The Christmas Shoes (Christmas Hope)

by VanLiere, Donna

  Two large elm trees guarded the front of the house, and an oak and a maple stood in the back. Maggie thought they were the most beautiful trees she’d ever seen. All her life, she wanted to live in a home surrounded by enormous shade trees, and now her dream had come true. She began tearing up the earth around the bases of her shade trees and prepared the soil for what would be a circle of tulips or daffodils. She dug up the soil by the tiny front porch and planted creeping phlox by the sidewalk, dianthus around the shrubs, daylilies between the shrubs, shasta daisies and Victoria salvia near the house, and pansies to fill in the rest of the bed with splashes of purples, reds, and yellows. Each afternoon when Jack arrived home, she’d take him and Nathan by the hand and describe what flower she had planted where, and in which month it would bloom.

  When Maggie discovered she was pregnant a second time, Jack’s eyes welled with tears. At such moments, Maggie was humbled by the love she felt for her husband, overwhelmed that God had sent him to her. Maggie had gone back to the bakery part-time, once Nathan started kindergarten, but when the baby came, she would quit her job and stay home. Money would be tight, but they knew they could make it. Jack made a modest but honest living at City Auto Service, and he’d already been there five years. He’d be up for another raise soon, and that would help.

  The owners of City Auto were three brothers—Carl, Mike, and Ted Shaver. The shop was originally called Three Brothers, until they decided that the name made it sound as if it was owned by the Mafia. They then changed the name to the more respectable City Auto Service. They were a small operation with two full-time employees—Jack in the shop and Jeannie in the office—and one part-timer who worked in the garage on Saturdays. Mike ran the business end of the shop (he was always the first to claim he couldn’t charge a battery to save his life), and Carl and Ted both worked in the garage. The Shavers were good, decent men to work for, and in his time there, Jack had learned more from them than he ever had in school. They provided insurance for their full-time employees, and each Christmas they’d give a Butterball turkey and a fifty-dollar bonus.

  When Jack tossed and turned at night, worrying about money, Maggie always told him, “There’s a difference between needs and wants, and we have everything we need.” When Jack’s spirits sagged, wishing his wife could shop at department stores like other women she knew instead of at yard sales and thrift shops, Maggie would hold his face in her hands and say, “It doesn’t matter, Jack. None of it matters. We’re healthy. We’re happy. All that other stuff is just extras. Maybe one day we’ll have it, but right now, we don’t need it.” That was always enough to keep Jack going. Maggie reached his soul in a way no one else could.

  Years earlier, he figured he’d probably live his life as a single man. Now, when he thought back to those days, he thanked God again and again for directing Maggie to City Auto Service.

  During her second pregnancy, Maggie often felt as if her belly was bloated but passed it off as the woes of pregnancy. After the smallest of meals, she’d feel terribly full. It was so unlike her pregnancy with Nathan, when she’d craved everything in sight. After Rachel was born, Maggie noticed the discomfort again yet disregarded it as a postpartum side effect. She mentioned her problem to the pediatrician at Rachel’s four-month follow-up visit. The doctor agreed it was probably associated with the pregnancy but suggested Maggie get it checked out. Another month went by before Maggie relented and made an appointment to see her gynecologist, who ran a series of tests and told her he wanted to see her again in another two weeks to go over the results.

  Maggie arrived for her appointment with Rachel on her hip.

  “I’m sorry,” the receptionist said. “The doctor was in the delivery room all morning, so he’s behind schedule. Have a seat—it could be a while.”

  A woman dressed in a navy-blue tailored suit, carrying a rich Italian-leather briefcase, approached the appointment desk as Maggie sat down.

  “I’m here to see Dr. Nylander,” the woman in the blue suit said.

  “He’s with patients right now,” the receptionist droned, barely lifting her eyes from her computer.

  “I’ll just wait for him then,” the woman said, turning her attention to the nearly full waiting room.

  “He’s going to be a while,” she replied in a pinched voice. “He’s got three other patients ahead of you.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “He’s expecting me.”

