Christmas Jars Page 9

  “Oh, my.” She was overcome.

  “The other is from a family of eight, believe it or not. Their father was laid off two years back, and a jar appeared on their step Christmas morning. It had almost a thousand dollars in cash. They apologized for not doing as well but wanted you to know they were thinking of you.” Hannah bent down and kissed her mother’s head. “Look how loved you are, Mother.”

  “And so too your father,” she answered.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Hannah and her mother sat silently gazing at the jars, each knowing they had not given jars to any of these people personally and wondering to what extent their family tradition had spread. Without a word, they reopened their albums and again examined family photos, mostly of Adam. Fifteen minutes later, two quick knocks stole their attention once again.

  “My turn,” Adam’s sister yelled out just as she arrived at the door. A short, muffled conversation began and ended with a “Thank you” that was loud enough it could have been meant for someone on the other side of the street. She turned back into the house. “Can I get a hand here?”

  “On my way, sis,” JJ pledged, and the sound of his heavy feet and skipping pace filled the first floor. “Unbelievable!” he shouted. In Terri’s arms were three full jars, and two more sat on the porch just outside the door. “What’s happening?” He turned to his sister. They delivered the jars to their mother’s spot in the living room.

  “I only got the story on one,” Terri began. “The others just handed them and ran off.” She picked back up a midsized jar with five rolls of quarters and at least five one-hundred-dollar bills. “A very good-looking man handed me this one.”

  “Easy there, honey,” her husband said, entering the room behind her.

  “Excuse me, a modestlygood-looking man handed me this.” She winked over her shoulder. “He’s a single guy, and judging from his suit and overcoat I imagine he’s pretty well off. He received a jar four years ago when he really didn’t need it. But it awoke something in him, and he said the next year he made his first-ever donation. Ever!”

  “I don’t understand,” Lauren interrupted. “Why him? Why us today?”

  “I guess some people just need to learn how to give, Mother.”

  But before Lauren could reply, another knock once again turned their heads from one another to the front door.

  “I got it!” JJ, Terri, and Hannah yelled in unison and jostled for position. JJ playfully pulled his sister and niece back by their waists. He arrived first and flung open the door. The others sat quietly preparing to eavesdrop.

  “Mother,” Hannah called, “you’d better come see this.”

  Lauren set aside the most recent jar, unwrapped herself from her warm blanket, and walked to the door. Everyone else in the house not already on the porch followed. She appeared in the open door and saw JJ, Terri, and Hannah flanking the porch, looking out into the yard and street.

  Scattered between the first step and as far as a block away were dozens of people carrying jars, all converging on the porch, all wearing tremendous smiles as wide as any Maxwell had ever seen.

  “Amazing,” Lauren said so quietly that only she heard. A makeshift line formed, and as if in a funeral reception line the strangers worked up the five steps to Lauren to hand over their Christmas Jars. Some shared their own conversion stories, others offered a warm “Merry Christmas, ma’am,” and still others said nothing at all. They smiled as they looked into her eyes, placed their jars in her outstretched hands, and walked away to their own Christmas Eve gatherings.

  Jars arrived for almost an hour. Each was taken by Lauren, handed to another, and set aside to make room for the next. Each visitor, from the first to the last, received a pure and full “Thank you.”

  “My heart cannot hold anymore,” Lauren said to Hannah as the last family disappeared down the stairs and into the gathering darkness.

  “Neither can the porch,” JJ cracked.

  Using an assembly line, they moved the jars into and throughout the living room and kitchen. No one dared speculate on how much money the jars might contain; they knew it didn’t matter. Very little was said, for most were still numb, inside and out, from the remarkable generosity, mostly from people they’d never met in all their years at 316 Oakliegh Hill.

