A Christmas for Carrie

by Alison Packard

  Her mother spread her gloved hands. “I couldn’t. I’m the only one who understood why he was the way he was.”

  “Then why didn’t you get him some help?”

  “I tried, but every time I checked him into a facility to dry out he’d start drinking again. I couldn’t force him to quit.”

  “Because you didn’t want to quit either. Admit it, Mom. You enabled each other and neither of you gave a damn about me.”

  “That’s not true. Your father and I loved you very much.”

  Carrie blew out a controlled breath and shook her head. “You had a funny way of showing it.”

  A tense silence stretched between them until her mother tightened the belt of her camel-colored coat and pulled a single key with a rental car company’s tag on it from her pocket. “I should go. We’re both upset and I don’t want us to say things we can’t take back. But I’m not leaving town until we talk.”

  “There’s nothing talk about. Not anymore.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Carrie. There are things you need to know, whether you want to hear them or not. I’m staying at the Holiday Inn on Bank Street. I’ll be there as long as it takes for you to hear what I have to say.”

  “You had to do it, didn’t you?” she asked as her mother moved past her and unlocked the door.

  “Do what?” Liz asked, turning to look at her.

  “Ruin Christmas...again.”

  * * *

  “What are you doing here?”

  The unwelcoming expression on Carrie’s face and her harsh tone as she opened the door only reinforced Nick’s foreboding from last night. The mother-and-daughter reunion had not gone well. Although almost noon, she was still wrapped in a red flannel robe, and the dark circles under her eyes told the tale of a long sleepless night.

  Even as the rays from the late-morning sun warmed his neck, Nick zipped his fleece jacket—an unconscious reaction from the artic chill in Carrie’s eyes perhaps. “You said last night you wanted to get a tree. I came by to see if you wanted to take a drive over to McBurney’s.”

  “I changed my mind,” Carrie replied, wedging herself between the door frame and the door, making it clear she wouldn’t be inviting him inside. “In fact, I’d like you to take the lights down.”

  Nick frowned. “Why?”

  “I don’t have to explain anything to you. I told you I hate Christmas. Trimming a tree, going to a holiday party and having lights on my house isn’t going to change that.”

  Unease prickled Nick’s skin. “What did your mother say to you last night?”

  “I didn’t let her say much of anything. She wanted to tell me something about my father but it’s all bullshit.”

  “How do you know if you don’t hear her out?”

  “Because I know my mother. She has an excuse for everything. She drank because of my father, she stayed with him because she felt sorry for him, she tried to help him but couldn’t force him to quit drinking. Blah, blah, blah.”

  “You do know that alcoholism is a disease and that no one can make an alcoholic stop drinking, right?

  Her jaw tightened and a trace of anger flashed in her eyes. “Yes. I know it’s a disease, Nick. I’ve read up on it.”

  “Then you know your mother is right. She couldn’t make your father stop drinking. He had to want that for himself. Didn’t you tell me your mother would never tell you anything about your father? It sounds like she might be trying to tell you now.”

  “Maybe.” She shrugged a slim shoulder. “But I don’t care. My father is dead. The damage has been done. I’ll never have the childhood I could have had.”

  Nick ran a frustrated hand through his hair. Carrie’s mother’s return had done a number on her. And because he’d witnessed how warm and compassionate she could be it pained him to see her like this. Cold and unfeeling. “But you might gain some insight into your father. Don’t you think that’s something worth knowing?”

  “No.”

  God, she was stubborn, and so damn mired in the past. “Are you going to feel sorry for yourself for the rest of your life?”

  “Excuse me?” she said, a hard note in her voice. “I think I have every right to feel sorry for myself.”

  Nick couldn’t hold back a grimace. “And you’re going to milk it for everything its worth, aren’t you?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Look, I know you had a crappy childhood. But how long are you going to live in the past? You can choose to be happy.”

  She let out a derisive snort. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t I? You had fun at the tree farm and then decorating the tree. You also enjoyed Christmas shopping and that crazy party at my parents’ house. And last night, at your office party, we had a great time. So don’t tell me you can’t be happy at Christmas, because I know better.”

  “When did you become a shrink?” she asked sarcastically, pinning him with a narrow gaze.

  “It doesn’t take a shrink to see that it isn’t your parents who’re responsible for your unhappiness at Christmas. It’s you.”

  Tension as thick as quicksand oozed between them. “I think you should leave,” she finally said after several long seconds.

  “Fine,” Nick snapped as frustration and a sense of hopeless futility pounded inside of him. “But you need to think long and hard about what I said. Because if you don’t, you could wind up alone and miserable for the rest of your life. Do you really want that?”

  “Goodbye, Nick,” she said with icy coolness and slammed the door.

  * * *

  Three days later, Carrie finished a grilled cheese sandwich that tasted like cardboard and set her empty paper plate next to her on the sofa cushion. On the television mounted above her fireplace, which she’d been glued to for hours, some lady on one of the home shopping channels was shilling a home theater system and doing a damn good job of it. Supplies were running low, the perky blonde warned. Evidently, her fellow Americans either knew an amazing deal when they saw one or were addicted to shopping. Or both.

