Obviously. Food, pretty decorations. Lexie Bell was a nice young woman. She deserved to find some nice man and be happy. Not that Stanley would be assisting with that search. Ever again.
He enjoyed the dinner, especially the cookies, little round ones dusted with powdered sugar.
“My wife used to make these,” he said. The memory made him wistful but, surprisingly, not horribly sad.
“My grandma made them. So does my mom. We call them snowball cookies,” Lexie said.
“I hope it snows again,” Brock said. “I want to make another snowman.”
“We might get some more,” Stanley said. The kid would probably need help with that snowman.
“I want to make snowballs, too,” Brock said and popped half a cookie in his mouth.
“Yeah? How come?” Stanley asked.
“So I can have a snowball fight,” Brock crowed.
“Be careful what you wish for, kid. Getting hit in the face with a snowball hurts.”
“Who would throw a snowball in someone’s face?” Lexie said, shocked.
“Your brother,” Stanley said, remembering.
Brock frowned at that. “I don’t want a brother.”
“At the rate we’re going you won’t have to worry,” Lexie muttered, then blushed.
“Brothers are okay,” Stanley said.
“They are?”
“Sure. You always have somebody to play with right there with you in the house,” Stanley told him.
“Then, I do want a brother. Maybe I’ll ask Santa for a brother.”
Stupid custom, thought Stanley.
“I think Santa specializes in toys,” Lexie told her son.
“I like toys, too. When are we going to see Santa, Mommy?”
“Soon,” Lexie said.
“Will you take us to see Santa, Grandpa Stanley?” Brock asked.
Stanley gave a snort. “There’s no such thing.”
Silence fell over the room, the kind of silence you heard right before a big storm broke.
Uh-oh. What had he just said?
The one thing you should never, never say to a kid, that was what. What had he been thinking? The truth was, he hadn’t. He’d been feeling at home and so comfortable he’d let his guard down.
Lexie looked at him in shock. Brock blinked. Then blinked again. Then the storm broke.
20
The kid burst into noisy tears and pushed away from the table so hard it knocked over his half-melted ice cream, sending a pink puddle spreading across the tabletop. Then he bolted.
“Uh, I’ll get that,” Stanley said, reaching for a napkin.
“Don’t bother,” Lexie said stiffly. “I’ll take care of it later. After...”
After she first cleaned up the mess Stanley had made. He scratched the back of his head, suddenly at a loss for how to explain what he’d just done.
“Mr. Mann, how could you?” she scolded, looking at him like he’d just committed a murder.
Maybe, in a way, he had.
“I guess I shouldn’t have said anything.” There was a bright remark.
“I guess not,” she snapped. “Children have to grow up so quickly these days. Brock’s going to have enough hard truths to hear later. He shouldn’t have to...” Her lower lip began to wobble.
Great. Now she was going to cry, too.
“It’s just as well,” Stanley said. “After all, it’s true.”
Not the right thing to say. “Maybe you should go home now. I’ll probably be busy with Brock for quite a while,” she said with a Frosty the Snowman accent.
An arctic chill invaded the room. Warm welcome had turned into winter cold shoulder. Like Stanley had meant to make her kid cry, for crying out loud.
The ice cream was dripping onto the carpet now, but Lexie didn’t notice. She turned her back on him and rushed up the stairs after her son. The party was over.
Just as well. He’d had enough drama with these two. He grabbed his coat and marched out the door.
* * *
Lexie raced up the stairs after her son, steaming as she went. Where did Stanley Mann get off, telling her child there was no such thing as Santa! How could he have been so thoughtless and mean?
She found her son sprawled across his bed, his face buried in his pillow, sobbing his heart out. She wanted to cry, too. He was just a little boy. To take the joy of Santa away from him had been wrong. Sick and wrong.
Brock was a human earthquake, his little body heaving and rolling with sobs. What could she say to her son to take away the sting of harsh reality? She laid a hand on his back, and he rolled over and looked at her, tears racing down his cheeks, his face red from crying.
“There has to be a Santa,” he wailed and threw himself into her arms.
Her poor little boy. He so hadn’t been ready for this.
She kissed the top of his head and stroked his hair and searched her mind for the right words.
“Grandpa Stanley doesn’t have it quite right,” she said. “There really was a real Santa once.”
Brock pulled away enough to look up at her half doubtful, half hopeful. “There was?”
“His name was Nicholas. He was a bishop.”
Brock’s brows pulled together, and he looked at her in confusion. “What’s a bishop?”
“Like a minister,” she improvised. “He was a very kind man, and he loved to help people who didn’t have any money. He especially liked to help children and would leave little gifts for them.”
“Like Santa?” Brock asked, hope returning.
“Like Santa. People called him Saint Nicholas. You could say he was the first Santa.”
Now came the smile. Brock sat back on his knees and began to bounce excitedly, turning the bed into a trampoline. “There is a Santa!”
Her son was so anxious to be a believer. She should let him.
