A Little Christmas Spirit Read online

  After lunch, though, he needed a nap. He settled in his recliner. He’d just shut his eyes for a few minutes. Just a few...

  “You haven’t hung those lights yet,” Carol whispered in his ear.

  He brushed her away like a pesky fly. “I’ll get to it. I’m trying to rest.”

  “You’ve had three years to rest. You need to get off your rear, Stanley. I’m losing patience. Stanley! Will you please look at me when I’m talking to you?”

  He didn’t want to, not after what he’d seen the night before. He took a leery peek, raising one eyelid, then shut it again quickly. The scary, red eyes were still there. What was she doing hanging around here? Shouldn’t she be off in heaven, where she belonged?

  “I will be soon enough,” she said.

  “There you go, reading my mind again,” he complained. She’d always been good at that. Irritatingly good, as a matter of fact, often finishing his sentences before he even could. That had bugged him, even when what she said had been exactly what he was going to say.

  What had bugged her was how he didn’t always pay attention when she was talking to him. But honestly, a man couldn’t pay attention to everything.

  “Stanley!”

  “What?” He jerked awake, looking around. Of course, there was no one in the living room but him. Sunlight was filtering in through the sheers at the window, beaming on the fake brown-leather couch they’d picked out together, spreading over the coffee table where she used to set her coffee mug when she was reading.

  “Staaanley.” He heard his name, soft as a whisper.

  “Okay, okay,” he said and pushed up from his chair.

  This was how they’d often operated. He’d promise to do something and then put it on hold, and she’d keep after him until he did it. He liked to do things on his own timetable. Why couldn’t she understand that?

  “Because certain things never get on your timetable,” she’d once explained. “You say you’ll do something just to shut me up.”

  “I do not,” he’d argued. But, truthfully, sometimes he did. He wished she was still there to keep after him.

  “I am here.”

  Being nagged by his flesh-and-blood wife was one thing. Being nagged by...this red-eyed apparition was quite another and not something he wanted to encourage. But there was only one way to make it stop. He fetched the lights and the ladder and got to work.

  * * *

  Lexie liked to spend Thanksgiving weekend setting out her decorations. It always put her in a holiday mood. Plus it was fun for Brock, who enjoyed helping. As he was getting older she was allowing him to handle more of her treasures.

  She started some holiday music streaming and hauled in the box with their decorations, Brock bouncing along beside her.

  “I get to help,” he reminded her.

  “Yes, you do,” she said.

  She opened the cardboard box, and it was like opening a treasure chest of memories. There was the faux mistletoe she’d bought when she and he-who-would-not-be-named first got together. She’d kept it even after they’d split, thinking she’d make good use of it again. She hung it every year as a kind of positive affirmation. Someday she would find someone wonderful.

  So far no one worth kissing under that mistletoe had come along, though. Being a kindergarten teacher didn’t exactly throw a lot of single men her way. But you never knew. And you couldn’t decorate for the holidays and not hang mistletoe.

  One by one, she unwrapped and handed over the vintage wax candles shaped like choirboys and angels that had been her grandma’s. Brock lined them up along the coffee table, which he proclaimed to be the perfect place for them. Of course it was. That way he could play with them on a regular basis.

  He set the snow globe she’d handcrafted from a jelly jar several Christmases ago right in the middle of the coffee table. It had turned out quite well for a first attempt, if she did say so herself.

  Next she let him put the green, pine-scented soy candle in the guest bathroom. She wouldn’t light it unless she had company, but even unlit it provided a lovely, fresh fragrance.

  As he did that she pulled the ceramic Christmas tree her mother had made back when she was first married out of its box. It had miniature lights on it and cast a gentle glow once it was plugged it in. She set it on the kitchen counter near an electrical outlet.

  “There,” she said, plugging it in so Brock could see. “Our guests will be able to enjoy it from the living room and the kitchen.”

  “When are we going to get a big tree?” he asked.

  “Closer to Christmas. We’re going to get a real, live tree, and we don’t want to put it up too early and have it dry out.”

  Her family had always had an artificial tree. Now that she was in Washington, she wanted a real one for Christmas.

  She let Brock settle her cloth elf on the back of the sofa, but her Santa collection she would set out herself. She had china ones and ceramic ones, antique collectibles and newer whimsical ones. They’d look cute on the mantel.

  She’d never before had a fireplace and had been thrilled when the Realtor assured her that the insert in this one worked great. She was looking forward to hanging their Christmas stockings from the mantel, enjoying cozy fires and drinking hot chocolate.

  There. The house looked so festive. All she had left to do was to set out her Santas, string the garland along the mantel and find a spot to hang the mistletoe. Maybe from that beam that hung between the kitchen and the living area, so accessible from all directions. Then the place would be all dressed up and ready for Christmas.

  Funny, she’d never considered owning a house. It had always seemed like such a big step. But when she’d come up here it somehow felt like the thing to do. “A house is a good investment,” her dad used to say.

