I'm Your Girl

by J. J. Murray

  “Are you coming up for a visit or not? At least come up for New Year’s.”

  I had taken a deep breath and closed my eyes. “No, Mama. As I’ve told you before, I have—”

  “Your own life now. I know, I know.” Silence.

  “And I only have one day of vacation left this year.” More silence. “I promise to come home for Thanksgiving.”

  “Thanksgiving? That’s in…eleven months!”

  “Bye, Mama.”

  Click.

  I had waited a few minutes, and the phone didn’t ring. After that, I had started shuffling cards and…here I am.

  I really shouldn’t be playing solitaire at all. I should be making cookies for Santa, which only I would eat in the morning. I should be wrapping gifts (mainly for myself) or listening to carols or even looking out the window for the snow showers they’re predicting. Roanoke might have a white Christmas for the first time in anyone’s memory. But aren’t all Christmases white anyway? You have a white Jesus, white shepherds, white angels, and white stars. It’s a Caucasian Christmas. At the library, we’ve been listening to a country station that plays only Christmas music from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. Our library isn’t completely quiet, because Kim “Prim” Cambridge, the library director says, “We have to compete with the mall, and they’re playing that music, too.”

  Kim is…odd.

  So, I’ve been subjected to eight hours of “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Silent Night,” “White Christmas,” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Oh, and “The Christmas Song” sung by some white guy with a twangy voice. Where are Nat King and Natalie Cole? Or just Nat? Mmm. I could get used to Nat’s creamy-butter voice in my life. I doubt I’ll hear him on that station, though I did hear a little Luther Vandross one day. It surprised me so much when he belted out “O Holy Night” that I did a little chair dance right there at the reference desk.

  Francine, the other Grade Four Clerk, had then had the nerve to ask if I needed some lotion for my behind. “You look all itchy and twitchy,” she had said.

  White folks just don’t know a good chair dance when they see one.

  I was listening to that station earlier tonight, but I’m all Christmased out. Those reindeer keep hitting grandma—because grandma is drunk—and the little drummer boy (all seventeen different versions, three every half hour) is giving me a headache with all that rum-pum-pum-pumming. I’m no Scrooge, but when you start hating “The First Noel”—the first Christmas song I learned to sing when I was five years old—you don’t have any Christmas spirit left.

  I look at the gifts under my Charlie Brown Christmas tree, a remnant of a tree I actually bought at a Christmas tree lot. “Topped it off a real big one,” the man had told me, and I had talked him down to three dollars.

  You know you’re horrible at celebrating Christmas when you talk a man down to three dollars for the top of a “real big one” and your tree fits in the front passenger seat of your Hyundai.

  And, you know you’re lonely when there are only four gifts under that tree. Two are from anonymous coworkers (one from a gift exchange with the circulation staff, one from a gift exchange with the reference staff), and both are books: The Da Vinci Code and The Handmaid’s Tale. Neither book is my cup of tea, but they’ll look nice in my library. The third gift is a sweater I bought for myself at Lane Bryant. I had tried on several sweaters ranging from sizes ten to eighteen, and though my heart had said, “Give yourself a size ten, girl,” and my mind had said, “You’ll look just fine in a fourteen,” my body ordered me to wrap up the size eighteen. It actually fits me better, though I’m embarrassed that it fits me better. It will give me an excuse to get out after Christmas to exchange it…for a sixteen…or a fourteen, who knows? I may take a couple walks around the block tomorrow.

  And the last gift really isn’t a gift at all. They’re books I get to review for the Mid-Atlantic Book Review, an on-line book club I’ve belonged to since I arrived in Roanoke. “We’re MAB, and we’re Mad about Books!” is our slogan. I didn’t make the slogan, and, for the most part, I’m “Mad at Books.” The trifling stuff they publish these days…At least these books will keep me busy for a week or so.

  Until then, I’ll just—

  “Finally!”

  Now if I can only find a red jack, I’ll be…

  Set.

