Tending Roses (25 page)

I grimaced, knowing Aunt Jeane wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“Please, Kate,” she urged. “You know he didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. He’s just . . . hopelessly insensitive. Just try to be a little thicker-skinned.”

Sighing, I lowered my face into my hand and rubbed my eyes. “All right, but only for you, Aunt Jeane.”

“Good girl.” She patted my shoulder. “Think of it as a chance to finish your Christmas shopping.” She slipped four one hundred dollar bills into my hand as if I were a teenager going on a date.

“Buy some things and let them be from Santa Claus,” she whispered.

“Aunt Jeane,” I admonished, handing the money back to her. “I don’t need you to give me money.” Which wasn’t exactly true. The money wire still hadn’t come in, and Ben and I had only managed to come up with two hundred dollars of mad money. It wasn’t much to buy Christmas presents for everyone.

Aunt Jeane pressed the money into my jacket pocket and stared me down with Grandma’s blue eyes. “I didn’t say you needed money. I just asked if you would do some shopping for me . . . er, Santa Claus.”

“All right,” I said, knowing that no one but she and I would ever know the identity of Santa’s banker. “Thanks, Aunt Jeane.”

“Santa Claus.” She winked, then shooed me out the door. “Hurry up. The day’s wasting. Take all the time you want. Don’t worry about Joshua. Ben just saw an ad in the paper for a live manger scene at Pearly’s Pecan Farm, and he wants to take Joshua there to see the animals. I think Uncle Robert, Grandma, and I will go along. I haven’t been out to Pearly’s in years.”

I paused in the doorway, wanting to delay the inevitable. “I thought Ben had work to do today,” I protested. I couldn’t imagine my father and me together for so many hours without Joshua to provide an area of neutrality. “I could take Josh with me.”

As usual, she knew what I was up to, and she shook her head resolutely. “Oh, no. Ben wants some daddy time with Josh, and your father needs help with his Christmas shopping. Works out perfectly for everyone.” She shooed me toward the door. “Go on now. Have a nice day shopping.”

So I did. I grudgingly asked my father if he was ready to go Christmas shopping. He agreed pleasantly, as if he had no idea he’d put me in a rotten mood a few minutes before.

He got his coat and we walked to the car in a strange sort of silence.

Watching him from the corner of my eye as he turned the car down the driveway, I was struck by how strange it felt to be alone in the car with him. Searching my memory, I could not recall a time when just the two of us had gone somewhere together.

We drove without speaking until we were well out of Hindsville and almost halfway to Springfield.

“It’s a nice day,” he said finally.

“Very,” I agreed. “Grandma is still sure there’s a snowstorm coming for Christmas.”

He chuckled. “She’ll probably get her way about it. You know your Grandma doesn’t take no for an answer. She used to drive me out of my mind when I was young. I couldn’t wait to grow up and get out from under her thumb. I wanted to get away from that farm so bad I could taste it.”

I looked at him, not knowing what to say. It was hard to imagine him ever young, or under anyone’s thumb, or living on the farm for that matter. “You’re not the farming type, Dad,” I said finally.

Chewing his lip thoughtfully, he gazed at the winter-browned Ozarks. “Actually, I enjoyed the farming to some degree. I was good at tinkering with the tractors and machinery. It was all the rest of it I could not stand—having my mother and father over my shoulder all the time, working and never having anything, never doing anything different. Everything on the farm seemed so small and unimportant. It seemed as though, if I stayed there, my life would be a waste, and then I’d wake up old. I thought if I got away, got an education and an important job, my life would mean something.”

“Well, I guess you were right,” I said bitterly, wondering why his children didn’t figure into the equation of life’s meaning. I wondered if we were one of those small, unimportant things.

He went on as if he hadn’t heard me. “But you see, Kate, that was why I didn’t want you and Ben to come to the farm. I knew Grandma would work her emotional blackmail on you. She is an expert at loading on the family guilt.” He glanced at me, then quickly focused on the road, sensing another fight brewing. “It wasn’t my intention to hurt your feelings. I just wanted to prevent the two of you from getting tied up in all of this. It isn’t your responsibility. Staying here will be a step backward financially for you and ultimately an unhappy experience for you. Both of you have too much going for you to become tied up in Grandma’s web.”

