Mama’s eyes got really big. “When could he have possibly said that to you?”
“I—I’m not sure, I don’t know, I just know he did. He promised. I remember.”
She put her hands against the edge of the table and stood up, her voice cold and shaky.
“We’re not discussing this anymore. It never ends well.”
On Monday I stayed on the bus past our house after school and rode to the store with Lucy, Kendra, and Sonnet. My heart still hurt from the fight the night before, and I didn’t have the energy to face Mama. Sue was waiting in the driveway with the car engine running.
“You three have dentist appointments,” she said to the girls. “Come with me.”
“Dentist?”
“I don’t want to go to the dentist!”
“You’re going, so get in the car,” she said. “Maggie, maybe you could help Kori. Biz has the physical therapist with her. She’s a little self-conscious. Givin’ her some space.”
Sonnet was the only one who didn’t argue about the dentist. She slipped into the front seat while Sue practically had to push the other two in the back. By the time they drove off, poor little Lucy was crying, her red face pressed against the back window.
When the bell over the door binged, Kori looked up from where she was kneeling on the floor and smiled. “Hey, Maggs, how are things?”
“Okay, sort of,” I said. “Sue said you might need help.”
“Sure, I can always use an extra hand. We’re still playing catch-up. Christmas stuff needs to get out.”
I tossed my backpack behind the counter and knelt beside her, packing dozens of tins of maple syrup with plain labels into boxes. The new cans we were putting on the shelves had a sprig of holly painted above a picture of a sleigh and two big horses standing by a sugar shack. My sugar shack.
“Didn’t my daddy paint stuff like this?”
She smiled and nodded. “Except for the holly, that’s his painting.”
“Is this my sugar shack?”
“Might be, they all kind of look alike to me, except the great big ones. His original painting is hanging in the bank in town.”
I’d never thought about his artwork being in places where I could go see it, I only knew about the boxes upstairs in the barn.
“I found a painting he did called The Georgia View.”
“I know that one. When the weather was good, that was your dad’s favorite place to paint. He said on a clear day he could see all the way to Georgia. Hence, the name.”
“Do you know about the magnolias?”
“I do. They’re lovely.”
“Mama says he was damaged and unpredictable.”
Kori knelt in front of me and lifted my chin. “He was a good man, Maggs. He had some challenges, but he was a truly good man.”
“Did he try to get better? From the PTSD, I mean.”
Kori paused just long enough for me to know the answer before she said anything. “He worked really hard, but I’d be lying if I said he was completely over it. It’s a process. He used art therapy to control his anxiety, and that was huge. He was definitely better, but not fixed.”
“She didn’t bring me to see him because she didn’t think I should be exposed to him, but I wish I’d known him more.”
“I know for a fact that he wished the same thing.”
The softness in her face made me feel safe. And she’d said he was a good man. That made my whole body fill up with happy.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m glad I came here today.”
“Me, too.”
THIRTY-THREE
The next Friday, Bob and Angela took me to Stowe to buy cross-country skis. Mama gave me the credit card and told them she wasn’t feeling well, but she was faking it. The real truth was she didn’t want them to see the Grand Canyon of distance between the two of us. It was bad enough that it could require explaining.
On Saturday I had my first ski lesson, which was perfect timing because I desperately needed to laugh. Those ten-mile-long sticks attached to my feet gave us plenty of opportunity. At least a handful of times one of them crossed over the other and I tumbled sideways into the snow. Bob showed me once how to get up on my own, then refused to help again.
“You’ve got to learn now, or you’ll never be able to go out alone,” he said.
By Sunday afternoon I was able to successfully glide across the field without falling. I took my very first selfie and emailed it to Angela with a note that said, Done!
The minute I got off the bus every day, I strapped on those skis and headed out. The first time I went to the sugar shack, I came home with a bruised body and a sore ego after crashing into multiple rocks and tree stumps hidden under the snow. But it was worth every aching muscle; every bit of near-frostbitten skin; and every damp, stinky sock I stripped off at night.
