“Here, give him to me.” Amy took DJ from my arms. “Can I have a kiss?”
DJ licked her nose. Jo snickered.
“Doggy kiss!” Daisy said.
Amy turned bewildered blue eyes to me.
“John gave us a dog for Christmas,” I explained. “Lady.”
“Puppy,” DJ said.
I smiled. “Not exactly a puppy. She’s a golden-collie mix.”
“She sounds beautiful,” Amy said.
“And smart,” Jo said from her perch on the windowsill. “Which is more important.”
“The vet thinks she’s about four years old. I figured an adult dog would be less trouble for Meg,” John said.
Jo snorted. “Yeah, because it’s so much easier to scoop the poops of an animal the size of a small pony.”
I coughed to cover my laugh. “I’ll have lots of help.”
“Where did you find her?” Beth asked, beaming approval as John told the story.
Our mother smiled. “Rescuing the homeless.”
“Not exactly,” our father said dryly from the recliner.
Presents heaped the hospital tray and the foot of the bed. I’d bought our joint gift to Momma, a silk scarf she’d admire and tuck away as too good for everyday wear. Jo had picked out Dad’s present, a gloomy-looking book called Aftermath about the war in Iraq. We exchanged our gifts to one another in order of age: scented soaps from me, notebooks with funny sayings from Jo, fuzzy socks from Beth.
Amy’s gifts were different. She’d made them herself, with unerring taste and her almost desperate desire to please, stitched from leather and canvas with bright colors and bold graphics. A folder for Beth’s music with a cubist guitar. A scribbling rat on a padded laptop case for Jo. A square-patterned tote that didn’t look anything like a diaper bag for me.
“These are beautiful, Amy,” our mother said, stroking the stitching on my bag. “You’ve learned so much in Paris.”
“It’s good to see you use your talent for others,” our father said. Even compliments were teaching moments for Dad.
Jo regarded her present, a funny expression on her face.
“I’m sorry I puked on your laptop,” Amy said.
Oh no.
Beth’s eyes widened in sympathy. “She threw up on your laptop?”
“It’s fine,” Jo said.
“It was an accident,” Amy said.
Jo wrapped her ponytail around her hand, securing it in a bun with one vicious stab. “There are no accidents, according to Freud.”
“Picasso,” Amy said in a small voice.
“What?”
“Freud didn’t say that. It was Picasso.”
I hid a smile. Jo sometimes forgot our baby sister was an artist, as ambitious, as talented in her own way as Jo. Amy disguised her determination beneath a bright, shallow surface, but the two were more alike than either wanted to admit.
“Ash, will you read to us now?” our mother suggested. Smoothing things over, the way she did. The way I did. “Before Beth has to leave for the airport.”
Every year that he was home, as far back as I could remember, our father read the Christmas gospel to us in his deep, beautiful preacher’s voice. The memories washed over me as he told the old, familiar story. The hospital noises faded away, squeaking shoes, beeping monitors, the jabber of the TV in the next room. Jo and Beth stood by the window, their arms around each other. I looked from our mother’s serene face to John cradling Daisy to the fluorescent light gleaming on our son’s head, resting on Amy’s shoulder. I was surrounded by love, a lovely pull at my heart, a tug in my womb.
My father stopped reading.
In the silence, Beth’s voice rose, singing “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” the melody achingly clear as angel song.
I blinked back tears as my sisters joined in. Jo was flat, as usual. John caught my eye and smiled.
Christmas wasn’t perfect this year. It was messy and flawed and human. It was real. It was wonderful.
I sang, my voice blending with my sisters’.
CHAPTER 23
Jo
Dad took Beth to the airport. I swallowed tears as we said good-bye in the hospital parking lot.
“I wish I was staying,” she said, clinging to me. “We barely had any time together at all.”
“Oh, honey.” I squeezed her tight, like a teddy bear. Tried to smile. “You have to go. Your fans are waiting.”
She blushed. “That’s what Colt says.”
“Anyway, you’ll be back before you know it. New Year’s is only a week away. We’ll have a long visit then.”
She looked away, across the parking lot.
“Bethie?”
She took a deep breath. “Colt . . . He asked me to come with him to Nashville after the show closes. He wants to record my song in his studio. But—”
“But that’s wonderful,” I said heartily.
She met my gaze. “It’s a long time to be gone.”
My heart wrenched. “Mom would want you to go. Did you tell her?”
She nodded. “Last night. Will you be okay?”
She was worried about us. About me? I pulled myself together, channeling Momma, determined not to make her leaving harder. “We’ll be fine. I’m so proud of you.” I hugged her again. “Nashville! You have to tell me all about it when you get back. Promise?”
Her thin face broke into a smile. “Promise.”
I waved wildly as Dad’s car pulled away, satisfied that Beth, at least, was on her way to where she belonged. Following her passion.
And Meg was going home with John. She told me, smiling, that she had given him a weekend away at some wrestling competition for Christmas and that he gave her a weekend at the beach. The same weekend, apparently, but she seemed confident they could work it out.
