Once More with Feeling

by Cynthia Baxter

  “Bobby.”

  “Call him and tell him you changed your mind. You could even mail him your old travel brochure.”

  Julie stared at her, wide-eyed. “But I want to have coffee with him!”

  “What about George?” asked Laura.

  Julie hung her head. “I know. I’m a terrible person. I’m bad. I’m a floozy.”

  “Hell, Julie,” Claire said, leaning back in her chair, “the last ‘floozy’ was Betty Boop. And she was a cartoon.”

  “I can’t help it. I know George and I have a good relationship. It’s steady. It’s predictable.”

  “But?” Claire prompted.

  “But lately I’ve been feeling stifled. Hemmed in.” She glanced around nervously, then hung her head. “I haven’t said this to anyone. I’ve barely let myself think it, but ... to be perfectly honest, I’m no longer sure George is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

  Laura’s mouth dropped open. “You never said anything like that before.”

  “I never felt this way before.”

  Claire smiled wickedly. “Not until she got her hands on Bobby’s longus pectineus.”

  “It’s not like that!” cried Julie. “Well . . . maybe just a little. I couldn’t help noticing he has a very nice body. But it’s mainly his mind that interests me,” she added hastily. “I like the way he makes me feel. We have so much to say to each other. When I’m massaging his rectus femoris and I can feel him relaxing, responding to the motion, it’s like ... like we’re doing a wonderful dance together.”

  “Sounds like a tango,” Claire observed. “I say go for it, Julie. Check this Bobby out.”

  “Poor George,” Laura said softly.

  While she adored Julie and was willing to support her almost unquestioningly in whatever she did, she couldn’t help feeling for George. After all, he was doing his best to make the relationship work, never dreaming for a minute that there were factors at play that could destroy it.

  * * * *

  Wednesday night’s Divorce and Separation Support Group had become an integral part of Laura’s life, giving structure to her week and providing her with a sense of continuity she didn’t get anywhere else. She liked having someplace to go.

  With the holidays getting closer, she was in need of a support fix. She headed into the meeting room at the Y a week and a half before Christmas, looking forward to being updated on the wild and zany lives of Amie, Tom, Estelle, and all the others. All in all, she concluded, their adventures were miles ahead of any sitcom characters’.

  But the entertainment value was only part of it. Laura found it reassuring that she was not alone in what she was experiencing—or what she was feeling. Often as she lay in bed at night, she pictured Dawn in her bed in Great Neck and Arnie in his in Westbury and Carolyn in Syosset, all of them unwinding after a long day wrestling with the same highs and lows that had sent her diving into the sheets in a state of emotional exhaustion.

  Her suspicions that she wasn’t the only one who had concerns about how to weather the holidays ahead proved correct. As coffee hour came to a close and the members of Group Two and Three wandered off, she saw that there was a full house tonight. All eleven of the regulars were present, and a few newcomers as well. Merry, in a corduroy jumper and the same thick stockings Laura’s grandmother used to wear, took her place at one end of their irregular circle.

  “I’d like to start tonight.” Dawn had her hand up before Merry had even had a chance to choke out a tearful welcome. Tonight the large woman was decked out in a red sequined sweater and white stretch pants that hid nothing. While the effect was startling, it did scream “festive.” “All this holiday business is really giving me the blues. Oh, sure, I’m going through the motions, shopping and baking and going to parties. But I can’t get past the fact that I’m going to the parties alone. When I bake my famous peanut-butter fudge, there’s nobody to eat it but me and the kids. I’m experiencing a kind of loneliness I haven’t felt up until this point.”

  “Yeah, I’m findin’ the same thing,” seconded Tom. Tonight his work clothes looked spanking clean. “Things at the shop are always kind of quiet this time of year. Nobody wants to have their tires rotated or their oil changed—not that you should ever neglect your auto maintenance, not even during the yuletide season.

  “Still, it looks like my customers would rather be at the mall. So I always end up with a lot of extra time on my hands. This year, instead of running around, trying to find the perfect gift for my wife, I’m doing stuff like stackin’ up the cans of Valvoline neater.”

