The 13th Gift (20 page)

Hearing his plan makes me feel like such a proud momma. I set down an armful of groceries on the counter and give him a hug.

In minutes the kitchen and the kids are covered in flour. The first batch of cookies we declare “experimental” when four rows of Santa boots merge into one giant cookie.

“Looks like one of Dad’s shoes,” Nick says.

Rick wore a size 14AAA.

We all laugh, then laugh again at our own laughter. I think we’re all feeling a little guilty over our burst of holiday joy, but grateful for it at the same time.

“Maybe it’s a sign,” Megan says.

“Of what?” Nick demands.

“That we should eat it,” I jump in to cut off any potential argument, breaking off pieces of the giant shoe and passing them around. The second batch of boots turns out better, elf sized.

By the time I’m ready to make cabbage rolls, Megan and Ben scatter to clean their bedrooms, and Nick continues packing up his stuff for the move to the basement. I tackle the raw meat on my own. I am peeling layers of steaming cabbage off a head when the room goes dark.

“Megan … I can’t cook what I can’t see!”

The lights go back on, but in a few minutes they flicker off again. This time a flashlight beam shines on the counter where I am working.

“Megan!”

“They won’t come if they think we’re home!”

“Close the curtains. It’ll be fine,” I reassure her. “Now, roll up your sleeves and come play in this meat with me.”

“Looks like worms,” she says, digging in up to her elbows. When she begins singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” I hum along. Singing is still hard.

On a beach in Maui on our honeymoon, Rick had burst into song, our song—“Longer,” by Dan Fogelberg
.

I thought he would stop after the first few lines. It was kind of corny, but he was being serious. He was my one-line comedian, not a musician. At least he had selected an isolated section of beach for his show. And he just kept singing
.

“That was my wedding gift to you,” Rick said at the conclusion of the song, but even then I could feel his mirth bubbling up. “This is my gift to you, a musical-comedy life.”

Then he grabbed my hand so tight I couldn’t break free and raced us into the waves together. I was wearing a new linen dress. He had on suit pants
.

That was the beginning of our silly, happy, off-key life. When Megan stumbles over the words of the Christmas carol, mixing her ladies dancing with leaping lords, I know I have a choice to make. I can dwell on past songs sung, or I can live here in the moment and sing with my daughter.

I choose to sing with her, but instead of the traditional pear tree and partridges, turtledoves and golden rings, I substitute our gifts, one Christmas flower, two bags of bows, and three rolls of gift wrap.

Sometime during the fifth or sixth chorus, our true friends leave a tenth gift. Ben discovers the package later that night
while carrying out bags of trash from his room to the bins on the side of the house. A fierce wind blows outside, and the light-weight parcel had been skipping across our lawn.

“It’s here. I’ve got it,” Ben announces, when he reenters the house. His words draw all of us to the living room.

“I was worried,” Megan says. “I don’t want the presents to stop. I don’t want the song to end.”

I’m not ready for that either. I wonder if the gift giver heard Megan and me singing. I wonder if they realize their magic is working. Megan tears open the present to find ten dancing Santa paper dolls. We don’t try to dissect the card or look for clues. Instead, we hang the paper dolls from the banister and get back to preparing for Christmas Eve.

Returning to the kitchen, I add the new gift to our version of the song and keep on rolling cabbage balls.

O
N THE DAY
before Christmas Eve, I wake up with a list of errands already dancing through my head. We had been up late the night before, cooking and prepping food for our party, but no amount of sleep deprivation can dull my excitement. As I weave through traffic thick as winter snow, I swear the Christmas rush is the very best time to shop. The traffic congestion allows me more time to tune in to Christmas songs on the car radio. When I hear John Denver and the Muppets singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” I feel as if they are crooning the carol just for me.

“Maybe I’ll wait until the last minute every year,” I say to myself, as I wave a car into a parking space that I had been waiting to occupy.

I find another spot farther out and revel in the brisk air as
I hike into the computer store. I’m replacing the dinosaur Nick has been playing video games on for the past three years, a computer my friend Kate gave to the family after she replaced hers with an updated model. I know my middle child will be thrilled with top-of-the-line technology, but he’s going to have to share it with the rest of us. I can’t afford to buy more than one. The new model will go in the family room. Even though it provides solitary entertainment, whoever is on it will be in the same room as the rest of us.

No more isolation, at least not from each other.

At the computer store, I meet an elderly man scratching his head over which video-game system to buy for his thirteen-year-old grandson. The clerks are all busy, so he asks me. Vying for the attention of a member of the sales staff myself, I nearly dismiss the guy with “haven’t a clue,” when I realize I know someone who could help him.

I dig my cell phone out of my purse and call Nick. I hand the man my phone, and he walks off with it toward the video games, as directed by Nick.

I can hear my son say, “She won’t mind.”

I follow my phone.

Fifteen minutes later the guy is headed to the checkout lanes, and I return to an even longer line of customers waiting to speak with a clerk about a computer.

Before leaving the store, the gentleman tracks me down again and tries to press a twenty dollar bill into my hand for Nick.

“Not necessary,” I say. “Merry Christmas to you and your grandson.”

“I figured you would say that. At least take this.”

He gives me a coupon for a free cup of coffee.

“Have one on me.”

The gentleman leaves me ferreting through rows of monitors and motherboards. I hate to admit that I know far less than the average teenager about computer operating systems, and I think about calling Nick again, but I want this present to be a surprise. So, I resign myself to wait for a salesman.

