Our First Christmas (32 page)

Those bright green eyes filled with tears, like my gold ones.

“I have missed you every single day for twelve years, Josh. I tried so hard to not think about you and all we had and all I'd lost. I flew all over the world to forget about you and it never worked. You followed me everywhere in my head.”

“It's been the same for me, sweetheart. It's always been you.”

“By the way, I've already quit Hellfire.”

“You have?”

“Yes.” I told him how I'd had to quit, my brain too fried, my soul too tired. I stepped forward, he stepped forward, and I wrapped my arms around his neck. “I'm a head case. I know it. But what I know even more is that I want to be with you every day. I want you. I need you. I love you. I can't be happy without you.”

“I'm not happy without you, either, Laurel. You are not a head case. You're thoughtful, interesting, fun, smart, and funny. You make the best cookies. How about if we start over for the last time?”

“That'll work for me, cowboy.”

“For me, too, cowgirl, for me, too.”

His mouth came down on mine.

He is delicious.

The Kelly Family's Chaotic Christmas Eve began in the light green farmhouse my great-granddad and grandma built. My mother had the hot buttered rums ready.

Aunt Amy brought her momma's hash and onion casserole and meat-loaf balls. The scent of the hash and onion casserole about knocked me over, but my smile did not waver when she kissed me and said, “Merry Christmas to my third daughter. I love you.”

Her husband, the former boxer, Richard Longer, hugged me, too, then whispered, “Sorry about the casserole. Trust me, it smelled worse at home, like a dead rodent.”

A truck roared up the drive, way too fast. I saw Oakie at the wheel. He stuck his head out and yelled, “Sister! We comin' to you, girl! We comin'!”

My two other half brothers, Aspen and Redwood, sons of my father and Chantrea, were in the back of the truck. As the truck slowed, they both stood up and waved, each of them with a six-pack of beer in their hands. “Merry happy beer Christmas!”

Oh, they were trouble. Oh, how I loved them. They leaped out of the truck and hugged me, then because they are big and strong and funny, they lifted me up in the air horizontally, and walked me back into the house like a Cleopatra queen. I would have objected but I was laughing too hard.

When they set me down in the family room, everyone was laughing.

“Okay, okay,” Aspen said. He has a mop of black hair and spends most of his time on the ski slopes. He has a tattoo of a Taz-manian devil on one arm. “We've got a song.”

“It's for you, Dick Longer,” Oakie said, running a hand over his mohawk. He, too, spends most of his time on the slopes. One of his tattoos is a pair of handcuffs. He'd told me it was to remind him to stay out of trouble. “We been workin' on it.”

“This year, we have a melody,” Redwood said. He is the third black-haired ski bum. He recently got a tattoo of a leopard on skis. “You know, like a symphony or a rock concert.”

All of them have a tattoo on their right arm that says, “Kelly,” and “Three brothers.”

The girls are crazy about them, their tattoos, ski bum-ness, and their piercings.

“No,” Aunt Amy said. “No singing.”

Richard stood up, bull-like chest out, and said, “You can sing the song, and then we'll go for a round in the backyard. Three minutes each?”

We all knew what Boxing Richard meant.

“Hmmm.” Oakie put his fist under his chin. “That doesn't sound pleasant. Sing a song, then I get my pretty nose bashed in.”

Aspen swallowed hard. “With you being a boxer, it does appear that the outcome would be poor for me.”

Redwood said, “I can't let you hit me, because then I'll get a black eye and it'll turn the girls on too much. You know, bad boy gone badder. They like that.”

“We have a decision then,” Richard said. “Let's forget about the song and all sit down and have a beer.”

The boys cheered and tossed him one.

My mother and Aunt Emma and Aunt Amy sighed with relief.

We were distracted when Camellia and Violet burst in with their husbands and Camellia's two vampire boys and Violet's two girls who keep getting expelled from preschool. I went straight up to hug them. The vampire boys were actually wearing vampire teeth.

“I like your teeth,” I said to them.

“Mommy said we wear the teef until we no bite the peoples anymore,” Tad said.

“I a biter so now the teef stop me,” Teddy said.

“It's best not to bite people,” I said, hugging them. “They might bite back.”

Tad's eyes grew huge in his cute face. “That ouch.”

“I don't yike that,” Teddy echoed. “No teef bite.”

I hugged Violet's girls, Shandry and Lizzy. “How's preschool?” I asked. Violet sighed. Her husband said, “Who gets expelled from preschool? Our kids. It's that Kelly Wild Bone. Your side of the family, Laurel.”

“Preschool fun,” Shandry said, throwing her little hands in the air. “I let animals free. Bye-bye, hamster!”

“I like to paint kids at the painting time,” Lizzy said. “Rainbow. You want me paint you, Aunt Laurel?”

The kids ran around the house to pet Zelda, Thomas, and James. “Keep their teeth on when they're around the cat,” I told Camellia. “It's a safe bet Zelda will bite back.”

