I, however, was not fit to cook for an army. I was used to cooking, rather poorly, for myself. My repertoire was quite limited. “Do you like cheese?” Everyone likes cheese, right?
She shook her head. “No, dear. Makes me gassy, I’m afraid.”
“Egg and toast?” I offered.
“That sounds lovely.”
“Excellent.” I took out a couple of plates, found a few slices of bread, plus butter and eggs from the fridge, and took a pan down from the rack and put it on the stove to heat. My mother used to call these Bull’s-eye Eggs. I buttered the bread and placed it buttered side down in the pan. “So what makes you think you’re a guardian angel?”
“They said you’d be like this.”
“Who said I’d be like what?”
“Not just you,” she hastened to correct. “They said everyone is like this. I imagine I would have been, too. Or was.” She drifted off into thought for a moment, and I watched her. “I just don’t know.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You lost me.”
“Oh! Oh! Yes indeed. They, the crew above, they said that no one ever believes anymore. That everyone is skeptical and thinks they’re dealing with a loon.” She narrowed her eyes and looked at me. “Do you think you’re dealing with a loon?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “But I don’t think I’m dealing with a guardian angel.”
She seemed to consider that, then gave a nod of acceptance. “That’s fair.”
“No offense, of course.”
“None taken, I assure you.”
I took out a small glass and cut a hole into each piece of toast with it, then cracked an egg into each and topped them with salt and pepper. As I watched the egg grow white around the edges, I asked, “If you’re a guardian angel sent to me on purpose, why?”
“Because this is the time of year you reflect the most and feel the worst,” she answered simply.
An easy guess, though. I mean, you can’t swing a cat by the tail without hitting someone who hates the holidays.
“I don’t hate the holidays,” I said, without a lot of conviction.
“I didn’t say you did. You said that.”
“Okay, I don’t feel the worst during the holidays.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I hate the holidays.” I flipped the eggs and put the circle I’d cut out of them back over the yolks in the center. “I do, I hate the holidays. There, I said it.” After a few seconds, I scooped an egg-and-toast onto each plate and took them over to the table where Charlie was sitting. She’d already opened our wrapped silverware. “Hot sauce? Ketchup?” I asked, ready to retrieve them.
“We’re getting there,” she said, and I realized she thought I’d said catch up.
“No, I mean, do you want ketchup or hot sauce? For your eggs?”
She looked at me, utterly puzzled.
So I added, “Or are they fine like this?”
“This is fine,” she agreed, then delicately cut a piece of bread off with her knife and fork. She popped it into her mouth and said, “Mmmmmmm. It’s been so long.”
There was no way to know whether she meant it felt like a long time since lunch or if she hadn’t eaten since her mortal days who-knows-how-many-years-ago, though I was pretty sure if I asked her she would answer that it was the latter. So I just said, “Bon appétit.”
We ate in silence for a few minutes, but it was nice. How often does a person have a chance like this, to eat in a favorite restaurant virtually alone? Admittedly it would have been better if Gemma had been in the kitchen making some of her fabulous concoctions, but this was pretty ideal as it was, especially since the one of us who did not get gassy from cheese went and made a plate of creamy Brie with balsamic cherries, sweet and tart Gorgonzola Dolce, hard aged Parmesan with crystals of flavor in every flake, and a rich Morbier with its vein of ash running through the middle.
Overhead, the Cocteau Twins started singing “Frosty the Snowman” on the never-ending loop of holiday music that played over the system, and my spirits soared.
“Anyway,” Charlie went on, “I’m here to help you get over your troubles.”
“But I’m not troubled!”
“Does it bother you that you’re stuck at work here on a beautiful Christmas Eve?”
“No!”
“Not even when the rest of the world is warm and cozy in their homes with their families, watching the snow come down, sitting by a crackling fire, maybe singing around a piano or lighting candles or doing whatever rituals each of them has?”
“Does that make me feel bad? No, of course not.”
