A Christmas Home: A Novel (5 page)

Twenty minutes later Mrs. Walker was asleep in her chair, with her old wrinkled hand still resting on Gracie’s head.

Laura reached in the box and pulled out a small nativity scene. “This will look great on the console.” She arranged the pieces as best she could while Todd rummaged through the box for the next decoration to set out.

Todd dug deeper into the box and pulled out a star that had been fixed rather awkwardly onto a plastic base so that it could rest on a tabletop. At first glance it looked more like a hat than a Christmas decoration. Todd grinned. “I know where this belongs!” He walked over to Laura and unceremoniously crowned her.

Laura laughed. Todd steadied the star from tumbling to the ground with his hands lingering for a few seconds on the top of her head. “Now you look like a Christmas angel, Laura,” he said, his blue eyes dancing.

Laura smiled and suddenly blushed. “As a Christmas angel, I order you to put the star back on the table and get to work!”

“Where are you staying tonight?” Todd asked the dog just before shutting the car door. When Christmas didn’t budge, Todd shrugged, waved good-bye, and headed in the direction of his cabin, a small structure that rested at the bottom of the hill, well within view of his parent’s watchful eyes. With the town hall meeting behind them, and their son collected from the Wellness Center and restored to his own home, Mary Ann and George returned to the old farmhouse on the top of the hill and nestled on the sofa with Christmas to watch the rest of the late night news.

Mary Ann reconfigured a question she had already asked George several times. “So you think he’ll take the shelter closing in stride?”

Each time she asked, George parceled out a few more thoughts. “I don’t know for sure. I think it’ll take time, maybe even a few days, for him to figure out what this really means. With the economy the way it is, he’ll be competing with lots of folks for employment. We’re not charging him rent to stay in the old cabin. His truck is paid for. He doesn’t need to make much money to get by.”

Mary Ann stiffened. “George, is ‘getting by’ the goal
you have for him? You know, he’s never had an interview or filled out a job application. It won’t be easy for him. He may need help. This shelter has been such a blessing. I can’t imagine him working anywhere else. Frankly, I’m not sure he can.”

“You’re right that it won’t be easy, but he’s not a child anymore, and there are plenty of ways he can earn a living—even if it takes time for him to find his way.”

Mary Ann placed her latest knitting project in a large straw basket beside the sofa. George knew that this was the signal that his wife was about to get down to the meat of the issue. “I’m afraid that Todd may drown without that shelter job. We should be prepared to throw him a lifeline.”

“What do you mean?” George asked.

“Todd is sensitive. I’m afraid he’ll unravel if he’s left to flip hamburgers the rest of his life. We can’t stand aside and see a potentially meaningful life wasted.”

George took her hand and held it reassuringly. “Of course not, but let’s give him a chance to solve his own problems. He just might surprise you.”

Mary Ann stood up. “It’s a fine line, George—helping, but not interfering. We’ll both do our best to walk it. But right now I’m just plain tired.”

George concurred. “It’s been a long day.”

Mary Ann called to the dog. “Come on, Christmas—last chance to go outside.” Walking to the back door, she turned on the exterior floodlights and let the Lab out into the yard. She watched him for a few minutes as he poked
about the yard. His black coat stood out against the white snow, and to her there was something regal about the old dog and the way he carried himself. He stopped and sniffed the night air, aware of some presence or sound lost to human senses.

Mary Ann watched as Christmas moved beneath an old weather vane in the driveway that George and his grandpa Bo had fastened to a steel pole sixty years earlier. It was a small replica of a twin-engine Cessna, swiveling on the pole, charting a new course with each change in the wind’s direction, its tiny aluminum props twirling in the moonlight.

Mary Ann opened the door and called out, “Come on, Christmas. Time for bed.”

CLOSING A
small business is hard—so hard that some ex-proprietors just give the keys to the bank and walk away. Without emotion, strangers can more easily crate broken dreams and set them curbside with the other discarded mementos of failure: reams of ledger paper stained by red ink; the personnel records of downsized employees; marketing brochures for failed products; and all the other pictures, plaques, and trophies of a team that will not suit up to play another day.

While some closings will always be harder than others, closing an animal shelter might be the hardest of all. When your inventory is made up of living, breathing creatures—animals that you have come to love, innocent pets, each human-animal relationship its own untold story—it is tough. If things get really bad, you may well have to destroy
the very things you have spent your entire career feeding, caring, loving, and fighting to save.

In the early morning after the town hall meeting, Hayley sat at her desk trying to work through all the levels of this disaster, from the most obvious to the most subtle. Her face rested in cupped hands. She felt clammy, and the acid in her stomach was bubbling and boiling like a witch’s cauldron.

She took out a pencil and paper from the top drawer and started to make one of her lists. Trying to get her logical mind around the previous day’s events proved an impossible task. The paper remained blank, so she pondered a different approach: a gigantic flowchart on her wall—full of arrows and scribbles—that would miraculously set her a course past the snow-capped peaks that towered in front of her like lofty Kilimanjaro. That didn’t work either. She didn’t know where to begin because she had not yet fully grasped the problem.

