Season's Greetings (2 page)

“Yeah. I’ll go when I get done here. Can you call me around four?” It would be a little bit better if I could talk to him about the choices, maybe send a photo of the final product.

“Ummm. I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.”

So I probably wouldn’t even get that solace. “Okay. Call if you can. I have to go. Work awaits.”

I hid in the stacks all day, shelving cart after cart of books, losing myself in the scent of leather and old paper. It beat working the counter where the aroma of pine from the decorative evergreen boughs—genuine, despite fire codes—and the peppermint of the candy dish just screamed Christmas. It beat smiling cheerfully and wishing sleep deprived young adults a happy holiday—because it was a state funded school and Merry Christmas was just too politically incorrect.

In the end, I didn’t bother with the measuring tape or the cocoa, just pointed my ‘67 Mustang straight for the nearest tree lot. Go in, pick a tree, go home, and set it up so the branches could drop. I could do this. I didn’t need Cris holding my hand to choose a tree.

My confidence in my ability to function as a rational adult was shaken when my first step on the tree lot brought tears to my eyes and bitterness to my heart. The scent of the pine trees made me nauseous, and the laughter of the kids running about chasing each other from Santa’s sleigh to the giant snowman cut-out made me weepy. I’d never been much of a people person, but I’d never felt such a need for companionship either. Being on the tree lot without Cris, I was lonely. Overwhelmingly so.

I didn’t have the heart to look around. Cris would have played tag with those kids. He would have coaxed me into the silly decorated sleigh and charmed some passing stranger into taking our picture.

I grabbed the first tree I found that seemed less than six feet tall and more than four. The tree needed to be tall enough to set on the low table in front of the street-side window of my living room. Everything else, I could work around. So what if the ornaments didn’t line up perfectly because the branches weren’t symmetrical?

I wouldn’t say I wound up with a Charlie Brown tree, but the fact that the tree wasn’t perfect soothed me a bit. The fact that it cost about half what we normally paid shocked me. Who knew? Somehow I had always assumed a tree for under a hundred bucks was impossible to find. I dropped the change into a bell-ringing Santa’s bucket, feeling a bit better about both myself and my tree.

Funny how that works; I hadn’t bought a cheaper tree intentionally to donate the rest of what I would have spent to any worthy cause. It just happened. And I felt the tiniest bit lighter, happier, afterward.

I helped the two lot workers in red and black flannel shirts fix the tree to the roof of my car by staying the hell out of their way and not protesting about my paint job more than twice while they secured the tree with tarp and bungee cords that I provided. Cris would have been all over that, double checking and testing the quality of the knots.

On impulse, I headed back over to the sleigh, where a weary looking young mom was struggling to get two rambunctious kids to sit still long enough so she could snap a picture.

“I’ll take the picture if you want to get in there with them,” I offered a bit awkwardly. Hopefully she wouldn’t think I was some kind of stalking perv.

“Would you?” She seemed relieved and excited, maybe the rest of the world wasn’t as paranoid and leery as I.

“Sure, if you’ll snap a picture of me for my boyfriend after.” Cris would get his annual photo of me in the Christmas sleigh after all.

She held out her gloved hand. “I’m Debbie Adams. The mischievous angels”—she grimaced wryly as I awkwardly took her hand—”are Chad and Brad.”

“Ben Cavelli. Twins, huh?” I accepted her camera as she seated herself between the two boys.

With their mom between them, the two demons turned into angels, smiling and snuggling into their mom’s down coat, looking up at her with laughing blue eyes. I must have taken half dozen candid shots before mom got the kids positioned the way she wanted them.

Five minutes, that was all the stillness the little ones could take, but I did snap the pic the now smiling mom wanted.

I handed her my phone, showed her how to take a picture with it, and brushed off her thanks. Instead of climbing into the seat of the sleigh though, I leaned back against the painted side of the crimson vehicle and whipped off my dark glasses. I would send the picture, along with one of the tree, to Cris before I went to bed tonight. I wouldn’t be looking my best, not without eyeliner and lip gloss, but I’d be genuinely smiling.

