A Dropped Stitches Christmas (15 page)

The silhouette behind us changes slightly to include the three crowned figures and the light fades as the play comes to an end.

The curtain closes and there is a full minute of silence. I look at Randy and he looks at me. Surely, someone would clap just to be polite.

“Were we that bad?” he whispers.

Then applause erupts from out front. People are stomping their feet and a few of them give piercing whistles.

“I don’t think so,” I whisper back to Randy with a grin on my face. I wouldn’t have wanted to let Mary down and I suspect Randy feels the same about Joseph.

The curtain opens and the whole cast goes forward to take a bow. Then it’s just Randy and I, holding hands, bowing in front of the audience.

The applause is deafening.

Then someone from beside the stage walks up and hands me a huge bouquet of roses. There are more roses in this bouquet than in the one I got when I was crowned queen of the Rose Court.

“I didn’t know they were doing this,” I say to Randy.

“They didn’t,” he says. “They’re from me.”

“Oh.” I’m already smiling so wide I don’t think I can smile any bigger, but I am wrong. “Thank you. They’re beautiful.”

“It’s what Joseph would have done,” Randy says quietly. “For his Mary.”

Okay, so now I’m beyond smiling. I think I’m crying, just a little.

“Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.”

—Will Rogers

R
ose brought us this quote when we were all on the mend. It was her way of reminding us that we needed to look forward and not backward. We were just beginning to see that we actually still had lives ahead of us. There was an exuberant feeling in the Sisterhood the night Rose brought us that quote. We knew things were going to be more hopeful the day after we talked about that quote.

There haven’t been all that many moments of sheer joy in my life and taking my bows on Mary’s behalf has definitely been one of them. Randy escorts me down off the stage and we make our way down the aisle so we can shake hands with everyone as they leave. This was the director’s idea and it is a good one. Everyone seems to want to say something to either Mary or Joseph.

I am carrying my bouquet of roses in one arm, but I still have one hand free for shaking hands with others. The roses are deep red, scented ones and the smell surrounds me.

Mostly, people want to congratulate me on doing so well in the play, but some of the people have more personal things to say. One elderly woman takes my hand and holds it for the longest time as she tells me about the time when she’d been Mary in a church Christmas play as a youngster. She says it started her on a lifelong journey of faith and that she hopes it does the same for me.

I tell her I hope it does, too, and I mean it. I pull one of the roses out of my bouquet and give it to her. She beams as she carries it off with her.

Then Becca comes to shake my hand.

“Forgive me,” she says. Her chin is determined and her eyes are steady. “I was wrong to be so angry.”

I know what an apology like that costs Becca.

“I was wrong, too,” I say. “I never should have let you keep believing I was richer than I was. I should have said something.”

Becca grins. “I don’t know why I kept believing it, anyway. You’re the only one of us who doesn’t have a car. I guess I always thought a chauffeur was dropping you off.”

“A chauffer called the city bus,” I say.

“I know.” Becca takes a deep breath. “I think I was always a little jealous of you for having everything so easy. And then, to find out it hadn’t been that way at all, I felt like a fool.”

I shake my head. “It wasn’t you. It was me.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Becca says.

The line stretches on behind her and I can see Marilee is anxious to say hello to me.

Several other people give me their regards before Marilee gets to me.

“Did you
see
those guys?” Marilee says in awe. “The ones with Randy.”

I knew it. “Quinn is working tonight so you’re out looking at other men. I don’t even know if they’re single.”

“Those aren’t other men. They’re Dodgers baseball players. I’ve got to get their autographs. My dad would be so excited. I want something special to add to his Christmas gift and this could be it. Did you meet them?”

“Randy introduced us before the play, but I didn’t know they were professional athletes.” So this was his answer to my aunt’s desire to have some important people at the party. Pro baseball players will make my aunt very happy.

Marilee looks at me like I’m hopeless. “One of them hit a ton of home runs last season. Don’t you read the newspaper?”

“Not the sports section.”

Marilee looks behind her and sees there are several people still waiting. “Put in a good word with Randy for me. I’ll try to find something for them to autograph. You don’t happen to have a baseball at your house, do you?”

I shake my head. “My uncle has some golf balls.”

“That will never do. I’ll ask Lizabett. Maybe she has something in her car they could autograph. You’re going right over to the party at your uncle’s, aren’t you?”

I nod. “I’m hitching a ride with Lizabett and she’s going right over.”

