Christmas in July

by Alan Michael Parker

  I write the travel team’s newsletter, and I post updates on injuries—Senior Softball is a game of subtraction, my husband Bryson likes to say. Bryson’s a pitcher, so the newsletter’s called KnuckleBalls, which Bryson thinks is funny and wants to believe he made up. During the offseason I compose and copy memory books, knit bat hats, monogram nameplates for the other ladies’ cushions, embroider the sleeves of Bryson’s teams’ jerseys with each player’s initials (or with his jersey number if, God forbid, one of the boys passes, so that everyone will be remembered), and I organize—although I don’t always host, because that would be greedy—the annual post-season get-togethers, as well as the holiday potluck.

  I have been ejected from the ballpark three times this year. I’m not proud of that fact, but when the ump’s wrong, don’t ask Meg to keep quiet. All three times, I was right. I was at Findlay the night we lost Jackie Jean to a heart attack—June 6, and yes, that’s D-Day, which seemed to me ironic, when I thought about it later. I wish I could have done something, but I don’t know CPR. I remember her husband Vince’s mouth opening and closing, kind of like a fish wanting air, one of those koi you see in a manmade pool in Vegas or at a really fancy indoor mall where the buses drop you off to shop at Black Lion. Vince held Jackie Jean’s hand. The dirt of the infield looked like it was blue and swirling—not the reflection from the ambulance light, but the dirt itself swirling, if that makes sense. I’m very specific in what I remember. Bryson says it’s one of the reasons he married me, but he married me because I got pregnant a million years ago.

  Being this involved in Bryson’s life gives me joy. I have more joy than anyone I know. I make cute things, I add touches of life. I get to think all of the time—the girls are always saying I look like I swallowed a peanut butter sandwich, that’s their little joke about me. The girls say I tighten my lips when I’m thinking, and they can tell Meg’s got her thinking face on. Even when I’m cheering, the girls say I look like I’m thinking about something, Meg’s always thinking.

  But this is a story about a little girl named Christmas—what a ridiculous name—and how she’s dying, and what I did for her, not a story about me. Which is how I feel about Senior Softball: that it’s always a story about how the boys did, who won, who got All-Star in the tournament, or if Bryson didn’t hit, how grumpy he’ll be when he gets home. To the extent that I add the flair that makes life more enjoyable, sure, this is about me, but not in the ways a person might know right at first. Just as I did for Christmas, that poor girl. She needed me. I know, I’ve had four kids, and I have wonderful grand-babies. Knock on wood, step on a crack, no one’s had cancer, even though Mikey does have colitis, which is no fun at all.

  I’m an artist. I studied drawing, painting, and graphic design for my Associate’s. Crafts are how I show I love everyone, and I love everyone a lot, all of the time. I’m so filled with love, I’m about to die of bursting. It’s like the Michael’s slogans, how the sayings at the ends of the aisles alternate between “Great Price” and “Things We Love.” My art qualifies as “Things We Love,” and of course, I don’t charge anything, not even for supplies, so “Great Price” makes sense too. It’s free to be loved by Meg. I just appreciate when I’m appreciated. Being inspired at my crafts table—that’s my favorite thing, when I’ve got a bag of foam balls and a bundle of pipe cleaners and craft paints and my hot glue gun. I could do that for hours.

  Back in high school, a lifetime ago, where Bryson and I met, an art teacher said to me in Art Club once, “Meg, you sure care about everything. It’s so sweet you make things to show it.” That stuck with me, even though that was the same art teacher who got arrested for selling marijuana out of his Corvette. Here I am, just making things—it’s not caring, though, it’s bigger than that. It’s love more than love, if that makes any sense. But it’s not boring Christian love, I didn’t learn that, my parents weren’t churchie. When I tried going to church with a couple of the girls from the bleachers, we just sat there with nothing to do. Singing to the baby Jesus who isn’t even there? Love means making stuff. It’s called “making love” for a reason! See, Meg’s always thinking.