It was only five in the morning, but already she had been sitting at her desk for more than an hour avoiding the hardest part, the first step in any crisis. It can only begin after we have accepted the unacceptable.

She got up and turned on the kennel lights. She walked up and down the aisles between the cages of dogs and cats, now yawning, stretching, and seemingly questioning the early hour and the deviation in their routine. Pacing, stopping in front of every cage, Hayley wondered which ones
would make it. What would be the fate of each pair of soft, eager eyes? How could she turn her back on them?

The events of life are supposed to sculpt us, to chip away at us, giving us form. That morning Hayley felt the stone hammer falling unusually hard, without mercy; shards of her old life were scattering in all directions. Intuitively she knew that she couldn’t resolve her crisis by trying to go around it. Painful as it might be, the only way was straight through it. Taking a deep breath, she struggled to define what the past ten years had meant to her, while she felt as if the core of her being was splitting into pieces.

Her whole career seemed to be summed up in those precious moments when an owner walked away with a cat or a dog.

Although they operate somewhat like a business, shelters are outside the normal bounds of commerce. When a sale is made, a transaction completed, hearts are transformed and some immeasurable energy—call it love—is set in motion. The shelter in Crossing Trails had improved the lives of so many families, and now all those moments, all those heartfelt transactions, would end forever. No, this wasn’t just another business shutting its doors.

Defining the loss brought Hayley closer to the raw nerve of her hurt, but there was more to confront. It was suddenly obvious. The closing of the shelter would be awful for all the lost and abandoned pets in her corner of the world. Yes, that was a huge part of it. The loss to the community
of this seemingly bottomless reservoir of companionship and love was tragic. Yes, that too. But the worst part of it might be what she would have to do next, what she was dreading the most. The prospect of speaking words that would hurt another human being caused her immeasurable pain.

In a few hours, she would have to deliver news that might very well derail a young man’s life. Not just any young man, but Todd McCray, whom she had come to love and respect like a brother.

The first item on the list that morning was a miserable task. She’d been cast in the role of the city’s henchman. Having not tried out for the part, she wondered if she could reject it. Could she just pick up her car keys, walk out the front door, and drive away without looking back? She could picture Todd’s face, crestfallen and devastated. She shook her head, back and forth, in disbelief, in anger. It wasn’t fair.

Hayley stood up and made the short journey across the room. She lifted the blinds and looked out the window. A hard north wind pushed against the pane and she could feel cold air seeping through the cracked glazing. The sun was rising slowly on a new day. She intentionally bit her lip, once, then again. She was a tough lady. She planned and made lists and flowcharts and still she worried. She believed in action first and emotion second. Still her eyes clouded. The first tear was small, barely perceptible, but the next ones flowed freely down her cheeks. It felt good to cry. It meant that, finally, she had broken through, reached
down and touched the deep heart of the matter. She knew what she was losing. Having taken the first steps in accepting her loss, she was now ready to take the first steps to deal with it.

She realized she was feeling overwhelmed because she was taking too much of the burden on her own shoulders and thinking it was her job to fix everything and everyone. It was too much for her—too much for anyone, really. She did not have to take this on all by herself. She could ask for help and move forward as best she could: making her to-do lists and completing each task, one by one. She picked up a clean index card and uncapped her pen. She pushed hard and allowed the ink to pool until she forced herself to write:

Hayley put the pen down. That was enough for now.

When it came to seeking help, Laura Jordan and Doc Pelot were the first people who came to mind. Both were unpaid volunteers at the shelter and Hayley’s good friends. Although they would be upset by the news, they were good, level-headed partners in the shelter business and she could trust them to help her. She also considered calling George and Mary Ann McCray and asking them to help. As much as Todd loved his parents, she also knew him to be a young man trying to find his own space outside the sphere of his
parents’ care. Getting them involved might be a betrayal of Todd’s sovereignty, a step backward for him. She decided to stick with Doc Pelot and Laura. At least for now. She checked the time. It was still a little too early to call them.

After warming her coffee in the microwave, Hayley sat back down with her feet perched on her desk. The idea of getting some help made her feel better. She turned her focus back to Todd. She wondered why, of all the miserable tasks she was facing, telling Todd seemed the worst.

Perhaps it was because she felt responsible for him. She had no confidence that he would survive in the work world without her guidance. She had gladly coached him the last few years, and he had willingly repaid her, with interest, by hard work and an unflinching commitment to the shelter’s animals. Todd’s talents and the shelter’s needs were a good match. She sensed that there would be no other suitable job opportunities for him in Crossing Trails.

Ready to end her ruminating, Hayley checked her watch again. It was 7:15. She decided that it was not too early to call her eighty-two-year-old helper and the county’s long-retired veterinarian, Doc Pelot, for advice. Before dialing, she formed a picture in her mind of the man she was hoping could help her. She imagined him sitting in his old vet clinic near his home. He had turned it into his “shop” and escaped there to do all the things that annoyed his wife, like smoking his pipe to his heart’s content, playing cards with his dwindling pool of cronies, fixing them gin martinis, arguing politics, and telling them the same old jokes
that kept them laughing for hours. He claimed that his vices kept him interesting, to which his wife would quickly respond, “A little too interesting.”