The 13th Gift (14 page)

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?”

“Perfect. Had a great view in both directions. I’d have seen Mom pull up, if I had gotten to the ridge before she got home.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. They continue chatting about the vantage point from the roof as if it’s perfectly natural.

“Time out,” I shout.

The kids stop strategizing and look at me.

“You,” I say pointing at Ben and Nick, “put the ladder back in the garage, then all of you into the house,
now
.”

By the time the trio is seated on the couch, my heart is back where it belongs, but I’m angry at their recklessness.

“What were you thinking?”

They confess together.

Ben had summoned Nick and Megan down to his room for a strategy session to figure out how to catch our true friends in the act.

“We need a way to watch for them, without them knowing,” Nick had said. “We don’t want them to stop leaving the gifts.”

Ben comes up with two ideas: lie low on the floor of the garage with the big door open just enough to watch for cars, or go up on the roof.

Nick volunteers to take the high road.

“I told him it could be slippery,” Ben says, as if to make me feel better. “We were testing it out.”

Rick and I had taught our kids to be adventurous—hiking in
the mountains, camping in the wilderness—and I feel somewhat responsible for their actions today. I have a feeling Rick would have been up there on the roof with them, if he had been here.

It’s Megan who realizes I’m not paying attention to the conversation.

“Earth to Mom?”

“We need to figure out when to go up. I don’t want to be lying on the roof any longer than I have to,” Nick says.

He still thinks this is going to happen. My children are crazy if they think I’m going to let them go up on a snowy roof at night, but maybe a stakeout by the garage door isn’t such a bad idea. I want to know who is leaving the gifts just as much as they do. I could layer the concrete floor with sleeping bags and blankets, make hot chocolate. It could be fun and we’d be together.

“Hellooo, don’t you think the gift givers will notice someone lying on the roof?” I ask.

“They’ll probably just think I’m a Christmas decoration,” Nick says.

“If you want to catch our friends, figure out a safe way to do it. Maybe tomorrow we can try Ben’s alternate plan.”

The boys head to the basement, and I fear another conspiracy may be afoot. Megan hangs out with me.

“Maybe we’ll have a snow day tomorrow,” she says hopefully. “Snow days all the way to Christmas break would be lovely.”

“Is it still snowing?” I ask.

Megan opens the front door and flips on the porch light. A small package sits in the snow outside the door.

“It’s here! The seventh gift!”

Ben and Nick hear Megan’s announcement and race back
upstairs to confiscate the card. A debonair little snowman with a colorful string scarf and big red shoes smiles at us from the front cover. Inside, there are pictures of pine trees, and our family’s special version of the Christmas carol.

I let the boys fuss over the card. I’m pretty sure Terry’s visit later in the week will end the mystery, at least for me.

My daughter is admiring the seven gold apple ornaments, when Nick tries to grab them from her.

“Let’s put them on the tree,” he says.

She refuses to give them up.

“These are special,” she says. “I know where they belong, and it’s not on the tree.”

W
ITH
M
EGAN OVERSEEING
our progress, the transformation of our home from everyday to holiday is nearly complete. It has taken an all-out Smith family effort to accomplish. By late afternoon the day after the golden apples arrive, I am surveying the house room by room, making sure it’s ready for our first holiday guest. Rick’s friend and coworker Terry Molnar is on his way.

Megan and I have exhumed my collection of Santa figurines, who now stand at attention on the sideboard in the living room. The ones that don’t fit are spreading the spirit of the season in some unexpected spaces. Made of glass, carved from chestnut, molded in porcelain and plastic, or hand sewn, each figure is a vessel of Christmas memories. A foot-tall Santa dressed in a green coat flashes the peace sign from behind a shower curtain in the guest bathroom, and I park a rotund Père Noël beside our bathroom scale, a reminder not to overindulge.

Rick and I had few contentious moments in our marriage, but the extent of my Santa collection definitely created several.

Once, as we were packing the figurines away for the season, Rick asked me which of the jolly old elves was my favorite. We were running out of storage space in the basement, and he thought it time to thin down the collection. I looked around: my sister Carol—Aunt Sugar to my kids because she always carried candy for them in her purse—had made weekly payments on the hand-carved, pipe-toting Santa dressed in red long johns. She believed paying for presents on the installment plan kept loved ones close to her heart all through the year, or at least until their gifts were paid off
.

Her motto: “I don’t just give gifts, I make memories.”

Not all of my Santas are store-bought; several of my favorites are made of construction paper and cotton balls, presents from my children in the early stages of their artistic careers. Rick gave me only one, a weary little fellow with sad eyes. The blue-robed Saint Nick always seemed out of step with the rest of the happy crowd, and I asked my husband why he had selected that particular one for me
.

“He carries the burdens of the world, so the rest of us don’t have to,” Rick had said. “Give him troubles. Give me your troubles.”

Then he had kissed me and whispered, “I love you.”