The Christmas Promise (Christmas Hope)

by VanLiere, Donna

  “I’m so sorry, Gloria. I had no idea,” she said. I used a napkin to wipe my face and wadded it up in my hand. “And you’ve had no word from him…ever?”

  “Nothing. We don’t know anything, but keep praying that something will get through to him.”

  “But what if your prayers aren’t helping?” she asked.

  I snapped my head up. “Of course they are!”

  “But what if they aren’t?”

  “What if they are?”

  Her voice was soft. “But Matthew hasn’t come home.”

  “It has to be his choice,” I said. “We’re not God’s pawns. We’re free to do whatever we want.” We were both quiet.

  I disappeared into the living room and took an envelope from the branches of the Christmas tree, showing it to Miriam. “Twenty or so years ago we went to one of Andrew’s basketball games. They were playing a team from some little town in Georgia, a real depressed area, and the boys on the team were playing in jeans and shorts and anything they could get their hands on. You could tell they just didn’t believe in themselves and they played pitifully that night. At one time Walt said, ‘I wish I could buy those boys some uniforms.’ I didn’t say anything but I figured out where I could buy some uniforms, and at Christmas I put an envelope in the branches of the tree for Walt. It was his Christmas present and it read, ‘A gift of uniforms has been given to the Fighting Eagles in your name.’ I even included a picture of the team wearing their brand-new uniforms. Every year Walt and I tried to outdo each other with those envelopes in the branches.” I tapped the envelope in my palm. “This is the last one I put on the tree for him. It’s a promise that I’d never stop looking for Matthew.”

  “Is that why you asked Erin to stay here? Is that why you rummage through bags of dirty clothes and clean filthy refrigerators?” I ran the envelope back and forth in my hand and felt tears rimming my eyes. She leaned onto the table, looking at me. “Gloria, do you blame yourself for his leaving?” I didn’t answer.

  I stared down at the aged envelope and ran my finger across it. “My father used to say, ‘Find what breaks your heart and get busy.’ Just thinking that Matthew was out on the street broke my heart, and every time I looked at street people I’d feel it all over again and knew I had to do something to help. I’ve always prayed that someone, somewhere would do the same for Matt.”

  “He has no idea you moved here?”

  I crossed into the living room and placed the envelope back among the branches. “No,” I said. “But our relatives are still in our old town. He could find me through them.” I sat at the kitchen table and folded my hands under my chin. “I was so lonely in Georgia. All our kids were gone. My husband was gone, and it was that silence, that deafening silence of widowhood, that just about drove me crazy. Walt had a recliner, an ugly green plaid one that we’d had for years, and he sat in it for as long as he could. After he died I sat in that chair all the time, wanting to be close to him. I don’t think I got out of it the first eight months after he died. But then Stephanie called and said she was having a baby, so I got out of it. Then I got out of it the next day and the next and I thought, ‘What am I doing here?’ I kept thinking that Matthew would just come waltzing through the door, but that wasn’t going to happen and I knew it. So I either sold off or gave to the kids most of our things, hauled the recliner off to Goodwill, and moved up here to be close to my first grandchild. Life is stronger than death, and I knew I needed to kick death in the choppers and get back to living again. Grandchildren have a way of bringing us to our senses.”

  She picked up her cup and held it in front of her. “And you keep the porch light on for Matthew,” she said. I nodded. “Well, don’t I feel foolish?”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I don’t know anything, it seems. But if Lynn were still here he’d know. He always knew about people.”

  “You know now,” I said.

  “I have not been very kind, Gloria.”

  “I have not been very kind, either, and I’m sorry for that. I even told people that your British accent was as real as the color of your hair.” She laughed and propped her elbows on the table. “It seems I can help a stranger in the street but I can’t help the stranger beside me.” I leaned back in my chair. “I took too much pride in my ability to read character.” I stopped. “In my inability, I should say.” I was anxious to change the subject. “Would you like to get married again?”

  She reared her head back and laughed. “Oh my, no! Two husbands in one lifetime are enough. I do miss the companionship, though.” She danced her fingers in front of her, as if conjuring up the plan of the century. “If there was a way to join two houses together, separate them with a long breezeway of some sort, I could live in my house and a man in his house and we could share meals and good conversation together.” Her eyes lit up with the thought. “But after dinner he’d just trot off to his home and I’d stay in mine. Who wouldn’t be up for that?”

  “It’s revolutionary!” I said.

  She cupped her hands around the tea, staring into it. “If I could have had Lynn longer, that would have been wonderful. He was the secret to our marriage. If only I could have met him when I was twenty instead of thirty-five.”

  “How long did you say you were married?” I asked.

  “Twenty-five years.”

  I thought for a moment, looking down at the table. “So you were a widow at sixty?”

