Listening to her complain about school.
At least Jocie didn’t have to worry about Mr. Hammond giving her the evil eye until after Christmas break. Jocie wasn’t going to think about him at all. He was just too weird. The last day of school he’d even smacked her on the shoulder with a rolled-up sheaf of papers. His excuse was that she looked as if she was about to fall asleep. She hadn’t even been slouching in her seat. She’d started to ask him if aliens from Neptune had trouble seeing, but she bit her tongue and stopped herself in time.
She had to survive English. She couldn’t drop out of school and the school said she had to take English. Mr. Hammond taught the only freshman English class. If you could call it teaching. Sometimes Jocie wasn’t sure he knew the difference between a noun and a verb. The last day before break, he’d read them a story he’d written. It was awful. Didn’t half make sense and was way too wordy. He needed some practice writing for a newspaper so he could figure out the value of a word.
Not that she was going to tell him that. She wasn’t going to tell him anything. She was going to wipe him completely out of her mind at least until she went back to school, and then she’d figure out a way to endure the rest of the year. Praying for him the way her father had suggested hadn’t worked.
She knew what Jesus had said in the Sermon on the Mount. Her father preached about it, and Aunt Love was always quoting that part about loving your enemies.
Pray
for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.
And there was something about doing good for people who hated you. She didn’t want to do anything good for Mr. Hammond. She wanted him to fall in a hole and disappear. Leigh opened the door a few inches and peeked out. Forever. She didn’t want to even think about him, much less pray for him. The best she could do was pray he’d be called back to Neptune and soon. Before January.
As she ran up the steps to Leigh’s apartment, she did whisper a little prayer. “Help me not to think about the teacher from Neptune once until after Christmas.”
Leigh opened the door a few inches and peeked out.“Oh, Jocie. I tried to call you. I don’t think you should come in. I’ve got a cold.” She sneezed a couple of times to prove it.
“You sound awful,” Jocie said.
“I know. I feel like crying.”
“Did you get your presents wrapped?”
“Not yet. I can’t quit sneezing long enough. I can’t believe I caught a cold right here at Christmastime. It’s going to mess up everything.” Leigh mashed her lips together, sniffed a couple of times, and blinked her eyes. Tears slid down her flushed cheeks.
“You might feel better by tomorrow.”
“But your dad had something planned for us tonight. There’s no way I’ll be better by tonight, and even if I do get better by tomorrow, I couldn’t come to your house and be around Stephen Lee.”
“He’s going to catch a cold sooner or later. Everybody does.”
“But I don’t want to give him his first cold. That wouldn’t be much of a Christmas gift.”
“I never catch anything. Let me come in and help you finish wrapping your presents.” Jocie held up the sack of presents she’d brought with her to wrap. “And I need to wrap mine too.”
Leigh looked as if she wanted to open the door and let Jocie come in, but then she had a sneezing fit. After she mopped up her nose, she said, “No, no sense in you getting sick and not being able to enjoy your break from school. But wait a minute. I’ll give you some wrapping paper and ribbon and you can wrap your presents at the
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offices before you go home. Okay?”
“I promise I wouldn’t catch anything,” Jocie said.
“I know, but we need to be sensible,” Leigh said and then looked as if she was going to cry again. She mashed her mouth together and fought off the tears. “Wait here.”
Leigh left the door open as she headed toward the kitchen. Jocie peeked in at Leigh’s Christmas tree in front of her living room window next to the street. Jocie had helped Leigh decorate the tree the first week of December. It wasn’t a live tree. They’d had to fit it together branch by branch, but it looked beautiful adorned with shiny gold garlands, red and blue satin balls, and miniature wooden toys.
The lights were on even though it was daylight. Aunt Love never let Jocie turn the Christmas lights on during the daytime except on Christmas morning. Several shining red packages with ribbons cascading down their sides sat under the tree on the white felt tree skirt.
That’s what Jocie liked best about Leigh. That she was so extravagant. She bought things just because she liked them, not because she had to have them. She had a whole stack of records. She bought grapes even when they weren’t on sale. About as extravagant as the Brooke household ever got was buying a frozen can of orange juice every now and again. Aunt Love might have forgotten a lot of things, but she hadn’t forgotten how to pinch a penny.
