A Little Christmas Spirit Page 9

  This ploy usually worked, but not today. Prince Thundercloud refused to leave.

  “You promised,” Brock said, his voice filled with umbrage.

  “Yes, I did, and I will find a way to make sure we get our lights up. Meanwhile, I need to see an attitude adjustment,” she said firmly. “Okay?”

  Brock was still looking far from happy, the ghost of Prince Thundercloud lingering.

  “Let’s make you some ants on a log,” she said, and started for the kitchen.

  He nodded and followed her there, stood silently by while she washed a couple of celery stalks and cut them into pieces.

  She set the peanut-butter jar on the kitchen bar along with the box of golden raisins and handed over a dull knife. “How about you get the log ready?”

  He took the knife and globbed peanut butter onto the celery. “I could hang up the lights. I watched Grandpa Stanley do it.”

  Grandpa Stanley again. “Honey, he’s not your grandpa.”

  “He could be.”

  Yes, and there could be a reindeer out there somewhere with a red nose. “Here, let’s put some ants on your log,” she said and opened the box of raisins.

  He reached in and took several, spacing them out along the middle of the celery log, concentrating on his task.

  “Very good,” she said when he was done.

  He took a bite. “I bet Grandpa Stanley would like to help us.”

  “Maybe, when he knows us better.”

  Okay, the ants weren’t cutting it. They needed a better distraction. “How about we give Grandma a call and see how she’s doing?” Lexie suggested.

  Talking to her mother had been easy when she was a child, a trial when she was a teenager and a lifeline once she hit her twenties. Since losing her father, it had become a duty.

  Not that she didn’t love her mother or want to talk to her, but conversation since Daddy’s death felt like trying to chat about the weather with a fellow passenger in one of the Titanic’s lifeboats. Still, those calls kept them connected and, Lexie hoped, reminded them that they still had each other.

  “I’m sure Grandma would like to hear about how we decorated the house,” she said, reaching for her cell phone.

  Brock said nothing.

  Lexie had about resigned herself to leaving a message on her mother’s voice mail when Mom answered. “Hello, honey.” She sounded as chipper as Brock.

  “Hi, Mom. We thought we’d call and check in.”

  “That was sweet of you. How are you doing?”

  “We’ve been having adventures. We got the house all decorated for Christmas. Here, I’ll let Brock tell you all about it.”

  He took the phone and said a dutiful, “Hi, Grandma. We got lights. But Mommy can’t hang them up because she’s hurt and has a big blue shoe on her foot. I’m going to ask Grandpa Stanley to put them up for us.” There was a pause, and then he held the phone out to Lexie. “Grandma wants to talk to you.”

  “What is Brock talking about?” her mother demanded.

  “I took a fall in the hardware-store parking lot and wound up with a chip fracture.”

  “Oh, Lord. What next?” Her mother’s favorite phrase. Ever since Daddy died she’d turned into an Eeyore. “Are you in a cast?”

  “No, a walking boot.” Too bad in a way. If she’d been in a cast, preferably full-body, maybe her mother would have roused herself from her doldrums and offered to come help her.

  “What were you doing at the hardware store?” As far as Mom was concerned, hardware stores were the domain of contractors and bored husbands.

  “We were getting the lights.”

  “That Grandpa Stanley’s going to hang,” Mom said as if Brock had just told her that a tall, invisible rabbit named Harvey was helping them out. “Who is Grandpa Stanley?”

  “The older man next door,” Lexie explained as Brock skipped out of the kitchen. “Brock finally met him and has taken a liking to him.”

  “Have you met him?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m going to Grandpa’s,” Brock called from the front hall.

  Going to Grandpa’s? “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Mom, I have to call you back.”

  “Alexandra, what’s going on?” her mother demanded.

  “Brock, you stay right here,” Lexie called.

  No answer. Of course not. Her son was a mini-man on a mission. Once she got him back home he was going to be sitting on that kitchen chair for a lot longer than six minutes.