  Time to shuffle.

  Again.

  Merry Christmas, girl.

  2

  Jack Browning

  I don’t know why I’m putting up this tree.

  Old habit, I guess.

  Yeah.

  It’s something to do.

  There are so many ornaments. Baby’s first, second, where’s the—There it is. Baby’s third. Stevie opened it last year…before tearing into his other presents.

  Without a second thought.

  He was a kid. He was excited. He opened this bear on a train in about five seconds. He loved his bears. I wanted to get him a plane, or an old car, or even a Harley-Davidson ornament, but Noël said to stay in sequence. “We’re creating heirlooms for him to share with his own family one day.”

  One day.

  Don’t think about it.

  I can’t help it.

  You and Noël were just keeping Hallmark in business, you know.

  I was getting to like that tradition.

  You can’t miss putting together his toys.

  They were fun.

  You cursed the directions too much.

  They weren’t written in decent English half the time.

  I look up at the goofy tree topper, a star I picked out at Wal-Mart. Half of the lights have the colors of the rainbow, and the other half are clear white. I don’t know why they keep burning out.

  That’s what lightbulbs do.

  But they only put in two replacement bulbs. How nice of them.

  That’s how they keep you coming back, year after year.

  Noël always winced and shrugged when we had completed the tree, but she took the picture anyway with Stevie in front of the tree, all warm in his footy pajamas, his stuffed teddy bear named Mr. Bear in his arms, his eyes sparkling like all the tinsel—

  He was a cute kid.

  The cutest.

  I’m sure Mr. Bear is still in Stevie’s closet. I ought to donate it and all the Christmas gifts Noël bought for Stevie during the year to the Salvation Army. She was always thinking about Christmas, even in July.

  You thought she was crazy.

  Yeah.

  I just can’t open her closet door to get at them yet, mainly because I can’t quite get myself to open the door to that room. My back aches from sleeping on the bottom bunk of Stevie’s bunk bed, and I ought to wash those sheets…but that little boy smell is still in them.

  Have I done everything correctly?

  Something’s missing.

  The train! Why didn’t I put that together before I hung the ornaments? I did the same thing last year. We put up the tree, wrapped it in lights, hung all the ornaments, and threw on lots of tinsel, so much so that it choked Tony the cat.

  Tony deposited a very interesting, shiny fur ball in the kitchen the next day.

  And then Noël said, “Don’t forget the train”…and here I am forgetting the train again.

  There are some outdoor decorations in the laundry room. Don’t forget them.

  It’s too late. It’s Christmas Eve.

  It’s never too late to celebrate Christmas.

  It is this year.

  I piece together the track around the base of the tree, getting tinsel in my hair and pinesap on my forehead. “You look silly, Daddy,” Stevie would say. Then I place the train on the track, hooking all the cars together and hitting the switch on the locomotive. The batteries are still good.

  Chug-a-chugga, chug-a-chugga.

  But where’s the smoke? Oh, yeah. I have to add cooking oil to the smokestack. Maybe later.

  Tony the cat hated the train, and I keep expecting him to appear out of no
where to swipe at the caboose. He left soon after…that day. He’s better off anyway.

  You forgot to feed him most of the time.

  I forget to feed myself most of the time.

  Yeah, your diet should consist of more than alcohol and pretzels.

  I wonder if Noël bought me anything before…

  You know she did.

  But my presents would be in that closet, too. I’ll bet she got me some clothes. Yeah. She was always trying to dress me better.

  Anything would have been an improvement.

  But I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’ll bet there are ties in that closet. Noël wanted me to look professional on the job—which would be over for a while anyway, at least until after New Year’s, though I’m sure I’d have plenty of papers to grade. I’m on an extended holiday break from teaching. You can’t call it “Christmas break” anymore.

  That isn’t politically correct.

  And you really shouldn’t say “holiday,” because it comes from “holy day.” So I guess you just say, “Have a good whatever.”

