The Joy of Christmas Read online

  That was when I decided my best defense might be to get defensive. “I can’t believe you sold Frederick’s Fine Footwear, Mom.” I took on a tone that was meant to sound hurt. “I mean, just like that, you go and sell a family business that’s been around for generations and you don’t even consult me?”

  “But I thought you didn’t want – ”

  “How could you possibly know what I want when you didn’t even talk to me about it, Mom?”

  “I tried to call you . . . but I haven’t heard from you for so long, Jamie.”

  “But I was counting on coming home this summer, I was going to work in the shoe store, Mom. I thought I might even take over running it, and now what am I supposed to – ”

  “Oh, Jamie!” She sounded truly alarmed. “I had no idea! Oh, I feel so horrible. I wish I’d known. I never would’ve sold it if I’d known you’d changed your mind. I’m so, so sorry.”

  I knew I had her where I wanted her, but I suddenly felt guilty about my tactics. Even so, I knew that before long I would have a confession to make. I knew I needed to position myself. And I guess I was feeling a little desperate. “Oh, it’s okay, Mom. It’s not really your fault. I guess I should’ve called you and said something – ”

  “I feel so terrible. You’re absolutely right, I should’ve asked you, Jamie. It’s just that George Hanson was so interested in buying, and I felt things were going downhill so fast, it was time to reorder merchandise for the fall season, and everything just seemed so over – ”

  “Really, Mom, it’s okay,” I said soothingly. “I just wish I’d known, that’s all.”

  She sighed loudly.

  “You really should’ve kept me in the loop, Mom.”

  “I know, Jamie. I’m so sorry.”

  “So, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks then?”

  “For graduation?” she asked hopefully.

  “No,” I answered quickly. “I decided not to do the ceremony. It’s all such a production – a bunch of pomp and circumstance and stifled yawns. I just want to come home, Mom. I’d hoped to come home and take over the business and – ”

  “Oh, dear . . .”

  “But don’t worry about any of that now.” I paused for dramatic effect. “I’ll . . . well, I’ll think of something else to do with my life.”

  So it was that Mom’s decision to sell the business helped to counter my own dilemma and, by burdening her with layers of parental guilt, I didn’t have to confess my lack of graduating with the prized business degree. But after I got home, we didn’t talk too much. I wasn’t sure if it was because of her or because of me. Admittedly, I wanted to avoid any conversations that might force a confession. Oh, I wanted to confess. I just wasn’t sure how – or more importantly, when. As a musician, I knew that timing was everything. Still, I could tell that Mom was sad and maybe even depressed. She seemed really withdrawn and she slept a lot, but that might’ve been the result of some of the medication she was taking. She told me that Dr. Griswold had prescribed Valium for her nerves shortly after Dad died.

  “I didn’t take it at first,” she told me, “but then I figured maybe it would help.”

  Well, I couldn’t tell if it had helped or not, but it sure did knock her out. Consequently there wasn’t much for me to do but hang by the pool, mow the lawn occasionally, and see if any of my old friends were in town, which didn’t seem to be the case.

  I’d stored most of my stuff, including my music instruments and the secondhand piano I’d purchased with my “tuition” money, in an old warehouse space that had once been used for shoe-related things but hadn’t been sold along with the business. By the end of summer, I found myself spending more and more time at the rundown warehouse. I’d pulled the piano out into the open and had begun to just play for the fun of it. But unlike the tunes I’d played for the Muskrats, this sort of playing was purely for my own enjoyment and not something I felt certain I’d want people my own age to even hear. It wasn’t anything like the stuff that our generation listened to nowadays. In a way it reminded me of country music, which I claim to despise, but the beat was different. I wasn’t even sure how I’d explain it, or if I cared to. But I was really getting into it, and it was a good way to kill time – perhaps it was a way to postpone the inevitable and to avoid my mother. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold out, and I had no plan for how I would admit that I’d squandered my tuition money as well as nearly two years of college. Mom had always been pro-education, and who knew how she would handle such news? She was already having a hard time anyway. Why add to her stress? Besides, I told myself, she was usually sleeping anyway.

  As fall approached, Mom announced that she was quitting the Valium. “It makes me feel like I’m living in a cloud,” she admitted. “Like I’m half dead.”

  “Good for you,” I told her. Still, considering the fact that she was getting back on her feet, so to speak, I didn’t think it was the right time to dump on her just yet.

  As September ended, both Mom and I were getting pretty antsy. I even had the gall to blame her edginess on her lack of narcotics, sometimes even suggesting, “Why don’t you just pop a Valium?” which made her furious.

  “Why don’t you just clean up after yourself?” she’d toss back at me.

  I suppose I had gotten a little sloppy. But then I’d grown up having a mom to clean up after me. And when Mom started to nag me about leaving messes in the kitchen or piles of dirty clothes in the laundry room, I’d get irritated. And if I got too worked up, like I often did, Mom would start asking what I was going to do for employment now that I had graduated.

  “How do you plan to use that college education?” she would ask.

