The 13th Gift (9 page)

I
DRAG MYSELF
from the couch when the alarm clock buzzes at five thirty a.m. instead of hitting the snooze button, like usual. There will be no arguments over who takes the first shower this morning. As I get ready for the day, I go over my to-do list. The kitchen is stocked with enough food to create a breakfast buffet, and I personally plan to make sure no one misses the school bus.

After the success of last night’s dinner and the arrival of a fourth anonymous gift, I commit to becoming a more fully functional mom, and this morning is the launch of the new me. Just as I am pumping myself up about doing this single-parent thing, Megan knocks on the bathroom door. I expect to see her joyful face when I open the door; instead, I see worry lines wrinkling her brow.

“I can’t find the cupcakes.”

“Cupcakes?”

“For the holiday party at school. You signed up to bring them at the open house. Remember, I asked you about them yesterday?”

The open house was in September.

“When’s the party?”

“Today.”

I’ve volunteered to supply a snack for Megan’s holiday party every year. She and I usually cuddle over cookbooks and seasonal magazines to find an unusual treat we can bake together. We’ve made Christmas wreath cookies of cornflakes and melted marshmallows, and candy-cane reindeers. I have been stumbling through December trying to forget about Christmas and failing miserably. The one thing I had promised to remember, I forgot.

“The school was supposed to send a reminder.”

“It’s on the refrigerator. I gave it to you last week.”

Megan leans against the bathroom door and gives me a frustrated look.

“Did you forget?”

The scene replays somewhere in my frontal lobe, beginning with Megan handing me the note. I had indeed promised to make the cupcakes and had just as quickly forgotten all about them.

“I remembered the gift for your teacher,” I say, trying to soften my daughter’s disappointment. She puts her hands over her eyes and shakes her head.

“What are we going to do?” she asks.

It’s not the first time since Rick’s death that I have screwed up like this; the ingredients I bought to make popcorn balls for
her harvest party are still in the pantry. But it’s another Christmas moment I’m denying my child, and I can’t handle disappointing her again.

“We could make something quick. Popcorn?”

“You signed up on the sweet list,” Meg says, looking encouraged that I am thinking of possible solutions to the snack crisis. “That means sugar.”

I don’t have time to bake, so I improvise.

“Finish getting ready. We’re going to the store.”

The trip to the grocery requires us to leave the house before the boys get on the school bus, and I’m worried Ben may use the opportunity to skip class. It also delays any chance I might have had to look around his bedroom this morning. I wrestled with the idea a good part of the night. Our relationship, though shaky right now, is built on trust. Searching his room will destroy that if he finds out, but it’s got to work both ways. I saw him sneaking something into the house last night. I need to know what’s going on with him.

Before Meg and I leave, I take Ben aside.

“Promise you’ll get on the school bus.”

Ben takes a deep breath, and I recognize the look on his face. It’s the same one I give him when he pushes my patience to the limit.

“Do you really need to ask that?”

Megan steps in, “Please Ben.”

“Whatever,” he says. “I promise.”

I am backing the car out of the driveway when Nick runs out of the house wearing his coat, pajama pants, and snow boots.

“I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

“Can it wait until after school?”

Nick’s expression tells me it shouldn’t, but when he says yes, I take him at his word.

“I don’t work today. I’ll be waiting when you get off the school bus.”

As he walks back into the house, I notice a manila envelope in his hands, and I wonder what’s inside.

Please, no more trouble. No more problems.

During our drive to the store, Megan rattles off a list of alternative treats in case the cupcakes are a no-show in the bakery aisle.

“Doughnuts with sprinkles, cookies, a giant Christmas cake, umm … pumpkin pie with whipped cream.”

I expect the store to be deserted because it’s so early, but it seems that I’m not the only parent seeking school party supplies. I’m about to call out a greeting to a pair of moms who have kids in Megan’s class, when I overhear their conversation.

“She blew off the harvest party. I’m buying extra cupcakes just in case.”

“I hear the family is falling apart.”

I stop walking and take hold of Megan’s hand so she stops, too. A blank expression replaces her smile. I’m hoping a black hole sucks us in before the ladies turn around and detect our presence, but Megan has other plans. She starts singing.

“He’s making a list. Checking it twice. Going to find out who’s naughty or nice.”

The ladies turn to see Megan taking hold of our shopping cart and plowing down the aisle in their direction. Her legs move with propeller speed toward the cupcake display. She stops short of disaster and says, “Excuse me.”

They step out of her way.

I join my girl, and we load cupcakes into our cart. She continues singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” emphasizing the word
naughty
.

Her daddy and I used to sing that tune whenever one of the kids acted out when they were little. I wonder if Megan sings it now for the busybodies or for me. The women hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. We are falling apart.

When the ladies move out of the aisle, I whisper to Meg, “I’m sorry. I’ll do better.”

She acts as if nothing happened.

“Let’s get an extra half dozen in case someone wants seconds,” she says instead, adding more cupcakes to our shopping cart.

I see that she is smiling again, but now there are tears welling in the corners of her eyes.

We encounter the women one more time in the checkout lane. Megan pointedly wishes them a happy Christmas. I walk out without saying a word to either of them.

Except for the hum of the car engine, the ride to school is a silent journey. Megan takes her time transferring the cupcakes from the plastic store containers into our decorative ones. She snaps down the last lid as I pull into a parking space.