Mama and I came to a temporary truce. We ate dinner with the TV on so we didn’t have to talk. We steered clear of conversations that might include the word daddy or Vermont. She left the catalog of school uniforms out on the kitchen table, with colored sticky notes marking specific pages, and went to Burlington once to get samples, but I only knew that because Bob told me.
The day the first load of Christmas trees was delivered to the country store, James gave me a pair of thick deerskin gloves.
“Mark your initials inside,” he said. “We each have a pair, but you don’t want Haily nabbing them. She loses hers all the time.”
I smiled the rest of that day.
We organized the trees by type and size, and spread open the limbs of the best ones to stand upright in the middle of the temporary lot between the store and the road. Haily and Ethan Edward strung hundreds of white lights so everyone driving by knew the trees had arrived. Deacon put up a tent with a table, chairs, and a giant heater that blew hot air where customers could come in out of the cold and drink spiced cider. White lattice panels displayed evergreen wreaths with red holly berries, and bundles of mistletoe hung overhead from strings. Biz and Lucy giggled every time someone walked under them.
“Don’t let Haily and Ethan Edward stand there,” Lucy said. “They’ll kiss!”
“Yeah,” said Biz. “They’ll kiss.” She puckered her lips and made a loud sucking noise.
Lucy bit into a cookie and giggled so hard she spewed crumbs everywhere.
Kendra walked past with an urn of hot cider. “Do you really think they need mistletoe?”
I loved being at the tree lot. It vibrated with energy and happiness. I loved the smells of the evergreens and the cars full of people who came to pick out their trees. I loved that I was important to the Parker family, and every time a customer recognized me as “one of them,” my heart grew a little bigger.
After ten days, Mama’d had enough of the truce. She showed up at the store all smiles, carting along a gold bag full of tiny wrapped gifts for Sue and Kori. Sonnet came to the tent where I was helping Biz catch up on missed schoolwork. We were learning the state names.
“Your mother’s in the store,” Sonnet said. “She wants you to pick out a tree with her.”
Biz pushed herself up from her chair. The map and colored pencils scattered across the table. “I wanna see her! I bet she’s all dressed up!”
Lucy raced past her. “I’m coming, too!”
By the time I got inside, Lucy’s arms circled Mama’s hips, and Biz was letting her touch her hair, which still stuck out like the fuzzy glow from an old lightbulb.
“She’s getting a tree! Can we help her pick?” Lucy begged Kori.
“Of course you can, Lu, the trees are right outside. It’s not like you’re taking a trip to Canada.”
“You do want me to help you, right?”
Mama bent down and touched the end of Lucy’s nose with her fingertip. Her nails were painted Christmas red.
“Why do you think I came here?”
“They’re outside, come on,” Lucy said, slipping her blue-mittened hand into Mama’s.
Biz we
nt to the other hand. “I’m helping, too.”
“Well, now that I have two beautiful escorts,” Mama said, “let’s go buy us a tree!”
They stopped at the blue spruce first, then the white pine, and finally the Fraser firs.
“Blue spruce grow in Canada—that’s why they cost more,” Lucy said, imitating the words I’d heard a dozen times. “Pines grow here, but they aren’t as strong for holding up heavy ornaments.”
Biz wagged a finger. “I bet you don’t like a mess, so maybe you should pick a Fraser fir. They don’t shed.”
Kori handed Mama a cup of hot cider. “They’ve got quite the sales pitch going.”
“It’s the truth,” Lucy insisted.
“It isn’t a pitch if it’s one hundred percent truth!” Biz said.
Mama tilted her face to the sky and laughed. Her perfect white teeth sparkled under the twinkling lights. “Well now, my sweet girls, aren’t you just the smartest things ever,” she said, pouring on her thickest southern accent.
Biz tilted her head back like Mama had and laughed. “Ever,” she said with a bunch of y’s strung through the middle.
