by Amy Matayo
I blink, flustered and trying to work up some irritation all over again. “Stop being so critical. Now when are we opening gifts?” I’m a two-year-old again, because a tantrum is all I can manage right now and I bought stupid Play-dough like an idiot.
Caleb laughs. “Tomorrow. Now go in the kitchen and check on the tenderloin. It still has another hour to bake, but I don’t want it to burn.”
“And what am I supposed to do if it is burning?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Take it out or something.”
I roll my eyes and stomp toward the kitchen to the sounds of people coming and going. Just before I reach the doorway, I’m struck by a thought—something I realized on my way inside this building tonight—and I turn.
“Caleb?”
“Yeah?” He’s helping the last little girl here into her coat; it’s the same shade of cotton candy pink as mine. I doubt it comes with an agenda. When he finally looks at me, I ask.
“You’re really not going to take it down, are you?” It’s weird, his refusal to budge, and I can’t keep a small amount of awe from creeping into my voice. When his eyebrows scrunch together in confusion, I elaborate. “The nativity scene. You’re going to leave it up?”
He gives me slight smile. “Until New Year’s Day. Maybe longer.”
I just look at him a long moment, trying hard to process this guy who goes against the norm—who breaks all the rules with the confidence of someone much older, even with the whole world freaking out around him.
I guess I stare at him too long, because now he’s asking the questions. “Why? You’re looking at me like you think I’m crazy.” Like I’ve sprouted a third arm and you’re trying to guess what I’ll do with it.
I slowly shake my head, unable to look away. “Not crazy. Just…different. Everyone always takes it down. Eventually, one of two things happen: either we manage to persuade them that making a small sacrifice is better than losing money, or they cave to the pressure of public outcry. People don’t like pressure. Or the negative attention that comes with it.”
He closes the door and drops the blinds, shutting us in for the night. Then he turns to me. “Well, that’s the thing about me, Kate. I don’t mind pressure. In fact, you can pretty much count on me doing the exact opposite of what’s expected. Case in point—a pastor going to a bar, getting into a fistfight, then picking up a barely-dressed drunk girl and taking her home. Not a lot of church-going men would do that.” He slides me a wink…one I feel to the tips of my toes. He means it as a joke, but to me it means…everything.
I swallow and force my voice to work. “That dress wasn’t mine. I would never wear something that tacky on purpose. It was Lucy’s.”
“Why am I not surprised?” My heart flips at the way he grins at me. “It wasn’t all bad, though. You looked pretty darn good in that dress.”
I bite my lip and turn away before he can see me blush.
I like different.
I like different a lot.
*
“Tell me about your tattoo.”
“You mean my weird body art?” He taps the toe of his shoe against mine. “What do you want to know?”
We’re lying side by side on our backs at the edge of the gym floor with our elbows touching—whether accidental or otherwise I’m not sure—and we’re looking up at the Christmas tree. Twinkling lights shine down on us like a thousand glittering stars, and I’ve never seen anything so pretty. I can’t believe this hasn’t been a yearly occurrence for me.
“Did it hurt when you got it?”
“Yes.”
“Bad?” I cut my arm once on a table saw in my garage, and I can still remember the pain. I have a tiny scar just above my elbow to prove it.
“Like getting stitches without anesthetic. And that was the good part.”
I turn my head to look at him. “Then why did you get it?”
He blinks at the lights, and for a moment his breathing stops. I know this because his chest, all this time rising up and down in a steady rhythm, stops moving completely. He swallows, and the sound drifts toward me. “As a reminder.”
I know I shouldn’t ask, and I know the reason is painful. Like the feeling you sometimes get when you’re late for an appointment or miss a loved one’s birthday and just before it hits you, unexplained panic sets in. That’s how I feel right now. “A reminder of what?”
He sighs. “Of my mother.”
His mother. Other than that brief talk about his stint in jail, it’s the first time he’s mentioned her, the first time he’s allowed me a glimpse into his past. Something tells me it isn’t pretty. Something also tells me not to say another word to keep the spell around us from breaking.
