to me now. I was trapped.

“Thanks,” I murmured and took the smallest one. Which isn’t saying much, considering they were all the size of bricks. Just as heavy too.

She looked at me expectantly. I smiled and bit down and almost broke a tooth.

“I think I’ll get some more coffee to go with this,” I said. Maybe if it sat in coffee for an hour …

“We need more than cinnamon rolls,” said Ben. “Clear the kitchen. I’m making omelets.”

Thank you, bro
, I thought.

“That’ll clear the kitchen,” Keira cracked.

“Hey, I can make omelets,” he said, sounding insulted.

“I don’t know why you need a big heavy breakfast when we’re going to have dinner in the middle of the day,” Gram grumbled.

Ben sneaked a conspiratorial wink my way. We did.

Keira didn’t give us long to eat breakfast. As soon as Aunt Chloe came through the door she said, “Come on, guys. You can eat anytime. We’re all here now. Let’s open our presents.”

“Like you need anything on top of what Spencer gave you?” Ben teased.

Keira fingered the topaz. “Just sitting here talking is boring.”

“We talked about you half the time,” Ben pointed out.

“And we talked about you the other half.”

“Okay, enough,” Mom said. “Let’s go open presents.”

“That sounds good to me,” Aunt Chloe said, plunking a cinnamon roll on her plate. Now, there was desperation.

We went into the living room, a small parade marching to “Jingle Bells” playing on the radio.

The number of presents under the tree had been steadily growing since we put it up, and now we had enough there to take care of the entire town of Carol. I knew we would find at least a couple presents for each of us just from Mom, who went completely nuts every year.

One present under the tree might as well have had a spotlight shining on it. It was painting size—large, impossible-to-hide painting size—and wrapped in red foil with silver ribbon. Aunt Chloe’s portrait of me. I tried not to shudder and began rehearsing my lines.
Oh, wow. Now, this is quite a piece of. . . Hmmm . . . art! That was so sweet of you
.

“Okay, who’s going to play Santa?” Mom asked.

“I did it last year,” Keira said, plopping onto the couch and tucking one leg under her. She was wearing multicolored striped socks with each toe a different color, an interesting fashion complement to her expensive jewelry.

“I’ll do it,” Ben volunteered and settled himself at the foot of the tree. “Hey, here’s one for Mom from Andie.”

“Be careful, it’s fragile,” I cautioned.

“No problem,” said Ben, then pretended to drop it, almost giving me a heart attack.

I’d hauled those tulip plates from the Metropolitan Museum of Art home in my carry-on, praying all the way they wouldn’t break. “You are so not funny,” I told him.

He snickered as he set it in Mom’s lap, then dug under the tree again.

“Give Andie mine,” said Aunt Chloe.

Well, might as well get the torture over with
. I braced myself and put on a smile. My aunt eagerly watched as I unwrapped her masterpiece.

And there I was, at least I think it was me. This version of me had a nose twice as wide as mine and a lower lip that looked like someone had plugged me into the collagen pump then gone away and forgotten me, and my skin was the color of something from the supermarket’s seafood department. But at least I wasn’t in the bathroom. She had put me in a field of multicolored dots that I think were meant to be wild flowers. I was wearing something resembling a Greek toga and had margarine-colored hair that reminded me of Medusa. I guess that went with the toga.

Aunt Chloe was watching me expectantly. Time to deliver my line. “Wow, this is quite a piece of art!” Quite a piece of something, that was for sure.

“Do you like it?” asked Aunt Chloe eagerly.

Oh, dear. I hadn’t rehearsed any response for that question. I didn’t want to lie.
Think fast, Andie. Think like Madison Avenue
.

“How could I not like it, considering you made it for me?”

It was true. As paintings went, the thing was abysmal, but the fact that my aunt had labored over it in love gave it value. At least enough value that I would take it back to New York. Where on earth was I going to hide it? And if Aunt Chloe ever came to visit, where would I hang it? I thought of my grandma, maybe doing penance for past motherly sins, hanging that thawing hamburger masterpiece in her dining room. I hadn't been a bad niece. I shouldn’t have to suffer. Maybe I could talk the apartment manager into letting me hang this in the laundry room.

