Christmas in July

by Alan Michael Parker

  “What?” Christmas was rubbing her hands together. She was taller when standing right before me.

  I stayed in her way. I wasn’t letting her get by me, not this time. I’m a person with some width to me.

  “Look at that. Isn’t that amazing.”

  “What?” Christmas said again. She did a little shift to the left. “Those boxes?”

  I did a little shift to the right, blocking her way. I’ve raised four children, and I knew how to handle this one. “Okay, smarty,” I said. “Let’s see what you know.” I took her by the wrist, skinny as a piece of string. “Get two boxes of each and follow me.”

  I moved her hand to the shelf, and I stood there and nudged her until she began to take down the boxes. Two each: Secrets, Ideas, Things. When she was done, I turned around and marched away, toward the front of the store and checkout.

  I knew that girl would follow, because she had my boxes. Plus she was just the kind to make a lot of noise, dress in those awful clothes, grumble on and on, and then want to behave, to be good. She was only a child. She would follow me all the way home, especially if I offered her cookies or cake. Which I did, and she did. I told her to bring the bags from Michael’s to my Kia, and then to get in, come with me, I had treats at home, and she looked surprised at every step, but she did what she was told.

  Score one for Meg O’Daly.

  We sat at my crafts table in what used to be Bryson’s den, before he converted it into my art room. He never went in there, when it was his den; all he needs is a desk for his computer. It’s much better now that it’s my art room.

  I gave Christmas some Oreos, and she seemed pretty happy about that. Everyone likes a good Oreo. I served on my Fourth of July plasticware, even though the setting was from a couple of years ago. The cookies weren’t in the right colors, compared to the good old red-white-and-blue motif, but some things in life aren’t right, like this girl having cancer, and losing all of her hair, and dying. She was a good girl, and I got sad to think about her dying. So I talked to her instead.

  “Look at all this, won’t you? We’ll each have a box for each: Secrets, Ideas, and Things. You can come here and use your boxes any time you like. You just knock on the door, and if no one’s home, I’ll show you where the key rock is—it’s in the garden, it’s an As-Seen-on-TV Hide-a-Key rock. The ones that hide the key?”

  I realized that I was talking too much. Meg O’Daly, I told myself, don’t scare her.

  “Would you like some pop with your cookies? I’ve got Sprite and Dr. Pepper.”

  Christmas had a mouth full of Oreos. She nodded. Her eyes were kind of watery. I wondered if that was the cancer, making her eyes soupy like that.

  “Dr. Pepper?”

  She nodded.

  “One Dr. Pepper, coming right up.”

  I went alone into my kitchen. Bryson had just redone the wallpaper borders, and the yellow of the daisy pattern was new. Maybe I should have him do it again, make the wallpaper borders more green to go with the kitchen chairs. I had done the chairs in light green vinyl—a lettuce color. My kitchen was my second favorite room in the world, and the colors here had to make me happy.

  That girl had me confused, if you can believe that. I had been standing in the middle of my kitchen, holding an empty glass in one hand and the big bottle of Dr. Pepper in the other and staring at nothing, just waiting for the world. I don’t know how long I had been standing there; something in me had stopped moving. I wasn’t the Meg O’Daly everyone knew.

  The Dr. Pepper was open already. Bryson had been at the Dr. Pepper again, so this was likely a different bottle. It was one of his secrets that I wasn’t supposed to know. He would buy Dr. Peppers to replace the Dr. Peppers, and I was supposed to act like I didn’t know he was guzzling pop late at night, when he did his lineups and team emails, even though the doctor was worried about Bryson’s sugars. Good thing he didn’t think I was stupid—we could both just pretend that the Dr. Pepper was the Dr. Pepper.

  Then I decided, because being wishy-washy isn’t me. I am the luckiest woman on the planet to be standing in such a beautiful kitchen, and I had to do something. Something right.

  I sat her at my crafts table. I could hear the central air, the water in my little fountain in the breakfast room trickling over the pebbles, the stand-up electric room freshener whirring, the cute Swiss clock in the hallway ticking, and my own breathing, huh, huh. I was hearing things very small.