“She died when I was seven. I almost died, too, but I wasn’t that lucky.”
My heart breaks at those words, and as Caleb goes on to tell me the story of a kid abandoned as a baby—then left alone and bleeding at the bottom of a ravine—my eyes begin to sting. He talks of standing helpless as the life he once knew was ripped away before he lost his first tooth, of the way it left him isolated and lost and without anyone to love him. Of the carousel of foster homes and friends and schools that left him spinning without a handhold.
It all falls into place. These kids. Caleb’s heart for service. His determination to keep this place together…to do whatever it takes to provide the children the best Christmas they’ve ever had. A single tear spills over as I listen, the first tear I remember in years. I’ve been raised to believe in the matter-of-fact. To suck up feelings and get onstage. Pointless nerves don’t sell causes. Any good performer knows that.
My nerves are frazzled now.
“No wonder you were in jail. You must have lost your mind after she died.” It takes work to keep my voice steady. And even though I’m still not sure he wants me to know about this part of his life, the quiet intimacy of the moment makes the timing seem appropriate. I hope with everything in me that I’m not wrong.
“I did lose my mind.” He says it so softly it’s like I’m not supposed to hear the words. “Lost it for years and years. But that isn’t the reason I went to jail.”
His tone carries the hint of caution, a warning to proceed carefully, as if he wants me to make sure I’m ready for answers before asking him anything else. But of course, I’m ready. I’ve been ready since the moment I found him wearing my pink robe.
“Then what was the reason? Why were you in jail, Caleb?”
He’s quiet for so long that I’m not sure he’s going to tell me. But then he does, and that’s the moment I know. The moment I know that no matter how I was raised or what I believe or whether things work out between Caleb and me or we say goodbye tonight and never see each other again, I’ve lost myself. I’ve lost myself, and he’s holding all the important pieces. Even if I run millions of miles from here, I’ll never get them back.
“Five years ago, I caught my best friend having sex in the back seat of my car outside a bar in Tulsa. Except the girl wasn’t awake. She was out cold, drugged up on so much alcohol and pills that she should have been dead.” He stares at the ceiling as the implication hovers heavy between us. That was nearly me. In the same way he saved that girl, he saved me, too. Only with me, the timing was better. “I pulled him off her and beat the crap out of him. I nearly killed him—would have if I hadn’t been so drunk that I stumbled and fell at the exact wrong moment—and he ran before I could finish the job. While I was trying to get her out of the car, she woke up enough to see me hovering over her and started screaming, and that’s when the police came.”
I just look at him until it all adds up, and I’m horrified. “And they thought you did it to her?”
He nods. “It was my car, and she was bruised pretty badly. Bleeding…” The roughness in his voice makes my own throat hurt. “It took over two dozen tests and forty-eight hours to clear me of the charges. Those might have been the worst hours of my life if it hadn’t been for what I’d already been through with my mother.”<
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Everything in me aches. My throat. My chest. My eyes. The pain of trying to control my tears and grab more than a shallow, ineffective breath becomes just too much. I can’t ask him what kinds of tests. Or what happened to his friend. Or how he met Chris and Scott and everyone else who gave him a second chance and turned his life around. I just know that I want that same thing…a chance. A turnaround, except with my family intact. I don’t know if it’s possible, and I have no idea how to get it. But right then it occurs to me that Caleb of all people might be the one to show me.
I ask the only question that seems safe. The only one that might keep me from shattering right here on the old wooden floor as thoughts of family and faith and new ways of life dart through my brain.
“Why an eagle? How does that remind you of your mother?” My voice is thick with the worry of finding out.
