“We’re going to Antoinette’s,” Luna told her mother. Antoinette was Nick’s younger sister. She had a wild Puerto Rican husband, three children and two grandchildren. Nick’s mom lived with them, and she was cooking her usual ziti and ham Christmas dinner.
“Why would you subject yourself to pasta when you’re getting divorced?” At least she didn’t get started about the civilized people of the north eating rice.
“For the kids’ sake. They like being with family, especially their cousins. I won’t take that away, and I’m going because I want to be with them.”
The night the boys had slept over at Nick’s, they’d asked him if their family was still going to have Christmas dinner together. He’d answered, “Of course!”
He’d probably had no intention of including Luna. Someone who took furniture from her house and dumped what he didn’t want on the floor would seem to have little sentiment in his heart for her. Nevertheless, she was now included.
“Well, I would be glad to get away from those people and have some peace and quiet if I were you,” Loreena said.
“By the way, you’re still invited,” Luna told her.
“Oh, okay. I’ll bring pignoli cookies.”
“No kidding.” Loreena always brought pignoli cookies. They were her favorite.
“By the way, they’re going to move your father to the new place the day after tomorrow.”
“That’s his birthday.”
“Oh, you remembered.”
That remark could’ve been taken in so many ways, most of them bad. But Luna simply said, “Yes, I did.” The day after Christmas was an apropos birthday for Lenny, who had always arrived late—if ever.
“Will you come help me settle him in?”
Luna bit her lip. It was not an easy thing to consider. But she had to help her mom out on this one. “Sure. I think I’ll bring the kids, too.”
“That would be nice.” Another ambiguous comment. Loreena’s tone sounded sarcastic, but there was always the chance she didn’t mean it to be.
“Gotta go, mom. See you tomorrow. Merry Christmas.”
Luna had hung up and finished her wrapping. She thought about calling Aunt Zelda, but nixed the idea because there was a concert on the barge and Zelda wouldn’t be able to talk. Besides, she’d become a Zen Buddhist at age fifty, so the birth of Christ meant even less to her than it did to Luna.
Luna’s wrapping was done. The gifts were in the closet. The gingerbread houses the kids had made earlier rested on the kitchen table. The tree waited patiently in the living room for the gifts she’d put under it later, after the kids had returned home and gone to bed.
The stockings were hung by the chimney, just like in the poem. Red with fuzzy white tops and their names in green glitter: “Mom”, “Ben” and “Dylan.” The kids had already put gifts in her stocking, purchased at their school holiday fair. But they were keeping their “main” gifts for her in their rooms.
She filled out her Match.com profile and sipped wine, looking forward to the promise of Christmas morning like she was a little kid again. She had every reason to believe she’d wake up to matches in her inbox.
After all, she’d been good.
The kids woke up practically at the crack of dawn. Dylan still fervently believed in Santa. Luna was pretty sure Ben was onto the truth, but he went along with the charade.
Luna headed down the steps with her video camera. The boys knew the routine: they waited until she was recording to rush down the steps. “Ooo, Santa ate his cookies,” Dylan exclaimed, pointing at the plate of crumbs on the coffee table.
“Of course he did, honey,” Luna said. “And his reindeer ate their carrots.”
There were bits of carrots scattered around the table, since reindeer did not possess the etiquette of eating over a plate.
In all the years she’d been doing this, the boys had never questioned how the reindeer got in the house. She’d had an answer prepared: Santa came down the chimney and let them in the front door.
This was the magic of Christmas, taking that leap of faith.
The boys ripped into their presents while Luna recorded footage. When they’d finished, Luna made her traditional holiday breakfast of French toast, with some help. The boys each cracked two eggs into a bowl. After they fished out the few stray bits of shell, Ben poured the milk and Dylan sprinkled in the cinnamon. Then all three chefs beat the ingredients together, and the boys took turns dunking the bread.
By this time, Luna was sorely in need of coffee.
