Lakeshore Christmas

by Susan Wiggs

  She didn’t say it, of course. She never did. Giving his disease a name might mean she’d have to acknowledge it, and maybe even see herself in an unflattering light. “I’ve found a recipe for a delicious fizzy punch, made strictly from soft drinks and lime sherbet. Doesn’t that sound divine?”

  “I’m salivating.”

  “And I had all our old photos scanned, so they’re digital, and this year, I made a computer slide show, complete with music to go along with the images. The photos start with a vintage circus shot of your dad’s great-grandfather and go right up to the present day. Most of them are of you, of course. People are going to die when they see how cute you were. They’ll just die. Having you there would be the icing on the cake.”

  It beats a sharp stick in the eye, he thought.

  He pictured his parents and their friends, settling attractively into middle age, sitting around and toasting the crazy times of their youth. These days, the Havens and the others from the commune lived in modest Long Island houses, listened to NPR and collected heart-healthy recipes. And, apparently, attended hotbox yoga classes.

  “I might even start a Web site to show them off to the world,” his mother continued. “A ‘Meet the Havens’ official Web site. Maybe that will be my project for the new year.”

  That sharp stick was beginning to look a little better to him. Christmastime was something Eddie wished he could erase from the hard drive.

  There were no misty memories for him of carols around the piano, family feasts, stockings stuffed with goodies and a tree surrounded with gifts. For most people, the sights, sounds and scents of the holiday were all wrapped up in warm, loving feelings. For the Havens, Christmastime meant hitting the road. His parents claimed that in addition to being the most lucrative season for an act like theirs, it was also the ideal way to avoid the crass commercialism of the holidays. In the process, they managed to avoid anything that might predispose Eddie to actually liking the holidays. His Christmas memories consisted of long days at train and bus stations, or riding in a borrowed VW microbus. Paper-wrapped meals eaten on the fly. Funky-smelling hotel rooms. Not knowing what day it was—even when it was Christmas Day.

  And the funny thing was, his parents didn’t have a clue about how lousy that was for a kid.

  He vividly recalled staring dull-eyed out the window of the van, watching the gray sky race by like a river through towns where he was a stranger. He and his parents generally played a different venue every night, wending their way through small towns where their act was a big deal.

  “Meet the Havens” was built around Eddie himself. Ever since the movie hit had rocketed him to fame at the age of six, he’d been a recognizable figure. Unfortunately, the laws of physics and showbiz both dictated that a meteoric rise was followed by a swift fall. He’d been too young to understand the concept, which was probably a good thing.

  His mother called it “super-fun,” and often sang and composed in the car between homeschooling sessions, which entailed a lot of spelling. To this day, Eddie could spell pretty much anything.

  On a typical day on the road, he’d wake up in a motel room with bad carpeting, the tables littered with empty bottles and torn packets of headache powders. Breakfast usually consisted of a row of powdered doughnuts purchased at a gas station or convenience store, always the first stop of the day. This was before the days of mobile phones, so his mother would use a pay phone to call ahead to confirm the next booking.

  His father would check the van’s oil and tires, gas the thing up. Eddie would consume the doughnuts and maybe a tube of salted peanuts, washed down with milk or juice from a paper carton.

  “We get a different Christmas every day,” his mother would declare, returning from her phone call to beam at him. “How much fun is that?”

  He figured out pretty quickly that she didn’t expect an answer. The three of them would sing together as they drove from place to place, practicing the numbers they would perform in Scranton, Saranac or Stamford or any of the dozens of towns on their itinerary. His mom would do her hair, using some kind of goop and big rollers and plugging in a blow-dryer at a gas station as showtime approached.

  Their venues ran the gamut from high school stages to Knights of Columbus halls to community playhouses to country clubs. Their repertoire consisted of the usual Christmas fare, interspersed with his parents’ banter, which for some reason never seemed to grow stale.

  “So tonight we invite you to step back, take a deep breath and remember the simple joys of the season,” his father would say, underscoring his words with a gentle stroke of guitar strings.

