by Tara Sivec
“You bought me comfortable, pretty clothes,” I smile at her, while she continues to file. “You only bought me pretty clothes. You didn’t buy one single thing for yourself, because you’re still wearing Jen’s clothes, and Jen told me last night you asked to borrow a few more things until you could go back and shop for yourself. Millie Chamberlin, you did something sweet and selfless.”
She scoffs and shakes her head at me.
“I’m feeling feverish; I’m sure that’s it. Probably coming down with something, being here on another planet like this and not used to the surroundings,” she explains it away, blowing nail dust off her fingers and holding her hand out to examine it.
“No, you thought of someone else first instead of yourself. You really do have a heart!”
“That’s definitely not it. Feel my forehead; it’s warm,” she says, leaning forward and sticking her head closer to me.
We’re both laughing when a chime from my phone on the nightstand indicating that it’s powering up has us both shutting up and turning to look at it. I finally decided to suck it up this morning, pulled it out of the bottom of my purse, and plugged it in to charge while I was getting dressed.
“I don’t know why you even bothered turning that thing on,” Millie says softly as we wait for it to power on, update, and do whatever else is taking so long. “You know seeing all those messages is just going to stress you out. There’s nothing you can do about any of it now.”
“I know that, in theory.” I shrug. “And it’s not like I’m planning on answering any of the messages. I don’t want to ruin this weird, happy Christmas buzz I’m feeling. I guess a part of me still…” I trail off, not wanting to say the words out loud, because it makes me sound like an idiot. But leave it to Millie to know everything.
“A part of you still wants to know you’re needed,” she finishes. “That they miss you, even though they’re going to show it by calling you a selfish bitch and an assortment of other colorful names.”
I laugh and shake my head. “Exactly. Which means I’m insane.”
“Well, yes, but that’s beside the point. Good God, how ancient is your phone? It’s taking forever to power up,” Millie complains.
Leaning over, I unplug it from the charger and remove it from the nightstand, looking down at my screen in confusion. It’s definitely on. And there are no unread text messages, no missed calls, and no voicemails.
“That can’t be right,” I mutter, clicking through everything again. “There must not be a signal around here again.”
Millie grabs her phone from next to her hip on my bed, turning it around and showing me her notifications flying in, one after another.
“So… they just… don’t need me.” I nod, in a little bit of a shocked daze as I continue staring at my phone that does indeed say I have a strong signal.
This is what I wanted. For them to figure things out on their own and finally behave like adults who take care of their own shit. So why in the hell do I feel so… blah?
“They don’t even give a shit if I’m okay,” I whisper, blinking back the tears and swallowing past the lump in my throat.
“Yes, they do. They’re just giving you space. Now, that’s enough being sad,” Millie orders, tapping my shoulder awkwardly with the tips of her fingers. “There, there. You know crying makes me uncomfortable.”
I laugh through my sniffles, shaking my head at her once again.
“When I was FaceTiming with my life coach last night, we consulted my crystals, and she’s really confident good things are coming for you,” Millie reassures me. “I mean, she told me this cold weather is really clearing up my complexion, but the cold weather is because of you, and I bought you a bunch of super good things, so I’m sure that’s what she meant. Yay for you!” Millie shakes her fists and does a body shimmy. “Okay, enough feeling sorry for yourself. Get up and go meet the day!” Millie says, popping off my bed, grabbing my hands, and pulling me up with her.
“What are your plans today?” I ask as we walk toward the door.
“Oh, I’m going to take a nap, silly!” She laughs, opening the door and walking out into the hall.
“You just woke up.”
“Right. An hour ago.”
She laughs at me again before disappearing inside her room across the hall. Glancing down at my door handle and then around the hallway at everyone else’s, I laugh again when I see Millie has put a bouquet of beef jerky sticks in everyone’s stocking, wrapped in red ribbons and bows, with one of her headshots attached. Signed, of course.
