A Plain & Fancy Christmas

by Cynthia Keller

  She parked and went to the front door, knocking a few times. There was silence from within. She knocked again, more loudly this time.

  “Hang on, I’m coming.” Lisa opened the door, wearing jeans and a faded black T-shirt. She looked exhausted, yet unsurprised to see Ellie standing there at eight o’clock in the morning. “Hey, there,” she said, running a hand through her short, black hair.

  “Listen,” Ellie said, “I know you told me you wouldn’t, but you have to let me help you. I brought you the money you needed. I insist that you take it.”

  Lisa smiled broadly, suddenly animated. “Oh, you’re the best!” She put out her hand for the cash. “Can I take your car to the drugstore? I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh.” Ellie hadn’t been prepared for that. “Well, why don’t I drive you?”

  “No, that’s fine. You just wait here.” Lisa took the car keys from her hand and rushed off. “Be right back in five.”

  Ellie turned to watch her yank open the car door and get in, tearing out of the driveway and down the road. She frowned.

  Turning back to the front door, she pushed it open slightly with her finger and peered inside. The room was a mess, dishes, clothes, overflowing ashtrays everywhere. The air was stale. Where was Lisa’s mother? In one of the bedrooms, no doubt. She didn’t want to disturb a sick woman, so she entered as quietly as she could, glancing around to see if there was a place to sit down. She moved some old comic books and papers off a chair and took a seat. Well, she thought, looking around, twenty-year-olds could be unbelievably messy, although this seemed a bit over the top, even for them.

  When a young man appeared in a doorway, Ellie almost jumped. Dressed in dirty jeans and a faded flannel shirt, he put one arm up to rest it against the doorjamb. Ellie judged him to be in his early twenties. He was looking her up and down.

  “And you would be …?” he asked in mild amusement.

  “I’m Ellie Lawrence. I work with Lisa. Waitressing.”

  “Ah, yes, a friend of Lisa’s.” He was grinning. “Lisa seemed to go off in quite a hurry.”

  “She had to go to the drugstore.”

  He laughed. “You don’t say.”

  Ellie was growing distinctly uncomfortable. “Yes,” she said in a cooler tone, “for her mother’s medicine.”

  He burst out laughing. “You don’t look stupid, lady. But you are.”

  A cold feeling was creeping up Ellie’s back. She was suddenly piecing it together. The mood swings, the tale of woe, the sudden excited reaction when Lisa saw the money.

  “And who would you be?” she asked the young man, still smirking at her.

  “Lisa’s brother. Pleased to meet you.” He extended a hand without moving. Ellie ignored it. “You don’t look like most of the people Lisa gets to, shall we say, help her.”

  “Lisa went to buy drugs, didn’t she?” Ellie asked. “Not medicine for her mother, but drugs for herself.”

  He tilted his head. “Our mother’s been dead for about, oh, three years now. She doesn’t have much need for medicine anymore.”

  “Right.” Ellie nodded, wondering if she was perhaps the easiest victim that Lisa—or anyone else in the world, for that matter—had ever conned. She sighed. “Will Lisa be bringing back my car?”

  “Oh, sure. She knows better than to mess with that kind of charge, stealing cars. But it might be a few hours.”

  Ellie took this in.

  “Carson finally cut her loose, eh? I wondered just how far she could push him. Now we know.”

  Ellie looked at him, startled. “Do you have a phone? I think I’d like to call for a ride.”

  When the taxi arrived, she asked the driver to take her to one of Carson’s other restaurants, where she knew he was spending the morning. On the way, she tried to figure out what she was going to say to him. She hadn’t made any headway by the time she arrived, so she hastened to go in before she could lose her nerve. The restaurant was still closed this early in the day, but the front door was unlocked.

  She saw surprise flicker in his eyes when she unexpectedly appeared. Then he quickly turned away, back to a discussion with the cashier. Ellie waited quietly until he was done. He nodded politely to acknowledge her, then started to move away.

