The 13th Gift (3 page)

“Have you checked out any of the Christmas tree lots in town? Megan has been bugging me to buy one.”

Joann’s attitude transforms.

“The lot up the street has gorgeous trees. I stopped there last night to buy a wreath. They had the largest poinsettias I have ever seen.”

“Poinsettias, really?” I ask. “And did you happen to buy one for a coworker?”

But instead of confessing, Joann laughs.

“Just enjoy the flower, Jo. Doesn’t matter who left it.”

Oh, but it does. And I have figured it out.

Confident that I have discovered the identity of our “true friends,” I set aside worries about the kids, and all thought of Christmas, to tackle a school-funding story. For a few hours, I am not a widow or a mother. I gratefully surrender those roles, even if only for a while.

Just after three thirty, the kids start calling. Megan is the first. She is home and has washed the red foil wrapping on the poinsettia with an old washcloth and dish soap.

“Looks tie-dyed,” she announces. “I like it.”

“What looks tie-dyed, the wrapping or the washcloth?” I ask.

“Both,” she giggles. “I’ve got Girl Scouts today. Can you pick me up at six thirty?”

Ten minutes later, Nick is on the phone.

“Wrestling practice until seven thirty. Don’t forget, it’s in the school gym.”

“I’ll be there. I promise.”

Forty-five minutes pass before I hear from Ben.

“Megan said we’re getting a Christmas tree this weekend. I’m busy.”

“I’m not sure when we’ll do it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ben says. “I’m busy all weekend.”

I begin to worry about getting my story edited and myself out of the office in time to pick up all the kids and get dinner ready. I finally wrap up at work at six twenty, leaving ten minutes to make the half-hour trip back to Bellbrook. I drive home at a much faster pace than the trip to the office this morning, but I start to panic as I shave the clock close. I have never left a kid waiting in the cold.

Megan is standing outside the school with several friends when I drive up. She is smiling. I am not the last mom to arrive.

“Look what we made at Girl Scouts.”

From a piece of red yarn, she dangles a Christmas tree ornament fashioned from construction paper and wooden sticks: a poinsettia.

“It’s for our Christmas tree,” she says, as if I needed to be reminded.

F
OR WEEKS, MY
sister-in-law Charlotte has been chiding me to hustle up my holiday preparations.

“You have got to give those kids a Christmas,” has become her latest trope.

This morning, she calls before six a.m., offering to pick up Nick and Megan from their sports practices to provide me with a few hours of shopping time after work.

“Just get it over with,” she insists. “You love Christmas shopping. Getting out there might cheer you up.”

I have no confidence in her logic, but I agree to give it a try.

That is how I find myself waiting with my turn signal on for a mom and a toddler to move past an open parking space in the shopping plaza, when a gray-haired grandpa type whips his Lexus around them and nabs my spot. The mom jerks her cart back to avoid a collision.

“Asshole,” she shouts, covering her daughter’s ears with gloved hands.

“Merry Christmas,” the old guy hollers as he steps from his car. He winks at me as he passes. I want to shove his smug expression somewhere distinctly un-Christmasy, but he’s already vaulting through the store doors. I’ve never been much of a musician, but I imagine rewriting the lyrics to “Silver Bells.” In my more realistic version, people are meeting “scowl after scowl” instead of “smile after smile.”

I abandon my search for a primo parking place, and drive to the adjacent shopping center where most of the businesses are closed for the day.

As I enter the store, strains of “Frosty the Snowman” blasting over the sound system weaken my resolve. Though my intent is to buy a mountain bike for Nick, I veer first into Rick’s favorite department, hardware. The layout of the aisles here is as familiar to me as housewares. Before Rick tackled a home repair—turning our concrete-walled basement into a playroom, building a deck on the back of the house, or crafting a ceramic-tiled counter for the kitchen—he would drag the whole family with him to the hardware department to select supplies. I am struck with the idea of buying some sort of useful tool that I can donate in Rick’s name to the Salvation Army or Habitat for Humanity.

I don’t ever remember hearing Christmas music in this section of the store before, but the lines of “Frosty” are loud enough
to rattle the light fixtures. I imagine ending the iceman’s romp through town with a blowtorch, or at the very least barbecuing the store’s sound system. It’s cruel, but the thought makes me laugh at myself.

“Do you carry acetylene torches?” I ask a clerk.

I load the torch into my shopping cart, thinking that this could be a useful donation or perhaps a Christmas gift for my brother-in-law Tom. Maybe I’ll keep it for myself. A more likely scenario, there won’t be presents or a tree to put them under at our house on December 25.

Just buy a bike. One step at a time.

On my trek to the toy department, I toss wrapping paper, gift cards, and tape into the cart. My holiday purchases, so far, are limited to bags of athletic socks and underwear for each of the kids—the only two items Rick ever asked for on his Christmas list. When we first met, Rick didn’t understand my need to ferret out the perfect gift for each loved one. His mother had died when he was three years old, and the holidays never took on much significance in his family. The Christmas gifts he received thereafter had been mostly functional … until he met me. It took time for him to catch my enthusiasm for the holidays. Maybe I just wore him down. The year I bought him a video camera, he waited two full days to open it as a protest over the expense. I caught him reading the manual the next day, and by New Year’s Eve he threatened to leave the tool-and-die industry to make movies. He gave me a nightgown that year, a twin to one I already owned.
The following year, he bought me a sterling silver necklace and matching bracelet.