She leaned fractionally forward. “Do you ever wish you had your own traditions and routines on this day?”
“I’ve never even thought about it.”
“There you go. That’s trouble.” She jabbed her fork at me for emphasis. “Most people want to be with family and friends today, but you’re just fine being locked in a retail establishment where you toil forty or more hours every week.”
“I love my work!”
“That’s all very well and good, missy, but you also love avoiding life.”
My ire raised, even while I knew there was an uncomfortable level of truth to what she was saying. “That’s not true.”
She took the last bite of her egg, looked at my empty plate, and shrugged. “If it weren’t true, then you wouldn’t need me. And, believe you me, you do. I believe you should have had a visit a long, long time ago. But, of course, I wasn’t ready then. Zooterkins, they gave me a tough case to begin with, didn’t they?”
I sighed. “Maybe you don’t need to try, then?”
She shook her head, essentially pooh-poohing me. “Let’s go back and clean up the shoes. I have the most marvelous idea.”
Chapter 3
“Pick a pair,” she told me, gesturing at the mess that she herself had created. “We’re going on a trip. Where do you want to go?”
“We’re not going anywhere. There are three feet of snow out there.”
“So these.” She picked up a pair of Hunter boots in a bright canary yellow. I loved them. I always loved Hunter boots. They reminded me of the snow boots I’d had when I was a little kid. My mother used to call them my Christopher Robin boots. I’d been meaning to buy a pair for ages, but somehow I always ended up talking myself out of it for one reason or another.
This time I took the boots she handed over. My thought was that the snow that was coming down now was going to be around for quite a while, so even though part of me didn’t want to play along with her little game, the other part of me recognized that this was a task well past due. I needed snow boots. Here they were.
In my exact size, even.
“Go on, chicken, try them on,” Charlie urged.
I took them in my hands, the sturdy, shiny rubber so much like a new toy that I felt like a kid again just holding them. “I do need some snow boots…”
“Of course you do!”
I sat down and put them on, one slow slide at a time. I felt a little dizzy as I did it, but didn’t think much of it until they were on and suddenly I wasn’t in the shoe department, or the store, anymore.
I was in the family room of my childhood home.
“Tell me what you see.” Charlie’s voice came from far away. “Tell me what you feel. Tell me everything.”
* * *
It was Christmas Eve. The worst Christmas Eve there could ever be. The fact that God even let Christmas come at all made Noelle angry. There should never be another Christmas, ever.
Christmas had been her mother’s favorite holiday. Her own, too. Once. But not anymore. Not since her mother had passed two months ago, in the middle of a hot October.
That’s what everyone said: passed. She’d passed. But Noelle knew she hadn’t passed, like she’d walked through one room into the next. She’d died. And now she was dead and she was never coming back and everything was wrong and there was no making it right, no matter how much her fathe
r might want her to just stop crying and pretend to have a good time.
For one thing, the tinsel was put on the tree in big hunks, not single strands laid over the branches the way Mom had done it. Branches—it was a fake tree anyway, so they weren’t even branches. Protrusions. Noelle was a month past twelve and fairly sure that was the right word. Her father and aunt had also just clumped all the decorations on the front, without regard for sizes. If Noelle had helped, as they’d asked her to, she would have known that her mother said the biggest ornaments went on the bottom and got progressively smaller as you moved up to the top of the tree.
Why didn’t Aunt Beanie know that? She was Mom’s sister! Weren’t they raised the same? Whatever. The tree looked stupid, like something out of someone else’s house, not her own.
“Cookies?” her father offered awkwardly, bringing in a plate of premade cookies he’d bought from Giant.
“No, thank you,” Noelle said.
“Do you … do you want to leave some out for Santa?”
“I already know, Dad. I know there’s no Santa.”
“But last year we—”
“Last year I didn’t know. I still believed the lies.” She leveled her gaze at him. “I don’t believe lies anymore.” Lies like it’s for the best, or she’s out of pain now, or she’s with you in your heart all the time now, or someday you’ll see her again.
