Chapter Eight

"I've been thinking about Christmas dinner."

Arthur looked up at his mother from where he'd been carefully arranging sugar cookies into piles of tissue.

"And, well, it is just the two of us this year, and I know you don't get a lot of home-cooked meals, but the thought of a whole spread for just two people…"

"I completely understand, Mom." He didn't say that he had home-cooked meals all the time. His own. And he had noted a distinct lack of a twenty-pound ham or ridiculously giant turkey in the fridge. "We can order a turkey pizza and watch a movie."

"Oh, don't be silly. I was thinking of making those baked chicken breasts with rice and greens. You like those, right?"

Arthur hated them. It was one of his mother's go-to one-pan recipes, but she always overcooked the chicken to a rubbery texture in an attempt to get the rice to cook, and the less said about the greens the better. It didn't help that she refused to use anything but salt and pepper for flavoring. Arthur did an excellent version of it using wild rice and cooking it in a two-piece terracotta bake set he had.

"I love it. And if you want to get a frozen apple pie, I promise I will not tell a soul. I'll take that secret to my grave."

His mother made a little piff sound. "Everyone at church uses frozen pie crusts. And half use canned pie filling."

Arthur put a dramatic hand to his chest. "The scandal."

"Last year, Laura Speckler tried to pass off an obviously frozen chocolate pie as homemade for the pie auction. In the end Pastor Cahill was the only one to bid on her pie, out of pity. The rest of us at least have the good grace to rough up the crusts a bit and buy a separate filling."

Arthur held back the smile. There was no trash talk on earth like nice church lady trash talk. Plenty of it had been directed at his family over the years and it used to hurt, but his mother could give back as good as she got, and he'd stopped giving a fuck somewhere around fifteen when he decided he had bigger problems in life than what his mother's social circle thought of him or his father. He placed a decorative lid on a cookie box.

"That's the last one. Have you got the list?"

Faith held up an extensive list of names, written in her tidy hand. "Checked twice."

"Okay, let's go sugar up this town."

Arthur was sure that every holiday he came home the Christmas cookie list had gotten longer.

"And is this Arthur? All grown up?"

I've been all grown up for comfortably over a decade now, you old bat, he thought at his old Sunday school teacher who used to heavily imply that children even conceived out of wedlock were heading to hell, while giving him the side eye. He smiled and held out cookies, using them as a shield to avoid getting his cheeks pinched.

"Look at your boy here, Faith." Arthur winced as the old bachelor who used to run the local tire shop slapped his arm with surprising strength. "Grew up a right looker."

Dude, you still have time to move to some retirement village in California and pick up a forty-year-old boy toy.

He passed over a box of cookies.

"Oh Faith, you have the most kind and Christian soul." Arthur gritted his teeth as he held out a huge box of cookies to Mrs. Havelsten, who had run the soup kitchen for years and was the wife of one of the wealthiest men in town. She didn't need to work (and made sure everyone knew it) and the soup kitchen and food bank was 'her little way of giving back.’ Every single time Arthur encountered the woman, he had the urge to sic the IRS on her.

He rolled his neck around and listened to it pop as soon as he and his mother were back in the car. "Who else is on the list?"

"All the rest we can take to the church with us, and it's nearly six already."

Church, right.

Christmas Eve service, which was not nearly as bad as Easter service because the Second Baptist Church of the Plains had never managed to scrape up the money for an air conditioning system that functioned properly, so with the exception of a few years with freak late snow, it was always broiling by Easter. Christmas was simply cold, but you put on layers, sucked it up, and powered through. Everyone talked fast and got out quickly.

"Welcome home Arthur," Pastor Cahill said with a grin and a handshake.

Arthur had to give the guy credit, he refused to believe he'd lost a soul, and always greeted Arthur like he was selling him a used car while signing him up for his third full-body dunking in holy water.

"Pastor."

"And Faith." Pastor Cahill took the box of cookies. "I know I shouldn't ask, but are there ginger snaps?"

"Absolutely."

"You are the kindest of women."

On that point Arthur couldn't argue, except to point out that his mom was usually too kind and got stepped on, and when she did stand up, it was usually at just the wrong moment.

"My little bit of joy to spread."

They entered the church as quickly as possible after that, trying to keep a bit of warmth.

They took their usual seats and Arthur took a deep breath. There had always been times in his life when one parent or another was conspicuous in their absence, and he could feel the void of them like a phantom limb, but the last few days had been particularly hard.

Heading back to work within a day of the madness of his father's funeral had perhaps not left him in a state to recognize the void that would never again be filled. Maybe that's why his mother was reaching for Coach Edwards. He had tried to call her more often, email more regularly, but there must have been so many days she spent in the house without even the presence of his father mutely flipping through the paper for company.

He should have visited, taken some vacation time, but Martin had gone missing and he had spiraled, his own grieving cut short and overlaid with a whole different flavor of panic, worry, and grief. A man sat down next to him in the spot he'd left empty. He vaguely recognized the face but couldn't put a name to it. He could recognize the back of Coach Edwards' head a few pews up, even all these years later. Too much time wondering how much trouble he'd get into trying to bounce a basketball off the back of that head.

Pastor Cahill shook the last hand and headed to the pulpit.

Arthur remembered all the prayers, when to stand up and sit down and vaguely sing on key.

He was hungry enough by the time they got home that he gladly took the microwave meal his mother suggested before heading off to bed.

"Sorry it's so late, I had to take my mother to church."

"That’s fine. I was still awake."

Arthur frowned. Really, Martin should have been asleep. "Late night at work?"

"No. I have simply found myself restless."

"A change in routine. I'm sorry." Arthur knew the break of routine had left him with his own level of stress and restlessness.

"Don't be. You have your obligations, as we all do, especially this year."

