Blue Christmas

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “Oh puh-leeze,” Cookie drawled. “My mama beat me with a hairbrush when she caught me waxing my eyebrows in tenth grade. And Daddy still tells people that Manny’s my ‘business associate.’”

  “Hard-shell Baptists, through and through,” Manny said with a sigh. “Neither one of them would set foot at our commitment ceremony,” he added. “Although they did send a place setting of our good silver, which was very generous, considering. But so what? They’re our family. My folks are dead. So we’re stuck with Ma and Pa Parker.”

  “You don’t understand,” Daniel said. “There’s a lot more to it than that.”

  “Puh-leeze,” Cookie repeated. “Grow up and get over yourself.”

  I wrapped my arms around Daniel’s waist and leaned in close. “One night,” I said. “Just let her stay one night. For me.”

  He kissed the top of my head, which I took as a good sign.

  “One night,” he repeated. “Just for you. But I have to tell you, this solves nothing.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered. Flushed with good cheer, I went to the living room, to ask Paula what she wanted in her coffee.

  She was gone, but my daddy’s letter sweater was still draped over the back of the chair where she’d been sitting.

  Back in the kitchen, Cookie and Manny were admiring my heart-pine cabinets and Sub-Zero refrigerator, while Daniel poured coffee into the mugs I’d set out.

  “Daniel!” I said sharply. “She’s gone.”

  He sighed and set down the coffeepot. “All right. Let me just get my coat and gloves.”

  “Can I ask you guys a favor?” I asked, turning to my newfound friends.

  “Sure,” Cookie said. “If you tell me where you found these nickel-plated faucets.”

  “Deal,” I said quickly. “Paula’s gone. Daniel and I are going out to look for her. Can you stay here, in case she comes back?”

  Manny was lifting the foil from a tray of dessert. “Oh no! Pecan pie,” he moaned. “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.”

  “Knock yourself out,” I said, grabbing the keys to my truck.

  CHAPTER 24

  The cold and rain seemed to have swept the historic district’s streets clean by the time the bells at St. John’s and the Lutheran Church of the Ascension tolled midnight.

  Daniel drove my truck and I kept my face pressed to the passenger-side window, looking for some glimpse of Paula. Neither of us said much until we’d worked our way all the way north to Bay Street.

  “How old do you think she is?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Your mother,” I said, exasperated.

  “No idea.”

  “Well, how old is Eric?”

  He had to think about it. “Thirty-nine?”

  “How old was she when she married your father?”

  His face flushed.

  “What?” I asked.

  “They had to get married, okay? She was a junior and my old man was, like, nineteen. She never even finished high school.”

  “So she was probably no more than seventeen when she had Eric. My God, Daniel, do you realize your mother isn’t even sixty yet?”

  “So?” He drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. “This is useless, Weezie. For all we know, she could have hopped a dog by now to head back to Jacksonville.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “Let’s check the Greyhound station.”

  He turned the car west, toward Martin Luther King Boulevard and the bus depot.

  “Paula’s not even sixty, but she looks as old or older than my mama, and she’s seventy-two,” I pointed out.

  “Back in the day, my mother was a real knockout,” Daniel said. “There was a picture of her in a bathing suit at the beach, standing by the edge of the water, in an old family album. I always assumed the girl in the picture was a movie star until Aunt Lucy told me it was…Paula.”

  We pulled into the bus station parking lot and peered through the brightly lit picture window. We could see a few people standing around, and a maintenance man, pushing a floor-waxing machine. Before Daniel could object, I hopped out of the truck and dashed inside.

  Less than five minutes later, I was back, shivering from the rain and cold.

  “No luck,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “There aren’t any buses to Jacksonville tonight. The last one left at eight.”

  Daniel turned the heater up and pulled away from the curb. “This is hopeless. I’m taking you home before you catch pneumonia.”

  I didn’t dare point out that his mother was out in this weather alone, wearing nothing warmer than a moth-eaten sweater.