  Her cell phone rang from its charger in the kitchen, but she ignored it. Except for taking two calls from Gillian she hadn’t spoken to anyone, and didn’t plan to. It was probably her mother, and talking to her in Carrie’s current state of mind wouldn’t be good for either of them.

  There was one person she was sure wouldn’t be calling, and that was Nick. She’d taken care of that with her atrocious behavior Saturday morning. Whenever she thought of how nasty she’d been to him, her cheeks burned and her stomach roiled. Any potential for a long-term relationship had been extinguished by that not so charming display, of that she was certain. Who’d want to date a shrew like her? And a miserable shrew at that.

  It wasn’t Nick’s fault she’d acted like a total bitch. And it wasn’t her mother’s either. This was all on her. For the past three days, all she could think about were Nick’s words, and she was scared—really scared—that she was going to end up alone and miserable, just like he’d said.

  I don’t want to be alone and miserable. She blinked as her eyes blurred with tears.

  Nick was right. She had been having fun and enjoying the holidays. For the first time in years she’d been able to listen to Christmas music without cringing, and pick out a present for a friend without feeling like it was a chore. She’d helped chop down a Christmas tree and decorate it with a family that had welcomed her with open arms.

  She’d done that, and more, with Nick. And now she’d driven him away, just like she’d done with Pete. Only Pete hadn’t touched her heart the way Nick had. The way he always had. Her feelings for him had been buried deep inside her for years but they’d returned with a vengeance the second she laid eyes on him again.

  Nick was out of reach now. He’d seen the ug
ly side of her; there was no coming back from that. But there was one person who wasn’t out of reach, one who had returned to Grass Valley just to talk to her.

  Maybe it was time to listen to what her mother had to say.

  Thirty minutes and one bribe to the hotel desk clerk later, Carrie rapped her knuckles on her mother’s door and waited. With nervous fingers, she stuffed her gloves and keys into her purse and tugged at the zipper of her parka. Despite the cold, she felt flushed. A common occurrence whenever she was anxious.

  The expression on Liz Jones’s face after she opened the door might have been comical if Carrie wasn’t aware of the importance of this conversation. Her eyes widened, first with surprise then with something akin to relief.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” her mother said, fidgeting with the hem of the yellow sweater she wore with a faded pair of jeans. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and although her face was completely devoid of makeup, she looked good. Healthy good. Not drawn and pale like Carrie remembered. “How’d you know what room I was in?”

  “I slipped the desk clerk a twenty,” Carrie replied with a guilty smile as her mother’s lips quirked with amusement. “May I come in?”

  “Oh yes. Of course.” She pulled the door open, stepped back and motioned Carrie inside with a wave of her hand.

  Gripping her purse like a lifeline, Carrie moved past her mother and quickly scanned the room. It was a typical hotel room. Two double beds flanked a nightstand with a lamp and an alarm clock atop it. A medium-sized flat-panel television sat on top of a dresser placed against the wall opposite the beds. The only bottle in sight was a popular brand of bottled water sitting on the nightstand.

  “There’s no alcohol here, if that’s what you’re looking for.” Carrie turned to find her mother had closed the door. “I’m sober. Eight months.”

  It took Carrie a moment to digest that bit of news. “Are you serious?”

  Her mother nodded and wrapped her arms around her midriff. “I’ve been attending AA regularly. I’m making my way through the steps. I’m working step nine, which is to make amends with anyone I may have harmed.”

  “But you said you wanted to tell me something about Dad. How does that help you make amends?”

  “Because it’s something I should have told you a long time ago. It would have explained so much, but your father begged me to never tell a soul, so I didn’t.”

  Now Carrie was curious. She set her purse on the bed and slipped off her parka. “Okay,” she said as she laid the parka over her purse and sank down on the bed. “I wasn’t ready to hear it the other night, but I’m ready now.”

  Letting out a long breath, Liz moved to a chair next to the dresser and sat across from her. She sat ramrod straight and lifted her hands to grip the arms of the chair. Her grasp was tight. So tight the whites of her knuckles were plainly visible. Whatever her mother was about to say wasn’t going to be good. Carrie’s stomach clenched with dread as she waited.

  “When your father was twelve years old, his mother, your grandmother, passed away after a long and painful bout with breast cancer. Your grandfather was despondent and less than a month later, when your father left the house to go to the corner store for milk, he blew his head off with a shotgun.”

  “Oh my God,” Carrie exclaimed as she lifted her hand to her mouth and stared at her mother. She hadn’t expected something so gruesome. She’d been told her grandparents had died long before she was born, but she’d never been told how they died. “That’s horrible.”

  “Yes. But what’s worse is that your father found the body.”

  Although fearing she already knew the answer, Carrie asked anyway, “Was it at Christmas?”

  “Christmas Eve day.” Her mother bowed her head and the only sound in the room was the whirring of the electric furnace underneath the window. When Liz looked up, her expression was somber and her eyes full of sorrow. “Your father found the body in his parents’ bedroom. He called the police and after they arrived, he was taken down to the police department because, in his panic, he’d touched the gun and had blood on his hands and clothes. For a short time they considered him a suspect.”

