by Jae
Kelli paused her fork. “Where are your parents now?”
“Brazil.”
Jules glanced over as she swallowed. “Brazil? You’re not traveling there for Christmas, are you?”
“No.” Toni smiled. “No. I volunteered to work Christmas. Everyone else has family they want to be with.”
Kelli caught Jules’s eye. Jules tipped her head a bit in answer to Kelli’s unspoken question. “You need to come here when you get off,” Jules said.
Toni opened her mouth to protest, but Kelli cut her off. “We’re having a boatload here for Christmas Day. One more won’t be a hardship for us, and there’s no reason for you to go home alone when you get off.”
Toni glanced from Kelli to Jules. “You’re sure?”
“We’re sure,” Jules said. “If you can stand a crowd.”
Toni’s face lit up. “I love crowds.”
“Well, our crowd is getting more interesting by the minute,” Jules said as she took a big gulp of wine.
The morning of the twenty-first found Jules and Kelli busy putting fresh sheets on the bed in the guest room and the futon in the office. Off to one side sat an uninflated air mattress.
“The young spine gets the floor,” Kelli said, standing up to stretch her own sore back. She made a fist and rubbed her knuckles into her muscles. “How did we ever do stuff like camp and sleep on the ground in sleeping bags?”
“I never did,” Jules said, tucking the bedspread into the foot of the bed. “Mae figured I had a bed and needed to be in it every night. Bertha wouldn’t have let Hobie sleep outside anyhow.”
Kelli glanced at her watch. “Where do you think they are by now?”
“Should be almost in Virginia by now.”
“Time to get the bathrooms scrubbed then.”
“Thank goodness you’re here,” Jules said two hours later. “If you’d been any longer, Kelli would have had me cleaning out the garage next.”
She opened the back door of Mae’s Oldsmobile for Bertha while Mae gave Kelli a hug. Ronnie, Jules noticed, got out from behind the wheel without saying anything and went to the trunk.
“I’ll help with those,” Jules said, taking a suitcase in each hand.
Upstairs, she set Mae’s bag down in the guestroom and Bertha’s in the office.
“Sorry, Ronnie. We’ll blow the air mattress up at night, but for now, you’ll have to be a vagabond.”
Ronnie dropped her backpack on the office floor. “Nothing new.”
Jules looked at her, but Ronnie was already walking back out into the hall and down the stairs. Jules followed to find Mae and Bertha busy in the kitchen, helping Kelli with dinner preparations. Ronnie accepted a Coke and went to the living room.
“We’ve got this,” Kelli said in an undertone to Jules.
Jules nodded and went to the living room to find Ronnie sitting on the floor with Holly curling up on her lap. Mistletoe eyed them from under the Christmas tree where she lay with her front feet tucked under her.
“So how are things going?”
Ronnie shrugged. “They’re going.”
Jules sipped her Coke. “Exams went well?”
“I guess. Don’t have my grades yet.”
They sat in silence while Ronnie stroked Holly’s silky coat as she purred contentedly.
“Anything else going on?”
Ronnie frowned. “I wish everyone would stop asking me that. I’m fine. Things are fine. My grades are fine. Work is fine. Okay?”
Jules bit her lip to keep from smiling. “Okay.”
She got up and went back to the kitchen.
“Everything okay?” Kelli asked.
“Nope. But she’s not ready to talk. Let’s just leave her be.”
Mae overheard and said, “She doesn’t have to talk to help set the table. Ronnie!”
Jules grinned and went to get the dishes from the cupboard.
Over dinner, Bertha chatted more than Jules could remember since she was a kid. Mae had talked her into helping out with the church soup kitchen twice a week, and it seemed having a purpose had been just what Bertha needed. Her hair was clean and cut to shoulder length, her eyes were bright, and there was some color in her cheeks. Hobie looked so much like her, Jules thought as she watched her talking to Kelli.
“And how’s your family, Kelli?” Mae asked.
“Fine,” Kelli lied. Her talk with her sister had not gone well. Jules waited to see if Kelli would go into any of that, but she just said, “My dad has been seeing a woman. We’ll all get to meet her at Christmas.”
Mae’s sharp gaze probed Kelli’s face. “I’m sure it’s nice for him to have company.”
Kelli nodded. “I think you’re right. We all have to move on.”
“Moving on doesn’t mean forgetting,” Bertha said.
Jules squeezed Kelli’s hand under the table.
Through dinner, Ronnie poked at her food, eating very little and saying nothing. As soon as she could, she cleared her dishes and excused herself to go upstairs.
“So this is what she’s been like?” Jules asked Bertha, who nodded.
“She comes home from work and stays in her room almost all the time,” Bertha said. “I’ve tried to get her to talk, but she won’t.”
“Has there been any trouble at the high school? Anything like last year when they were writing stuff on her locker?”
Bertha shook her head. “Not that I’ve heard. And I don’t think she’s had any contact with her mother. It started after she got a letter from Ohio State. I think maybe they turned her down, but I’ve been afraid to ask.”
“You’re kidding,” Kelli said. “She’s a good student.”
“That’s not all they base admissions on, though,” Jules said.