  I worked in insurance, so I know what’s what. Before I had my Christy, Missy, Mark, and Mikey, I was the receptionist and then the co-manager of reception at the State Farm Office in the Henderson Building, Henderson Insurance, run by Old Man Henderson and his bad seed, Gordo. But I had to get out of there. They couldn’t take Meg’s opinions, that’s what I learned, and I couldn’t take Gordo slobbering on me, which didn’t stop even after I got pregnant. I can only put up with so much from a man like that. Big deal that I was already eighteen and legal. I knew not to tell Bryson or one of my brothers. Nothing good could come from Gordo being beaten in the parking lot. I handled it myself.

  The first time I met that girl, Christmas, she was lying about the creek at A.B. Park when I went to rinse out the boys’ cooler after the Friday night game. They’ve got a hose that runs from the back of the snack shack and restrooms to the creek, and it makes sense to rinse the cooler at the creek, because that’s where the water runs. It was hot, even for July, and that child smelled like liquor. I knew I smelled something forsaken as soon as I stepped behind the snack shack, and that’s saying a lot, because the public restrooms are right there. She was drunk, her butt in the creek, and she wore god-awful clothes and a hat that didn’t say anything. What’s a girl like that doing that for? That’s what I asked her. I said, “If I’m not Meg O’Daly! What’s a girl like you doing that for? What’s your name?”

  “Christmas,” she said. “I’m Christmas.” She mumbled something else, which I think isn’t right for a girl. We girls need to make sure the boys understand when we talk. She’s got a lot to learn. Then she retched.

  “You go on, get out of there,” I told her, and I meant the creek, and I meant for her to get over here. But I had to turn around and let the boys know, head out without me, I’ll see you at home, I’ve got my Kia. I’m thinking I’ve got my space blanket too, once I get this skinny thing washed up. If need be, I’ll close down the fields—I know how to hit the lights if the Parks and Rec young man with the big beard doesn’t come by on his golf cart. I can do a man’s job.

  Because I’m an artist, I see the world differently. It’s not like I’m Bob Ross, I’m just someone who makes things for others. My art has purpose. When I put self-adhesive rhinestone stickers on Christy’s book covers for nursing school, I did it because her sad patients needed bling in their lives and everyone else had given those sick people gifts that don’t last, flowers and balloons. If a girl’s in chemo, she doesn’t want her Get Well Soon! balloon to deflate overnight, or to watch the pretty flowers on her puke stand wilt and die, even I know that. She wants to think about what tomorrow’s sunrise is going to be like, how pretty the world is going to be, and will it rain the day after. She just wants to know there will be a day after.

  Rhinestones are perfect for thinking about the future. Self-adhesive rhinestone stickers, the square ones you can mosaic on a clean surface in any pattern, even tip to tip like diamonds—they’re beautiful like that, all lined up. They’re art, they’re like nature, they’re glued there and so they’re going to stay there. They’re practical, just like me. I’m not going anywhere, Christmas.

  It’s like when I worked in insurance—art’s like insurance. Take a ceramic mug. A ceramic mug’s going to break, someone with neuropathy will drop it, or the mug will chip in the dishwasher, or there won’t even be a reason, the mug will just be broken. We all wear down. If I just let the mug be broken, I haven’t done anything useful today. Every day is a useful day, that’s one of my mottos, I always say, “Meg O’Daly says every day is a useful day.” So art’s like that, and so is insurance. Insurance makes sure that we’re protected, it’s like gravity. Art makes sure that we have beautiful innocence in our lives, against all of that ugliness we have to see. Insurance helps us not be destitute when bad things happen. Art is like that—but it’s for
the soul. Insurance for the soul, that’s what I tell everyone art is, because they’re always asking me those questions when they see my art, those “What is it, Meg?” kinds of questions.

  My favorite art project lately has been making little replicas of everyone on Bryson’s Beaver Hunters—that’s his traveling team, they’re called BBH to be polite—out of FloraCraft Foam Mousse • Espuma. I take one of those three-inch foam balls and I make it look like a softball. I hand-dip a base layer of bright lemon-lime; I hand-glue the ribbon to look like the stitching of the ball. Then I use other sizes of FloraCraft Foam Mousse • Espuma, different-sized foam parts that I attach with hot glue, and I decorate with bits of cloth that I’ve sewn on my Singer Sew Mate, and I make tiny replicas of everyone on the team. Rafael’s stringy hair (he plays first) and Keith’s white head (he plays second). Their faces are painted to be faces. Their uniform numbers are on their backs. Only when everyone’s done do I carry the whole team like that, in a cardboard box, to the field, and I sit them down on the bleachers next to me—they lie on a green swath of cloth, like grass only nicer—and they cheer on the real players. I can’t say how happy it makes me to see those little FloraCraft Foam Mousse • Espuma players getting rowdy in the stands. Better than any vodka tonic! All the girls ooh and ahh. What I don’t tell the girls is how many times I had to make Scottie, the big DH, because he has such a funny face, kind of a sideways face. I must have thrown out five Scotties.

