Tending Roses

by Wingate, Lisa

I caught a dose of Ben’s high spirits as he struggled to carry an enormous box into the house. “Ben, what in the world . . . ?”

  “Surplus from Christmas pageants past.” He gleefully lowered the box to the kitchen floor. “Can you believe all this stuff was just sitting in the storage shed at church? Look. We’ve got lights.” He held up a tangled mass. “Garland, life-size gingerbread men.” Diving into the box again, he came up holding a felt tunic, and he fanned an eyebrow at me. “And an elf suit in case you want to dress up later.”

  The image made me laugh and blush. I looked over my shoulder to make sure we were alone in the kitchen.

  “Dad’s lost his mind,” I whispered to Josh, setting his carrier on the floor so he could investigate a strand of glittering tinsel. “Grandma said there was a trunk of old Christmas decorations in the attic. Maybe we can get the house decorated and put Grandma in a better mood when she gets home from town.”

  Ben chuckled. “That would take some serious Christmas magic. She looked like she was about ready to slug old Oliver when they came out of the grocery store.” He gave me an evil, sideways wink. “I think maybe he was getting a little fresh.”

  Aunt Jeane chuckled at Ben’s joke as she entered the kitchen. “That poor man. She’s always picking on him.” She took Joshua and made goo-goo eyes at him.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about old Oliver,” Ben said. “He looks happiest when he’s bothering Grandma V. I think it’s a love-hate relationship both ways.” Ben set aside the tangled lights and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “So, let’s go get the trunk out of the attic and see what’s in the old Vongortler Christmas stash.”

  “You guys go on,” Aunt Jeane said, holding Josh above her head like an airplane. “Josh and I will go sit in the living room with Uncle Robert for a while.”

  So Ben and I left Josh in the capable hands of his auntie and proceeded to the third-story attic, up a short flight of stairs at the end of the upper-story hall. I opened the door cautiously, peering inside as the overhead light blinked, crackled, and finally came to life.

  The room looked as though a tornado had blown through, depositing empty wooden crates, old toys with wheels missing, a couple of bald baby dolls, chairs with broken parts, trunks with old clothes and quilts spilling out, lamps with torn shades, a dress dummy lying on its side like a headless Rip Van Winkle, and an old-fashioned shopping cart tilted on three wheels. A layer of fine dust covered everything, giving it the appearance of a faded still-life painting.

  Ben looked curiously around the room. “What’s all this?”

  “Grandma’s treasures,” I said, moving aside a couple of hideous framed paintings of Spanish knights and unearthing the trunk marked CHRISTMAS. I remembered the old red steamer trunk from my childhood. “She never goes to the county dump without scavenging something. Karen and I used to think she was a little nuts.”

  Ben skewed a brow as if he agreed. “But all this stuff is . . . broken. It’s junk.”

  “Not to Grandma.” I dragged the trunk out of the corner. “Karen called it junk once, and both of us got a thirty-minute lecture on wastefulness and how people shouldn’t throw away useful things just because they need a little extra care.” The last statement made me think of Grandma’s situation, and I felt a painful twinge inside me.

  Ben met my gaze for just a moment, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.

  He cleared his throat and grabbed the other handle of the trunk. “Well, let’s get this thing downstairs and see what’s inside.” Closing the door as we left the attic, he took one more look at the mess and shook his head. “Hope the trunk’s not full of bald angels and three-legged reindeer.”

  I chuckled as we lugged the trunk downstairs. “No telling what’s in here,” I said, suddenly fascinated by the possibilities. “I’ll bet no one has opened this thing since the last Christmas we came to the farm. I think I was about twelve. There used to be some real family heirlooms in the Christmas trunk.”

  Ben and I set the trunk at the bottom of the stairs and spent the next hour poring through the old Christmas decorations. The trunk was a time capsule of my family’s history—ancient carved wooden ornaments initialed by my grandfather, a dangling Roy Rogers and Trigger that must have been ordered off a cereal box or soap flakes, an official Red Rider BB gun ornament that had probably been my father’s, a tiny cloth angel with Aunt Jeane’s initials stitched on the back, a glittered hickory nut made by my mother, a skinny Santa Claus my parents sent to Grandma from a trip to Germany, several homely macaroni angels crafted by Karen and me in Girl Scouts, and a handmade manger scene that Grandma once told me her father had made for her. All of us were there in that old trunk, frozen in time.

