The Kind of Friends We Used to Be (18 page)

It is Christmas Eve, and Kate is trying to string popcorn, which turns out to be an amazingly hard thing to do. The only reason she’s doing it is that her mom and dad had this big, nostalgic conversation at lunch, about how they were too poor to afford ornaments for their bare, scraggly tree their first Christmas as a married couple; all they had to decorate it with was long strands of popcorn, which made the tree look like it was covered with freshly fallen snow.

So now Kate is stuck trying to run a needle threaded with dental floss through piece after
piece of microwave popcorn. So far she has gotten six pieces on the floss and destroyed seventeen. It is, she thinks, a losing battle, but she can tell it makes her mom happy that she’s trying, and since Kate is not sure her mom will like Kate’s Christmas present to her, she figures this could be a kind of present too.

When the doorbell rings, Kate jumps up to get it. “Anything to stop stringing popcorn” is becoming her motto of the day. She thinks it is probably the
UPS
man, since she just heard the truck out on the road, and the presents from her Uncle Simon and Aunt Kim still haven’t arrived, even though Aunt Kim swore up and down on the phone to Kate’s mom that she’d mailed them a week ago.

Instead, it’s Flannery. “Bad news,” Flannery says the second the door is open. “I have to take my guitar back.”

Adrenaline surges through Kate’s stomach and up and down her legs. She realizes she has pretty much forgotten that her guitar is actually Flannery’s guitar. When Flannery first lent it to her at the end of the summer, Kate
had thought a lot about how she could save up money for her own guitar, but after weeks, then months went by, and Flannery never asked for her guitar back, Kate had sort of convinced herself that Flannery didn’t actually want it back.

“Come on in,” she says to Flannery now. “I’ll go get it.”

Flannery follows Kate to her room. “I’m probably getting a new guitar for Christmas from my dad,” she says, “so if it was up to me I’d let you keep it. But my stepbrother’s here, and he lost his guitar on the plane, and apparently he can’t live without a guitar in his hands every minute of the day.”

“How’d he lose it on the plane?” Kate asks as she pulls the guitar case out of the closet. The guitar itself is on a stand next to her bed.

“Not on the plane. I mean all of his luggage got lost, including his guitar. They think it’s probably in Atlanta. The fact is, he’s a terrible guitar player. I don’t know why everyone’s acting like if he doesn’t have a guitar to play, the world will be deprived of his great talent.
Believe me, we’d be better off if no one let him near a guitar ever again.”

Kate is careful as she lays the guitar in its case. She wonders what she’ll do without her guitar. Without Flannery’s guitar. She was going to spend her whole vacation writing new songs, maybe even recording some. Matthew said that he might be able to get them into the audio lab over Christmas, that the audio lab director, Mr. Norris, was going to open it up a few hours a day for anybody who was interested. They were going to try to record something together, just for fun. But she isn’t going to be able to record anything without a guitar.

Worse, she realizes suddenly, she isn’t going to be able to give her mom her Christmas present. Every year Kate’s mom said, “Don’t buy me something for Christmas, make me something,” and every year Kate and Tracie went to Target and bought something their mom totally didn’t need, electric coffee grinders and rice steamers, fancy little soaps for the downstairs bathroom. But finally, this year, Kate has actually made something. She’s written her mom a song.

A word springs into Kate’s head. It is a word she isn’t supposed to say, a word she’s never heard her mom say, and has only heard her dad say a few times, when he was driving in bad traffic. Kate says it now, under her breath at first, and then louder, and then four times in a row.

And then, to her embarrassment, she starts to cry. “Sorry,” she apologizes to Flannery. “I just, well, I was going to a play a song on it. I mean, for my mom, in the morning. For a present. I didn’t really get her anything else.”

Flannery looks at her a long time without saying anything, and Kate feels like an idiot. It is Marylin who understands about moms and Christmas presents. Kate has come to believe that Flannery is a decent human being, but that doesn’t mean she is sentimental or actually cares about what Kate’s mom gets for Christmas.

To Kate’s surprise, Flannery shrugs. “Hey, that’s cool. Ellis can play the guitar my dad’s sending me for Christmas. The
UPS
guy is probably dropping it off right now. I kind of hate to let Ellis get his grimy little paws on it,
but he’s only here three more days.”

Kate does not hug Flannery. She does not sob grateful tears of joy. She knows that she has exceeded the limits of Flannery’s tolerance for emotional displays already with her crying. So all she does is say, “Thanks.” And then, “You don’t happen to want to string some popcorn with me, do you?”

Flannery shrugs again. “Okay, yeah, sure. I could use some big excitement in my life right now. Besides, anything’s better than hanging out with Ellis.”

Just as Kate’s settled into her seat and picked up her strand of mutilated popcorn, the doorbell rings, and she is saved again. It is the
UPS
man, with two big boxes—one from Uncle Simon and Aunt Kim—and the other, a long, flat box, from the Guitar Center. Kate’s mom rushes up behind her.

“I’ll get those, honey, you just run along!” she says, clearly trying to sound nonchalant. She pokes her head out the door and calls, “Thanks! Merry Christmas!” to the retreating
UPS
man. Then she says to Kate, “Oh, honey, I
forgot to check the mail today; run and get it, would you?”

Kate walks down the driveway to the mailbox. She waves to the
UPS
man as he drives in the direction of Flannery’s house. She waits for the truck to stop, so she can watch the
UPS
man carry Flannery’s guitar up to the front door. She thinks it would be nice to go back into the kitchen and say, “Hey, Flannery, guess what! I think your guitar has arrived!” It can be like a little present she gives Flannery, in exchange for the present Flannery has given her.

