by Annie O'Neil
Best, Jess(ica) Green
14 December
The trouble with pressing send on an email was, once you’d done it? It was impossible to retrieve. It was also impossible to go to sleep afterwards. Jess had actively considered sneaking out in the middle of the night to take all of the wreaths down but each time she psyched herself up she’d heard a car, or caught a light flicking on in a window, or had fallen into a listless half-sleep only to dream of being chased by a zombie Santa. Waking up wasn’t much better.
Pouring her entire life story out to a stranger who was the grandson of the grumpy old man whose house she’d just Christmas punk’d definitely fell into the realms of Very Bad Ideas.
Jess grappled about on the floor for her phone: 5 a.m. Better than three, when she’d last looked. She rolled off her mattress (bed frame still unmade) and into a cross-legged position by the window. What had she been thinking? Spilling her guts to Will like that?
She could blame the rum, but it really was time to start owning her behaviour. It was a lecture she’d delivered to Amanda more than once when her friend had mooched into work with another tale of ‘accidentally having one too many’ and snogging someone she’d now have to shake off because, of course, she’d stupidly given him all of her social-media links. Amanda was over-friendly like that. She also always blamed the booze. Jess knew doing the same would be falling into the same dangerous trap she’d been cornered in by Crispin. Last night had been the shameful denouement of yet more ‘it’s you not me’ behaviour that she decried in others. It was time to wrap up all of this ‘woe is me, it wasn’t my fault’ attitude she’d been wearing like a unicorn onesie that absolved her from any wrong-doing. She hadn’t hit Crispin. Not even close. But had she fought her corner? No. Not even close. She feebly shook her fist in the air then watched as it flopped back down onto her flannel pyjamas. The ones with the holly berries on them. She’d dug them out of a box last night to see if they’d give her any inspiration about what she could do today when the entire neighbourhood showed up expecting to be dazzled with holiday cheer. Or – the chilling thought that had kept her up half the night dropped a few more degrees – not only would they not show up, they’d send a representative who would hand over a petition signed by everyone demanding that she move. Move and hand in her notice at the academy before she’d even started. Mrs Jameson never would’ve done a thing like that, they’d say. Torture an old man with symbols of peace and joy. Speaking of which … she tiptoed over to her window and stuck her head out, squinting through the grainy light of the street lamps. Yup. They were still there. In fact, she could be wrong, but there appeared to be a few more. He must not have gone out yesterday. That, or he thought leaving them up was the easiest way to get Jess ‘and her ilk’, as he’d referred to the rest of the neighbours, to leave him alone.
Right. She owed Mr Winters an apology. The type of epic apology that would also convince him to take part in the advent calendar so that Drea didn’t kill her when/if her son arrived for his much-anticipated visit. Mrs Jameson could have done it. Not that she would’ve hung an excess of wreaths on his fence in the first place, but … her teaching baton had been handed to Jess and she was going to run with it. In a bit.
She would have coffee, wait for the sun to rise, then go over, offer him her deepest apologies for being a bully, collect each of the wreaths and give them back to their rightful owners, explaining to everyone how she had been wrong to get everyone to help her gang up on him. No way was she going to start the school term being the mad teacher who did the Christmas version of egging the neighbourhood Grinch’s front door. She’d made a call and had got it wrong. Very wrong. And she was the only one who could put it right. By throwing herself at Mr Winters’ mercy, theoretically, he’d forgive her and come up with an amazing plan to be part of the Christmas Street festivities, and all would be right in the world again. But first … coffee. And, as she was trying to be brave, a look at her emails.
14 December
03:37
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Update from Christmas Street
Dear Jess –
By all means, leave them up! Sounds like he could do with the Christmas cheer. If he takes them down then, at the very least, you will know you were right and he’ll have got some exercise which, at his age, is probably never a bad thing. They’re easy access and not too heavy, right? Nothing made out of antlers, I presume? (Antler wreaths are strangely popular on the Orkneys).
Sorry for such a short note. As you rightly guessed, it’s completely mental right now. That school where you were sounds like a higher level of funky, and by funky I mean … not the soul-brother kind. You’re well shot of them. So-called ‘ordinary’ people are brilliant and, in my estimation, not ordinary at all. Will send longer email once I manage to uncurl my fingers. Note to self: Never agree to wrap 500 angels on horseback (figs with prosciutto) for an osteopathy/chiropractor’s regional holiday party. (And no, the irony is not lost on me.)
Regards xW
Coffee consumed, winter coat on, Jess did a couple of star jumps before opening the door to leave – only to find herself face to face with Drea. A distinctly unhappy-looking Drea.
‘Hi?’
‘I was feeling extra Christmassy when I woke up this morning.’
‘Oh?’ Umm … Drea looked like Drea … but didn’t sound like Drea. ‘That’s good. Weren’t you away?’