Leigh came back to the door and handed Jocie an unopened roll of red foil paper and a spool of white ribbon. “You have tape at the
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, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Gee thanks, Leigh. This stuff is beautiful.” Jocie shoved the paper down in her sack of presents before she smiled at Leigh and said, “You’re the best.”
“I wish I felt the best.” She tried to cough and sneeze at the same time. “You want me to call your father to come get you?”
“I can walk. It’s not that far. I hope you feel better. Rub some of that stinky salve on your chest or something. That’s what Aunt Love always makes me do if I sneeze even once, and like I said, I never catch anything.”
“I hate the smell of that stuff, but I guess it’s worth a try,” Leigh said with a weak smile.
Before Jocie could start down the steps, the Hollyhill Flower Shop van stopped in front of Leigh’s house. “Looks like somebody has sent you flowers.”
“They might be for Mrs. Simpson downstairs.” Leigh opened her door a little wider to peer out at Blanche Baker lifting a vase filled with at least a dozen red roses out of the van.
“Wow,” Jocie said as Mrs. Baker started up the stairs to Leigh’s door. She couldn’t believe her father had been so extravagant. Roses had to cost a mint this time of the year.
“Oh, Jocie. I wasn’t expecting you to be here.” Mrs. Baker frowned as she carefully edged past Jocie on the narrow landing as if she thought Jocie might stick her foot out to trip her or something. Then she smiled at Leigh still standing in the doorway. “I’ve got roses for you, Leigh.”
“My heavens, they’re gorgeous,” Leigh said. “Where’s the card?”
“Right there in the middle, but maybe you should take them inside before you read it,” Mrs. Baker said as she held the vase out toward Leigh. Then with a pointed look at Jocie, she added, “It might be private.”
Leigh didn’t pay any attention and neither did Jocie as she peered over Mrs. Baker’s shoulder at the words on the card. “With great affection, Your Secret Admirer.”
“A secret admirer,” Jocie said. “Oh shoot. Then they must not be from Dad. Nothing secret about his admiration.”
Leigh was staring at the card as if she was as surprised as Jocie. Mrs. Baker thrust the vase into Leigh’s hands. “Merry Christmas, Leigh. I’ve got other deliveries. Make sure you keep the water in the vase fresh.” Then she gave Jocie a hard look as she said, “And you, Jocie Brooke, don’t be so nosy. They’re not your roses.”
“I can still smell them before I leave, can’t I?” Jocie said.
“I guess that’s up to Leigh,” Mrs. Baker said before she went down the stairs.
“What’s the matter with her?” Jocie asked.
“I think she thought it might be awkward for me to get the roses with you here.”
“Why?” Jocie looked at Leigh.
“Because, as you said, the roses must not be from your father.”
“Oh,” Jocie said. “So who’s your secret admirer?”
“I’m afraid to hazard a guess,” Leigh said as she studied the roses. She wasn’t smiling. That might have been because her cold was making her miserable as she sneezed again so hard that she almost dropped the vase.
Jocie put down her sack of presents and took the vase from Leigh until she got over her sneezing fit. “You want me to carry them in for you?”
Leigh blew her nose and then shook her head. “No, I can take them now.” She reached for the vase and stared down at the flowers. “A girl loses a little weight and things get crazy.”
“And you really don’t know who they’re from?”
“How could I? There was no name.”
“You think Mrs. Baker would tell you?”
“Maybe. If I asked,” Leigh said.
“Don’t you want to know? Aren’t you curious? I mean, this is the kind of thing you read about in books. Books like Zella reads. Flowers from a secret admirer. You think Zella sent them to get Dad motivated?”
Leigh laughed. “That’s an idea, but I don’t think so. Not unless she could somehow charge them to your father.”
D
avid pulled away from the curb back out on the street as soon as Jocie was on the first step up to Leigh’s apartment. He wanted to sit there and wait until Leigh opened the door. He wanted to see her smile and wave at him, but he couldn’t take the chance that she might run down the steps to ask him about the special date he’d promised her that night.