His praise only poured salt in my wounds, and I turned to him with my eyes stinging. “In the first place, Grandma Rose isn’t a responsibility—she’s a person. Her feelings should be considered, not just what is convenient for everyone else. I’m sure Aunt Jeane has told you by now that Ben and I are thinking of staying here for a while longer. If we replace some of the appliances and put in some timers and safety devices, I think she’ll be able to stay on her own again when we have to leave.”

He shook his head, cutting a hard look in my direction.

I rushed on before he could give me all the reasons why that was a bad idea. “Staying here may not be right for you, or Karen, or Aunt Jeane, or anybody else, but maybe it’s right for us, and maybe it’s right for Grandma, and maybe it’s right for Joshua. He’s still so little. I want us to have some time with him, and I want Grandma to have time to fully recover from her stroke.”

“Well, that’s commendable.” His voice was flat and emotionless. “But what happens when you have to go back to the real world?”

“I don’t know. We can deal with that when the time comes.”

“Grandma will still be in the same situation she is in now, and the same decisions will have to be made.” He said it as if it didn’t bother him at all, as if we were talking about getting rid of a used car.

“Maybe not. Maybe she will be better by then.”

“It isn’t likely, Kate.” I could feel him looking at me, but I stared out the window. “Grandma is going downhill, and we all know it. She could have another stroke at any time. You have to face that fact.”

“No, I don’t.” I crossed my arms over my chest, glaring at him. “Right now, she is fine and she’s happy at the farm. You can’t predict the future and neither can Aunt Jeane. Maybe things will work out conveniently for you, and three or four months from now, Grandma won’t be around for you to worry about. Then we’ll all go back to doing what we did before.” It was the worst, the cruelest thing I could say. I wondered what it was about my father that turned me into someone I didn’t recognize and didn’t like.

He jerked his head back, looking shocked, then stared at the road ahead and clamped his lips into a tight, pale line, ending the conversation.

After that, we stuck to safer subjects, such as tree species and rock formations, Christmas decorations and Joshua’s wish list. Dad made me laugh with a story about the origin of the Red Rider BB gun Christmas ornament, and how the gun and hatchet that came with it had been confiscated the next spring when he snapped Grandma’s clothesline, sending the laundry into the mud where the pack of farm dogs used it for tug-of-war. I could picture Grandma standing over the wringer washer afterward, issuing instructions as my father scrubbed and bleached each item.

And so the day went by, not unpleasant, but not a point of epiphany in our relationship either. Both of us chose to leave the conversation about Grandma unfinished, but I knew the final discussion would come when Karen arrived and the whole family sat down together. So far, no one seemed to be on my side . . . except Grandma. And she didn’t get a vote.

Aunt Jeane probed me for information about the day when we were in the kitchen together fixing supper that night.

“We got the shopping done,” I told her. “Not much else.” I didn’t tell her we had talked about Grandma. I didn’t want to give her any more ammunition.

“That’s good,” she said, loath to admit that she had hoped for more of a reconciliation between me and my father. Maybe she had been hoping he would sway me to their position about Grandma. “You didn’t get time to talk?”

I pretended to concentrate on chopping an onion—convenient because it gave me an excuse to cry. “Not much. He told me how much he hated life on the farm, and he couldn’t believe I liked it. I got aggravated. That was pretty much it. After that, we talked about trees.”

Aunt Jeane bent over the stew pot, gazing in as if she were reading tea leaves. “Well, you have to understand. Your dad had a lot to prove when he left the farm. He was the only son, and Grandpa planned on his taking over the farm someday. When he went away to study medicine and then moved to Boston to live, Grandpa was pretty bitter. They never had gotten along too well, and that just made things worse.”

I thought about it for a minute, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. It was hard to picture my father ever needing to prove himself. “I think Dad and I understand each other about as well as we’re ever going to.”

Aunt Jeane waited for the pot to settle, then skimmed the shimmering beads of oil from the top. “Well, that would be a shame.” She looked sideways at me. “For both of you.”