  “Brock’s on his way next door.”

  “To Grandpa’s,” her mother said, half disgusted, half confused.

  “He knows he’s not supposed to go out without me.” That was it. She was going to have a lock installed at the top of the front door. “I’ll call you later,” she said and ended the call.

  She clumped through the house as fast as she could, stopped at the coat closet only long enough to pull down her son’s parka. Of course a little boy making a break for it wouldn’t stop for something so insignificant as a coat.

  Pulling her sweater tightly about her, she made her clumsy way down the front-porch steps and started across the lawn. Why was it, when you got pregnant, that no one ever warned you how hard parenting was?

  Oh, yes, because then the entire race would die out.

  Chip fractures, runaway sons... Honestly, could this day get any worse?

  9

  Stanley was very busy—watching a hockey game on TV—when his doorbell rang. And rang. And rang.

  Dog, his temporary houseguest, was thrilled with the idea of company and jumped off the recliner where she’d been sitting with him, raced to the door and began to bark.

  Who the heck was on his front porch this late on a Sunday? Girl Scouts? Blue Birds? Someone selling magazines to put himself through college? Whatever they were selling, Stanley wasn’t interested.

  Okay, maybe if it was cookies, but it wasn’t Girl Scout cookie season.

  “I don’t want any,” Stanley called. Which was stupid. Nobody could hear him over the TV and the barking dog.

  The doorbell continued to ring.

  With a scowl, he pushed out of his recliner and lumbered over to the door. People should leave a man alone on the weekend when he was trying to rest.

  He looked out one of the tall narrow windows that flanked his front door. No one selling anything. But something just as irritating.

  He opened the door and frowned down on the kid from next door. What was he doing wandering around the neighborhood? It would be dark soon. And where was his coat? What kind of woman let a kid this age wander around the neighborhood without a coat? Or even with a coat?

  Dog didn’t care about any of those details. She was happy to greet their visitor, jumping up and pawing him.

  The little boy giggled and knelt down to pet her, dropping the box he’d been holding. “What’s your dog’s name?”

  “Dog. Does your mother know you’re out?”

  The boy nodded. He picked the box back up. It was a shiny cardboard one with a picture of a house lit with colored lights.

  He offered it to Stanley. “Mommy can’t hang up our Christmas lights. Will you?”

  Stanley frowned and hid his hands behind his back. “Why can’t your mom hang them?” What did he look like, the neighborhood handyman?

  A soft chuckle floated on the air behind him.

  His frown got longer. No, no, no. He did not hear a thing.

  “She’s hurt.”

  “Well, then, your dad.”

  “I don’t have a daddy.”

  “Brock!” called an angry voice.

  Stanley looked to see his neighbor coming his way. She was a pretty young woman, slender with long, reddish hair. She was carrying the boy’s coat, but she herself was only in jeans and a thin sweater. And a blue walking boo
t. So that was why she couldn’t hang the lights.

  “Brock Arthur Bell,” she scolded the boy, who gave a start and dropped the box. “What did I say about leaving the yard?”

  The kid’s lower lip began to wobble. “I just wanted to ask Grandpa Stanley to hang up our lights.”

  Grandpa Stanley?

  The woman joined them on the porch and began stuffing her son into his red parka. “I’m sorry Brockie bothered you,” she said to Stanley. “He was so enthralled with your Christmas lights that he wanted to put some up on our house. I’m afraid I fell in the parking lot at Family Sam’s and fractured my ankle, so I don’t want to try going up a ladder.”

  You can.

  It felt like Carol was hovering right behind his shoulder. “I did not hear that,” Stanley informed her.

  “Excuse me?” The neighbor woman’s face was turning red, probably not from the cold.

  “Nothing,” Stanley said. Meanwhile, the boy was kneeling in front of the dog, laughing while Butt Breath slobbered all over his face. “Dog, stop that,” Stanley commanded, pulling on her collar.