He doesn’t speak for a long moment, but then he finds my hand and squeezes it once, like he needs the encouragement to push forward. I squeeze back and link my fingers through his, giving it to him. “The day she died, the last thing my mother told me was to stay awake. To sit up and keep my eyes open until help came to rescue me. So I did. For three long hours I did, even though I was tired, even though it hurt, and even though she was dead in my lap and I wanted to join her. But the day I decided to follow God, I realized that I had never really stayed awake at all. All those years, I was sound asleep and wanting to die at the bottom of that ravine.” He finally looks at me and smiles. His eyes are watery like mine. “But when I met God, I woke up. More than woke up, I soared. I think my mother would be proud that I finally did what she asked.”
I’m under water, and I can’t breathe. Trying physically hurts.
I think of my mother. My father. Of all the people in their organization and in the media who expect something from me…things I no longer have the energy to give. I think of everything about my life, every speech I’ve made and every flier I’ve handed out. I think of how I’ve felt dead forever, a puppet wearing pink in a show I no longer want to perform. I want to soar, but I have no idea how. I’m not sure I ever will. Or if I’ll ever have the courage.
It doesn’t take me long to figure out that I don’t.
Or that I shouldn’t have asked Caleb about his tattoo, which led to this entire conversation.
No longer able to hold my finger over the hole in the dam containing my tears, I let go, turn my head, and shatter right beside him.
29
Caleb
“A Long December”
—Counting Crows
It’s Christmas. The best day of the year out of three-hundred and sixty-five options. The one day when adults can act like kids and kids can beg for whatever toy they want without fear of being reprimanded. It’s Christmas. The day Jesus was born. The celebration of everything His arrival represents.
Today is Christmas.
And I’m in love with an atheist.
“All we need to do is convert her to our side and you’ll be the luckiest guy on the planet.”
From the moment I woke up this morning, Scott’s words have echoed in my head, ricocheting through my mind like a childhood taunt. “You’re never the luckiest guy on the planet…never the luckiest guy…”
And it’s true. Since the beginning of November, I’ve wanted only one thing for Christmas this year. It wasn’t until Kate left last night that I realized might not ever happen.
“Happy Christmas Eve!” Mrs. Jenkins walks into the kitchen and shouts this before I’ve even poured my first cup of coffee. The sound is like the blare of a horn at two a.m.—rude and unwelcome. I reach for the creamer, reminding myself for the hundredth time to get a working coffee pot of my own. They cost twenty bucks, won’t exactly break the bank, but I can’t ever seem to remember.
“Happy Christmas Eve,” I mutter back, pinching the space between my eyebrows. I’m still wearing pajama bottoms and an old t-shirt and haven’t brushed my teeth—the two requirements that need to be met before engaging in conversation. It’s a personal rule of mine.
“Happy Christmas Eve!” she says again when Scott walks into the room. I cringe, especially because what comes next is—
“Happy Christmas Eve!” Scott shouts back. I’m surrounded by Chihuahuas yapping in my ear. This family is insanely perky in the mornings, and right now I want to muzzle both of them and stick them inside an electric fence. Christmas might be my favorite holiday, but not before noon, and not on a day that I don’t have to work.
“It’s not even a real holiday yet,” I say. “Could you both reign in the enthusiasm until tomorrow?”
They share an amused look, one I don’t have to see to feel. Chris shuffles in and heads toward me—my only ally in this Disney World nightmare—to get his own liquid wake-up drug. The mugs clang together as he grabs one from the cabinet, further exacerbating my already cranky personality. I’ve been compared to Scrooge in the immediate hours after sunrise, and not just in December. It’s a label I don’t mind wearing. My inner Santa comes out after lunch.
“Happy Christmas Eve.” Chris’s voice is only marginally softer but somehow even more annoying.
“Not you too,” I groan. It seems they’ve all succumbed to yapping this morning. I’m still too tired for it, and if I’m being honest, still torn up over the vision of Kate last night, quietly crying for what felt like hours while I held on to her hand. I’m still not sure how long we stayed that way, but at the time I just knew that nothing was worth letting go, not as long as she needed me. And when she didn’t, she pulled her hand away.
I’m sorry, Caleb. I can’t stay here.
And then she stood up and left.