  “Yes.” She bolted upright. “I mean no! I married Lynn when I was…” Her mind raced for the numbers. “I was twenty-two when I married him!” I rested my forehead in my hands but my shoulders began to shake. Miriam jabbed her finger into the table. “What is wrong with you, Gloria? Why are…” She threw her hands in the air. “Oh, just forget it. But I refuse to be a member of AARP!”

  I smacked the table, laughing. “Don’t you take advantage of Senior Citizens Day at Wilson’s?”

  “Never!” she said. “I don’t even go downtown on Wednesdays because people look at me and automatically think I’m old. I’m not old.”

  I straightened my back, saluting her. “Neither am I. As a matter of fact, I never even feel old until I go out in public. Then it’s all downhill from there.”

  Miriam cackled and doubled over, holding the table for support. “Have you ever looked at yourself upside down in a mirror?”

  “What?” I’d never heard of such a thing. Miriam ran for the toaster and held it low. I bent over in the chair, focusing on my reflection, and screamed. “What is that?” Miriam lost her balance and stumbled into the wall, snorting. “I looked like an alien!” I rubbed my eyes, erasing the image from my mind. “I scared myself!”

  She put the toaster down with a thud and her pink chiffon robe billowed around her as she moved about the kitchen, flailing her arms. “Nobody warns you about old age,” she said. “It just creeps up on you and makes tracks across your face. It’s terribly rude and inconsiderate. The next thing you know your body sags, your vision fails, and you wrench your back picking up a book!”

  “I fell downtown a few days ago,” I said. “I practically tackled a young man I thought was Matt and then my feet just went right out from underneath me. I was so flustered that I forgot to go into Wilson’s, which was the reason I went downtown in the first place!” Miriam held her teacup to her mouth and laughed into it. “When I was young I always envisioned myself being fit and lean at this age in the middle of a race with runners half my age. Who was I kidding?”

  She ran a napkin back and forth in front of her, thinking. “When I was younger and working so much in the theater I always thought that there would be roles for me. Really dynamic roles portraying strong, vibrant women in the prime of their lives. And those roles are out there,” she said, looking up at me. “For younger actresses. When you hit a certain age you’re no longer strong or dynamic, and forget about the prime of your life. You’re waaayy past that and are relegated to play someone’s grandmother or tottering old neighbor. And I t
hink it stinks.” She pounded the table with her fist. “Age is just a number!”

  “Sixty and proud of it!” I said.

  She looked at me, bewildered. “You mean I’m actually older than you?”

  I squeezed her hand. “It can be our secret.”

  She sighed, scratching her head. “I was thirty-five when I married Lynn, and my mum was sixty-two. I remember looking at myself in the mirror in my dress and saying, ‘I feel like a teenager.’ And she looked at me and said, ‘So do I, babe.’” She placed her hands under her chin. “I still feel like a teenager.”

  I smiled. “So do I, babe.”

  She jumped up and started pacing the floor of the kitchen. “I refuse to buy into the old mentality.”

  I stood at attention. “Don’t sell that garbage around here because we ain’t buying it!”

  She held her fingers out one at a time and crossed each one off in front of me as she rattled through her list. “I will not go to those ridiculous ‘over-the-hill’ parties with their ghastly gifts, I will always pay full price for a movie ticket, and never—I mean never—will I go to a restaurant at four o’clock in the afternoon just to take advantage of an early bird special!”

  I raised my hand and Miriam clasped it; our hands held together in victory.

  Chaz sat on a bench in the middle of the square after work. The wind swirled around his ears and he let it sting his cheeks and mouth. This was what it was like for Mike, except a hundred times worse because he’d stay there all night. The wind lashed at his face and Chaz pulled up his scarf.

  He couldn’t take the cold anymore, so he walked a few blocks down to the bar. It was closing, but the bartender let him sit at the counter and drink a couple of beers while he shut down the place. The smell of stale cigarettes saturated the half-lit room. Glasses clinked together in the room behind the bar, followed by the whoosh of a restaurant dishwasher. The bartender turned up the radio in the back and sang along with it, popping his head out long enough to pour Chaz another beer and collect his money. He downed the rest of the beer and walked out the door.

  The temperature had dropped since the time Chaz had gone into the bar, and he pulled the gray tuque tight over his head. A car drove around the town square and he wondered who would be out at this solitary hour. It seemed that no one but people like Mike and him were wandering about. The car pulled beside him and the passenger window rolled down. “You live in the Lexington Apartments, right?” He leaned over and saw an older woman behind the wheel.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve seen you walk back and forth into town,” she said. “I can drive you home.”

  She looked harmless and he was freezing. “Sure.” He opened the door and slid inside. “I’m not used to seeing people out at this time.”

  Her laugh was ragged and tired. “I should have been home hours ago. I was visiting my daughter and her family, and was stuck on the highway for three hours while they cleaned up an accident, some sort of tanker truck.” She threw a hand in the air. “What a mess.”

  She drove past the house glowing with Christmas lights, and Chaz pointed to it. “Do those lights drive you crazy in your place?”

