Just One Thing (14 page)

I took off my jacket, untied my striped scarf, and let my wild, teased hair loose. Then I carefully put my glasses on and took the unglazed clay pot out of my bag.

“Harry Potter?” Jerry asked.

“No, she’s a Hairy
Potter
. H-A-I-R-Y.” Jerry looked confused so Sam explained. “She does pottery. She’s a potter.”

“But there are no universal potters I could think of, so I went for—”

“A hairy potter,” Jerry finished. “That’s a good one.”

“Well, it’s only good if people know I made pottery. Otherwise, it requires an explanation.”

“Still, it’s creative,” Jerry said.

Sam handed me a Guinness and said, “Go mingle. It’s a party.”

I did mingle. I explained my costume and I met people. Some I recognized, some who must have frequented the bar on other nights I didn’t.

I spent almost an hour talking to Mike and Emma. They had a small farm out my way. They raised llamas and kids. “Saturday nights are our night out,” Emma said. “We have a neighbor girl who comes to stay with the kids.”

“How many?”

“Four,” she said. “We thought we were done after our third, but seems God had other ideas.”

Lee and I had thought we were done after the twins. Gracie was a surprise baby.

I remembered right after she was born, the nurse handed her to me, and Lee kissed my forehead and whispered, “Surprise.”

I smiled at the memory and realized that I could remember without the gut-wrenching pain.

That was progress.

Sam had hooked an iPod up to speakers and started a Halloween playlist. The
Ghostbusters
theme.
Time Warp. Thriller
. When
Monster Mash
started to play, he came up behind me. “May I have this dance?”

He took me in his arms and started to slow dance. It wasn’t really a dance, more a hold-me-close-and-turn-in-a-circle sort of thing. “I couldn’t dance before I messed up my leg,” he whispered in my ear.

Then he laughed. And I laughed too as we turned awkward circles together in the center of the bar. “This is tonight’s one-thing,” I told him. “And it’s a very good thing.”

“It is,” he agreed.

I nodded. I knew that I’d pull this particular memory out in the future, and it would always make me smile.

The next morning, I took Angus for a long walk up the road.

There was a small church about a half mile up the road at the corner. When the kids were younger, we attended services there when we spent time at camp in the summer.

It was a very small congregation, but they’d been nice people. The minister had been ancient. Gracie always said he looked like Santa and the twins would torment her about still believing in Santa.

Today, as Angus and I walked by, they were singing at the Sunday morning service.

I stood a moment and listened. I recognized the song.
I Love to Tell the Story.

I remembered going to church when I was nine or ten and singing that song. It was my grandmother’s small church in Wesleyville. I spent a lot of weekends with her and we’d go together. She’d hold my hand and sing with gusto, not caring that her voice was off-key. And it was definitely off-key. My father used to joke that she couldn’t hit a tune if it were the broadside of a barn.

I hadn’t thought of my grandmother in years. I’d called her Nana and she used to make me tea in a battered yellow teapot and tell me stories.

Part of me wanted to leave Angus tied to a tree and sneak inside and sing along.

I missed church, I realized.

I hadn’t known that before, but now, I did. I missed it.

After my grandmother passed away, I didn’t go to church regularly. Neither of my parents was active in their church and never pushed the issue. But when I’d had kids, I’d decided to make church a part of our lives. When they were small, we’d all go together. Lee and I would split the kids. One twin, Lee, Gracie, me, the other twin. It saved a lot of fighting.

When the kids got older, I’d leave for church twenty minutes or so before the rest of the family. I’d sit in our pew and just be. I didn’t verbalize a prayer, or make requests. I just sat with God. I’d think of everything I was thankful for. I’d count my blessings. And I’d just enjoy those few moments of quiet communion.

Then Lee and the kids would arrive and slide into the pew. We sat between kids. Our strategy didn’t always work. Still, I didn’t mind. I had those quiet moments before they arrived to sustain me.

And I missed them.

Then I remembered one terrible time as I sat by myself in a pew, not communing, but commanding. Begging. Bartering.

God had ignored me and I hadn’t talked to him since.

But maybe it was time to start.

The words of that song played over and over again as I walked Angus back home. “It satisfies my longing, as nothing else can do.”

