The Forever Christmas Tree

by Sandra Hill

  If that wasn’t bad enough, as Ethan was leaving the town hall, at nine-freakin’-thirty, Laura sidled up to him and said, “Guess who’s coming for Christmas, Mister Scrooge? And I don’t mean Santa Claus.” Then she added, “Ho, ho, ho!”

  Later that night, after sending his grandmother and Cassie home and checking over the day’s receipts and inventory, Ethan walked to the far end of his local tree farm, to the perfectly shaped blue spruce tree, the one the council kept badgering him to donate, the one that had defied all odds in growing on an island where even the hardiest evergreen trees struggled to survive.

  It was a reminder of things long dead. He should just chop the damn tree down and burn it for fireplace kindling. A final end to . . . everything.

  He should.

  But he didn’t.

  He couldn’t.

  He . . . just . . . couldn’t.

  Chapter 3

  Old acquaintances are not forgotten . . .

  To Mildred’s shock, Eliza Rutledge showed up on her doorstep, for the first time in twelve years, just before the Saturday Samba session. The dance club event was being held this afternoon, instead of its usual early evening hours, because it was going to be a farewell party, as well, for two of Mildred’s “renters,” who were leaving that night:

  Gloria Solomon, who had been the town librarian for forty years, was moving into one of those assisted-living places, at her children’s insistence, none of whom lived nearby. Not that Mildred really opposed the move. Gloria was fine, most of the time, but she had become a bit senile on occasion, taking to nighttime strolls downtown in her underwear. Aside from the modesty issue, the cold temperatures posed a danger to her frail body with its susceptibility to pneumonia. Plus, she sometimes needed the assistance of a walker for support.

  Harry Carder, a retired financial advisor, was going to Seattle to spend the holidays with his son’s family. Harry, before being confined to a wheelchair, had loved to dance, not so much samba, but swing, which had been a favorite for him and his late wife, Julia, a dentist. Harry would be coming back to Bell Cove, but whether to this house, or elsewhere, depended on the outcome of the visit by Mildred’s niece.

  Wendy was arriving on Wednesday and staying for two whole weeks, which was both wonderful and ominous at the same time, considering her rare appearances over the years. Mildred suspected that Wendy would not like the idea of her having turned her family home into a B & B, or boardinghouse, of sorts, let alone a dance club. She might even be thinking about selling the property, a prospect too scary for Mildred to contemplate.

  All these thoughts flashed quickly through Mildred’s mind as she gaped at the woman who had been her best friend since kindergarten, until that nasty business more than ten years ago when insulting words had been spoken from both sides, words that could not be taken back. This was the person who’d known her best, had shared her deepest secrets, had laughed and cried with her over big and small events in her life, and vice versa.

  Mildred had been there when Eliza Metz fell in love with Samuel Rutledge. In fact, she’d been her maid of honor when they’d married and godmother to their one and only child, George. And she’d been the pillar to which a devastated Eliza had clung when Samuel had died suddenly at age fifty in a freak accident up on the mainland tree farm, then still later when her daughter-in-law ran off with her therapist, leaving George and his young son bewildered and unable to cope on their own.

  Eliza had been there for Mildred, as well. When her fiancé, Barry Rogers, had been killed in the waning years of the Vietnam War. When she’d miscarried his baby a few months later. When she’d moved into this house to help her sister-in-law Anne Patterson during the latter stages of her cancer and then stayed to raise her daughter.

  Ironically, both Mildred and Eliza had been called on to help raise young members of their families. For Mildred, it was her niece, Wendy. For Eliza, it was her grandson Ethan and then her great-granddaughter Cassie, who was born with a hip disease to a mother, Beth Anne, who was already in the beginning stages of MS, which turned out to be terminal a decade or so later. Because of their falling-out, Mildred had not been there for Eliza during those latter crises with Beth Anne and Cassie.

  Of course they’d seen each other over the past twelve years, but only in passing. Pride and stubbornness were part of Mildred’s Scottish heritage; she had no idea what Eliza’s excuse was, if there was one, aside from anger. And hurt.