  Eighteen

  ~

  The heart of Christmas Eve arrived, and the children were eventually sent off for baths and pajamas. Others hid away to wrap a few final gifts that had almost been forgotten in Adam’s passing. Lauren melted back into Adam’s chair and listened to the chatter. Her grateful eyes scanned the room, making mental note of the seemingly endless procession of jars. She marveled at the unique nature of each. The grieving widow was awash with a colorful blend of emotions, especially the beginning pangs of loneliness and longing for Adam. She peered at the chair next to her, the one she had occupied for an entire marriage, and wished she were sitting in it instead.

  With the bustle calming around her, and just as her eyes fell closed for the first time in eighteen hours, another knock startled her. “Hannah? Steven?” she called, but no one answered. “Dustin, dear? You down here?” But he was hiding in the studio, sitting on a workbench, pretending to read the sports page. Mostly he looked around and tried to imagine Restored without Adam.

  “No, no, I’ll get it,” Lauren said to herself, unwrapping once again and walking to the door. She pulled it open to see yet another stranger—a middle-aged woman—holding a jar.

  “Hello there,” she greeted.

  “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Maxwell,” the woman answered.

  The confused look on Lauren’s face was hard to ignore.

  “The newspaper article,” the visitor prompted.

  “Yes, of course. Forgive me, we’ve had a few unexpected visitors tonight,” Lauren said, folding her arms across her chest and rubbing her bare arms. “It’s gotten cold.”

  “Christmas Eve,” the woman replied. “It’s finally here.”

  “Indeed. Well, won’t you come in?”

  “Do you mind? I’m sure it’s been a long day for you and your family—”

  “Don’t be silly. Come.” Both women stepped into the rapidly cooling foyer, and Lauren closed the door behind them. “Since you know my name, may I know yours?”

  “Marianne.” The woman stuck her gloved hand out.

  “Pleasure, Marianne.” She met the woman’s hand and shook. “Call me Lauren.”

  She led the visitor into the living room and gestured to the love seat. “Sit down, please,” she said and settled herself once again in her husband’s favorite recliner.

  Marianne sat down and glanced around the room at the collection of brimming jars.

  “I guess you know why I’m here, then,” she said.

  Lauren looked at the woman quizzically and smiled. “I think I might.”

  “I want you to know”—she stood and stepped toward Lauren, reaching to hand her the chilly glass jar—“that this jar saved my life.”

  “Really? How so?” Lauren accepted the heavy jar, turned it around like all the others in sheer wonder, and rested it in her lap.

  Marianne stepped back and retook her seat. “A long time ago—a lifetime ago, it feels like—I was a young woman living around here, and I was given a jar myself.”

  “A lifetime ago? That’s an awfully long time.”

  Marianne took an extra breath and continued. “You’re so right. You see, at the time I was a young, naive newlywed. Sort of new, I guess.” Lauren wondered if the woman was telling this story for the very first time. “My husband and I were pretty happy, both working, enjoying, I thought, our first couple of years together.”

  “I remember those times.” Lauren’s mind spun back thirty-plus years to the early days of her own marriage.

  “My husband traveled a lot, and I was home mostly, trying to keep things organized, learning how to be a homemaker. He was pretty rough with me, but then I thought overall it was probably good. I was learni
ng to be a wife, you know?”

  “Dear, it’s never—”

  “Yes,” she interrupted. “I know that now. It’s never all right. But he loved me, and when things were good they were real good. Then three years in or so we got pregnant.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “I wish it had been. He wasn’t happy. He didn’t want it.”

  “Didn’t want it?”

  “He wanted me to ‘take care of it,’ he said. I broke the news to him over the phone while he was in New York or Detroit or somewhere, I don’t even remember. He was pretty upset about it, thought I’d somehow tricked him.” Marianne rubbed her face and breathed as if refilling her tank. “He came home and he hit me like he never had. He said if I kept it he’d leave. That he wasn’t ready. That I wasn’t ready.”

  Lauren stifled the urge to comfort; she knew after three decades the woman had either long since healed or buried her pain far beyond the reach of comfort.