I glance at my phone in my hand every few seconds as I walk down the hallway and take the stairs. It feels weird holding it in my hand again after being without it for four days. It feels even stranger that it’s not buzzing and dinging every few seconds with another incoming message or call. I don’t know what’s worse, the constant headache of always being needed for something or not being needed at all. Or even thought about.
When I glance up from my phone, I jump a little when I see that damn giant nutcracker in the sitting room, sliding my phone in my back pocket as I continue on quickly through the room and into the entryway.
Joy is finishing up a phone call at the front desk, and she smiles and waves at me when I walk up to the counter, trying to not make it obvious that I’m looking around for Jason as I scan the dining room.
He said he’d see me tomorrow morning, but he didn’t say where or when. Well, it’s tomorrow morning, and I’m suddenly more anxious than ever to see his face. The quiet, empty phone in my back pocket is a constant reminder that my family doesn’t seem to care about me. Jason makes me forget about my problems, and right now, I need to forget about my problems.
I can see a few guests digging into plates of the French toast casserole and breakfast casserole I made yesterday, and a little bit of my sadness goes away.
“Allie Parker, you’re just as pretty as a picture!” Joy exclaims when she hangs up the phone and looks me up and down.
My face heats with the compliment, and I fidget with the new sweater, tugging on the hem and pulling the sleeves down over my hands.
“I hate to do this to you, but I have a huge favor to ask,” Joy continues. “I know John told you last night we have a replacement cook coming in this afternoon and you could go back to enjoying your vacation, but she’s going to need someone to show her the ropes. Missy is Amy’s niece and just graduated from culinary school. Just the nicest young woman who helps her aunt out from time-to-time here, but she’s never actually been in charge of planning menus, ordering supplies, and feeding big groups of people. We need you, Allie. Just for one more day, I promise.”
Of course I immediately jump at the chance to help out. My family might not need me, but this one does, and there’s no way I’m going to let them down when they’ve shown me nothing but kindness and made me feel so at home.
Before I head off into the kitchen to grab a notepad and write some things down for Missy, Joy stops me as she picks up the phone and starts dialing a number.
“Oh, Jason said to tell you he’s going to be busy for a little while helping his dad assist a few of the other businesses along this strip rehang and fix their Christmas displays. That wind from the blizzard really did a number on things.” She sighs, bringing the phone up to her ear as she waits for the call to go through. “I think he also said he left something for you in the sitting room by the fireplace.”
She gives me a knowing wink before turning away from me and greeting the person on the other end of the line when the call connects. Turning around and walking back into the sitting room, I see what Joy is talking about immediately. I was so busy staring down at my phone that I didn’t see what he’d done the first time I came through here.
He gave me St. Nicholas night.
My smile hurts my face as I quickly cross the room, kneeling down right in front of the fireplace, where Jason put my black Converse. He must have moved them here after I kicked them off by the front door and w
ent upstairs last night.
My shoes are filled to the brim with an assortment of red, green, gold, and silver wrapped Christmas candies and chocolates, more peppermint Christmas nougats, and lying next to my shoes is one of those cardboard, chocolate Advent calendars, where you open a little cardboard door every day leading up to Christmas and get a piece of candy. I told Jason last night my granny always gave me one of those as soon as I walked in the door to her house from California every year.
There’s also a small present stuffed between the shoes, wrapped in dark blue paper with snowmen on it. Quickly tearing into it, I laugh when I unfold the item and see that it’s a Christmas oven mitt with a picture of a nutcracker and the words Son of a nutcracker! on it.
“Nutfucker!”
I jump and whirl around to find Jen’s daughter Maddy standing behind me, pointing at the oven mitt with a smile on her face.
“Oh hell no. We are not going to start that again,” Jen complains with a laugh, coming into the sitting room from the entryway to stand behind her daughter.
“Fuck ass!” Maddy shouts with glee, pointing over my shoulder.
Lord, the mouth on this kid!
“I swear to God, I’m going to kill Jason,” Jen mutters, as Maddy goes racing around me.
