The Ghostly Hideaway (17 page)

“They’re planning to arrive on Christmas Eve and
stay until Valentine’s Day and our wedding and probably for another
week or two while we’re on our honeymoon. I am especially grateful
that they’ll be here with Grandmother while we’re gone. Grandmother
will be so thrilled to have them and we won’t have to worry about
her being alone while we’re on our honeymoon!”

“Oh, Baby, you said the magic word, ‘honeymoon.’ I
can hardly wait. Do you think there’s a way we can slip off before
Christmas when your folks arrive? I want to make love with you
again. You’re a fantastic lover, Johnny! I love the way you hold me
and kiss me and touch me tenderly in all the most erotic
places.”

“If you don’t stop talking like that, one of two
things is going to happen. I’ll have to hang up and go take a cold
shower or put on my clothes and run down over the hill to your
house and make wild, passionate love to you on the couch in the
family room with your folks just upstairs.”

“Well, while I like the second idea much better than
the first, I guess we’d better hang up and get some sleep. We have
a lot of things to do in the next few weeks. Probably the most
important will be ordering our wedding invitations. We need to
start making out a list of people to send invitations to so we’ll
have an idea how many to order.”

“You’re right, but if we get started on that now, we
won’t get any sleep at all tonight. I guess we’d better say
goodnight. I love you so much, Johnny.”

“I love you, too, and I just wish our wedding was
yesterday. I mean, I’m looking forward to it but—well, okay,
goodnight, Sweetheart. I’ll see you tomorrow—or actually, later
today. It’s after midnight, Hon. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight. Okay let’s hang up.”

“You hang up.”

“No, you hang up.”

“Okay, we’ll hang up together. One, two, three, hang
up.”

“You didn’t hang up.”

“Neither did you.”

“Oh, for the love of Pete, Johnny, we’re not
thirteen.”

“Now wait a minute, are you in love with Pete or
with me.”

“What?”

“You said, ‘for the love of Pete.’ I just wanted to
know which one of us you’re in love with.”

“You, Johnny. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight." About a half hour later, they finally
hung up and went to bed. But Johnny did take a cold shower before
he could go to sleep.

Several days later Chrissy and Johnny were making
wedding plans and they looked out toward their home site and gasped
in surprise. Their mobile home was being set on the concrete
foundation they had watched them pour earlier.

“Oh, Johnny, they’ve about got our trailer ready for
us.”

”It will still be a good while before it’s all ready
but they are getting along with it quite well.”

“I can hardly wait until we can live there. It will
be so perfect, Honey.”

“As soon as they get some steps up to it, we’ll take
everyone over to see it.”

“Oh, yeah. That will be special.

“Well, this job is in the record books, Johnny, and
I for one am extremely proud of it. We did a good job and finished
almost on time, despite the big snow storm the last of last month."
Ed was proud of the work they had turned out and the school board
had expressed their approval with a two hundred dollar bonus for
each of them.

“Thanks, Ed, for firing me as a helper. I’m enjoying
being your partner and I’m proud of what we’ve done, too. With this
behind us, it’s time to concentrate on the holidays and the
wedding. Man, oh, man—to use Andy’s phrasing—I’m really nervous
about that.

“The next thing Chrissy and I need to do is decide
who we’re going to send invitations to and then order the
invitations. Of course most of my folks already know about it but I
want them to have the invitations, too.”

“Penny and I talked to my family in California and
told them they would be getting invitations and my dad and my
brother and his family are all planning to be here, barring illness
or bad weather. There are a few people in North Carolina I think
Chrissy will want to invite, as well as Penny’s aunt and her
family.”

“You’re not helping much with my nerves,” Johnny
said, laughing, “but I’ll be glad if everyone can come to celebrate
our love. I’m going to make your daughter very, very happy, I
promise.”

“I have no doubts, Johnny. I’m happy she found you
or you found her or however it came about.”