  “Lize?” she said, her heart beating so fast she could scarcely breathe. “Is something wrong?” Maybe there had been some disaster at her farm. To her grandson. Or her great-granddaughter.

  Eliza’s eyes, the pale blue that Mildred had always envied, misted over with tears. “Something’s been wrong for a long time, don’t you think, Mildy?”

  That old pet name triggered something in Mildred, and she began to weep, too.

  “I brought a gift,” Eliza said, pointing to the box on the doorstep at her feet containing a beautiful Della Robbia door wreath with evergreens and fruit and dried flowers.

  This style of artistic creation had been a favorite of Mildred’s since she was a young girl. She remembered the time the two of them . . . well, never mind. “There’s also a matching garland in my truck.”

  Mildred just then noticed the black Rutledge Farm pickup truck parked on the street. If she’d seen it earlier, would she have opened the door? “But why?” she asked.

  “It’s a peace offering, Mildy.”

  Mildred had meant, why was she here, not why the gift, but she supposed they were the same thing. “Oh, Lize!” Mildred felt guilty then, that Eliza had been the one to make the first move. “I am so sorry, my friend.” Why was it so easy to say those words now when they’d been stuck in her throat for so long? It was like a Heimlich maneuver had been done on her body and all the pent-up emotion came spilling out.

  “Me, too. Me, too.”

  They were in each other’s arms then, hugging and sobbing, both of them murmuring disjointed words about missing each other and wasted years and such. But then, Eliza stiffened as she seemed to stare at something over Mildred’s shoulder through the still-open doorway.

  There was a click, click, click sound, which Mildred recognized as tap shoes on hardwood floors.

  “¿Que pasa?” Raul inquired of Mildred with concern as he came up beside her. “Have you had the bad news?”

  “No, no, just good news,” Mildred assured him. “Raul, I don’t believe you’ve met my friend, Eliza Rutledge. She’s brought us a gift.” She pointed to the wreath in its hexagonal box, tied with a big red bow. “And, Eliza, this is my friend Raul Arias, who is visiting with me. He’s from Spain.”

  Raul reached out and shook Eliza’s hand, saying, “¡Bienvenida, bienvenida! You have come for our samba party, yes?”

  At first, Eliza didn’t answer, so disconcerted was she by the sight of Mildred’s companion, who was dressed for today’s gathering in a white ruffled shirt tucked into slim black pants with a wide cummerbund. Raul did have a nice figure, for a man his age. If not for the thick, wavy, white hair, which he cared for meticulously with expensive hair products he purchased online, he could have passed for forty, instead of sixty.

  It wasn’t Raul’s physical appearance that had flustered Eliza, though, Mildred sensed. It was his mere presence at Mildred’s side, as if he belonged. Eliza had to have heard rumors, but Raul’s arm over Mildred’s shoulder was a clear signal of their relationship.

  “Uh, no,” Eliza replied finally to Raul’s question. “I didn’t know about a party.” To Mildred, she added, “I can come back another time when you’re not busy.”

  “No, no,” Mildred said, taking Eliza’s hand and drawing her inside. “This isn’t the usual Saturday Samba dance session, but a little social get-together to say good-bye to two of my houseguests. And it doesn’t start for another hour.”

  “Go, go.” Raul shooed them. “I get the Christmas wreath for you, darling. I will put it in the garage for
now.”

  “Darling?” Eliza mouthed silently at Mildred.

  Mildred just smiled and led Eliza into the entryway, closing the door against the chill. She took Eliza’s coat and hung it in the hall closet. It was hard to miss the sound of Julio Iglesias coming from the front parlor; so, they paused there, where Harry, in his wheelchair, was talking to Gloria. The other guests wouldn’t arrive for another half hour yet. The two of them waved at Eliza, whose jaw kept dropping lower and lower.

  “What happened to the furniture?” Eliza asked, voicing what was probably the least important of the questions she must have.

  “We moved it into the second parlor so we’d have room to dance,” Mildred said. “Let’s go in the kitchen. I was in the middle of making Grandma Patterson’s Christmas punch.”