  And every time he uttered those words, Eddie’s dad would sound as warmhearted and calm as a Zen master. No one in the audience would know they’d nearly been late to the show because of a flat tire. Or that they’d missed their exit or gotten lost or that Larry had spilled half a can of Utica Club on his shirt. All the preceding chaos fell away when the three of them hit the stage.

  Sometimes the lighting masked the audience from Eddie, and as he performed, he went away in his head somewhere, picturing himself in a different world. Other times, he might have a full view of their listeners, and he’d imagine what it was like to belong to a different family, to have siblings, to attend public school, to go home to the same house every night. His parents assured him that he’d be bored in an instant. They said siblings took your stuff and blamed you for everything.

  The Havens were on the road through New Year’s Day each year, but the highlight of the season, financially speaking, was always Christmas Eve. His parents told him so, anyway. That was when people were feeling particularly generous and kind. Sometimes when he performed, he would look out into the audience to see if he could recognize kindness in people’s faces. It always gave him a pang, seeing kids who would sleep in their own bed that night and wake up to the sort of Christmas morning Eddie knew only from the movies. It was amazing to him that there were children who actually experienced the brightly lit tree, a stocking stuffed to overflowing, cinnamon rolls baking in the oven, and the longed-for, yearned-for, wished-for Santa gift hidden beneath the pine boughs.

  Eddie had grown up wanting to believe Christmas wishes could come true. Everyone’s favorite line in his movie was “Miracles can happen, if only you believe.” And indeed, in The Christmas Caper, little Jimmy Kringle was reunited with his long-lost family. Eddie had tried hard to be a true believer, even though his parents dismissed Santa as an agent of materialistic greed. Eddie used to write letters in secret and post them on his own, asking Santa for the kind of things any boy might want—a new bike, a model rocket, a puppy, an aquarium full of neon-colored fish. He never got anything he asked for. On Christmas day, he’d wake up in some nondescript hotel room or motor court unit. His parents would sleep in while he watched church on TV and ate whatever he could find—often a tin of brightly frosted cookies given to them by a producer or stagehand. After a while, Larry and Barb would get up and fish a dripping bottle out of the slush in the ice chest and crack it open, and sip the fizzy stuff until they were in a good mood. The drink was called Cold Duck and it smelled weird and tasted worse.

  Eddie never said anything to them about Santa. He knew they didn’t believe and wouldn’t approve. The lack of gifts under the tree—not that there was a tree—merely proved their point.

  “Sorry to have to disappoint you,” he told his mother on the phone, “but I’m stuck here in Avalon, same as I am every Christmas, working on the pageant.”

  A pause. “Surely by now you’ve fulfilled your community service.”

  “Still at it,” he said. What nobody knew, what he kept from everybody, was that his community service sentence had been fulfilled a long time ago. He kept coming back, year after year, because in spite of everything, he stupidly wanted to believe in Christmas.

  “My goodness. You’ve done more than your share. I can’t imagine what that judge was thinking.”

  Eddie and his mother had, more or less, the same
conversation, year in and year out. She wanted him to spend Christmas with them, while he would resort to anything—including a lie—to get out of it. The reason he worked on the pageant year after year was simple. It saved him from having to deal with something he liked even less.

  He offered the same line he always gave her. “I’ll come down for a visit after.”

  “The Sheltons will be so disappointed. They specifically said how much they were looking forward to seeing you.”

  He felt his jaw tighten. Did she think, after all this time, that he would change his mind? That he would suddenly want to make merry with the people who had ruined the holiday for him? “Tell them I’m sorry to miss them, too,” he said. “Tell them I had to go abroad.”

  A beat of silence tripped by. “Well. That is disappointing. We’ll miss you,” she said. “Christmas just isn’t the same without you, son.”

  “I’ll miss you too, Barb,” he said. “Tell Larry I said hi.”