The next day, I knew my one-thing before I left for the bar. I was a bit nervous, wondering if seeing Sam outside the bar, outside of Monday—first on our picnic, then at the party—would change anything, though at this point I was pretty sure it wouldn’t. Mondays were magic.

Sam smiled as I walked in and he started drawing my Guinness.

I sat on my barstool and simply enjoyed the moment of quiet.

Drawing a Guinness isn’t quite the same as pouring any other brew. It’s an art form, and it takes a few minutes.

But I used that time to simply enjoy the quiet murmurs of the bar.

The people talking.

Glasses clinking.

Joanie the waitress, bustling about, delivering food, taking orders.

Jerry at the end of the bar, sipping his Guinness.

Sam came to the end of the bar with a beautiful glass of Guinness and said the words, “One thing.”

Picnics and parties hadn’t changed anything. It was Monday, this was Sam, and I knew my one-thing.

“Gracie believed in Santa Claus . . .”

“Mom, it’s so embarrassing.” Connie was not a morning person. Today, she stomped into the kitchen and sat down at her empty cereal bowl. She poured a healthy amount of cereal from the Cheerios box and smothered it in milk.

Gracie followed close on her heels and said, “Morning, Mom.”

“What’s so embarrassing?” Lexie had found that Connie managed her tribulations better if she had a chance to vent. She’d decided that her job was as Mom the venting precipitator.

“Gracie.” Connie’s voice was filled with big-sister disgust. She used the same tone when complaining about Conner’s room, which frequently was in danger of being condemned by the health department. “Mom, she was talking about Santa yesterday and Julie overheard her. Do you know how embarrassing that was for me?”

As a fourth grader, Connie had reached the upper tier of the elementary school, and Gracie, as a third grader, was embarrassing when she simply breathed.

“Now, Connie—” Lexie started.

Connie interrupted her by leaning across the table and shouting, “There is no such thing as Santa. Mom and Dad buy all the presents.”

Gracie didn’t look the least bit dismayed as she ate her cereal.

Lee walked into the kitchen, and Connie saw a new place to vent frustration. “Dad, tell Gracie there’s no Santa.”

“There’s no Santa,” he echoed.

Lexie kicked him softly. “Lee, we agreed—”

“We agreed that we’d let the kids discover the truth on their own, but it sounds as if Gracie’s discovered the truth. She’s just ignoring it. She’s eight, Lex. That’s old enough to accept the way things are. Life’s not always the way we want it.”

“Gracie, honey, I’m sorry . . .” Lexie said softly.

Rather than look dismayed, Gracie smiled and patted her hand. “It’s okay, Mom. I know there’s no real Santa. Remember that little girl in the book you read me? That newspaper
guy told her that it’s okay if moms and dads bought the presents, ’cause they had Santa in their heart. Well, I got him in my heart, too. So, it’s okay if Connie don’t believe, ’cause I know my heart is big enough for Santa and me.”

“. . .
And that was that. It didn’t matter what anyone said; Gracie believed in Santa until the day she died.” I tripped over the last word, but managed it. “Every Christmas, she’d leave him cookies. She wrote him annual letters. And when she was twelve, she adopted a family and bought them all gifts with her own money. We all helped, and on Christmas Eve, we packed up everything and put it on their porch. She left a letter with it all—a letter from Santa. We all went back to the car and she was the one who rang the doorbell, then ran.”

There was a happy memory that I hadn’t pulled out to examine in a long time. Gracie’s undisguised glee as she ran to the car.

“She said she was just letting the Santa in her heart out.”

“She sounds like she was an amazing girl,” Sam said.

“She was. All my kids are.”

“Your turn,” I said to Sam. “One thing.”

“My nickname was Romeo.” Sam smiled. “There was this guy in our unit. Tony Mulligan. His dad was Irish, his mom Italian. He was the only swarthy-skinned redhead I ever met . . .”

“Come on, Sam. You’re going to be my best man. Consider this part of your duties.”

Sam looked at his friend. Tony was one of those guys who never seemed to have it together. He was always late for everything but chow. He was the only guy Sam had ever met who could look rumpled in a newly pressed uniform, and whose hair, no matter how short, looked a mess because of the legion of cowlicks it sported. And the fact that his hair was red only called attention to its disarray. Wherever he went, Tony stood out. And unfortunately, he didn’t stand out well.