"Yeah. Has that neighbor of yours gotten his place cleaned up yet?"

"I saw some individuals I believe to be his children taking out bags yesterday. They did not look happy, but neither did he."

"How about those completely bonkers Christmas lights on the other side of the hall? Any headaches?"

He heard Martin take a deep breath. "This morning, I knocked on their door and explained my situation and asked if they could put them on a less frantic pattern."

Arthur sat up. Martin asking for help was damn near unheard of; asking a stranger to change something that was bothering him just might count as a Christmas miracle.

"And?"

"They were understanding. The lights are now on a slowly shifting pattern that is almost soothing."

"Good." He didn't say 'I am so unbelievably fucking proud of you for standing up for your own needs and health,' because that was likely to come across as patronizing, but it didn't change the fact that he was. "I was worried about that."

"I have taken to keeping my medication on me at all times. Just in case."

"That's sensible. I should let you try to sleep."

"You, as well."

"No." Arthur flopped back down on his bed. "I need to stay awake then sneak out of the house and join my sisters for midnight mass one more time."

"For a man with Atheist listed on his file, you have a lot of religion in your life."

Arthur sighed. "Tell me about it."

"Are you actually going where I think you're going?"

Arthur froze. He'd been tiptoeing in his stocking feet, dancing over long memorized squeaky floorboards, barely even breathing. In the end, it didn't matter. He was always half sure that his mother had pretended to be asleep on Christmas Eve while his dad snuck him out to midnight mass with Hanh and his sisters. Now he knew for certain.

"Hi, Mom."

His mother made a low sound of anger that seemed to come from deep in her throat that he had never heard before. "How can you possibly—"

"They are my sisters, and this will probably be the last time I will see all of them, or possibly any of them, and they didn't ask for the weird life Dad inflicted on them any more than I did."

"Just because your father went to them doesn't mean you need to."

Arthur understood the anger that had been quietly festering in her heart since the day she tumbled into bed with a charming drunk nearly twenty-five years her senior, but at some point, she needed to take a deep breath and let it go.

He took the deep breath instead and let it out slowly then began to put on his shoes. "Dad had zero use for religion, organized or otherwise, and that is a bold stance to take in this town, but every Christmas Eve he would drag himself to Second Baptist Church of the Plains and shiver through a sermon on salvation that he didn't believe in and didn't believe he deserved, and he would do that for you. And then a few hours later he would drag himself to St. Brendan of the Prairie and suffer through an hour of badly sung hymns because they have never managed to get a music director who wasn't tone deaf, and he would do that for her. And that was his yearly penance. So, this year, one last time, I'm going for Dad, because I could never be a good son to both of you at the same time and this is the last chance I've got." He didn't give his mother a chance to answer, just put on his coat and left. He wondered if his key would fit when he got home.

They stood at the bottom steps of St. Brendan of the Prairie shivering slightly, even in overcoats and gloves.

Sonia gave him a hug, squeezing his ribs to the point of pain. "How's your mother? Not furious at you?"

"She's spitting tacks. With Dad gone, she did not pretend to sleep while I tried to sneak out."

"You know you have the most unbelievably perfect excuse to not be here?"

He shrugged. "One more time, for Dad's sake"

"You're a good son."

"I'm a terrible son."

"Mom." A teenager in an ill-fitting suit let out a long whine.

"Say hi to your Uncle Arthur."

"Hey." There was no enthusiasm in it. Arthur didn't blame the kid. He had no idea how involved a grandfather his dad had been and was barely a teenager himself when he first became an uncle. He tried to keep basic contact with his nieces and nephews, to send checks on big events or birthdays, but he knew he was just the weird, white, sort-of-uncle that grandma didn’t really like.

Yvette looked him over. "Really?" The word was filled with a lifetime of distaste.

"Last time you'll ever have to see me if you don’t want to." He knew that, aside from Sonia, his sisters never really considered him family. And he didn’t blame them. It was a fucked-up situation their dad had left them all in.

"Promise."

Arthur held up two fingers "Scouts honor."

Yvette snorted and walked off.

"You were never a scout." Sonia pointed out with a great deal of amusement.

No, but in retrospect, there was one in high school I was really into.

Hanh stopped in front of him. She was in the same black lace dress she wore every year. He'd never asked, but was half sure it came from Vietnam with her. "Why are you here?"

Always to the point. "Dad's not here. I am." He offered his elbow to Hanh the way he'd seen his father do every Christmas Eve. It was one of two consistently romantic things he ever saw his father do. The other was pruning the roses behind the house so they looked like long stem roses when picked. It let his mother put them in the tall vases when company came over.

She looked him over then nodded and placed her hand on his elbow. He walked her up the stairs of the small church, the rest of the family following behind.

Father Lorene shook his hand once they were through the heavy double doors. "Well, I must say you are the last person I expected to see here tonight."

Arthur shrugged. "Christmas miracle?"

The old priest shook a finger at him, but there was no malice in it. They'd made peace long ago. "Hedging your bets, like your father."

"What can I say, I'm in insurance."

Father Lorene shook his head, then shook Hanh's hand while Arthur made his way to their usual pew. It wasn't a large church. Half the size of Second Baptist but with maybe a third of the congregation, on a good day.

The hymns were as out of tune as he remembered and the lessons were pretty much burned into his brain. The flickering of candles was almost hypnotic, but he knew if he started to fall asleep his dad wouldn't be there to elbow him in the ribs. So, he sang along, stayed seated for the communion, and once they were back outside, took off his coat and let a quick blast of frigid air wake him up.

"You okay to drive?" Sonia asked.

Arthur slapped his cheeks and gave his head a quick shake. "I can make the five miles and two turns."

"Okay, well, don't be a stranger bro."

"You, too. Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas."