by Mindy Klasky
He hesitated. But he finally said, “Go ahead. Keep the books. Keep all of it. Hell, sell it off if you want. Even if I don’t make it as a chef, I’m never coming back to the bookstore.”
And that’s when she realized his raging over-protectiveness was really just an attempt to grapple with his own fear. He didn’t care that much about Tom Finnegan, not really. Chris was just scared. Scared things wouldn’t work out for him in DC. Scared his career as a chef would be as short-lived as his job as a bookseller.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said. “Really. I promise.”
He let her hug him. Even leaned over so she could kiss his cheek. Finally, she ushered him out the door in front of her. She locked up carefully before they went their separate ways along Main Street.
She took her time walking home, basking in the quiet peace of the early December evening. Lights still shone in the shop windows of many of the whitewashed brick buildings. Glossy black shutters looked calm and orderly in the twilight. Old-fashioned street lamps cast a warm glow over the sidewalk.
She crossed the street to cut through Harmony Park, avoiding the new brick building that had replaced the burnt-out shell of Barton’s over a decade ago. A group of boys played touch football in the center of the brown grass, finding each other by shouts as much as by sight in the gathering gloom. A couple of little kids scrambled over the swing set, round as marbles in their winter coats.
Snow had fallen the night before Thanksgiving, only a couple of inches. It had long since melted away, even in the shadows, but the weathermen said December was likely to be colder than usual. Lexi hugged herself and quick-walked the last two blocks to her home.
She was smiling by the time she reached her block. All the houses on Adams Street had been built the same time, in the 1940s, when apple farming ramped up to feed a hungry nation at war. The sturdy brick homes weren’t cookie cutter, though. Mrs. Norwich had a solarium on the side of her house. The Eastons had added on two bedrooms and a luxury kitchen. The Davidsons had turned their garage into an in-law apartment.
Lexi’s place was one of the smallest—a simple one-story brick cottage, with a white-painted porch the length of the facade. A glider hung on the far end of the porch. And Anne Barton sat cross-legged on the glider.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, holding the door open for her best friend. Because she wasn’t totally telling the truth. She did want to talk about it. She wanted to talk about the way Tom Finnegan had looked at her as he’d shaken her hand, about the way her girl parts had squeezed in response to his cool, steady gaze.
“Tough,” Anne said.
“Don’t you have a diner to run?”
“It’s Thursday night. Alonzo’s cooking.”
Damn. At least the conversation was put on hold as they stepped inside. Both women were attacked by a three-legged tornado disguised as a rangy brown hound. Lucky keened as he raced between them, shoving his head under their hands, thrashing their knees with his tail. Lexi laughed and scratched his ears and told him he was a good dog, the best dog, the bravest dog in the whole entire world.
She looked up to see Pirate sitting in the doorway to her bedroom. The one-eyed tiger-striped cat looked completely disgusted with the dog, as if the entire animal world was betrayed by canine enthusiasm. Lexi rewarded the aloof creature with a scritch at the base of his tail.
Of course Anne followed her into the bedroom, not nearly ready to give up on her argument. She shoved laundry off the over-size armchair in the corner as Lexi dug in the closet for clean sweatpants and a velvety cotton sweater. Anne said, “You are not letting that guy work in your store.”
Lexi smiled sweetly. “When you say it like that, you sound like I hired a sales assistant.”
“You don’t even know him!”
“Are you and Chris playing tag-team? My beloved brother spent the entire afternoon reading me the same page from the Safety Manual for Desperate Spinsters.”
“You’re twenty-five years old, Lex. Not a spinster. Don’t change the topic.”
Well, it had been worth a try. Lexi shrugged and led the way into the kitchen. Lucky followed as if he’d never seen anything as exciting as the black-and-white tile floor, unless it was the white-painted pantry or his poor, empty food bowl in the corner. Pirate stalked after, pretending he didn’t care about anything. Certainly not dinner.
Anne parked herself at the kitchen table. “Maybe Chris has a point. You don’t know that guy from Adam. He could be an axe murderer.”