  I understand what it means to be better than I am, to want the FloraCraft Foam Mousse • Espuma replica of Scottie, the DH, to look like him. It’s not just pride, which I do believe is a sin, even though I don’t go in for those sins. An artist needs for herself the thing to be beautiful—then it can be beautiful for someone else. The girls are always asking, “Why’d you do that, Meg?” and I want to say, “For me,” but that’s too much the truth, and they wouldn’t understand. Only another artist could.

  There is just one course of action when a pukey girl’s stinking with liquor and she’s half in a creek, and the person who knows better is standing there with a hose. “Christmas, dear,” I say, “we’re going to clean you up.”

  She looked at me like I was the Devil and his friend Daniel. She was hollering at me to stop, but I didn’t pay no mind, I’ve had kids, and I know the back end of a pig from its cute little ears. I used to make pigs, I was on a pig kick. For a year there, all I made were pigs, out of pipe cleaners and poly stuffing tucked into pink terry. They were cute too, but a woman can only make so many pigs before she goes crazy—pig crazy, Bryson called it. Pigs aren’t useful the way art needs to be. Pigs aren’t people, although that girl, Christmas, probably smelled like a pig before I hosed her off. I did like the googly eyes of all of those pigs—gluing on those plastic googly eyes was my favorite when I was pig crazy. No matter what Bryson said, I had my reasons, and so I stopped making pigs once I realized that they were all beginning to look like Grandpa Colin, who was a right sonofabitch to Grandma Jean, even for those days, way back when, when it was okay for a man to be a right sonofabitch.

  Here’s what I think about the girls and the boys: it’s like we’re playing a game, but one team only gets to have eight players to the other’s ten. That means we’re two down in the field—probably a second basemen, and only playing three outfielders instead of four—and we’ve got two automatic outs at the bottom of the order. That’s the girls’ team. I raised my kids to think differently, to make sure everyone gets a chance to play, the girls and the boys, and I come out to Bryson’s game because this is my time too. Just because I’m not an athlete doesn’t mean I’m less. I’m making my art, and I’m showing how much love I have, and it’s tough tweeties if someone can’t understand what a girl has to offer. Because sometimes one of the girls in the stands will say, “Meg O’Daly, I know, let’s get a girls’ team and play on Thursdays!” and I’ll say, “Now, you listen. We do a man’s job, and we let the boys play games.”

  I have another saying, and it’s a real important one: “If you don’t want Meg O’Daly’s opinion, don’t ask her.” It’s gone a long way to making sure Bryson and I are still married, forty-four years and counting. He’s had to learn a lot about me, information a man might not want to have. For our fiftieth, he knows already he’s taking me on a cruise, and I’m going to bring home a little umbrella for every drink I get—although I did see that Michael’s is carrying those little umbrellas now, and all they need is a splash of paint, and presto, you’ve got a theme. Most likely, one of the girls will think that’s a good idea, to have a Hawaiian party at holiday time, when you need to be thinking red, green, and tinsel. That’s okay, she’s entitled to her opinion—so long as she doesn’t ask me, we should be fine. I’m not in charge of all the holiday themes. Bryson will say, because he always does, “Why are you coming to me, Meg O’Daly, when you need to be telling all this right to her!” He means well, but he doesn’t know how to be part of a community, how to get along with everyone. “Just pitch the ball,” I say sweetly to Bryson. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  That girl, Christmas, showed up at the end of our spring season. We weren’t having our best season—a couple of the boys had injuries, and one, Rocky the left fielder, looked like he might be finished—but we were in the thick of the standings. We had already made the playoffs. That’s a little joke in Senior Softball: if you lose every game, no matter if you’re playing rec ball or competitive, you still make the playoffs, because everyone makes the playoffs. There’s always a round robin tournament at the end, either single or double elimination, and doesn’t it just squeeze my heart, how often the worst team wins it all. I’m not supposed to like when that happens—Bryson hates it, putting in all that hard work, and being the captain, and being on the best team, and then seeing the worst team with the trophy—but I have to say, it gives me a little shine. Of course, I yell and stomp with the other girls. I know my job.