  She spotted an empty seat next to Maggie. She slid into the chair and set the briefcase on her lap. Rachel made a loud gurgling noise that sounded like a sink backing up, then smiled.

  The receptionist slid open her glass window: “Maggie Andrews.”

  “That was fast,” Maggie exclaimed as she approached the desk.

  “Mrs. Andrews,” the receptionist continued. “Your insurance is only going to cover a portion of your tests, which means you will be responsible for the remainder of the charges,” she said, handing her the printout of expenses.

  “Do I have to pay them today?” Maggie asked, jiggling and shifting the baby.

  “Charges are expected to be met on the day of service,” the receptionist answered, typing feverishly into her computer.

  Maggie scanned the bill and asked hesitantly, “Is there a way that we could be set up on a payment plan where we could pay off a little of the bill each month?”

  “Services are supposed to be paid for on the day of service,” the receptionist reiterated loudly enough for everyone in the waiting area to hear.

  “I understand,” Maggie whispered, “but it would be helpful if we could pay monthly on the bill.”

  “I’ll see who I can talk to,” the receptionist snapped, closing her window.

  Embarrassed, Maggie sat back down in her seat, bouncing Rachel, who had begun to slightly whimper.

  “She must have charmed her way into the job,” the woman next to her said with a smile. “I work here, and I’d like to say she’s just having a bad day, but if that’s the case, I’ve unfortunately never caught her on a good one.”

  Maggie chuckled, relaxing, and said, “What do you do here?”

  “Freelance marketing. I’m on a team that creates the annual reports, so we interview doctors and patients in each department and review the new medical equipment, look at procedures, and compile the report… I’m Kate,” she said, extending her hand.

  “Maggie Andrews.”

  Rachel hiccupped and squirmed on her mother’s lap.

  “She’s beautiful,” Kate said, admiring the infant’s wide, bright eyes.

  “She is when she’s not mad,” Maggie laughed.

  “What’s her name?” Kate asked.

  “Rachel.”

  “Oh! I was going to have a Rachel,” Kate gushed. “It was between Hannah and Rachel, and on the day she was born, I looked at her and decided on Hannah.”

  “I love that name,” Maggie replied, smiling at the wriggling baby on her lap. “It’s a beautiful name she can grow into.”

  “Exactly!” Kate exclaimed. “How old is she?”

  “Five and a half months,” Maggie answered sweetly. “And I have a seven-year-old in first grade. How about you?”

  “Two girls,” Kate smiled. “My youngest started kindergarten this year. I thought it would kill me,” she laughed.

  “When I put Nathan on the school bus for his first day in kindergarten, I cried the rest of the morning,” Maggie agreed. “That’s why I take this one with me wherever I go.” Rachel whimpered and coughed before straightening her body into a full-blown crying jag.

  “I’m so sorry.” Maggie apologized, lifting the baby onto her shoulder. “She’s had an upset stomach.”

  “I understand,” Kate comforted. “Both of mine had colic.”

  “Did you want to have any more?” Maggie asked, thumping the baby’s back.

  “Oh, I would have loved to. I don’t think my husband would have loved it, though.”

  Maggie liked this stylish woman. She wasn’t self-
absorbed, the way she’d always assumed rich people would be. “What does your husband do?” Maggie asked, shushing the baby’s cries.

  “He’s in law,” Kate replied. There was an odd sadness in her voice. It made Maggie suddenly feel sorry for her.

  “What does yours do?” Kate asked.

  “He’s a mechanic,” she answered.

  “Maggie Andrews,” the nurse said, standing in the doorway.

  “Oh, that’s me, again,” she said, patting Rachel’s back.

  “I can watch her if you’d like,” Kate offered, smiling. “I can’t see the doctor until he finishes with his patients anyway.”

  Maggie would never leave her baby with a complete stranger, regardless of how kind she thought she was. She looked uncomfortably toward the nurse waiting for her in the doorway. “I could never ask you to do that,” Maggie said, inching toward the nurse.

  “We can all vouch for Kate around here, Maggie,” the nurse smiled. “She’s been around here a long time. If you’d like, we can leave Rachel with her in Dr. Nylander’s office while he sees you. Might make your appointment a little easier. It’s up to you.”