  “I told him I wouldn’t, that I couldn’t. We were having the baby, and that we could handle whatever rearranging he thought we needed. He said he’d think about it, and things seemed all right for quite a while, seven months actually. We didn’t talk much. He traveled more than ever, but the hitting stopped, and I guess things just seemed okay to me. I always thought it could have been so much worse.” Marianne’s cadence trailed off, and Lauren could see reflected in her face a life of very hard lessons.

  “Then he left,” Marianne picked up again, “for a ten-day trip in December to Vegas. I was eight months pregnant. Said he’d be back by Christmas. And on Christmas Eve, first thing in the morning, I get this call that a check bounced. I ran down to the bank, and it was gone. He’d taken everything.”

  “No, tell me he hadn’t.” Lauren said the words she was supposed to but already knew the answer.

  “Every penny . . . I was horrified. I was scared. I was lost for where to go next. I sat on the curb outside, staring at my bank balance on one of those little white sheets of paper.”

  Footsteps interrupted the unfolding story. “Mom?” Hannah glided in from the hallway. “Everything okay?”

  “Yes, love, everything’s fine. Join us.”

  Hannah sat on the floor at her mother’s side and rested her arms across Lauren’s legs.

  “Go on,” Lauren told Marianne.

  “You must think I’m crazy, but I needed to tell you this.”

  “Of course, please, continue. And, oh,” she interrupted herself, “this is my oldest, Hannah.” Lauren gently patted her daughter’s head like a bongo. “Hannah, meet Marianne.”

  “Hi. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “Go on, dear,” said Lauren.

  “Well, I sat there in shock and was just, frankly, tired of crying. My life was ending. No education, no husband, and a child in me that I couldn’t raise. For the first time in my life I felt like there was no hope. Then this little girl walked toward me, just this little angel, she was.”

  Lauren suppressed a smile that began in her belly and worked up to the tightening corners of her mouth. Chills spread from her toes to her scalp as she took a long, deep breath. Subtly, she tilted the jar in her lap away from her just enough to steal a glance at the delicately painted letters: “ALM.”

  “She was carrying that very jar, the one in your lap, but filled with a lot more money, I’m afraid, and she asked me to take it.” For the first time, the woman—no longer a stranger—began choking on her words.

  Hannah took her mother’s hand and squeezed gently.

  “The girl sat down by me, slid the jar over, and said I should have it. Then a very concerned dad appeared behind her. This girl, this beautiful little girl, told him I needed it, that I should have it. I cannot describe what I felt, but I remember it today like a movie I’ve seen a million times, you know?”

  “You’re doing just fine.” Lauren replayed in her own mind the story with equally vivid detail. “It’s like we were there.”

  “The little girl and her dad walked away, leaving this jar full of money next to me. I tried to get a plate number or a description or something so I could look them up and repay them, but I couldn’t see through the tears. I must have sat there for another hour.”

  “Quite a story,” Hannah said, still reeling from hearing this familiar story for the first time from the other side.

  “That’s not quite it. If you don’t mind?”

  “Absolutely! Go on!” Hannah and her mother spoke on top of one another.

  “I walked into the bank, deposited the money—eight hundred seventy-four dollars, ninety cents.”

  “Imagine that,” said Hannah.

  “I moved out during the next two days, moved in with a friend, and thought I’d have time to think things through before the baby came. I didn’t. I fought contractions as hard as I could, then delivered her on my girlfriend’s couch.”

  “My!” Lauren covered her mouth.

  “I stayed for a day or so to get my legs back. Then I took off.”

  “With a newborn?” Hannah asked.

  “Well, I knew if someone came to see me they’d want to tell him.”

  “Your husband, you mean?” Lauren asked.

  “My husband . . . I talked to a clinic about adoption. I was in no way ready to raise this baby, but they said I’d have to have her dad involved—at least until we proved what kind of man he was . . . so I just left.”