  Try putting that phrase on a button and see if you don’t offend anyone.

  The school, Monterey Elementary, called me in again to substitute last week. It’s nice to know they’re thinking of me, but I’m on permanent sabbatical, prematurely retired at the ripe old age of thirty-two. I should have gotten hazard pay to teach social studies to fifth-graders, and they want me to substitute? No way, I said, even though subs are now making eighty bucks a day. I’m okay for funds—for now. The life insurance…

  I don’t want to think about the reason I have so few debts now.

  You will anyway.

  I don’t want to, but…they only gave me $5,000 for Stevie! That’s all he was worth! Five thousand dollars for a priceless little life! I got more money from the settlement on the van! A child’s life has to have more value than a van!

  Stevie was priceless.

  It was as if he were leased to me for a few years, and I could trade him in for…for this…for this.

  Stevie was on loan from God, Jack. We’re all only on loan to this world.

  It’s just not fair.

  I get up and walk down the hallway to Noël’s door. All the times I used to come up from grading or writing, turning this doorknob silently, easing the door open only to have the hinges squeak, but Noël slept through it, even though I bumped a dresser drawer with my knee almost every night.

  Your bruises must have healed by now.

  They have. I even have a few scars.

  It was a sharp dresser. Get it?

  Ha-ha.

  I’d feel for the corner of the bed on my side, slide in beside her, kiss her cheek, maybe spoon with her a while before returning to the cold side of the bed….

  I can’t turn the knob today. I just can’t. Maybe tomorrow.

  You’ve been saying that for the last six months.

  I know. Maybe tomorrow.

  I return to the tree, plugging in the lights. Then I take a picture of…no one with big eyes giggling into the camera.

  Oh, God, this is so hard.

  No one said it was going to be easy.

  I down the rest of my eggnog, toasting the tree and carrying on a conversation with myself while the train chug-a-chugs in circles.

  3

  Diane

  I like living alone, and I even like living in a house that continuously falls apart, all at once sometimes. I’ve met some interesting men that way, and they don’t have to bathe or dry their socks in my bathroom.

  It all started about three months after I moved in, not that my house in northeast Roanoke—which is mostly blue-collar and white—would ever be the first cover home of Better Black Homes and Gardens. At first, it was a series of little things. Nothing major, just minor problems to fuss at like drafts, creaks, funny smells, and peeling paint and siding.

  After all these minor headaches, the small deck at the back of the house simply fell into the yard, taking a huge strip of siding with it, after some heavy rains during my only week off from the library last summer. Why do bad things always seem to happen on your vacation? I called around for estimates, didn’t have the $2,000 (over my dead body!) necessary to rebuild it “to code” (whatever that means), and ended up taking a card off a wall at the entrance of Food Lion for a handyman. I called and left a message, and the next day Robert Maxwell showed up.

  I have only dropped my jaw past my ankles once or twice in my life, and when I saw Robert Maxwell, my jaw was dragging on the ground behind me, grass and little stones and dandelions all up in my teeth. Imagine a six-five black Fabio with good hair, muscles on top of muscles, a smile right out of GQ, and hands the size of tree stumps. I showed him the damage to the deck and the siding.

  “It’ll take me uh couple uh three days,” he had said real slow. “It won’t be no trouble ’tall.”

  Except for his constipated, country accent, I had enjoyed my handyman. I had watched that mountain of a man through the miniblinds in my bedroom. That man could dig him some holes and cut him some wood, and the way his sweat dripped down his massive back to his behind…I had even thought about smoking cigarettes afterward. I had felt like such a ho. When it rained on what was supposed to have been his last day and he hadn’t shown up, I had been depressed all day and prayed all night for a sunny day.

  On his last day, while he was laying and nailing the floorboards, I had brought him some sweet lemonade and sat on the finished section wearing my tightest shorts and an electric pink tank top.

  “You do nice work,” I had said in my hoochie voice.

  “Thanks,” he had said.