Later on after supper Chrissy and Johnny settled in
the living room and made lists of family and friends. They
determined they would probably need to buy fifty invitations.
Chrissy’s guest list went like this:

Mom and Dad and the twins

Uncle Jack and Aunt Genny Parsons

Webster and Faye Parsons

Mattie Parsons

Emily Parsons

Grandpa Fred Wroe

Uncle Robert and Aunt Carla Wroe

Cousin Megan and Cousin Bobby

Millie Dillard (high school friend)

Sara Board (high school friend)

Mr. and Mrs. Enright (NC
neighbours)

Mr. and Mrs. Harper (NC neighbours)

The groom’s list was somewhat longer:

Mom and Dad, Sean and Kathleen

Grandmother Lydia Thorne

Grandfather Patrick O’Reilly

Grandmama Keara O’Reilly

Uncle Paddy and Aunt Callie
O’Reilly

Rose, Jimmy, Buddy, Colleen & Nancy
Ruth O’Reilly

Uncle Francis and Aunt Adrianna Nolan
and little Frankie

Uncle Chuck and Aunt Kattie Carter and
Charlene, Joey, and Doreen

Uncle Morgan and Aunt Polly
O’Reilly

Uncle Al and Aunt Dorrie Grantland and
little Betty Ruth

“I thought we might want to ask Sheriff Lampton and
the Tinsleys, too.”

Chrissy agreed and they added:

Frank and DeDe Tinsley and Devon and
Maria

Sheriff and Mrs. Owen Lampton

“We’ll need to talk to the minister, too, Johnny,
and make all those arrangements. Valentine’s Day will be here
before you know it, Honey.”

“I can’t wait, Baby. There’s something else I want
to talk to you about and that’s our honeymoon. What do you think
about going to Ireland and seeing where I grew up and I can
introduce you to all my friends and let them see what a beautiful
wife I have?”

“Oh, Johnny, I think that would be beyond my wildest
dreams. Go across the ocean! Would we fly or go by ship? Oh, this
is terrifically exciting! What part of Ireland are you from? You’ve
never talked about your homeland. I want to hear all about it.”

“We’ll fly, of course; it would take too long to go
by ship. Well, it’s a small town in County Galway called ‘Athenry’
and it’s only a short distance from Galway. There’s a big old
castle there that was built back in the 1200s. It has a moat and
three towers, and we can go tour through it. I could see the top of
the towers from my bedroom window a short distance to the west of
where I lived. You can still see some of the walls that were built
around the town about a half-century later in the late 1200’s, too.
I want us to take a boat ride on Galway Bay and watch the moon go
down. It’s simply gorgeous; it looks as though it melts into the
water and then flows through the surface and dances on the waves in
celebration of its love affair with the sea.”

“Oh, that sounds unbelievably awesome and
romantic!”

“Do you kids know what time it is? It’s almost
eleven o’clock. Don’t you think we should all call it a night?”

“I’m sorry, Dad, I had no idea it was that late.
We’ve been working on wedding guest lists and the time just flew
by.”

“I’m sorry, too. We’ll say ‘goodnight’ and I’ll be
gone.”

“I’ll be glad when we don’t have to say goodnight
and go to different houses to sleep.”

“It won’t be long, Honey. Goodnight for now. I love
you, Christina.”

“I love you, too. Goodnight, Jonathon.

Chrissy was going almost every day up to
Grandmother’s to help her get ready for Christmas. She also made a
point of stopping by a minute coming or going to see how things
were going with their mobile home. She and Grandmother made candy,
cookies, and pies and Chrissy helped her do a bunch of cleaning.
They wiped down walls, cleaned windows and facings; they dusted and
vacuumed; they took down all the drapes and curtains and washed
them; they removed crocheted spreads from furniture, washed and
starched and ironed them and put them back on; they put clean
sheets, pillow cases, blankets and quilts on all five of the beds;
and they plugged in air fresheners all over the house. Some of the
rooms hadn’t even been opened for months and months and months.

Lydia had almost decided not to do the bedrooms yet
and wait until after Christmas and closer to their wedding date;
but Chrissy said, “We’ll be extremely busy a little later. Don’t
you think they’ll still be fresh enough in February, if we do them
now?" And Lydia had conceded the point and now it was done.

The three bathrooms had to be scrubbed from top to
bottom and they had got out the good towels and washcloths and
washed them, dried them and hung them up. Lydia decided she needed
a few more bath towels and she put that on the shopping list, which
had become pretty long and was getting longer every day.

