The 13th Day of Christmas Read online

  Who do you know who is facing days of Christmas that seem destined to be bleak when they should be bright, foggy when they should be fearless, full of loneliness when they should be full of love?

  Charlee and Marva, together, are unwrapping each new day as if it is a gift. They’re experiencing what it truly means to make every day count. It’s a message of Christmas we all can take to heart.

  No, not everyone has a friend like Marva at their side. But just think of those who can have a friend in you.

  16

  Homecoming

  Today’s the day,” Nurse Becky Reynolds said. “Can you believe it’s here?”

  No, Charlee couldn’t. She’d seen nothing for weeks except for her hospital room and a few short green and white hallways on her floor. She’d walked up and down those shiny hallways, pulling an IV with Melvin the monkey perched precariously on top.

  She missed her home.

  She missed the other twenty-six, too.

  She missed the neighbors who hardly spoke to her. She missed watching the boys climb and tumble down the dirt and gravel pile at the end of the short barb street. She wanted to wave to the porch rockers, walk down the street for no reason, and turn around and wave again, just because she could.

  Charlee couldn’t wait to lie in her own bed and stare up at Zach’s bunk and know she wasn’t the only one in the room. She missed his music being turned up so loud she could hear the buzzing and booming sneaking out from his earbuds.

  But mostly, she missed Miss Marva. She’d been to visit Charlee every few days, but was never able to stay long. She hoped her friend wouldn’t be too tired for another visit, and that Charlee wouldn’t be too tired to host her.

  “What’s the first thing you’ll do?” Nurse Becky asked as she made notes on Charlee’s chart.

  “I don’t know. There’s a lot on my list. I never even got to finish my Thanksgiving turkey dinner.”

  “I betcha you’ll get that chance, Charlee.”

  “I hope it’s a different turkey!”

  Nurse Becky laughed and slid the chart back into a wall pocket. “I hope so, too,” she said and she sat on the edge of Charlee’s bed. “Your mom and dad are with the doctor right now going over your schedule. But since it’s just you and me, can I share a secret with you?”

  “Sure.” Charlee wrapped Melvin’s long arms around his head until they doubled back over his ears.

  “It’s really, really important that you rest at home. I know you want to do everything, but it’s super important that you take it slow. You’re going to be coming back a lot for treatments, and they’re going to make you very tired. So you need to save your energy as much as you can. Like a dessert you want to last a long time. Understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “How about this. You like movies?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Maybe just picture yourself in slow motion, like they do in the movies sometimes. When you feel like eating too fast, or walking too fast from the bedroom to your bathroom, or wherever, just imagine you’re in a movie going suuuuper sloooow. Can you do that for me?”

  “I can try.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise,” Charlee said, as she wrapped her pinkie around Nurse Becky’s.

  Charlee rode in the middle seat of the minivan and clutched a fat pillow, a gift from Nurse Becky that the other nurses and doctors had signed and drawn smiley faces on in brightly colored permanent markers.

  Her dad drove and her mother rode in the passenger’s seat, but she spent so much time turned around looking at her daughter, Charlee thought she should have just sat next to her.

  “How you feeling?” Emily asked.

  “Good.”

  “Not sick?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’ll tell me?”

  “Yep.”

  “All right.”

  They drove slowly from the hospital through Woodbrook and Charlee pointed out the town’s Christmas decorations that hadn’t been there the last time she’d been downtown.

  “There’s a wreath on every streetlight!” Charlee said.

  “Isn’t it nice?”

  “Uh-huh. Drive slower, Dad.”

  Emily turned again as they neared the entrance for 27 Homes and put her hand on Charlee’s knee. “Remember everything we’ve talked about, right?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “You’re still a little sick, sweetheart, and we still have a long ways to go. Lots of trips back for treatments to make sure the big sickness doesn’t come back. That means we have to be careful.”

  “I know.”

  “No playing outside. It’s bed, the couch, and short times at the table, for now.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “And we know you want to visit Marva, but not yet. Not until the doctor says it’s all right.”

  “I know,” Charlee said, a hint of irritation creeping into her voice.

  “She knows, Emily,” Thomas said. “Right, Charlee Chew?”

  Charlee saw her dad wink at her in the rearview mirror. “Uh-huh.”

  “We’ve got a few surprises in store,” her dad said, looking back again. “How does that sound?”

  “You do?”

  “We sure do,” he added. “Christmas is all about surprises, right?”

  They pulled into the neighborhood, and Charlee grinned at the sight of a wreath capped with a bright red bow hanging from the front door of their trailer.

  The wreath, Charlee soon learned, was only the beginning. The trailer had been “Christmased,” as Charlee called it. Lights draped from the cabinets in the kitchen, a motion-sensor dancing Santa stood on the counter next to the toaster, and Miss Marva’s large tree towered in the corner of the snug living room. The tree stretched so far into the room it left little space around it for anything but the TV stand and a recliner.

  Even Zach was in the holiday mood. They found him sitting at the table wearing a green cotton elf hat with a jingly brass ball hanging from the end.

