A Dropped Stitches Christmas (11 page)

“The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.”

—James Yorke

I
brought this quote to the Sisterhood and it still amuses me. I am not a plan B kind of a person. None of us in the Sisterhood are. I wondered when we first talked about this quote if having cancer made us less flexible than we would have been otherwise. It seemed like so much was out of our control that we hung on for dear life to those few things we thought we could control.

I didn’t know I would need a plan B the first thing on Tuesday morning, but I did. I stopped to talk to my aunt before I left for my play rehearsal. We are standing in the doorway of the front door.

“I’ve heard Max Sullivan is going to be here,” my aunt says. She is rubbing her hands in anticipation or worry, I don’t know which. “I hear he’s the power behind all of those new movies. I can’t wait to meet him. Do you think he might come speak to our garden club some time?”

My aunt belongs to the San Marino Garden Club, the club that had part of its winter home tour at my uncle’s house last weekend. She would be ecstatic to bring in a well-known speaker from the movie industry. The other women would be all over something like that.

“I don’t know,” I say, wishing I could do better to please her. My aunt is always easier to live around when she has her way. “I don’t know him at all.”

“Well, he’s going to be watching your play before he comes to the party,” my aunt says. “Surely, he’ll want to meet the actors. You can ask him then.”

“I’m an understudy,” I say. “I doubt I’ll be there if he does meet the actors.”

“An understudy?” my aunt says with a frown.

My aunt has a fine smooth face; her salon appointments see to that. Frowning is her only vice. She wears sunblock; she eats the right vitamins; she has her skin renewed regularly with some kind of a facial. I guess she can’t stop the frowning though.

“It’s okay,” I say. “Really. I’m fine with being an understudy for Mary.”

“Maybe if your uncle spoke to the director.”

“No, no. That’s not necessary. The parts are already assigned. I’m fine with being an understudy.”

If the girl with the butterfly tattoo only knew how close she is to losing her part, she’d be screeching at me about now. I have no doubt that my uncle could throw enough weight around to intimidate the director of the play, especially when the director is having the cast party at my uncle’s house.

“It wouldn’t be fair to change things now,” I say.

“I just don’t like to see you overlooked.”

I have never seen my aunt being this nice to me. “Is everything okay?”

“Well, yes,” my aunt says hesitantly. “I think so.”

There’s no early sun this morning and the house looks shadowed inside.

“It’s my mother, isn’t it?”

I never understand why people don’t tell the families when someone is sick. I’ve always known that, if something was wrong with my mother, I would be the very last one to know. And she has been looking so frail lately. Like she’s sad and expecting worse to come.

“No, no.” My aunt looks startled. “It’s the food.”

“Food? For the party?” I ask in relief.

My aunt nods. “Our regular caterer is already booked and it’s only two days notice for the party so I don’t think we can get anyone else that’s any good. So, I was wondering if that place you go—you know, the place—if they would do it?”

“The Pews?”

My aunt nods. “We’ll pay, of course.”

“I can ask.”

The Pews doesn’t ordinarily do catering, but when I get there and mention it to Marilee, she thinks it would be a great idea. She sees that there will be enough of the right kind of people at the party to jump-start a side catering business for The Pews.

“Who knows? We might even start doing this sort of thing. For right now we have the kitchen space to fix the food and Randy has a Jeep so we can haul big pans of things for the party. What kind of food does your aunt want?”

Marilee and I are sitting in our Sisterhood room at The Pews. We’re waiting for the coffee in our cups to cool a little.

“Little bites of things. Something that will impress people.”

“That means silver trays,” Marilee says. “And we’ll need to hire some waitstaff.”

“I could pass around a tray.”

I think of the black shirt and white blouse I was going to wear to church last Sunday.

Marilee nods. “We might all need to help, but I think it would be fun.”

“We’d be doing something together,” I agree.

“You’ll need to talk to Randy about the menu,” Marilee tells me. “I’ll go check on our stock of plastic glasses. No, wait.” She looks at me. “I suppose we should use the real ones?”

I nod. “If you want it to look elegant.”