‘Yes,’ Drea said in a polite tone intimating Jess was a simpleton. ‘I was at a fitness conference. A conference devoted to nourishing good health. Or, put more seasonally, bringing those around us tidings of comfort and joy.’ There was an unsettling pressure on the last word, as if that Christmas joy she had just topped up had now dissipated.
‘When did you get back?’ Jess asked, wondering if Drea’s cars was one of the ones that had stopped her from running down the street and taking down all of the wreaths at 3AM.
‘Late last night,’ Drea said, still speaking in that weird possessed-by-an-over-polite-demon voice. ‘I slept well, woke up happy. Took a shower using some lovely seasonal gel. I put my hair up with a red scrunchy, I even considered putting on a ridiculous Christmas jumper in advance of my new friend Jessica’s advent-calendar evening.’
‘Oh? That should be … erm …’ Jess wasn’t quite sure what it should be as Drea continued.
‘I put on my lovely winter coat, came out of my front door and thought what a lovely street I live on. A street where everyone cares and shares with one another.’
Uh-oh. The knots in Jess’s stomach tightened.
‘A place where we all gather together to make wreaths, not for ourselves, but for one another.’
Yup. This was definitely heading where she’d hoped it wouldn’t.
‘So I was about to get in my car to run a few errands, my heart filled with nothing but holiday cheer when what to my wondering eyes should appear?’
Jess was relatively sure it wasn’t a sleigh. Or eight tiny reindeer.
‘I— Drea, I was just on my way to fix—’
Drea cut her off, now openly blazing with anger. ‘I don’t want to hear it. What I do want to know,’ she said making decisive little nicks in the space between them with her fingernails, ‘is if you remember that this whole advent-calendar thing was meant to be fun. Right? Fun. It was meant to bring us together as a community, not as a mob. We want people to be happy to live here. Not ringing up their estate agents asking after safer neighbourhoods.’
‘I know … I … Did he call the police?’ She scanned the street.
Clearly unconcerned if Jess was arrested, Drea folded her arms across her chest and asked, ‘Do you know what advent means?’
A horror gripped Jess by the throat as her mind went blank. She should. She didn’t. She couldn’t under Drea’s displeased gl
are.
‘It means, doll face, glorious and joyful anticipation of the arrival of the chosen son. Which, for me, this year, means my son.’ She made an ah-ah noise as Jess tried to apologise. ‘Did you know there are four symbols for advent?’
Jess shook her head. No, she didn’t.
Drea held up a solitary finger, then three more as she pelleted Jess with the answers to the rhetorical question, ‘Peace. Love. Joy. Hope. Hope, Jessica Green. I was hoping you were going to be a lovely addition to this neighbourhood. Not someone intent on sabotaging my efforts to make this a kind and desirable place to live. A place my son might want to visit his mother. A place he would then return to. Not somewhere Daily Mail reporters stalk to highlight Christmas ASBOs in action.’
Again Jess tried to apologise, her stomach a mess of fear that paparazzi were hiding in her hedge recording every word of this one-sided exchange. Her eyes snagged on her For Sale sign. That Sold sticker would be coming off soon, then.
‘Drea, I honestly didn’t—’
Drea held up her hand, her body already half turning towards the street. ‘I’ve got work today, doll face, but let it be known, I am disappointed in you. By the time we gather here tonight? I want you to have fixed it.’
Jess tried to swallow and couldn’t. Disappointment was a thousand times worse than fury. Any child with a conscience knew that. On top of which, Drea was right. Her response to Mr Winters’ refusal of the wreath was over the top. She’d have to fix this. No matter what.
As Drea stalked off down the street, Jess resolved to give her the best Christmas ever. Even if it killed her.
As Drea roared away in her throaty sports car, Jess pulled up her proverbial socks. She owed someone an apology.
Mr Winters took his time answering the door. No doubt, the first painful phase of a lengthy penance Jess would have to pay for being so horrid. But she’d pay it. If it meant planting tulip bulbs until the end of time, she’d do it.
When he opened the door, instead of immediately slamming it in her face as he should have, he took a step back as if preparing to invite her in.
Unexpected.
The eloquent apology she’d been rehearsing flew out of her head. In its place came a series of staccato blurts. ‘Good morning. Hello. Chilly out. Umm … quick question. Have you seen your front fence?’
He nodded sombrely. ‘I have.’
In a rush she promised to take all of the wreaths down, especially the one with battery-operated stormtroopers, because it didn’t represent what a wreath should represent, which was life. Eternal life. Did he know that? She hadn’t until just now when she’d looked it up. Kind of like the symbols of advent. Did he know those? She rattled them off – peacelovehopejoy – then began a painfully detailed apology. She didn’t know what had come over her, she’d had a very bad year, it had made her do strange things and this was the worst thing of all because she thought he was lovely, really lovely, and that she had, in her own backwards incredibly stupid way, been trying to inject a bit of holiday cheer into his life because to her he seemed sad not angry as a lot of people thought and she couldn’t bear it that he was sad because she knew how powerfully debilitating being sad could be.