People told a lot of lies to try to stop the sadness, but it didn’t work.
“What do you want to do, then?”
She took a breath and looked around. Nothing was the way it had ever been on Christmas before—Couldn’t he see that? Had he never noticed everything her mother had done?—but it was still the same house. She could at least try to have a good time.
Something inside of her, though, something bitter and angry, wouldn’t let her even try.
“I know one thing we should do,” Aunt Beanie announced from the front hall. She stomped the snow off her feet and instructed her kids—fourteen-year-old Aaron and bitchy thirteen-year-old Rachel—to do the same. “Where’s the CD player?” she asked, then spotted it on the hearth next to the fireplace. “Every year when Lynnie and I were kids, we’d play Bing Crosby singing ‘Do You Hear What I Hear?’ on Christmas Eve. Did your mom do that with you, Noelle?”
She nodded. “Yes.” A lump formed in her throat. But she didn’t want to cry. Especially not in front of Aaron and Rachel.
“Perfect!”
Beanie’s enthusiasm was so broad it had to be faked. No one could be that happy on the first Christmas after her sister’s death. But she was doing it for Noelle, and Noelle knew it and was grateful, even though she secretly just wanted to go to her room and cry until the stupid holiday was over.
The music came on, and everyone chatted away, holiday talk, gift talk, the idea of Beanie and her family maybe taking Noelle on a ski trip they were planning for the New Year’s school vacation. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to do anything. She didn’t want anyone to expect anything of her right now.
The music played on, and everyone moved into the dining room for a game of Monopoly. Despite herself, Noelle found herself having fun, but as soon as Aunt Beanie asked if she wanted to go stay at her house for the night, she shut down. No, she didn’t want to leave home on Christmas Eve. Somehow the very idea made her feel even farther away from her mother. As if she could somehow come back tonight and visit. It was as likely as Santa Claus, maybe even less so, but Noelle wasn’t going anywhere.
“Are you sure?” Beanie asked. “It’s going to be really fun. The kids are going to stay up all night and watch old holiday movies. I’m going to try, but I always fall asleep before Jimmy Stewart ever meets Clarence.” Behind her Rachel nodded, her lank, coffee-colored hair swinging in front of her coffee-colored eyes—for her, a display of wild enthusiasm.
“Why don’t you come?” Aaron urged. He actually smiled, showing his full set of braces; the steely teeth and his troubled skin made an unfortunate combination, yet the smile warmed her heart. “We’ll make sure you have a good time.”
“Yeah,” Rachel agreed, though her persuasion ended there. She pushed her limp hair back, and it fell right back in her face.
“We got a toboggan for Christmas Eve,” Aaron went on. “We can go ride it down the hill by the middle school.”
“No thanks,” Noelle said. “I’m just going to go to bed. I’m really tired.”
Her aunt and father exchanged a look, and he gave a small shrug. “I’ll tuck you in, baby,” he said to her.
“No, that’s all right. I’m fine. Really.” Even to her own ears she didn’t sound convincing. She got up from the sofa and halted at the door to the room. “Thanks, everyone. I’m sorry I’m not so much fun. Merry Christmas.” She barely got the last word out before her voice cracked, and she ran upstairs, whipped her door closed behind her, and threw herself onto her bed, crying into her pillow until finally she fell into a hard sleep.
That was where the memory ended. Normally.
But just as she was expecting to explain to Charlie why she’d been so sour as a child that year, the memory started over, only, like a movie, it was something she’d never seen before.
“Why don’t you come?” Aaron said. “We’ll make sure you have a good time.”
“Yeah,” Rachel agreed.
