Jingle Bell Rock (10 page)

Luke and Robbie, two grown men, wrestled on the great room floor like a couple of two-year-olds, their six-foot-plus bodies rolling this way and that, crashing into furniture and the brick fireplace. They didn’t stop until their mother left the kitchen to pop them each on the head with a damp dish towel, as she reminded them that they were not at home.

When they finally gathered around the tree and the mountain of gifts, there was soft laughter and good-natured teasing all around. Matthew and Heather sat on the floor with a surprisingly calm Rudy hunkered down between them, and Jess and Jimmy shared their wide chair.

What followed was more chaos. Wrapping paper flew, while sweaters and jewelry and toys—playthings for the kids and for the men—were held high for all to see. Matthew got a football, and it was passed around the room easily, over heads and around furniture. Heather got a doll that cried—and cry it did.

About the time the last package was unwrapped, John made his way to the stereo, stepping carefully over discarded paper and boxes, to put in Jimmy’s Christmas CD. When he punched the start button he was wearing a devilish smile. Rudy howled. Three notes hadn’t played before Jimmy told his brother to shut it off.

John, who was surely aware of Jimmy’s aversion to listening to himself sing, simply leaned against the wall and grinned widely, crossing one booted ankle over the other.

Jimmy smiled down at Jess, and tightened the arm around her shoulder. “See?” he said softly. “Everything’s great. Everybody’s happy. You worried yourself for nothing.”

Rudy was howling softly, singing along as always. Matthew and Heather were already arguing over a contested toy, and Ginny was loudly defending a new sweater Robbie called gaudy. She ended the argument with the smack of an empty box on her brother’s head.

“Sometimes I worry too much, don’t I?”

Jimmy nodded. “Sometimes.”

“It’s a waste of time, isn’t it?”

“Usually.”

She didn’t want to be like her mother. Always a crisis, always a disaster. So everything wasn’t perfect. Perfection was overrated, anyway.

John turned up the volume. So did Rudy.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Jimmy said as he slipped his arm from her shoulder, “I have to go kick my little brother’s butt.”

At least John had the good sense to lead his big brother outside for their fun. The remaining Blue brothers followed, taking the two newest members of the family, Sarah and Christine, with them. Then Peter and the kids and Ginny left the room, with Marty and Winston close behind. Rance shook his head in disgust as he left the room, but be was smiling brightly. Jess’s dad gave her a grin as he left the room.

Leaving Jess and her mother and Jimmy’s mother to clean up the mess.

The Christmas album was still playing, Jimmy’s beautiful voice filling every corner of the room. The women picked up shredded wrapping paper and stuffed it into plastic garbage bags, checking carefully to see that no small gift was hidden in the trash. Before long, Jess could actually see the carpet again.

“I can’t stand it,” Jess’s mother said to Clara. “She’s never going to tell us.”

Jess lifted her head cautiously. They were both looking at her, waiting. “Who’s never going to tell you what?” she asked suspiciously. They couldn’t
possibly
know about the baby.

Her mother sighed. Clara smiled.
Caught.

“How did you find out?” Jess dropped a handful of gold-foil wrapping paper onto the floor. “Did Jimmy tell you?”

Clara shook her head. “Not intentionally. All day he’s been treating you as if you might break. He’s always loved you madly, Jess, but he’s never mollycoddled you quite like this before.”

“Between that and your radiant glow,” Jess’s mother added, “we both knew before dinner was done.”

“Glow?”

Both women nodded, smiling knowingly.

“Who else knows?”

The two mothers shared a cryptic glance. “Oh, no one else, I don’t suppose,” Clara said. “Men can be blind when it suits them.”

They didn’t seem hurt or angry, not in the least. Matthew burst into the room to grab his new football. “We decided on a game instead of a fight,” he said breathlessly as he scooped it from the floor.

With the men all occupied, the talk turned to baby names and breast-feeding and how difficult it would be to juggle a baby and Jimmy’s schedule. It took Jess and Clara a good fifteen minutes to convince Jess’s mother that somehow they would work it out. In spite of a few anxious moments, it was a discussion much more comfortable than Jess had imagined was possible.

