The 13th Gift Read online

  “I don’t want to forget Daddy’s way of twirling spaghetti on a fork,” Megan says softly.

  Her comment quiets Nick. The two remain silent for the rest of the meal, which doesn’t take long. The garbage disposal runs a long time and I suspect neither of them ate much. The aroma of pulverizing dill pickles wafts all the way to the family room.

  “It’s your turn to do dishes,” Nick’s parting comment, before his footsteps thump up the stairs to his room.

  “Why is it always my turn?” his sister calls after him.

  A few minutes later, Megan is kneeling on the floor in front of the couch and prying open my right eyelid. She is holding the poinsettia.

  “You asleep?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Our flower is sick.”

  “It just needs water. Get a measuring cup from the cupboard. Give it a quarter cup.”

  She talks to the plant as she walks back to the kitchen.

  “You’re going to be just fine,” she says. Then, “Please live, little flower.”

  With dinner chores and homework done, Megan joins me in the family room, settling into a beanbag chair to watch television. Keeping my eyes closed, I pretend to sleep. I don’t want to answer any more Christmas questions tonight, but my little chatterbox has clearly made her mental list and is checking it twice.

  “Do you work late tomorrow?” she asks.

  “Argh.”

  My groan sounds more like a huff, and I am sure Megan feels like one of the Three Little Pigs facing the Big Bad Wolf. Her home is made of straw and sticks.

  “I’m sorry, Momma. I’ll be quiet.”

  Quiet. That’s what I long for, but I can’t ignore the hurt look on her face.

  “What’s up?”

  “I was just wondering … about getting a tree?”

  I definitely saw that one coming, and I have a response prepared.

  “Made any progress on your bedroom?”

  Hurricane Megan has been blowing with gale force this week, depositing school clothes, sports equipment, candy wrappers, and water bottles in every nook of her room, except where they belong.

  I have used her messy room and the overall disheveled condition of the house as an excuse to put off all kinds of things, and the latest is the purchase of a Christmas tree.

  “If only I could get my stupid brothers to help,” she says. “Can’t you make them?”

  “I have asked them, just like I asked you.”

  The conversation doesn’t inspire Megan to get busy, but it does quiet her.

  She channel surfs, finding news about a car accident, a robbery, and a standoff with police, instead of the holiday show or cartoon I know she prefers. When her movements morph from restless to quiet, I glance over. Though the overhead light hums, the darkness outside has crept indoors with the sunset casting shadows in corners. The late night and early rising have caught up with my Megan. Her chest slowly rises and falls in time with her slumbering breath, but her hands are clasped over her eyes. I roll into the couch, doing the same thing.

  But before I can drift off, I hear the crash of shattering glass in the kitchen, and I’m pretty certain the mayonnaise jar now rests in pieces in the bottom of the recycling bin. Ben is destroying the evidence.

  I have to talk to him.

  When he comes downstairs a few minutes later, neither of us says a word. We are gunslingers standing twenty paces apart. We don’t draw our weapons because Megan is asleep on the floor, but Ben knows that I know he never went to the grocery.

  Megan’s gentle snores divert our attention. Our showdown will come, but not tonight.

  “Can’t spend time with her if she’s asleep,” Ben says, covering his kid sister with a blanket.

  The bravado of his words doesn’t camouflage the gentleness of his actions as he tucks the blanket around his sister’s toes. Ben turns off the light and the television as I request. But the door to the basement bangs behind him as he goes downstairs, and the sound jolts Megan from sleep. She is confused.

  “Daddy?” she calls out.

  I have heard her sleepy voice whisper his name many times in the early morning hours, as her daddy left for work. Megan’s bedroom was always his last stop before heading out the door. Prone to kicking off her blankets at night, Rick never left home without tucking in his princess. Though sentimental and sweet, his actions often woke Megan. She would skitter to the window and wave good-bye as he backed out of the driveway. Of course, the wave was followed by a trip into my bed and an early wake-up for me. When I asked Rick to be quieter in the morning, he refused.