Marilee shakes her head. “Didn’t Randy ask you to drive over with him?”

“No, we haven’t really had much of a chance to talk. We’ve been onstage.”

Marilee nods. “He’ll ask you. That’ll give you time to ask him about his Dodgers friends. And find out if he carries a baseball in that Jeep of his.”

It takes a little longer for the line to wind down. The director is the last one through and he stops to get the address for my uncle’s house. The party will already be going before any of us get there.

Marilee is right. As soon as the director walks away, Randy comes over and asks me to ride to the party with him. I tell him I need to let Lizabett know so I walk over and give her a quick hug so she can be going as well.

Lizabett was putting the Sisterhood journal back in her purse as I walk over.

“Did you write something?”

She shakes her head. “I was just reading what Becca wrote.”

Lizabett pulls the journal out of her purse and hands it to me. “Read it when you get a chance.”

I take the journal although I can’t take anything else now since I already have the roses in one arm.

I walk back to Randy and we walk out to his Jeep together. I kind of miss the silhouette of Mary and Joseph following us around.

“Thanks for everything,” I say. “If you hadn’t agreed to fill in at the last minute, there wouldn’t have been a play.”

“Oh, the director would have thought of something.”

“Yeah, me reading Joseph’s lines in a deep voice and Mary’s lines in another.”

It’s cozy driving down the freeway back to Pasadena. I’ve put my roses in the backseat and they make the whole Jeep smell nice. I wonder what Randy’s friends will think if they drive somewhere with him soon.

Which reminds me. I tell Randy that Marilee noticed his fans were baseball players and she would like an autograph on something.

He, of course, graciously agrees to ask them if they’ll sign something.

“You don’t have a baseball with you, do you?” I ask.

I can see there’s nothing in his Jeep except for his snorkeling gear and I don’t think Marilee’s father wants an autograph on a black fin.

Randy shakes his head. “Maybe one of the guys will have a baseball with him though. I’ll ask them.”

I think about asking Randy what he thinks about my new hair color. It seems a little odd to just blurt out a question like that, though, so I try to think of a way to ease into it.

“I noticed Becca was there,” Randy says.

I nod. “It was good to see her. We’ve made our peace.”

“I thought so.”

It seems like it takes no time at all before we are turning onto Huntington Drive. We’ll be at my uncle’s house in a few minutes.

“I hope they found a bowl for the spiced cider. It’s cold enough tonight people will want something warm.”

Randy turns onto my uncle’s street. “Marilee asked Linda to take care of everything and she’s very responsible. I’m sure everything’s perfect.”

Randy hasn’t met my aunt yet so I don’t tell him that perfection might not be so easy to attain in the house we’re heading toward. Of course, having some big-name baseball players among the guests will help.

I see the lights of my uncle’s house while we’re still down the block. There are lights in every single window and lots of twinkle lights spreading out to the lawn. Christmas music is floating out from the house. That’s when I notice a figure in a light-colored garment wandering around on the lawn.

“That’s my mother!”

I look again. “In my old bathrobe.”

And, it’s light enough with all of the Christmas decorations going that the neighbors on all sides could see her.

“She hates that bathrobe,” I say as Randy parks his Jeep at the curb in front of my uncle’s house.

“Maybe she lost something,” Randy says.

I don’t tell him that my mother would need to lose her mind before she would willingly start wandering around San Marino in that old flannel bathrobe. She doesn’t even go outside without makeup on. Not even when she’s sick. She can’t stand the thought of the neighbors saying something.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” I say after I get out of the Jeep and run over to her.

My mother looks up at me and I can see she has been crying. “I lost your cat. I left the door open and she ran outside. I’ve looked, but I can’t find her. You love that cat.”

“I love you more, Mom,” I say as I give her shoulders a squeeze. “You shouldn’t be out here in the cold. Marie will come inside before we know it. It’s just all of these people around tonight.”

I turn my mother toward the house and we’re walking back together.

Randy is almost behind us so I turn around and mouth at him. “Marie’s loose. Can you find her again?”

Randy is the one who convinced my cat to come back home the last time she ran away.

Randy leaves on his mission and I keep walking with my mother.

“I just keep losing things,” my mother mutters as we get to the stairs leading up to our rooms in the house. “Nobody wants to live with me anymore.”

“Don’t worry about Marie,” I say again as I open the door. “She’ll be back. Of course she wants to live here with us.”

“Your dad doesn’t,” my mother says as she steps in the door.

