Christmas Blessings

by Katherine Spencer

  Barbara laughed. “My husband would probably say I should read a cookbook, too. But I’d rather wait for the movie.”

  “How is my pressure? Can you tell me that?” Cynthia interrupted.

  Barbara gave her the numbers as she jotted them down on a pad. “Not bad. Jean tells me she’s been cooking salt free. I think it’s already helped.”

  “It may have brought my blood pressure down, but it hasn’t helped my appetite. The food tastes so bland.” Cynthia stuck out her tongue.

  She looked like a child, acting out in a doctor’s office. Jean shared a glance with Barbara and nearly laughed out loud.

  “Really? I’ve heard you’re eating well. Much more nutritious meals since your daughter came than you had on your own. Your weight and color already look better,” Barbara noted as she took out her stethoscope.

  Cynthia shrugged. “I really haven’t noticed. I eat whatever she puts in front of me.”

  Jean was sure that her mother had noticed but didn’t want to agree, thereby admitting that she had not been eating very well on her own. Jean had been preparing healthy, whole foods, with lots of fresh vegetables, fruit, and lean protein. If the refrigerator and cupboards were any indication, her mother’s diet had been sorely lacking all of that. Aides had been making breakfast and lunch, though there was no telling if Cynthia ate much of it. Jean knew Cynthia’s bad habits and guessed that she had probably been surviving on cheese and crackers, with some tea, cookies, and chocolate added in.

  Barbara’s face took on a serious expression as she listened to Cynthia’s heart. Then she moved the stethoscope to her back and listened again. “In and out please, Cynthia, deep breaths.” Cynthia did her best, though it tore at Jean’s heart a bit to see and hear her mother labor for a good, deep breath.

  Barbara put the stethoscope aside and took Cynthia’s wrist to check her pulse. Jean noticed the nurse did not comment on Cynthia’s breathing; she just moved on to the next task.

  “Your pulse seems good,” she said after a moment or two.

  Cynthia pushed her sweater sleeve down again and sat back in her chair. “If you can still find a pulse, it’s a good report. That’s the stage I’m at now.”

  “You’re not at that stage yet, Cynthia. Not by a long shot,” Barbara assured her. She was writing in the notebook again, her reading glasses balanced at the tip of her nose. “Let’s take your temperature. Then we’re almost done.”

  Cynthia looked impatient with the thermometer—an electronic model—in her mouth. A few moments later a beep sounded.

  “Ninety-six point seven. We’ll take it.” Barbara turned to Jean. “Did you collect a sample for the blood-sugar test?”

  “We did,” Jean said. “It’s in my mother’s bathroom.”

  “Good. I’ll just pop in there and check her sugar.” She patted Cynthia’s shoulder as she went by. “We’ll see if you’ve been eating too much Thanksgiving pie.”

  Cynthia let out a long, noisy sigh as Barbara left the room. “I wish she’d leave. All this chatter. So annoying.”

  Barbara soon returned and began to pack her equipment. “Your sugar is a tad high. Nothing serious. You know what to cut back on. I won’t give you a lecture.”

  Cynthia rolled her eyes. “Thank heavens for that small mercy.”

  Barbara laughed. “Why don’t you do something fun today? With your daughter,” she added. “Start a project together—an afghan? Or a scrapbook? I bet you have plenty of old photographs around here.”

  Did they ever. Crammed into drawers, tucked away in shoeboxes, and even hidden in the pages of old books. No telling where photos might pop up, considering the state of the house—an unholy mess, in Jean’s opinion.

  “The fun boat has sailed for me, Nurse Crosby. I doubt I’ll live long enough to finish anything like that. Why even start it?” The unvarnished admission made Jean sad. She would have been happy to start some handicraft project with her mother, but it was probably true she would end up finishing it alone. “I’m content with my book,” Cynthia continued. “That’s about all the fun my old ticker can take.”

  “You know what Henry Ford said? ‘Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right,’” Barbara returned. “Every day is a gift, Cynthia. That’s why they call it the present.”