  “She was just a kid when she had you,” I said. “Barely into her twenties. And all of a sudden, after your dad left, she was a single mom with three little boys to take care of.”

  “Lots of people become single parents at a young age,” Daniel said. “They don’t abandon their kids when they find a new partner.”

  “What were you doing when you were in your early twenties?” I asked.

  He snorted. “That’s different. I was in the Marines. I was partying, raising hell, like every other guy I knew.”

  “Think about what Paula’s life was like,” I urged. “Just out of her teens, saddled with three little boys. She’s working at the sugar plant, and she meets some smooth-talking boss who sweeps her off her feet—”

  He glared at me. “Why are we having this discussion? You don’t know anything about her. Anyway, she said it herself. She was a selfish coward.”

  “It’s Christmas,” I said, wanting to change the subject. As we rounded the square by the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, we saw people emerging from the church, umbrellas unfurled like a forest of mushrooms. “And I promised Mama I’d go to mass with her this year.”

  “Was she mad at you for not going?” he asked.

  “No. I think she understood that when dinner went hay-wire I wasn’t going anywhere. She might be disappointed, but not mad.”

  “No guilt trip?”

  I smiled. “Well, maybe a little one.”

  We were on Charlton Street now, and it pleased me to see the blue glow of my shop windows reflected in the rain-slicked street in front of the shop.

  “Hey,” I said suddenly. “I’ve got an idea.”

  We parked at the curb and walked over to the shop, and stood in the rain to look at Paula Stipanek Gambrell, sound asleep in the display bed.

  Daniel slipped an arm out of his jacket and pulled it over my head to shield me from the worst of the weather.

  “She doesn’t look all that evil,” I observed.

  “Not even sixty,” he said. “But she’s been all beat up by life.”

  Paula’s skin looked dark and leathery in the pale wash of lights from the windows, her short-cropped hair dark silver against the white bed linens.

  “She’s much smaller than I remembered,” he said. “And her hair! Look how gray. It used to be jet black. She wore it long, almost to her waist.”

  He shook his head, and raindrops splattered on my cheek. “She’s nothing like I thought she’d be now. Hoyt Gambrell was a rich man before he went away to prison. I always pictured her living on some golf course, playing bridge with a bunch of rich country-club women.”

  I slid an arm around his waist. “Maybe she did you a favor—leaving you with your aunt. You guys had a home in a decent neighborhood. A middle-class upbringing. She couldn’t have given you that.”

  He clutched me tightly to his chest, and I could hear the even in and out of his breathing. I looked up, and he looked away.

  “That last Christmas, before she left? It was the best one we’d ever had. Hoyt must have slipped her some extra money. Derek got an NBA regulation basketball and Eric got a slick skateboard. We all got new clothes and sneakers.”

  “What about you? What’d you get?”

  He laughed. “What I’d been begging for. An Easy-Bake Oven. And a Popeil Pocket Fisherman like I’d seen on television. I was a we
ird little dude, huh?”

  “You were a prodigy,” I protested.

  “What should we do?” he asked haltingly. “Chase her off? Wake her up and take her back to your place?”

  I had a ready answer for that one, but I managed to choke it back. “It’s your call.”

  “Let her sleep,” he said finally, steering me toward my own front door. “If she’s not gone by morning, we’ll figure something out.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah. All of us. My mom. You and me. And my brothers.”

  The living room was dark when we stepped inside. We found Manny and Cookie in the kitchen, sipping eggnog and giggling like a couple of teenagers.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” Manny said, jumping up to greet us.

  “Did you find her?” Cookie asked. “Is she coming back here?”

  “She was asleep. At my shop,” I said.

  “It’s late,” Daniel said pointedly.

  When they’d finally gone, we locked the front and back doors, and checked a final time on the dogs curled up together on Jethro’s bed.

  “You sleepy?” Daniel asked as I headed toward the stairs.