Then it was time for Luna to open her gifts, which the boys proudly brought from upstairs. “We picked them out ourselves, Mommy!” Dylan said. He’d gotten her two bouquets of colored, wooden tulips. “One was not enough,” he told her. She loved them, because they were from Dylan and because they would never die.
Ben had selected jewelry: purple beads on a silver necklace and bracelet. She loved them, because they from Ben and because they were purple.
Her stocking contained purple pens and pencils and mini notebooks. And at the bottom was a set of three rocks with the moon hand-painted on them. “That’s because of your name, mom,” Ben explained.
It was one of those happy moments in a life you wish you could just hold on to forever, or at least store it in a jar somewhere so you could take it out and relive it at will.
They all hugged. Then the kids went to play their new video games and wait for Nick to come. He’d been working the morning shift at the deli for triple-time.
Luna decided to check her in-box.
There was one match.
She was excited until she saw the guy was twenty-seven.
Twenty-seven?
What would they have in common?
Some match. How could a twenty-seven-year-old be interested in me?
If this was how it was gonna be, she might have to ask for her money back.
He was cute, that was for sure. She read his profile. He liked music. Who doesn’t like music? He liked taking walks and holding hands. Yeah, right. That’s what they all say.
In his personal statement he said he was “looking for someone understanding who believes in change and second chances.” Terrific. Probably a bank robber or bomb maker or something.
Disgusted, Luna left the site.
Christmas dinner at Antoinette’s was relatively uneventful. Luna was surprised by everyone’s good behavior. Not one argument erupted at the table, and more importantly, no one confronted her for tossing Nick.
Did they know she’d tossed Nick? Sal was on Nick’s father’s side, long estranged from Nick’s mom since the time he got caught kissing another woman in the meat freezer of the deli the family once owned. Nick’s mom had been bringing him a surprise dinner, but she’s the one who got a shocker. Nick’s dad and his girlfriend were forced to chill when Nick’s mom slammed the door and bolted them in, not bothering to call her brother-in-law to let them out for a couple of hours. Even after getting the deep freeze, Nick’s old-school dad wanted to stay married. But Nick’s mom didn’t.
No extended Marones were present tonight. These days, it took a death in the family to get the two sides together, glaring at each other from opposite sides of the viewing room.
And what did it matter if they knew? This bunch was famous for playing “pretend nothing’s wrong.” Their family pastime was burying their heads in the sand. The last acknowledged unpleasantness had been Nick’s parents’ divorce and that was thirty years ago. Only alcohol brought truths to the surface but tonight nobody was drinking. A Christmas miracle.
Loreena showed up with her box of pignoli cookies while everyone was chomping their way through a giant cannoli and a variety of other pastries. “Oh, am I late?” she asked.
“About two hours,” said Luna.
“Do you have any food left?”
Luna made her mother a plate of ham scraps and the ziti left in the corners of the pan. Loreena claimed to despise pasta, yet she ate every year at these dinners. This was
the one place where she never asked for risotto.
To take her mind off of her mother’s incongruities (a thought process which, if unchecked, inevitably spiraled into reflections about her childhood which were better left unlooked at) Luna went into the bathroom, took out her phone and checked her Match.com account again, hoping for another match.
There were a couple more guys, but they looked like complete rogues.
There was also a message from the twenty-seven year old!
He said he’d read her profile, and she sounded so wonderful.
He hoped he would be so lucky that she would give him a shot.
He confessed the reason why he needed a second chance: he was an ex-crack addict, and he lived in a halfway house.
Luna knew she should’ve hit ‘delete’ and been done with him, but his note was sweet.
And he was interested in her!
Oy vey, said Jiminy.
“Can’t you be an optimist?”
Only when there’s a possibility of something working out well, he answered.
“Oh, zip it. You said yourself, you can’t see the future.”
A blind mute could see how this will end.
Luna decided to talk to Sunny.