As usual he’d promised more than he was going to be able to deliver. He kept hoping for this great idea to rise up out of some subconscious romantic reservoir in his head or that maybe the Lord would grab him, give him a shake, and say do this or do that. But all he’d ended up with was a big question: Do what?
He wanted to give Leigh the ring. He wanted to tell her he loved her. He wanted to ask her to marry him. The want-to was swelling inside him until he thought he might burst. But at the same time the words were hanging up in his mouth. So much so that he was beginning to wonder if maybe the Lord had grabbed him and was giving him a shake and telling him not to be such an idiot as to think a young woman like Leigh would want to spend the rest of her life with him.
And not just with him. He came with plenty of baggage. Two daughters. A grandson. An elderly aunt. The ugliest dog in the county. A newspaper barely breaking even. A whole church full of lambs he was trying to shepherd.
Leigh would have to be out of her mind to want to jump into all that. David knew that with his head, but in his heart he was praying she might just be willing to give it a try. He was praying that if this gift, this blessing, was his to receive, then he wouldn’t ruin it by his ineptness at romance.
The truth was, he felt like a sweaty-palmed high school kid trying to work up the nerve to ask a pretty girl to the prom. Except there was no prom. He was supposed to come up with the prom. Some special event. Some special evening. Some special way to tell Leigh he loved her. He’d promised.
He’d thought up and rejected a dozen ideas. He’d even considered going down on his knees after the services last Sunday morning and asking her in front of his whole congregation, but then he worried that she might want to say no and wouldn’t feel she could in front of all those people wanting her to say yes. The church people already had them the same as married just because Leigh had moved her membership to Mt. Pleasant. And he didn’t think she’d say no, but he didn’t want to force her to say yes by surrounding her with fifty or sixty pairs of expectant eyes.
He’d thought about hiding the ring in the community section where the engagement notices were printed when they’d folded the
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on Tuesday night, but he could imagine what Zella would think of that. She already thought he didn’t have a romantic bone in his body and that Leigh deserved better. Trouble was, Zella was right on both counts.
At last he’d settled on something simple. Dinner out somewhere. He’d bring his own candles from home if he had to. But that was before he started trying to make reservations. Every place was closed. It was Christmas Eve, after all. People wanted to be home with their families.
Now he was nearly desperate. He should have gone on and proposed last Saturday morning at the ball field with the sun coming up and their breath frosty in the air. Leigh might have thought that was romantic. But he hadn’t. And now there wasn’t another Saturday morning before Christmas. This was Christmas Eve. This was the day he’d promised something special.
He looked over at the Hollyhill Flower Shop as he turned in to the street behind the
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offices. It was open. He could still get some flowers. A couple of roses to carry with him when he showed up at her door that night without a plan. That might be almost romantic, or at least as close as he was going to get. He’d taken Leigh a rose once when he’d gone to the park to walk with her. The first time they’d kissed. The first time he’d admitted to himself, even if he hadn’t admitted it to her, that he didn’t want to be alone anymore.
As he got out of his car, he felt in his pocket for the envelope of money the people at Mt. Pleasant had taken up for his Christmas gift. He was planning to go down to the Appliance Center at lunch and pay off the refrigerator, but he could keep out a few dollars for a couple of roses.
“What’s up, boss?” Wes asked him when he came through the back door into the pressroom. “You’re looking sort of down in the mouth this morning. Don’t you know it’s Christmas Eve?”
“I guess that’s my problem, Wes.”
“You afraid Santy Claus has lost your address?” Wes gave him a quizzical look.
“We haven’t put out any cookies and milk for a long time.” David pushed a smile out on his face. He fingered the ring box that had become a permanent fixture in his coat pocket so he could have it close to hand in case he got a sudden romantic inspiration. He’d about rubbed the felt off the box.
“Then I guess it’s a good thing the Lord don’t have to have cookies and milk to send down the blessings.”
David looked over at Wes. “You trying to preach at the preacher?”
“Sometimes the preacher needs it.”
“A lot of the times the preacher needs it.” David’s smile disappeared as he sank down on one of the wooden stools by the composing tables.
“Aren’t Christians supposed to be extra happy at Christmastime? You know, with the birth of Christ and all.” Wes limped over to sit in one of the chairs they kept in the pressroom now for him to rest his leg.