  Merry was nodding sympathetically. “The holidays are an extremely difficult time. Everywhere we go, we’re hit with messages that say this is a loving time. A family time. A togetherness time. How do we feel when we see that so many of the people around us are part of a couple?”

  Tom shot his hand up into the air. “We feel like crap.”

  Go, Tom, thought Laura.

  As usual, Merry finessed that one. “We experience bad feelings. Negative feelings. We don’t always feel very good about ourselves. We may feel alone. We may feel as if we’ve failed—”

  Laura was relieved when Carolyn raised her hand. The tiny redhead was dressed for the holiday season as well. Her green sweater had reindeer on the pockets, and a gold Christmas tree was pinned to the blouse underneath. Even her earrings—a tiny green ornament on one side, a shiny red bell on the other—were seasonal. “This is my first Christmas alone, too. But instead of being miserable about it, I’m trying really hard to look inside myself to find the strength to get through the holidays. I’m reaching out to friends. I’m working at a soup kitchen. I decided I’m going to make this the best darned Christmas my kids ever had. I’ve been so busy stringing popcorn and going caroling and doing all the things I never managed to find the time for in the past that I haven’t had time to feel bad. As a matter of fact, I’ve been feeling pretty good about myself.”

  Carolyn’s enthusiasm prompted Laura to raise her hand. “I’m feeling pretty good, too,” she told the group. “I’ve barely noticed it’s Christmas. I’ve been too busy discovering that I actually enjoy being single. My husband just moved out of the house a few weeks ago, and since then, I’ve been exhilarated. I feel so free.

  “I can stay up as late as I want and read in bed without anyone complaining about the light being on. I can watch whatever I want on TV ... and the remote is always in my possession.” Laura shrugged. “Sometimes I even have ice cream for dinner.”

  Merry’s head was bobbing up and down. She looked as if she were about to burst. “I hope everyone is listening to what Laura is saying. Carolyn, too. We don’t have to have a mate in order to count. We don’t need someone else in our lives to feel whole. We’re all capable of enjoying life ... on our own. Each of us is capable of giving to ourselves.”

  Arnie looked confused. “Wait a minute. You mean, like, instead of me giving a present to my wife, this year I can use the money to buy something I want?”

  “She means we don’t need to look to others to make us happy,” explained Estelle. As usual, she had kept silent until she was so strongly motivated that nothing could keep her from speaking out. Of course, the members of the group held their breath whenever she took the floor. “We make ourselves happy. We fulfill ourselves. We decide what’s important to us, and we fill our lives with it.”

  “I think I get it,” said Tom. “You mean like Carolyn workin’ at that soup kitchen.”

  Merry’s eyes were shining. “That’s right.”

  He turned to Carolyn. “You get paid for that?”

  “I guess what we need to do,” Dawn said thoughtfully, “is think of finding happiness as a challenge. Kind of like a mission. A quest. We have to figure out what matters to us, without worrying about anybody else.”

  “Like hockey,” Arnie muttered.

  Merry jumped on that one immediately. “Hockey is a good example. When you were married, Arnie, was ice hockey something yo
u and your wife enjoyed together?”

  “Hah! You kidding?”

  “Well,” she went on, growing more excited, “now that you’re on your own, you’re free to pursue your interest in sports. It’s something that matters to you. You don’t need another person in order to enjoy it.”

  “Well, it helps to have somebody else to watch your coat while you’re on line for a hot dog.... But I understand what you’re saying. Really, I do.”

  Laura did, too. Sitting in the meeting room, for a moment phasing out the voices of the others, she felt a surge of strength rising up inside her. She would get through the holidays. And she would enjoy herself. She’d look to the traditions that had always brought her joy; immerse herself in schmaltzy choral music and fancy cookies and too much tinsel and all the other things that made the holidays wonderful. She’d find the spirit that only came once a year, the real gift of the holiday season.