Turning my body so I can follow her, my eyes widen when I see her flop down on her knees in front of the couch over by the window to talk to two of the most obese cats I have ever seen in my life.
“Allie, I’d like you to meet my brother’s cats, Fuck Ass, and Lazy Ass,” she says, lowering her voice so Maddy doesn’t hear her as she points to the two blobs becoming one with the couch.
Sadly, toddlers have supersonic hearing.
“Fuck ass!” Maddy cheers again, giving an Eskimo kiss to the orange one.
“Be honest,” I say to Jen as I push up from the ground to stand next to her. “You had other children, and those things ate them.”
Jen laughs and shakes her head.
“My brother hates cats. Or so he says,” Jen explains. “These two showed up as strays about five years ago, right after he moved into his cabin. He refused to let them in his house, and my mom wouldn’t let them in here either, but those cats followed both of them back and forth from here to there, just meowing and meowing the whole time. That first winter, they both felt bad, so they both double fed them. I don’t know which one cracked first and let them in, but the cats still go back and forth between here and Jason’s place, and they both still double feed them, double treat them, and basically have turned them into the fat bastards they are today.”
Jen walks over to Maddy, scooping her up and into her arms.
“Maddy, the kitties are called Fa and La, remember? Just like the fun Christmas song we like to sing. Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!”
“Fuck ass!” Maddy shouts again, refusing to be silenced.
Quickly bending down, I grab a few pieces of wrapped chocolate from my shoe, handing them over to Maddy, who immediately starts unwrapping them and shoveling them into her mouth.
Jen and Maddy wave goodbye as they head out of the room, Jen telling me she’ll see me later tonight for a Redinger family tradition. She doesn’t elaborate before she’s gone, and I bend down and scoop up my shoes and all my goodies from Jason, humming “Deck the Halls” to myself as I run back up to my room to put everything away before I get to work in the kitchen.
And of course, before I head back downstairs, I open up all the little cardboard doors to the Advent calendar and eat all the chocolates for the days of December I’ve missed already, and they taste just like my childhood.
Waxy, a little gritty, kind of disgusting, and definitely not real chocolate, but it’s the thought that counts, and a tradition I definitely missed.
“You are just one big Christmas cliché.”
“These things are starting to grow on me,” Jason says, as I watch him pop a peppermint nougat into his mouth and slowly chew.
When he saw me pull one out of my pocket before we left The Redinger House and made a face of disgust, I promptly unwrapped it and pushed it past his protesting lips. And only shivered a little when the tips of my fingers came in contact with his mouth.
Ever since then, as he took me on a walk along the snow-covered cobblestone street outside the bed-and-breakfast, he’s asked me for three more. And now all I can think about is how minty and delicious his mouth must taste right now.
“So, tell me what this mission is your mom sent us on?” I ask him as I shove my hands into the pockets of the warm, wool coat Jen let me borrow, instead of grabbing his face and pulling his mouth down to mine.
After I met Missy and spent all day helping her plan the next week of meals, food prep, and supply ordering, Jason came into the kitchen when I was finishing up and told me he needed my help with a very important Christmas mission.
“Well, tonight is what my mom likes to refer to as The Redinger House’s version of The Polar Express,” Jason explains, snow starting to gently fall again as we walk past the pizza place that saved dinner the other night. “My dad rents a trolley, and everyone piles on to sing Christmas carols, tell funny Christmas stories and jokes, and drink spiked egg nog and hot apple cider, while he drives everyone around the base of the mountain to look at Christmas lights. Every year, mom has the boutique owner make all the guests Redinger House Christmas ornaments with the year on them, and the guests get them as soon as they board the trolley. And I need to pick them up, so I figured now would be a good time for you to finally get out and see the street.”
We get to the end of the sidewalk and row of businesses where the boutique stands, when Jason suddenly stops, grabs onto my shoulders, and turns me around to look back in the direction we came.
“Wow,” I say on a whispered breath.