  “Seeing her at the window waving reminds me why I go to work every day.”

  Megan sits up, and I can see from her expression that reality is returning.

  Daddy’s truck is not pulling out of the driveway.

  My mind shouts, “Momma is here. I love you,” but the words change as they spill from my lips.

  “Hey, sleepy head,” I say, flabbergasted at my own speech. “How about using some of that Christmas spirit to clean your bedroom.”

  Megan stares at me for a moment and then heads upstairs. The room closes in around me without her. Family photos—my grandmother, mom, all the matriarchs of my family—glare down at me from the walls.

  A family room is no place to be alone.

  After a very few minutes, I follow Meg upstairs.

  She sits with her back to the open door surrounded by sheets of construction paper. I see Ben’s name printed on one with artwork cut from a CD cover glued in the center. A hand-drawn angel flies across the sheet bearing my name. Nick’s holds a newspaper Nintendo ad. Each is embellished with a bow.

  Christmas presents.

  Megan is gathering up her art and hiding the homemade cards behind her bed before she begins organizing her stuffed animal collection.

  “I just wanted to hug her,” Megan confides to a plush puppy, before launching it into her toy chest.

  “Just because I’m a kid doesn’t mean I don’t understand,” she speaks this time to a photo of her dad gazing down at his newborn daughter. “How can I help, if Mom won’t talk to me?”

  A teacher had told Megan the family would heal, that we would all feel better, that “it just takes time.” The thought seems to comfort Megan, but I don’t know if I believe it. The mood in the house is getting worse as the holidays approach.

  I lean back against the hall wall, ashamed to be listening, but I don’t walk away.

  “It’s the gifts, I know nobody else wants them,” Megan continues. “I’m the only one who wants Christmas.”

  When I hear her open a window, I think it time to intervene, until she starts talking to our true friends.

  “Thank you, but please stop,” she says, and I can picture her leaning on her windowsill facing the dark night. “You are making Momma sad.”

  I back down the hallway avoiding the floorboards that creak.

  Twenty minutes later I find her still at her window, bundled in sweatshirt and mittens, listening for passing cars. I tell her to close the window, but she begs to leave it open a little longer.

  “I’m listening for the gift givers,” she explains. “I’m going to catch them tonight.”

  The furnace is roaring, and I envision the electric meter on the back of the house spinning dollar signs. But I have told my daughter no too many times these last few days.

  “Ten more minutes. Then close the window. And you can clean your room while you listen.”

  Megan gathers an armful of her dirty clothes and deposits it in the laundry room, then ventures down to Ben’s hideaway, perhaps to ask him for help with the cleaning. When she opens the door to his room, I hear the volume on her brother’s stereo shoot up.

  Megan doesn’t tell me what he said, but she comes back upstairs shortly. Out of Ben’s earshot, I hear her mutter a name for her brother that makes me smile to myself.

  “Poopy head.”

  Nick at least listens to her idea. He agrees to clean
his room but will do so using one hand while the other, and his attention, are focusing on a video game.

  “You’ll never get it get done that way,” she complains. “Don’t you want a Christmas tree?”

  Nick doesn’t immediately respond. When he does give her an answer, I think it is an honest one.

  “I’m not sure we should get a tree,” he says slowly. “I don’t want Christmas. I want …”

  He doesn’t finish the sentence, and Megan heads back to her room with a resigned sigh.

  Her sense of defeat doesn’t last long.

  Within minutes she is tossing laundry out into the hall using her best foul shot form.

  “She shoots. She scores. The crowd goes wild.”

  A pair of blue jeans flies through the imaginary hoop, then gym shorts and basketball socks.

  “She scores again. Aaaaaah.”

  Megan’s room is starting to look much better, although I notice that she is shoving an assortment of broken toys and outgrown clothes under her bed. I’m about to suggest that we sort through some of the debris together when a car drives by with the radio blaring.