  Besides, she reminded herself, she was anything but alone. She had Evan. If she couldn’t hold on to this feeling of power for her own sake, she’d do it for him.

  Chapter Ten

  “Okay,” Laura said under her breath, rubbing her hands together. “I can do this.”

  “Are you sure, Mom?” Evan sounded doubtful as he struggled to hold up a seven-foot fir tree. Next to it, he looked as tiny as one of Santa’s elves.

  “Of course. What’s so hard about making a tree stand up in your living room? Mother Nature’s been doing it in her living room for eons.”

  Glancing around the room, Laura had to admit she couldn’t help feeling as if she were posing for a Kodak moment. That afternoon, right after she’d picked Evan up from school, the two of them had gone Christmas-tree hunting. Instead of heading for the woods, they opted to trek over to the nearest farm stand, where freshly cut trees were being sold as fast as the men in the red-plaid coats could bind them in twine.

  As usual, Evan had set his heart on one so tall owning it would have necessitated cutting a hole in the ceiling. Laura, with her level head and limited budget, patiently led him to the moderately priced trees, the ones that looked as if they needed a little love. Picking out a tree, they’d decided, was like choosing a puppy. You looked and looked ... and then suddenly you just knew.

  When Evan insisted on the way home that they set up the tree and start decorating it right away, putting the task even above his favorite six o’clock rerun, Laura agreed. She was excited, too. As far as she was concerned, it never really felt like Christmastime until the tree was up. And she was definitely in need of a little boost in the spirit department.

  She even built a fire in the fireplace for the occasion. She was determined to make her first Christmas on her own as wonderful as possible. The promise she’d made to herself at the support group the night before was still ringing in her ears. She and Evan laughed hysterically as they tried to remember the words of the Christmas carols she insisted upon singing while they carried the cartons of decorations down from the attic. She tried to sing the less familiar ones to keep him entertained.

  “Who was Good King Wenceslas, anyway?” Evan demanded, lugging a box down the stairs. Peeking out of the top were tacky gold garlands that Laura loved.

  ‘The man who invented Scotch tape,” she replied earnestly. “Think about it, Ev. How could any of us have a real Christmas without Scotch tape?”

  With the roaring fire, the fragrance of pine, and the dusty cardboard cartons promising goodies dial had been forgotten for the past eleven and a half months, all the elements were in order. Her heart fluttered as she took the brand-new red tree stand, the finest K Mart had to offer, out of its box.

  Still, as she contemplated the task ahead, she wished she’d forgone one or two of her college English courses and opted for something more practical—like mechanical engineering. While this was precisely the kind of thing Gertrude Giraffe could carry off without a hitch, Laura was anything but confident about the undertaking. As much as she hated to admit it, she’d always thought of setting up the tree as the husband’s job. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the metal tree stand into the corner of the living room. The Christmas tree had always gone next to the fireplace, but this year it would have a new place, she’d decided.

  “Bring that baby over here,” Laura instructed. “Now, what we need here is a show of upper-body strength. Pretend you’re a Ninja Turtle—

  “Come on, Mom. You know nobody likes the Ninja Turtles anymore.”

  “Okay. Pretend you’re He-Man—”

  “He-Man’s worse. Only babies like him.”

  “Barbie on steroids?”

  “Mo-o-o-m!” Evan chortled. Then, growing sober: “What are steroids?”

  “You’ll learn all about them when you play high school football. In the meantime let’s see if together you and I can lift up that tree and get it right smack in the middle of this—bull’s-eye!”

  Tightening the screws against the pine tree’s trunk, Laura felt a surge of triumph. She really was doing it. She’d accomplished this formidable job not only with ease, not only with grace, but without having to argue about which side of the tree had more bare spots.

  “Not bad, huh? Not that I can be totally objective, of course, but all things considered, I’d say this is the best tree we’ve ever had.”

  “Oh, Mom. You say that every year.”