But the
UPS
truck does not stop in front of Flannery’s house. It lumbers down the street and turns left onto Sagebrush Drive.

When Kate returns to the kitchen, she doesn’t say anything about the
UPS
truck or guitars. She just picks up her needle and begins her attack on the popcorn. When she glances over at Flannery, Kate is amazed to see that Flannery has already strung two feet of dental floss. “That’s amazing,” she says. “How did you get so good at that?”

“I was a Brownie in third grade,” Flannery
replies, “and my Brownie leader was totally into stringing popcorn. We did it for, like, three weeks in a row. I was the champ.”

“You were a Brownie?” Kate asks. Of course, what she wants to ask is,
They let people like you in Brownies?
but it’s Christmas Eve, so she doesn’t.

Flannery grins. “I was an amazing Brownie.” She looks up from her popcorn. “You might not know this, but I was a really nice little kid.”

“Pretty hard to believe,” Kate jokes, and Flannery throws a piece of popcorn at her. Kate pops it into her mouth. She plucks another piece of popcorn from the bowl and pokes her needle at it. The fact is, she can believe that Flannery was a nice kid. About 90 percent of people are nice kids up through second grade, and then the percentages start to dip. By sixth grade, it’s probably down to 40 percent. A picture of Mazie Calloway pops into her head, and Kate revises her estimate to 30 percent.

But maybe things get better, Kate thinks, glancing up at Flannery, whose face is squinched
in concentration, like the only thing that matters at this very minute is guiding that needle through the popcorn. Maybe even Mazie Calloway will turn nice one day.

Okay, Kate actually doubts that Mazie Calloway will ever be anything besides a horrible human being. But it’s Christmas, and she is in the mood to feel hopeful about everything.

Especially about that long, flat box with the Guitar Center return address.

Kate is very hopeful about that.

It is Christmas Eve, and Marylin is putting eyeliner on an angel. “Hold still, sweetie,” she says, and tries to remember what Rhetta has told her about applying eye makeup. Smudged lines are better than thin, sharp lines. You are creating shadows and light. Subtle is good. No clown faces.

Marylin thinks she’s sort of good at this. Not as good as Rhetta, who right now is transforming the girl playing the Virgin Mary from a pale, slightly cross-eyed ten-year-old into
the serene, graceful-looking mother of Jesus.
Makeup is magic
is another thing Rhetta likes to say, and Marylin is starting to believe it.

Reverend Mayes sweeps through the room, looking strange to Marylin in his white robe. She has gone to church twice with Rhetta, and both times Reverend Mayes was dressed in a polo shirt and chinos. He is the most laid-back minister Marylin has ever met. But now he looks a little nervous, like if this Christmas pageant’s a flop, God might get mad at him.

“I see only two wise men,” he says, surveying the room, which is filled with sheep, shepherds, angels, and various farm animals. “Where’s the third one?”

“Owen is sick,” a sheep calls from the corner. “I forgot his mom said for me to tell you that. He has a cold and maybe strep, only she couldn’t get an appointment to find out, so she was going to take him this afternoon to Urgent Care over by the Food Lion so he—”

Reverend Mayes cuts the sheep off. “Thanks, Seth, I think I get it.” He turns to a thin woman who is busy hemming an angel’s robe. “So who
can we get to substitute, Lisa? Any ideas? It’ll look strange to just have two wise men.”

The woman looks around the room. “How about Rhetta?”

Rhetta holds up her hands, like she’s trying to keep that idea from landing on her. “I’m strictly behind the scenes, Dad. We’ve talked about that.”

“But it’s an emergency, honey. Help me out here.”

Rhetta looks over at Marylin, and Marylin shakes her head no. It’s not that she’s afraid of standing up in front of crowds. As a middle-school cheerleader, she does it all the time. But she has never stood in front of a bunch of people trying to look, well, holy. She doesn’t think she can pull it off.

Reverend Mayes catches the look between Rhetta and Marylin and smiles. “Marylin! You’d be an awesome wise man—or wise woman, if you prefer. Do me this favor, sweetheart. It would mean so much to all these children, who have worked so hard to put together a nice pageant.”

Well, how are you supposed to refuse a minister? How is Marylin supposed to say no to all these little lambs and angels? So she lets Rhetta put a humongous crown on her head and drape her in a red velvet robe lined with fake leopard skin. One look in the mirror and Marylin knows she looks ridiculous, but she supposes it’s for a good cause. Besides, it’s not like anyone from school besides Rhetta will be there.

When it is the three wise men’s turn, they march down the aisle of the church singing, “We Three Kings.” Fortunately, Marylin knows all the words, even from the second and third verses. She tries to remember to sing loudly, but she is pretty caught up in keeping the gold coins from falling off the pillow she is carrying. With every step, they slide a little closer to the edge of the pillow, and Marylin thinks if she doesn’t get to the baby Jesus soon, those coins are going to fall off and roll down to the altar.

Sure enough, when the wise men come to a stop, one of the coin slips off the pillow and
onto the floor, but looking around, Marylin doesn’t think anyone has noticed. They’re all too busy oohing and aahing at the baby Jesus, who is a real baby, a girl with blond, wispy hair. The baby Jesus is looking around and smiling at everyone, and Marylin can tell this is making people happy by the way they are making little cooing sounds.

After she has set down the pillow in front of baby Jesus’s straw bed, Marylin stands up, relieved to be done with her part. She realizes she hasn’t seen her parents and Petey yet. In fact, she has sort of forgotten they’d be here. This isn’t their church, after all, not that they’ve gone to any church very much in the past year. If she hadn’t agreed to help Rhetta with the Christmas pageant, Marylin and Petey would already be at her dad’s apartment, miles away from any church Marylin could think of.