A Cozy Country Christmas Anthology (5 page)

Al grinned at my shocked expression. “My
Sunday School class wanted to do something special for a family and
I happened to think of you and Steven. They’ve been slaving away on
ornaments and paper chains for a month—just as excited about their
surprise as this little sprout seems to be.” He nodded at Jill who
was seated cross-legged before the tree, head tilted back as she
gazed up at the star.

I managed to stammer our thanks and Steven
pressed Al’s hand fervently. At the door, our good friend stopped
to slip an envelope into my hand. “A Christmas angel left this at
the church office for you folks.”

He winked and began shepherding his charges,
who were making snow angels with Jeff and Lars on our front lawn,
toward the SUV and the van.

I counted the bills inside the envelope. I
would be able to pay the utility bills and there was enough left
over for groceries.

The vehicles pulled out of the yard in a
flurry of snow, snatches of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” drifting
back to my ears.

The falling flakes melted and mixed with the
warm tears on my cheeks as I whispered, “Let nothing you
dismay—remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day.”

I looked up into a haze of white, and
although I couldn’t see it, I knew the Star of Bethlehem shone over
our house that night.

THE END

In For A
Penny

When he first mentioned the weekend visit,
Rob talked of going alone. Slipping into his role of a surgeon
preparing a patient for the upcoming ordeal, his words flowed.

Like a distracted patient, however, Dorothy’s
hearing turned selective with only fragmented phrases washing over
her: “Back before you know it”...“Only gone two days”...“We’ll both
feel better when it’s over...”

“I’m going with you, Rob.” Her firm tone
silenced his unspoken protest.

After a moment of staring, eyes narrowed, he
scowled, turned, and stalked out of the condo. Biting her lip,
Dorothy accepted this retreat, although she still struggled every
moment with the knowledge that he’d walked out on her emotionally
months ago.

So she’d laid down an ultimatum and now they
were trapped together in the car, with unspoken awkwardness
separating them from their destination.

As the sun glinted without mercy off the
windshields of oncoming cars, stabbing through the protection of
her sunglasses, Dorothy wondered whether, when Rob said, “we’ll
both feel better when it’s over,” he’d been referring to this
weekend, their marriage or the birth of the new life stirring
within her.

“Tell me about your grandfather,” she said,
the words spilling out and sending ripples to disturb the
silence.

Rob hesitated. With her intimate knowledge of
his thought processes, Dorothy could almost see him marshalling his
words into orderly statements as though setting a row of delicate
stitches. She waited with outward patience, the sharp edges of her
fingernails gouging the palms of her hands.

As her husband swung the wheel in a left
turn, Dorothy’s gaze snagged on his left wrist. Tanned, softly
curling golden hairs, strong, but marred by the clinical precision
of his TAG Heuer wristwatch. Her nails dug deeper—she’d been hoping
he would leave it behind. The ever present symbol that time served
as the master of their relationship stirred a faint nausea within
her. She’d asked, no, begged, Rob to leave his watch behind on this
trip.

“My grandfather isn’t a guy you can peg into
a hole. He’s not someone comfortable in society and he’s never had
much money.” The sting of the unspoken “unlike your family” echoed
in Dorothy’s head.

Another pause as Rob kept his gaze locked on
the traffic ahead. “Ham’s over eighty now and a widower.”

The marriage counselor’s admonition, “Pretend
you’re on a first date this weekend,” jabbed at Dorothy. But
communication between them had become a nightmarish blind date of
walking on eggshells, fumbling for words and tense silences. She
shared the blame equally but didn’t know how to break the
cycle.

Again, the sunlight highlighted her husband’s
capable hands as he maneuvered the Mercedes through heavy traffic
spewing out of the city and heading north. A weekly exodus to
wide-open spaces, one they’d never made. She continued to stare at
Rob’s hands. The hands of a healer, yet he refused to mend their
marriage.

Dorothy yanked her thoughts off that gloomy
track and launched another conversational probe. “What did Ham do
for a living?” She winced. Her laugh sounded like a titter in her
too critical ears. “I assume he’s retired.”

