The Christmas Hope(8)

TWO




Hope never abandons you; you abandon it.

—George Weinberg



I’d been home less than thirty minutes. I barely had time to change my clothes and sort through the mail when the phone rang. I looked at my watch—six o’clock. Right on time. I never actually had to call my mother because she would always call me before I got the chance to get to the phone. “Hello.”

“How was your day, Patti?”

“It was great!” I always told her my days were great.

“What are you eating tonight?”

“I haven’t even opened the fridge to see what’s in there,” I said.

“Then come on over. I’ve got chicken in the oven and there’s too much here for just the two of us.” My mother married Lester Allen when I was fourteen. He was a member of the church that had been so kind to us, never married, and worked as a construction supervisor. When he and my mother began sitting together at church I didn’t think anything of it; but when he started to join us for Sunday lunch at our house I became suspicious and confused. Lester was stocky with a round face and glasses and his pants were always about an inch too short. I never imagined that my mother would find him attractive; I didn’t. But after they began dating I knew why my mother liked Lester. He was good to her. He was helpful and kind and could always make her laugh. He respected her and that respect carried over to Richard and me. Looking back, I don’t know why he would want to marry a woman with one teenager and another teen in the making; I think most men would run away from that sort of commitment, but Lester was different. He never tried to swoop in and pretend he was our father; he knew he wasn’t but he quickly became a father to us, doing everything a dad did and what our own father never had. Richard loved Lester from the beginning. I never realized it, although I’m sure my mother did, but Richard was desperate for a man in his life. Shortly after Les and Mom married, we went to the courthouse and Lester adopted us. Soon after, Richard began calling him Dad. I thought it would sound strange to call Lester that but when I tried it at sixteen it felt comfortable and safe. He’d been Dad ever since.

Although I was tired I drove to Mom and Dad’s house. I hadn’t spent much time with them lately and I knew my absence was concerning them. After the meal I stood to clear the plates. “Does Mark get in tonight?” Mom asked. She knew he didn’t; she just wanted to bring him up to see how he was doing.

“Tomorrow morning,” I said.

“Poor guy. He must be so tired after those overnight flights.”

“He’s used to them,” I said.

Mom pushed all the scraps down the garbage disposal and turned it on. “I found him a back massager today for Christmas,” she said, talking over the grinding of the disposal. “It’s got a long handle so he can get to his lower back.” She used a spatula and held it over her shoulder and down her back to demonstrate. “Do you think he’ll like that?”

I loaded dishes into the dishwasher. “He’ll love it.” There was no point in telling her again that she didn’t have to get us anything; actually that we would prefer that she didn’t. Regardless of what happened, she thought of Mark as a son and wasn’t about to let Christmas roll around without wrapping presents for him.

Mom liked Mark the moment I brought him home from college for Thanksgiving vacation. She had never come out and said anything about the other boys I had dated but I always knew when she didn’t like one of them. “Is he watching cartoons?” she asked one Saturday morning, looking into the living room at my boyfriend who had taken food out of the kitchen and was eating cornflakes on the sofa.

“Yes,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t say anything else.

“I didn’t realize eighteen-year-old men watched cartoons.” That’s all she had to say.

And on a separate occasion she looked at her watch when another boyfriend visited. “It’s already eight-thirty. I’d start the pancakes but I don’t know how much longer he’ll sleep.” When he walked into the kitchen at nine-fifteen with messy hair, a ratty T-shirt and boxer shorts, I saw the look on her face and hoped she wouldn’t say anything. She didn’t.

“Ambition never hurt anyone,” she’d tell me over and over. “You’ll never find a bum with ambition.” That was my mother’s favorite word when I was dating: “bum.” “Don’t marry a bum,” she’d say. I knew she thought my biological father was a bum but she never said it, at least not to me. “Bums are a dime a dozen. They’re easy to find. But there are some good men out there, too. They might be harder to find but they’re out there.”