“Try to have fun today,” I tell her. “Don’t let those ladies get to you.”

To my surprise, she laughs.

“Those women don’t get what we’re going through, not like the gift givers,” she says. “We’re not falling apart; we’re just chipped a little bit. You do what you can, Mom. We all do.”

Megan leans across the center console of the car and gives me a kiss on the cheek before getting out.

As I watch her swaying ponytail disappear into the crowd entering the school building, I see not the ten-year-old she is, but the young lady she is becoming. My heart glows with maternal pride, and I sit there basking in it, until I notice one of the moms from the store pulling into the parking space next to mine. I am pretty sure there is an apology written on her face, but I don’t want or deserve it. I back the car out as she approaches. I have nothing to say. My daughter has said it all.

I spend most of the day scrubbing floors, washing dishes, and doing lots of laundry. My kids need me to take charge, and I don’t want to let them down any more than I already have. Now that Nick has removed the holiday decorations from the basement closet, I know it won’t be long before ceramic Santas start appearing around the house. My goals are to make sure the decorations won’t be sitting in dust clouds and that we have clean clothes to wear next week.

It feels good to do normal things, chores I have done every year to prepare for the holidays since I was a new bride. I appreciate the solitude of the house, the quietness. Instead of feeling lonely and stiff, I feel free to let my mind wander back to happier Christmases and to cry if I want to, without fear of upsetting one of the kids.

My holiday preparations always began in mid-November with a floor-to-ceiling scrub of everything in the house, a tradition of my mom’s that I adopted. Our first Christmas together, Rick had volunteered
to help before he realized how extensive the work was actually going to be
.

“Nobody’s going to notice if you don’t vacuum under the bed,” he had complained two days into our Christmas cleaning. “Who cares about dust on the top of the chandelier that can only be seen if you’re seven feet tall?”

After a weekend of scrubbing floors, cleaning toilets, de-cobwebbing light fixtures, washing down walls, and polishing every wooden surface in the house, Rick labeled me “Christmas crazy.” In future years to avoid participation in the cleanup, he would plan some vital home repair—like replacing the plastic vent on the dryer or changing the batteries on our seven smoke alarms—that simply had to be completed over the holidays. That was fine with me as long as he stayed out of my way. I’d flip on the radio and sing along to Christmas songs while the housework tinted my hands and knees the color of pink poinsettias
.

The real Christmas fun began after the cleaning. That’s when I’d drag out the decorations. A Santa figurine dressed in Pilgrim apparel standing next to a turkey, a gift from my sister Carol, was always the first holiday dressing to be displayed. For us, and then later for the kids, his appearance was a sign that a month of holiday fun was about to begin. Thanksgiving was a blur this year, and the little fellow never made it out of the cupboard
.

I’m nearly to the bottom of the laundry pile—I can actually see the floor for the first time in weeks—when I unearth a cache of Rick’s clothing: socks, underwear, the gray-striped shirt he wore the day before he died. The sleeves are still rolled up to the elbows, a necessity because his long arms usually stuck out of his sleeves. I gather the shirt and hold it to my nose, breathing deeply.

Mildew.

The shirt has been sitting on the laundry room floor under wet towels and dirty gym clothes. Any trace of my Rick is gone.

I dump extra laundry detergent into the washer as it fills with hot water and then collect Rick’s clothing. Before I toss in the shirt, a note slips out of pocket. The paper is damp, but a list written in Rick’s perfect block penmanship is legible: “Christmas gifts to buy before surgery—bike for Nick, seat covers for Ben’s car, a Bellbrook warm-up suit for Meg. Nerf guns for everybody.”

Under my name, he has written “This Christmas is going to be special.”

I trace each letter on the page wondering when he wrote the list, and where. The empty washing machine runs through the wash cycle while I read the short missive over and over, committing it to memory. I’d like to think it’s a sign from Rick that he is somehow still with us, but I know it’s just another piece of his unfinished life.

I refold the note and put it back in the shirt pocket, then restart the washing machine. I stuff Rick’s socks, his underwear, and the shirt into the washer, and I watch, mesmerized, as the hot water begins to rotate. I regret my action almost immediately, but not soon enough to save the note. It is in pieces, like our lives.

Vapor rising from the hot water makes me feel like I’m in a steam room, so I flip the lid closed, but it doesn’t help. I am sweating, and my heart jumps and leaps like it wants out of my chest. I wonder if this is how Rick felt, and I panic. My legs buckle, and I slip to the floor.

“Breathe. Stay calm. Help me, Rick.”

I fall asleep sitting there on the concrete floor, leaning against the washer.

When I wake, the house is quiet, and my heart beats normally. Only the fear remains. The house feels unwelcoming, and I don’t want to be here alone. I run upstairs, slip on my snow boots, grab my car keys and coat. I have to get away.

I drive for three hours, to Cincinnati and back, without getting out of the car.

Nick opens the front door for me when I arrive home just after five o’clock. He has been home for more than an hour, but he doesn’t ask me where I’ve been. A CD with a collection of my favorite songs is playing on the stereo. Megan, he informs me, needs a ride home from basketball practice at seven thirty; Ben is chopping firewood with a friend, and he’s going to get paid.