“Right,” Lexi agreed peaceably. “And as I told my poor alarmed brother, so could any customer who walks in off the street. Oh, that’s right! Finn was a customer who walked in off the street!” She opened the pantry and took out two cans of food—one for the dog and the other for the cat. “He’s down on his luck, Anne. He’s a veteran.”
“How do you know that?” Anne practically shouted.
“He had a USAA credit card, you know, one of those military ones. And you saw what he looks like.”
“Yeah, I saw. That’s what worries me. You’ve always been a sucker for blue eyes.”
Lexi refused to be distracted. “I’m not talking about his eyes. But his hair is super short. And he’s wearing all new clothes, like he’s out of uniform for the first time in years.”
“They weren’t all new clothes,” Anne argued. “Those jeans—”
So she had noticed. Lexi kneed Lucky to the side so she could reach the silverware drawer for a fork. “He’s here to see the Dawsons. Finn must have served with Jon.” He was already Finn in her mind.
“Finn!” Anne spluttered. “You’re making things up because you want them to be true.”
“You saw what happened! The way he reacted to the nail gun. He thought he was under attack or something.”
Even if Anne had wanted to respond, she couldn’t have made herself heard over Lucky’s frantic whining. Lexi opened the can of dog food, forking the whole thing into the hound’s bowl and putting it on the floor. As Lucky worked his only magic trick, making the slop disappear in a heartbeat, Lexi doled out a much smaller portion of shrimp-and-flaked-tuna paté for Pirate, then carried cat and food down the short hall to the laundry room. Pirate settled in for his dinner on top of the washing machine, safe from an invading dog looking for dessert.
Alas, Anne was still waiting when Lexi got back to the kitchen. “You can’t save this guy, Lex. You can’t heal a wounded warrior with the power of your touch.”
“I’m not trying to heal anyone! He owes me money!”
“Right,” Anne said, as if five thousand bucks was nothing. “When do your parents get home?”
“What the hell? Do you think we’re ten years old? You know perfectly well Mom and Dad are in Europe until January. And don’t you even think of tracking them down to tell them about this.”
“Chris would want them to know.”
“Chris is a pain in the ass. Come on, Anne. Give me a little credit. I’m doing what’s best for my business. And if I can help out a vet at the same time, help him get back on his feet instead of suing him in small claims court, how can you possibly say that’s a bad thing?”
Anne countered, her voice deadly calm. “This is Timothy Carter all over again.”
“Come on! Timothy wasn’t military.”
“You know what I mean. You thought you had some magic power to help him. You thought you could fix damaged goods.”
“I’m damaged goods!”
Wow. Lexi hadn’t realized how on edge she was. She regretted her shout even before Lucky turned back to vacuuming the kitchen floor for any stray crumb he might have missed.
Anne folded her palm over Lexi’s hand, ignoring her flinch. “You know that’s not what I meant. But Timothy moved to Harmony Springs because you were the only friend he had.”
“No one said anything about Finn moving here. Not permanently.” But she was only splitting hairs to avoid looking at the cards Anne had spread on the table.
&nb
sp; Lexi had met Timothy at Camp Renaissance, when they were both in junior high. He’d been burned worse than she; his face was a mass of thick, mottled tissue. At Renaissance no one cared; they were all figuring out ways to live with their scars.
But college had been hell for both of them. It was the most natural thing in the world for Timothy to follow her to Harmony Springs after they graduated. Lexi was finally through with casual hookups, with worrying about some guy seeing the tight white skin on her back.
Timothy was safe. Timothy was easy.
Right up till the moment Timothy met Marta in the check-out line at the Wal-Mart in Winchester. They went to dinner on Monday, to a movie on Tuesday, and he’d moved out of Lexi’s house on Wednesday afternoon.
She’d dutifully gone out on dozens of dates since then. Even brought home some guys. But she’d made damn sure no one ever saw her scars—the ones from the fire or the ones Timothy had etched even deeper, in her heart.