  “I thought I was going to run a shoe store,” I’d toss back, hoping to keep her questions at bay. Then we’d really get into it. She’d point out that it had been my choice, reminding me of how

  I’d made myself clear to Dad. Then I would blame her for not communicating with me. It could get pretty loud sometimes. Like that muggy evening when one of our “discussions” escalated into a heated argument, and I told Mom that I thought it was high time for me to move out.

  “I need a place of my own!” I shouted at her, knowing full well that the windows were open and half the neighborhood could probably hear us.

  “Fine!” she shouted back.

  “And there’s no time like the present!” I added, almost expecting her to back down now. Despite our disagreements, I thought she liked having me around.

  “Maybe that’s for the best,” she said with tear-filled eyes, reaching for her pocketbook. “I’ll help you get into a place, and then you can get a job and support yourself, Jamie. That would probably be good for you.” She wrote me a check that would cover a month’s worth of rent and buy groceries and then told me “good luck.”

  But by late October, I was out of money, still unemployed, about to be thrown out of my apartment, and one day, while strolling through town, I discovered that Mom had put the family home up for sale.

  “What’s going on here?” I demanded when I saw the real estate sign planted in the front yard. Mom was raking willow leaves and looked up at me with a weary expression. Was she tired of me or just life in general?

  “This place is too big for me,” she said calmly. “Too hard to keep up. Plus it’s too expensive to hire someone. There’s the pool and the grounds and just everything. I decided to look for something smaller, perhaps a little cottage near the ocean.”

  I blinked at her in surprise. Who was this woman anyway? What had become of my mother, that small but feisty woman who could run an impeccable household and still have time to play cards with her friends or tennis at the club? It seemed like the life had been sucked right out of this woman. It occurred to me that she probably needed my help, maybe she even wanted me to move back home. Even so, I was too proud to ask if I could come back. I wanted her to ask me. Not only that, but I was too embarrassed to admit that I was still jobless. And that naturally brought up the other
part of the problem. No way did I want to confess to her that I hadn’t finished college or any of my other shortcomings. No, instead I just opened my big fat mouth and the escape plan I’d recently been toying with came flying out.

  “Fine,” I snapped at her. “Go ahead and sell the house. You make all your decisions without me anyway. But just so you know, I plan on enlisting in the Air Force. I was on my way to the recruiter’s office right now. I hear they’re looking for some smart guys with a college education, and I – ”

  “What?” Mom dropped her bamboo rake and her jaw in the same instant. You’d have thought I’d just told her that I was planning on chopping off my right arm or robbing a bank or something. “Are you crazy?” she demanded, the color draining from her face.

  No doubt, I had her attention now. And even though my proclamation was rather half-hatched, not to mention somewhat premature, it suddenly made perfect sense to me. Joining the Air Force sounded exciting and interesting. I’d watched their exotic TV ads about seeing the world. Plus, didn’t they offer three good meals a day? That was better than I’d been doing lately. Also, I’d heard they had education benefits by way of the GI bill. Maybe I could even get my degree when I finished. Plus, it would be the perfect way to delay the inevitable – confessing all to Mom.

  “My buddy Steve enlisted in the Air Force last June,” I told her with false confidence. “He thinks he’ll be an officer. And with this business going on in Vietnam right now, I thought why shouldn’t I do the same? After all, it’s my patriotic duty, and President Kennedy is the one who said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your – ’ ”

  “James William Frederick!”

  “What?”

  “Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  “No, Mom. I’m thinking straighter than ever at the moment. And, hey, I might even become a pilot, and I could – ”

  “You could get yourself killed!”

  “Why do you have to go and jump to that conclusion?” I asked in a surprisingly calm voice. It was fun playing the mature person for a change. “Don’t you remember how Dad used to say how much he’d wanted to enlist during World War II? Every time we watched a war movie on TV, he’d get all depressed. He felt like he’d missed out on something really important, but he told me that no matter how hard he’d tried to sign up, they refused to take him.”

  “That’s because he was too old !”

  Well, it was no secret that my dad had been about twelve years older than Mom. But that hadn’t been too old to enlist. “He told me it was because of his flat feet.”

  Mom blinked, then nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”

  Flat feet or no flat feet, there was something about the way Mom had blurted out “too old” that made me wonder if their age difference had been an issue with her. Had it bothered her that he was so much older? And now he was gone and she, only forty-one and still nice looking (for a mom anyway), was all alone. I studied her more closely. Even without makeup and twigs in her hair, she was pretty. But she looked too skinny and her high cheekbones looked even higher than usual with dark shadows in the hollows of her cheeks, and dark shadows beneath her eyes. Was she okay?

  “Well, what about Henry Ackley?” I demanded, pushing my sympathetic thoughts aside, at least for the time being. I had a point to make here – about the Air Force and why I should join. Henry had been Dad’s most faithful employee and a proud veteran to boot. “Henry used to tell me that joining the armed forces was the best way a man could possibly serve his country.”

  “Henry didn’t know everything!”

  “What do you mean by that?” I demanded. “Henry was always telling great war stories, acting like being in the South Pacific was the greatest time of his life. And, good grief, it had to be a lot more exciting than selling pumps to old ladies, for Pete’s sake. What are you talking about anyway, Mom?”

