Down Home Carolina Christmas

by Pamela Browning

  “I got a Christmas card from Tiffany at the office,” Dixie said. “She sent it from Singapore.”

  Carrie had also received one. “I miss her, kind of,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Dixie said. “She was nice.”

  “Yeah.”

  Dixie checked her cell-phone messages. “I need to get back to work,” she said. “If you’re still down in the dumps at closing time, maybe we could go out to dinner. We could treat ourselves to Pothier’s.”

  Carrie was determined never to return to that particular restaurant now that Luke was gone for good. It brought back too many memories. “Maybe,” she said despite a craving for chocolate gâteau, which she figured would pass.

  Dixie left in a hurry, and Carrie dialed Glenda’s number.

  “You mean you’d like to go?” Glenda asked delightedly after Carrie questioned her about the cruise. “My sister-in-law, the teacher, was going with me, but she has to help her mother in Cheraw during Christmas break. Her mom’s got shingles. You want the travel agent’s phone number?”

  Carrie wrote down the number, and before she could change her mind, she called.

  “Sure, I can handle everything,” the agent said. “Relax and I’ll send your tickets as soon as possible.” She outlined the itinerary, which included Mexico, Jamaica and the Virgin Islands. Carrie didn’t care where the ship went as long as she wasn’t in Yewville when Luke was visiting.

  Carrie announced her intentions at Sunday dinner. Memaw complained about her not being in town this Christmas, and Dixie fussed, and predictably, Claudia kept insisting that she repeat what she’d said. In the end, though, they wished her well. Said they understood. Volunteered to feed Killer and take in Carrie’s mail while she was gone.

  Carrie went shopping in Columbia and bought a couple of new outfits, sleeveless and in neon colors, as well as a slinky black dress for formal nights on the ship. She borrowed a suitcase from Joyanne, who’d bought it for her move to California, and started packing and unpacking, aiming for the right wardrobe mix. She wondered if she’d like Jamaica, and if so, maybe she could move there. Open a garage. Eat ackee rice and fish that was nice and learn to like rum drinks with little parasols floating on top. These were comforting, off-the-wall thoughts that would never go anywhere. She was healing from the rift with Luke.

  Then, on the day before she was to catch a plane for Fort Lauderdale, where she and Glenda would board the ship, she woke up with a fever of 102. Worse yet, she could hardly talk.

  “Oh, no,” Glenda moaned when Carrie called and croaked out her news. “You’ll be the second person to quit on me.”

  “Can’t help it,” Carrie said, reaching for the throat lozenges that Dixie had brought her. “Can’t go anywhere like this.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Glenda said.

  “Send postcards,” Carrie requested. “Lots.”

  “I will, hon, and I’ll miss you.”

  Carrie hung up and took her temperature again. Still 102, and the packed suitcase mocked her from across the room. She’d be able to wear the sleeveless neon things next summer when she and Dixie made their annual jaunt to Myrtle Beach in July, but as for slinky black, forget it. Maybe she’d give the dress to Joyanne for her trip to Hollywood. Joyanne was going to change her name to Joy Morris and leave after New Year’s. She was all atwitter with her plans.

  Carrie wished she could be excited about something. But right now, her head hurt and her throat was on fire and she wanted to die.

  She dozed, woke up, fell asleep and dreamed that Luke was in bed beside her. When she woke again, there was only Killer, though he comforted her by snuggling close. Tomorrow, Christmas Eve, was her birthday. She’d celebrate it with a lop-eared rabbit, and the only celebratory drink she was likely to have would be NyQuil. She still wanted to die.

  Dixie brought her food the next day, a big pot of chicken soup. She stayed only long enough to heat it up before leaving at Carrie’s urging.

  “Don’t want you to get sick, too. Does my voice sound better?”

  “No, it’s worse. Try the ginger tea I made yesterday.”

  “Did. Upset stomach,” Carrie said. The word stomach came out in a whisper, as if her vocal cords had quit completely.

  “Would you like more ice? More anything?”