“Ham’ll never retire, not completely.” Rob
snorted as a reluctant grin teased his lips. The car accelerated to
move around a slower vehicle. Another moment, then Rob blurted, “He
was a cowboy.”

Dorothy hated the paper-thin defensiveness
that coated his words, the subtle accusation of snobbishness. Then
the import crashed in on her. “A cowboy?!!”

Her husband’s studied attention to his
driving left no room for her to maneuver. She blanked out her
thoughts, determined not to let him win by getting angry and
lashing back.

With one hand, she caressed her midriff. Such
turmoil had to be bad for the baby. A baby scheduled to be born
into a home so blessed with the material and yet so poor in the
emotional. Would this tiny life be raised in a two parent home?

As the miles murmured beneath the tires,
cushioned in luxury, Dorothy pondered the mysteries of a failing
marriage. When had the first unhealed wound appeared? Rob’s
schedule as a top-level trauma surgeon kept them physically apart
much of the time, while his exhaustion and nervous tension from
bearing life and death responsibilities nearly every day isolated
them emotionally.

Dorothy knew she’d helped to create this
division between them, that he viewed her requests for a reduced
schedule as criticism or her frustration, when rare evenings
together were interrupted with intrusive pages, as selfishness.
Counseling had enabled her to see his side of the story but since
Rob had neither the time, nor the inclination to attend counseling,
she stood alone in her self-knowledge. Nothing she’d tried recently
seemed to bring them closer together.

Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how
much she’d staked on this trip as a salvage mission. Rob might be
able to avoid her emotionally but this weekend they were stuck
together physically, without the beep of the ever present pager to
allow him to escape, for at least 48 hours.

Dorothy blinked and raised her head. She
massaged her stiff neck and stifled a groan. Somehow, she’d dozed
off and missed a view of some of the lakes and rivers that
Minnesota bragged about on license plates and official websites.
She’d also wasted precious hours of potential bonding. Her mouth
felt dry and a faint headache tingled behind her eyes.

She looked around. Wherever they were at, the
road had been damaged by yet another severe winter, and not even
the Mercedes’ suspension system could level out all the bumps.
Luxury defeated by an overwhelming force. Just like their
marriage.

Dorothy had grown up in what Rob had jokingly
referred to during their courtship as “the lap of luxury.” Holiday
travel had been to glitzy resorts set on sparkling lakes where
every need had been met with a smile. Places with spectacular
views, everywhere you looked a vista of beauty.

Her parents had never vacationed in places
like this backwater, she reflected, peering through the passenger
window. When Rob told her where Ham lived, she’d imagined thick
woods smelling of pine needles and “nature”, not scrubby pines
alternating with birches and tangled ditches that bloomed with
orange, purple and yellow wildflowers. Or weeds, depending upon
your viewpoint, Dorothy reflected.

After perhaps fifty or sixty miles, they
passed through only the third town since Dorothy had opened her
eyes. More small lakes, more ditches, more wildflowers. She found
herself wondering whether the names of those plants could possibly
be as a colorful as they were themselves, trying to imagine where
the people who lived in the small houses set well back from the
road could possibly work. No big box stores or fast food
restaurants in this “neck of the woods”, as Rob used to say.

Used to. She yanked her thoughts back to the
countryside. A bird flew alongside the car and then veered off,
vanished. What did birds do after they raised a family? Fly south,
find a new mate? No, Rob had once talked about ducks and geese that
mated for life. This curiosity directed at something other than
herself and Rob felt strange, yet welcoming.

“That’s so strange.”

Rob jerked his head around to stare and
Dorothy realized, too late, that she’d said the word out loud. “I
meant strange that there’s so little traffic on the road.”

“I told you before that this isn’t a vacation
paradise. No one in the Twin Cities has ever heard of—”

“Sibley’s Corners!” Dorothy interrupted him,
pointing to a faded sign that announced their destination. “We’re
here!”

“Don’t sound so excited.” Rob gave her a wary
glance. “I don’t know what you’re expecting, but...” His voice
trailed away.

