Forever Christmas

by Robert Tate Miller

  “Beth . . . ?”

  Beth hurried down the stairs without a word, shoved off Andrew’s attempt to restrain her, and was out the lobby door in a flash. Andrew froze, stared from Whitman to Gibbons and back again, and then bolted after her.

  “Beth, wait!” Andrew hit a patch of ice on the front walk as he tried to catch up to his fleeing wife. He lost his balance, and his feet went flying out from beneath him. He landed hard on his back, the cold cement punching the breath out of him. He lay on the ground for a moment, gasping for air. By the time he was able to suck in enough oxygen to get up, Beth was already in the backseat of Larry’s cab. Andrew grabbed the door before she could close it. “Beth, please! I was going to tell you just as soon—”

  Beth glared up at him from the backseat. “When, Andrew? When the moving van arrived?”

  “Beth, I’m sorry. I should have—”

  “Andrew, how could you do this? We’re a couple. We’re supposed to plan our lives together.”

  “Beth, I know. I just wanted to surprise you . . .”

  “Surprise me? Well, you succeeded. I’m surprised. Tell me, Andrew, what were you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. That it was an amazing opportunity, maybe a full partnership at double the salary, a share of the profits, and no more New York winters.”

  “I love those winters, Andrew. And I love our life in New York. Did you ever for one second—when you were dreaming about your big salary and share of the profits—think about your wife? What I might want? Did you, Andrew? Even for a moment?”

  Andrew slowly shook his head. He couldn’t lie to her. Not now. He had only thought of himself, his career, his status. His wife had been an afterthought.

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

  Beth’s face changed. The anger was gone. There was only pain. He had broken the heart of his best friend, the love of his life. He’d lost her. The game was over.

  Beth pulled the car door out of his grip and slammed it shut. “Train station, Larry,” she said.

  Andrew watched as the taxi pulled away, stunned and confused and out of ideas. As he stood there in the cold, a light snow began to fall.

  What had he done? Was this the last time he’d ever see her alive? He had thrown away the best gift God had ever given him. He had taken Beth for granted, and the bill had come due. He was going to lose her, and he knew he was getting exactly what he deserved.

  In a flash, his life with Beth flickered through his mind like a movie trailer. He saw them as children splashing in a backyard kiddie pool, sharing an awkward first kiss at a friend’s birthday party. Then a foggy memory of Beth by his dying mother’s bedside, holding Emma’s frail, quivering hand, whispering words of comfort. He saw his young bride’s joyous tearstained face as he lifted her veil on their wedding day.

  The scenes whisked by on fast-forward, moving so quickly he could barely make them out. Then there she was again, standing in the window of their apartment, solemnly decorating the tree as Andrew waited for the cab that would take him away from her. Only this time, she turned and looked down at him, a wounded expression on her face. She mouthed words that were easy to read. “Good-bye, Andrew. I’ll miss you.”

  Last of all, he flashed back to the snow-laden New York street on that terrible night. The relentless taxi bearing down on Beth, kicking up a spray of soft white powder in its wake. He saw himself watching, helpless and hopeless and terrified, unable to move, unable to save her. He closed his eyes as if to shut out the awful scene, but try as he might, he couldn’t look away. He had to watch.

  The whistle of an approaching train stirred him from his fatalistic thoughts. The visions vanished. He glanced around, refocused as the whistle sounded again. The train was arriving at River Falls Station.

  Beth’s train.

  Andrew felt a sudden surge of adrenaline. It was the fourth quarter, and he was far behind, but the game wasn’t over yet. Maybe he would fail at Lionel’s assignment; maybe he was about to lose his wife. But he hadn’t yet. He still had more than thirteen hours to go.

  Andrew cupped his hands and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Lionel! Where are you? Show yourself!” He turned to see old Gibbons watching him from the inn porch.

  “I need a ride!” Andrew yelled. “Now!”

  The cold engine of Gibbons’s old pickup sputtered and coughed as he tried to crank it to life. “C’mon, Bessie, you can do it.”