  “Sure I do. It’s a Christmas tradition, like giving fruitcake to people you secretly don’t like.” Laura turned to the boxes of decorations lined up along the couch. “Now we can—”

  “Mom!” Evan screeched. “Look out!”

  Their precious little Tannenbaum began leaning to one side, slowly, and then it toppled over, taking the metal stand with it. She could have sworn it was laughing at her. Or at least trying to get back at her for those metal screws she’d slammed into its trunk.

  Evan looked at it forlornly. “Dad never had any trouble making the tree stand up.”

  “Oh, sure he did. Everyone does. We just made a point of protecting you from the more stressful aspects of the holiday.” She was on all fours underneath the tree, fumbling with the screws once again, silently cursing the defiant bit of flora, which was rebelling against having been wrested from its natural habitat by sticking its spiky needles into her neck and up her nose.

  Yet in the end, the human spirit triumphed over nature. “Voila! Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Do you think we should be careful not to breathe when we’re close to it?”

  “This tree is as sturdy as ... as the Titanic.”

  “The what?”

  “Uh, a famous ship that ... How about if you try to find the lights? That’s the next step. Meanwhile I’ll start unpacking the ornaments.”

  She held her breath as she opened the first box and confronted the ghost of Christmases Past. Taking out the pieces one at a time, holding them in her hand, forced her to reexamine memories that she hadn’t had to face since the year before, when she’d packed them away.

  Gingerly she pulled out the four ceramic apples she’d bought the first year she and Roger were married. Delving into a clump of tissue paper, she unwrapped a cardboard star, decorated with gold glitter, with Evan’s baby picture in the middle. She’d made that one to commemorate his very first Christmas. Underneath was a wooden sailboat with Santa at the helm. She’d bought it for Roger as a stocking stuffer just the year before. She remembered having thought about attaching a tiny wedding ring to the side—as a joke—but in the end had decided against it.

  The visions that came to her were not all sugarplums. There was coal in the Christmas stocking as well. Laura reminded herself that even in the best of times, she’d ended up decorating most of the tree with only the help of a toddler who couldn’t be trusted to handle anything breakable.

  In fact, the norm was for her to spend nearly every Christmas Eve alone. Somehow, Roger had always had more important things to do. For one thing, he left his shopping to the last minute, claiming that the day before Christmas was the ideal
time to avoid the crowds. That meant he toiled away late into the night, hiding in the basement, wrapping the presents Laura wasn’t allowed to see.

  Some years he wasn’t in the house at all. He was out delivering gifts, or helping his mother with the tree, or painting a handmade wooden present out in the cold garage in the hope that it would dry overnight. Laura and Evan were left on their own to admire the sparkling lights on the tree and speculate about whether or not Santa would have managed to get ahold of this toy or that.

  That had been the reality. Even so, Laura felt a pang of sadness, becoming suddenly very aware of the fact that she was a single mother. At least this year, doing the tree by herself was her choice. Then she realized something else was missing: the usual knot of anger in her stomach over the fact that once again she wanted something from her husband that she simply wasn’t getting. All around the country, happy families were carrying out their traditions ... together. But no matter how hard she’d tried, her life never quite seemed to work the way she wanted it to.

  “Hey, Mom?” Evan’s voice brought her out of her reverie. “We got trouble.”

  “What now?”

  He held up the Christmas-tree lights, a tangle of green wires and colored bulbs. “We’re never going to straighten these out!”

  His voice was quiet, trembling just a little. Laura realized that he was afraid. Afraid that this year the Christmas tree would have no lights or perhaps that there would be no joy, none of that special feeling that made fires in fireplaces glow with holiday magic, and the evergreen come alive, and the simplest Christmas carol resonate like a magnificent cantata.

  Maybe he feared that Christmas, like everything else in his life, would never again be as wonderful as it had once been.

  “Oh, Evan!” she cried, kneeling down to throw her arms around his bony shoulders. Suddenly he seemed very small and very fragile. “Of course I can fix those lights. And if I can’t, we can run out and buy new ones. We’re going to have a wonderful Christmas, I promise.”