Sitting in my car, I laughed to see that the young mother had also taken a few candid shots…one of my ass in the tight denim jeans that was absolutely making the send-to-Cris cut.

Chapter Two

My parents and siblings knew, of course, that Cris wasn’t coming home as scheduled. The six messages on my phone by the time I got home made it perfectly clear they had decided to make sure I didn’t have time to mourn his absence.

I wrestled the tree into the house and brought the tree stand in from the garden shed. I could call my family as I decorated, then send pictures of the tree and the tree lot to Cris before I went to bed.

My family wasn’t that patient. I was cursing the tree stand and on the verge of cursing Cris’s golden opportunity when the doorbell rang. Flinging the wrench and screwdriver aside, I lurched to my feet and stomped petulantly to the door. The murmur of voices on the other side was indistinguishable, but it sounded like a lot of people.

It was. Mom and Dad stood at the head of a whole crowd of family—my sister and her husband, their two kids, my younger brother Abe, and his friend Trey who practically lived at my parents’ house. Everyone held some offering of food, and my mom held a wrapped package.

My stomach rumbled at the delicious odors wafting from the food dishes, and I stepped back to allow them all entry. The teens headed to the kitchen to grab sodas, the adults to the dining room. My mom grabbed my hand and held me in place as I moved to follow. I looked down into sympathetic green eyes.

“How are you doing, Ben honey?”

Tears gathered at her concern, but I brushed them away. Whether Cris was here or not, my family loved me. I could always count on them. Unlike a certain six foot golden-skinned blond charmer who was noticeably absent.

“I’m fine, Mom. Starving though,” I hinted, dodging toward the dining room again.

“You boys, you’ve been starving since you turned five. Before that you wouldn’t eat a darn thing but chicken nuggets dipped in mayonnaise. I just have to give you this, and then you can eat.” She placed the wrapped box reverently in my hands.

I looked at the cheerful snowman paper in surprise. “What is it?”

“I don’t know. Cris sent it FedEx to the house with express instructions to bring it over here tonight.”

Cris did?
I blinked rapidly but a tear made its way from the corner of my eye, leaving a hot track down my cheek. “Thanks, Mom.” Torn, I glanced to the dining room where laughter and the clink of silverware and china mingled.

“You’re supposed to open it now,” Mom urged. “Dinner will be here when you get done.”

She left me in the hallway with my package and a cloud of White Diamonds, feeling wishy-washy and on the verge of a meltdown. Cris was thinking about me. I tugged the sparkly white ribbon wrapped around the gift. Cris must have either paid someone to do the wrapping or spent hours on it.

Oh, he never did anything sloppy, but the wrapping of gifts was usually my department. Cris would neatly wrap something in red or green paper, stick a contrasting bow on it, and call it good.

The paper fell away to reveal a carved oak box. I knew this box. It was Cris’s father’s work. He’d retired years ago and set up a shop in his garage. There he managed to avoid getting under his wife’s feet by woodworking. He built bookshelves and boxes, turned pens and candlesticks. This box had all the hallmarks of Doug Martin’s woodshop. Quality wood, meticulous attention to detail.

On the box lid was carved an ornate sprig of mistletoe inlaid with mother of pearl berries and some kind of green enamel for the leaves. Underneath in scrolling script, it said Christmas 2011.

I lifted the lid of the box to find, nested on a bed of black velvet, a glass apple ornament that looked to be from the same era as my grandmother’s birds. The tears I’d managed to stave off flowed unheeded as I touched the ornament with a trembling finger.

Strong fingers curled around my shoulder. “Everything all right, Son?”

I blinked back the tears, wiped my cheeks on the sleeve of my shirt. “Yeah, Dad. Fine.”