  Let’s get going here, I decided.

  We sat at the table, facing one another.

  I looked at her, poor thing. I bet she didn’t want to be treated like she was a poor thing. I said, “If you were dying real soon, would you choose a box which says ‘Secrets,’ ‘Ideas,’ or ‘Things’?”

  Christmas didn’t answer. She sipped some of Bryson’s Dr. Pepper. The Oreos were gone.

  “Me, I wouldn’t care.”

  That got a look back.

  “But if I had to choose, maybe I’d want ‘Secrets.’ Because there wasn’t going to be anyone to tell my secrets to.”

  I made my right hand flat, and I pushed one of the Secrets boxes a tiny bit toward Christmas, maybe just an inch. She still hadn’t said anything.

  Okay, I thought. Not that one.

  “Or, maybe I would want ‘Ideas,’ because no one was going to know my ideas, because I was going to be dead.”

  I made my left hand flat, and I pushed one of the Ideas boxes toward her, then stopped pushing. I clasped my hands together and laid them on my stomach. Here’s a church without a steeple, I told myself.

  I made myself sit there.

  Christmas’ eyes moved, left to right, Secrets to Ideas. Right to left. Left to right, and that’s where they stayed. She had chosen: Ideas it was.

  “Okay,” I said. “This one’s yours.”

  I took the lid off of the Ideas box. Inside, there were dividers; the box had a plastic insert and little compartments. The dividers were each wrapped in plastic, how cute was that.

  “My word!” I said to Christmas. “It’s just like a person inside. All divided up. It’s just like you and me!”

  On the shelves along the wall—I had Bryson build them this past winter, when he was sitting around doing nothing again, another winter with Bryson waiting for spring—I keep stacks of construction paper and card stock in different colors. Not that I have a stationery store or anything, but I do like my craft papers in so many ways. Christmas wasn’t big on chatting when crafting, some girls are like that, so I got up from the table and went over to the shelves.

  “If I were to give you squares of paper, would you be happy? You could draw on them or write Ideas for your Ideas box.”

  Children who don’t answer make me nuts. But I had to be patient. I could almost see the girl think that she was thinking she had to get out of here, that this crazy crafts lady was going to murder her with a pair of pinking shears. I knew exactly in which drawer I kept the shears, and she was right, if she didn’t answer me, I might kill her. I had to make myself wait, and that was hard.

  We both waited.

  “Purple,” Christmas finally said.

  “Purple!” My voice was a little too squeaky. “Purple,” I said. “I just happen to have purple, and we can use the big paper cutter and make squares out of it, and then it can be yours. You can have as many purple squares as your little heart desires.”

  “Rmm-ou,” Christmas mumbled.

  “Speak up, dear,” I said.

  “Thank you.” She raised her head.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I decided I wouldn’t murder her with the pinking shears after all. That was a funny joke I told myself just then.

  But then I wondered, if I were dying, wouldn’t I want to die right away, instead of waiting for it? Kill me, I thought.

  “What are all these for?” Christmas had gone to use the rest-room, and was calling from the trophy hall.

  “They’re trophies,” I said.

  “What for?�
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  “Senior ball. My husband plays.”

  There wasn’t an answer. Christmas appeared in the doorway of the crafts room. She had a piece of something stuck to her cheek.

  “I hate sports,” she said, and moved to sit back at the table. She had work to do with her purple squares.

  “You’ve got something—” I pointed toward her cheek. “There… almost…there!”

  Christmas didn’t laugh. A healthy girl would laugh, I realized later, after she had gone. Anyone healthy laughs at a thing stuck to her face. Dying makes people not funny, that’s what I think.

  I showed Christmas where the As-Seen-on-TV Hide-a-Key rock was, and how to let herself in through the breakfast room side door. I showed her where I would put the Secrets, Ideas, and Things boxes, on a little shelf just for her. I told her I’d leave a snack for her if I went out, that she should help herself, and that I often went out, because of Senior Softball and Bryson’s league schedules, which were coming up on the playoffs, and she was welcome to come by anytime. I felt like I was talking to a stray cat, saying, “There will be a saucer of milk for you, Fluffy.” What do strays die of? I’m not a cat person.