  She stepped forward and looked me in the eyes. “I’m talking about a young man – a young man with a bright future and a fine education – a young man who is willing to toss everything aside just so he can run halfway around the world to shoot guns and bombs and things!”

  “Whoa, Mom,” I said in an almost teasing voice. “I had no idea you were anti-war. Did Dad know about this?”

  Her eyes were filled with fire now and she was really fuming. She reminded me of a character in those cartoons I used to watch on Saturdays, maybe the one where Elmer Fudd got so fed up with Bugs Bunny that the steam came pouring out his nostrils and ears as he aimed a loaded shotgun at the rabbit’s head. Well, my mother looked ready to blow too. But I just shrugged, picked up her fallen rake, and took over where she’d left off, scooping a big clump of leaves into her pile.

  Without saying a single word, Mom turned away and stomped off toward the house. I think I actually felt the lawn vibrating with each step. And I felt pretty sure I’d missed a bullet – a mother bullet.

  But when Mom came back out again, about an hour or so later and after I’d gotten all the leaves raked into one big neat pile, she informed me that I was not going to enlist in the Air Force, and that I was not going to go to Vietnam, and that I was not going to become a pilot. “Not until you’ve accompanied me to Ireland first,” she told me in her firmest most I-mean-business–like voice.

  “Ireland?” I said, thinking my mother had finally lost her blooming mind. “What on earth for?”

  “Because I said so,” she said with finality. “And I’ve already made the travel arrangements for us. We’re going there in mid-December. For Christmas. You’ll have just enough time to get your passport. And if you know what’s good for you, you will not argue with your mother, young man!”

  3

  Colleen

  “Why in the world are you going to Ireland?” my sister demanded as I refilled our coffee cups. Sally had just driven up from San Diego and we were having our second cup of coffee. I returned the chrome coffeepot to its spot by the stove, then sat back down, placing both of my palms flat on the shiny plastic surface of my kitchen table. I studied the cheerful buttercup color of the plastic laminate and pondered her question. It was a good question – one that deserved a good answer. It had been only a week since I’d announced my crazy plan to Jamie, and to be honest, I was starting to have second thoughts myself.

  “Really, Colleen,” she persisted as she picked up the creamer. “What makes you want to go to Ireland? And for Christmas? You don’t even know anyone over there, do you?”

  “No . . .” I stirred cream into my coffee.

  “Not that I wouldn’t love to travel too, if I were you.” She let out a long sigh, looking dreamily out my kitchen window toward the bougainvillea bush. “But Ireland?”

  “Jamie was talking about joining the Air Force.” I said the words slowly, still trying to absorb the meaning behind his announcement. “So?” Sally shrugged then stirred some sugar into her cup.

  “So, I didn’t want him to.”

  “Why not?” She looked evenly at me now, and I could tell I was walking on thin ice here. Especially since her husband Richard had only recently retired from a lifetime career in the Navy and their older son Larry was considering following in his dad’s footsteps after high school graduation in two years. “You have something against the military, Colleen?”

  “No, no, of course not.” I considered my words carefully. “It’s only that Jamie just graduated from college and . . .”

  “First of all, what makes you so sure about that? It’s not like you saw him graduate, did you? Has he shown you his diploma yet?”

  “No, but that’s not really the point.”

  “What is the point?”

  “I don’t want him going off to Vietnam and getting hurt.”

  “Why would he get hurt, Colleen? From what I hear it’s mostly about peacekeeping, restoring the order. According to Richard, it should all be over before long anyway.”

  “But you never know . . .”

  Sally frowned, then r
eached over and placed her hand on mine. “It’s because of losing Hal, isn’t it? You’re worried that since you’ve been recently widowed, you only have Jamie left, am I right?”

  I looked out the window in time to see a goldfinch lighting on a branch, then nodded. “Yes, I suppose that has something to do with it.”

  “But why Ireland? And if you’re worried about Jamie’s safety, you might want to think again. From what I’ve heard about that new prime minister in northern Ireland, it’s not going to be the most peaceful place either before long.”

  “It’s hard to explain . . . but I suppose I’ve wanted to see Ireland for a long time.”

  “Is it because of your name?” Sally teased. “You think that because Mom named you Colleen means you’re Irish? Because I can assure you that’s not the case. She just happened to like the name. If Dad had had his way, we’d all have Norwegian names like Helga or Olga or Gudrun.”

  I chuckled. “Can you imagine being Gudrun? It sounds like a bad case of indigestion. And, no, my interest in Ireland isn’t related to my name. But maybe it’s because of that movie . . . remember The Quiet Man with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara about ten years ago? I was so taken with it. Ireland looked like such a pretty place. So romantic.”

  Sally seemed to consider this, then eagerly nodded. “Oh, I loved that movie too. Well, except for the part where he spanked her. That was uncalled for.”

  I laughed, then agreed.

  “So, there’s no talking you out of this Ireland trip then? You and Jamie won’t change your minds and come down and spend Christmas with us this year?”

  “No, but thanks anyway. The travel agent has it all booked and Jamie’s already applied for his passport.”