  “Carson, please.” She put out a hand to stop him. “I need to talk to you. To apologize.”

  “No need,” he said in a curt voice.

  “Please, at least let me explain. I know now, I get it.”

  He looked at her.

  “Lisa and drugs. I understand.”

  “Come on.” He led her to a table.

  “I owe you a huge apology. You were absolutely right. I shouldn’t have stuck my two cents in where they didn’t belong when I didn’t know the facts.”

  His eyes bored into hers. “You need to understand, Ellie. Lisa’s mother was a good friend of mine, one of my chefs. When she died of kidney failure three years ago, I wanted to help her kids in whatever way I could. I never knew Lisa was into drugs. Maybe she didn’t start until after her mother died. I don’t know. I gave them money that first year, and then, when she turned eighteen, I hired her to work. Her brother has some job, and he seems able to make some kind of a living. But she hasn’t been able to keep it together. I paid for her rehab three times.”

  “Oh,” Ellie groaned. “This is way worse than I guessed.”

  He nodded. “I put up with the missed days and the minor stuff. But last month, I saw she was stealing money. I can’t keep her off the drugs, and she doesn’t seem to want to get off them herself. So there’s not much else I can do. I had to let her go.”

  “Of course. This is so terrible …”

  “What made it even more so was how fast you were to think the worst of me.” He leaned back in his seat. “I didn’t see that coming.”

  I should have seen it coming, Ellie thought. I’ve been so confused, I can’t tell the nice guys from the rotten ones anymore. Here I thought I was coming to this girl’s rescue when all I did was cause trouble, make Carson justifiably angry with me, and manage to throw away three hundred dollars as a bonus.

  Carson smiled at her. “You look so miserable, I actually feel bad for you. Even though you really had no business saying what you did to me.” He reached for her hand. “Why didn’t you trust me to do the right thing? You know I care about everybody who works at my places.”

  “I know, I know. I’m humiliated and embarrassed and really sorry.”

  “Wow, okay, not so much groveling required. A simple, ‘Hey, Carson, I think you’re actually okay’ will suffice. Besides, I ask your opinion on lots of things when it’s appropriate. This just wasn’t one of those times.”

  “Hey, Carson?”

  “Yes?”

  “I think you’re actually okay.”

  He grinned, rose up halfway and leaned across the table to kiss her. It was an odd moment for a first kiss, she thought, but she would gladly take it.

  Chapter 30

  Rachel finished writing the address and capped the black marker. When she and Katie returned from their trip, she would mail the carton home to her mother. It contained half a dozen quilt tops, which Leah and the other women would complete before taking them to be sold. Sometimes Rachel had to stay up late at night to sew, but she was determined to send back more quilt tops than she usually produced to compensate for missing out on so much other work on the farm.

  “First thing Monday morning, I’ll walk this over to the post office,” she said. Katie was reading on the sofa, and didn’t respond. The intercom from downstairs buzzed, startling Rachel, as usual, with its shrillness. That would be Nick. She went over to press the button and tell him they were on their way down. Katie jumped up to put on the fleece jacket Nina had bought her for the colder weather.

  “Let’s go.” She grabbed the wheeled suitcase they were sharing.

  Seeing Nick was always a welcome adventure to Katie, and the fact that he would be driving them up to Providence for an entire week
end was a special treat. Uncle Nick worked all week, but he made time on a Saturday or Sunday to visit the two of them, or take Katie somewhere fun in the city. He introduced her to the top of the Empire State Building, the carousel in Central Park, and the busy streets of SoHo.

  Rachel was delighted when she received a phone call from A.J. asking if she and Katie would come to Providence to visit her and Steve one weekend. Up until that point, she and her newfound sister had talked on the telephone a few times, but they had little to say to each other, and the conversation was stilted. A.J. must have been bothered by that as well, and decided the time had come to do something about it. This was exactly the reason Rachel wanted to come here in the first place: to get to know her new family. Still, she would have been unlikely to make this trip without Nick, and Katie was thrilled about a weekend with her new aunt and uncles.

