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SIOBHAN
Pan and I found ourselves placed in two vastly different areas of the church basement, which totally sucked because I had hoped to use the evening’s activities to catch her up with all the crap going on in my life. Instead, she worked with the pie-baking team while I was miles away in the dining room area on decoration detail. I did see one or two familiar faces among the small crowd: Sam Dillon roasted turkeys while his girlfriend (and unbeknownst to her but beknownst to me soon-to-be-fiancée) Paige peeled potatoes. I didn’t envy her the constant repetitive wrist action and said a silent thank you to the assignment gods that put me going up and down a ladder to pin streamers to the ceiling corners. My knees probably wouldn’t agree come tomorrow, but I’d need my hands for photo-snapping all those kids with Santa.
At one point, Sam caught my eye and made a pleading expression in my direction. I nodded at him. Like I needed his reminder to keep from sashaying over to the potato station and asking Paige what she planned to wear when Sam proposed on Christmas Eve.
Which reminded me...
I still had no one to go with me to that event. Pan always spent the holiday with her family, so she was an automatic no. I could invite Nana, but she’d probably prefer to spend that time with Captain Lou. I dreaded the idea of going alone, but my brain couldn’t come up with a single person who wouldn’t mind being on a work assignment with me. Playing escort to a working photographer at an event is plain-out lonely and dull. All the key moments, I’m off snapping pictures, so anyone accompanying me is left alone. It takes a very secure individual to agree to those conditions.
Speaking of secure individuals, I heard Justin’s confident laugh before I found him in the pie-baking section, working alongside Pan. Being six feet off the ground in the center of the room had some perks. Pity stabbed my conscience when I noticed how pink my best friend’s cheeks had become. It was probably hotter than Hades over there in front of all those ovens.
“Okay, that looks great.” Russell, the guy holding the ladder below me, drew my attention back to my task. I stifled a shiver while he passed up a cluster of red, white, and green balloons. “Now, just add these to the center where the streamers all meet.”
I took the colorful grouping from him with tentative fingers, avoiding any contact. I found the ribbon tying them together, then dug in my pocket for another pushpin. Once I tacked the balloons into place, I leaned back slightly and looked down at Russell. “How’s that?”
The middle-aged paunchy lecher pretended to study the ceiling with intensity while eying my butt. “Looks terrific to me.”
I gritted my teeth to keep from saying something caustic and totally inappropriate for church. Russell kept dancing on my last live nerve. He started off on the wrong foot when he first suggested I should be the one going up and down the ladder because he had a bad back. “And besides,” he’d added with a wink, “the view is better from down here.”
A thousand epithets screamed in my head, but none escaped my lips. Instead, I ignored the pig and shouted toward where Pan and Justin worked on pouring pumpkin into pie shells. “Hey, Justin! Sweetheart? Does this look okay?”
If the endearment threw him in any way, he never showed it. He simply flashed two thumbs-up. “Looks perfect, babe.”
“Is he your boyfriend?” As I’d expected, Russell took in Justin’s size and age, as well as the affectionate looks suddenly passing between us.
I waved my left hand with a gleeful air. “Fiancé.” I counted on the fact Russell’s machismo wouldn’t allow him to admit he didn’t see a ring.
When he spoke again, his tone became steeped in respect. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
Yeah, that was what I thought. In men like Russell’s world, all women were fair game for their romantic pursuit—unless they’d already been claimed by another man.
I descended the ladder, slow rung by slow rung. “It really shouldn’t matter,” I said.
Not that I expected to get through to him. His misogyny was too ingrained. Still, I had to try. Maybe someday, one of these lunkheads would actually learn how to act around a woman from my words.
“You know,” I added when we were eye-level, “I’m not only someone’s fiancée, I’m also someone’s daughter.” I shouldn’t have to identify myself as belonging to any man to get this idiot to see me as a human, not an object, but I knew that concept would never permeate his Neanderthal skull. I had to work around the mutual male respect angle if I had any hope of gaining his attention. “My dad, who’s fairly close to your age by the way, wouldn’t be too thrilled to know you’ve been ogling me all night.” Lucky for him, my dad would be far too busy figuring out how he came back to life to worry about me.