  “You sure five hundred will be enough?” I had wanted to tip him real nice with my body. I had wanted to climb Mount Maxwell. I still do.

  He had looked at me with those sleepy eyes of his. “My wife says I shoulda asked for more.”

  His wife. Of course he had a wife. She has to be the happiest woman in world history. She probably has an orgasm every time Robert opens the front door to their house.

  “She say one of our boys needs him some braces, and my oldest daughter needs her car fixed.” That added up to at least four children. Robert Maxwell was a potent man.

  I had felt terrible for taking advantage of him just to save me some money, so I had paid him $750 cash after taking an advance out on my MasterCard. I had reached up to shake his hand, and I had watched my hand disappear into his. “Take care,” I had said, hoping to see my hand again.

  “Call me anytime.”

  And I do. I call that man, a real man that only the Lord God in the highest heaven could make. I have Robert Maxwell’s number on speed dial, and I call him every time something inside or outside the house breaks, just to see him in the flesh.

  I even break stuff…just because.

  Hmm.

  I think I’ll need him to redo my sidewalk. It’s all pitted like the surface of the moon. Yes. He’d have to break it up with a jackhammer or sledgehammer….

  That makes me dizzy just thinking about it. And maybe I’ll get some real cigarettes this time, you know, to support Virginia’s economy.

  But can I see the sidewalk from my bedroom window? Hmm. I may have to get comfortable in the living room. But can you pour concrete in December? I bet you can’t.

  What else can I break around here?

  4

  Jack

  Merry Christmas, Daddy….

  “Stevie?”

  I sit up too quickly and hit my head on the slats for the top bunk of Stevie’s bed.

  Again. When will you learn?

  How did I get here?

  You were drinking heavily.

  I only had three—

  Five.

  Okay, five mugs of eggnog. At least I won’t need breakfast. I’ve already had my dairy and eggs for the rest of the week.

  I look up at the torn black lining under the top bunk. One little hole, and Stevie had found it, taking one tiny finger and rrrrrrrr-ip. And instead of
fixing it properly, I had only duct taped the sides and put a few pushpins here and there.

  It did the job.

  But it looks tacky.

  I’m a grown man sleeping in my boy’s bed. Funny, I hardly had to do that when he was…when he was here. Noël did most of the soothing in this house, whispering him back to sleep whenever he had a bad dream. He would call out only to her in the night.

  And here I am calling out to him in the morning.

  Merry Christmas, Jack.

  What am I going to do today? There’s no need to check the mailbox since it’s a holiday. That’s one of my few daily errands. It takes forty-seven steps to get to the mailbox. The fact that I know this makes me sad.

  It took you forty-three yesterday.

  It was cold. I had to move fast.

  I’ve been waiting for my first novel to come out, a romance of all things, as if romance will ever happen to me again. I had waited too long to find a wife, to start a family…and to buy a safer vehicle than that van.

  Stop thinking about that van.

  I go to the kitchen and turn on the coffeemaker before I realize I haven’t put in any coffee. The water that drips into my cup is slightly brown and smells like coffee, but it tastes like…hot brown water. Instead of searching through the mess I’ve made of the kitchen pantry for the coffee, I take a tea bag I used yesterday and dunk it into the water. It should be good for at least two more cups.

  You’re going to need vice grips to squeeze out any flavor.

  Probably.

  I return to the living room and plug in the lights of the tree before curling up on the love seat with my “coffee water tea.”

  “It’s a nice tree, honey.”

  It never was, but Noël was always looking for something positive to say. The four trees I bought for us before…the accident…leaned right or left, were too bushy or had bald spots, or were too short or too tall.

  One even had a bird’s nest.

  Yet, after we decorated those trees, they always looked better—in Noël’s eyes, anyway—than any tree in any window in the neighborhood. We used to walk through the neighborhood looking at other people’s trees, and though there were many grander than ours, Noël always said, “It’s a nice tree, honey.”