Marilee reaches behind her and pulls a white tablet off the bookshelf. “I’ll need to make a list.”

I swear, Marilee could launch a war if she had enough lists. She’s one of the most organized people I know. I’ve wondered for a while now if she isn’t a little bored with her job at The Pews. I know her heart is here. But, like I said, she could run any kind of a campaign. She’s just not using all of her talents at her job here.

Marilee is still making lists when Lizabett comes to The Pews and asks me if I want company for my rehearsal today. I nod. Lizabett enjoys watching the play take shape and its fun to sit with her and see everyone run through their lines.

Of course, Lizabett keeps hoping the director will yell, “Cut!” and call for the understudy for Mary to step forward, but I’m happy enough watching the butterfly lady do the honors.

If Randy weren’t needed at the grill, I would like him to see the role of Joseph played in rehearsal. Joseph is a short, stocky guy who looks like a computer technician. When he looks at Mary, though, he looks at her with clear fondness on his face. The director was smart to get a boyfriend-girlfriend combo to play Joseph and Mary. It makes for some believable acting.

By the time Lizabett and I slip into the church where everyone is rehearsing, the play is almost ready to go on. Since I’m technically part of the cast, Lizabett and I get to sit in the first few rows of the church so we can see everything well.

The stage is almost finished being built at the front of the church. Someone has painted some fantastic backgrounds of dusty landscapes with farmhouses in the distance and what looks like dead grass on the ground.

Now that I’ve read the New Testament a few times, I can see how the dryness in the first part of the play is symbolic. It is what the world was like before Jesus was born. All of those dusty images could make a person thirsty. No wonder Mary goes on about tomatoes when she gets closer to their destination.

“They want to make you long for Christmas,” I whisper to Lizabett. “All that dust in the beginning and then the gradual greening as the big night arrives.”

Lizabett is looking at the side of the stage where some of the other props are stacked.

“Is that Motel 6 sign supposed to be for the inn?” she asks.

I nod. “And the manger is a gas station.”

“I can’t imagine Jesus being born in a gas station,” Lizabett says.

“Actually, he’s born in the restroom of the gas station. The station is closed for the night.”

“Wow.”

“Mary and Joseph were poor,” I say.

Joseph’s understudy comes down the aisle and sits in front of us. He turns around and nods. He and I don’t actually know each other, but we nod at each other just to show that we both know it could be the two of us up there on the stage if disaster suddenly struck.

It kind of bothers me that Joseph’s understudy looks a lot more like the actor playing Joseph than I look like the butterfly woman playing Mary. It just makes it so plain to me that the director chose me as the understudy because he wanted to use my uncle’s house and the understudy role was the least he could give me. And I mean the absolute least.

I know this is the way Hollywood works even on small productions like this one. It’s all about who you know or, more accurately, who the people you are meeting know and whether they are willing to introduce you to them later.

I brought the journal with us this afternoon. Not because I think either Lizabett or I will do much writing. But because it feels good to have it with us. I never thought I’d feel this way about the journal. But it’s a part of me like my cell phone and my bus pass.

I wonder if it’s because I am starting to like being responsible for the journal. It’s like carrying the heart of the Sisterhood around.

“They missed that one,” the Joseph understudy turns around and whispers at me. “If they can’t learn the lines, they shouldn’t be up there.”

“They’re probably just nervous,” I whisper back.

He grunts in disgust. “I could do better.”

I just shrug at him. I might have said the same kind of a thing a week or so ago. Its easy to put people down instead of lifting them up. “The important thing is the play.”

Well, that made the understudy turn back around and face the stage.

“Did I sound stuffy?” I turn to Lizabett and whisper softly. “I didn’t mean to. It’s just that—”

Lizabett nods. “You’re right to take it seriously. It’s Mary’s story. Well, and Joseph’s, too—and the baby’s at the end.”

The lights are starting to dim as the old pickup truck onstage bounces along to the motel that is flashing a No Vacancy sign. This is one of my favorite parts, because I see how worried Joseph is about Mary. Not that I wouldn’t be worried, too, since a baby is going to be born any minute now and he’s the one who has to make the arrangements and there’s no 911 to call.

