The 13th Gift (6 page)

Twenty minutes later I find her still at her window, bundled in sweatshirt and mittens, listening for passing cars. I tell her to close the window, but she begs to leave it open a little longer.

“I’m listening for the gift givers,” she explains. “I’m going to catch them tonight.”

The furnace is roaring, and I envision the electric meter on the back of the house spinning dollar signs. But I have told my daughter no too many times these last few days.

“Ten more minutes. Then close the window. And you can clean your room while you listen.”

Megan gathers an armful of her dirty clothes and deposits it in the laundry room, then ventures down to Ben’s hideaway, perhaps to ask him for help with the cleaning. When she opens the door to his room, I hear the volume on her brother’s stereo shoot up.

Megan doesn’t tell me what he said, but she comes back upstairs shortly. Out of Ben’s earshot, I hear her mutter a name for her brother that makes me smile to myself.

“Poopy head.”

Nick at least listens to her idea. He agrees to clean his room but will do so using one hand while the other, and his attention, are focusing on a video game.

“You’ll never get it get done that way,” she complains. “Don’t you want a Christmas tree?”

Nick doesn’t immediately respond. When he does give her an answer, I think it is an honest one.

“I’m not sure we should get a tree,” he says slowly. “I don’t want Christmas. I want …”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, and Megan heads back to her room with a resigned sigh.

Her sense of defeat doesn’t last long.

Within minutes she is tossing laundry out into the hall using her best foul shot form.

“She shoots. She scores. The crowd goes wild.”

A pair of blue jeans flies through the imaginary hoop, then gym shorts and basketball socks.

“She scores again. Aaaaaah.”

Megan’s room is starting to look much better, although I notice that she is shoving an assortment of broken toys and outgrown clothes under her bed. I’m about to suggest that we sort through some of the debris together when a car drives by with the radio blaring.

“It’s got to be them!”

She runs from her bedroom, leaps down the steps, and throws open the front door. The words of the song and the car are fading down the street.

There is no gift on the porch.

“Phooey,” she says, but she is singing as she closes the door. When she realizes I am listening, though, her carol ends. I turn
off the radio whenever a holiday song comes on, even though I know she cherishes the melodies. Now I’m teaching her to tune out Christmas, too.

Embarrassed at the example I am setting, I force myself to get off my butt. I might not be able to sing with my daughter right now, but I can drag a mop around the floor.

Megan is overjoyed at my activity.

“Christmas cleaning!” she says gleefully. “Thank you, Mom!”

She runs upstairs, giving me a glimmer of optimism for the outcome of her cleaning efforts. When I join her later, she is perching on a throne of pillows under the window, admiring the Christmas lights on the house across the street. The display reminds both of us of the giant Christmas tree Rick built a few years ago with similar white chasers.

“Ours covered the entire side of the house,” Megan remembers. “I helped Daddy draw up the plans.”

On a sunny January afternoon, she had held the ladder as her dad climbed up to take down the thirteen strands of lights. When the pair came inside, red-nosed and weary, two hours later, I made them cups of hot chocolate. They were already strategizing our light display for the following year
.

“I think we dipped chocolate chip cookies in our cocoa,” Megan says.

Megan’s stomach growls, and I ask her about the dinner. She doesn’t tattle on her older brother. I admire her loyalty but realize that I need to give Ben more oversight and less responsibility for his siblings.

“You didn’t eat much?”

She shrugs.

“Want a snack?”

“Yeah!”

Megan and I go into the kitchen and I search the pantry, the freezer, the fridge for something healthy. My foraged finds are limited to a bag of stale potato chips, a brown banana, and chocolate ice cream topped with frosty-white freezer burn. I need to go to the grocery, but it’s after eight p.m., and my children are hungry.

“Who wants a hamburger,” I shout loud enough for all my kids to hear.

Nick’s bedroom door flies open.

Megan hollers, “Wahoo.”

Ben makes it upstairs faster than I have seen him move in months.

“One box of mac ’n’ cheese isn’t enough for all of us,” he says mildly, but the kids are so pumped up about the late dinner that I don’t want to ruin the mood by accusing him of neglecting his younger siblings.

As I walk to the car, Megan shouts something at me from the doorway.

“Don’t forget about my school party,” she hollers.

I make the gas station my first stop. There I purchase the best-looking box of cheap chocolates on the shelf for Megan’s teacher. Though I’m not sure exactly when the party is scheduled, I want to buy the gift before I forget. I’ll have to track down some wrapping paper, but at least we already have bows, thanks to the gift givers.

I pick up a sack of hamburgers and fries for my family, and head for home. By the time I pull into the driveway, I’m feeling pretty puffed up about my parenting skills. My kids will have a
somewhat decent dinner this evening, and I’ve remembered to buy the Christmas gift for Meg’s teacher.

“You can do this single-parenting thing,” I tell myself, and in the moment I almost believe it.

While I am out picking up dinner for my kids, the third gift arrives. Megan, who was watching for my return, saw the car pull up.

“At first I thought it might be a neighbor or one of Ben’s friends,” she reports excitedly, as we devour cheeseburgers on the family room couch. “I was kneeling low and peeking over the sill to see what they would do next.”

