An Amish Christmas (7 page)

James sat on the edge of their bed, his head down and his hands clasped between his knees. Meg watched him brace himself for what he was about to do. She almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

She was no happier than he about this decision. There was no place on earth she wanted to go less than her parents’ house in upstate New York. But it was the only solution to their problems that made any real sense. Their first priority was to find a place to stay. Only Meg’s parents had the room to take them all in, and could be prevailed upon to let them stay indefinitely for free.

Of course, “free” was a relative term, Meg reflected. Payment might not be made in the form of money, but it would most definitely be made. And the cost would be extremely high.

She picked up the phone, punching in the numbers to her childhood home before handing it to James.

He took a deep breath, then stood as he brought the phone to his ear and waited for someone to answer. “Hello, Harlan?” James was trying to sound cheerful, Meg knew, but his voice came out sounding more strangled. “It’s James … Hobart.”

Meg turned away, fiddling with something on their dresser so he wouldn’t feel her eyes upon him. She could hear him pace as he talked.

“How are you? Frances doing okay? Good, good.”

The brief pauses required for her father’s replies told Meg that he was being his usual terse self. James made small talk for a little while longer. Meg noted that her father did not inquire about her or the children.

“Harlan, I need to talk to you about something pretty serious.” James was getting down to it but kept his tone casual. “We’ve had some setbacks here, you know, the economy and such. I’m sure you’ve been reading about all this. Well, we haven’t been immune down here in Charlotte.

“So, what with my firm downsizing and such, turns out we’re going to have to do some downsizing ourselves. We bit off a little more than we could chew, I guess, with the house. Foolish in retrospect.”

With his last comment, James had purposely handed her father the opening to lecture him. The conversation was becoming increasingly painful for her to listen to, and she knew it was about to get worse.

“Yeah, you’re right,” James said contritely. Meg could imagine her father making some self-righteous remark about how this was to be expected when people overreached or didn’t follow the tried and true.

“So, Meg and I have been talking. We think the best thing would be if we came to you and I started doing what I should have been doing all along: learning the business.”

Meg looked up at her husband. Getting that out must have nearly killed him. While she was glad that he was finally dealing with some of the ugliness his mess had created, at the same time, his groveling was making her cringe in sympathy.

“That’s right, Harlan, I am dead serious. It’s time for us to get settled into a solid business that we can depend on. Those are the ones that last, no matter what. Like you always said. Heck, I’m definitely looking forward to doing something
real
instead of pushing papers all day. But we’d need to lean on your generosity a bit. You know, maybe staying with you until we get our feet on the ground up there.”

James listened as his father-in-law responded.

“Unfortunately, in this market, we won’t get anything out of the house. We put a lot of money into it, and I’m not hopeful we’ll make it back. So, no, we don’t have a whole lot of capital, as they say.”

Meg wasn’t surprised that her husband chose to finesse the issue of their losing the house. She couldn’t really imagine him saying that they would be leaving with only the shirts on their backs. The conversation went on for another minute or so before he brought it to a close.

“Yes, you’re absolutely right. Yes. Well, okay, then, that sounds fine. What time tonight? Good. Send my best to Frances in the meantime.”

James pressed the off button and put down the phone. He turned to Meg. “You have to call back tonight at seven. He said
your mother would handle any ‘domestic arrangements,’ as he so quaintly put it. She’s out now.”

“Will he give you a job?”

“Yes. He said it was about time I’d come to my senses.”

“James, I know how hard that—”

“Oh, cut it out.” His face contorted with fury. “You must have really enjoyed that. For the rest of your lives, you and your parents can hold it over my head, how I came crawling to them for help.
Begged
them to take in my family and give me some crummy job. Happy now?”

Meg took a step back in surprise. “You think that makes me happy?”

“I
know
it does.” James left the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Whatever sympathy Meg had felt for him vanished. He viewed himself as a victim, she realized, and somehow she was going to be the villain. He was writing his own script about what had happened. Unfortunately, she could see that it wasn’t going to have much to do with the truth.