“Well, this is getting tiresome,” Mae said. “She needs to stop making everyone else miserable.”
“She’s seventeen,” Kelli said. “It’s her job to make everyone else miserable.”
“I’ll give her a little time and try again,” Jules said. “In the meantime, let’s just leave her as alone as she wants to be.”
“Well, I guess we didn’t need to worry about what we were going to do with Mae and Bertha for three days, did we?” Kelli said as she handed two grocery bags to Jules.
“What in the world did they buy?” Jules peered into the bags.
That question was soon answered as the house was filled with the smell of baking cookies—dozens and dozens of cookies.
“We’ll be eating Christmas cookies until Memorial Day,” Jules said, looking around at the cooling racks and Tupperware containers covering every inch of counter and tabletop.
“They freeze,” Bertha said happily, her cheeks pink with the heat of the oven as she placed another baking sheet inside.
On the second day of the baking marathon, Mae looked over at Jules and said, “Don’t you think this has gone on long enough?”
Jules glanced upward to where Ronnie had ensconced herself in the office as soon as Bertha woke and vacated the futon. She’d spent the entire previous day up there with her laptop, emerging only for meals.
“I think you’re right.”
Jules packed a large plastic bag full of a variety of cookies. “For the energy it’s going to take to pry the truth out of her.”
She went upstairs and gave the door one sharp rap before opening it. “Come on.”
Ronnie looked up. “What?”
“We’re going for a drive.”
Ronnie’s expression darkened. “Where?”
“Just for a drive. You’ve been in this room too long. Come on.”
Ronnie just stared at her.
“It’s not really a request.” Jules stepped out into the hall and waited.
Scowling, Ronnie closed her laptop and got to her feet.
Jules got into her Subaru while Ronnie buckled herself into the passenger seat. She backed out and drove without speaking, letting Ronnie sulk.
Finally, Ronnie said, “Where are we going?”
“Thought you might like to see UVA’s campus.” Jules wove her way toward downtown Charlottesville.
Ronnie didn’t reply, just turned to stare out the window.
With the campus nearly deserted for the holidays, Jules easily found parking near the central grounds.
She snugged her scarf around her neck and grabbed a messenger bag containing the baggie of cookies, slinging it over her chest. Without waiting, she headed off, leaving Ronnie no choice but to follow. They skirted the McIntire Amphitheatre and walked toward the Lawn and the Rotunda.
Jules stopped and looked around. From the corner of her eye, she saw Ronnie’s mouth gape at the sight. Jefferson’s image for the campus never failed to impress.
“Ohio State’s campus isn’t as old or as grand,” she said. “But it has some beaut—”
“I’m not going.”
Jules turned to face Ronnie. “What?”
Ronnie’s hands were jammed into her jacket pockets and her chin was tucked into her scarf as she repeated, “I am not going to college.”
Jules led the way to the steps of a building and sat. Ronnie sat beside her as Jules dug into her bag and then held it out. “Have a cookie.”
Wordlessly, Ronnie reached into the baggie. They munched in silence for a few minutes.
“Did OSU turn you down?”
Ronnie didn’t answer. She got up and walked along the path. Jules followed.
“Ronnie, you gotta talk to someone.”
Ronnie stopped. “I got accepted, okay? But I’m not going.”
Jules opened her mouth to question further, when she suddenly recalled the day she got her acceptance letter.
“I was terrified.”
Ronnie half-glanced in her direction. “What do you mean?”
Jules squinted at the dome of the Rotunda, remembering. “I’d waited and waited for that acceptance letter, and then, when it came… I kind of panicked. OSU was too big and too far away. I told Pappy I wasn’t going.”
Ronnie shifted to look at her fully. “What did he say?”
Jules smiled and nibbled on an oatmeal cookie for a moment. “I told him I’d be lost there. He told me I’d find myself.”
Ronnie broke a piece off a chocolate chip cookie and put it in her mouth. She chewed for a moment. “One lecture hall is bigger than my whole high school.”
“Yup.”
“The campus is bigger than the town of Aldie.”
“Yes, it is.” Jules leaned over and bumped Ronnie’s shoulder. “And you’ll meet all kinds of people you’d never meet in Aldie. You won’t be judged by them because they don’t know you. You get to start completely fresh, invent yourself as the person you want to be.”
Ronnie seemed to think about this as she ate the rest of her cookie.
Jules laid her arm across Ronnie’s shoulders. “I know it’s intimidating, but I promise you, it’ll be okay. Your whole world will change. You wanted change, right?”
Ronnie hiccupped with laughter and swiped her sleeve across her face. “Be careful what you ask for?”
Jules smiled and gave Ronnie a shake. “Yeah. Something like that.”
“What did you say to her?” Kelli whispered Christmas Eve as Ronnie peeled potatoes for dinner and chatted with Bertha.
“Not much.” Jules smiled. “Mostly just remembered. By the way, you and I are going to be taking a trip to Columbus this summer to help her learn her way around.”
Kelli gave Jules a kiss on the cheek and went to check the ham.
There was a knock on the front door, and Marianne called out from the foyer. She came into the kitchen a moment later.