The early evening sun has all but disappeared, and all the businesses lining this side of the street resemble Bavarian cottages and have turned on their Christmas lights, leading down to The Redinger House facing the street. And behind The Redinger House, standing tall and looking down over this small town, is a huge, snow-covered mountain.
“It’s been so windy and snowy the last few days you couldn’t really see the view,” Jason says quietly from right behind me.
“I forgot how beautiful the mountains are here,” I sigh, tilting my chin up toward the falling snow as Jason moves around me to hold open the door to the boutique.
As soon as I’m inside, I can see why Millie went so crazy shopping for me in here. Everything they sell is rustic country, from check-printed quilts, to wreaths made of bright red pip berries tied with a burlap bow, and mason jar after mason jar of homemade, yummy-smelling candles, and everything I used to love about how my granny decorated her home. An explosion of rustic Christmas decorations and clothing has taken over the small store, on top of the items they have throughout the year, and I wander around, looking at every shiplapped Christmas tree and snow shovel with a wintery Christmas scene painted on the blade, wanting to buy it all.
For what purpose? To stick it in a closet back in L.A. and never pull it out again?
“You really want that obnoxious, burlap sack ornament, don’t you?” Jason says, pulling me out of my melancholy thoughts as I look away from the adorable ornament I was eyeing to stare up at him.
He’s smiling at me, and he’s so handsome it takes my breath away for a second.
“I do.” I nod. “I really do.”
I’m still nodding, but now I’m staring at Jason’s mouth, and I’m pretty sure I’m not talking about the ornament anymore.
“Then you should have it,” Jason says softly, my eyes moving up to his as he takes a step closer to me. “You should have everything you’ve ever wanted.”
“Okay,” I whisper, leaning toward him, my eyes laser-focused on his mouth again.
“Excuse me, do you want me to take your picture?”
My body jerks away from Jason’s when a woman in her seventies walks up to us, and I realize she’s the
owner when she hands Jason a large, white box.
“Thanks, Peg,” Jason says, taking the box from her hands. “Um, why would we want our picture taken?”
“Oh!” She laughs, shaking her head at him. “Not you, her.”
She nods in my direction before continuing, as she pulls her cell phone out of the pocket of her Christmas cardigan.
“Her friend Millie was in here the other day and just thought it was the craziest thing I didn’t want to take her picture,” Peg explains, lifting her glasses up off her nose and bringing the screen of her phone up a few inches from her face. “Where is that damn camera button? Anyway, I figured it was a city thing and you needed to have your picture taken. If you want to just show me where the camera is on this thing, I’ll take a picture for you.”
I spend the next fifteen minutes showing Peg how to use her phone, explaining to her that I absolutely do not need my picture taken, but if she sees Millie again to feel free to take hers, and then we traded beef stroganoff recipes while she helped me pick out mini, pine-scented candles with rustic red and green bows around the lids for me to stick in everyone’s door stockings back at The Redinger House. When we met Jason up by the register—where he disappeared in the middle of our chat—and the clerk behind the counter wrapped up all my candles, Peg randomly told me her favorite Christmas movie was A Christmas Carol from 1951. I told her I just so happened to see that in John and Joy’s DVD collection, and I would make sure they played it if she agreed to stop by for Christmas movie night.
I pay for my candles as Jason takes the heavy bag from Peg, telling her that I expect to see her at movie night, as Jason and I head back outside into the cold to walk back to the bed-and-breakfast.
“What did you buy while I was talking to Peg?” I ask him, nodding to the bag on top of the box of ornaments.
“Another family tradition is that we each have to pick out an ornament every year for the main tree in the living room at the bed-and-breakfast,” Jason tells me as we walk side by side back down the street toward the mountain and his family’s home. “My mom actually has a handwritten list she started the first Christmas she and my dad spent together. It gets folded up and packed away with the ornaments, and every year when we’ve each picked out our ornaments, she writes down the year on the paper, with our names and a description of our ornaments next to each one. She’s been bugging me to buy my ornament for this year, since she, my dad, and Jen all got theirs weeks ago.”