  “The one your brother used to make? With Scotch whiskey?” Eliza arched her brows. “Isn’t that a bit risky to serve to your guests who might be driving?” What she didn’t say, but was implied, was “older people” who might be driving.

  “Doc would be appalled to see how little booze I put in his recipe.” Doc was the nickname that her brother, Alan Patterson, Wendy’s father, had gone by ever since he’d graduated from medical school. “Will you sample it for me?”

  “Sure, but just a little. I have to get back to the shop. We’re busy on Saturday afternoons.”

  Eliza sat down at the big oak table in the center of the kitchen, which hadn’t changed much since she’d been here last, except for a few updated appliances. The same white, glass-paned cabinets, and even the wallpaper, pretty lighthouses against an ocean background, remained unchanged. It was a large room, but cozy, with its windows facing the bay in the distance over the sand dunes and the occasional passing ship. Center stage on the table was Grandma Patterson’s cut-glass punch bowl to which Mildred had already added a few jiggers of Glenlivet to ginger tea mixed with cranberry and orange juices, some ginger ale for fizz, and sliced oranges floating on top. She poured a half cup for each of them and topped them with cranberries frozen inside star-shaped ice cubes.

  “How festive!” Eliza said, “and delicious,” after taking a sip.

  Mildred sat down in the chair next to Eliza, not across the table, and squeezed her hand. “Do we need to talk about . . . you know?” A rehashing of that horrendous time when Wendy’s boyfriend, Ethan, had gotten another girl pregnant would accomplish nothing and could renew the hurt, but maybe they needed to explain their actions. To get rid of the elephant in the room.

  “Oh, God! I hope not!”

  Mildred sighed with relief.

  “You look good, Mildy. The years have been good to you.”

  Mildred glanced down at the green taffeta dress that she pulled out of her closet every holiday. It was flattering to her still-trim, short figure, but more than that, it had a full, calf-length skirt that was perfect for samba dancing. In her hair, the same blunt-cut, jaw-level bob she’d worn since her twenties, minus the bangs, and the same reddish-blonde shade, thanks to Francine Henderson at Styles & Smiles, she’d pinned a sprig of holly. “You look good, too, Lize.”

  And she did, although Eliza waved a hand dismissively at Mildred’s compliment. Without any effort, Eliza still managed to look sleek and chic in a pair of jeans tucked into low-heeled leather boots, with a white T-shirt under an open plaid woolen shirt. Women of her height and thin frame managed to pull off any outfit they wore, at any age, without any effort, darn it! Her long salt-and-pepper hair, pulled off her surprisingly wrinkle-free face into a coil held on to the top of her head with a claw comb, was no-muss stylish.

  “Are you still painting, Lize?” Mildred asked.

  “Not so much. Too busy with the shop and taking care of Cassie.”

  Eliza Rutledge had been painting since she was a teenager, as a hobby. After marrying, her works featured beautiful winter beach and bay scenes . . . always with a lone Christmas tree. What else? Mildred had one she’d put in the attic twelve years ago. Snow on the dunes, a lighthouse in the far background, and a small, incongruously placed Christmas tree. Although she was an amateur, Eliza’s artistic endeavors were lovely and graced the walls of many homes in Bell Cove.

  “This Raul . . . is he . . . um, special?” Eliza asked tentatively.

  “Yes, but not in the way you probably mean.” The buzzer went off on the stove and Mildred got up to remove a tray of shortbread from the oven. The buttery sweet smell filled the room. She put a few onto a plate and brought it back to the table to cool. Only then did she sit back down and continue, “I’ve been so lonely, Lize. Especially after Alan passed.”

  Eliza knew how distraught and lonely Mildred had been after Barry’s death almost fifty years ago in that damn war and how Bell Cove, her hometown, had been a refuge for her, especially later as she’d moved in to help Alan raise his daughter Wendy. But Wendy left twelve years ago and Alan had been gone five years now.

  “I probably shouldn’t have retired five years ago.” Mildred had been a Bell Cove Elementary School music teacher for more than forty years. “The school board would have let me continue, as long as I was able, but I had all these grand plans about traveling and gardening . . .” She let her words trail off.