Meg left the room only to be met by the sound of Lizzie crying. Ever since yesterday, when they told the children the news, Lizzie had been virtually holed up in her bedroom. She hadn’t come down for dinner, and the dirty cereal bowl and spoon in the sink this morning were the only evidence that she had eaten anything between then and now. Periodically, Meg would knock on her daughter’s door, but all she got in the way of a response was “Go away!”

She tried again with a gentle knock. “Lizzie? Please let me talk to you.”

To Meg’s surprise, she received silence in reply. She took that as an invitation and opened the door a few inches. “Can I come in?”

The only answer was Lizzie’s sniffling. Meg entered to find her daughter stretched across the bed on her stomach, her face turned toward the wall.

“Oh, honey, I know this is so, so hard,” Meg said.

Lizzie kept her face averted, and her voice was muffled by sobs. “No, you don’t. You don’t know anything. You may have grown up in some stupid little town, but nobody made you leave your house and everything you owned. Nobody destroyed everything you worked so hard to build—friends, your social life—everything.” She turned her face toward Meg. It was red and tear-stained. “How could you do this to me?” Her voice grew louder. “Why did you let this happen? You have three children. Didn’t you think about us at all?”

“Your father and I—”

“I can’t understand how you and Daddy could be so stupid. And selfish. You didn’t save anything or have any kind of plan. Boom, just like that, our lives are gone.”

“There’s a lot you don’t understand about all this.”

Lizzie regarded her mother dully. “I understand that I hate you. You’ve ruined my life, like, literally,
ruined
it.” She turned her face to the wall again. “I wish I were dead. Leave me alone. I never want to see you again.”

Meg stood there for a moment, trying to imagine what this all felt like to her daughter. Then she left the room.

As she made her way down the hallway, she saw the door to Sam’s room was open. Peering in, she froze. Her nine-year-old
sat on the floor in the center of the room, surrounded by a huge array of boxes and bags full of his collections. Meg watched silently as he lovingly examined some tiny rubber action figures.

His stuff
. The stuff that made him the quirky, sweet kid he was. She hadn’t thought about how he would have to abandon all the things he had collected. All the things that somehow represented to him security and control in a scary world. How could they ask him to do that? The other two children would have to part with clothes and gadgets and a range of things that were bound to be painful to them. But Sam would have to let go of a part of himself that he wasn’t ready to give up. He shouldn’t have to.

He saw her standing in the doorway and smiled. “Hi, Mom.”

Of the three children, Sam was the only one who hadn’t displayed anger toward Meg or James. After their gathering in the family room, Will had left the house yelling out angrily that he would be at Leo’s as he slammed the door behind him. He wasn’t supposed to leave home without a parental okay, but Leo lived within walking distance, and under the circumstances, no one was about to stop him. This morning he had sullenly allowed Meg to cook him scrambled eggs and toast, retreating with the plate to his room so he wouldn’t have to sit with her in the kitchen. Apparently, he wasn’t speaking to his parents any more than he had to.

Sam had been very quiet, but it was a different kind of quiet. He was clearly afraid, and he seemed to Meg more fragile. He had spent much of the morning in her presence, practically following her from room to room, trying to be helpful in any way
he could. It was as if he needed to be with her but was trying not to add to the misery and disruption in the house.

Meg forced a smile to match his. “Hi, pumpkin.”

He got up and went over to his desk, retrieving a crumpled pile of dollar bills there. “I saved this from my allowance and stuff. It’s eighteen dollars. I thought maybe you and Daddy could use it.”

“No, no, Sam.” The words caught in her throat. “That’s very nice. But you keep it.”

She turned away before he could see her face. Hurrying down the stairs, tears burning her eyes, she went out to the backyard and got as far from the house as she could before bursting into long, loud sobs. It was the first time since all this had started, she realized, that she had cried. Now that she had started, she wasn’t sure she would be able to stop. She cried for the children and for her marriage. She cried with fear, having no idea what the next months would bring. She cried at the realization that the security of her life had been such a flimsy illusion.