She gave her a call. “I have a Match dot com dilemma.”
“Come on over! We need to exchange presents anyway.”
“Cool.”
Pretty much everyone who didn’t live at the house had left, though Nick was still hanging with a couple of cousins who had stopped in for dessert, and Loreena lurked in the background picking at cannoli crumbs and pignoli nuts. Nick’s mom would sit and have tea with her later, once she was done putting the food away. Luna knew this from past years. She never understood why Loreena would want to be in the company of the mother of the man she’d focused much of her considerable rage and hatred on for considerable years, or for that matter, why Loreena would want to come to his family’s house at all. But it was one of many questions that could never be answered.
Luna wished her mother and everyone else a Merry Christmas and then said goodbye to the boys in one of their cousin’s rooms for a sleepover. She kissed them and told them she’d see them in the morning.
Sunny opened the door beaming. “I gave myself the best gift ever!”
“What’s that?”
Sunny poured Luna some eggnog, but Luna shook her head when Sunny offered to spike it. She had to drive home. “I broke up with Phil!”
“That’s not nice, doing that on Christmas.”
“How many times do I have to repeat myself? I’m not nice!” Sunny took a big slug of her eggnog. “I didn’t plan it, but he did something so ridiculously stupid I just couldn’t look at him anymore.”
“What was it?”
“I sent him out to pick up Cool Whip for my pudding pie, and he came back with Miracle Whip.”
“That is ridiculously stupid. Did he have an explanation?”
“He said they didn’t have any Cool Whip, and he didn’t want to come back empty-handed.” She gave Luna a deep look. “Can you imagine using Miracle Whip on a pie?”
Luna shuddered.
“It’s a miracle I didn’t whip him,” said Sunny.
“I understand your frustration,” Luna said. “But I’m still surprised. You’re missing out on his presents!” Sunny loved gifts and Phil gave thoughtful ones. He’d given Sunny a bunch of stuff last year, including Alice in Chains CDs to replace the ones she’d worn out and Sponge Bob pajamas.
Sunny said, “There’s no greater present than his absence. Now I can watch my Fellowship of the Ring DVD in peace. It’ll be a silent night tonight. Bless the Baby Jesus, amen.”
Luna didn’t know how Sunny could be so callous. Part of her was appalled, and part of her was envious. Could she ever treat someone with such indifference?
“Speaking of Baby Jesus, did you hear they stole him from the manger again?” Sunny asked.
Every year, a nativity scene was displayed outside town hall. The little bed remained empty until Christmas Eve, when Baby Jesus was placed inside at some late hour. And every year for as far back as Luna could remember Baby Jesus vanished sometime after twilight on Christmas Day. If you didn’t get a look at him in the sunlight, you’d missed your chance.
“I thought they put in a security camera at the top of the manger.”
“They did, but someone came from behind and cut the cord,” Sunny told her.
“Do you think it’s the same person every year?”
“Probably it’s their Christmas tradition. Some people sing carols, some bake cookies, and some snatch Baby Jesus.”
“What could they possibly do with all those Baby Jesuses?”
“Damned if I know. They must have a closet full by now.”
Luna said, “I always wondered, didn’t Joseph get upset that his wife got pregnant by someone else?”
“Good point,” said Sunny. “And why didn’t he have sex with his own wife? He must’ve had some set of blue balls.”
Sunny and Luna exchanged gifts. Sunny unwrapped her first gift, which was a clear plastic egg filled with pearly-white goo. The packaging said, Angel Snot: The gift of precious fluids from Heaven’s Messengers. “I love it! I’m going to keep it on my desk at work,” she told Luna.
She unwrapped her second gift: What Would Jesus Wear? Jesus dress-up magnets.
“Just when I thought the snot could not be topped,” said Sunny.
“Now Christ can really be in pajamas,” said Luna.
Sunny got Luna a Shakespeare action figure with removable quill. “Cool! I’ll prop him up when I’m writing,” she said.