Dingy houses huddled closer and closer
together as though wary of open spaces as the Mercedes rolled
through the town. For the first time, Dorothy realized that it must
have been a dry season here up north. Lawns looked patchy and
brown, drowsing under the relentless afternoon sun. A too-thin
woman in shorts and faded tee shirt watered a circle of petunias,
the life giving liquid trickling from a hose that sagged in empathy
with her shoulders. She watched the expensive car glide past, her
face expressionless.

Two blocks past the woman, Rob swung the
wheel and then slowed as he pulled into a narrow graveled drive.
Switching off the engine, he dropped his hands into his lap. To
Dorothy’s surprise, she heard him draw a sharp, inward breath.

Was he afraid? Her smart, driven husband,
who’d put himself through medical school and faced down her family
to get her to marry him, looked nervous. He wet his lips, reached
for his travel mug for another drink, his stare fixed on the small,
shabby house.

Dorothy turned from Rob to study it, also.
Peeling layers of various shades of paint gave it the look of a bag
lady caught on the nightly news, an elderly woman bundled in layers
to ward off the chill of a Minneapolis winter.

So small! The passenger door clicked open,
breaking her concentration, and she struggled out, with Rob’s hand
to assist her, an impassive, courteous butler. The muscles of her
back ached with tension and her temples throbbed.

With a flip-flop of nerves Dorothy realized,
I shouldn’t have come. If Rob was trapped this weekend, so was she.
No hotels in Sibley Corners, Rob had informed her, his lips white
and head held high. “So much the better,” she’d retorted. Yes, so
much the better. . .

The sun beat down on her uncovered head; a
wave of dizziness washed over her and she grabbed at the sleek, hot
side of the car. Rob had disappeared.

As her head cleared, Dorothy turned to find
her husband a few feet away, almost slouched in the shade cast by a
pine tree, his hands in his pockets, his poker stiff spine relaxed.
Bewildered by this sudden shift in Rob’s body language, she started
towards him, her expensive shoes crunching on the dried out
needles. No grass, just sandy soil, burnt by the acid from the
needles.

“Ham, this is my wife, Dorothy. Dorothy, my
grandfather, Hamilton Forest.”

Forcing a smile to her lips, she slipped off
her sunglasses and extended a hand in greeting. As her eyes
adjusted, her mental sketch of an ex-cowboy as lanky and laconic
crumbled into dust and fell among the needles.

Her husband’s grandfather appeared to be an
elf named “Forest”—or was he a gnome? The top of Ham’s head only
came up to the top of Dorothy’s chin, while bowed legs encased in
ancient blue jeans and gnarled hands remained as the only outward
signs of his former occupation.

Ham gave his grandson an enthusiastic hug
before turning his attention to Dorothy. A startlingly deep voice
boomed from that tiny frame, “Pleased to meet ya, Dorothy! You’ve
lassoed a good man in my Robbie.”

For a moment, she forgot her queasiness as
she returned her host’s smile. “Yes, he’s quite a catch!”

Rob’s swift glance and wary expression
betrayed his feelings regarding her sincerity but his grandfather
threw his arms around Dorothy and gave her a whole-hearted squeeze.
Tears stung her eyes. Loving human contact after months of
isolation. Her lip quivered and she bit it hard to maintain her
composure.

Ham peered up at her. “I can tell by looking
at her that she’s a winner, grandson. As pretty as dogwood blossoms
in the spring! We’ll get along just fine.”

Although Rob stood beside her, Dorothy sensed
his subtle withdrawal, the shifting of his stance so their
shoulders no longer touched. Ham continued to beam as he regarded
his visitors.

“What are you working on, Ham?” Rob bent over
a saddle draped across a board, poked at the piece of wood
supported by four legs. “What’s this called, Ham?”

“That’s a saw horse, Mr. Town fellow.” Ham
picked up what looked like a can of shoe polish and a ragged piece
of cloth from the seat of a lawn chair. “I’m doing my daily
polishing.” He stroked the saddle’s dark, moist looking leather.
“Takes a heap of elbow grease to keep leather as soft as butter.
You have to keep at it each day or it dries out, could crack.”

A saddle as an image for her marriage?
Dorothy rubbed at the tension banding her forehead. Too simplistic.
Stop grasping at quick solutions, real life isn’t black and white,
she told herself.