Okay, so now I know my mother has really been worrying. I should have woken her up earlier and insisted she come to the play with me. Maybe if she saw me with my brown hair playing the role of Mary and everybody being so happy with the play, she could have adjusted to the change.

“Dad is in a rehab center,” I say gently. “He’ll come back when he’s well enough. You know that.”

My mother and I are inside our little stairwell now and she turns to me.

“I should have told you. He’s been out of the rehab center for months now. He refuses to come back and live with us.”

“Oh.”

There’s a dim light in the stairwell, but I don’t need to see my mother’s face to know she’s telling me the absolute truth.

“He says he won’t live in my brother’s house anymore. That it makes him want to drink. That he can’t be a man living off someone’s charity like this.”

I feel a moment’s panic. “But Dad has to be somewhere. Where is he if he’s not at the rehab center?”

“He got a job at the mall and rented a place in Eagle Rock. Eagle Rock!”

Okay, so Eagle Rock isn’t San Marino. In fact, it’s twenty steps or so down from San Marino. Maybe even fifty steps down. But it’s not like my dad has been living on the moon for the past few months. It can’t be more then ten miles away from here.

“But why haven’t we seen him?”

“He comes by when you’re in school. We didn’t want to upset you.”

Now I have to sit down on the stairs.

“I know how attached you are to San Marino,” my mother says. “We can’t afford to live here unless we stay in your uncle’s house. And you deserve to be in San Marino. This is where you belong. Your dad will just have to stay in Eagle Rock and visit us when he can.”

“No, Mom,” I say as I look up at her. “I don’t
need
to be anywhere. What I need is for my parents to be honest with me.”

My mother draws the flannel robe closer around her. “You say that now, but there’ll come a day when you’ll regret it if we leave.”

“Why? Why would you think that?”

My mother frowns. “Well, anyone would, dear. You’ve been the Rose Queen. Your dad and I can’t expect you to sleep on the sofa of his one-bedroom apartment.”

“Then I can get my own apartment,” I say. “I’ve been hoping to move after Christmas anyway.”

My mother stares at me like I’ve grown wings right in front of her eyes.

“I’m old enough to live on my own,” I say to her softly.

“But you’ve been sick. The Hodgkin’s disease—”

I smile. “I’ll be fine. I can’t live my life wrapped in cotton. I have to grow up sometime.”

I follow my mom up the stairway.

“Does this mean Dad will be here for Christmas?” I say when we reach the top.

“I guess so,” my mother says with a smile of her own. “I’m worried about him being all alone in that apartment on Christmas day.”

The color in my mother’s face is looking better.

“Why don’t you get dressed and come down to the party?” I say to my mom. “We made all kinds of wonderful appetizers and there’s eggnog and spiced cider.”

“I’ve been smelling the cider. And I think your cat smelled some of the other food.”

“Well, then,” I say. “She won’t be hard to find. She’ll be hanging around the doorways begging for a treat.”

My mother goes to her room to get dressed and I remember the roses I left in Randy’s Jeep. I go back down the stairs and I see Randy holding Marie and talking to his two baseball friends that have arrived.

The two friends are walking into the house by the time I reach Randy.

“You found her,” I say.

Randy nods as he pets my cat. “I think she decided to give up easy this time. She knows I’d just get her in the end anyway.”

“I forgot my roses, too,” I say.

Randy reaches into a pocket and gives me a key. “I’ll take your cat back to your doorway.”

I nod. “I left the door unlocked. Just set her at the bottom of the stairs and she’ll be fine.”

“One of us better go inside and check on the food, too,” Randy says. “I’ll do that after I put Marie inside.”

There are so many lights around I don’t need to fumble to get the key into the door of Randy’s Jeep. I smile when I see the roses and then I remember that I have the Sisterhood journal as well.

I take the roses upstairs and fill several vases with them before I take the Sisterhood journal into my bedroom.

Marie is curled up in the basket in the corner of my room, but she’s not sleeping so I turn the light on higher. I want to know what Becca wrote in the Sisterhood journal.

Hi, this is Becca. I never knew my ideals could get me into so much trouble. I’ve always known I like things to be black and white, right and wrong. But I didn’t know there could be so much gray in life at the same time.

I think when we all had cancer I needed to know things were black and white. If I admitted to gray, I was admitting to the possibility of death.

I don’t know why I put Carly up on some kind of a pedestal. I used to look at her when we were meeting and think, if I could only be like her, I would live. No one that serene could possibly die.