  “Dr. Nylander wouldn’t mind?” Maggie asked.

  “Not a bit. He has to meet with Kate in his office anyway.”

  The look in the nurse’s eyes told Maggie her baby would most definitely be safe. “Thank you so much,” she said, feeling reassured, and handed the child to Kate.

  “Not a problem,” Kate cooed at the baby. “It’s been way too long since I’ve held one this small.”

  Kate patted the baby’s back and walked her into the doctor’s office. She loved the flexibility of her job. It paid well, and she was able to drop Hannah and Lily off at school, work a few hours, and be done in time to pick them up. She was completely at ease interviewing doctors and medical experts from around the world and was thoroughly proficient writing about medical issues, technology, and the latest research findings. People found her sharp and engaging, always the consummate professional, which is why the hospital continued to hire her year after year. Kate continued to walk the baby around, bouncing, patting, and rubbing her until Rachel burped.

  When she came out of the examining room, Maggie found Rachel asleep in Kate’s arms. She weakly thanked her new friend.

  “Oh, I loved it,” Kate smiled. “Are you all right?”

  “Thank you again,” Maggie managed, sliding the baby bag over her shoulder.

  “Good-bye, my little Gerber baby,” Kate whispered, squeezing the child’s tiny hand.

  Maggie buried her face into Rachel’s warm body, kissing her belly, and left quickly. She heard Kate ask her if she wanted to go to the coffee shop and talk, but she didn’t answer. Her visit to the doctor had left her stunned and shaken. Maggie had barely sat down in his office when he told her he’d sent her blood work for oncological testing. Several tests confirmed she had ovarian cancer.

  “Do you know if your grandmother had it?” the doctor asked.

  “No. Not that I know of.”

  “Anyone else in your family—aunt or a sister, perhaps?”

  “No. No one.”

  He wanted to start aggressive treatments right away. The cancer had gone undetected for so long that he feared it had already spread more than they would have liked. He picked up the phone and scheduled her an appointment with a surgeon. In all likelihood, he continued, she would need a total abdominal hysterectomy and two other procedures she’d never heard of before. He explained that the procedures would detect if the cancer had spread.

  When she came home, Jack held Rachel in his arms as Maggie told him the news. He sat silent for several minutes, holding the baby close to him, listening to her tiny breaths, breathing in her milky-powdery smell. He squeezed her tight. She was as beautiful as her mother. Her face looked exactly like Maggie’s. His heart pounded anxiously. Could this disease take her from him? Could he lose her?

  “What did they say exactly?”

  “They’ve scheduled surgery for Monday.”

  Jack could feel the pounding of his heart.

  “Then they’ll start chemotherapy right away.”

  “Did they say anything about any sort of prognosis?”

  “No.”

  “Did they say if the chances were good with this type of cancer?”

  “They didn’t say.”

  Jack couldn’t help thinking that if they didn’t say it, the chances, then, were not good—not good at all.

  Maggie opened her eyes and realized she’d drifted off, lost in memory. She strained to sit up, listening as her mother and Nathan chattered and worked in the kitchen. As Evelyn opened the oven door to bring out another batch of cookies, an aroma of vanilla wafted into the living room. Maggie shut her eyes. What she would give to be covered in flour right now, watching her son’s eyes gleam as she pulled tray after tray of hot Santa cookies from the oven. She threw her arm over her face.

  “Oh God, help me,” she prayed. “I don’t want to leave my children. I don’t want to leave my babies.” She could stand the pain of the disease, but the pain in her heart was nearly unbearable. Then Nathan ran to her, holding a tray full of freshly frosted Santas, and plopped them clumsily down onto her lap.

  “Ooh, look at this. What a baker you are,” Maggie exclaimed. She wiped her eyes and hoped he hadn’t seen her. Nathan moved excitedly to the head of her bed and expertly cranked it into a sitting position.