  Once Christmas left, I thought about calling my phone chain and getting the girls involved. I thought a long time, sitting at my crafts table, cutting purple paper into squares to put into the Secrets, Ideas, and Things boxes, for her to find if she came back. I hoped she would.

  Squares are perfect. I held one up. I turned it around, but that didn’t matter. Then I decided to handle this situation myself, even though the girls on the phone chain like helping and they rely on me to tell them how.

  This girl needed the Meg O’Daly touch.

  Because I’m an artist, I understand what being different is like. Take jewelry, for example. I don’t make a lot of jewelry, but when I do, it’s because I’m inspired. I find that inspiration makes me different from other people. It doesn’t occur to Bryson to sit at his crafts table and make jewelry as a gift for someone. That’s my own thinking.

  I use Stringing Enfilage/Enhebrar—the kind that comes on the card, I like the rainbow-colored—if I’m making necklaces. For earrings, I work with jewelry wire, and use 4mm jump rings and spacer bars and findings. I have nylon-covered round-nose pliers for opening the jump rings without scratching the metal, and once the rings are open, anything can be hung there and made pretty. My granddaughter Shayla loves making earrings. But as I tell Shayla, a girl’s got to have pierced ears to wear earrings, and I don’t make clip-ons, those are for beginners.

  Here’s what I think about wearing earrings: a girl wants to fit in, and she wants to look unique, but if she looks too unique, she won’t fit in. It’s just how society is. The boys are telling the girls, “I want you to look pretty,” but they don’t know what that means. A girl has to say what she wants and to decide how she looks. I grew up, and Daddy never let me want what I wanted. But Bryson’s good, and he waits for me to say I’m ready before we go out.

  My girls and boys, they grew up knowing better, although I’m not so sure about the oldest, Mark. He’s in sales and he’s just like my dad, one of those men who thinks he knows. Mark wouldn’t act differently if you paid him—although he likes his money, that’s obvious. He’s a good salesman, my Mark, and he and Margie have my favorite grand-twins (okay, they’re the only ones I have), even though they live so far from here, but I think that being in sales makes Mark feel like he knows better all of the time, telling a customer, “You want to have this generator because it’s the best one on the market at the best price,” whether or not that’s true.

  I think Mark’s a bit opposite of me. I say, “Meg O’Daly, you’ve made something for someone, and even if you love it so much, you’ve got to give it to them. That’s your job, because you’re an artist.”

  When I make a present for someone, I try to picture that person a lot. I close my eyes and I open my eyes and I unfocus on the person, which helps me see the person. I want the person to be visible, to be smiling at me. Christmas kept coming up invisible, to me, and it wasn’t because of her skinniness. I couldn’t make myself see her. I didn’t know who she was—I think it’s because she’s a young girl, and not a grown-up yet, and she’s not one of my grandkids, and she’s so wild, such a feral little thing. Which is why the earrings I made for her didn’t work.

  Nice earrings, too. Once I selected the findings and chose the spacer bars, I turned some silver wire around a little cylinder or tube or whatever it is, and then I added red wire next to the silver, for a striped effect, and I used my pliers to make a loop out of the red wire, and then I hung a little silver ball in the loop. Not real silver, of course. I think I made these earrings—picturing Christmas in my head—with the ball at the bottom because I was thinking about what a little kitty would wear. Like a bell on a collar.

  I made two mistakes with these earrings. First, she wasn’t a little kitty. Christmas was a different kind of person than that. I got that wrong. Second, I don’t like cats, so why would I make something out of love for something I don’t love.

  Another way that crafting improves a person, an article said, is to help with “mental challenge and problem-solving.” I agree completely. I appreciate a good mental challenge, which I think must be because I’m an artist. I like trying to solve things with art.