  “Please hurry!” Andrew said. He checked his watch.

  Gibbons tried the key again. “The old girl can be a bit ornery at times,” he said. The engine clicked and thumped. “Nope. She’s not ready yet.”

  Andrew had waited long enough. “Forget it!” he said. He shoved open the truck door and made a run for it.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  You just missed her.” A smiling porter greeted Andrew as he ran from the terminal out onto the train platform. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if the porter meant Beth or the train. Out of breath from his mad dash through the icy streets, Andrew doubled over and sucked in air.

  When he looked down the tracks, he could see the 10:35 a.m. train to New York growing smaller as it left River Falls. Andrew slumped down on a bench. How could he have let this happen? The porter felt a wave of pity for the man. “Be another at one thirty,” he said.

  Andrew stared up at him. The porter was tall and lean, with a perfectly groomed handlebar mustache that made him look as if he’d stepped through a wormhole from an old western town. His neat red-and-black-trimmed uniform had shiny, freshly polished brass buttons. His hat was fire-engine red with a dark brown bill; the gold chain of a watch dangled from his pocket. The metal name tag on his breast simply said “Porter.” Whether it was his name or his occupation, Andrew couldn’t fathom.

  “I can’t wait that long,” Andrew said. “Is there a car rental place around here?”

  The porter chuckled. “Car rental? In River Falls? No, sir. ’Fraid not.”

  “Of course not,” Andrew said. He whipped out his wallet. “What about you? Do you have a car I could rent . . . or buy?” Andrew held up a wad of bills. “I have cash.”

  “Mister, all I got’s an old jalopy, and she’s not for sale.”

  Andrew grew more desperate. If this guy wanted to barter, he’d come to the right place. “Name your price!” Andrew peeled out three crisp hundred-dollar bills. “How about I rent it for three hundred and return it tomorrow with a full tank of gas.”

  The porter grinned. “Sir . . .”

  “You can trust me! Here, I’ll leave you my credit cards.” Andrew started to empty the contents of his wallet. The kindly porter raised a hand.

  “Sir, even if I was willing to lend you my car, it wouldn’t make a difference. With the holiday traffic as bad as it is, it would make more sense to wait for the one thirty. The turnpike’s a parking lot all the way to Meadville. Train’ll get you home a whole lot quicker.”

  Andrew nodded. “Thanks.” As he started to turn away, Andrew saw the porter lift a gold watch from his pocket and pop it open. Dangling from the chain was a fob—a large, fancy gold key.

  A steady snow sifted down on River Falls as Andrew trudged through the square, his hands in his coat pockets and his eyes on the ground. He wasn’t sure where he was headed or why. He just knew he couldn’t sit still.

  He passed the Forever Christmas store and cut across the square to the big fir tree where he found the twin ornaments he and Beth had placed that morning. A new wave of hopelessness washed over him. Here he was, trapped in his hometown, and Beth was moving farther and farther away from him by the moment. He took out his phone, checked to see if she’d texted him back. Nothing.

  She wouldn’t answer. She’d given up on him, on them.

  Andrew felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and quickly checked for a text from Beth. But instead of Beth on his phone screen, he saw Lionel’s smiling face. The text read simply, Forgiveness is divine.

  Andrew deleted the message. When he looked up
from his phone, he was no longer by the Christmas tree. He was standing in front of the Shady Tree Nursing Home.

  Andrew found his father in the Shady Tree rec room sitting at his usual card table. Henry Farmer was all alone, save for an ancient woman in a wheelchair who had fallen asleep in front of the television. Andrew watched his old man shuffle the deck twice, then start laying out the cards for a game of solitaire. Halfway through the dealing, he paused to take a hit of oxygen. When he turned back to his cards, Andrew was standing there in front of the table.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Andrew?” Henry looked past him, searching for Beth.

  “Just me,” Andrew said. “Mind if I sit down?”

  “Pull up a stump,” Henry said.

  Andrew took a seat across from his father. He sighed deeply as he gathered his thoughts. Where to begin?