  Her mother groaned. “Please, spare me the greeting-card inscriptions.”

  “I knew you’d love that one. I couldn’t help myself,” Barbara admitted with a grin. “See you Thursday.”

  Cynthia nodded and returned to her book. Jean followed Barbara to the foyer. “How is she doing today? She seemed to have more energy this morning.”

  “As well as can be expected, Jean.” Barbara zipped up her jacket and pulled on a wool hat. “I think she’s benefited already from you being here. And doing some craft or something productive would do her good,” she added. “But she’s stubborn—and partly right. We can’t expect any miracles. Keep a close eye on her. You can always call me with questions. But call the doctor or 911 if anything major happens.”

  “I will, thanks.”

  Back in the living room, Jean found her mother sitting back in the recliner with her feet up. “Would you like some lunch, Mom? Or a cup of tea?”

  “Not right now.”

  “How about the oxygen? Do you need that?” Her mother’s complexion looked a bit ashen.

  “You can bring it in. I might take some later. That woman always tires me out. I need a nap.”

  “Good idea. I’ll get you a throw for your legs.” When Jean returned from the bedroom with the oxygen and a light throw, she found her mother sitting with her eyes closed. But she opened them again as Jean fixed the blanket around her. “I think you should open the shop today, Jean. We might as well try to make a little money from that space. You have nothing better to do.”

  Nothing better than keeping up with the wash, the shopping, and the cleaning. Not to mention tackling the piles of junk in every room—stacks of mail, newspapers, magazines, and assorted odds and ends that filled every corner of the house. Her mother had never been the type of woman who was devoted to house cleaning. But somehow the house had always been tidy and clean when Jean was growing up. At some point, Cynthia had let the place slide. The daily aides could only do so much, and it now looked like a scene from the TV show about hoarders.

  But Jean guessed there had been enough changes in her mother’s routine for one week. She would wait a bit before proposing a major cleanup.

  “Sure, I can go out to the shop. When was the last time you were in there? I think you told me, but I forgot.”

  Her mother looked annoyed by the question. “Oh . . . I don’t know. I can’t remember precisely. Not too long ago.”

  “I’ll bring some cleaning supplies out. To dust and clean the floor.” She stopped in the kitchen and put supplies together in a bucket. Then she brought a monitor in from her mother’s bedroom and set it up near the sofa. “I’ll take the receiver. Call if you need anything.”

  “I’m just going to sleep. I won’t be dancing a jig.”

  “Maybe not. But if the mood strikes, just remember, I can hear you,” Jean warned in a teasing tone.

  Her mother was lying back again with her eyes closed and didn’t reply.

  “I’ll be back to check on you in an hour,” Jean called out.

  She listened for a reply but could only hear deep breathing. Her mother was already fast asleep.

  Carrying the bucket, broom, and mop, Jean tramped across the muddy ground toward an outbuilding, about fifty feet from the house, a small building protected by a stand of pine trees. The house itself was not quite Victorian, more of a small farmhouse, and the shop was originally built as a guest cottage. Jean’s great-grandparents, who purchased the property—a good-sized parcel, at the far end of Main Street, about a mile and half from the harbor—lived in the hou
se and found it overflowing with guests in the summertime, so they built some extra accommodations.

  Eventually, after Jean was born, her mother inherited the property. This allowed Jean’s parents to move to Cape Light from Northampton, easing financial pressures and making it possible for Cynthia to pursue her passion—painting—and to take care of her children. Usually in that order of priorities, too, Jean reflected.

  Her mother had used the cottage as an art studio for a time. But after Jean’s father died, Cynthia converted it to a coffee and tea shop to bring in extra income. These days one might call it a bookstore café, Jean thought, except that her mother had much more than old books for sale.

  It was a sweet little cottage but looked neglected now. The familiar wooden sign that hung over the door looked faded—Wayside Coffee & Tea Shop, it said in hand-painted letters. And beneath that: Ice Cream, Cakes, Antiques & Books.