  Good grief. Dogs and kids and helpless neighbors. He had no idea what he had done to deserve this invasion of his privacy.

  “I’m so sorry we bothered you,” said the woman. “Come on, Brockie. We need to go home.”

  “But what about the lights?” The kid’s face was scrunching up like he was going to cry. Next to him the dog whimpered in sympathy.

  Stanley could hear the TV blasting at him from the living room. Some choir was singing “Deck the Halls.” What the devil had happened to his hockey game? As if he couldn’t guess. Carol again.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” he muttered and scooped up the box. “I’ll get my coat.” He’d put the lights up, and then he’d be done with the neighbors.

  “We have a ladder,” Brock said, pointing to their car.

  “So I see,” Stanley said.

  “You don’t need to,” she began.

  “Yeah, I do,” Stanley said, resigned.

  “Well, thank you,” she said. “It means a lot to my son. Come on, Brockie,” she said to the kid, holding out her hand.

  He didn’t take it. “Can I walk over with Grandpa Stanley?”

  Stanley was going to have to put a stop to this grandpa crap.

  “May I?” his mother corrected, and Stanley suddenly remembered playing Mother, May I? as a kid.

  This mother looked at him as if assessing his ability to get her son from his front lawn to hers. He obviously passed the test because instead of saying “No, you may not,” she said, “All right. But once we’re back at the house, you stay right in front of it. Do you understand me?”

  The kid nodded eagerly and grinned.

  Stanley, on the other hand, didn’t. First he was the neighborhood handyman, now he was the nanny next door.

  He grabbed his coat, Dog dancing at his heels, and then trudged next door with both Dog and Kid tagging along. It was freeze-your-ass-off cold out, and the air was damp, and Stanley had already hung one set of Christmas lights. Which he hadn’t wanted to do. Wasn’t Sunday supposed to be a day of rest?

  There was no rest for his ears. The boy kept up a steady line of chatter. “We went to a hospital, and Mommy got her foot x-ed.”

  “You mean x-rayed.”

  Brock nodded. “Shannon took us. She’s nice.”

  Mommy had a friend. Maybe that would lessen the amount of harassment she and the kid gave Stanley in the future.

  “My grandma’s in California,” Brock continued. “My grandpa died, and he’s with the angels.”

  So the boy was looking for a grandpa substitute. Well, he’d have to look somewhere else. At this point in life the last thing Stanley needed to be bothered with was a kid.

  “Here,” he said, handing over the box of lights. “Take these, and go wait on the porch.” And give me a minute of peace.

  The boy obeyed, walking off with the box, and Stanley trudged to the car and retrieved the ladder with Dog supervising.

  “We’re not going to get involved with these people,” Stanley said to her.

  As if the dog was staying? No, that wouldn’t happen. Somebody would call and take her off his hands.

  Back at the house, the kid was sitting on the front porch, his feet planted on the first step, his arms wrapped around the box of lights like it held treasure. Stanley supposed, in a way, it did. Kids were so easily pleased. Things that seemed small to grown-ups were huge to them.

  He thought back to his own childhood, what a big deal it always was decorating the tree with his mom and dad and brother every year. And oh, the excitement of hanging up those Christmas stockings!

  And oh, how pissed he’d been when he learned that his parents had lied to him about Santa Claus! He’d been all of five, and the news had been a crushing blow. Dad had lost his job at the plant, and they’d had to come clean. There would be no visit from Santa that year. There was no Santa, anyway, never had been. Stanley had been stunned, unable to take it in, even when he saw the proof of it on Christmas morning. The only presents under the tree had been socks and pajamas, new pants for his brother and him, along with boring knitted scarves and hats and winter coats a size too big from their grandparents. The Christmas stockings had felt like a joke, with hardly anything in them. An orange each and some Life Savers and a candy cane. No little toys, no fat bonbons. Not even any nuts. How could his parents have deceived him so?

  “Life’s tough,” his dad had snapped when he made the mistake of complaining.