  “I have a gift for you,” he said.

  “You do?”

  Zach reached under the table and pulled up a box wrapped in the local newspaper. “Sorry it’s not real wrapping paper. I didn’t think about it until you were already on the way back.”

  Charlee was so happy to be home, to see Zach and to have something waiting with her name on it, she would have been content if the gift hadn’t been wrapped at all.

  “Thanks, Zach,” she said. “Can I open it now?”

  He nodded and she ripped at the top of the wrapping, quickly exposing the box and freeing it from the newspaper.

  “Miss Marva sorta helped buy them,” Zach said.

  Charlee spun the box around to examine the picture of a pair of florescent yellow, two-way radios. “Are these walkie-talkies?”

  “Sorta,” Zach said. “They’re pretty much the nicest you can get around here. Like I said, Miss Marva chipped in.”

  Charlee pulled off a piece of tape and opened the box. She pulled out a Styrofoam block with two spaces, but only one radio. “Where’s the other one?”

  Zach took the packaging from her, removed the radio, and turned it on. “Say something,” he said, holding down the button.

  Charlee took it from him and looked curiously at her father.

  “Go ahead,” Thomas said. “Say something.”

  Charlee put her lips close to the front of the radio. “Hello?” But she didn’t release the button until Zach gingerly slid her finger off it.

  No response.

  “Try again,” Zach said. “And remember to only press the button while you’re talking. You have to let go to hear the other person.”

  Charlee pushed the button and pressed her lips right against the radio. “Hello? Is anyone there?”

 
“Charlee!” The voice came through without any pops or crackles.

  Charlee giggled. “Who is this?”

  “My. Well, who do you think it is?”

  For the first time in weeks, Charlee’s smile was almost as wide as Melvin’s. “Miss Marva!” she squealed, but then forgot to release the button and Zach again reached over and nudged her finger.

  “Good guess, dear. It’s your favorite neighbor from across the field.”

  “You’re my favorite neighbor anywhere,” Charlee said, and she immediately released the button, drawing a thumbs-up from her brother.

  “How are you feeling today?” Miss Marva asked.

  “I’m good. How are you doing? I miss you. I’m home now.”

  “I know you’re home, dear.” Charlee could hear Miss Marva laughing. “And I’m very happy about that.”

  “Me too. But Mom says I can’t leave to visit you for a while.”

  “I know—that’s why Zach got these for us. You can talk to me anytime.”

  “Anytime?”

  “If I’m awake, you can talk to me whenever you like. I’ll leave it on and in my apron pocket all day.”

  “Thanks!”

  “You’ll listen to your folks, right? Do what they say and get better soon?”

  “I will.”

  “And I’ll come visit when I can. And soon, I promise, you can come back over to my house.”

  “Okay,” Charlee said, but she immediately hit the button again. “Wait! Thanks for loaning us your tree! It takes up the whole house!”

  “I’m so glad.”

  The two friends chatted back and forth for another minute while Charlee’s parents unloaded her things from the van.

  “I like talking to you, but I wish I could see you, too,” Charlee said.

  After a beat of silence, Marva’s voice came back across the radio. “How about you count to ten and then look out your window at my back porch. Can you see that far?”

  “Sure I can! One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . .” Charlee quickened the pace. “Six, seven, eight, nine, ten!” Then she got up from the table and looked out the back door.

  Marva stood on her front porch waving with both arms and wearing an apron.

  Charlee pressed the radio button. “Hi! What does your apron say?”

  “It says: Welcome home, Charlee.”

  17

  Doubting Thomas

  Thomas sat in the dark. On the floor, a portable space heater’s digital display tried to convince him it was 65 degrees. Thomas knew better. A December cold front had settled in the south, and Woodbrook was getting its first taste of winter.

  At 5:15 in the morning, wind lashed against the thin walls of the trailer like waves on a sea wall. He was grateful Emily and the kids could sleep through it, but Thomas wondered how they possibly could. If he really considered it, he hadn’t slept well since moving to 27 Homes. But cold, unkind nights like the last one only made it harder for him to turn off his mind and hand it over to the night.

  He poured a second, smaller bowl of cereal and finished it quickly. Then, for the third time that morning, he checked on Charlee. She slept soundly under a sheet and two blankets, clutching Melvin with one arm and the top blanket with another. She wore a knit cap on her head, and her face was partially obscured by her pillow. Still, from Thomas’s view in the doorway, it looked like she was almost smiling.

  He mouthed a good-bye to Zach and Charlee, shut the door, and made his way outside. The wind has slowed, he thought, but it still blew with enough personality to punish his ears. The hood was still up on the Beetle, and he stopped to admire his work using his cell phone as a flashlight. One of Thomas’s friends from a job site had offered to let Thomas raid his own comatose VW for parts in exchange for help framing a basement. With Zach’s help, he’d made enough progress that the engine was finally turning over.

