The 13th Gift (17 page)

“Not to worry,” Nick says. “I’ve got my Game Boy and a box of cereal. I’m not getting outta bed.”

“How about you help Megan decorate the tree.”

“I’ll supervise … from the couch … maybe.”

I hear gift-wrapping sounds coming from Megan’s bedroom, so I tap on her closed door and ask if she’s hungry.

“Silly question, Momma,” she says, jumping up from the floor and following me to the kitchen. “I’m always hungry.”

With an elbow resting on the table and her head lounging in the palm of one hand, Megan shovels in mouthfuls of oatmeal with her free hand while sizing up the tree.

“It has potential. Just needs trimming.”

Megan’s favorite Christmas task has always been digging through our holiday tins to unearth the glass balls and bells and angels to hang on the tree. We like to joke that there’s always an overabundance of ornaments on our tree right at her arm’s length. In her excitement to unwrap these family treasures, she carpets the floor with the old newspapers and plastic grocery bags that I use to pack them away. She also usually manages to unravel rolls of ribbon or gift wrap in her enthusiasm to fashion homemade ornaments, and glitter becomes part of the upholstery.

The cleanup takes longer than the trimming.

Carrying one of the trinkets at a time was never sufficient for our daughter, even though the tins were only a few feet away. She insisted on an armful, and her breakage ratio was high. Inevitably, a snow globe or snowman would slip from her fingers, and her heart would ache for the loss of such beauty. Megan’s many mishaps had led me to divide up our ornaments into precious and expendable years earlier. The really special ones she’s not allowed to hang until she is older.

When she’d been much younger, Megan had convinced Rick to dig a grave in the backyard to bury a fallen angel ornament. She could not bear to see the delicate creature spending eternity in the trash.

From the kitchen window I had watched them standing together, saying a prayer over the tiny mound of earth next to the gym set. I was both envious of the moment they were sharing and filled with gratitude for my good luck
.

He would have done anything for her, for all of us
.

The incident touched him, too. He came back into the house changed
.

Rick made it his parental mission to devise ways for our daughter to carry more than one ornament at a time. It was like the egg-drop experiment Ben did for science class, where students are asked to devise packaging to protect an egg from a one-story drop. Before tree-trimming night, I would buy a box of very plain and cheap plastic ornaments for each year’s experiment. We tried loading up a basket with ornaments, but it tipped when Megan stood on her tiptoes to reach high branches. Folding up the bottom of Megan’s sweatshirt like a basket worked fairly well, until she needed two hands to fasten a baby Jesus to a branch
.

We lost two ornaments that year. After that, the ideas kept getting sillier and sillier
.

Rick jokingly considered applying for a patent for his last invention, the sweater hanger. He lined the inside front of an oversized sweater he had bought at a used clothing store with a heavy piece of plastic, secured with black electrical tape, to create a protective barrier. Then, he and Megan attached little wire hangers to each of the ornaments and hung six of them on the front of the sweater. She looked like a human Christmas tree
.

“Economy of labor,” Rick had said. “I’m all about making life easier.”

This year will be the first time Megan will tackle the trimming on her own.

“Why don’t you wait until Ben wakes up and see if he’ll help?” I say.

Neither of us believes that will happen, so I take another approach, hoping to save the house from my little hurricane.

“How about you open one tin of ornaments at a time? Hang them, then put all the packing paper back inside when you’re done.”

Megan rolls her eyes at me.

“You know me, Mom.”

“Consider that an ornament order,” I say, tapping her nose with my finger.

Megan finishes her breakfast and returns to her room to complete a “secret project,” while I make a list of unfinished holiday chores before going to the office. Christmas Eve is approaching, and I still haven’t given my family an affirmative on hosting the celebration here like I usually do. I’ve been shopping shy ever since I abandoned my cart in the bicycle aisle the other day.

“Tonight, you return to toy land,” I tell myself. “Or, maybe ease back into shopping at one of the stores on the outer rim of the mall.”

Nick has wrestling practice tonight and Megan, basketball. That leaves me three hours of freedom after work. I need to buy Megan a new Christmas sweater, and I have furnishings to purchase for Nick’s new room. I leave a question mark on my list
behind Ben’s name. Rick had planned to buy him seat covers for his car. Now that I’ve confiscated his keys, I think it prudent to come up with another gift idea.

The newspaper office is quiet with only three of us working.

I write a story about added law enforcement on the highways over the holidays. Police departments and the state highway patrol also don’t shut down for the holidays, so I easily reach post commanders and local police chiefs. I wrap up the article in under two hours hoping to go home, but my editor hands me another assignment.

“Have fun with this one,” he says

With the turn of the century twelve days away, he has asked me to piece together an account of Dayton on New Year’s Day 1900.

I find everything I need in the newspaper archives. Local celebrations were simple family gatherings, no big party where people came to cheer at 12:01 a.m. I like that idea; it seems that families haven’t changed all that much in one hundred years.

The weather was the big news story of the day back then. Frigid temperatures had turned the Great Miami River into a thick sheet of ice that had beckoned skaters and sleighs. I imagine women with hair coiffed high in the Gibson-girl style sliding across the ice with suited gents in bowler hats.