At this point he held up a hand. Possibly because she had started poking herself on the chest with her index finger with such force it had given her the hiccoughs, all of which made the apology sound even weirder.
‘Leave them, lass.’
‘What? Absolutely not. I’ll take them down.’
‘Honestly. Leave them as they are.’ He gave a wry little chuckle. ‘It reminds me of something my Anne would’ve done.’
Jess quirked her head to the side. ‘Anne?’
‘My wife,’ he said. ‘My late wife,’ he added much more soberly and then as if that were the gateway towards a new phase in their relationship, he opened up one of his broad hands and ushered her in, ‘Come in, lass, out of the cold.’
A few minutes later Jess was ensconced in a lovely, if slightly worn, armchair across from a crackling fire and being handed a perfectly brewed cup of tea, with another apology that he had no hot chocolate in the house. Once he’d put his own cup on a side table, Mr Winters sat down heavily in his armchair and gave his knees a rub. Mr Perkins was sitting on a nearby faded pouffe keeping his steely gaze on Jess as if to say, I see you. Make no false moves.
‘I think I owe you an explanation,’ Mr Winters said after taking a sip of his tea.
Jess began to protest, but Mr Winters spoke over her.
‘You’re right. I am sad. The type of sad you can’t erase no matter how many wreaths are hung upon your gate.’
Jess swallowed.
As if he’d made a deal with himself that he had to explain, he continued in a mechanical tone, ‘Thirty-five years ago, my Anne had a bit of a headache. A cold, actually. Or so she thought. It was enough for her to want to lie down anyway.’
Jess took a sip of tea, not even flinching as the hot liquid scalded the back of her throat.
‘It was about two o’clock in the afternoon and our son, Robert, rang all the way from Edinburgh where he was at university. Caught her just before she’d gone upstairs.’ His index finger traced the journey his wife would’ve taken from the foot of the stairs to an old avocado-coloured rotary dial telephone on a table just inside the sitting room where they were sat.
When he spoke again, he sounded as if he was reading a timeline he’d been over and over and still had yet to make sense of.
‘He had a word with his mum and was concerned enough about her cold – she was never ill, you see – to ask her to put me on the line. He thought I should bring her to the GP’s. Anne was against it. Said she was needed a short rest was all. Robert disagreed. I disagreed with Robert; I said his mother knew best and I would respect her wishes.’
He stopped, took a sip of tea, and looked at the cat, who promptly came over and sat by his foot as if he knew Mr Winters needed some solidarity, but not so much that it would make his emotions spill up and over into the room.
‘When I went to check on her an hour or so later, she was very still. Too still.’ He frowned at his tea. ‘She’d died. Right there in her sleep. A diabetic coma, said the coroner.’ He looked up at Jess, his blue eyes filled with disbelief. ‘She’d never had a diagnosis like that. Diabetes. She’d never even liked sweets.’
Jess felt as though her heart was cracking in two. Of all of the scenarios she’d tried to imagine that would have caused a thirty-five-year rift between father and son, this was not one of them.
She put her cup down on a doily, her hands shaking. Poor Mr Winters. Poor Mrs Winters. And Robert. And Will. How awful for all of them.
‘Robert’s not spoken to me since. Well. Not since the funeral. And I’ve not found a way to shake the feeling that he’d been right all along. I should’ve taken her to the GP as he advised. It was all my fault. She’d be right here if I’d listened to my son.’
Jess shook her head, no, it wasn’t his fault, surely he had to know that; but before she could find the best way to say the words he clearly needed to hear he gave his head a few of those nod/shake things that meant they were done now. ‘Anyway, Anne would’ve done something similar to what you did if I’d been gruff with her about something meant to be nice. Hung up wreaths or planted tulip bulbs upside down, so … you leave them right where they are, Jessica.’ His eyes caught hers again to stem any more apologies. ‘I may be sad, but this has made me think perhaps it’s time to find a way to live with it. Not let it define me quite so much as I have done.’
She could relate to that. The Cheese Sandwich Incident would never go away, but she had to find a way not to let it shadow the rest of her life.
As if sensing yet another change in mood, Mr Perkins deftly jumped up and onto Mr Winters’ lap and curled up in a tight, protective ball. Absently, Mr Winters began to stroke him, his thought
s clearly drifting back to a time and place Jess could never access.
She thanked him for the tea and put on her coat because it was pretty clear he’d maxed out his sharing time.
Her heart ached for him. She said goodbye, assuring him, once again, that she wouldn’t touch the wreaths, nor would she let anyone else. Between his house and her own, Jess’s resolve grew. She would make Mr Winters’ and Drea’s – screw it – the whole of Christmas Street’s Christmas the very best Christmas ever. And not just to one up Mrs Jameson. It was to mark a change. Prove she could learn from and live with the mistakes she’d made.