When the door slammed behind her, all my prayers—all Scott’s prayers—seemed to bounce off the ceiling of heaven and break apart at my feet. All thoughts of being on the same team, of sharing the same faith, of walking side by side with a girl I’d grown to love like the idiot I am, were gone just like that. I’m glad I never told her.
Now it’s Christmas, my favorite time of year, and I just want to bury myself alive. I’m counting on the coffee to give me a reason not to.
“What’s on tap for today?” Chris asks no one in particular as he leans against the counter.
“Bud Lite, hold the ice,” I say. It’s a lame joke, maybe the worst one I’ve ever told, but the sun has barely cracked the horizon and nothing is particularly funny.
The whole room groans. It serves them right for being so chipper. “We haven’t heard a beer joke in months. We thought you’d forgotten.” I hear the wistful edge in Mrs. Jenkins’ voice, like it was a futile hope.
“Of course I haven’t forgotten. I have a lot more where that came from.”
“Lucky us,” Scott pipes up, grabbing a bowl and a carton of eggs. He begins cracking them and I reach for a pan. Chris grabs a stack of plates from the cabinet and Mrs. Jenkins’ opens the bacon, separating the strips one-by-one and laying them in the pan. She asks me about the kid’s program tonight and I fill her in on the details. Before long I can almost forget about the turmoil surrounding Kate. Eventually the food preparation turns to eating and eating turns to cleaning and cleaning turns to talk of opening gifts.
Somehow I forget about my desire to head back to bed and skip this day, and my excitement returns, albeit only on a miniscule level. But miniscule is better than nothing, and I grab onto to it with everything I have. It’s Christmas Eve morning. And even though it took me a while, I manage to find the joy.
Everything might have gone south the past two months, but I still have God. I still have my faith. I still have a family.
For now, for always, it’s enough.
*
It doesn’t take long for me to realize it isn’t enough.
It should be, but right now it isn’t and I can’t take much more.
I’m in my apartment and my phone is taunting me with every minute it doesn’t ring, so I shove it in the top drawer of my dresser to keep from staring at the black
screen. I’ve eaten, showered, taken a nap, and straightened up—something I rarely do because who cares? I’m a bachelor. Messiness is expected. Still, I’ve wiped down the bathroom counter, rearranged my desk drawers, and located all the bags of lifesavers and candy canes I bought last-minute to fill the kid’s stockings because someone has to play Santa for them.
I check my watch. Only two-thirty, but I’ve run out of stalling tactics. The kids will start arriving to the center at five. I might as well make sure they have something incredible to show up for. I’ve never actually worn a Santa suit and probably never will again, but this year will be the exception. This year, I’m going to find one.
With no idea where to start looking, I grab my keys off the dresser and head out to find Scott.
Because if I’m playing Santa, his skinny butt is playing an elf.
30
Kate
“It’s My Life”
—Bon Jovi
It’s a few minutes before five, and even though I know it’s too early, I can almost hear the sound of children ripping Christmas paper from those packages. I can hear shrieks. Laughter. Even the sound of Mr. Jenkins’ voice as he shares a message of hope just like the one he shared a couple of weeks ago while I stood in the shadows. I reach for my pillow and cover my head, but the phantom noise only intensifies. I shouldn’t be lying in my bed, anyway. All of it is punishment for my laziness.
In the other room, my mother is making dinner. Lasagna, if she sticks with what she mentioned yesterday. It’s my favorite, but it sounds awful—like a defiled Christmas feast I’ve never eaten before. Tenderloin. Tenderloin is what Caleb eats on Christmas Eve, and tenderloin is what I want, served on paper plates with plastic forks in a bleach-scented gym. It screams Christmas. Somehow I know this, even though—with the exception of that tiny tree in my apartment bedroom—Christmas has never spoken to me at all.
I push the pillow off my face and sit up, then reach for the novel I started reading earlier that morning—wanting to lose myself in the story of another person’s life. I could’ve chosen better than this particular character’s, but sometimes, like music, books are the best way to escape.