  Jean gazed up at the sloping roof. It was covered with pine needles, and the sagging gutters overflowed with leaves. Shutters that framed the windows were loose, the paint peeling. The same for the door, Jean noticed, as she unlocked it and pushed it open.

  A few dry leaves had blown in, and she pushed them aside with her foot. The room smelled musty and she propped the door open with a chair, despite the chilly weather outside. It was cloudy out and looked like it might rain again. Still, the place needed a good airing out—and a good cleaning from floor to ceiling.

  Not to mention the dusting, a day’s work right there. There were shelves and small tables covered with bric-a-brac, bits of china, costume jewelry, quasi-antiques, picture frames, vases, and books. None of it had been touched in months, or maybe years, she guessed. Just as Jean remembered, the walls were still covered with watercolor paintings, mostly scenes of local landscapes and all by the same artist—Cynthia Randolph Whitman.

  Jean shrugged off her jacket, set up the receiver for the monitor, and got to work. Her mother’s perception of the shop was definitely stuck in some distant day when the place did attract a fair number of customers each afternoon: villagers out walking; mothers pushing strollers, small children in tow; schoolchildren who weren’t allowed to stray too far from home but found the Wayside Coffee & Tea Shop within their permitted range. Jean doubted many people would stop in these days when there were other, more attractive choices in the village—Willoughby’s Fine Foods and Catering and the Beanery, to name just two. But if it made her mother feel better to know the shop was up and running, Jean didn’t mind making the effort. Cleaning the place brought back memories, mostly unhappy ones. Jean worked in the Wayside almost every afternoon after school and on weekends, too. Kevin was supposed to share the job, but he was older and had more after-school activities, especially sports practice and games. It seemed as if he was on a team for every season. Jean didn’t play any sports or belong to after-school clubs. So she was stuck with running the Wayside, doing her homework at the counter in between customers. Sometimes one of her friends would stop by and keep her company. Other times, the cool girls from school would come and tease her, making her run back and forth to wait on them.

  Her mother rarely greeted Jean when she got home from school, asked about her day, or helped with homework. She was in her studio and did not like to be disturbed. “Pretend I’m working in an office or a store,” she would tell Jean. “You couldn’t run in and talk to me when you got off the bus, could you? I know your father doesn’t think so, but my painting is real work, Jean.” Then when her mother emerged, around dinnertime, she was often in a bad mood. “My work didn’t go well,” she might say. Or sometimes it was going well, and she was annoyed that she had to stop.

  Jean sneezed at the dust. She’d better get started before she wound up with a full-on allergy attack. She began by washing down the countertop and tables. She soon had them clean, and the area behind the counter, too, dumping all the metal utensils in a sink of sudsy water. She started on the floor next, lifting the chairs to the tables to sweep and then mop. Luckily, the shop was small and it didn’t take long to make progress.

  As she waved the broom near the ceiling to pull down some cobwebs, a painting caught her eye. A small sailboat, heeling into the wind, heading around the bend of a rocky shoreline, a beach that looked familiar to her, though she couldn’t recall the name.

  Jean took down the small painting. The small craft, tossed by white-capped waves, was a sixteen-foot daysailer called The Cuttlefish. The man at the helm was her father, Thomas Whitman. Her mother rarely included people in her paintings, and when she did, the figures were always at a distance, too small and blurry to identify. But Jean could easily recognize her father, his wide shoulders and lanky form, the way he faced into the wind and spray, undaunted.

  Jean returned the painting to its place. Never well-matched, her parents were unhappily married most of the time. When Jean got older, she realized it wasn’t anyone’s fault. But her mother had been discontented with nearly everything in her life.

  When she was a young woman, Cynthia had a chance to study in New York at a famous art school where many of the cutting-edge artists of the day taught. But her parents didn’t have the means to send their daughter there. Cynthia was going steady with Jean’s father at the time, and her family pressured her to marry and settle down.

  Jean had often heard the story, along with a warning about marrying too young. “People change so much in their twenties. Even in their thirties. You shouldn’t marry young, Jean. Take your time. Get out in the world. Have a sense of yourself, what you really want in life,” her mother would advise. The way I should have done, Jean would always hear her mother’s silent refrain.

  To this day, Jean was sure her mother still believed that she had missed her chance at a different sort of life. A life far from quiet Cape Light. A life that would have been more exciting and sophisticated, and filled with a higher level of accomplishment than a room full of watercolors and two small children.

  As much as she had idolized her father, Jean understood that he had played a part in her mother’s unhappiness. He would often come home late, well after dinner. Jean remembered eating quietly with her brother while her mother smoked cigarettes and brooded. On those nights, Jean would run to greet her father at the door, but her mother barely said a word.

  Later, after Jean and her brother were in bed, she would hear her parents argue. The words “affairs” and “divorce” often floated through the walls in the darkness. Though Jean was always braced to hear the worst in the morning, life went on as usual.

  She later realized that her parents stayed together for the sake of her and Kevin. Perhaps they would have divorced once she and her brother were out of the house, but her father died when she was ten, of a sudden heart attack. As an adult, she wondered if her mother grew difficult because of her father’s roving eye, or if Cynthia had always been difficult and hard to please, and had driven her father away.

  Jean wiped out the coffeemaker with vigor, as if trying to wipe away the past. She had put those childhood years and traumas behind her. She had grown and changed and even forgiven her parents for her less-than-perfect upbringing. Still, she could feel those old buttons being pushed, just by being back here.

  She walked around the shop and took the chairs down, setting them under the tables. The place was clean and fresh-smelling. Ready for business, she realized, if she had anything to sell. She had listened at the monitor a few times and only heard the continued sound of her mother’s steady, deep breaths as she slept. But it was time to check on her, Jean thought, and get some coffee and maybe some leftover Thanksgiving pie to sell.

  She grabbed her jacket and headed for the house just as a rain began to fall. She doubted there would be any customers today, but she was ready for some coffee herself.

  She entered the house quietly then peered into the living room. Her mother was fast asleep, the blanket pulled up to her chin. Jean walked closer. Cynthia was breathin
g well without the oxygen, and the snack Jean had left—half an apple, cheddar cheese, and crackers—had disappeared.

  Jean took a container of coffee from the kitchen cupboard, along with milk and sugar. She also took what was left of the pumpkin pie. More than half, she noticed, enough to put on a cake stand.

  She made one last stop in the laundry room, where she had left her black leather artist’s portfolio containing the sketches and paintings from her picture book project. She had stashed the artwork there last night, seeking a place beyond her mother’s range. No one had seen the work yet, and she sometimes wondered if anyone ever would. She doubted the paintings were good enough for a published book, but she enjoyed working on it. If this first attempt didn’t get published, she would start another. Unlike the work she had done at advertising agencies, she never knew quite what was going to happen when she picked up her pen or paintbrushes. There were always surprises, the heart of truly creative endeavors.

  She ran through the rain for the short distance back to the cottage, and hung her wet jacket near the door. Then she slipped on the white apron and fixed a pot of coffee. The rich smell filled the small shop quickly, even before she arranged the pumpkin pie on a stand.

  She poured herself a mug of coffee then spread out her artwork on a table at the back of the shop. The coffee tasted good, made from freshly ground beans she had bought from the Beanery.

  Raindrops pattering against the windows gave the shop a cozy feeling. I could get a lot of work done out here, Jean realized. She was close enough to help her mother if needed. But also far enough to have some physical and mental space. Which she definitely needed in order to concentrate.

  Jean wasn’t so sure of her writing but hoped that her paintings would carry the story. The main character, a city mouse named Stanley, finds himself trapped in a delivery truck and “delivered” to a small village out in the country. He’s a bit of a know-it-all but finds he must gain trust and make unlikely friends if he’s going to survive. She was happy with the way she had captured Stanley’s jaunty personality in his furry, rounded body and whiskered face. Drawing some of the other animals was harder. She had studied photographs she’d found online and visited a farm to make sketches and take photos.