Family Blessings (37 page)

They opened their gifts from Orrin and Peg but kept the rest for Christmas morning. They watched Pavarotti perform from some immense gothic temple with a 120-voice choir behind him. They missed Greg so terribly each of them went away to shed private tears at one time or another.

At ten o'clock, Orrin and Peg said they were going home.

Lee said, "Oh, can't you stay a little longer? Christopher gets off at eleven and he's coming over then."

"I'm sorry, honey, we can't. We'll be up fairly early to go over to Sylvia's and open gifts with them."

Janice said, "I didn't know Chris was coming over tonight. I thought he was coming in the morning."

"Poor guy had to work three to eleven on Christmas Eve, so I told him I'd save some oyster stew and cake for him and he could drop by for a midnight snack."

Peg said, "Wish him Merry Christmas from us. We might stop by tomorrow, or if you feel like it, come over to Sylvia's later on in the day."

"We might, but you know how it is. Everybody always likes to hang around here on Christmas Day. Play with their new toys."

When Orrin and Peg were gone, Lee said, "Time to stuff stockings."

They had never given up the tradition. Each of them went to their rooms and found sacks of tiny gifts they'd squirreled away during the past few weeks, even Lloyd. The stocking that last year had said Greg, this year said Chris.

"I hope none of you mind my including Chris this year," Lee said Joey said, "Naw. Chris is neat."

Lloyd said, "Since when have any of us minded including Chris?"

Janice said, "I got something special for Chris's stocking."

"What?" her brother asked.

"None of your business. I got something special for you, too."

"What?"

She poked a tissue-wrapped ingot into his sock.

"Lemme see!"

"Get away, nosy!"

The two of them started tussling on the living room floor, and Lloyd smiled broadly at their antics.

They were all still up at 11:15 when Christopher got there. The tree was llt, the television was rerunning an old James Galway Christmas concert, and the stockings were hung from the arms of a dining room chair that had been set beside the tree and pressed into use as a substitute chimney for as long as it had been in the family.

When Christopher stepped in, still in uniform, he held a stack of gifts The family surrounded him, exclaiming over the packages, taking his Jacket, his hat, and wishing him Merry Christmas.

Then Janice took his hand and led him into the living room.

"Come and see what's in here for you."

When he saw the stocking with his name on it, a powerful welling seemed to happen in his heart. He stared, battling the sting in his eyes, wondering how he'd managed to get so lucky as to have this family adopt him as they had. As one mesmerized, he reached . . .

And got his hand playfully slapped.

"No, not yet!" Janice scolded. "You have to wait for morning, the same as the rest of us."

"You don't ask much, do you?" he teased in reply.

Janice was now holding the hand she'd slapped, her fingers threaded possessively between Christopher's. "Come down here and look . . .

there's more."

Indeed, there were gifts under the tree with his name on them.

Several!

"Grampa and Joey and I talked it over, and we all decided you should stay here overnight, that way you'll be here when we all wake up in the . morning. Mom, that's okay, isn't it? If Chris stays overnight?"

Christopher began to object.

"Hey, wait a minute, Janice, I don't , think--' "Mom, that's okay, isn't it?" she repeated.

"Of course it's okay."

"Grampa sleeps in Greg's room," Janice explained, "and you can sleep on the sofa."

"Janice, really . . . I'm still in my uniform and . .."

"Joey's got some baggy old sweats, haven't you, Joe?"

The decision seemed to be taken out of Christopher's hands. In short time, he had shucked off his tie, gun belt and bullet-proof vest, and was sitting on the living room floor with a bowl of oyster stew while the others lounged around with second pieces of cake. They turned the television off and kept only the tree lights on, he finished his stew and a piece of cake, and told them about Lola Gildress, Frank Tinker, Elda Minski and Inez Gurney.

He didn't tell them about taking the ham to his folks.

He told Lee later on, when everyone had gone to their rooms and he'd been given a toothbrush, blankets and a pillow, and Joey's sweats.

She went down the hall, calling, "Goodnight, everyone," snapping out the lights and tapping on doors. "Everybody wake everybody else in the morning, okay?"