  She turned and looked at them. “Not really.”

  “Somebody said they’ve been up since last Christmas.”

  She pulled into the parking lot and snow crunched beneath the wheels. “Yeah, they have.”

  He shook his head. “Seems there’s somebody like that in every neighborhood.” He pointed to his building and she drove toward it.

  “They put the lights up for their son last year,” she said, pulling in front of the building. “He was overseas in the military and was coming home for a couple of weeks in November. They put up the lights, decorated the tree, and bought gifts for an early Christmas, but he never came. Missing in action. They keep them up, you know, hoping.”

  There was nothing to say that could follow that, so he thanked her for the ride and closed the door. He ran up the stairs to his apartment and noticed that the woman didn’t park in front of one of the apartment buildings but drove across the street, pulling into the driveway of the home with the Christmas lights. He stood in the breezeway and watched as she waited for the garage door to open and then pulled in, the door closing behind her.

  Eight

  Life’s most urgent question is:

  What are you doing for others?

  —Martin Luther King Jr.

  I tried calling Carla’s apartment throughout the morning. Donovan wasn’t a bother, but I did have deliveries to make to some of my families and wondered when Carla would come for him. We made cookies to pass the time. Donovan sat on the kitchen counter and mixed the batter with great flourish.

  “Maybe I can take cookies to Spaz,” he said.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, turning the oven to preheat.

  “He works with Mom and watches me. We play Spider-Man a lot. He’d love to eat these.”

  “Well, take some to him!”

  Miriam walked through the front door and looked rumpled from a morning of watching workmen at her home. “Your hair’s all mixed up,” Donovan said.

  “Thank you,” she said, hanging her coat.

  “It looks like a cat’s been playing in it.”

  I stirred the batter and laughed. Miriam’s coiffed look had certainly come undone since she moved in. I said it was because she was finally feeling at home and letting her guard down. She said it was because most of her products were covered with mold in the swamp that was once her bathroom. I offered to let her use my products but she said she didn’t use retail, whatever that meant.

  Miriam dipped her finger into the batter and put a dab on the end of Donovan’s nose. “How long might this lad be staying with us?”

  “His mother will be taking him home today,” I said. “But I do need to run things to some folks and I need to pick up a few bags of hats and gloves at Wilson’s. Would you like to stay here with Donovan or run the errands for me?”

  Miriam clacked her tongue, thinking. She watched Donovan make a batter mess on the countertop and then wipe it on his pants. “I’ll opt for the errands.”

  Miriam hadn’t thought much about what I did throughout the day, but when she pulled into the driveway of Lila Hofstetter’s place to drop off a bag of children’s clothes she felt unsettled. Who was this woman and what was she supposed to say to her? Lila threw open the door and launched into a series of doctor appointment stories, each one longer and more meandering than the last. Miriam hung on to the storm door by her fingertips, letting it close farther after each story, but Lila rambled on. As it inched closed Miriam declined Lila’s offer to come in for coffee and bolted for the car. “I should have stayed with the kid,” Miriam said out loud, searching the map for the next street.

  She took a box filled with plates, towels, and sheets to an elderly woman named Carol, who lived near the River Road housing development. Miriam sat slumped in her seat, certain the car would come under gunfire, hooligans pouring out from all sides around her. Her eyes scanned front, back, side to side, front, back, side to side. She snatched up her purse and threw it into the trunk, then slammed it shut. Carol answered her door and Miriam screamed as a small wiry dog named Bennie sprang past her. Carol squealed, imploring Miriam to bring him back. Miriam darted across the parking lot in chase, but the dog ran beneath a car and began to shake. Miriam bent over and made kissing noises in his direction. “Here, dog,” she purred. “Come to Auntie Miriam.” He lifted a paw and ran his tongue from top to bottom. “Oh, you insolent cur,” she said, breathless. Miriam squatted and snapped her fingers. She sighed, watching him, then dug through her coat pocket, pulling out a stick of gum. “Lookie here!” Bennie sniffed the air and crawled toward her. She crept backward, holding the gum close to the ground, and snagged Bennie when he took the prize. She ran with the dog at arm’s length, as if he were a bomb, and deposited him back inside Carol’s door. Miriam declined Carol’s offer for a cup of coffee and a bite
of banana bread and ran back to the car. She looked at herself in the rearview mirror and groaned, fixing her hair. “This is crude and uncivil,” she grumbled.

  She hung her head out of the window on more than one occasion for directions. “Just like a dog,” she said. Art Lender gave her a hug when she handed him a bag of work clothes and groceries, and she stumbled backward. She also declined his offer for something to drink, choosing to get behind the wheel with as few words exchanged as possible. He watched as she hurried to the car and hung his head out the door, shouting, “Thank you, Miss Mary!”

  She spun on her heels. “Am,” she said, yelling. “Miriam.”