  “Time for his beard,” Nathan yelled, running back into the kitchen for a bowl full of coconut. Together they sprinkled coconut across the smiling Santas, pressing the white flakes into each beard, talking and laughing as they worked.

  Three

  Man is born broken. He lives by mending.

  The grace of God is glue.

  —Eugene O’Neill

  My mother, Ellen Layton, had thrown a tree-decorating party at Christmas for as long as I could remember. When my brother, Hugh, and I were small, the party would begin first thing on a Saturday morning. Mom would rouse us out of bed with the smells of bacon, and pancakes in the shape of snowmen. Then the entire family would load into the station wagon and head to Hurley’s Farm—John Hurley was an old friend of my father’s—for a trek deep into the woods. My father, Albert, wielded the ax, occasionally letting one of us take a careful whack at the prized tree. Even later, when he’d acquired a small, gasoline-powered chain saw, my father insisted that the Christmas tree be hewn by ax, an antique double-bladed tool passed down by my grandfather, because it was tradition. Once home, Dad and I positioned the tree while Mom and Hugh braved the cold attic for the abundance of Christmas ornaments and decorations Mom had collected over the years. Mom sang and danced with Dad to Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” while Hugh and I busily continued with the tree, pretending not to see our parents’ silliness.

  I cannot ever recall seeing my mother happier than she was on those tree-decorating days. A joy radiated from her, and even from my father, who routinely conked out at six-thirty every evening, after getting up at five every morning to go to work. The whole family would get caught up in Mom’s ecstasy, and would sing and decorate until every last ornament had a limb to call home. After we were grown, and my father had died, Mom continued her tree-decorating parties with another widow in the neighborhood. Just because they were alone didn’t mean they couldn’t enjoy the beauty of Christmas. When the grandchildren came along, the parties regained some of their traditional momentum, with the exception that we’d buy a tree from a supermarket parking lot instead of cutting one down from Hurley’s farm, which saved time, and besides, the trees were invariably fuller and more symmetrical than the scruffier wild trees my father used to drag home.

  A few weeks before Christmas, Kate and I loaded the girls into the Mercedes and drove the short distance to my mother’s house. Mom had lived in the same brick Tudor house for more than forty years, and even though she was sixty-eight and lived alone, she insisted on decorating the outside of her home as a winter wonder
land. Garlands of holly and ivy draped over the doorway, and a huge evergreen wreath hung prominently in the center of the door and on each of the front windows, tied with wide red-velvet ribbons. Bright electric candles threw off a brilliant light in the center of each window. Strands of small twinkling lights wrapped each yew and juniper and evergreen shrub, as well as each tree in the front lawn that could be reached with a ladder. The bigger trees provided the backdrop for the Nativity scene, complete with lighting.

  When we were little boys, Hugh and I helped my mother set up the Nativity. She had bought the handcrafted Nativity years ago at a yard sale. Though my mother’s home was filled with magnificent antiques, she always claimed the twenty-dollar Nativity was one of her most prized possessions. As kids, my brother and I saw the set as little more than a collection of large wooden dolls, but each year Mom would explain the meaning of the Nativity to us. “This is the most miraculous thing about Christ’s life, boys,” she’d say. “The most miraculous thing isn’t that He rose from the grave. He’s the Son of God—you’d expect God to be able to raise His own son from the grave. Don’t you think?” And we would eagerly nod our heads in agreement. “But that’s not the most spectacular thing at all. What’s spectacular and mind-boggling is that God would want to leave the beauty of heaven to come to live here as a man. And you’d think that since Jesus was the King of Kings that he’d at least be born in a castle somewhere, not in some dirty barn. That’s what’s amazing!” she’d exclaim, turning Joseph ever so slightly toward Mary. “That’s why Christmas is so special. Jesus came as a baby to Bethlehem—a baby that would grow up to live as a servant, not as a king.” Plugging in the floodlights that beamed over the back of the shepherds onto the baby in the manger, she’d continue, “That’s the beauty and wonder of Christmas, and that’s why we’ll set up the Nativity for as long as we can—to remind us. Isn’t it a nice reminder, boys?” And we’d earnestly nod our heads again.