For the first time Jess understood her mother a little. She wanted everything to be flawless for this child, and for the children who would come later. She wanted their Christmases to be wonderful, perfect, as magical as this one. She wanted their lives to be perfect. That was all her mother had wanted for her children. Sally Lennox just had a tendency to get caught up in the details, instead of looking at the big picture.

It was a good while later before the game was finished and a hungry crew came in looking for hot chocolate and soft drinks and leftover chili. Jimmy plopped down in the wide chair with Jess, put his arm around her, and pulled her close.

“You smell,” she said softly, but she didn’t move away.

“I’ve been playing football, darlin’. What do you expect?”

Three of the Blue boys made themselves comfortable in front of the television and found the Aloha Bowl in progress. Jimmy scooped up the remote from the table close at hand, and changed the channel.
Miracle on 34th Street
was just coming on.

Three handsome but extremely irritated faces turned their way.

“There’s a TV in the master bedroom,” Jimmy said with a smile. “If you want to watch football you’ll have to do it in there, because this is Jess’s favorite Christmas movie.”

“Whipped,” Luke whispered loudly and with a wicked smile as he walked past on his way to the bedroom with John and Robbie. Will and his wife sat on the couch, and in just a few minutes they were joined by Peter and his kids. Heather was asleep in a matter of minutes. Jimmy’s mother and father sat side by side, and Jess’s folks were right behind them.

All was quiet, but for the movie that was playing. Jess looked around the crowded room. Everyone was exhausted; drowsy and happy. In the background she heard one of Jimmy’s brothers shouting, maybe cheering, at the bedroom TV.

Rudy pattered into the room, settled himself at Jimmy’s feet, and closed his eyes.

Jess was getting pretty tired, herself. All of a sudden she could hardly keep her eyes open. She leaned her head against Jimmy’s shoulder.

When she woke up again she wouldn’t be here. She knew it, as her eyes drifted closed. Where would she wake up? In another future, or in the time where she belonged? She didn’t want to leave Jimmy, but...

What had their wedding been like? She didn’t remember, because she hadn’t been there... yet. When had they first made love? There were so many memories still to make, and she didn’t want to miss a minute of it.

Jess forced her eyes open. Jimmy’s eyes were on the TV, but they drooped almost as badly as hers did. It had been a hectic day.

“Jimmy?”

He looked down at her.

“It has been a good day, hasn’t it?”

He nodded slightly, and smiled before pulling her head back to his shoulder.

Jess turned her face up. “I love you, Blue.”

He kissed her, a soft and all too brief touch of his mouth to hers, and when he returned her head to his shoulder, she fell immediately into a deep sleep.

Chapter Ten

The unmistakable music of
Miracle on 34th Street
was playing in the background, intruding into Jess’s sleep even though she wasn’t quite ready to wake up. She smiled sleepily at the thought that Jimmy would actually turn off a football game to watch the holiday classic with her. She pulled the quilt to her chin, and lifted her head slowly.

She wasn’t sitting in that wide chair with Jimmy, her family and his all around. It was Christmas morning, and she was alone in her apartment, curled up on the chair where she’d fallen asleep last night.

“All a dream,” she whispered to herself, achingly disappointed.

The most vivid and real dream—
dreams
—she’d ever experienced.

She shook it off and made herself leave the chair. Her legs wanted to cramp after being twisted beneath her all night, and the chill of bare feet against a cold floor didn’t add to her comfort one bit. Coffee, an entire pot to herself, that was what she needed.

She started the coffee, and then she glared at Mrs. Courtney’s perfectly innocent-looking cookies for a moment before tossing the entire plate into the trash. There was definitely some illicit hallucinogenic ingredient in those gingerbread men. There was no other explanation for those weird and vivid dreams.

Before the coffee was ready, the phone rang. It was her mother, of course, and Jess smiled at the memory of the dream, of her conversation with her mother about babies and motherhood.

There was a crisis already, of course. Marty had come home with a nose ring and a long-haired guy who called himself Snake. Matthew had decided, just that morning, that he was allergic to turkey, and only pizza would do for Christmas dinner. Little Heather was crying because her new doll’s dress was blue, and she wanted pink.