The door burst open, and we glanced up in time to see Grandma shuffle into the kitchen, towing an ancient Radio Flyer wagon stacked high with wrapped Christmas gifts.

She paused suspiciously, as if she knew she had walked in on an interesting conversation and was hoping it would start up again. “Don’t let me bother you,” she said. “As you two were doing the cooking, I thought I would get my presents wrapped and brought in before Karen gets here tomorrow.” She looked from me to Aunt Jeane, then shrugged, giving up on the prospect of finding out any secrets. “We should get busy with making the room ready for Karen and James. There will be no time for that with preparing the Christmas meals for the poor tomorrow afternoon at the church. And then on Christmas Eve we must bake the pies, go cut a tree in the pasture, and get it decorated.” She shuffled out of the kitchen with the red wagon squealing behind her like a Christmas goose. “Now, nobody needs to bother with getting any gifts for me,” she called back. “I’m too old. It’s gift enough that everyone will be together for Christmas.”

Handing the vegetables to Aunt Jeane, I met her gaze and smiled, reminded of the real reason for this Christmas gathering, and of how important it was. Grandma needed all of us, and if we had nothing else in common, our coming to the farm proved that all of us needed her.

D
ECEMBER twenty-third began in a flurry of activity. Ben and Uncle Robert left for town early to help the Baptist Men’s Group cook turkeys at the church for the Christmas meal deliveries. Grandma, Aunt Jeane, and I prepared pies to take to the church in the afternoon. Dell came to our door early in the morning, carrying one of Grandma Rose’s handmade tree angels that she said needed repair. Mostly she just looked bored and lonesome and sad. Far too sad for a nine-year-old girl two days before Christmas. She stood shyly in the corner of our kitchen and told us that her granny had said Santa wasn’t likely to come to their house because Dell was too grown-up for such things.

Grandma Rose scoffed, shaking her head. “Now that is just nonsense.” She wagged a finger at Dell, then reached over and gripped Dell’s hand in hers, giving the girl’s dark fingers a squeeze. “You’re hardly too old for Santa Claus, but with your granny having an attitude like that, Saint Nick probably won’t dare come to your house.” Grandma looked at us and tightened her lips into a determined line. “I’ll wager that he’ll leave your gifts under our tree, and you can come here to get them Christmas morning.”

Dell glanced at Grandma, a glint of hope in her dark eyes, then looked at Aunt Jeane and me for confirmation. We nodded, hoping Grandma and Santa Claus had something in mind.

Grandma smiled and shooed Dell from the room. “I hear the baby waking in his swing there in the living room,” she told the girl. “Why don’t you go and play with him while we finish baking? Remember, we’ll be going to the church later to help fix Christmas dinners for . . .” She paused, for once thinking ahead of her tongue, and finally finished tactfully, “For people who haven’t time to cook.”

“Um-hum. I remember.” Dell stopped halfway out the door and glanced at me, looking much happier than she had when she’d arrived. “I can watch Joshee in the nursery at church.”

“That would be great,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anyone he would rather play with.”

She ducked her dark head and hurried from the room, just a hint of a smile showing beneath the curtain of hair.

The three of us paused to listen until we heard Dell talking to Joshua in the living room.

Grandma huffed an irritated puff of air and turned back to chopping apples, her lips a tight, unsmiling line. “Where is Jackie, anyway? I thought he was watching the baby.”

“No, Mother.” Aunt Jeane rolled her eyes. “Don’t you remember? He came through here earlier and said he was going for a walk outdoors. The baby has been sleeping all morning anyway. He’s exhausted from all that fun he had with his daddy at Pearly’s Pecan Farm. I’ll tell you, Kate, you should have seen Ben and Josh feeding the goats. I’m not sure which one of them had more fun.”

“I’m glad they got to go,” I said, wishing I had been with them rather than shopping with my father. “Ben said Josh laughed and laughed at the goats.”

“Ben is a brave man.” Aunt Jeane chuckled. “He was almost goat-nibbled to death taking Joshua through the petting zoo.”

Grandma slapped her knife against the cutting board, still murderously dicing the apples, then proceeded to change the subject. “Jackie should have considered that there’s no time for lolling around today, what with all the Christmas meals to prepare. At least he could have looked after the baby.”