  Rachel retrieved her black cape and bonnet from the closet as Katie zipped up the fleece jacket.

  Wheeling the suitcase, Katie walked ahead to hold the lobby door open for her mother. They emerged into a cold November afternoon, the sky already dark. Nick was standing by his car. He came to take their bag and get a hug from Katie before they settled in and headed toward I-95 for the three-hour drive. On the way, Nick regaled them with humorous stories about his colleagues at the news website where he worked, and they shared with him what they had done during the week. It was a pleasant trip and Katie seemed almost disappointed when they pulled up in front of a gray house on a small suburban street.

  “Everybody out,” he announced, honking the car horn several times before coming around to Rachel’s side of the car to help her out.

  The noise summoned A.J. and Steve to the door. There were handshakes and hugs, and they all sat in the living room while Steve fed more wood to the fire. The house, Rachel saw, was small and cluttered, but pleasant. The numerous bookshelves reminded her of Nina and Gil’s apartment. Unlike their neat shelves, though, these were so packed that many books were shoved in sideways, and others formed piles on the floor just in front of the shelves. After some discussion about the drive, A.J. led them into a tiny dining room for a dinner of roast chicken and butternut squash.

  “This is a big treat for us,” A.J. said to Rachel and Katie as she filled water glasses for everyone. “Along with you two, we get Nick. I don’t think you’ve ever been here to our house, have you?” She looked at him.

  “Never. I like it, though. This gave me a good excuse to visit.”

  Steve directed his comment to Nick. “I’m guessing the women want to be by themselves tomorrow, so you and I should figure out something to do.”

  Nick paused. “Actually, I was hoping tomorrow Katie would go exploring with me.” He turned toward her in the seat next to his. “What do you say? You want to hang with me and Uncle Steve?”

  “Oh, yes.” She bobbed her head with enthusiasm.

  “That’s great!” Steve said in surprise. “We’ll have an outing, the three of us.”

  A.J. spoke to Rachel. “I figured I could show you around Brown, and however much of Providence you want to see.”

  “Wonderful.”

  They lingered over dinner, everyone contributing bits and pieces about themselves to the conversation in an effort to get to know one another better. By the time they got up from the table, it was nearly eleven. A.J. made up the couch in the living room for Nick, and showed Rachel the extra bedroom she and Katie would share.

  In the morning, Steve served them all pancakes, juice, and coffee before he, Nick, and Katie took off in his car.

  “At last,” A.J. said, finishing up the coffee in her cup, “it’s quiet. Just you and me.” She smiled. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. But I am glad to have some time alone with you.”

  Rachel was washing the dishes. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled back.

  “Oh, leave those dishes,” A.J. said, with a wave of her hand. “I’ll get them later. I want you to sit down and talk with me.”

  Rachel did as she was asked. “It’s very nice of you to have us,” she said as she took a seat.

  “No, it isn’t, and please don’t be so formal with me. I need to get to know my sister, but it’s so difficult to make it down to New York while I have school. And even if I could, I’d have to fight everybody else there for your time. Now I have you all to myself. My older sister.”

  “I have to keep reminding myself of that. I am your older sister, aren’t I?”

  “But without the benefits of being one. You never got to boss me around or yell at me, or any of that fun stuff Ellie got to do.”

  Rachel laughed. “I can’t imagine doing that to you.”

  “You say that now. You wouldn’t if you had known me as a kid.”

  Rachel’s tone was wistful. “I wish I had. It’s funny, though. You seem older than I am, because you’re so experienced in the world.”

  “That’s just in my world. In your world, I would seem like a bumbling fool.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Should we walk?” A.J. took a down jacket off a hook on the wall. She watched Rachel don her cape and black bonnet. “Will you be warm enough? It’s pretty cold today.”

  “Absolutely.”

  The two of them stepped out into a sunny but frigid day. As they walked, A.J. paused to explain different things about the university and the buildings. When they grew hungry, they stopped at a small restaurant on Thayer Street for some lunch. Afterward, A.J. took Rachel into the Brown bookstore. They wandered downstairs where the course books were sold, and Rachel meandered among them, transfixed by the variety and sheer number of different subjects, some of which fascinated her, many of which she had never heard of. She picked up some of the spiral-bound notebooks, running her hand along the shiny covers, picturing herself carrying one as she walked along the street.

  Eventually, they made their way to the school’s central green, where they sat on the wide stone steps of one of the buildings, watching students crisscrossing the green, talking, texting, hurrying, lost in thought. Rachel envisioned the classrooms surrounding them, where professors lectured and students took notes. She felt an ache that she pushed away before she could examine it too closely.

  “How long has this school been here?” she asked.

  “About two hundred and fifty years, give or take.”

  “So many students have passed through. It’s such a beautiful place, all these brick buildings and old trees.” She sighed.

  “Do you wish you had gone to college?” A.J. asked.

  “It wasn’t a choice.”

  “I understand … but I’m just asking if you ever wish you had. Even if you couldn’t.”

  Rachel hesitated. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  A.J. nodded.

  “When I was seventeen, I lived away from home for a bit. During that time, I studied. I worked, but at night, I studied books I wasn’t supposed to be studying. And I really liked that. But it’s not okay to do that once you join the church.”

  They were both quiet.

  “That’s really something,” A.J. finally said. “It’s hard for me to imagine you having to study in secret.”

  “We learn everything we need to know in our schools. But past eighth grade—it’s not what we do.”

  “What about now, when you’re older? Would it be okay?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Oh, no. Besides, there’s too much work to be done. There’s no time for that. And there’s no point to it.”

  A.J. seemed to consider this but didn’t pursue the subject. “I’m freezing,” she said, rubbing her gloved hands together. “How about some hot chocolate in the Blue Room.” She pointed to a large building at the far end of the green.

  They went inside to a large room with booths, tables, and chairs. While A.J. went to get their drinks, Rachel found an empty table. Some of the students were watching her, but she was far more interested in watching them. So many nationalities and accents all around her. She caught a glimpse of a
stack of books on a nearby table; the one on top had a long title she couldn’t quite make out, something about Latin America. At a booth, she saw a girl about to open a large textbook with the words Organic Chemistry on the cover.

  “You can study anything you want here, anything at all,” she observed as A.J. joined her with two cups of steaming hot chocolate.

  “Not anything, but almost.”

  “You study education, don’t you?”

  “Basically.”

  “Gee, I—”

  She was interrupted by the ringing of A.J.’s cell phone. A.J. took it out of her jacket pocket and looked to see who was calling.

  “Sorry.” She held up a finger. “One second. It’s Nick.” She pressed a button and held the phone to her ear. “Hi.”

  As she listened, her face grew solemn, then she drew a quick breath. “Ohhh …,” she moaned. She listened some more. “Right. We’ll meet you back there.”

  She clicked off the phone and looked over at Rachel. “Nick just got a call from our parents. Gram died.”

  “Blaine? Oh, no,” Rachel cried. “But we just saw her two days ago. She wasn’t sick.”

  “She had a heart attack.” A.J.’s eyes were filling with tears. “We’re all driving to New York. So we should get back to my house.”

  Here she had just discovered this lovely woman, Rachel thought, her very own grandmother, and now she was gone. Time was so fleeting, with so much going on in her life now. Suddenly, she felt a longing to see her parents.

  But which set of parents? she asked herself. The answer, she realized, was both.

  Chapter 31

  The Wayward Café wasn’t due to open for another week, so finishing touches were still being applied to the interior. As Carson and Ellie walked the space, they discussed the plans, from what should go where to how the traffic should flow.

  When Carson asked her opinion about opening for breakfast, she hesitated. “You know, I’m just giving you my personal feelings, not anything based on actual information.”