When her mother finished talking, with a sigh and a sniffle, Jess assured her that everything would be fine. Marty was going to turn out to be a fine young woman, and this Christmas and the next and all the ones to follow were going to be wonderful, each in its own, unpredictable way. And for the first time in a very long time, she believed it.

After she said a long-distance “Merry Christmas” to every member of her family—and Snake—Jess actually regretted her decision to spend this Christmas alone. So the holidays at the Lennox house weren’t perfect. Maybe they weren’t supposed to be.

She sat at the table with her coffee and the packages under her little tree. She sipped for a while, toying with the taped end of Lorraine’s package before opening it, carefully peeling off the Santa wrapping paper and lifting the lid of the small box to reveal an assortment of Christmas jewelry. A pin in the shape of a red-nosed reindeer, dangling Christmas-tree earrings, and a thin red-and-green beaded hair-clip. Festive holiday costume jewelry of the sort that Lorraine always wore and Jess never did. They weren’t dazzling and they certainly weren’t sensible. They were simply fun.

The present from her mother and father had arrived in the mail two weeks ago. Knowing pretty much what to expect, Jess hadn’t been tempted even once in those two weeks to open the gift early. But now she slid the box slowly across the table and very neatly opened her mother’s carefully wrapped package.

It was, of course, a box from her mother’s favorite department store. Every year Jess received clothing from her parents, apparel that was too bright and too young and usually the wrong size. Too big one year, too small the next. There was a drawer full of those outfits in her dresser, outfits she didn’t dare dispose of. Sure as she did, her mother would arrive for a surprise visit and demand to see whatever Jess had just given or thrown away.

She lifted the lid, curious as to what she might find, and folded back the tissue paper to reveal a green sweater flecked with gold. Not
exactly
like the one she’d dreamed about, but so close it gave her a chill. She lifted the sweater carefully, revealing the short matching skirt.

“Weird,” she whispered.

She held the sweater close to her chest. Coincidence, that was all.

Maybe it was just coincidence, but as she held the sweater against her flannel pj’s and remembered the dream, the idea of spending Christmas day alone was dreadfully unappealing. Depressing, even.

She was showered and dressed in half an hour. For once, the bright clothing her mother had chosen actually fit. Another omen? Jess smiled at that thought as she fastened the reindeer pin to her chest and slipped on the Christmas-tree earrings and secured one section of her unruly hair with the beaded clip.

She was just doing Jimmy a favor, that was all. Pretending to be his girlfriend for a couple of hours to keep his overbearing mother off his back was the least she could do for a friend. Jess grabbed her coat and left the too small, too quiet apartment.

It was another cold day, but the sun was shining and the skies were clear and bright. Jess was heading for her car when she heard raised voices from around the corner.

“I can’t believe you have the nerve to show up with a puppy!” The high-pitched voice stopped Jess in her tracks. “We live in an apartment, and Scott is only two years old. A dog would just be something else for me to take care of, and you know it!”

“Scott will love—” a deep male voice began.

“No!”

“But what am I supposed to do with—”

“Get rid of it!”

Jess stepped to the edge of the building and peeked around the corner. She recognized the couple from the fourth floor, Tom and Sharon Hall. They were both very nice, usually, and they had the cutest little boy. They had recently separated, she thought.

In his arms Tom held a little ball of black fur that cuddled against him for warmth. And maybe for protection from Sharon. There was a red bow around the dog’s neck that was almost as large as it was. The puppy saw Jess first, and he lifted his head, fastening black eyes on her.

Tom and Sharon noticed her at the same time.

“Merry Christmas,” Jess said with a sheepish smile. “I didn’t mean to intrude, but I couldn’t help—”

“See what you’ve done?” Sharon snapped at Tom. “Making a scene in front of the neighbors.”

Tom turned a haggard face to Jess, and she could see so much in his distressed expression. He missed his kid; he missed his wife. The three of them belonged together, especially today.

“Cute dog,” Jess said with a grin.

“You want it?” Sharon Hall snapped. “I am not—”

“Yes,” Jess interrupted. “Actually, I do. I have a friend who would love a puppy for Christmas.”