  He set down his phone, wishing he could dive under the covers and go back to the angel again. He couldn’t, though. He was haunted by echoes of the wistful note in his mother’s voice as he dressed for the day and headed to the station. He didn’t like to disappoint her, hell no. But he could not fathom a way to survive Christmas Eve, complete with a screening of Caper and—good God—a musical slide show, all accompanied by the requisite cocktails and spiked eggnog. He was confident in his sobriety, but if anything could drive him back to drinking, it would be a night like that.

  Later that day, Eddie pulled into the gym parking lot and headed for the handball court. Athletics weren’t really his bag, but he liked the game well enough, and he was meeting his friend Bo Crutcher here. A major league pitcher, Bo had a strict winter training regimen which he stuck to with the devotion of a fanatic. For Eddie, a handball game with a baseball pitcher was kind of a mismatch, but it was a good workout.

  He found Bo in the weight room. “Ready to get your ass kicked?” Eddie asked him.

  “Yeah, I’m shaking.”

  “Let’s get going, then. I got a lot I have to do later. Christmas pageant stuff,” he added. “With my new boss, Maureen Davenport.”

  “Maureen Davenport.” Bo tried out the name. “What’s she like?”

  An interesting question and one Eddie had been contemplating a lot lately. What was she like? “Bossy,” he said. “A take-charge kind of woman.”

  “She single?” asked Bo. Up until recently, Crutcher had been the womanizer of the group. These days he was a happily married man, so he transferred his flirtatious ways to his unattached friends.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t ask,” he said. I didn’t have to.

  “Bet she is. So what’s she like?” Bo persisted.

  “She’s a librarian, okay? She’s like…a librarian.”

  “What’s a librarian like?” Crutcher asked.

  “You know, all smart and stuff. Know-it-all attitude, hair pulled back with chopsticks or knitting needles sticking through it, glasses.” A couple of times during auditions, he had glanced at Maureen and caught a glimpse of an attractive woman. When she smiled, when she listened to music, she looked incredibly pretty. And—he couldn’t be sure because he didn’t want to be rude—he thought maybe under the sweater, she might have a figure. Not that it should matter, but he looked for things like that in a woman.

  Bo wiggled his eyebrows. “Sounds like just your type.”

  “I’m working on the Christmas program with her. And helping her put on a big fund-raiser for the library.”

  “You’re going to a lot of trouble for a chick you don’t even like,” said Bo.

  “I didn’t say I don’t like her,” Eddie pointed out. “I do like her. Just not, you know, in that way.”

  “What way?” Bo asked, playing dumb. He did that a lot.

  “You know what way,” Eddie said.

  “The way I don’t like that chick?” Bo paused in his workout to indicate a statuesque redhead coming toward them as though on a catwalk. She was drop-dead gorgeous in a tight yoga top and formfitting pants folded down to reveal a glimpse of skin and a belly button ring.

  She aimed a cool glance at Bo, her gaze heating up as it progressed from his head to his feet and back again. Then with unhurried leisure, she went to him and planted a lingering kiss on his mouth.

  Eddie wasn’t shocked or surprised, just envious. The redhead was Bo’s wife, Kimberly.

  “Sure,” he said under his breath, “that way. That’s the way I don’t like Maureen Davenport.”

  “Hi, Eddie,” said Kim. “Did you say something?”

  “Yeah, I got roped into helping organize a library fund-raiser.”

  “Good for you. Count on us for a donation. A big one. Everybody loves the library.”

  “So I hear. But do we love it enough to hand over a wad of cash the size of Poughkeepsie? Hey, maybe you guys have that wad of cash. A major league player? You could save me a lot of trouble—”

  “How much?” asked Bo.

  Eddie dug a pledge form out of his gym bag and indicated the target amount at the top. “I’m not that major,” Bo said. “Dang, that is a wad. I don’t have that kind of money. The ink’s barely dry on my contract.”

  “I thought baseball players were loaded,” Eddie pointed out.

  “Like movie stars,” Bo countered.

  “We should both be swimming in dough,” Eddie said. But neither was swimming in anything. Bo’s career in the majors was too new, and Eddie’s in the movies too old.

  “That’s the reason for the fund-raiser,” he said. “One person can’t get it done. But if everybody contributes, we can pull it off.”