  In the meantime, whenever I went out, I put a plate of Oreos on a dish and left it on my crafts table, with a matching napkin and a little note that said, “Welcome!” That’s all the note said. Each time, the Oreos were still there. Then, on a Tuesday afternoon, when I went to stock up on Gatorade powder for the boys’ game that night, I came home and the Oreos were gone. Christmas had been there—the thought made me smile, and made me think of Santa, too, even though that girl and Santa couldn’t be further from one another.

  I had done right and not left the earrings for her, but I had to make something. That girl was sick, and I had to love her somehow. She had asked to be loved, by coming back for the Oreos.

  A necklace was wrong, mittens were wrong, a little coin purse was wrong, a tooled belt was wrong, a glasses case with lots of bling was wrong (although one of my favorite gifts to give), a blouse with embroidered collar points was wrong (too cowgirl), a lampshade was wrong. The mental challenge continued.

  Christmas came back on Wednesday. She waited for me to go out—she must have been hiding nearby—and she ate the Oreos again. This time, I found the dish in the kitchen sink instead of on the crafts table. The Secrets, Ideas, and Things boxes were all in the same place.

  Christmas came back on Friday. Oreos gone, and the dish in the sink. We were having something together, like we were leaving messages. Maybe she was coming into unfocus a bit more.

  I called my daughter Christy, the nurse, in Columbus, Ohio, and told her about Christmas.

  “Her name’s like yours,” I said. “I should have named you Christmas.”

  “Mom,” Christy said. “Joe’s due home soon and I’m working tonight.”

  “I know, I know, this won’t be but a sec. Be sympathetic for a change, would you? What should I give her?”

  I had to leave too, since the drive to A.B. takes fifteen minutes and the game was starting at 7:00. Bryson wants his Gatorade when he wants it.

  Christmas was changing my life in so many ways.

  “I don’t know, Mom. Make her something. Like you do.” I could tell Christy was exasperated. “Make her something she’ll wear. Look, I’ve got to go—”

  “Of course, honey. You tell your Joe his mother-in-law says hi. That should surprise him plenty. Happy trails to Joe from me.”

  I went out again on Friday, and Christmas came and ate the Oreos and cleaned up after herself, fourth day in a row. I was beginning to wonder if she might like a different kind of cookie. Maybe I would put two kinds of cookies on the plate. Maybe if a person’s dying, she only wants her very favorite cookie all the time.

  Bryson’s Friday night softball team has a few diff
erent players than his Tuesday night team. Some guys who play Senior ball aren’t retired, and they can’t play during the week for work reasons, but they like the weekend warrior routine. Some of them are real good, too, and the Friday team, “Oldies But Goodies,” OBG, they’re fun to watch. One guy, R.J., used to play college ball, he’s a beast in center, and he hits it out two or three or even four times a game. He grunts when he hits the ball, which makes us girls smile.

  Bryson’s OBG team has OBG hats that I ordered through a website, and OBG logos on their jerseys custom made by Willard Smith at The Craft Maxi Mart. CraftMaxiMart.com does the best custom labels and logos, and Tom Smith’s my guy on the phone. Since OBG is sponsored by MotoRivals, the European sports car place on North Central, there’s money enough to pay for Tom Smith’s fancy work. Sponsors are important.

  I was packing Bryson’s extra gear and a hat for a substitute player, late Friday—the game was at 8:30—and I looked at the OBG hat, and the logo, and there was the answer. Just like that, I knew what to make. Christmas was in luck. Christmas would come early this year, I told myself, but the joke didn’t make sense, even though it had Meg O’Daly love in spades.

  I can’t do anything but keep the book when I’m keeping the book. The official scorer for each team has to watch every play and use the System 17 method that the Official Quick Tally™ Scorebook requires, and to show the ump the score if asked, which happens at the end of each half inning but sometimes more often than that. I know this is boring for most people, but not for me. That night, though, for the first time I could remember, I didn’t want to keep the book. Which shook me up a little: Meg O’Daly was going through something.

  I wanted, instead, to be knitting. I knew the hat I was going to knit for Christmas. Although I probably had to stop at Michael’s for more purple yarn.