  “Dad, I was wrong. I never should have said those things to you. I’m sorry.”

  A narrow smile creased the old man’s lips. “No apology needed, son. I don’t blame you one bit. I’m the one who owes you an apology. As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about it all morning. I heard this quote the other day: ‘There are three stages of a man’s life. He believes in Santa Claus; he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus; he is Santa Claus.’ When it came to my family, I skipped the last stage—and, for that, I’m truly sorry. Andy, I know I wasn’t there for you. I think about it all the time, and I’d give anything for a chance to do it over again, to make things right. Unfortunately, God doesn’t hand out do-overs.”

  Andrew gave a grim smile. If only he knew.

  “I can’t change the past,” Henry said. “I just hope and pray there’s still time, that I can be in your life somehow. Even if just a little.”

  Andrew looked at his father. So this was what forgiveness felt like. Not too shabby. He put a hand on Henry’s arm.

  “I’m pretty big on second chances right now.”

  Henry smiled to stifle his tears. Then he winked at his son. “So how about a game of pinochle?”

  “Dad, I’d like to. I really would. But I have to find Beth.”

  “Find Beth?”

  “I messed up. I messed up bad. I really let her down, and now I think I’ve lost her.”

  Henry nodded as if he understood perfectly. “You’re lucky, Andrew. All the years I spent running around, all the years out on the road, I didn’t realize how much I loved your mother until it was too late. She was gone, and I never got the chance to tell her how lucky I was to have someone as wonderful as her. It’s not too late for you, Andrew. You have time. You’ll find Beth, and you’ll make things right. She’ll understand. The two of you will have a lifetime of happiness together.”

  The irony of his father’s words seared Andrew’s soul. That lifetime of happiness was quickly slipping through his fingers. His brokenhearted wife was miles and miles away.

  And the clock was ticking.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  To Andrew, the two-and-a-half-hour train ride from River Falls to Penn Station seemed like an eternity. The train was packed with holiday travelers, weary parents letting their sugar-rushed kids run rampant from one car to another. Andrew spent the first hour trying in vain to reach Beth by phone until his cell died somewhere in western New Jersey.

  When the doors opened at Penn Station, the train was half an hour late. Andrew bolted like a caged animal. He dodged and darted his way through the mob and bounded up the exit stairs to 34th Street. It was already nearly dark; the steady snow of the arriving storm fell on a city glowing with red and green and all things Christmas. The massive tree of lights outside Macy’s cast an amber glow on the hundreds of faces waiting in line for one last shot on Santa’s lap.

  Andrew darted out into the street and started wildly flagging passing cabs. Occupied. Out of service. Suddenly, he saw one pull up in front of Macy’s. As a family of four piled out of the backseat, Andrew made a dash for it, barely outrunning a skateboard-toting teenage boy in a hoodie sweatshirt. Andrew jumped in back and closed the door.

  “Carnegie Hill. And please hurry!”

  But there was no hurrying on this snowy Christmas Eve in New York City. The unusually heavy holiday traffic crawled along at a snail’s pace, and not even a skilled New York cabbie could find an opening.

  At 52nd and Broadway, Andrew decided he’d had enough. He tossed a crumpled twenty in the front seat and jumped out, intercepting an empty bike taxi that was easily darting in and around the traffic logjam, heading in the opposite direction.

  Andrew darted in front of the bicyclist, cutting him off. “Hey, buddy! I need to go to Carnegie Hill!”

  The driver maneuvered around him, kept pedaling. “Not with me, you ain’t,” he said.

  “How about for a hundred bucks?” The driver slammed on his brakes.

  Fifteen minutes later and a hundred dollars lighter, Andrew stood at the front door of his apartment building. He put his old key in the lock without a second thought. Click. It turned with no problem. He shoved open the door and hurried inside.

  “Beth!” Andrew raced through the apartment room to room. “Beth?”

  Empty. In the bedroom, his eyes lighted on the digital clock on the bedside table: 4:58 p.m.

  Seven hours to go.