  Ben and I strung artificial pine garlands in the dogtrot and along the stair banister, then hung the ornaments carefully on the garlands, where they could be removed and later put on the tree. As Aunt Jeane and Uncle Robert prepared supper in the kitchen, Ben and I stood in our bedroom doorway and surveyed our handiwork.

  “These bring back a lot of memories,” I whispered, looking at the ornaments again. I was sad and happy and tired all at once. “Christmas was always my favorite time of the year when I was little.”

  “It is for most kids.” Ben flipped the light switch, and we stood in the twinkling blue glow of Christmas lights. “New bikes, new skateboards . . . new laptop computer with a ten-gig drive, high-res screen, and turbo processor . . .” He paused hopefully.

  I chuckled at his joke, knowing there would be no new laptop computer under our tree this year. Then I went on reminiscing. “You know, for me the best thing about Christmas was that we were going to have a few days when no one was rushing off to be somewhere, and there were no baby-sitters coming to stay with us. Mom loved Christmas. She always made Dad take time off, and we’d decorate the tree and drive downtown to look at the lights. She got so excited looking at the decorations. I think she liked it as much as Karen and I did.”

  Ben slipped his arms around me from behind and rested his chin on my head. “That’s the first time you’ve mentioned your mom in years,” he said quietly.

  I realized suddenly that he was right. “I guess I just sort of pushed her out of my mind. Maybe I’ve been pretending she’s gone away to one of her symposiums, and she’s coming back.”

  He held me closer, his arms like a warm blanket around me. “She isn’t coming back, Kate.”

  “I know.” It was hard to face that my mother and I had spent so little time together, even harder to face that my father was still alive, and I didn’t even have the desire to see him. I wondered if I had ever felt love for him, or he for me. He was little more than a wax statue in my memory—a figurine present at birthdays, holiday dinners, graduations, and not much else. He had spent his life studying cells under a microscope, yet he was blind to the events going on around him. He was a paradox I could not understand.

  His mistakes were mistakes I did not want to repeat.

  “Ben, I don’t want our family to end up like this,” I said quietly. Stepping away from him, I walked into our room and sat on the edge of the bed.

  He followed me and leaned against the dresser, looking confused. “Where is that coming from? I thought we were hanging Christmas decorations and having a good time.”

  “That’s just it.” I wished I could find the words to explain the sense of lost opportunity that gripped me. “Twenty years from now, I don’t want Josh to be hanging Christmas decorations somewhere with his mind full of bitter memories and disappointments. I want him to remember good times—to remember us together as a family, to know how to build a family of his own someday.” I sighed, looking at Ben, who was looking at me with an expression as blank as the summer sky. “You don’t build family memories by being at work all the time. We deserve more than the back of your head in front of a computer screen.”

  He rolled his eyes as if it were a tired subject. “It’s a little hard to sit around bouncing a baby on my knee
when I’ve got a business to build and bills to pay.”

  “I understand that.” I felt surprisingly calm, yet determined, as if I knew I was on the right path this time. “But the fact is, there will always be more work that can be done, more contracts you can get, one more little detailing job for James. There are tons of things I could and probably should be doing for work right now. But at some point, you have to put it aside and get busy with the things that really matter.”

  Ben threw up his hands, looking helpless. “All right, I admit it. I’m just not very good with little babies. My dad never changed any diapers or washed any bottles. It didn’t scar us for life. I think you’re worrying too much.”