“Andie, these are lovely!” Mom cried as she pulled out a plate from the box. She smiled lovingly at me. “You shouldn’t have. They must have cost you an arm and a leg.”

They had. “Only an arm,” I said, trying to sound humble.

“Hey, cool,” Ben said, displaying the New York Mets baseball cap I’d gotten him. He put it on. “How do I look?”

“Like a dweeb,” teased Keira. “Give Andie my present.”

Ben obliged and I opened it. Coffee. There was a surprise. But hey, I like coffee. And the mug she had picked to go with it was really cute too. It had a stylized picture of a trendy-looking woman sitting at a cafe table, writing in a journal.

“That’s you being sophisticated in New York,” Keira said.

“I like it. Thanks.”

The presents kept coming. From Mom, a check for Ben and clothes for Keira. For me, pretty stationery and stamps. (Subtle as always, Mom). But she didn’t stop there. I opened a smaller package to find a pendant with a small ruby, my birthstone. Where was my mother getting all this money? Surely not from selling mugs and tacky jackets. “Mom, you shouldn’t have done this,” I said.

“Of course I should have,” she said and smiled.

As if that weren’t enough, she’d also gotten me a bunch of scrapbooking supplies. “So you can keep track of your adventures in New York,” she told me.

She hated having me gone, wanted me home, yet here she was, being supportive anyway. I felt all choked up. “Oh, Mom.”

Gram gave me a set of hand-embroidered kitchen towels that I knew I’d never use. Not because they were an embarrassment, but because they were lovely and irreplaceable, and I didn’t want to get them stained. Gram couldn’t cook, but her handwork was true art. Maybe I’d have them framed and hang them in my kitchen.

Keira loved the scarf I’d found at the Columbus Avenue flea market, and the little kitchen knickknack I’d bought at another flea market for Gram went over well too.

“Okay, sis, open mine,” Ben said and handed me a fat plastic bag sealed with duct tape. My brother, Mr. Martha Stewart. I wrestled the bag free of tape and pulled out a black sweatshirt with
I Love New York
emblazoned across it.

“I got it online,” he said. “Like it?”

Now I could look like a tourist in my own town. “I do,” I said. My brother had put a lot of thought into that present. In fact, it seemed my whole family had done nothing but think of me this Christmas. I hugged him and tried not to cry.

Mom opened Gram’s gift, pulling out quilted pillow shams. More beautiful handwork. “Oh, Mom. These are fabulous.”

“They’ll match the quilt I gave you,” Gram said.

“You’re right. They will.”

“Get the quilt and let’s see how they look,” Gram suggested.

“Good idea,” Mom said and disappeared down the hall.

And that was the last we saw of her. At least until the presents were almost all opened and Gram called, “Did you find it?”

“Not yet,” Mom called back.

Now Aunt Chloe was tearing into my present. “An art book! Thank you, Andie.” She hugged the book to her. “This must have cost you a fortune.”

“Not really,” I said. I’d gotten it at a used book store. On a budget like mine, you’ve got to be creative.

“Hey, here’s one more for Andie from Mom,” Ben said.

It looked like clothes. I was suddenly clutched by a prophetic sense of dread. I held my breath as I pulled off the ribbon and paper and opened the box. Inside lay a pink jacket. Oh, no. Not the Man Hater one Mom had been wearing at the airport. I pulled it out.

“That’s from the spring line,” Aunt Chloe said proudly. “You’re the first person to have one.”

Lucky me, I thought miserably. I turned it around and read the back,
I've done Carol (the town)
.

“Those are going to sell like hotcakes,” Aunt Chloe predicted.

Maybe someone would like to buy this one. I nodded and put it back in the box, praying Mom wouldn’t expect me to wear it to the airport when I left.