  “And . . . ?”

  “I discovered that it’s no fun traveling alone, and I have a black thumb.”

  They both laughed.

  But then Eliza said, “I get lonely, too. Oh, I know that I have Ethan and Cassie to keep me company, and the shop occupies my time, but . . .”

  Mildred squeezed her hand. “But, sweetie, you had more than twenty years with the love of your life. That’s priceless. Sam was priceless.”

  “Yes, he was.” Eliza sighed and stared off into space for a moment.

  Eliza and Samuel’s love story was legendary around Bell Cove. When the mountain boy, Samuel Rutledge, met Eliza Metz, an Outer Banks girl from a family of bell artisans, he fell head over heels in love. He was a Christmas tree farmer, of all things, at a time back in the sixties when there weren’t that many big commercial growers. Most people went out and cut their own trees.

  Because Eliza didn’t want to leave the barrier island and because he loved her so much, Samuel moved here, bought five acres, and tried to grow Christmas trees on the punishing land between the ocean and the sound. It was lucky he still kept that tree farm on the mountain because it was their bread and butter while the island efforts proved a dismal failure. And God bless Samuel, he never faltered under the teasing and laughter of the islanders as he produced one stunted, sorry Christmas tree after another. Then, lo and behold, people started buying the ugly trees out of pity, then as a joke.

  All for the love of a woman. Sometimes she wondered if she and Barry would have had the same kind of love if they’d had the chance to marry. Probably not. The Eliza/Samuel kind of love was rare. Although it did seem to run in their family. The men loved hard. Look at how George had taken his wife’s leaving, never looking at another woman for fifteen-odd years until his death at only forty, some said of a broken heart. And Ethan . . . oh, my God! His love of Wendy and his grief over what he’d considered her desertion, although he was to blame for that . . . well, enough about that!

  “And where does Raul fit into your loneliness?” Eliza asked, jarring Mildred out of her wandering thoughts.

  “Not just Raul, but my housemates. You have to be wondering about them.” At Eliza’s nod, Mildred said, “It started with Joy Lowry. Remember her?”

  “She used to own the bookstore, didn’t she?”

  “Yes. I met her in the general store one day, and she commented that she was thinking about selling her house, that it was too much for her to keep up since her husband, who had that insurance agency, ran off with his secretary, but she didn’t want to move away from Bell Cove. I offered to let her stay with me, temporarily.”

  “Didn’t she remarry . . . the new minister over at Nags Head?”

  “Uh-huh. Over the past two years, I’ve had a dozen different people
stay here. Never more than three or four at a time. And none have been here for more than six months.”

  By now, the shortbread had cooled, and Eliza took a bite of one triangle, closed her eyes, and pretended to swoon. “You might not have a green thumb, but you haven’t lost your touch with baking.”

  “Thank you, thank you. I’ll give you a tin to take home with you. This is the third batch I’ve made today.”

  “Again . . . Raul?”

  “Right. I met Raul last year at the Swinging Seniors Club over at Ocracoke. No, not that kind of swinging. It was for jitterbug aficionados. He was visiting his daughter who’s a marine archaeologist or something, who lives there.” She shrugged. “We connected.”

  “What does he do for a living? Is he retired?”

  “He took early retirement as a professor at the University of Barcelona after his wife died. He’s writing some kind of history book.”

  “Okaay. And is this the real deal, long term, committed kind of relationship?”

  Mildred laughed. “This is the nice-for-now, let’s-see-where-it-goes kind of relationship. He has every intention of returning to Spain. I can’t see myself anywhere but Bell Cove.” She laughed again. “Your turn, Lize. What prompted your visit today?”

  Eliza took another drink of punch before replying. “Two things, actually. Have you heard about that silly grinch contest they’re having in town?”

  “Yes. Five thousand dollars raised already. Amazing!”

  “What’s amazing is the number of people who’ve been nominated. Ethan and Frank Baxter are running neck and neck for first place at the moment, but I suspect they’re voting for each other. I came into the shop this morning, and my name was at the bottom of the list. Mine! Can you imagine? Who would ever think of me as a grinch?”