  “Ice,” Carrie croaked, wrapping herself in the thick duvet and burrowing down into the pillows. She didn’t want to watch TV. She didn’t want to read. She didn’t want to talk. She still wanted to die.

  “I’m sorry you’ll miss the candlelight service tonight,” Dixie said.

  Carrie nodded, imagining the congregation’s faces lit by candle glow as the choir sang Christmas carols. She and Dixie usually picked up Memaw and took her with them, then returned her home afterward, their parting cries of “Merry Christmas!” ringing out across the neighboring fields in the cool night air.

  “You’re almost out of aspirin. I’ll bring you a fresh bottle when I drive Memaw home after church,” Dixie said.

  “Okay,” Carrie whispered. “Thanks. Have fun.”

  “We’ll miss you.” With that and a cheery wave, Dixie left.

  Carrie turned on the radio beside her bed and rationed out the remaining aspirin. She slipped in and out of sleep, envying Glenda, who by now was probably afloat off the coast of Florida and flirting with an elder-hunk dance host.

  She wondered where Luke was. If he’d arrived in town yet. If he was enjoying the birthday celebration with his parents. Who else would be there. Whether they’d go to church, and if she had gone, whether she’d have had to sit in his presence aching for him and remembering how much she’d loved him.

  Did love him. But that didn’t matter anymore.

  LUKE FLEW into Yewville after dark, his plane circling above the town before gliding in for a smooth landing. His father met him at the airport, and his mother was there, too. She looked well, better than the last couple of times he’d seen her. With them was Shasta, well behaved at the end of her leash, though that didn’t stop her from nosing his hand for a treat. He hadn’t forgotten. He’d brought a whole bag of special biscuits from a bakery in Santa Barbara that catered only to dogs.

  Luke had persuaded his parents to skip the birthday party, told them he wouldn’t arrive until too late. Both Ruth and Howell had accepted this, and he was relieved that no false conviviality was expected of him. His acting skills would extend only so far in his personal life, and he couldn’t be enthusiastic about celebrating the birth date he shared with Carrie.

  After leaving the tiny airport, they drove through the darkened streets toward the Allentown highway, with his father behind the wheel. Christmas decorations consisting of red-and-white candy canes and glittery wreaths decorated each reproduction vintage lamppost. Memorial Park had a charming illuminated crèche scene positioned to one side of the entrance, and the gazebo near the pond was strung with tiny white lights. The weather was cold enough for snow, his father said.

  “But nothing like in New Hampshire,” his mother cautioned. “We’re expecting a few flurries and they don’t expect them to stick.”

  “That’s more than I would have seen in L.A.,” Luke joked, and his mother smiled. There was a time when she wouldn’t have.

  Ruth and Howell insisted that the three of them attend candlelight services at their new church. “I’ve been to a couple of circle meetings with Frances Smith,” Ruth said. “I liked all the people real well, and I think I’ll join.”

  Luke’s spirits lifted, not only because his mother was settling in but because his father seemed happy. Besides, at the candlelight service, Luke would see Carrie. She’d told him that she went every year.

  “I suppose Carrie still drops by every once in a while?” Luke ventured as they passed Smitty’s, closed and dark but with a big wreath of fresh pine boughs on the door.

  “Not lately,” Howell said thoughtfully. “She’s tapered off for some reason.”

  “She went on a cruise,” his mother contributed. “
With my hairdresser, Glenda. They’re probably sipping mai tais on board the Caribbean Queen right now.”

  “Oh,” Luke said, spirits taking a nosedive from which he doubted they’d recover during his whole Christmas vacation. “When is the cruise over?”

  “I don’t have an appointment with Glenda until January 10,” Ruth said. “She’ll be back by then.”

  Luke would be in Paris on that date, scheduled to meet with the director of his new movie, a guy who had won a couple of awards in Cannes at one time. This would have been an exciting prospect, but it wasn’t now. He was silent the rest of the way to his parents’ house.

  There wasn’t time for Howell to show Luke the birds he’d carved out of scraps of wood to pass the time, and Ruth would have liked him to partake of the Lane cake she’d baked in honor of his birthday. She’d written his name on top in red icing, and she’d stuck in green candles. The recipe was one she’d acquired from Carrie’s grandmother.