My siblings and I skated on that same stretch of river every winter when we were kids. I remember walking stiff-legged for days after an afternoon on the bumpy, frozen water. There were no Zambonis to
smooth the surface, and I ended on my backside more often than up on my skates
.

The only time I truly enjoyed being on the ice was when Rick glided beside me, holding me upright. Secure in his arms, I could float across the ice like an Olympian. That’s how I drifted through life until his death, always leaning and holding on tight. Now I am learning to skate on my own. I know there are still bumpy patches, but I am not alone. I’m excited about the possibilities
.

I finish writing the historical piece with a feat of gallantry involving a runaway team of horses hitched to a wagon with no driver at the reins. Passersby marveled as a spectator leaped astride the galloping team and brought them under control. Reading people’s accounts of the moment, they describe it as something out of a story rather than real life. Heroes don’t jump on runaway horses anymore, I think to myself; they leave anonymous gifts on doorsteps.

The drama reminds me of our true friends and the promise I made to the kids last night. I call Gem City trying to track down a home telephone number for Terry. The operator won’t give it out, but promises to leave him a message. I put in a call to Tom, thinking he may know how to contact our old friend. I get his answering machine.

I stop at home to change into jeans and gym shoes before shopping. The house is dark, so I flip the switch by the door and the tree lights illuminate the room. I expect to see our pine bedazzled with tinsel, baubles, and beads, but it’s as naked as when I left this morning.

It’s clear its state of undress isn’t from a lack of effort.

Ransacked ornament tins clutter the living room with wads of packing paper spilling from open lids. Glass balls are arranged on the coffee table by color: red, green, silver, gold. Folks unfamiliar with my Megan might think she’s trying to organize them.

Not my little girl.

She’s searching for something.

From the appearance of the room, she hasn’t found it. I get the step stool from the garage and carry it down to the family room closet. I know what she’s looking for and where to find it. I’m standing on tiptoe, feeling around, when my fingers touch the edge of the metal tin on the top shelf labeled “Precious.” I scoot it across the wooden surface until I can grab it with both hands.

Running my fingers across the cold surface of the lid, I study the picture stamped on top: a white stone castle built for King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the very one used as a model for the Disneyland castle. The tin had been filled with chocolate-dipped cookies, a gift to Rick from a Gem City Engineering customer. The cookies didn’t last long, but the beautiful tin has become very special to me.

I return to the living room and plant the box and myself near the tree.

The container holds my family’s Christmas history, each year individually wrapped in white tissue paper. A bewildered bride and groom stand side by side on a ceramic ornament, with “Our first Christmas together” and “1980” stamped in gold letters. A baby boy in red pajamas tangled in light strings smiles from the 1982 ball that commemorates Ben’s birth. There’s a tiny
playpen with a teddy bear dated 1987 for Nick, and Megan’s rocking horse is inscribed 1989.

My mother bought them all for us over the years. The Christmas after my dad died, she told me why.

“Give these to your children someday to hang on their own Christmas trees. They will be grown, and I will be a memory. Tell them these are from Baci and Grandpa Huist. Tell them they were loved even before they were born.”

I’m tempted to hang these keepsakes on the tree myself, but set them aside to leave for Megan, with my supervision. I have told her the story of these precious keepsakes. I will tell her again, while she cleans up this mess, and then we can hang them together.

I change my clothes as planned, grab my purse, and head for the door. The mall is waiting. My kids need presents. I am just stepping onto the porch when I see a car rounding the bend up the street.

“Wait a minute,” I say out loud.

The vehicle looks similar to the one we chased the other night.

No time to close the door or turn off the lights. I stand my ground and stare as it passes. The car doesn’t stop, but I imagine that the passenger is slumping down in the front seat, like I did.

When the car turns the corner, I shift into high gear, figuring they’ll circle the block and return in a few minutes. I run outside and pull my Grand Am into the garage, then turn off the lights in the house so it looks like no one is home. I am crouching on the living room floor next to the front window with my binoculars aimed at the street, when my hair gets tangled on a low-hanging branch of the Christmas tree.

“Crap.”

I yank at my hair, which luckily comes loose, but the tree nearly topples.

I thank goodness that I didn’t put our special ornaments on the tree.

I give up my hazardous hideout, a twig still knotted in my hair, and run up to Nick’s bedroom, where I hope to find a better vantage point. I reach his window in time to see a lone figure step from a car more than a block up the street.

A small figure moves quickly up the street toward the house, growing larger with each step. The dark-clad creature crisscrosses yards staying in the shadows, and I lose sight of it more than once. The figure disappears again somewhere in the flower bed that borders our house.

I’m swelling with emotions. Our gift giver is standing below this window, waiting to step onto the porch where a beam of moonlight will reveal his or her identity to me.

Seconds pass with no movement. I hesitate, think about running downstairs and opening the door, but I don’t want to take my eyes off the porch. Flattening my body against the wall, I try to get a better view. I pull myself up to straddle the rim of an old dog food bucket that holds Nick’s Lego collection. Balancing on the thin edge of plastic I peek out the corner of the window. My sweaty palms clutch at the wall for a handhold. I test the stability of the curtain rod, but it is already loose. My heart is thumping, and I think of Rick, but this time I am not afraid. I am too excited. The view is much better up here. I can see someone moving around the boxwood.