  Yes, it was. Buying this one was also a testament to her confidence in her future, that her new job was secure and this life she was starting wasn’t simply temporary. No more substitute teaching, no more part-time day-care jobs. She was a real teacher now.

  Brock, being six and full of energy, had no desire to sit and watch her string a garland along the mantel. “Can I go play?”

  “May I go play?” she corrected.

  “May I go play?”

  “Yes, for a little while. Let’s get you bundled up.” The famous Pacific Northwest drizzle had stayed away so far, but the sky was gray, and it was still nippy outside.

  Once she had him in his red parka and his red knit cap and mittens, she started for the back door to usher him out into the back yard.

  “I want to play in the front yard,” he said.

  The back yard was fenced, a big patch of lawn, surrounded by flower beds full of shrubs and flowers and beauty bark. It was great for games of Mother, May I? and bocce ball and two-person tag with Mom. But Brock was in love with the front yard. It offered both the potential for a rare neighbor-sighting as well as that big maple tree with a thick trunk and twisted boughs low enough to reach. He loved scrambling around in it when she was working out there, weeding the flower beds or raking leaves.

  Still, the front yard wasn’t fenced, and though they were in a cul-de-sac, she didn’t like the idea of Brock being out there without her. Any crazy person passing by could grab her little boy and abscond with him.

  “No, I think the back yard, Brockie,” she said.

  “I want to climb the tree,” he protested.

  It would be hard for a kidnapper to pull her boy out of a tree, she supposed. And on a cold, gray day, how many kidnappers were wandering their quiet suburban neighborhood? It wasn’t like Brock had asked to cross the street. Still...

  “Please,” he begged, both hands steepled in little-boy prayer.

  Lexie caved. “All right,” she said, doing an about-face. She’d keep an eye on him from the window while she finished up. “Stay in the yard,” she
commanded as she opened the front door for him. “And don’t climb too high in that tree. No more than three boughs up, remember?”

  “I remember,” he said and dashed across the porch and down the steps.

  She watched as he hurled himself across the lawn to the tree, grabbed a thick bough and started clambering up his own personal jungle gym. He got his feet anchored in the Y between those bottom branches and stood there, surveying his domain.

  A rather lonely domain. So far, he hadn’t quite found his feet socially, and she hadn’t managed to score any playdates for him, but she planned to change all that in the New Year. Little boys, like their mamas, needed friends.

  She went to the kitchen and made herself some tea and poured it into the Best Teacher Ever mug her aunt had given her when she got her job. “Because you will be,” she’d said.

  Then she returned to the living room to decorate the mantel and keep a watchful eye out the living-room window.

  The maple tree was bare. No leaves. No little boy. He wasn’t in the yard, either.

  Lexie’s heart stopped, and the blood drained from her face. She dropped her mug and raced for the front door.

  * * *

  Stanley was at the top of the ladder, stringing multicolored lights along the roofline when a new voice invaded the silence. “What are you doing?” it asked.

  It sure wasn’t Carol. She knew exactly what he was doing.

  He looked over his shoulder and saw a little boy looking up at him. He had a round face and brown eyes and a stray brown curl stuck out from under the red knit cap on his head. He was stuffed inside a bulky parka and had red mittens on his hands.

  “Where’d you come from?” Stanley asked. It would be nice if the kid said “Far away,” but a feeling of foreboding told Stanley that wasn’t the answer he was going to get.

  The kid pointed to the tan two-story Craftsman next door. “There.”

  The friendly neighbor who tried to flag him down whenever he drove by, who’d used cookies like a Trojan horse in an attempt to gain access inside his house. Of course it would be her kid.

  Stanley grunted and got back to work. “You should go home.”

  “There’s nobody to play with.”

  Not Stanley’s problem. “Go play with your mom.”

  “She’s putting up Santas. I don’t get to touch them.”

  “I’m busy here.” Stanley said it brusquely, hoping his tone would shoo the boy away.

  Little kids obviously didn’t understand the subtlety of brusqueness.

  “You’re hanging Christmas lights. I like Christmas lights.”

  “Yeah, a lot of people do.” Including Carol.

  “I’m going to ask my mommy if we can have Christmas lights,” the boy volunteered.

  “Good idea. Go do that.”

  The kid didn’t go. “My name’s Brock. What’s yours?”

  “Stanley.”

  “That’s a nice name.”

  Oh, brother. Stanley shook his head, climbed down the ladder, moved it and went back up to secure more lights.

  “Do you have kids?”

  “No.”

  “How come? Don’t you like kids?”

  “I can take ’em or leave ’em.”

  “I’m a kid.”

  “Thanks for sharing.”

  At that moment the boy’s mother appeared on their front porch, calling him, her voice frantic.

  The kid waved at her and called, “I’m over here, Mommy.”

  Bugging the neighbors.

  “You come home this minute!” she called.

  Stanley knew what that tone of voice meant. He’d heard it enough when his own mother had gotten after him. It said You’re in deep shit.

  “I gotta go now. Bye!”

  Yeah, bye. Good riddance.

  Kids were pests.