  The winter storm arrived full force as Andrew desperately searched their Upper East Side neighborhood. He checked every spot he could think of where Beth might be: the flower shop, the bookstore, the corner grocer. Nobody had seen her, and most merchants were preparing to close up shop and head home to their families. Where would Beth go? What would she be doing? Andrew’s mind tripped over itself as he tried to pluck a single right idea out of his rush of frantic thoughts.

  He looked up into the falling snow. “Beth. Where are you?”

  All of a sudden he saw her, just across the street. She stood at a storefront window, watching an electric train putter around a winding train track.

  Andrew heaved a sigh of relief. He walked across the street and gently touched her on the shoulder. “Beth?”

  Startled, she turned to him. Not Beth. The young woman with Beth’s height and hair gave him an annoyed look and hurried on up the sidewalk.

  “So sorry,” Andrew said. “I thought you were . . .”

  The woman didn’t look back to acknowledge his awkward apology—she just kept going and disappeared around the corner.

  Andrew’s heart sank. The clock was ticking ever closer to zero hour, and his wife was lost somewhere in a snowy white sea of eight million souls. Again he looked up at the sky. He closed his eyes and let the wet snow melt against his skin.

  “Show me the way,” he said. “Help me find my wife.” He waited for an answer, a voice from the heavens, a bolt of lightning, any kind of sign.

  Nothing.

  The drone of a city bus barreling up the street shattered the stillness of the moment. On its side was an enormous poster of Santa Claus ice-skating beneath the tree at Rockefeller Center, his back leg splayed out behind him.

  Andrew felt a rush of hope. He knew where to find Beth.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The rink is now closed. Thank you all for coming, and have a merry Christmas.”

  Andrew heard the closing announcement crackle from the Rockefeller Center speakers as he jumped out of a cab at the corner of 5th and 47th and ran across the plaza to the skating rink.

  Gripping the railing beneath the mighty tree, he scanned the rink below. The Christmas Eve crowd had dwindled to just a few dozen, and the last of the skaters were making their way off the ice as the Zamboni driver readied his big machine. For a moment, Andrew’s heart sank. Could his hunch be wrong? What if she wasn’t there?

  Then a couple of teenage girls moved aside, and he could see Beth down by the rink. She was leaning against the railing, staring out at the ice, lost in thought. He watched her for a moment. She seemed so small and vulnerable, so alone.

  “Not skating tonight?” Andrew sidled up beside his wife at the r
ailing. Beth didn’t look at him, didn’t ask what he was doing there or how he’d known where to find her. She just ignored his question, kept staring straight ahead. Andrew hadn’t taken the time to formulate his thoughts and had no earthly idea what came next. He took a breath, started again.

  “Beth, I’ve loved you my whole life. Every memory that’s ever meant anything to me had you in the starring role. And I would never deliberately do anything to hurt you.”

  Beth looked at him, and Andrew could tell by the pained look in her eyes that she wasn’t convinced. He pressed on.

  “I did a stupid thing and tried to convince myself that going to LA was the best thing for us. Of course, I should have talked it over with you. But I was arrogant and self-consumed, and all I could think about was money and success. I almost had myself convinced I was doing it for your own good. I was wrong, and I was foolish, but I’m not that guy anymore. I’m not that guy, and I will never be that guy again. Because I love you.”

  He turned her to him and took her face in his hands. He said it again this time while gazing right into her eyes. “I love you. I. Love. You.”

  Beth finally looked back at him. Her chin was quivering. “Beth, as long as I’m around, you will never be alone.”

  Hearing Andrew repeat the line he’d said to her on their wedding day seemed to break down Beth’s last wall of resistance. The tears flowed—tears of relief, tears of desperation. Tears, he hoped, of forgiveness.

  As the noisy Zamboni hummed its way across the ice, Andrew held his wife in his arms. She buried her face in his chest and cried as the snow started to fall harder and clung to their hair and shoulders. And when Andrew reached the point where he would usually break off the hug, he clung to her even tighter. He’d hold on forever if only he could, if only it meant his Beth would be there to hang on to.