But then, if he learned the truth yet again, maybe from some older child on the playground or one of her cousin’s children, he’d be doubly disillusioned. “We did get our idea of Santa from him, but Santa is pretend, sweetie. He’s a fun friend mommies invent so their little boys can have a special present under the tree. He’s a game you and I play so I can find extra ways to do nice things for you.”
“But I saw Santa last year. I asked him for Legos.”
“And he told me,” Lexie said. Okay, stretching the truth a little, but a woman had to do what a woman had to do. “He was pretending, too, all so you could have a happy Christmas Day.”
Brock frowned, processing this.
She pulled him close and put an arm around him. “Santa is something fun mommies and daddies have been doing for a long time. Grandma and Grandpa played the Santa game with me, and their mommy and daddy played the Santa game with them. Someday, when you’re grown up and have children you’ll play the Santa game with them, and they’ll have fun finding that special present under the tree just like you do.”
Her son didn’t say anything, just sat there, still processing this huge turn of events.
“It is fun to pretend, isn’t it?” she prompted.
He nodded, slowly. “Will I still get my Christmas stocking?”
The treats for it were already hidden in her closet. “Of course.”
“And the extra present under the tree?”
It was ordered and supposed to ship soon. “Yes. So you see, the only difference is when you go see Santa, you’ll know it’s a game.”
“Can we still go see Santa?”
“Of course we can.”
He smiled. Finally. “Good. Because I want to tell him I want a Junior Handyman tool set.”
“I’m sure you’ll get it,” she said. “Now, how about a bath and a bedtime story?”
He nodded, slid off the bed and started for the bathroom, his earlier miser
y forgotten.
Lexie was finding it harder to let go of her emotions. Seeing her son so upset had been distressing. Thank you, Stanley Mann.
She should never have baked him cookies or invited him to dinner, should never have invited him to Brock’s school program. If she’d known what it would lead to she’d never have accepted so much as one kind gesture from him.
But later, after her son was in bed and she was sponging up the mess on the carpet, she was able to admit that her neighbor wasn’t a monster. Under that gruff exterior beat a kind heart. He wasn’t the Grinch, out to ruin Christmas. He was simply a grumpy, lonely old man who needed love.
Which he was more than welcome to look for somewhere else. He wasn’t all bad, but he was bad enough, and they really didn’t need him in their lives, spreading negativity over everything.
She shouldn’t have rushed so quickly to attach herself and her son to him. She certainly didn’t do that with men her own age. Maybe with Stanley she’d figured since he was older he was harmless. Ha!
There had been plenty of red flags—his standoffishness, his sour attitude and rare smiles. She’d been so excited to befriend her neighbor, so desperate for a male figure in her son’s life, she’d ignored those red flags.
Well, she was done with that. From now on she was going to ignore Stanley Mann.
* * *
Enough was enough. Lexie Bell the pest could live her life, and Stanley would live his. He’d known all along it would be a dumb idea to get involved with those two, and he’d been right. Well, he’d had enough of them. And he’d had enough of cookies and fudge and cheese bread. And stringing lights and decorating trees. And Christmas.
Oh, no. What was that he heard? Voices. He went to the living-room window and twitched the curtain.
Carolers were coming down the street. He turned off all the lights and retreated to his recliner. They continued to come closer, approaching like a freight train. “Fa-la-la-la-la.”
Oh, cut it out.
Soon he could tell they were on the sidewalk right in front of his house. He could hear them out there, gustily singing that it was the season to be jolly. Bonnie heard them, too, and began to bark.
“Stop that,” he commanded. “Don’t encourage them.”
This was no season of joy. He was now more miserable than ever.
Santa. Ugh. Santa was a crock, and Christmas was nothing but a stupid holiday full of commercialism and fat guys who pretended they could bring you what you wanted. Well, he wanted his old life back, and neither Santa nor anybody else was going to make that happen. He went in search of ice cream.
The ice cream didn’t make him feel any better. Neither did his encounter with Carol that night. Bad enough that the kid was upset and that Lexie Bell wanted to strangle him with a string of Christmas lights, but Carol had to weigh in as well.
“Stanley, what on earth were you thinking?” she scolded. Tonight she was dressed like an old-time schoolmarm. She held a ruler and was slapping it on the palm of her hand. He half expected her to whack him with it.
“I don’t know.” But he did. He’d been remembering his own disappointment on learning there was no Santa. Santa was a crock. “Parents shouldn’t lie to their kids,” he muttered.
“It’s pretending, Stanley. It’s no different than a child having an imaginary friend.”
“I never had an imaginary friend,” he argued.
“Don’t be obtuse. You shouldn’t have said what you said, and you know it.”
“It just slipped out. Okay?” he said defensively.
“You need to make it up to that girl.”
“Carol,” he said sternly. “I’m done. She as much as kicked me out. What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to think of something. That’s what I want you to do.”
“I’m tired of thinking. I’m just plain tired.”
“Well, then, I’ll leave you to get some rest,” she said in a huff.
And with that she was gone without leaving behind so much as a hint of peppermint.