  Christmas dinner had been at his grandma’s. Turkey. Even back then he hadn’t liked it. Grandma Clark had tried to save the day by serving cake and homemade fudge and sending some home with them. But it was too little too late.

  If you asked Stanley, the whole Santa thing was sick and wrong, anyway. Better to give the kids presents and take credit for it yourself. Why should a fat man from an old poem get the glory? It was dumb. And scarring.

  His neighbor came out on the porch to join her son, a jacket on over the sweater, as Stanley was setting up her ladder. She began helping the boy take the lights out of the box.

  “It’s awfully kind of you to do this,” she said to Stanley.

  He hadn’t had much choice. He grunted and walked over to them. “You’ve barely got enough to do the front of your roofline,” he informed her, looking at them.

  “That will be enough,” she said. “I really appreciate you helping us. If it wasn’t for this boot I’d do it myself, but I was a little nervous about going up the ladder with it. I was going to find someone to help me,” she added.

  “Well, you did,” Stanley said resentfully. He took the light string and started for the ladder. The kid moved to stand at the foot of it, watching as Stanley climbed.

  It looked like he wasn’t the only one who was going to be watching Stanley’s every move. The woman stayed there on the porch.

  “I’m Lexie Bell,” she said.

  “Stanley Mann,” he replied. Not that he wanted to make her acquaintance, but he did have some manners, after all.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said. “We moved here from California, and it’s taking longer than I thought to get to know our neighbors.”

  What was he supposed to say to that? Nothing, he decided and kept working.

  He was spared from any more conversation when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out of her coat pocket and said, “Hello, Mom. No, he’s fine. Our neighbor’s here now, helping us hang our lights. Isn’t that kind of him?”

  Kind, yeah, that was him.

  She moved to the far end of her porch, still talking away on her phone. These millennials—or whatever the heck she was—they ought to just have their phones implanted in their hands and be done with it.

  She was gone, but her kid was still right there
at the foot of the ladder. “I like you,” he said.

  Oh, brother. “Don’t be so quick to like people you don’t know,” Stanley said. He wasn’t in a hurry to like this kid or his mom. And he sure wasn’t in a hurry to get better acquainted with them.

  “Do you like me?” Brock prompted.

  “I’ll let you know,” Stanley said, stretching to secure another section of lights.

  “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When will you let me know you like me?”

  “Later,” Stanley said and worked a little faster.

  Lexie Bell had just finished her conversation when Stanley came down from the ladder. He plugged in the lights in the outdoor socket, and the roofline of their house suddenly glowed with all manner of jewel colors. The boy jumped up and down and clapped his hands, and Lexie beamed at Stanley as if he’d worked a miracle.

  “Thank you,” she gushed. “How can we ever repay you?”

  By not bugging me. “No need,” he said. “If you open your garage door I’ll put this ladder away.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said and hurried inside.

  A moment later, the door made its slow ascent, showing a garage filled with packing boxes, stacked every which way, and a Chevy compact. It probably didn’t have any cardboard under it to catch oil drips.

  Not his problem.

  Lexie stood in the doorway, which looked like it led to the kitchen, same as Stanley’s house. “Put it anywhere,” she said.

  Stanley leaned the ladder against the wall. “There you go,” he said and started to hurry away before she could find something else to say and trap him there in some verbal spiderweb.

  “Thank you again so much!” she called after him.

  The kid, who was turning into his shadow, started to run after him.

  “Brock Arthur Bell, you come here right now!” she called.

  “I have to go,” the kid said to him.

  “Good,” Stanley muttered. He beat it back home, Dog trotting next to him. Back in the house the TV was still going, and the hockey game was playing once more. Of course.

  He got a towel and wiped off Dog’s muddy paws, then wandered through the dining room on his way to the kitchen to make himself something hot to drink. He couldn’t help seeing the house next door through the sheers covering the window. Those lights did look nice. Lexie Bell should have bought enough to do the porch railing as well.