  “We shouldn’t be late for church,” Howell said, pulling on his gloves. “Let’s get going.”

  They headed out into the cold crisp air. Luke, his hopes of seeing Carrie dashed, didn’t care if he went to church at this point or not, but he didn’t know any way out. His parents were on a roll with this new community involvement of theirs, and he wouldn’t derail their plans. More than anything, he longed for the three of them to function as a family again, and he knew his attitude was of major importance in getting them all back to normal.

  Even though Carrie wasn’t present, Luke surveyed the faces of the parishioners during the church service. He had no trouble identifying Hub and his family, and Hub nodded gravely at him in recognition. Memaw Frances held her hymn book right up in front of her face, sharing it with Claudia, and Jackson, Claudia’s son, was ogling a couple of teenage girls sitting diagonally across the aisle from him. Then Luke spotted Carrie, and his heart leaped in recognition until he realized that it was not Carrie but Dixie. He tried to catch her eye, but she ignored him. Maybe she was bummed out because she believed he’d mistreated her sister, which, in retrospect, perhaps he had. Regret washed over him, a knowing that he’d held something precious in the palm of his hand and let it slip away.

  As the sweet sound of carols filled the large hall, he engaged in a few moments of serious introspection. After Carrie handed him his walking papers, he hadn’t believed he’d done anything wrong in regard to their relationship. Awash in self-righteousness, he told himself that he’d been honest with Carrie. He hadn’t promised more than he was prepared to give, and he’d considered it unfair that Carrie expected better.

  But was it? Now that he’d had time to mull over Carrie’s position while far away from Yewville and everything it represented, it occurred to him that perhaps he’d been unreasonable. Maybe he’d been regarding the situation from a perspective that wasn’t even valid.

  Looking around at the families gathered—the mothers and fathers standing together, their children holding their hands or maybe carried in their parents’ arms, everyone so warm and trusting—it seemed to Luke that maybe these people had the right idea. They tended to stay close to home, to keep family ties intact. To be there for one another through whatever happened to them, loyal, supportive and loving no matter what.

  He hadn’t done that in his own nuclear family, and though running away from Garrett Falls had started him on his way to a fulfilling and lucrative career, for a while he’d almost severed his ties with his parents completely. He glanced at Ruth, whose expression as she sang “Silent Night” was beatific, and at Howell, whose arm was curved around his wife. His father noticed him watching and placed his free hand on Luke’s shoulder.

  Luke was overcome with emotion. It had been so long since they’d stood together like this, joined together in love. Unbidden tears sprang to his eyes, and he thought of his sister. Sherry, the most kind and loving of little girls, would be pleased that the family had melded again. A kind of peace settled over him. He felt reconnected with his soul, and he hadn’t even known he’d lost it before now.

  When the service was over, when everyone was pushing toward the exits, Luke found himself beside Dixie. He hadn’t planned it. Suddenly Dixie was just there, though only a few moments ago she’d been moving toward a different door.

  “Merry Christmas, Dixie,” he said, and her head snapped around.

  “Merry Christmas to you, too,” she replied courteously, but he could read nothing more into the greeting than that.

  They both took a few more steps before Luke said, “How’s Carrie?”

  “Sick,” Dixie said. “Sick as can be.”

  This concerned him. “I heard she was on a cruise.”

  Dixie shook her head. “At the last minute, she had to cancel. She caught the flu.”

  “So she’s home?”

  Dixie nodded, then narrowed her eyes at him. “Why do you ask?”

  “I wanted to wish her a happy birthday,” he said. It was a lame excuse, though certainly true. Plus, maybe if he saw her sick, her nose all red from blowing it and her hair matted from lying in bed all day, she’d seem less attractive to him. Maybe he would be able to relegate her to the past and forget all about her beautiful body and their wonderfully orchestrated lovemaking in all sorts of positions and places, like the old Skyline Drive-in.

  Dixie seemed to be considering. “I was going to drop her off a bottle of aspirin when I drive Memaw home. Maybe you could take it by.”