She didn’t follow through with her plan to stop the gift giving; she didn’t even race to the door to confront them. Instead, she snuck over to the door, crouching low, trying to hide, and wishing we hadn’t left so many lights on downstairs so that she could get a better look at our Christmas elves.

She didn’t open the door until after the purr of the car engine moved up the street. She found three rolls of Christmas wrapping paper on the porch, along with the usual note.

“I had my ear to the door,” Megan says, building suspense. “I could hear the rustle of a package, footsteps. My hand was on the doorknob.”

“Why didn’t you open it?” Nick asks.

“Why didn’t you talk to them?” Ben wants to know.

Megan surprises us when she announces that she did.

“I whispered Merry Christmas,” she says. “And, thank you.”

Nick thinks it a good idea she didn’t open the door.

“Might stop if we spoil their fun. Maybe they’ll bring us real presents on Christmas, a new television or bikes.”

“These are real presents,” Megan insists.

“Maybe we should start getting ready for bedtime,” I declare.

The boys take off, but my daughter stays. Bella plops down next to Megan and rubs a wet nose against her hand, an invitation to scratch her neck. The child obliges, giving comfort to the one creature in the house that allows her to do so.

“Christmas is harder than it used to be,” she tells the dog.

I couldn’t agree more, but keep my opinion to myself. I remind Megan not to open the door if she doesn’t know who is standing on the other side of it. I don’t like the idea of strangers skulking around the house when I’m not home, although I am begrudgingly grateful that I don’t have to make an extra stop to get Christmas wrapping paper now for Megan’s teacher’s gift.

“They’re not strangers,” Megan says. “They’re our true friends.”

Identifying the culprits moves to the top of my Christmas list.

I
RISE EARLY
to wrap the chocolates for Megan’s teacher before waking the kids, but the task turns into a scavenger hunt. I search the family room and the kitchen for the wrapping paper that Megan reported receiving, finding only one depleted cardboard roll in a trash bag outside my daughter’s bedroom door. I am tiptoeing across Megan’s room to check her favorite stowaway spot behind the bed when a frustrated growl startles us both. Megan opens her eyes, smiles at me, and drifts back to sleep, while I track the source of the disturbance.

Nick stands at his bedroom door, kicking at a pile of dirty laundry that prevents him from closing it. I wish I could blame the mess on Meg, but the fault is mine. I had wedged the door open with the clothes after he fell asleep. Nick and I have been playing tug-of-war with that door every night for more than a
month. Nick had closed his bedroom door before going to bed. Later, when I no longer heard the jingle of his video-game music, I had reopened it. It’s a habit with me these days. I fear the kids will need me and I won’t hear them.

“Why won’t you keep the door closed?” Nick demands.

His voice trembles, and his eyes blaze with a level of anger I have never seen in my typically even-tempered son.

“I’m twelve years old. I need privacy.”

“I do respect your privacy, Nick, but you don’t need privacy while you’re sleeping.”

I wrap an arm around my son’s shoulders and walk him back to bed. In the darkened room, I don’t see the roll of gift wrap he left on the floor, and I trip over it. Nick picks it up and begins bouncing the roll against the bed frame, lightly at first and then harder and faster like an airplane engine revving for flight. I don’t know where he’s going with this, so I grab the roll and give him a gentle shove to make room for me to sit down next to him.

He leans against me. When he speaks, I understand it’s not anger that he is feeling. It’s anguish.

“Every time we get one of these gifts, it reminds me that Dad put off surgery to be home, with us, Christmas break.”

Instead of uttering words of maternal wisdom or even comfort, I say, “Me, too.”

We sit in silence until a sleepy-eyed Megan appears in the doorway yawning. She is dressed in oversized pajamas covered in dancing penguins, and most of her hair hangs in clumps in front of her face. Nick and I can’t help but smile.

“You guys okay?” she asks in a guidance-counselor-like voice.

“We’re good,” I answer.

“My work is done here,” she says, honoring us with a royal curtsey and wave. “Carry on.”

Megan grabs the gift wrap from my hand before departing.

“I’ve been looking for this,” she says, but I’m not about to let that roll disappear again.

“I’ve been looking for it, too. I need that paper to wrap your teacher’s gift.”

She extends the roll toward me and then pulls it back.

“I just need a little bit,” she says. “I have presents for you guys and they need wrapping right away. Besides, I don’t need to take in the chocolates until tomorrow.”

“Don’t use it all,” I say, but she is already out the door.

Nick and I look at each other and sigh.

“There is no escaping this Christmas,” he says to me in a voice so world-weary that it makes me wrap my arm around his shoulder.

Megan’s antics have lightened Nick’s mood for a moment, but I know the well of his sorrow runs pretty damn deep. For him, the approach of Christmas and the mysterious gifts have become a battering ram. The poinsettia, the bows, the gift wrap—each is pounding at his protective walls.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

Seconds creep by and Nick doesn’t answer; he’s staring at me. I don’t want to be the adult in the room, the parent, the mom, but I know it’s my job, so I ask him again.

“
Are
you okay?”

He answers, “No.”

And his walls fall down.