“It’s like ‘The Gift of the Magi,’” I said.
Meg looked blank.
“The short story. By O. Henry?”
“English major.” Meg pointed at me, then tapped her own chest. “Accountant.”
“Right. I just meant . . . Well, I’m glad you guys are happy.”
“Thanks, sweetie.” She kissed me as she took Daisy from me to load her into her car seat. “You want to come over for dinner? You can meet the dog.”
Without my niece, my arms felt empty. I thought of the cheerful chaos of my sister’s house, full of twins and food and noise, and wanted desperately to say yes. But Meg and John had already spent half their Christmas at the hospital. They deserved some family time together, without me hanging around.
“Maybe later,” I said. “I’ll see what Dad wants to do.”
“Okay. I’ll call you.”
More hugs, more waves, and she was gone. Leaving me standing in the parking lot with nowhere to go, except home.
No word from Eric since I’d told him to go away. Not a call, not a text, nothing. Nada. Squat. Not that I expected him to . . . Okay, fine. Maybe I hoped he would wish me Merry Christmas or something.
I could call him. We lived in the modern world, after all. I didn’t have to wait for him to message me. But what good would that do? He wanted me to take down my blog. And I wouldn’t. Anyway, I wasn’t intruding on his Christmas with his sons. His ex-wife.
“I am with you now.” An image of Eric smiling at me across my alcove desk crashed over me like a wave. Eric, naked in my shower. Eric, bounding up the stairs with a bag of Chinese takeout in his hands. For a second it was hard to breathe.
I dug in my pocket for my keys, feeling tired. The drive to the farmhouse seemed suddenly long and lonely.
“Shades of middle school,” Amy said as we got in the pickup.
Right. Not lonely. Amy was with me. Yay.
I flicked on the wipers. It was raining again. “What are you talking about?”
“Gotcha.” I glanced across at the passenger seat. In the spangled light through the windshield, her face was pale. Her eyes looked bruised, as if she hadn’t slept. Concern pricked me. I wasn’t Mom or Meg. Amy and I had never been close. But I was still her big sister. “Listen, I’m the last person to tell you how to live your life,” I began.
“Then don’t,” Amy said.
“But maybe you shouldn’t drink so much.”
Amy sighed. “I don’t, usually. Last night, I was just dealing with some stuff, all right?”
I nodded understandingly. “Mom.”
“Mom and Dad, and you and Trey, and . . . stuff,” she said.
I flushed with guilt. “We should have taken you with us.”
“No. No, I should have let you two go. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Gee, maybe that you didn’t want to be alone on Christmas Eve?”
“Something like that.” She smiled crookedly. “At least I didn’t drown this time.”
A joke.
Amy had changed, I thought. Or maybe I was finally learning to see her, the grown-up Amy, not the image of her I carried in my head. I’d always seen her bids for attention, her focus on appearances, as an irritating character flaw. Spoiled, shallow Amy. But now I saw how hard she really tried to please. Those Christmas gifts, for example. She wasn’t showing off her talent. She’d put real thought and work into our presents, taking the time to create the perfect, practical, individual gift, something each of us could actually use. She was more perceptive than I was. The thought was humbling.
“You really did learn a lot in Paris,” I said.
Amy looked away. “You have no idea.”
We drove past bare trees and brown fields and ditches that never drained. “I was wrong,” I announced.
“Well, duh,” Amy said. A pause. “About what?”
“About you. You’re not Lydia Bennet. You’re Marianne Dashwood.”
“Who?”
“The younger sister in Sense and Sensibility. The emotional one. She makes some dumb decisions, but she always acts with her whole heart.”
“Bet she doesn’t marry Darcy, though.”
“Well, no, since he’s in another book. She marries Colonel Brandon.” Amy still looked blank. “Alan Rickman, in the movie,” I said.
“The old guy?”
“He’s not that old,” I said, oddly defensive.
“Well, not anymore. He’s dead.”
A snort escaped me.
Amy heaved an exaggerated sigh, her eyes sparkling with humor. “It’s not fair. You—your character—gets Colin Firth in a wet white shirt and I get stuck with Professor Snape.”
I grinned. “Yeah, but he’s crazy in love with you. And rich.”
“Richer than Darcy?”
I hesitated.
“Never mind,” Amy said. “I don’t need some selfish, entitled asshole in my life. I’m going to start my own design label and become fabulously wealthy on my own.”
“Now you sound like me,” I said.
“Shoot me now,” Amy said. But she was smiling.
Eric wasn’t an asshole, I thought as I turned up the drive to the farm. He was a proud, private man. A good man. A good boss. Until he fired me. Or I quit. I wasn’t sure anymore. Either way, my working for him was a problem. I didn’t belong on the fringes of his life in New York any more than I belonged on the fringes of Trey’s life in Bunyan.
Where did I belong?
I yanked my hair into a ponytail and went to feed the goats. When I came in from the barn, Amy met me at the door.
“Somebody left this,” she said, handing me a brightly wrapped package. “For you.”