They took all the good china and crystal out of the
china cabinet, washed every piece of it, and set it on the
sideboard to sparkle.

“Of course, we won’t need all of it for Christmas.
Let’s see, there’ll be seven of us for dinner and there’s a place
setting for twelve; but it looks pretty setting there, doesn’t
it?”

Chrissy agreed that it did look beautiful.
Grandmother still wasn’t aware that Bruce and Janet, Sean and
Kathleen, Johnny’s parents and siblings, would be there on
Christmas Eve.

They had put all the leaves in the dining table and
put on the new Christmas tablecloth and all the placemats Lydia had
bought when they were in Owensboro for the twins’ birthday. Then
Lydia carefully removed a box from the center drawer of the china
cabinet and opened it to reveal a set of twelve gilt-edged crystal
napkin holders in the shape of angels.

“Oh, Grandmother, those are without a doubt the most
beautiful things I’ve ever seen. They look so fragile and delicate
with the gold edged wings and, look, each of them holds a book that
serves as a handle to move them with. The ring itself is attached
to the wings in the back and whatever color napkin you put through
the ring looks as though it’s almost absorbed into the clear
crystal. They are
so
lovely.”

“This sets them off, too, don’t you think?” Lydia
said as she lifted an angel centerpiece from its wrappings. The
angel was about nine inches tall with a place for candles on each
side of the crystal figurine. Lydia placed two red tapers in the
holders on either side and put a candle ring with holly and red
berries and lots of greenery around the whole centerpiece.

“Those are absolutely perfect, Grandmother. You’ll
have the prettiest table in the country if not in the whole world.
Mom will be speechless. Where on earth did you get them?"

“They were a gift from Great-Aunt Ruth Remington.
Grandma Wesley was my maternal grandmother and Aunt Ruth was her
sister. Because Mama had named me for Aunt Ruth, she gave them to
me as a nativity gift. They had been in her family for three
generations. She said the thirteen angels would be good luck and
would watch over me. I think I’ve only used them twice but I’ve
cherished them all of my life. I wanted to use them one more time.
She was never married and her money passed to me when she died as
well. I’ve never used any of it. George made a decent living and he
always said I might want to use it for something special sometime.
Of course, it’s drawn interest all these years. I don’t know
exactly how much it amounts to right now.”

At least Chrissy could quit worrying about whether
or not Grandmother Lydia could afford to spend what she wanted to.
Chrissy was humming Christmas songs while she cleaned the
silverware and put around the place settings. They had already
cleaned the chandelier over the table and the refracted light
glinted and gleamed on everything. The whole table was
extraordinary!

It was only a week before Christmas when the ladies
made time to go to Owensboro for their last minute shopping.
Everything was so crowded it was pathetic. Johnny had gone with
them to help with carrying the packages. Ed had opted not to go. He
was quite busy in the workshop he had set up in the storage shed
and he was being very secretive about his activities. He had even
put aluminum foil over the windows so that no one could see inside
and he kept the door locked even when he was inside. Everyone
surmised that he was doing something for Christmas but nobody had
any idea what or for whom; not even Penny.

They had used Ed’s Rendezvous to go shopping because
with the third row seats folded down that left bunches of room for
the boxes, bags and parcels full of goodies they came back with.
They had separated the packages when they loaded stuff into the SUV
so they already knew what went where. They put all of Penny’s
things in the library and that door was locked immediately. Chrissy
and Johnny took Grandmother and all her things home. Chrissy liked
how sneaky Johnny had been about buying gifts for his family.

“Look, Grandmother, at this set of crystal vases,”
he had said. “Don’t you think Mom would love these?”

“Yes, they are lovely. I wish they could have been
here for Christmas, too, but I’m sure glad they can come for your
wedding.”

“I think I’ll get them and wrap them up and we can
have Christmas for them when they do get here." Johnny knew she
would feel bad when they showed up Christmas Eve and she had no
gifts for them. “Dad loves to smoke a pipe. I’ll bet he would enjoy
this set. What do you think Kathleen would like, Chrissy? She’s
seventeen now so she’s near your age.”