“Hey,” Jules said. “Wine?”
“Sure.” Marianne got a glass and poured for herself, topping off Jules’s glass also.
“The kids with Brian tonight?”
“Yes. Not that he’s cooking. He took them to his parents’, so they’ll do their Christmas tonight, and I won’t have to cut our day short tomorrow.” Marianne’s expression darkened as she took a huge gulp. “Of course, I may want to skip out of here tomorrow.”
Jules glanced over sympathetically. “Give her a chance. She might be really nice.”
“Doesn’t matter if she is. It’s the whole idea. Mom hasn’t even been gone a year. It’s like he just locked her memory away in a trunk and got himself a new model.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Jules said, stepping gingerly around this prickly topic. “Kelli said there are still pictures of Carol all around the house. I think Evelyn is smart enough not to try and replace her. No more than she wants to replace her first husband. They just want to share each other’s company.”
Marianne snorted. “Share each other’s bed more likely.”
Jules thought it best not to reply. She folded the freshly laundered napkins Kelli had laid out while Marianne wandered off to see if she could help Mae with anything.
Jules went to set the dining table and paused, looking back into the kitchen. Never would she have expected to have her grandmother and Hobie’s mom working in her kitchen, chatting with her partner as they prepared Christmas Eve dinner. She hadn’t spent Christmas with Mae for years. It had just gotten too hard to go home for the holidays. Too many memories. She finished setting the table.
“Jules? What time is church tonight?”
Jules turned to find Mae looking at her. “Excuse me?”
“It’s Christmas Eve. We are going to church, young lady.”
Kelli bit her lip, but Ronnie didn’t bother to hide her glee at hearing this exchange.
“I’ll have to call and see,” Jules mumbled.
Kelli rolled over and wrapped an arm around Jules. “I think the kids are awake.”
Sleepily, Jules groaned. “We don’t have any kids.”
“We do this Christmas.” She kissed Jules and got out of bed. “And she’s sleeping on an air mattress right next to all the presents.”
Jules sat up and ran a hand through her hair, which was sticking up in all directions. Times like this, she missed her ponytail. Still half-asleep, she pulled on a sweatshirt and flannel pants printed with Christmas lights. She went to brush her teeth when Kelli left the bathroom. By the time she finished, Kelli was downstairs. She sniffed as she descended the stairs.
“Do I smell—”
“Cinnamon rolls!”
Bertha beamed from where she was kneeling, peering through the oven window. “Merry Christmas. I thought I’d make something special for breakfast this morning.”
Kelli handed Jules a cup of coffee. “What time did you get up? We didn’t get home until after midnight.”
Bertha shrugged. “I don’t mind. I like having people to cook for.”
Ronnie bounced into the kitchen. “Mattress is back upstairs. When do we open presents?”
Jules scowled over her coffee.
“You’d better let her get at least one cup into her system first,” Kelli said, chuckling.
Mae came downstairs. “About time you got up. Santa left stockings for everyone.”
Jules choked. “Stockings?” She coughed, pounding her chest with her fist. “You told me stockings were silly when I was a kid.”
Mae’s cheeks flushed a bit. “Well, I was wrong there.”
The oven timer beeped, cutting off further discussion. Bertha pulled a cake pan out of the oven and drizzled icing over the rolls. In a minute, everyone was seated at the table with a couple of cinnamon rolls each.
“Oh, Bertha,” said Kell
i. “These are heavenly.”
Jules closed her eyes and moaned, nodding. Ronnie wolfed down a third roll while everyone else was finishing a second.
“Presents now?”
Kelli laughed. “All right. Presents. Come on.”
She led the way into the living room where the Christmas tree lights provided the only illumination. She clicked on a couple of lamps as everyone took a seat.
Ronnie dove under the tree, distributing the wrapped gifts there. There was a lot of ripping of paper followed by exclamations of delight from everyone except Jules.
Kelli glanced over and saw her sitting cross-legged on the couch, staring at a thick book in her lap.
“Jules?”
Ronnie nudged Bertha, and Mae glanced over.
“What is it?” Kelli asked.
Jules turned it to reveal a photo of two smiling kids—a skinny girl and a chubby boy—standing with their arms around each other, wearing army helmets and canteens belted around their waists.
“We scanned all of Bertha’s and Mae’s old pictures,” Ronnie said.
“We thought you might not have any photos of Hobie,” Mae said. “Thought it might be time for you to have some.”
Jules blinked rapidly, turning the photo album back around and flipping through the pages. Kelli came to sit beside her, leaning over to see. Jules pressed her fist to her mouth.
“Do you like it?” Bertha asked tremulously.
“I love it,” Jules said, though her voice cracked. “Thank you all.”
An awkward silence filled the room for a moment.
“Thanks for my sweatshirt,” Ronnie said, slipping it over her head and staring down at the scarlet letters emblazoned across her chest.
Conversation resumed as the others all continued opening presents, but Jules just sat with her photo album, smiling at the images staring up at her.
They all helped clean up the torn wrapping paper and boxes, stuffing everything into a bag to take out to the recycling bin, and then it was time to get back to work in the kitchen.