Joseph talks with the man inside the motel and the desk clerk keeps shaking his head. Finally, the desk clerk reaches under the counter and brings up a short stack of neatly folded towels.

“Here. It’s the best I can do,” he says to Joseph. “And the restroom is always open at the station across the street. At least it has heat and it has a big hallway in front.”

“Thanks.” Joseph takes the towels and goes back to the pickup truck.

I sit here and think about Christmas. I’ve always thought how terrible the innkeeper was to not go upstairs and kick some of his guests out of their room so there’d be a place for Jesus to be born. But I see we treat lots of people as though they’re not as important as we think we are. I guess I shouldn’t say we. The truth is I haven’t even passed out towels to people in need very often.

It’s easy to enjoy the Christmas nativity scene when it’s a few plastic figures nestled into a manger. It all looks kind of cozy. And anyone who has pets knows a few animals around only adds to the charm. But when I think about the manger as being a cement-floored restroom at the back of a gas station with only a few towels for comfort, I start to realize that Mary must have been scared.

She had to trust God a lot. Or she would have unraveled completely. Not only was she having a baby, she was part of the greatest miracle of all time. I still haven’t quite wrapped my mind around that virgin birth part.

I have the Sisterhood journal sitting in my lap and I grab it a little tighter.

I’m almost surprised when the shepherds show up. They are farm laborers and they have a wire cage filled with chickens. I know the director used chickens for animals instead of sheep because they’re smaller and fit on the stage better, but I think he might be on to something. Chickens are humble creatures and I like that.

I see the farm laborers all taking off their caps as they look at the baby.

Lizabett sighs when the play is over. For the first time since she’s started watching the play, she doesn’t comment that I should be in the lead Mary role. I know that means she’s looked past her ambitions for me and is seeing the story.

“The baby would have been cold if the desk clerk hadn’t given them those towels,” Lizabett finally said.

I nod.

Lizabett makes a stop once we get to Pasadena. She pulls right up into the parking lot on Lake and Walnut and puts five dollars in the red bucket that the Salvation Army person has there. I put in another five dollars.

“God bless you,” the Salvation Army man says.

“Thank you,” we answer right back.

We drive on to one of the parking lots just off of Colorado. Lizabett parks her car there and we walk over to The Pews. The stores on Colorado are all decorated for Christmas with red swags from the streetlights and lots of twinkle lights in the windows.

I picked up my complimentary play tickets before I left the rehearsal and I will give Marilee and Randy their tickets. I already gave Lizabett her ticket. I will have to leave Becca’s ticket at The Pews.

“You know, the best thing we did in a long time was to find a place for Joy to stay,” I say to Lizabett as I open the door to The Pews.

“Randy’s the one who did that,” Lizabett says as she steps over the threshold.

“Well, and Becca brought her to our attention,” I say as I follow her into the diner.

Now that I think about it, my contribution was more audience participation than anything. It’s not an easy thing to realize you might not like to be treated like a princess anymore, but that it’s still the way you know how to live.

I’m a little subdued as I give Marilee her ticket to the play.

“Can I do anything to help?” I ask Marilee as we stand by the main counter inside the diner.

“Mushrooms,” she says as she leads me to the kitchen. “We’re making crab-stuffed mushrooms for the party tomorrow and we have lots of de-capping to do.”

The kitchen counters are full of boxes and trays.

“Hi,” Randy says to me with a quick smile. He’s standing at the grill putting a sauce on some tiger shrimp. “Welcome to toothpick town.”

Randy reaches over to a nearby tray and gets one of the strawberries on a toothpick. He holds it out to me. “Sweets for the sweet.”

Marilee groans.

Randy chuckles. “Hey, I’m grilling here. I don’t have time to think of new poetry.”

“It’s lovely,” I say as I walk over and take the strawberry. “My favorite.”

I start working. I think it’s a nice touch that someone has thought to include baby tomatoes stuffed with cream cheese and chives.