  The boys had just won a squeaker, and it was the game after the Fourth of July charity tournament our All-Star travel team played down in Rockville, and some of those players, having played six games over the weekend, were looking their age. Just because jocks play Senior Softball doesn’t mean they’re younger than anyone; six games is a lot. Looking older isn’t as bad as feeling older, I always say—even though some of the girls wouldn’t agree. Like that Mandy, who paid for her boobs, which everyone knows, so it’s not even gossip.

  I made Christmas stand there, and I hosed that girl down. It’s a professional style hose, the water’s cold and the pressure’s strong, which made her do a little dance—she covered her chest with one arm and tried to cross her legs, but also used her hand to protect herself down there, and she hopped around and turned her back, or tried.

  I love how water changes things. I’ve got this little waterfall in my breakfast room, a plug-in kind I bought myself for my birthday, and it makes all of those little pebbles shiny and wonderful. With a person, looking clean changes other ways we look. Christmas kept looking younger and younger in the hose, tall and skinny and sick and barely a baby. I had the funny impression that if I kept that hose on her, she’d wash away.

  I had towels I could fetch, and a space blanket. She took off her hat—that was a shock to see—wrung it out and put it back on. She’s not very smart, I thought, to put on a wet hat. She just stood there shivering.

  I remember thinking she should not be drinking liquor. When I’m sick, drinking liquor makes me feel worse. And what if I had cancer. Meg O’Daly, that would not be fun.

  I went to turn off the hose and get the space blanket in its foil pouch. The towels were folded on the backseat of the Kia, and the space blanket was in the Rubber Maid first-aid tub I keep in the trunk, so I had to go to the parking lot. “Stay here,” I said to her. “You stay here.” But I should have kept my eye on her. Any teenage girl named Christmas is bound to be a hellcat.

  Life’s funny, how people surprise you. You can give someone a gift—you can make them a housewarm
ing combo bouquet out of the nicest silk flowers, add in a touch of spray, and use the vase that was in your collection, maybe from that condolence call you got when Dad died and the girls wouldn’t leave the kitchen, they just stayed and stayed—and people can still look at you like you’re Typhoid Meg. Like you were giving them a bomb or something, handing them a piece of crap (pardon my language, it’s a little problem I have at times). “What people?” Bryson likes to ask, even though he’s just teasing. He’s a good man, my Bryson.

  I was doing right by Christmas, but she was a wild child, and I should have known better. When I came back behind the snack shack, with the towels and the space blanket, shaking and snapping out the wrinkles as I turned the corner, she was gone. I wouldn’t say ungracious if I didn’t mean it—and I wouldn’t mean it, except for that word she yelled at me, from the woods behind the creek. That wasn’t very nice.

  The second time I saw Christmas, I thought to myself, Meg O’Daly, this can’t be true. There I was at Michael’s, buying DMC Embroidery Floss, because it was on sale, off-season, and I had just turned the corner and made the most fabulous discovery near the restrooms, and darned if there wasn’t Christmas again. It wasn’t more than a few days later, but she looked pretty much the same, almost as wrung out. She looked like she was still standing there all sopping wet and shivering, covering her girl parts, except she was dry. Of course, the little girl could have gotten her period, she looked that pale. It can hit hard when it first hits and you’re that skinny.

  Michael’s specializes in the best notions. Every holiday season, I send a note to the Michael’s corporate office, telling them how much I appreciate them and what they do for their customers, how they think of the best items to sell, but this year, my note would have to be extra long. In the back of the store, on a shelf right where I could see them, were cardboard boxes already labeled: Secrets, Ideas, Things. What a great world we live in, I might have said aloud. “Meg O’Daly, it’s a great world!”