My first thought was that Trey had brought my Christmas present. But the handwriting on the note wasn’t Trey’s. Or the signature.
Sorry I missed you. Eric.
My heart stopped. “He was here?”
“Who?”
“Eric. The guy who brought this.”
“I don’t know. It was at the front door when I came in.”
I clutched the note, my insides swooping and tumbling like a flock of swallows. “He was here, and I missed him.”
“At least he brought you a present,” Amy said. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
I pulled at the wrapping paper, my fingers trembling with some emotion I couldn’t name. Fear? Happiness? Hope?
“It’s just an old cookbook,” Amy said, disappointed.
“It’s Eric’s copy of The French Laundry. Signed by Thomas Keller.” I turned reverently to the title page to show her. There, under the author’s signature, Eric had written another note.
“‘To Jo. Write your story. Eric,’” Amy read aloud. “What does that mean?”
I stroked the message without answering, replaying our conversation in my head. “He kicked me out.” Eric’s voice had been easy, amused, as he spoke of his old boss. “Time to fly on my own, yeah? Cook my own food. Find my own voice.”
Write my own story.
I didn’t know my story. At least, I couldn’t see the ending. But I thought I knew where it began. In a room of my own.
* * *
:
Singers put out Christmas albums. Chefs cook Christmas menus. Writers tell Christmas stories. This one is mine.
HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
by Jo March
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” I grumbled, lying on the rug.
White Christmas was playing on the TV, but this year the scenes of soldiers far from home made my throat ache. It felt weird to be watching the movie without Dad. Everything felt wrong this year.
I raised my head, glancing from the laptop screen—my mother’s, and thank God she kept her passwords in a desk drawer with her checks—out the funny peaked window at the view of fields and trees.
Good. Yes.
I loved having my own space.
Ten-year-old Amy looked up from the coffee table, where she was making something out of the scraps she’d begged from Miss Hannah’s quilting bag. Christmas ornaments, I thought. A mess.
Amy called up the stairs. “I’m going to Meg’s. You want to come?”
“In a minute.”
Or ten. Or twenty. I typed in fits and spurts, by feel, from memory.
“I’m leaving,” Amy shouted.
Christmas dinner, I thought. I should see if Dad was ready to join them. But the story drew me back, drew me in.
“We’re having turkey, too,” I said, clutching the phone, hungering for his attention. His approval.
Momma held up a finger. “One minute left.”
“I love you,” Dad said. “Take care of Momma and your sisters for me.”
I swallowed hard. “I will.”
I hunched over my requisitioned laptop as the light faded. Remembering, fixing, fiddling, deleting.
“We’re getting cut off,” Dad said. “Love you, too, honey. Merry Christmas. God bless you.”
“Merry Christmas!” we all chorused.
The connection cut off. Silence fell, as cold as snow. Beth’s eyes swam with unshed tears. Amy’s face was blotchy.
God bless us, every one, I thought, echoing Tiny Tim.
I stretched my neck. Shook my cramped fingers. Not done. Not done yet.
I put in our presents to Momma, put it all down in bursts of feeling and snatches of recollection, like setting words to music, like hearing my sisters singing in my head. When I was finished, my heart pounded as if I’d completed a four-mile run. A naked run. This was something different, all right. This was me. This was my own story, under my own name. Would anybody like it?
I read the blog over, breathless and exposed.
Before I could chicken out, I took a deep breath. Hit POST.
So quiet.
Against the drumming of my heart, I could hear the patter of rain on the roof and the sound of my father, moving around downstairs. It was dark outside. He must be hungry. Stiffly, I made my way down the attic steps.
Light shone from my parents’ room. There was an open suitcase on their bed.
My brain stuttered. “Dad? What are you doing?”
My father turned from his dresser, T-shirts in hand. I wondered who had folded them for him. “Packing.”
My skin prickled. He didn’t need a suitcase to spend the night in the hospital. “For what?”
“The caregivers’ conference.”
“You’re not still going.” As if my saying so could make it true. “Mom’s in the hospital.”
“She’ll be released to rehab tomorrow.”
Paralyzed, I watched him walk back to the suitcase, trying to reconcile the man methodically stacking underwear with the father of my childhood, the one I’d written letters to, the dad in my story. “Have you told her?”
“She knows.”
“What did she say?”
His mouth compressed. “I don’t believe I have to share the details of our conversation with you.”
Heat stung my cheeks like a slap. But this was my father. The man who had taught me to speak up for myself, to hold true to what I believed. “I don’t need details, Dad,” I said in an even voice. “But an explanation would be nice.”
My father sighed. “Your mother isn’t the only one who requires support, Jo. There are people—veterans who have sacrificed everything for their country, many of them homeless or wounded—who don’t have anyone else to advocate for them. No one to share in their grief and their joy, no one to care for them or their families. I have a duty to be where the suffering is greatest. If you had any kind of calling yourself, you would understand.”
“This isn’t about your high-and-noble calling. And I’m not going to let you make it about me. About my writing. This is about Mom. And she needs you.”
Meg and Jo Page 31