  Grandma got run over by a reindeer …

  “It’s got to be them!”

  She runs from her bedroom, leaps down the steps, and throws open the front door. The words of the song and the car are fading down the street.

  There is no gift on the porch.

  “Phooey,” she says, but she is singing as she closes the door. When she realizes I am listening, though, her carol ends. I turn off the radio whenever a holiday song comes on, even though I know she cherishes the melodies. Now I’m teaching her to tune out Christmas, too.

  Embarrassed at the example I am setting, I force myself to get off my butt. I might not be able to sing with my daughter right now, but I can drag a mop around the floor.

  Megan is overjoyed at my activity.

  “Christmas cleaning!” she says gleefully. “Thank you, Mom!”

  She runs upstairs, giving me a glimmer of optimism for the outcome of her cleaning efforts. When I join her later, she is perching on a throne of pillows under the window, admiring the Christmas lights on the house across the street. The display reminds both of us of the giant Christmas tree Rick built a few years ago with similar white chasers.

  “Ours covered the entire side of the house,” Megan remembers. “I helped Daddy draw up the plans.”

  On a sunny January afternoon, she had held the ladder as her dad climbed up to take down the thirteen strands of lights. When the pair came inside, red-nosed and weary, two hours later, I made them cups of hot chocolate. They were already strategizing our light display for the following year.

  “I think we dipped chocolate chip cookies in our cocoa,” Megan says.

  Megan’s stomach growls, and I ask her about the dinner. She doesn’t tattle on her older brother. I admire her loyalty but realize that I need to give Ben more oversight and less responsibility for his siblings.

  “You didn’t eat much?”

  She shrugs.

  “Want a snack?”

  “Yeah!”

  Megan and I go into the kitchen and I search the pantry, the freezer, the fridge for something healthy. My foraged finds are limited to a bag of stale potato chips, a brown banana, and chocolate ice cream topped with frosty-white freezer burn. I need to go to the grocery, but it’s after eight p.m., and my children are hungry.

  “Who wants a hamburger,” I shout loud enough for all my kids to hear.

  Nick’s bedroom door flies open.

  Megan hollers, “Wahoo.”

  Ben makes it upstairs faster than I have seen him move in months.

  “One box of mac ’n’ cheese isn’t enough for all of us,” he says mildly, but the kids are so pumped up about the late dinner that I don’t want to ruin the mood by accusing him of neglecting his younger siblings.

  As I walk to the car, Megan shouts something at me from the doorway.

  “Don’t forget about my school party,” she hollers.

  I make the gas station my first stop. There I purchase the best-looking box of cheap chocolates on the shelf for Megan’s teacher. Though I’m not sure exactly when the party is scheduled, I want to buy the gift before I forget. I’ll have to track down some wrapping paper, but at least we already have bows, thanks to the gift givers.

  I pick up a sack of hamburgers and fries for my family, and head for home. By the time I pull into the driveway, I’m feeling pretty puffed up about my parenting skills. My kids will have a somewhat decent dinner this evening, and I’ve remembered to buy the Christmas gift for Meg’s teacher.

  “You can do this single-parenting thing,” I tell myself, and in the moment I almost believe it.

  While I am out picking up dinner for my kids, the third gift arrives. Megan, who was watching for my return, saw the car pull up.

  “At first I thought it might be a neighbor or one of Ben’s friends,” she reports excitedly, as we devour cheeseburgers on the family room couch. “I was kneeling low and peeking over the sill to see what they would do next.”

  She didn’t follow through with her plan to stop the gift giving; she didn’t even race to the door to confront them. Instead, she snuck over to the door, crouching low, trying to hide, and wishing we hadn’t left so many lights on downstairs so that she could get a better look at our Christmas elves.

  She didn’t open the door until after the purr of the car engine moved up the street. She found three rolls of Christmas wrapping paper on the porch, along with the usual note.

  On the third day of Christmas

  Your true friends give to you,

  three rolls of gift wrap for all of you.