“Uh-huh.” Russell’s cheeks reddened, but he looked past me to the Christmas tree in the far corner of the room. His narrowed eyes suggested he would’ve liked to insult me some more instead of listening to my lecture.
I wouldn’t give him the chance. I took a deep breath and let out my anger on the exhale. “Ho-kay. Well, nice meeting you. I’m gonna go set up my stuff for tomorrow. I’m taking pictures of the kids with Santa. Have a good night.”
I strolled away, feigning nonchalance, but my fists clenched and unclenched at my sides. Men. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a card-carrying member of the Men Bashers Club, but at the same time, too many of the species baffled me. You had the Russells of the world, who thought women should see their predatory behavior as a compliment; the Justins who suffered from Peter Pan syndrome, never wanting to grow up; the Jimmys who’d been burned once and blamed all women for one woman’s careless actions. There were others, of course, all complicated, all conflicted, and none of them self-aware. Toss in gay men, and it was no wonder so few women married and stayed married ‘til death did them part.
I was almost at the area decorated as the North Pole when Justin cut me off by appearing in front of me. I’d been so involved with my ruminations about the male species, I’d never noticed his approach.
“Hey.” He placed his hands on my forearms in a light grip, stopping my forward motion. “You okay? What happened? What was that ‘sweetheart’ stuff all about?”
I nodded. “Yeah, thanks for helping me out with that. I had to finagle my way around the creepy guy working with me without insulting or assaulting him for ogling me. I told him you and I were engaged to get him to show me some respect.”
“Oh, well, in that case, maybe we should make our romance look legit...” He pulled me closer, wrapped an arm around me, and planted an all-consuming kiss on my mouth.
It was...
Gross. Like kissing a little brother—or the brat who used to live across the street. Still, I put my all into the farce for the benefit of Russell the pervert.
When Justin finally pulled away from me, his face wore an expression of regret that rang pretty close to my own repulsed emotions. “That was weird.”
“Yeah,” I replied through a tight smile and gritted teeth to keep the sharks at bay. “Let’s not ever do that again. Okay?”
“Deal.” He released me and headed back to the kitchen area while I forced my feet to continue my sedate walk toward the North Pole, as opposed to the frantic race to the exit I really wanted.
♥♥♥♥
ALTHEA
I spent most of Saturday cleaning the house. Not that it was dirty, mind you. I needed something to do to keep my hands busy and my mind occupied. With Siobhan working the holiday party at the church, I had no one to talk to. Not that I’d tell her anything anyway, mind you again.
But the last twenty-four hours had turned most of my well-founded beliefs upside-down. I’d underestimated Jimmy Vais, overestimated my mahjong friends—who, by the way, had gotten Jimmy’s story totally wrong—and I had no idea if I over- or underestimated my feelings for Lou. Today, I needed a semblance of normalcy. God knew what kind of mass confusion awaited me should I dare step out of the house. Better I take a page out of Jimmy’s book, stay indoors, and block the outside from coming in. At the same time, I didn’t want to obsess over my thoughts. I could easily become like Archie’s older sister.
Madeline was what nowadays would be called bipolar. In the old days, she was known as manic-depressive during polite dinner conversations or crazy by those who didn’t know better or care to learn. Most of the time, Maddie was sweet-tempered and joyful, but occasionally, she’d become moody and sullen. Archie would tell me stories of how she sometimes walked the halls at night, clutching a pair of child’s scissors in her fist to ward off the mice she claimed lived in the walls. Archie’s parents had provided well for her future in their will, so she spent her later years in a group home with a supportive staff, excellent medical care, and lots of friends. Until she fell apart...
When we broke the news to her about Charlie’s death, she became fanatical about protecting Tim from any type of harm. She started out gradually enough. Odd packages would arrive at our house, addressed to Tim. The first box contained a pound of dry spaghetti, a jar of pasta sauce, two cans of Coke, and a snack-size chocolate pudding cup. A note included with the food advised us to have Tim call her when he cooked the pasta and they would have a dinner date over the phone. The gesture seemed thoughtful and harmless enough, so we played along. For months, the dinner date boxes arrived on a regular basis. Tim was sweet and polite with Maddie for each one. Sometimes she sent pasta, sometimes canned soup and tuna, and once, she sent cereal with boxed milk. The conversations, however, escalated from questions about how he was doing in school to worries that someone was out to get him, to threats about poisoning that had us throwing away the packages the minute they arrived because we couldn’t guarantee she hadn’t tampered with the contents.