  Carrie felt the blood drain from her face. She couldn’t imagine anyone going through something like that, much less a twelve-year-old boy. “What happened after that?”

  “He was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in upstate New York. They didn’t want him, but took him in out of obligation. They never showed him one ounce of love or kindness, and to cope with his grief, anger and loneliness, he started drinking. When I met him he was a functioning alcoholic. He could go all day at work without a drink, but at night and on weekends he had to have it. He used to tell me it kept the demons away.”

  “What about you?” Carrie asked. “When did you start drinking heavily?”

  “Carrie, I loved your father so much and mistakenly believed I could help him quit. I was a social drinker and for years I could take it or leave it. But as dealing with your father and his dark moods became more and more difficult, I found myself drinking much more than usual to help deal with my anger and frustration. It didn’t take long for me to become as addicted to it as he was. I needed to feel numb and it did the trick.”

  Still in shock, tears brimmed in Carrie’s eyes and she couldn’t speak. There were no words to articulate her reaction to what she’d just heard. To have one parent die was tragic, but to have the other commit suicide just weeks later was unimaginable. Yet it had happened to her father. He must have felt so abandoned, and so alone. Her heart ached for the little boy he’d once been.

  “You need to know something about your father. He loved you and, for a while after you were born, he cut back. I’m convinced his love for you was the reason he didn’t take his life sooner. He didn’t want you to go through what he had been through. But in the end, those demons he wrestled with won and he couldn’t go on. He just didn’t want to live anymore. I never told you this, but he left me a note. The only thing it said was that he was sorry, and that he was going to do it in a place where neither of us would be the ones to find his body.”

  And they hadn’t. His body had been found in the Sierra Nevada foothills by a forest ranger. A single gunshot to his right temple. He’d died instantly.

  “You were right. I should have taken you and left him. But I couldn’t. He’d already endured the loss of the parents he adored and I was afraid he couldn’t survive if I left him. In hindsight, I can see I was wrong. And that you suffered for it. I’m sorry, Carrie. I’m so very sorry.”

  Tears slid down Carrie’s cheeks but she made no move to brush them away. “I was so awful to you the other night,” she whispered. “I should have listened to you.”

  “I understand why you didn’t. It’s not like I’ve given you much reason to believe anything I have to say. And I have a lot more than this secret of your father’s to atone for. If you’ll let me.”

  What her mother was asking for was something Carrie never thought she could give. Forgiveness. But now, it seemed a possibility. And not a remote one.

  “Is it hard?” She wiped her wet cheeks with the back of her hand. “Not drinking?”

  “Yes.” Liz leaned back in the chair, visibly more relaxed. “But it’s getting easier as each day passes. That’s the motto—one day at a time.”

  Carrie managed a weak smile. “How’s...how’s—oh crap...I forgot his name.”

  “Bill,” her mother said with a chuckle. “He’s a wonderful man, and extremely supportive of my recovery. He isn’t much of a drinker and didn’t mind when I asked him if the condo could be a booze-free zone.”

  “So you’re happy now?”

  “I’m getting there. It’s amazing how much you miss when you’re drinking. It occurred to me a few months ago that I don’t know my own daughter. I’d like to change that.” A tentative smi
le hovered on her lips. “Do you think that’s possible?”

  Was it possible? Carrie wasn’t sure. Not after so many years spent resenting the hell out of both her mother and her father. Looking into her mother’s hopeful eyes, she wanted so much to be able to put the past behind her and live a full and happy life—a life with no bitterness eating away at her soul. At one time such happiness seemed unimaginable. But now, it was there, just within reach. All she had to do was meet her mother halfway. It wouldn’t be easy, but maybe if they both tried, it could happen. Eventually.

  Carrie’s lips trembled. “I don’t know, Mom. But I’m willing to try.”

  Chapter Eleven

  At noon on Christmas Eve, after calling his partner, Adam, and wishing him a Merry Christmas, Nick followed the enticing aroma of apples and cinnamon into the kitchen and found his mother taking a pie out of the oven.

  “That smells good,” he said, watching her set the pie on a trivet next to the stove. “Can I have a piece? Maybe with some vanilla ice cream?”

  “It’s may I have a piece.” With an amused expression on her face, she pulled off her oven mitts and tossed them on the counter. Tied around her waist was her favorite holiday apron—decorated with dancing snowmen and, as usual, flour. Some things never changed; his mother wearing a quarter of what she cooked was one of them. “And you haven’t had lunch yet.”

  “I’ll have pie instead.” Nick’s mouth watered in anticipation as he eyed the Dutch apple pie. “It’s not often I get homemade dessert.”

  Paula sighed. “You’re a grown man. If you want to have pie for lunch, who am I to argue? But let it cool a bit before you cut into it,” she said as she moved to the sink and turned on the water. “Did you call Carrie and ask her to come over for dinner tomorrow? We’re eating early.”

  “No.” He hadn’t talked to Carrie since Saturday. And after their last encounter he wasn’t sure they would ever speak again. Having a door slammed in his face was a first, and not something he cared to repeat. “But I doubt she’d accept if I did.”