  “Maybe I could,” he said, though his heart flipped at the prospect.

  Dixie regarded him, a carefully measured glance. “She may not be happy to see you.”

  “I’m prepared for that,” he told her. “I might even understand it.”

  Dixie stuck a hand deep into a coat pocket, then pressed a bottle into his hand. “Here. Take this. Go there alone.” With that, she melted into the crowd, joining Memaw Frances and Claudia at the exit. She shot him a quick little wave as they went out the door.

  If Luke could have had his way, he’d have deposited his mother and father at their house and rushed right back to Carrie’s, which they had to pass on the way home. Instead, as they drove, he endured his father’s description of the clever tricks Shasta could do, his mother’s complaints that her friends in New Hampshire neglected to write, his father’s remarks about the latest political situations. At their house, he had to honor his mother’s insistence that he blow out birthday candles and eat not one but two pieces of cake before he could leave. And then, since his Ferrari was still garaged at the rental house, he had to ask his father for the car keys.

  “Reminds me of old times,” Howell said jocularly, tossing them to him, and Luke made tracks.

  When Luke got out of his parents’ car at Carrie’s home place, something cold stung his face, and he lifted his eyes to see tiny snowflakes drifting down. The first story of the house was dark, but inside a dim light shone from the upstairs window of Carrie’s bedroom. He knew the back door wouldn’t be locked because it never was, so he walked around the house and entered through the screen porch into the kitchen.

  Killer hopped away from the door as Luke switched on the light. The rabbit blinked at him, and Luke felt inordinately glad to set eyes on him. He’d slept with that fool rabbit almost every time he’d slept with Carrie, shoving Killer aside when he reached for her, sometimes hating it when the rabbit refused to move. Killer was part of the whole Carrie experience, and he felt an absurd affection for the animal, even though he knew that it was probably hoping for a chance to chomp down on his big toe.

  “Carrie?”

  No answer.

  “Carrie,” he called again. He weighed the idea of leaving the aspirin on the kitchen table but discarded the idea immediately. Carrie might not come downstairs for a while, and maybe she really needed the medicine.

  He heard the strains of Christmas carols. Carrie must have her radio on. The radio was a nice model with good speakers, and they’d often listened to it when they made love.


  “Well, if she’s not going to answer, I’ll have to go up there,” he told Killer. The rabbit followed along, inquisitively sniffing his way up one step at a time.

  “Carrie, I brought the aspirin,” Luke called when he stepped onto the landing.

  He heard a stirring, but Carrie didn’t reply. He recalled all the other times he’d climbed these stairs, eager to slide into bed beside her. It made him sad that they were no longer lovers, and it occurred to him that he’d been miserable ever since they broke up. This qualified as a paradigm shift of momentous magnitude, but he didn’t have time to ponder it at length.

  When he stood at the bedroom door, Carrie said something unintelligible. She was swaddled in bedclothes. What was exposed of her face was flushed with fever, her nose as red as he’d expected it to be. Tissues were strewn about the bed, and the radio played “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.” It looked like a sickroom, not much like Christmas at all. But Carrie was beautiful.

  “Luke,” she whispered.

  “Dixie sent me over with the aspirin,” he said.

  She stared up at him, her eyes enormously round. She’d drawn her hair up in a knot on top of her head, and wisps framed her face. She was wearing an old nightgown under all those covers, one he recognized as the high-necked Mother Hubbard garment that had hung on the back of her closet door. He’d teased her about it a couple of times, threatening that if she ever wore it in bed with him, he’d rip it right off. Now he had no intention of doing such a thing. All he wanted was to feast his eyes on her.

  “Happy birthday,” she croaked.

  “To you, too,” he added, setting the aspirin down on the bedside table. He was awash with regret over the past several weeks. He’d missed her more than she could ever imagine.

  “I was sure I was dreaming when you appeared at the door. I knew you weren’t real.”

  “I’m real enough,” he said. He noticed a videotape at the bottom of the bed. It was Frankly, Roberta, the romantic comedy that had set him on the way to stardom. She noticed him studying it and smiled slightly.