Then came the surprise visits to the house. Like the packages, they began innocently enough. Soon, though, she’d slip out of her home in the middle of the night, walk to our house—often in her pajamas—and ring the doorbell over and over until we answered. She’d then race up to Tim’s room and insist on sitting by his bed all night to keep him safe. There were evil people, she’d say, intent on killing him. She claimed Charlie came to her in her dreams to warn her to protect his brother. Her endless terrors and suspicions took their toll on us all, but we couldn’t reason with her.
It was Tim who finally found a way to soothe her anxiety. At a spring fair, he purchased a keychain with an evil eye charm. You know. The blue stone with the white center and black dot inside? He assured her he’d always carry the charm with him to protect him from harm. Apparently, she believed him because the dreams stopped, the visits stopped, and she lived happily in her group home for another fifteen years before she passed away.
As far as I know, Tim kept his promise, too. Decades later, when he died, his keys were still clipped to that evil eye keychain.
I imagine some people would say that, considering all the tragedies our family had endured, maybe the so-called good luck charm hadn’t really worked for us. True, we’d had our share of sorrows, but we’d also had a lot of love, even if it was sometimes brief.
Thinking of love brought my thoughts full-circle, back to Lou and my dilemma. And I’d run out of things to clean. On a whim, I headed for Tim’s office. I started my search at the desk with its multi-tiered hutch, pulling open drawers and rummaging around all the shelves. Nothing.
Aaaargh! Okay, now it became a quest—my very own holy grail. I stomped upstairs toward the master bedroom. Technically, I suppose, the room was now Siobhan’s, though she’d never moved in, preferring the bedroom she’d inhabited since childhood. I think, perhaps, she believed by moving into her parents’ old room, she’d officially have to grow up. I should probably push her in that direction, but not today. Today, I had a different goal.
Nostalgia overwhelmed me the second I stepped on the carpet. All the furniture and décor had changed over the decades, but the walls held onto the reminiscence of the past. I sank onto the edge of my son and daughter-in-law’s bed, a heavy walnut four-poster covered in cream-colored linens. How bland. When Archie and I first shared this room in the early days of our marriage, we’d opted for a waterbed.
I closed my eyes, picturing the room as it looked back then. With the visions of gray shag carpet, pink-and-purple-striped wallpaper, chrome lamps and the white wicker peacock chair, came a more visceral memory. After a dozen or so years, we renovated the room. The wallpaper came down, in favor of a soft mauve paint. With our aging bodies needing firmer support, we opted for a traditional mattress and boxspring combination, attached to a monstrous modular set with a ceiling-high storage hutch and embedded high hats. I kept my beloved peacock chair and added plush cushions to ease my older bones.
Early one evening, I sat in the peacock chair, watching while Archie stripped out of his greasy mechanic’s clothes after work, when the question blurted from my lips. “If I died before you, do you think you’d remarry?”
He paused, one leg in and one leg out of his trousers. By now, he’d grown accustomed to my quirks and didn’t reply with any wonderment about why I’d ask such a thing. Instead, he shrugged. “That depends. How old am I in this scenario?”
“What difference does that make?”
“Well,” he said, stripping off his pants before dropping them in the hamper, “if you were to die tomorrow, I’d probably remarry within a year or two. We’ve got two young boys who need a mother. If you’re talking about twenty or thirty years from now, when the kids are out of the house and on their own, I wouldn’t rush to get married again. I’m a grown man, able to take care of myself. Besides, I’d want to spend most of my time missing you.”
My eyes grew misty, and my heart melted. “Aww...”
“Yup. It would be a long time before I’d forget how you complained about having to straighten out my sweaty socks before putting them in the washer, how you never remember to fill your gas tank, and can’t sew a button on your son’s Cub Scout uniform.”
He chuckled, and I feigned throwing something at his head. “That’s not funny.”
In his undershirt and boxers, he strode to where I sat and kissed me just below my earlobe. “I will always love you, Thea. No one in the world could ever take your place.”
I shook myself from the past and shot to my feet. Right. I guess that answered my questions about Lou. Time to clean the basement—after I found that keychain.