  “I had my ear to the door,” Megan says, building suspense. “I could hear the rustle of a package, footsteps. My hand was on the doorknob.”

  “Why didn’t you open it?” Nick asks.

  “Why didn’t you talk to them?” Ben wants to know.

  Megan surprises us when she announces that she did.

  “I whispered Merry Christmas,” she says. “And, thank you.”

  Nick thinks it a good idea she didn’t open the door.

  “Might stop if we spoil their fun. Maybe they’ll bring us real presents on Christmas, a new television or bikes.”

  “These are real presents,” Megan insists.

  “Maybe we should start getting ready for bedtime,” I declare.

  The boys take off, but my daughter stays. Bella plops down next to Megan and rubs a wet nose against her hand, an invitation to scratch her neck. The child obliges, giving comfort to the one creature in the house that allows her to do so.

  “Christmas is harder than it used to be,” she tells the dog.

  I couldn’t agree more, but keep my opinion to myself. I remind Megan not to open the door if she doesn’t know who is standing on the other side of it. I don’t like the idea of strangers skulking around the house when I’m not home, although I am begrudgingly grateful that I don’t have to make an extra stop to get Christmas wrapping paper now for Megan’s teacher’s gift.

  “They’re not strangers,” Megan says. “They’re our true friends.”

  Identifying the culprits moves to the top of my Christmas list.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Fourth Day of Christmas

  I RISE EARLY to wrap the chocolates for Megan’s teacher before waking the kids, but the task turns into a scavenger hunt. I search the family room and the kitchen for the wrapping paper that Megan reported receiving, finding only one depleted cardboard roll in a trash bag outside my daughter’s bedroom door. I am tiptoeing across Megan’s room to check her favorite stowaway spot behind the bed when a frustrated growl startles us both. Megan opens her eyes, smiles at me, and drifts back to sleep, while I track the source of the disturbance.

  Nick stands at his bedroom door, kicking at a pile of dirty laundry that prevents him from closing it. I wish I could blame the mess on Meg, but the fault is mine. I had wedged the door op
en with the clothes after he fell asleep. Nick and I have been playing tug-of-war with that door every night for more than a month. Nick had closed his bedroom door before going to bed. Later, when I no longer heard the jingle of his video-game music, I had reopened it. It’s a habit with me these days. I fear the kids will need me and I won’t hear them.

  “Why won’t you keep the door closed?” Nick demands.

  His voice trembles, and his eyes blaze with a level of anger I have never seen in my typically even-tempered son.

  “I’m twelve years old. I need privacy.”

  “I do respect your privacy, Nick, but you don’t need privacy while you’re sleeping.”

  I wrap an arm around my son’s shoulders and walk him back to bed. In the darkened room, I don’t see the roll of gift wrap he left on the floor, and I trip over it. Nick picks it up and begins bouncing the roll against the bed frame, lightly at first and then harder and faster like an airplane engine revving for flight. I don’t know where he’s going with this, so I grab the roll and give him a gentle shove to make room for me to sit down next to him.

  He leans against me. When he speaks, I understand it’s not anger that he is feeling. It’s anguish.

  “Every time we get one of these gifts, it reminds me that Dad put off surgery to be home, with us, Christmas break.”

  Instead of uttering words of maternal wisdom or even comfort, I say, “Me, too.”

  We sit in silence until a sleepy-eyed Megan appears in the doorway yawning. She is dressed in oversized pajamas covered in dancing penguins, and most of her hair hangs in clumps in front of her face. Nick and I can’t help but smile.

  “You guys okay?” she asks in a guidance-counselor-like voice.

  “We’re good,” I answer.

  “My work is done here,” she says, honoring us with a royal curtsey and wave. “Carry on.”

  Megan grabs the gift wrap from my hand before departing.

  “I’ve been looking for this,” she says, but I’m not about to let that roll disappear again.

  “I’ve been looking for it, too. I need that paper to wrap your teacher’s gift.”