Lexi looked up to find Anne staring at her with concern. Lexi forced herself to take a deep breath, to hold it for a count of five, and then to exhale. “Finn is nothing like Timothy,” she said. “I just want to get my money back. I have to get The Christmas Cat through spring. To summer and the real cidiot money.”
“You promise you won’t fall for him?”
Lexi squeezed her knees close together. “I won’t fall for him,” she lied.
“Triple caramel, honey melt, sweet tea promise?” Anne pushed.
“Triple caramel, honey melt, sweet tea promise,” Lexi said, because that’s what she’d answered since she was five years old, when she’d first sworn a promise to her best friend in the entire world.
Anne sighed and pushed back from the table. “Let me guess. You don’t have a thing to eat in this house.”
“I have Pop-Tarts,” Lexi said helpfully. “And a whole case of Cup of Soup. I think there are still a couple of frozen waffles.”
“Let me clarify,” Anne said. “You don’t have any food in this house.”
Lexi shrugged because she never had any food, not by Anne’s standards. If something couldn’t fit into a slot in the toaster or spin on the microwave’s glass plate, she didn’t cook it.
“Come on,” Anne said. “I’ve got a couple of pork chops in my fridge.”
Lexi’s stomach rumbled as she shrugged on her fleece-lined coat. As she closed the front door, Lucky whined for second supper. The dog had to content himself with a rawhide chew, though, while Pirate hopped up on the windowsill to watch over the quiet streets of Harmony Springs.
~~~
“So you’re doing the deed with little Lexi Taylor.”
Finn glanced up from the basketball game on TV to find J-Dawg sitting in the corner of his motel room. “Fuck off,” he said to the ghost.
“Come on! That Christmas Virgin thing she’s working is hot. Just sayin’.” The Dawg leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over his belly. He wasn’t fat, not exactly, but he was comfortable, round, not yet honed by the Army. He laughed loud and hearty, the way he had the first day they’d met in Basic Training, right before Sarge made them do sit-ups till they puked.
Finn pulled his ball cap lower on his forehead and poured himself another shot of Jack before he turned up the volume on the TV. The squeak of shoes on the wooden court sounded like little birds dying.
“Sorry, man,” J-Dawg said after the Celtics gave up a three-pointer. “I shouldn’t’ve said that. I forgot you were an altar boy and shit.”
Finn kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t supposed to see J-Dawg. Definitely wasn’t supposed to talk to him.
“Come on, man,” the ghost whined. “I said I was sorry.”
Finn told himself the Lexus in the TV commercial was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. Where the fuck did they get a red bow that big, anyway?
Dawg said, “Hey! Best Christmas you ever had! Go!”
It was an old game, one they played back in camp when they were sitting around, wasting time, waiting for new orders. Best food you ever ate. Best movie you ever saw. Hottest girl you ever fucked.
And even though none of this was real, even though none of it mattered because J-Dawg was a ghost and this conversation was impossible, Finn felt himself spinning back in time. The years flew away, calendar pages dropping to the motel room floor like in some cheesy movie. The TV went nuts, all zig-zag lines with a high-pitched whine coming from the speakers. And when the picture stabilized again, Finn was watching a movie of his own life.
He was twelve years old. His dungarees were hitched high around his waist; his mother dressed him like he was a nerd. He wore a white dress shirt beneath a scratchy Christmas sweater; it must have been a hand-me-down from cousin Donny, because the sleeves were too long, and both elbows were frayed.
“It’s no problem at all, Mrs. Finnegan,” said Mrs. Francis J. Davenport III. “Tommy can come up to the attic with me.”
Ma stared like the old woman had gone crazy. But Tommy knew the rules as well as Ma did. His mother always worked a Back Bay party Christmas Day, earned more money serving up ham and spiced apples and platters of decorated cookies for eight hours than she did for eight days the rest of the year. And now that he was twelve, Tommy was old enough to help. He could polish silver before the meal and wash dishes in the huge kitchen after, handling each piece of china like it was more precious than the chalice he held for Father Brennan at mass on Sundays.