  6

  “I want to have at least three children,” Carol said one summer evening when they were strolling the beach at Golden Gardens. They’d been together for a year and were talking more and more of a future together.

  Stanley wasn’t into kids all that much, but he knew he’d be fine with any kid who was part Carol.

  “You’ll be teaching them once you get your degree,” he’d said. “Maybe after working with them you’ll change your mind about wanting any.”

  “Oh, no. I love children. Don’t you?”

  His cousin Belinda had just had a baby. Holding it had terrified him. “Don’t know much about them.”

  “Nobody does when they first start out. You learn as you go.”

  “You’ll already be an expert,” he said. He’d depend on her to help him figure out the whole parenting thing.

  There were more conversations as things continued to get serious between them, and one of them had been with her dad, who summoned him into the living room one evening for a chat.

  The family did all their true living in the family room. The living room had cream-colored carpet and fancy furniture and was reserved for important company. And important conversations.

  An important conversation with Mr. Bartlett. Stanley began to sweat. Mr. Bartlett had been an army lieutenant during World War II. He’d gone to school on the GI Bill and gotten a teaching degree. Teachers didn’t earn much at all back in the fifties, but he’d kept with it and finally become a high-school principal. He was a deacon at his church and a member of the local Lions Club. A cultured, educated man, a mover and shaker. He was everything Stanley wasn’t, everything Stanley would probably never be. Stanley stood four inches taller than him, but as they settled in the living room, Mr. Bartlett on the cream-colored sofa and Stanley on the edge of a matching chair, he felt about three feet tall.

  “You and my daughter appear to be very fond of each other,” Mr. Bartlett began.

  “I love her,” Stanley blurted.

  Oh, boy. That was going to go over like a lead balloon. Every sweat gland in his body went into production, and he felt like his whole face was going up in flames.

  Mr. Bartlett nodded solemnly. “Of course you do. What’s not to love?”

  Did that mean he had the old man’s approval? Or...? Stanley’s shirt collar was suddenly way too tight.

  “Carol is a very special young woman.”

  “She’s the best,” Stanley agreed. “I know I don’t deserve her.” But he wanted her, anyway. Needed her. Couldn’t imagine his life without her.

  “So what are you going to do to deserve her?”

  “Work hard?”

  “At what?”

  What? What? Stanley frantically searched his mind for the right answer.

  Mr. Bartlett didn’t wait for it. “You need a skill, Stanley. Something you can depend on.” Here he looked meaningfully at Stanley. “Have you thought of going to college?”

  “No, sir.” Boy, did that make him sound unworthy. He needed to rethink his future.

  Mr. Bartlett frowned. “Well, you need to do something more than working as an unskilled laborer. Find out what it takes to move up the ladder or pick a new skill to learn. You can’t drift along through life without a purpose, not if you’re serious about having a future with my daughter,” he added, lowering his brows.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Carol wants to be a teacher, and she’ll be a wonderful one. She’s got plans. Goals. She’s going places. Where are you going, young man?”

  To school. Stanley enrolled in an electrical technology certification program the very next day.

  Both families celebrated their accomplishments, but when Carol finally got her teaching degree, her family did so with twice as much fanfare: a big garden party with family and friends, cake, balloons, speeches and plenty of congratulatory cards, most of them filled with money.

  Stanley had made his best effort, getting her a card and a book he’d
found on child psychology.

  “Thought it might come in handy on the job,” he said when she opened it.

  “That was a very clever gift, Stanley,” her mother approved. “Now that you’ve got your teaching credentials, you can start thinking about other things,” she said to Carol and smiled encouragingly at him.

  Yes, other things. It was time to propose. But it had to be special. Romantic. Stanley had no idea how to be romantic.

  “Give her a long-stemmed red rose,” his pal Walt advised. “Women love that. And take her someplace really nice for dinner. With a view.”

  Dinner and a rose. He could do that. He made reservations at the Windjammer on Shilshole Bay Marina, requesting a window table so they could enjoy the view of the boats. He made a seven-thirty reservation so they’d still be there to catch the summer sunset. That would be romantic. He picked up the rose after work and put it in the trunk so she wouldn’t see it. Then he went home and showered and shaved and got dressed in his stylin’ flared slacks and sports jacket.

  “So this is it,” Curtis said, checking out the look.

  “Yep.”

  “She’s great,” his brother said in approval. “Wish I could find one just like her.”

  “You’re not looking that hard,” Stanley pointed out.

  “You’re right. I’m not ready to settle down.”

  Stanley was. He could hardly wait to start living with Carol. That was when his life would really begin.

  She looked picture-perfect, all dressed up for the big night out he’d promised her in a white granny dress printed with little pink roses. It made him think of wedding dresses. He hoped she’d say yes.

  Of course she would. They were in love. He was still nervous.

  They got to the restaurant, and he hurried around to the trunk to get the rose. He’d hide it inside his jacket then present it to her when their dessert came and pop the question. Carol had already hopped out of her side, and she came around the car just in time to see him staring aghast at the wilted red thing.