“We got a toboggan for Christmas Eve. We can go ride it down the hill by the middle school.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say no. In fact, to tell them all they were being insensitive and downright mean. Didn’t they realize she’d lost her mother? That nothing could ever make her happy again? That it was easy for them, with their parents and their nice big house in Potomac Falls, with a pool in the summer and a toboggan in winter, but all she had was a fake tree with clumps of tinsel and relatives who were going to get tired of her sadness and mopiness sooner rather than later and she would end up, inevitably, alone.
It took her only a fraction of a second to have all of those thoughts and feelings and then just a fraction of a second more to refuse to fall into that sad, sorry pit. No, she didn’t want to go. She wanted to go to her room and cry. But she had the rest of her life to go off by herself and cry whenever she wanted. If she stayed here now, it was absolutely sure to be a miserable Christmas Eve. There was literally no way for her father, or even for her, to get it right when they were both heartbroken and knew everything was so wrong.
So why not try something a little outside her comfort zone? Why not socialize a little, instead of moping?
That’s what her mom would tell her to do, after all.
She had always told her to get out more, to join in more. Not to be so shy.
So she would. This time she would.
Aunt Beanie’s house was a festival of twinkling lights and decorations. She’d gone all out, and Noelle wondered why they’d even bothered to come to her own house at all, with its sad excuse for festivities.
“Noelle Carpenter, where are your snow boots?” Aunt Beanie demanded as the kids were getting ready to go out the front door with their sleds and toboggan.
“I don’t have any,” Noelle answered. Then, aware that it sounded like they were too poor to afford shoes, she added, “My dad and I were going to go out and get some, but you know how it never snows here. Until now.”
Beanie looked out the door at the still-falling snow and made a hmmph sound. “Your mother would never have let you go short on shoes! Well, I have just the thing,” she said, and opened the hall closet, producing some muddy old yellow rubber Wellington boots. “These were your mom’s, but she ordered them a half size too small and ended up giving them to me. Said they were blistering her feet even though she loved them and wore them anyway for a while. She said they reminded her of Paddington Bear. Or was it Christopher Robin? I have a feeling they’ll fit you just perfectly with a few pairs of socks. Rachel! Get some socks for Noelle!”
Rachel ran upstairs and came back with two pairs of thick socks. Noel
le wrestled into them and then slid the boots on. “They’re perfect!” she breathed. “Well, a little big, but perfect anyway.”
“Your mom loved them. It just killed her for me to dance around in them in front of her, but they didn’t make her size.” Beanie gave a laugh and looked off into the distance, then brought herself back. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … It didn’t kill her, obviously.” She kneaded her hands in front of her stomach. “I’m so sorry, that seems so insensitive.”
“It’s okay. She was your sister, you had jokes together. I know you loved her, too. She wouldn’t want us to watch every word we say.” Noelle tried to think of her own example to make Beanie feel better. “I used to eat ice cream in front of her because she was so afraid of getting fat. Not that she was anything close to it.”
“No, she had a great figure.”
Until the end, neither of them said. But they both paused, presumably remembering the way cancer and chemo had robbed her of her hair, her appetite, and her strength.
“Anyway”—Beanie clapped her hands together—“now you are ready for the snow. Have fun, little kiddles! And be good! Aaron, Rachel, keep a good eye on your cousin.”
Forty-five minutes later, Noelle and Aaron and Rachel were under an inky black sky, dotted with shining stars, ambient light streaming from the basketball and tennis courts, screaming with laughter as they—along with what seemed like the entire student body of Potomac Middle School—whooshed down the hill and across what was normally a wide basketball court but was now a sheet of ice.
“Jacob Marsden keeps looking at you,” Rachel said to Noelle on a white puff of breath.
“Who?”
“What do you mean who? The cutest boy in school. Duh.”
An unfamiliar thrill ran down Noelle’s core. “I don’t know who he is, and anyway I’m not old enough to date.”
“You’re old enough to kiss, and that’s just exactly what he wants to do.” Rachel’s lower lip stuck out involuntarily. “I can’t believe you don’t even know who he is. Do you know how many girls here have the hots for him?”
A Shoe Addict's Christmas Page 3