Much later, when she couldn’t cry another tear, she stood, exhausted, and made some resolutions. She wouldn’t let the children see her get down. No matter how furious she was at James, they would maintain the best possible relations in front of them. Last, she wouldn’t rely on her husband to get them out of their financial straits because the likelihood that he could tolerate working for her father was pretty much zero.

At exactly seven o’clock that evening, Meg sat down at the kitchen table to call her mother. If Meg’s mother had said to call at seven, she expected to receive the call at seven, not
7:01. Tardiness as a symptom of weak character had been a frequent topic of discussion between her parents during Meg’s childhood. Whatever else tonight’s conversation might bring, she wanted to eliminate that subject as a possibility.

The phone rang and rang. Meg could picture her mother in the kitchen, washing up after supper, unhurriedly drying her hands on a dish towel before reaching for the wall-mounted telephone.

“Hello.” A flat statement without expectation.

That one word was enough to make Meg flinch. “Mother, hi, it’s Meg.”

“Hello, Margaret. Didn’t hear from you yesterday on Thanksgiving, but I understand you’ve gotten yourself in a lot of trouble down there.”

Double points, Meg thought grimly. The reprimand for the missed call and the put-down both in one sentence. The fact that her mother still insisted on calling her by her given—and hated—name of Margaret was just the usual icing on the cake.

“I’m very sorry we have to bother you like this. I really appreciate you and Dad letting us stay with you for a while.”

“I’m hardly surprised it came to this, dear. That big-deal firm James worked for, all those fancy companies, you just knew they were going to come to no good. Dishonest cheats, all of them.”

“I guess” was all Meg could get out.

Her mother’s pinched tone couldn’t disguise her satisfaction. “If you’d listened to your father and me when we told you to come back home after you two married—well, I don’t have to tell you that you wouldn’t be in this predicament now.”

Meg forced a jovial tone. “But look how it’s working out—James will be joining the family business after all.”

“We’ll see,” her mother said primly. “Frankly, I wonder if he can handle going from those expensive suits and expense-account lunches to real life.”

Meg wanted desperately to move the conversation in another direction. “This will be a chance for the kids to spend time with you. You can all get to know one another a lot better.”

Her remark was met with silence.

Meg tried not to feel hurt. “They’re nice kids, Mother.”

“Just remember, Margaret, I brought up one child, and I’m not bringing up any more,” her mother said. “Once was enough.”

“Don’t worry,” Meg said sharply. “No one expects you to do anything at all for them.” She caught herself. Getting into an argument wouldn’t help matters. “You’re doing plenty just letting us come. We really appreciate it, and we’ll stay out of your hair.”

“Fine. The three of them will sleep in the spare room, and you and James can have your old room.”

“Of course. Thank you.” Meg knew there wasn’t any other choice, but the scenario filled her with dread.

“When are you coming?”

“It’ll be a couple of weeks. Can I let you know when we get closer?”

“I can’t have you calling me that morning to tell me you’ll be showing up for lunch.”

“No, no, Mother, I’ll give you plenty of notice. How about if I call you next week and give you a firm date?”

“Fine. Call next Friday, at seven, like tonight.”

“Yes, I will.”

There was a pause. “I hope you two have learned a lesson. You were riding so high. And look at you now. To be your age and have to come home to live with your parents because you have no money …”

“Yes, well, these things happen,” Meg said through clenched teeth. “So—good-bye. Talk to you next week.”

She set down the telephone. Then she folded her arms on the table and buried her head in them. Today she and James had made only the first small installment of the many payments yet to come.

Over the next two weeks, Meg was grateful that the job of closing up the house kept her constantly busy. It made it easier for her to ignore any thoughts about how much she loved the landscape painting hanging in the living room, or the art deco perfume bottle James had given her one year for their anniversary. Early on in her marriage, she had done a lot of baking and, over the years, had amassed a large array of cooking and decorating tools. As she tossed the pans and pastry brushes into shopping bags, she fought to avoid recalling the birthday cakes and holiday pies she had made, the cupcakes for school events.