Ma had drilled him on his lines. “Yes ma’am. No sir. Right away, sir. My pleasure, ma’am.”
But Ma hadn’t prepared him for this, for a fat woman in a green dress with a gold Christmas tree pin on her chest telling him she had a job upstairs that only he could do. His mother looked worried, but she waved for him to follow Mrs. Davenport up to the attic.
“So, young man. How old are your sisters?”
“Mary is ten,” he said. “And Martha is eight.” He paused, because he knew how people looked when they found out how many kids were in his family. But Ma had said to tell the truth while he worked at the rich people’s house. So he added, “Elizabeth is six, and Paul’s the baby. He’s only four.”
But the old woman didn’t seem surprised or angry or squinch up her face like he’d said something gross. Instead, she nodded and led him over to shelves that lined the sloped roof of the attic. “Well, Mary probably likes horses then. Maybe she’d like one of these.”
And there were five plastic horses, the big ones, as long as his forearm, like he’d seen the O’Connell twins playing with at recess. Mary had pretended she thought the horses were dumb, but he’d seen her draw a stallion in her notebook that night, when she was supposed to be working on her times tables.
“Go ahead,” Mrs. Davenport said. “Choose one.”
Tommy stared at her, trying to figure out the catch.
“It’s all right,” she said. “My husband and I, we’re sort of crazy people. We buy toys like this online, and we clean them up. Take them to hospitals for sick kids.”
“We’re not sick,” Tommy said.
“Of course not. But this year, my husband and I got too many toys. We need to get rid of some. And you can help, by choosing things for your sisters and your brother.”
Tommy wasn’t stupid. He knew the woman was lying. The toys were handouts, charity, and Dad would be wicked mad if he ever found out.
But Ma had told Tommy to follow the rules. She’d said to do whatever the rich people asked.
So he chose a horse for Mary, and a watercolor set for Martha, complete with a pad of thick white paper. There was a Barbie doll for Elizabeth, and a brand new whiffle ball and bat for Paul.
“Perfect!” the woman said, and she was smiling like he’d done something really smart. “Now, what about you?”
“I’m too old for presents,” Tommy said. That’s what his mother had told him, for his last three Christmases, and birthdays too.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Davenport said. But she didn’t make him choose another toy. Instead
, she reached for a metal box on one of the top shelves, blue with houses painted on the lid. He just made out the words butter cookies on the lid before she pried it open. But there weren’t any cookies in the box. Instead, it was filled with money—lots of coins, but paper money too. She counted out twenty dollars—three fives and five ones. She folded it all and handed it to him. “There,” she said. “You can buy something for yourself.”
“I can’t—” he started to say, but the old lady shook her head.
“You can. It’ll be our secret.”
Mrs. Davenport stopped at a table by the stairs that led down from the attic. She collected four paper bags, the kind people got when they shopped at an expensive store, but these had Christmas trees and angels and bells all over them. She added sheets of tissue paper, red and green and yellow, and she told him he could put the presents inside the bags instead of wrapping them. The paper was to make them look pretty.
Ma was finishing up in the kitchen when he carried all the stuff downstairs. She told Mrs. Davenport they couldn’t take the toys, that it was too much. But the old woman just shook her head and said, “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”
So they’d taken the presents home. The little kids were in bed when they came in. It was one of those times when Dad was living upstairs at O’Grady’s, so Tommy didn’t need to worry about how his father would mess everything up. Instead, Tommy and his mother put the gifts in tissue paper, and they put the tissue paper in bags, and they put the bags in the center of the banged-up kitchen table.
And in the morning, Tommy told everyone Santa had come to visit during the night. He said he’d heard reindeer hooves on the roof. Mary and Martha were too old to believe him, but Elizabeth and Paul made him repeat every word, over and over and over again. It was the best Christmas ever, even if Ma did cry a little as she heated up the leftover ham Mrs. Davenport had insisted they take home.