After she left he tossed and turned, and once he finally made it into what should have been a restful sleep, he found himself far from resting. He was having Christmas dinner with Ebenezer Scrooge. The only other dinner guest was the Grinch. The scarred, old wooden table they sat at had nothing but a soup tureen, cracked bowls, and three spoons. No tablecloth, no pinecone centerpiece, no candles.
“You’re one of us now,” said Ebenezer. He pointed to the tureen. “Have some gruel.”
“Gruel for Christmas dinner?” Stanley protested.
“You expected me to roll out the red carpet?” sneered Scrooge, and the Grinch laughed.
The room was cold, and the fireplace in the corner only a blackened mouth.
“Can’t you light a fire?” Stanley begged. “It’s cold in here.”
“Coal costs money. Why should I spend money on the likes of you?” his host demanded.
“You’re supposed to be a changed man,” Stanley protested. “A man who keeps Christmas well.”
“Don’t believe everything you read,” said Scrooge.
Stanley looked to the Grinch for confirmation.
He merely shrugged. “People never really change, you know.”
“They can,” Stanley insisted. “You two are a couple of downers. I’m not like you, and I don’t like you. I’m leaving.”
That made them both laugh. The Grinch laughed so hard he fell off his chair.
Stanley pushed away from the table and marched across the room, which, he suddenly realized, looked mysteriously like a dungeon. The door was thick and heavy with a barred window that looked out on nothing but darkness. He grabbed the metal handle and pulled, but it refused to budge.
“We’re locked in,” Scrooge informed him. “Locked in by our own bad attitudes.”
Stanley gave another tug. The door still wouldn’t budge. He ran to the one window in the room. It was barred.
He grabbed the bars and rattled them, crying, “I want out! Let me out!”
He was still crying “Let me out!” when he woke up.
21
On Friday the last of the afternoon light shone on a truck with a U-Haul trailer attached pulling into the driveway of the house across the street from Lexie’s. It was followed by a car.
“Look, Mommy!” Brock cried. “Kids!”
Lexie joined him at the living-room window and looked out. Sure enough, two little girls had jumped out of the truck and were running across the yard to the front door where a tall, lean man with brown hair and glasses stood, opening it. A woman got out of the car and followed them. The girls looked somewhere around Brock’s age, and the adults looked to be in maybe their late thirties or early forties.
New neighbors! Maybe they were actually nice. One could hope.
“Can I go over and play?” Brock asked.
“May I go over and play?”
“May I?”
“Let’s give them a chance to unpack first,” Lexie said.
Brock’s pout showed what he thought of that idea.
“I tell you what, though. We can make some cupcakes to welcome them to the neighborhood and take them over later. How does that sound?”
“Yes!” he hooted and raced for the kitchen.
Yes! Lexie thought. Oh, please let these people be normal.
After the requisite handwashing, she put her son to work helping with the baking. The thought occurred that, nice as it was to have him enjoying helping her in the kitchen, it would be equally nice if he had a father with whom he could share these kinds of bonding moments. Or a grandpa.
The image of her son and Stanley Mann standing by the snowman they’d made popped into her mind. She erased it with the memory of Stanley Mann making her son cry when he killed Santa. There would be time for male bonding lat
er. With someone else.
Brock was getting very good at cracking eggs into a bowl (and then fishing out the eggshells) and enjoyed using the mixer under her close supervision. She’d gotten giant marshmallows and chocolate chips to make snowmen to top the cupcakes and Hershey’s Kisses for their hats. The project kept Brock occupied for a good couple of hours. After dinner they had to decorate a little box to put the cupcakes in, and that took more time. But then Brock’s patience was at an end, and he was begging to go meet the neighbors.
Lexie hoped they’d given the newcomers sufficient time to at least catch their breath. She also hoped they’d appreciate getting a treat and a welcome to the neighborhood. She knew she would have appreciated such a gesture when she’d moved in.
They bundled up and crossed the street to the house that had stood empty for so long, Brock carrying his box decorated with red construction paper and cut-out white snowflakes as carefully as if he were a Wise Man bearing a gift for the Christ Child. The day was clear and the ground dry, which made walking so much nicer. Like her house, this one had a long front porch. There was something about a front porch that was so welcoming. Maybe the neighbors, themselves, would be as well.
As they approached the front door she could hear children laughing inside. Laughter was always a good sign. It meant the people were happy.
There was never any laughter coming from Stanley Mann’s house.
She shoved away the thought. That was his own fault.
Lexie rang the doorbell and heard high-pitched voices accompanied by a stampede of feet.
“I’ll get it!”
“No, I will! Daddy, Arielle’s shoving!”
The two little girls they’d seen earlier opened the door, each fighting for the best hold on the doorknob. They both had ponytails and big eyes and looked like Disney princesses in the making. Each stared curiously at Lexie.
“Who are you?” asked the smaller of the two girls.
Brock said, “I’m Brock. We brought snowman cupcakes.” He held out the box.
The taller one was quick to take it. “Thank you.”
They’d been taught manners. That was a good sign.
A Little Christmas Spirit Page 21