“I figured you would,” said Sunny.
Sunny’s second gift was a metal It’s Happy Bunny sign. It read: Sucky losers not allowed.
“To hang outside your front door,” said Sunny.
“I hope this works,” said Luna.
“It will if you enforce it,” said Sunny. “Anyway, tell me about your dating dilemma. What’s wrong with the dude? Erectile dysfunction? Ditch him! Anything else, we can work with.”
“He’s kind of young. Twenty-seven.”
“Young can be good. They’ve got stamina.”
“You said The Coconut wasn’t good,” Luna reminded her.
“That had nothing to do with his age. It was his type: ‘B’ for boring. Youth doesn’t trump dull.”
“Do you think addicts can change?”
“Uh-oh. Why do you ask that?”
“He said he used to be addicted to crack.”
“How long ago is ‘used to be?’”
“I’m not sure, but he lives in a halfway house right now. He’s got a ten PM curfew.”
“Well… I have a few friends that got off drugs. They were serious about it. But it’s tough. Look at Sal. He’s cracked back out a few times, and his mother’s wallet has paid the price. Then again, Sal’s an idiot. Is this guy an idiot?”
“Doesn’t seem so.” Luna was confused. “So… Should I give him the benefit of the doubt?”
“I think you have a bigger problem.”
“What’s that?”
“If he has a ten PM lock-down, how are you ever gonna have sex?”
Luna shrugged. “We’ll deal with that later, if necessary. Right now, I just have to be sure this is a good thing for me.”
“He told you all this drug stuff in his email?”
Luna nodded.
Sunny whistled. “Well, everything’s out in the open. It can’t get worse than crack. Unless, of course, he’s a mass murderer or something. But what are the odds on his being a junkie and a serial killer?”
“So what should I do?”
“Is he cute?”
“He is.”
“Then meet him. At least you’ll have some eye candy. But watch your purse.”
TWENTY-ONE
When she woke up, Luna called Alex. He had a beautiful voice filled with good humor. The kind of tone you could feel wrapping itself around you an
d keeping you warm.
Luna decided to go for it.
But before she could meet the ex-addict who could be her potential boyfriend, she had to again face the ex-addict who was her father.
What are you hoping to get out of seeing your father again? Jiminy asked.
“Nothing.”
Good. Then you won’t be disappointed.
Luna picked up the kids and took them to Build-A-Bear at the mall to make the grandpa they barely knew a birthday/get well teddy bear. They chose a tan one, and Dylan insisted on dressing him in an old-time train engineer’s outfit: blue pin-striped overalls, a matching cap and a bandana.
“Grandpa doesn’t work on a railroad,” Ben told Dylan. “You don’t even know if he likes trains.”
“I don’t care,” Dylan responded. And Ben didn’t care enough to argue.
Just as well, because the store didn’t have any heroin-addict accessories for the bears. Not a syringe or a tourniquet in sight.
Lenny was parked by the window in his new room at Blue Skies Extended Care Facility when they walked in. Well, a wheelchair was an improvement over a bed, Luna thought.
The room was not an improvement over the hospital. It looked like a hospital room, with two beds and curtains to separate them. The other bed was unoccupied, just as it had been in the hospital. Was it better to be alone in this sterile room, or to have the company of a person one didn’t know or choose? Would it make a difference to her father, anyway?
“H-hi!” Lenny exclaimed when he saw Luna and her boys.
Ben said, “Happy birthday, Grandpa!”
Dylan added, “We made you a bear!”
“Th-thanks!”
Luna wondered if her dad knew what they were talking about and if he even knew who the boys were. They’d grown so much… and he’d never really known them.
Dylan propped the bear on Lenny’s lap. Lenny touched it with his left hand, rubbing his finger on its soft paw. Inadvertently, he triggered the squeezable mechanism that Dylan had also insisted on including: a high-pitched voice that squealed, “I love you!”
Luna Rising Page 14