Lucy watched her sister and imitated her. “Ever.”
I wished I felt the same fascination for Mama as the girls, but everything she did annoyed me. And that prickly little thought made me wonder why I’d never gotten this mama before, why she’d saved all this motherly charm for Biz and Lucy. Wasn’t I good enough? Or did she think maybe I, too, was damaged?
She ended up picking the fattest blue spruce on the lot. “We never had one like this in Georgia, isn’t that right, sugar?”
We had a fake tree in Georgia. Clarissa put it up and decorated it for us. I kept my mouth shut.
“It’s so exciting to have something new!”
“Blue spruce are my favorite,” Lucy said.
“No, they’re not,” claimed Biz. “You don’t even like the way they smell.”
Lucy’s face bunched up. “You’re lying!”
“Am not,” Biz snarled.
Lucy lunged forward, both arms outstretched, ready to push her sister to the ground. I dived in between and blocked what could have set Biz’s physical therapy back by months. Kori grabbed Lucy’s arms from behind.
“You girls behave or Maggie’s mom won’t come visit anymore.”
“Well, I don’t condone a tussle between sisters, but it’s not every day a gal has two beautiful girls fighting over her. I can see why my own daughter prefers being here than at home.”
Her words sliced through the air like a steel blade. Kori looked at me quickly. Her expression said Let it go.
James promised to deliver the tree the next evening and set it up with Deacon. Then Mama dropped a bomb.
“I’ve never had a tree-decorating party,” she said. Biz and Lucy stared up at her, their eyes wide, their hands practically quivering. “Would y’all come over Friday night? Seven o’clock? Deacon, too. And Quince. I’ll make cookies and we’ll have music and by the end of the night, we’ll have the prettiest tree in all of Vermont!”
“We’d love to come,” Kori said. “I’m sure Haily and Ethan Edward won’t mind staying behind for an hour. They can join us after closing. If that’s okay for Ethan Edward to come.”
Mama clapped her hands together. “Of course! Ethan Edward is welcome, too!”
“He’s Haily’s bf,” Lucy said.
“That means boyfriend,” Biz said. “He gave her a—”
“Okay!” I said, clapping my hands loudly. “Let’s go! Come on, Mama, time to go home.”
I pulled her by the sleeve across the lot to the driveway before Biz could say any more about the still-famous hickey. When I looked back, James was holding his hand over her mouth, and the whole family was laughing.
On the way home I initiated the first conversation Mama and I’d had in over a week.
“Are you insane? You realize there are six kids, right? So that’s eight people you’ve just invited, plus Deacon and Quince and Ethan Edward. We don’t own a cookie cutter, and you left all the ornaments in Georgia, remember? How are we going to eat Christmas cookies and decorate a tree without those things?”
Her forehead stitched together in the center. “I don’t know just yet, but I’ll figure it out.”
I sank down in my seat and prayed for a massive, road-closing snowstorm to hit Vermont within the next seventy-two hours.
THIRTY-FOUR
No great snowstorm swooped through to save me, but by Friday night I was sure Mama’d sworn off doing anything so impulsive again. She spent two days driving all over the state in search of unique Christmas ornaments so it looked like they’d been collected over many years. Somehow she’d even scrounged up a glazed ceramic peach with CHRISTMAS IN GEORGIA written across the front from a thrift store. She held it up proudly.
“No one will ever suspect we didn’t have ornaments until today!”
“Except most of these are in brand-new boxes. That might be a clue.”
She glanced around the kitchen, then scurried off. By dinnertime, all evidence of her shopping spree had disappeared, and each ornament was wrapped in a piece of tissue, hand-crinkled by Mama.
Friday afternoon the kitchen smelled of smoke, and not the kind that came from a fireplace. This was definitely a burned-food odor. Platters of near-perfect gingerbread men and sugar cookies lined the counter. I scouted around, looking for the source. Nothing obvious until I opened the trash can lid. The entire thing was full of scorched-black stars, trees, and gingerbread men.