It happens quicker than I expect.

“I saw you helping the old guy. I was with another customer,” the clerk says. “Thank you.”

Then he yawns while rubbing his eyes and says, “Sorry. We’ve been so busy. I dreamed we ran out of stock last night and people were pelting me with mouse pads.”

“Christmas will be here and gone before you know it,” I say. “Try to enjoy it.”

“Coffee would help,” he smiles, adding there’s none left in the break room. “Now, how can I help you?”

The clerk helps me select a hard drive, nineteen-inch monitor, color printer, scanner, and a stash of video games for all three of my children. My purchases will be delivered to Tom and Charlotte’s house before noon tomorrow; they will sneak them over after our Christmas Eve celebration, when the kids are in bed.

“You actually bought a computer, and it’s on the delivery schedule. That’s fantastic, Jo! But you’re not just thinking about buying one thing, right?” Char asks, when I call her from the store to confirm the delivery time. “What about the bike?”

When I tell her that two are hidden in the garage, she bellows out a loud, “Thank goodness. When did all this happen?”

“Let’s just say our true friends have inspired me.”

Charlotte laughs.

“Those gifts have made a difference,” she says. “I’ll tell Tom to take a nap Christmas Eve. Sounds like the two of you are going to be up late.”

When I exit the store, snowflakes are painting cars a glittery white.

“It feels like Christmas,” I think. I’m not sure if it’s the snow or the shopping that makes me feel this way. I wonder if our true friends will leave footprints in the snow tonight, and whether we will be able to learn more about them based on the size of their shoes. I stop and remind myself that discovering their identity isn’t a priority anymore. I just want to thank them.

Instead of driving directly to the furniture store to buy Nick’s bed, I stop at a coffee shop. I’m pretty certain beverages are frowned upon in the computer store, but I use the free coupon to get a cup for the weary clerk anyway. Sneaking it inside under my coat, I get the man’s attention and hand it to him behind a stack of boxed monitors.

“You’re an angel,” he exclaims.

I wave off the compliment and leave.

Crossing off the computer from Nick’s wish list, I drive three blocks to a discount furniture store. As I walk in and start looking at the prices, I whisper thank you to the folks at Gem City Engineering who are making this possible.

I select a dark chocolate-colored chest of drawers and matching nightstand for Nick, along with a mattress, box spring, and a bed frame.

My son’s waterbed will be history by Christmas.

The charge for the furniture is already on my Visa when the salesman tells me, “No deliveries until after Christmas.”

I hear him, but my brain—or maybe it’s my heart—refuses to accept. This fresh start is all my son wants for Christmas, except for the computer and the bike, and I tell the salesman so.

“My son’s father died on a waterbed. He can’t sleep on his anymore.… He’s having nightmares. I’ve got to move him out of that room.”

I don’t even remember leaning across the counter and grabbing hold of the guy’s tie. When I do realize what I’m doing, I pat the tie as if smoothing it out and back off.

By then others are watching … again.

“You should have come in sooner,” the salesman tells me, and his tone feels like he’s scolding me. “Our delivery schedule is full up for tomorrow.”

That old familiar feeling of letting a kid down eats at my conscience. The guy is right. I should have been here sooner. Hearing him say it feels like a punch in the gut after we’ve come so far, and I am not about to let him spoil my son’s Christmas.

And there are others on my side.

A woman in a faux-leopard coat waving a MasterCard doesn’t appreciate the comment.

“Her boy lost his daddy. You need to help her.”

“Have a heart, buddy,” a male customer adds. “Didn’t you have a dad?”

“Well, yeah,” the salesman says, laughing at the question.

“I thought so,” the man says pounding on the counter like he’s discovered the answer to one of life’s great mysteries. “So, what are you going to do about this?”

The MasterCard lady doesn’t give the salesman a chance to answer.

“How about I take my charge card, and I drive over to the
mattress shop up the street to buy a bed,” she says, ripping up her invoice.

She points to the gentleman who also holds a sales slip in his hand and asks, “Are you with me?”

He hesitates for a moment, then says, “Sure. Why the heck not.”

Two more customers threaten to cancel their orders, and that’s enough to make the manager take me aside. He asks me to have a seat in the closeout-furniture section surrounded by an assortment of mismatched, damaged, and out-of-style sale items. There are no other customers in the area, and I get the idea that’s why he selected this location. I feel like I have landed on the Island of Misfit Toys, like in the animated
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
that’s been on television every holiday season since I was a kid.

The manager launches into a spiel about his daughter not getting the Millennium Princess Barbie doll she wants for Christmas because he’s been working nonstop since Thanksgiving. I think he is setting me up to soften the blow, and tears start rolling down my cheeks. But then I hear him say, “So I’ll make it happen, okay?”

“What?”

“December 24, eight a.m.,” he promises. “I’ll drop the order off myself.”

I hug the guy before leaving the store. I’d like to think the spirit of the season inspires the man, not a mother’s tears, threats from customers, or my promise to pay double the delivery fee.

Outside, the MasterCard lady is waiting for me. My smile
broadcasts that all is well, and I thank her for the role she played in getting my purchase on the delivery schedule for tomorrow.

“Most fun I’ve had in years,” she says. “We widows have to stick together.”

“You’ve lost your husband, too?”