  I took a deep breath. Ben’s family got along on the surface, but the truth was more complicated. “You’ve been complaining about your dad for as long as I can remember. He was never there. You never played football together. He didn’t have time to help you fix your bike, your car, your curveball. He never attended your baseball games, your football games, the school play. All he did was struggle fifteen hours a day to build a business, and everyone in your family seemed to think that was acceptable. But you always felt the absence, remember? Don’t you remember telling me that years ago? Don’t you remember us talking about how life shouldn’t be that way?” I raised my hands, pleading to be heard. “Why would you want to repeat that pattern?”

  He tipped his chin up confidently, looking out the window as Oliver Mason’s car drove up in the twilight. “It’s not going to be like that with Josh and me.”

  I sighed, watching Grandma come up the walk. “At what point do you intend to step into Josh’s life and make him your buddy? And what if, by the time you’re ready for him, he has already given up on you?”

  Ben just turned and stared at me, blinking, as if maybe what I’d said had finally gotten through to him.

  The supper call came from the kitchen, and our conversation ended. Ben was unusually quiet during dinner and through the rest of the evening. He went to sleep that night without a word, turned toward his side of the bed, not seeming angry, just silent. I wondered what he was thinking.

  I lay on my side of the bed, staring out the window at the heavy full moon, thinking about Ben and me—where we had come from and where we were now. Ten years ago, we had arrived in Chicago with nothing but a little secondhand furniture and a stack of college loans to pay. At the time, the most important thing was to get the best-paying jobs we could and bury ourselves in the business of getting ahead. All we wanted at that point in our lives was to pay off the college loans. When we had the loans paid off, all we wanted was a new car. When we had the new car, all we wanted was a house, then a bigger house, then a boat, a country-club membership, a baby, a family . . .

  Maybe you should start wanting less. . . .

  Maybe we kept wanting more because all the possessions in our lives were taking us further away from the one thing we started out with—peace. When Ben and I were in college, we had nothing, but we could sit and talk for hours. We could laugh together at the littlest things. We could share nearly everything.

  Now, even when our bodies were together, our minds were spinning ahead—to the next job site, the next round of bills to pay, the next meeting, the next fund-raiser, the new house . . . Ben and I had everything, but not the time to enjoy any of it. The problem was, I didn’t know how we were going to get off the carousel. It wouldn’t do me any good to get off alone. We had to do it together.

  I closed my eyes and tried not to think about it anymore. Maybe a few more months at the farm would give us time to reconnect. Maybe Ben felt the same deep need. Maybe that was why he was so quick to consider staying at the farm for a while. Maybe, even if he didn’t know it yet, Grandma Rose’s magic was working on him too.

  But in the morning, he was gone and there was a note saying he had some things to do and would meet us at church for the service.

  Grandma had insisted the night before that we would all attend the last service before Christmas, and nobody was getting out of it. I was surprised when Ben said we would go, without even asking me, but I knew he was probably right in agreeing. Grandma would have worked herself into a fit if we’d refused.

  I knew Grandma wouldn’t be happy to learn that Ben had gone to the office, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, so I rose and dressed, then went to the kitchen, where Aunt Jeane and Grandma were already starting breakfast.

  Aunt Jeane looked toward the doorway. “Where is Ben this morning?”

  “Gone.” I tried not to sound as embarrassed by his absence as I felt. “He left a note saying he had some things to do.”

  Grandma drew back, giving me a horrified look as she set a platter of pancakes on the table. “Well, I hope he won’t miss service. We’re having the nativity and the handbell choir. Everyone will be there. It would be terrible if he missed it. Everyone will ask where he is, and with him using the offices at the church, it won’t seem right that he doesn’t attend Christmas service.”

  “He said he would meet us there,” I replied quickly.

  She went on as if she hadn’t heard me. “Now, don’t forget Dell Jordan will be coming by to ride to church with us. I told her to be here at ten-fifteen and not a minute later. It isn’t right to be late for service. Are you certain Ben knows what time to be there? You know, service begins at ten-fifty, not eleven o’clock. If he comes at eleven, he’ll be walking in late, and . . .”

  “Grandma, he’ll be there. Stop worrying.” I sounded more sure than I felt. I hoped Ben didn’t get tied up on his computer and forget to come. Grandma would never let us hear the end of it.