  “Not really,” I admitted. “I was tired earlier, but I think I’m too keyed up now to sleep.”

  “It’s officially Christmas,” he said, pointing to the clock on the mantel. “Maybe Santa came while we were out.”

  “The way things have gone around here tonight it’s more likely that the Grinch came and shoved all our presents and the roast beast up the chimney while little Cindy Lou Who was asleep,” I said. “But we could check.”

  I reached for the light switch in the darkened den, but Daniel caught my hand. “Let’s leave ’em off,” he suggested. He went over to the fireplace and switched on the gas logs, then slowly lit the dozen or so candles I’d arranged on the mantel. While he was lighting the candles, I found the remote control switch for the Christmas tree and clicked it on.

  When I saw the lit tree, I burst into laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” Daniel asked, turning abruptly.

  “The tree,” I said, pointing at the eight-foot Fraser fir.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said, coming to stand beside me. “Prettiest tree you’ve ever decorated.”

  “Except I didn’t decorate it this way,” I told him. “Look at the way those strands of twinkle lights are draped in precise six-inch loops.”

  “So?”

  “So I just threw ‘em on there any old way. And where are my big ol’ gaudy colored lights? And my tinsel? I had about a ton of tinsel on this tree earlier. And now there’s not even a smidge. Not to mention the way the gifts are so artfully arranged under the tree. Look at it! It looks like something out of a magazine.”

  “I don’t get it,” Daniel said. “If you didn’t do this, who did?”

  “A couple of elves named Manny and Cookie.”

  “Damn,” Daniel said.

  “I know. We’ve been the victims of a drive-by redecorate.”

  “It’s still a beautiful tree,” he said, his dark blue eyes suddenly serious. “Perfect for a beautiful woman.”

  “Sweet,” I said, kissing him. “Is this you, apologizing?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “I’ve been a prick. About Christmas. And family. And everything.”

  “You have been pretty awful,” I agreed.

  He wrapped his arms around my waist. “I’m going to do better. I swear it, Weezie.”

  “I know,” I said, kissing him.

  “No, really,” he said. “You make everybody around you happy. You make me happy. I don’t tell you that enough, but you do.”

  “That’s quite a speech,” I said, nuzzling his neck. “Is that my Christmas present? Because if it is, it’s a really good one. I’ve got a good present for you too. Wanna see?”

  “I’m not done yet,” he said carefully. “I’ve been thinking about this all night. Even before Paula—I mean, my mother—showed up. I’m tired of blaming other people for the way my life turned out. Because it didn’t turn out so bad, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve got a home, and a great business. A family—even though they drive me nuts, I’ve got a family. And I’ve got you. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without you.”

  “Even though I drive you nuts?”

  “Especially because you drive me nuts. I get to choose—whether to be happy or miserable. I choose happy. I choose you, Weezie Foley.”

  He kissed me, long and slowly and thoroughly.

  “I choose you back,” I said when I came up for air.

  Without warning, he sank down into the big leather armchair by the fireplace and pulled me onto his lap.

  “Is this the part where you ask me if I’ve been a good little girl this year?” I asked, giggling and fumbling with his belt buckle.

  “We’ll get to that part,” he said, kissing me hungrily and running his hands up under my sweater. “Although, to be honest, I have to say I prefer you naughty. Actually, I was thinking we’d do the present part now.”

  “I do love presents,” I said, working on his shirt buttons.

  “We’d better do the presents first,” he said, pushing me upright. “Or we might not get around to it tonight.”

  “Me first,” I said.

  Fortunately, Manny and Cookie’s redecorating scheme had left Daniel’s little pile of presents at the front edge of the tree. I gathered them into my arms.

  “All that for me?” he said, his face falling. “I only got you one.”

  “Only one of these is really special,” I assured him. “The others are nothing. They can wait till tomorrow.”