  Kim’s expression lit with a bright smile. “We’ll do what we can. Just tell us where and when.”

  “Thanks. As soon as there’s a plan, I’ll let you know. I’ll announce it on the radio, too.”

  “You’re doing a lot for a woman you don’t like in that way,” Bo said.

  Maureen was busy helping a group of volunteers and children decorate the library’s Christmas tree. Each year, a tall noble fir was donated by Gail and Adam Wright, owners of a plant nursery on the Lakeshore Road. A team of off-duty firefighters had helped stand the twenty-foot tree in the central atrium of the library, a big airy space illuminated by a white winter glow through the skylight two stories above.

  Renée was there with her three kids. Daisy Bellamy managed to keep tabs on little Charlie as she snapped picture after picture. After the lights were strung, each child present created a hand-made ornament to hang on the tree. Volunteers on ladders adorned the upper branches while the little ones looked on in wonder.

  Gail Wright had three school-age kids. The youngest was George, who went by the nickname Bear. His ornament was a crude angel made of a toilet-paper tube, with wings constructed of Popsicle sticks. “I made this for my dad,” he told Maureen. “He’s on deployment. He won’t be home for Christmas.”

  “Let’s get a picture of you with it,” Maureen said, taking him by the hand. “Then you can send him the picture, all right?”

  He glowered at her, not fooled for an instant. His father was gone, and just having a picture wasn’t the same. Her heart ached for the little boy, his mother and siblings. Adam Wright had joined the state’s National Guard in order to supplement the farm’s income during the lean years. He’d expected to be called to help his community during floods or forest fires, or to be in the first line of defense in domestic disasters. Instead, he found himself amid a frontline fighting force in a dangerous foreign land.

  “You don’t have to smile,” Daisy said, squatting down to Bear’s level. “Your dad’ll understand. I’ve got a friend in the military, and he understands when I feel scared for him.”

  “My dad says I got the best smile,” Bear said.

  “You want to give it a try, then?” asked Daisy.

  The little boy’s attempt was a sad trembling of the chin, a grimace of his lips, but Maureen knew the pho
to would be precious to his father, checking his e-mail from some remote outpost.

  The Christmas tree grew steadily more beautiful as more ornaments were added. “It’s time for the treetop angel,” said Maureen’s niece, Wendy. “Who’s gonna put up the angel?”

  “Maureen should do it,” said Daisy, ready with her camera.

  Maureen recoiled. “No, I couldn’t—”

  “We insist,” said Mr. Shannon, the president of the board. He took the elaborate ornament, made of silk and blown glass, from its box. “You should do the honor of placing the angel on the treetop. I assure you, the ladder is quite sturdy.” What he didn’t say, what he didn’t have to say, was that this could well be the last time for the library’s tree.

  “Here,” said Renée. “I’ll hold the ladder steady while you climb up.”

  Maureen was too proud to admit she was afraid of heights. She took the angel and climbed the first few steps of the ladder. About halfway up, she made the mistake of glancing at the floor, which suddenly appeared distant and forbiddingly hard. Yikes. She needed to hang on with both hands. She grabbed the angel’s hanging loop in her teeth, which probably didn’t look very attractive, but it was better than turning back. As she climbed each level of the tree, she tried to distract herself from her fear of heights by focusing on all the beautiful homemade ornaments. They had been created by children through the years, with such love and hope. Some depicted smiling faces superimposed on books. Others had brief, scrawled messages: I the library. Reading is fun. There were even a couple of portraits of Maureen herself. Seen through children’s eyes, she was all heavy-rimmed glasses and a giant hair bun, yet they always drew her smiling, so that was something. Nearly there, she recognized an ancient ornament, one she herself had made as a schoolgirl. It was a small ceramic reindeer with Christmas is Magic written on the side. It was the runaway reindeer from Eddie’s movie. Even then, she thought.

  She reached the upper steps of the ladder without incident, and was now close enough to place the angel on the treetop. The trouble was, she’d made the mistake of looking down and was now too scared to let go of the ladder.