  “You walked away with the baby?” Hannah asked.

  “More like ran. I loaded the baby in my car—no car seat, nothing—and drove out of town. When I was a couple miles out, I stopped, dropped the baby off with an anonymous note, and kept running. And honestly? I mean, it’s taken me time to get to this, but it was the smartest decision I ever made.”

  “I can only imagine,” Hannah said, still stunned, suppressing the desire to jump to her feet and pull the stranger into her arms.

  “Tracking down a gal from school to stay with wasn’t as tough as I thought it’d be,” Marianne continued. “I stayed with her a couple months until I figured things out. My mom and dad were gone; it’s not like I had all that many choices. So I used what was left of the money and went to hairdresser school. Now I do hair, and I do pretty good. I have my own salon in my house.”

  “We’re so happy for—”

  “And how can I forget!” she exclaimed. “I’m married now to a great guy, married ten years, no kids, but he treats me like a queen.” She thrust her ring finger at them, smiling proudly.

  Even if they’d wanted to speak, Lauren and Hannah didn’t have the words. Lauren found herself replaying in her mind Marianne’s words: .. . dropped the baby off with an anonymous note. At the same time, she recalled the image of a young woman sitting on the Persian rug in this very room and telling her life story—a story that began at a restaurant on U.S. Highway 4.

  The three women sat in silence, looking at and into one another, each of them reflecting on what had been shared.

  After a few moments, Lauren got up from her chair and pulled her still-stunned daughter to her feet. She stepped to the love seat, extended her hand, and said, smiling warmly, “Marianne, do you like chicken?”

  Nineteen

  ~

  With Marianne in the passenger’s seat and her mother comfortably in the back, Hannah drove through their neighborhood, across the edge of downtown, and out toward the darkness of the surrounding countryside. Their cheerful banter quieted when Hannah turned the car onto Highway 4. It stopped entirely when a yellow and white sign came into view.

  Hannah turned into the empty parking lot and pulled up facing the wide plate-glass front window of Chuck’s Chicken ’n’ Biscuits. The restaurant had been dark, illuminated only by a single light peeking from the kitchen over the chest-high stainless steel order counter. But now the headlights shone brightly through the glass, revealing a young woman sitting alone in the booth that knew her best.

  Hannah turned off the car, and after a brief pause, Marianne got ou
t. Lauren moved quickly into the passenger’s seat, and the two excited women slunk down in their seats, peering over the dashboard, their nerves quivering.

  They watched as Marianne opened the front door of the restaurant and walked past the silent boogie-dancing Santa and the darkened Christmas tree. She hesitated just short of the young woman and turned to look through the window at Hannah and her mother. Over the glare of the headlights she saw their heads scrunched together, their faces barely visible over the dashboard. But she could have seen their smiles from the moon.

  Marianne turned back to Hope, walked to the booth, and sat across from her for the first time since leaving her in the very same booth precisely one week shy of twenty-six years earlier. Even from their distance in the empty parking lot, Hannah and Lauren could see them gaze across at one another for some time before Marianne’s lips finally moved. At last, they saw Hope pull a tightly folded piece of paper from her coat pocket and slide it across the smooth tabletop.

  Through two converging beams of light, a tearful daughter and mother watched another tearful daughter and mother become reunited across a white-flecked altar of forgiveness. Then Lauren and Hannah reverently withdrew.

  ~

  Through the early hours of that blessed morning, the two newly introduced women, a family once again, became acquainted, each eagerly sharing the events of their lives. They wept as Hope shared the miracle of her adoptive mother, Louise, and that gentle woman’s graceful passage through this life and into the next.

  Dawn approached, and in the gathering light, Hope made out the green edging on Marianne’s baby blue eyes. And as the last corner of the restaurant filled with the redeeming light of Christmas morning, Marianne and Hope could be seen playing tic-tac-toe with tater tots that somehow never cooled.