"Okay," they all replied, settling down in their rooms.

She made her way to the kitchen where one last light burned over the kitchen stove. "Joey-y-y-y," she called, "you forgot the kitchen stove light again." On her way past the living room, she called, " Night, Christopher. Don't fall asleep with those tree lights on."

He said, "Lee, come here a minute, will you?"

She entered the room where he was lying stretched out on his back with his hands stacked beneath his head, covered to the chest with an old quilt of her mother's.

She stood behind him and said quietly, "Yes?"

He reached a hand above his head. She put hers in it and he hauled her around to the side of the sofa where she knelt on the floor beside him.

He took her face in both his hands, studying what he could see of it with the tree lights behind her. He held it tenderly, his thumbs resting just beside her mouth, fanning softly over her skin.

"I love you, Lee," he said.

She hadn't expected it, not this soon, not this directly. She'd thought maybe, if they ever became intimate, he might say it someday.

But this pure revelation, inspired not by some sexual tryst but by the spirit of Christmas, touched her as no passion-inspired words ever could. All within her strove toward a deeper relationship with him.

She could no more withhold the words than she could keep from touching his face as she said them.

"I love you too, Christopher."

He didn't kiss her, merely sighed and pulled her down so her head lay on his chest, her forehead against his chin.

"I want to tell you something. I need to tell you, okay?"

With her ear against his chest, she could hear him swallow.

"Of course," she replied.

He waited several beats, as if gathering emotional equilibrium, before launching into it. "I went to see my parents tonight. I had taken Inez Gurney to the hospital and felt so damned sorry for her, all alone with nobody to be with on Christmas Eve. And after I got back in the squad car I started thinking about Mavis and Ed, and I suppose I identified a lot with old Inez. Hell, it was Christmas . . . and they were living right across town . . .

and I hadn't seen them at all." He paused ruminatively then started again as if pulling himself from some unwanted wool gathering. "Anyway . .." He cleared his throat. "I went to see them. I went over to my apartment and got a ham some grateful citizen had given each one of us in the department--and I took it over there." Again she heard him swallow thickly. "It was awful.

The two of them, nothing but a pair of sick old drunks who really don't give a shit about me or about themselves. They just sit there drinking their lives away. It's just so damned pointless."

He stared at the tree lights: His tears had turned them into manypointed stars.

She raised up so she could see his face. "Christopher, listen to me."

She saw his glistening eyes, found a corner of the quilt and dried them. "They gave you birth, and for that you should be grateful.

Somehow, out of all those misbegotten genes and chromosomes, a few of the right ones went to you and made you a good person who cares about your fellow man. But beyond that, they shirked every responsibility known to sociology. I will never again encourage you to go to them, because they don't deserve you. Alcoholism, they say, is an illness.

But character IS not. Their character, or lack of it, is inexcusable.

Since I've known you, listened to you, learned what your childhood was like and how it's affected your adulthood, I've come to agree with you that parents earn love from their children, and they did nothing to earn yours. Now stop feeling guilty because you can't love them."

He kissed her forehead and said, "You're so damned good for me.

She was leaning on his chest with one arm, a hand in his hair while stroking his forehead repeatedly with her thumb. "Yes, I am," she whispered. "And you're good for me too."

He looked at her with some amazement. "Did you really say you love me?"

"Yes, I did. We both did . . . and not in the middle of a thrusting match on the floor either. There's some significance in that, isn't there?"

They both considered it awhile, then he said, "Thanks for the stocking."

"You don't know what's in it yet. Could be a stick and a lump of coal.

He'd been battling some wrenching inner emotions all evening, and they won at last. He gripped her hard, drawing her down against his chest, putting his face in her hair and squeezing his eyes shut against the sting within, the mixture of heavyheartedness and lightheartedness this night had brought.

His parents--the failures.

This woman--the healer.

"Thanks for all of this," he said brokenly. "I don't know what the hell I did to deserve you."

She let him hold her, listening to him gulp down great knots of emotion until at last he freed her and she raised up to see his face.

"Feeling better now?"

He nodded and dried his eyes with his knuckles.