  As the morning wore on, Grandma latched on like a hound on a bone. Her complaints made me feel even worse about Ben’s absence. She fretted all the way through breakfast, getting out of her chair to check the driveway, speculating on what might be keeping him, asking me if he had taken dress clothes with him, or if I should bring some along.

  I refused to check his closet and finally resorted to using one of her own lines. “Have a little faith, Grandma. He’ll be there.” I hope . . .

  Grandma huffed an irritated breath and went to the car, where she sat for fifteen minutes waiting impatiently for the rest of us to finish getting ready.

  Uncle Robert laughed when she started honking the horn. “Sounds like we’d better get out there before she goes into a conniption.” He smiled at me as we walked out the door. “This is all Ben’s fault, you know. He didn’t stick with the plan.”

  “Make sure you tell him that.” I was only partly joking. “All I can say is, he’d better be there.”

  And he was, waiting at the curb like a valet, helping old ladies out of their cars and saying flattering things about their Christmas dresses. He had the whole over-seventy crowd giggling and blushing like a bunch of schoolgirls when we arrived. Grandma was no exception. He laid on a few compliments, and she instantly forgot that she’d been complaining about him all morning.

  Aunt Jeane and I shrugged at each other, wishing we had that kind of magic.

  Most of the congregation was gathered on the sidewalk enjoying the beautiful December morning. Standing in groups, they were laughing and talking, discussing what had been said in Sunday school, or how unusually warm the weather was, or sharing their Christmas plans.

  We were barely out of the car when there was a knot of people around us, hugging me and Aunt Jeane, and telling Dell how charming she looked in the green daisy-print dress Grandma had found for her. Dell smiled shyly and clung to Grandma’s hand as the senior ladies updated Grandma on the progress toward the upcoming workday and delivery of Christmas dinners. The ladies quickly kidnapped Joshua, passing him around and arguing about who would watch him in the nursery. He giggled as three of them gathered the loose children and whisked them off to the church annex.

  The high sounds of childish voices drifted away, leaving only the low hum of adult conversation. I had a sensation of being at my mother’s funeral. I was overwh
elmed with the urge to run to the car and lock myself away.

  Ben slipped his hand into mine as if he knew. “Been a while, huh?” he whispered. “Better get inside before lightning strikes us.”

  Taking a deep breath, I turned toward the door as the chimes rang overhead. I walked slowly forward, clinging to Ben as to a lifeline.

  The chapel was as I remembered it—two modest rows of ancient oak pews solemnly facing the pulpit and choir box. Behind the choir box was the wide window to the baptistry, added long after the church was built, so that baptisms would no longer have to take place in the river. I stared long at the old stained-glass window above the baptismal pool, studying the colored beams of sunlight that reflected on the water and floated around the room like angels. There had been no sunlight on the day of my mother’s funeral. Only darkness and a cold winter rain. I wasn’t certain if that was reality or just the memory of my own pain.

  Grandma patted my hand and shifted to put a pillow behind her back as the organ started playing. Standing with our hymnals, we sang “Love Lifted Me” and “Joy to the World.” Beside me, I heard Ben’s deep baritone and Grandma’s high, thin soprano and Dell’s light, sweet voice. The words of the song drifted through my soul, lighting the blackness within, taking away old pain. Closing my eyes, I heard the words from my childhood, heard my own voice singing like my mother’s, Dell’s singing like mine, Grandma’s just as I’d always remembered it, crackling high above all the others. A wonderful sense of renewal filled me. Time passes, I thought, but memories do not.

  I sat holding Ben’s hand, feeling thankful that we were there together as we listened to the handbells play “Away in a Manger,” and watched the children file in to complete the manger scene at the front of the church.

  Afterward, Brother Baker took the pulpit and began a sermon on the humble birth of Christ and the greatness of God’s gift to the world. It was a lesson I remembered from some childhood Christmas visit, spoken in exactly the same way now as then, same words, same inflections, same look of passion in Brother Baker’s eyes. There was comfort in the fact that some things never change. It was as if the church had been waiting in suspended animation all the time I was away.