  Thomas looked in the driver’s side window and blew into his hands. The car still lacked seat belts, and Thomas knew he’d need to get them installed before Emily would let him take Zach for a ride, even around their quiet neighborhood.

  The seat belts weren’t the only things missing. The car had no working emergency brake and no windshield wipers. Only one headlight worked—even though the bulbs were new. At least the wiper motor successfully moved the stubby metal brackets back and forth in rhythm through the air. It was a start.

  Thomas carefully and quietly lowered and latched the hood. He noticed Marva’s lights on across the field, and he checked the time on his cell phone: 5:33. He wished he had more time and could check on the only neighbor the family really knew, but he faced a twenty-minute drive to work and an early start time. Later, if he remembered, he’d text Emily and ask if she’d check on Marva before taking Charlee in for her treatment.

  He climbed in his clunker truck and lifted the handle with both hands to shut the door. It was his daily ritual to miss the bells and whistles of the beefy Ford F-250 he’d left on the dealership lot when he could no longer make his payments.

  The other truck was made-in-America strong and made him feel successful; the clunker was foreign and made him feel like he was cheating on his country.

  The other truck had seat warmers; the clunker had seats.

  The other truck had satellite radio; the clunker had a radio that worked when Thomas rolled down the window and held on to the makeshift antenna that had been duct taped to the side of the truck.

  It was strange, he knew, but he thought the other truck smelled like leather and hard work; the clunker smelled like tuna fish and failure.

  Thomas pulled out of 27 Homes and onto the rural highway that ran into town. He passed only two cars on the short drive between the neighborhood and the first of six traffic lights on Main Street. Downtown was quiet, too, and only a few cars lit the air with headlights and turn signals onto the town’s narrow side streets. He sat at the first light and admired a dark red, antique Chevy truck sitting in the parking lot of Oakli’s Barely Owned Cars. The light changed and by the time he noticed, it was already turning yellow.

  He rolled through but was stopped again at the second light. “Figures,” he said aloud. “Nobody around, and I’m on the wrong side of the cycle.” On his left, the lights were already bright at Utley Dental Care, and he wondered who trusted a sleepy dentist to go spelunking in their mouth at 6:00 a.m.

  At the third light he stopped again, but he would have run it if not for the two town cops standing outside Shrum’s bakery and coffee shop. He also noticed a new craft store called Jadi’s and hoped Charlee would one day browse its aisles.

  The fourth light also stopped him, and he noticed for the first time a sign on the door of a two-story brick building that read Woodbrook Sleep Clinic—Dr. Sammi Denson. He found it ironic their lights were on that early, too.

  At the fifth light, which seemed to last longer than three Sunday sunrises, Thomas cursed under his breath when a county sheriff’s deputy cruiser approached the intersection and stopped. When they finally passed each other, Thomas thought the deputy eyeballed him like a guilty man.

  At the sixth and final light on Woodbrook’s Main Street, Thomas found himself sitting in front of the Woodbrook town offices where he had first picked up the keys to a dirty trailer in a dirty neighborhood. He wished he could pull in and return the keys to the assistant town manager, the one who’d signed their rental contract. Could he slide the keys across the counter and drive in reverse back to their former lives, their former selves? Could he rewind it all? The move? Bankruptcy? Charlee’s cancer?

  The wind picked up again in an insistent, angry tantrum, and a wreath on the door of Starnes’ Salon blew off its hook and rolled like a tire across the intersection. Pieces of pine branches and holly peeled from the wreath; the bow untied, but did not detach. By the time it came to rest against a newspaper box, it wasn’t a wreath
anymore. It was nothing more than a collection of battered branches with a tattered bow.

  Thomas stared at it through the light cycle until the car behind him honked and delivered him back from the wreath to the present.

  A project foreman met Thomas in the parking lot of the new sixteen-unit apartment building they’d been working on for two weeks. “No work today, sorry, Thomas.”

  “What do you mean no work?”

  “I mean we don’t need you on this job anymore. You’re done. We’re ahead of schedule.”

  “What about paint?”

  “It’s covered. Same crew from the motel remodel.”

  “Flooring?”

  “Guys are coming for that next week, if we’re ready.”

  “Come on, man, I need this. There must be something.”

  “Sorry, Thomas. Call the office in a few days, see if something else pops on another job.” The foreman nodded another apology and turned his back.

  Thomas dropped his head onto the window of his truck. The sky had begun to stroke from black to blue and the light mixed with the yellow from the parking lot lamp overhead. Thomas pulled his head back and examined his unshaven reflection. But it wasn’t his face he saw; it was Charlee’s.

  Inside the truck but still sitting in the unfinished, unpaved parking lot, he let his temperature rise to a boil, and he banged both fists against the steering wheel until the faux leather cover came loose and hung half off. He ripped it off with a single, violent yank and slapped it against the dash until the radio turned on and the knob popped off.

  He punched the radio once with the bottom of his clenched right fist, and the static disappeared as quickly as it arrived.

  “My God.”

  Thomas gripped the cold wheel and rocked his head back against the headrest.

  “My God. Is this real, God?”