She kissed his mouth with extreme tenderness and whispered, "See you in the morning. No digging in the socks till everyone's up."

Janice awoke first, shortly after sunrise. She tiptoed to the kitchen and plugged in the electric coffeemaker, then stuck her head around the archway of the living room. Christopher lay on his side with both hands up near his face, one knee updrawn, protruding from the covers along with one bare foot.

She studied his foot--medium length, bony, with some pale hair on the toes. She studied the palm of his right hand, fingers curled above it in repose. She studied his hair, so thick and manageable it scarcely looked mussed from his night's sleep. She studied his mouth, open a sliver as he slept, and imagined kissing it someday.

Down the hall a bedroom door opened and Christopher's eyelids flinched.

The bathroom door closed and he woke up, saw Janice halfhidden around the doorway and went into a stretch with one elbow pointing at a corner of the ceiling.

"Oh . . . hi . .." His words were distorted by the stretch. "Did I sleep too late?"

"No, everyone's just starting to wake up." She smiled. "Merry Christmas."

"Yeah, thanks, same to you. Is that coffee I smell?"

"Sure is. There'll be a jam-up in the bathroom, so go ahead and have a cup while you wait your turn."

"Thanks, I will." "I heard you and Mom talking last night after I went to bed."

She waited while he wondered what she expected to hear him say.

"Yeah, I had something I needed to talk to her about."

"How long did you talk?"

"Not long. Ten minutes maybe."

"She's great, isn't she? You can talk to her about anything."

"Yeah, you sure can. But I knew that from Greg. He always told me that about her."

"It's been pretty awful around here without him since the holiday started, but we're all putting on a brave face."

"I know. I miss him, too."

She laid her cheek and one hand against the archway. "Thanks for filling in for him, Chris. Your being here means a lot to all of us Especially to Mom."

How he and Lee managed to keep their feelings hidden throughout the rest of that day was an act of sheer determination. They sat on the living room floor and pulled the booty out of their stockings, still dressed in bathrobes and sweat suits, laughing at such findings as edible candy worms, bubble-gum "mosquito eggs," false eyelashes as long as spaghetti, socks with bear claws and footpads painted on them and red clown noses, which they all put on while they continued digging.

Janice had bought Joey a sex manual for teenagers, which caused some laughter and some blushing, while Lloyd had gotten everyone coupons for McDonald's. In Christopher's stocking he also found tiny bottles of aftershave, a deck of playing cards, a key holder, a rubber stamp with his home address (from Joey, which surprised him because it meant they'd had long-term plans for his presence here this morning).

And from , Janice, two tickets to a Timberwolves game.

"If you need company, just let me know. I love the Wolves," she said.

"Gosh, thanks, Janice," he answered. "I just might."

. When the stockings were emptied, they all got juice and coffee and settled down in the living room to open the gifts beneath the tree.

Christopher had put plenty of thought into the gift he gave to each of them. For Joey, the object of every teenager's covetousness: a pair of Oakley sunglasses with dragonfly-blue lenses and Croakies to match.

. For Janice, a trip to Horst, which the gals at the police station assured . him was the beauty shop of note in the Twin Cities. For Lloyd, a membership to a health club with a walking track. And for each of them, the last photograph he'd taken of Greg, blown up to a five-by-seven and framed.

The pictures brought tears, of course, but Lloyd put it best when he held the frame in one hand, wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his bathrobe and said, "We all needed this. We've been missing him a lot and haven't said anything. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been sneaking off to wipe my eyes whenever he came to mind, which has been often. Now, thanks to Chris, he's here with us in this room again, in all our hearts at once.

Thanks, Chris . . . thanks a lot."

When the emotional moment passed, they finished opening gifts. Joey gave him a paperback novel about a police detective, Lloyd a billfold, Janice a compact disc by Wynonna Judd, and Lee a coordinated sweater and shirt. It was only later, when he was taking the shirt out of the plastic sleeve and removing the pins, that he found, in the pocket, a fourteen karat gold bracelet. Hanging from it by a golden thread was a small, flat red foil heart upon which the manufacturer's name was stamped in gold. Inside, on the space provided, she'd written Love, Lee.