The Christmas Hope(35)

I kissed her forehead and got behind the wheel of the car. I watched in the mirror as she looked out the window toward the sky. Was she straining to see her mother? Was she hoping she’d catch a glimpse of her through the clouds? I wondered what she was thinking but didn’t ask. I had grown to hate all the questions I was asked after Sean’s death.





I saw Roy’s car as I pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant. I parked beside it and laughed to myself. His car hadn’t been clean since he’d become a grandfather. The backseat was littered with coloring books, Legos, toy soldiers, ground Cheerios, and a naked baby doll. I held Emily’s hand and walked through the front door looking for Roy and Barbara. I spotted Roy trying to throw a small red ball into a configuration of rings twenty feet in front of him. The smallest and most difficult ring to throw into was worth fifty points. After four pitches he managed to win a measly forty points, not enough for a prize. Six-year-old Jasmine threw a ball and it fell through the hole of the secondbiggest ring, earning her twenty points. She jumped and squealed and braids all over her head bounced up and down. Roy high-fived her and saw us watching at the door. He waved us over and stretched out his hand toward Emily.

“You must be Emily,” he said. “I’m Roy and this is my granddaughter, Jasmine, and this is my friend, Barbara.” He took out a handful of gold tokens from his pocket and handed them to Emily. “Would you like to throw the balls, too?”

She nodded.

He slid a coin into a slot and four balls rolled toward Emily. “You can keep these tokens and play whatever you want.”

Emily threw a ball and missed the rings. She threw another one and missed again. Jasmine stepped in to give pointers and when Emily threw again she earned ten points. She turned to look at me and I cheered. Roy and Barbara and I sat at a nearby table.

“She’s a doll,” Barbara said, watching Emily. Barbara was a tall, striking woman with high cheekbones and gray streaked hair. She and Roy had been dating for so long that his grandkids called her Grandma and she loved it. “So Mark is home this year, Patti?” she asked.

I swirled a napkin on the table in front of me. “Yes. For the first time in years we’ll be having Christmas at our house.” I put my face in my hands and shook my head.

Barbara leaned over the table and patted my arm. “Everything will go fine. Trust me, nobody remembers flat dinner rolls or greasy gravy. They just remember being together.”

I nodded. “Our problem is we’re not so good at being together anymore.”

“Emily doesn’t know that,” Barbara said.

Emily came to the table and I smiled. “Can I go play that game over there?” she said, pointing to a small basketball hoop. I told her she could and Jasmine grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the other side of the restaurant.

“She’s a sweet girl,” Barbara said. “Do you have a foster home for her yet?”

“After Christmas,” I said. “Mark said that everybody needs a break once in a while.”

“Mark’s right,” Roy said. It made me feel better knowing that Roy was on my side. “We’ll have Greta over, the lady who watched her quite a bit, and try to let her have a normal Christmas.” Jasmine yelled for Barbara and Barbara ducked as if being struck from behind.

“Lord, that child has a set of lungs on her,” she said, getting up from the table. Jasmine yelled again and Barbara held onto her head as if it would blow away. “Yell one more time. I don’t think Canada heard you,” she said, walking toward the girls. The waitress came and Roy ordered a large and small pizza and a pitcher of Sprite.

“Diet Coke,” I said, catching the waitress before she left. “I can already feel the holiday pounds.”

Roy leaned on the table and looked at me. “You look terrible, Patti.”

I threw my arms in the air. “Please, don’t hold anything back. Tell me how I really look.”

Roy laughed and made room for the pitcher of Sprite. “Did she like the tree?”

“She loved it.” I swirled the napkin in bigger circles in front of me.

Roy cleared his throat. “Are you happy that Mark will be home for Christmas?”

I looked up at him and wadded the napkin into a ball. “I don’t know,” I whispered.

Roy looked at me and nodded. “Did I ever tell you about Margaret’s wind chimes?”

I shook my head.

“Well, I never knew that Margaret loved wind chimes but one year we went to visit my mother and on our way home we stopped at a restaurant that had a great big wraparound porch on it with all these wind chimes hanging from it. She kept me out on that porch for thirty minutes trying to find the perfect wind chimes for our back porch. She found a set that had bright colored birds on it and when we got home she wanted to hang them right away. So I hung them for her but I wasn’t thinking and didn’t realize that our breakfast nook windows are right by the back porch and every morning I’d hear those tinkling chimes, and they drove me crazy. Margaret loved the sound. She’d open the windows wide and just listen as they went pling, pling—pling, pling, but they drove me nuts. I couldn’t read the paper with all that plinging. When she was out of the house one day I moved them to the front porch but when she got home and noticed what I’d done she moved them back. That went on for ages. I’d move them to the front and she’d move them to the back and open the windows so she could hear them. Back and forth they went until she got sick.” His voice was quiet. “I didn’t move them anymore after that. I left the windows open and let that sound filter through the house. When she couldn’t get up anymore I put another set outside our bedroom window and when I’d lay down next to her at night I could hear them going pling, pling—pling, pling, and I’d fall to sleep. I could fall asleep to a noise that at one time drove me crazy.” He took a drink of soda and cleared his throat. “I don’t know why I told you that, Patti, except to say don’t let this happen. If you and Mark get a divorce it’ll be like another death in your family.” He paused for a moment. “If I’m stepping over my boundaries you let me know, Patti, but I’ve known you for a long time and I knew Sean, too. And I know there’s no way he’d ever want to see you and Mark split up or for you to check out the way you have. You’ve been part of the living dead long enough. I know what that society looks like because I was part of it for a long time after Margaret died. But at some point you have to make a decision to join life again.”