“Then come on and eat. Everyone’s waiting for you.” I followed him into the room, laughing a bit to see that he’d chosen the seat at the metaphoric head of the round table for himself. Tradition. It was a beautiful thing.

“Need some help getting the tree up?” My sister Becky asked.

“I can handle it,” I asserted, spooning fragrant jasmine rice onto my plate.

“Oh, let us help.” My mom and dad spoke at the same time. It was just an excuse not to leave right after dinner. I gave in gracefully. An extra pair or three of hands might help in getting that tree in the stand.

“Can we decorate it today?” Sherri chimed in.

Just turned thirteen, she was the youngest member of the family, my sister’s youngest child, and much indulged.

“Don’t be a doofus.” Her brother Ryan, two years older and proud of it, snapped. “The branches have to drop before you decorate it.”

Sherri’s innocent question sparked a debate over the merits of setting up the tree and letting it sit overnight before decorating versus decorating immediately after standing. The family fell in predictable lines, with Ryan leading the charge to prove how wrong his sibling was to even suggest it.

Finally, I couldn’t stand the disappointment on her face any longer when it looked like the practical wait for the branches to fall crowd was going to win. “I think we can do it tonight.”

Besides, decorating the tree would keep company in the house a while longer. “We can set it up, then do dishes, bake some brownies, play some video games, and then decorate.” A few hours in between would have to do.

Mom beamed her approval at me across the table, and Sherri glowed with happiness. Everyone else accepted the decree as though humoring me were more important than being right.

We ate chicken curry and beef satay, talked about the weather, the kids, and everything except the holidays. It was weird, but nice. I knew they wanted to avoid the subject of Cris’s absence.

After dinner, Mom and Becky ejected me from the kitchen so they could do the dishes. I trailed after my dad and Becky’s husband, Jake, into the living room where my not quite Charlie Brown tree rested against the front window in an awkward sprawl.

My dad and Jake immediately fell to muttering about the tools available and grunting over the best way to do this. I slid onto the couch and put my feet on the coffee table, watching, smiling. The melancholy was fading and when Sherri turned on the CD player, the joyful notes of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” filled the room and my heart.

I snapped a few quick pictures with my camera then waved Trey and Abe and my nephew Ryan ahead of me as I headed down the hall to the unused back bedroom. It had become a catch-all storage room. The red and green Rubbermaid Christmas ornament storage boxes were easily identified, and we carried them into the living room to discover that between Jake and my dad, they had managed to get the tree steady and upright in its stand.

Together we wrangled the tree into position atop the table in front of the window, and I searched through the first box for the red plaid tree skirt my mother had given me my first Christmas in the house. Tree skirt in place, I stepped back to survey my work. My family stared at the tree in disbelief. Jake wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “It’s not so bad,” he said dubiously.

Abe and Trey snickered in the background and my mom shushed them loudly. I sighed. “Well, how about those brownies? Who’s going to bake with me?”

Jake and I headed to the kitchen while my mom and sister trailed behind. The rest of them settled on the sofa and turned on the TV.

“
The Grinch
!
The Grinch
is on,” Abe called after us excitedly.

“Record it! We can watch it together in a few minutes.” I opened the cupboard and started pulling out baking chocolate and flour.

“You don’t have a box mix?” Jake teased. He knew better. I learned to cook in the kitchen at my mom’s side. Boxed mixes never made their way to my shelves any more than they did hers.
Why bother, when it’s just as fast and easy to mix it yourself?

“You’re kidding, right?” I asked, swiping at his head with the carton of eggs.

My mom and sister took out the blender and dug through my freezer. While Jake and I chatted and measured ingredients for the brownies, they whipped up a batch of phony eggnog. Phony meaning no alcohol in honor of the underaged among us.

“Ben, are you coming over in the morning to make cookies with me?” Another family tradition. This one came with its own boatload of stress. I’d be expected to bake dozens and dozens of cookies, assemble them into gift boxes, and assist in distributing them to the grateful recipients.