I understand now why his dad was not a fan of holiday shopping. It feels as if I’m betraying my husband to even think about celebrating the holidays. All I want for Christmas is him, and the idea of making new holiday memories without Rick just makes me miss him more. I just can’t operate under the same modus operandi as past years, and I have no idea how I’m supposed to behave.

“I need a damn rule book.”

My lament is loud enough to summon a clerk.

“In the video department,” she responds, pointing to the rear of the store, apparently ignoring my profanity in a way that my daughter does not. “Books are back by the videos.”

I move in that direction, embarrassed to have been caught talking to myself. I hope the clerk will chalk my behavior up to temporary holiday insanity and not a more general affliction. I glance backward to see if she is occupied with another customer. That’s when I really do get into an accident. I smack into a life-sized, blow-up lawn Santa with my shopping cart; he doesn’t deflate, but he is wobbling close to a display of glass candle globes.

“Can I help you?”

Now I have the clerk’s undivided attention, and she is looking none too surprised to see that I am the cause of the near display disaster.

“My daughter would love him,” I say weakly.

“Then buy one.”

Abashed, I grab a blow-up Santa and toss him in my cart next to the torch.

I know our house looks cheerless compared to others on the
block dressed in white lights, nativity scenes, and grazing wire reindeer. Trimming the outside of the house was Rick’s bailiwick, not mine. I am not going to buy this blow-up, but I don’t want to put the Santa back on the shelf with the clerk now stalking my every move. Under her now watchful eye, I pretend to consider buying hand-painted ornaments, a quilted Christmas tree skirt, metal tins with snowy scenes on the lids, and others filled with assortments of chocolates.

None of the items appeal to me.

I do want to feel the Christmas tug that usually consumes me this time of year. I have always begun holiday shopping before Thanksgiving and usually have a trove of presents purchased long before the onslaught of the holiday stampede. Then I purposefully forget how much I have spent and buy more just to be part of the holiday rush. I used to love crowded shopping malls, wrapping presents, baking cookies, the swarm of family visiting on Christmas Eve.

Not anymore.

For the first time in nearly twenty years, my husband isn’t standing beside me mentally calculating our seasonal checkbook damage, and I have no will to spend.

Wouldn’t Rick find this ironic.

When the sales clerk starts humming along to “Winter Wonderland,” I leave the Christmas displays and head over to toys, taking the blow-up Santa with me.

Just buy the bike and get out of here, I tell myself.

The toy aisles are humming with dads and moms and grandparents flitting from Barbie dolls to board games. I pause near the video games, looking for anything to jump out at me.

Rick and I had decided years ago we weren’t bringing a video-game
system into the house. We wanted our kids to fill their free time with more educational activities, like reading. Then I had gone on a weekend trip to Christmas shop in Frankenmuth, Michigan, with my mom and sisters
.

I was only gone three days, but when I returned, we owned a Nintendo. With controller in hand, Rick was seated on the family room floor, gyrating right, then left, sitting up tall, slouching, unconsciously mimicking the movements of Super Mario on the television screen. The kids were gathered around him like little apostles, moving as he moved in a choreographed dance
.

They never heard me walk in the door
.

“It’s a science experiment,” Rick insisted before I flicked the back of his head with an American Girl book I had purchased for Megan
.

Now, three years later, our collection of video-game systems also includes a Nintendo Game Boy, Sega Game Gear, and numerous computer games that the kids play together. Since his father’s death, Nick has become completely immersed in these escape pods that draw him into video worlds where beaten and bloodied avatars spring back to life with each new game. I don’t want to encourage the habit, but I can see that the games are helping him cope.

I venture into the video-game aisle, where I find the old guy who stole my parking space in a spat over a game with the mom and toddler he nearly hit.

“I saw it first,” the old guy shouts.

“I just went to get someone to unlock the display case,” the mother fires back. “They’re paging a clerk for
me
.”

I should keep walking, but I don’t.

“Let her have it, you old grump.”

The two turn and look at me. The old guy’s face glows Christmas red, and the mom stands with fists balled like she’s ready to duke it out, either with him or with me. Another voice joins in the fray.

“You again.”

I don’t have to turn around to identify its owner. It’s that same sales clerk. Instead of defusing the fighters, she’s coming at me.

“I thought you were looking for books.”

“Well … a bike actually.”

“Three aisles down. On the left. How about you go have a look.”

I flash my best mean face at the old guy and leave the aisle with a final, menacing remark.

“Give the game to the girl.”

My legs are shaking by the time I reach the bicycle racks. There is less foot traffic here; bikes aren’t a big seller in the Midwest in winter. I am grateful for the quiet, but it doesn’t last long.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” a stock boy asks as I browse ten-speeds.

“Yes,” I say, gesturing between a trendy yellow and a traditional blue mountain bike. “I just can’t decide on the color.”