  I climbed back onto his lap, carrying only the tall, cylindrical gift that I’d wrapped in heavy gold paper with a thick blue velvet ribbon. “Open it,” I commanded.

  He untied the ribbon with a single tug and slipped the bottle out of the paper.

  “Wow,” he said, reading the label aloud. “A 1970 pomerol. My God, Weezie, this is an amazing bottle of wine. Where’d you find it?”

  “An auction,” I said anxiously. “You like it?”

  “I will,” he said, running his fingertips over the cork.

  “It’s a 1970,” I said. “Because of the year you were born. I wanted to buy you a special bottle, and BeBe said this would be good.”

  “Better than good,” he said. “Life-altering.” He shifted, sliding out from under me and standing up. “Stay there. I’ll be right back.”

  When he came back, he was carrying a corkscrew and two wineglasses. Before I could stop him, he’d plunged the opener into the cork.

  “Wait!” I protested. “Daniel, this is a once-in-a-lifetime bottle. You don’t know what I had to go through to buy it. I mean, I love that you’re excited about it, but don’t you want to save it for a special occasion?”

  He poured a few drops into one of the glasses, rolled it around, then held it to his nostrils, inhaling deeply and smiling widely. He tasted, nodded, then poured a glass and handed it to me.

  I sniffed dutifully. And sipped. It was very good wine, as far as I could tell. But then, I thought the screw-top stuff I bought at Kroger was good too.

  Daniel sipped his, then carefully set his glass down on the coffee table.

  My heart sank. “Not so hot, huh? I’ve got some champagne too, but maybe we’d better wait on that.”

  “Later,” he said. “Now it’s my turn.” He scooted me over to one side and raised a hip to reach into his pocket.

  He brought out a small black velvet box and held it out to me. “Sorry about the wrapping,” he said. “I was going to wait until tomorrow. But you said I should save the wine for a special occasion. This is as special as it gets.”

  My hands were damp and shaky, and my fingers couldn’t quite work the tiny silver clasp on the box.

  “Here,” he said impatiently. He took the box and flipped the top open.

  A circlet of blue sapphires winked and sparkled in the reflected
light of the Christmas tree, and in the center of the sapphires sat one perfect square-cut diamond.

  “I know they’re not your birthstones, but you love blue, and they’re sapphires, and just a diamond didn’t seem like enough—”

  “Shut up,” I said, kissing him quiet.

  “Yes?” he asked, a little while later, taking the ring from the box and fitting it on my trembling left hand.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Oh, hell yes.”

  Foley Family Irish Corned Beef Dip

  The way you class up a recipe calling for canned corned beef is to serve it in a hollowed-out bread round that you buy at the best bakery in your neighborhood—preferably the bread should be rye, pumpernickel, or sourdough.

  2 loaves unsliced bread

  1 1/3 cups sour cream

  1 ½ cups Duke’s mayonnaise

  2 teaspoons dried minced onion

  1 can corned beef

  ½ teaspoon horseradish

  Combine all ingredients except the bread, mashing with a fork to create even consistency. Spoon into a hollowed-out bread round. Serve with cut-up chunks of the second loaf of bread.

  Red Roosters

  A Christmas-y cocktail that will make your guests crow with delight. Just remember to make it the night before your party so that the juice mixture has time to freeze. And remind guests that this potable is mighty potent. Supposedly makes ten servings. As if!

  ¼ cup granulated sugar

  ½ cup water

  1 cup frozen lemonade concentrate

  1 cup frozen orange juice concentrate

  2 cups cranberry juice

  2 cups vodka

  4 cups ginger ale

  Bring sugar and water to a boil in a saucepan over low heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Add all juices and vodka and stir to blend. Freeze mixture in pitcher or freezer-safe container. One hour before serving time, add ginger ale to pitcher. As mixture thaws, break into slush with a long spoon.

  MORE CHRISTMAS CHEER

  from Mary Kay Andrews

  MY BLUE CHRISTMAS