“Wow,” I said. “Just wow.”
I hauled the bag outside and hid it, then lit some scented candles in the kitchen. Hopefully the squirrels would eat cookies that were only ashes held together by charred sugar.
At ten till seven, Mama cornered me. “Now, is there anything I should do differently or say differently tonight?”
“What do you mean?”
“These people are your friends, sweetheart. I’ve never entertained a gay couple before. I mean, other than Peter. Help me, I don’t want to say something stupid and embarrass you.”
“Same-sex marriage became legal in Vermont in 2009, Mama, and it was the first state to allow civil unions between same-sex couples long before that. People here don’t care, and neither should you.”
“I don’t care, not the way you’re suggesting. I’m doing this for you. And where did you learn all that stuff, anyway?”
“At my cushy, conservative private school in Atlanta, all the way back in fourth grade. Seriously, sometimes you act like you’ve been living under a rock.”
Her mouth dropped open and her eyes welled up.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to sound like that, but they’re just people. Treat them like you want to be treated, like you always tell me to do.”
She started bawling, right there in the kitchen. “Now look, my face is going to be red and splotchy when they get here!”
I grabbed a tissue box and gave it to her. “It’s nothing to cry about.”
“Maybe for you, but sometimes you make me feel so inadequate, even when I’m trying so hard—”
The doorbell rang three times in a row. I’d been antsy for them to get here so Mama and I didn’t have to be alone, but she’d actually just said something real, something from her heart, about feelings. Something I could build on.
“Oh no, they’re here.” She smoothed her dress and threw the tissue away. “Do I look okay?”
She looked pathetic. “I think Biz and Lucy are hoping for the movie star Mama, so maybe you want to go clean the mascara off your face. Other than that, you look great.”
The doorbell rang again. A tiny hand knocked on the window. Mama ran up the stairs and I went to greet our guests.
She came down a few minutes later, all charm and ho-ho-ho. Lucy’s and Biz’s eyes got really big when they saw her decked out in her fancy red Christmas outfit, complete with glittery earrings and a green and gold scarf.
They ran to her for hugs, and she burst into tears again and fled. The rest of us stood in that tiny front room, which now had the giant blue spruce taking up a quarter of the space, and watched her run off.
“What did we do?” Biz asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
Kori touched my shoulder. “Do you need to go help her?”
“No, she’ll be fine.”
Silently, we sorted through the ornaments, pulling them out of the fake-used boxes, while James and Sue circled the tree with lights.
“Where are the cookies?” Lucy asked.
“Shhhhh,” Kendra said. “Don’t be rude.”
“It’s not rude—she said we’d have cookies.”
“I’ll get them,” I said.
“Let’s wait for your mom,” Kori said. “She went to a lot of trouble for us.”
Ten minutes later Mama swept back in smelling of hairspray and potpourri perfume. She gathered Biz and Lucy into her arms. “I’m so sorry, my sweet precious girls. I had an emotional moment of gratitude. I’m so happy y’all are here.”
“Is gratitude an emotion?” Lucy asked.
Mama kissed her cheek. “Well, it sure as heck made me emotional. Now, let’s get this party started. How about you girls help me bring in some cookies?”
“Yeah!”
“I can carry a tray by myself,” Biz said. “Watch.” She stood tall, held her arms out to the side, and walked a straight line without any hint of a limp or bobble.
The three of them went off to the kitchen, and the rest of us all sighed at the same time. Sonnet sat at the piano and let her fingers graze the tops of the ivory keys, her back straight, her shiny black hair lying flat past her waist.
“He used to let me play,” she said. “I came here for lessons because we only have a keyboard.”
Mama came around the corner with a pitcher of eggnog, trailed by Lucy and Biz, who each carried a platter piled high with cookies. My heart tweaked again. They’d had more fun with her in those few minutes than I remembered having in my whole life. Mama poured eggnog and the little girls went around the room offering cookies to everyone.
Georgia Rules Page 13