Camellia looked worried and took off after the boys, dropping her pecan pie, which she knew was better than Velvet's, and a chocolate silk pie, on the counter, followed by Violet's eggplant lasagna for her Italian husband and banana bread because she likes it.

I went back out to the front porch. An elegant car came next, and Chantrea stepped out. She had her fourth son, David, with her, who was actually carrying what appeared to be a four-foot-tall galaxy with him. There were colorful wires, marshmallows, and something that looked suspiciously like a large firework. “Hi, David.” I gave him a hug.

“Greetings, from a scientist.” He bowed, then adjusted his large glasses. Some scientific table fell out of his front pocket and he tucked it back in.

Chantrea was dressed in silk and high heels, even in the snow. She doesn't dress like that when it's only she and I. I think she's threatened by Velvet.

She was carrying her Christmas Eve Cambodian ginger catfish and Beef Lok Lak dishes.

I grabbed the catfish dish, then hugged her. I had remembered to put the Goodwill butter plate at her table setting so we didn't lose one of Grandma's if she threw it. The Goodwill plate was quite pretty. China. Blue flowers. I hoped it lasted the dinner.

“You see my boobs?” she asked. “Bigger now.”

I eyed her chest. Whoa. Boob job. “They are splendid.”

“Yes. Splendid. See?” She put the Beef Lok Lak on the ground and flashed me. “Ya. Much better. No one call me flat pancake girl Chantrea no more.”

“I've never heard anyone say that about you, Chantrea.” I saw beneath the bravado. She was scared. She was coming to Christmas dinner with two ex wives and a current wife. The current wife was younger and had two children with her ex.

“I got the big knockers like Velvet,” Chantrea said. “But mine better. I show her tonight at dinner. Mine better.”

“I'm so glad you're here.”

“Ya. Me, too. You keep that Amy away from me, too. She say my good boys not good. They good. I learn to fight in Cambodia and I can do here in America.”

“I understand. But no plate throwing.”

She gasped, outraged. “No, not a plate I throw. That wrong. Butter dish. I throw butter dish.”

“Keep it safe. It's Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas. You my angel.”

“Merry Christmas. You're mine, too, Chantrea. I love you.”

“I love you more, heart daughter.”

She headed to the house as my father, Velvet with her controversial chest, and their two little kids, Daisy and Banyan, arrived, along with Velvet's boy, William Robert Rhodes II, the son of the governor who had the affair with Velvet. I am told that the governor, William Robert Rhodes, senior, pays $3,000 a month in child support from the Alaskan village in which he lives with his long beard.

I don't know Velvet well, but my father is totally in love with her.

“Hello, Velvet,” I said.

“Merry Christmas, insane one.” She hugged me. She was carrying the carrots and slew made with the recipe from the strip joint, heavy with brandy, and the pecan pie. I knew she believed it to be better than Camellia's.

“I don't want my fine butt handed to me in a sling tonight, Laurel, if you know what I mean with this family of yours, but I'm happy we're here with the loose cannons anyhow.”

“Merry Christmas. I'm glad you're here, too.” I think she still had Chantrea beat in the chest department. Chantrea would not be pleased. However, Aspen, Redwood, and Oakie would be, which would irritate Chantrea.

“You look lovely, Laurel, as always.” My father hobbled over, his left leg dragging a bit, the left side of his smile up higher than the right. My guilt rushed straight at me, hard and fast, as usual, but then he wrapped me in a hug. When he pulled back, he wiped his eyes. “It lifts my soul to see you. Every time. Never changes. Merry Christmas. I love you.”

“Merry Christmas, Dad. I love you, too.”

I hugged my half siblings Daisy and Banyan. Daisy, four years old, was wearing a princess dress, the shark-tooth necklace I gave her, and an army helmet. She jumped up and down when I said “Merry Christmas” and told me that Santa had brought her a doll for Christmas Eve. “I take doll head off, like this.” She turned around and dug in her pink backpack. “See now doll head a baseball.” She threw the doll head baseball, then ran after it, army helmet bopping.

Banyan, three years old, was wearing a miniature hunting outfit, the stuffed snake I gave him around his neck, and he was carrying a plastic spatula and a wooden fork.

“Are you going to cook?” I asked him.

He seemed confused, then he grinned and waved his utensils. “New toys!”

“He likes to play in the kitchen,” my father said.

Banyan banged the spatula and spoon together. “Bang, bang, bang!”

William Robert Rhodes II, eleven years old, stuck his hand out and shook mine. “It's a pleasure to see you again.”

“It's a pleasure to see you, too.”

He was wearing a suit. “I like to dress for the occasion.”

“You look very handsome.”

“Thank you. Do you have a chessboard here? Or backgammon?”

“I don't think so. We usually play poker on Christmas. Don't be afraid if people get angry when they lose.”

“Poker?” He arched an eyebrow. “That's acceptable. Your father taught me. No one can ever read my expression, so I do have some expertise in that area. It can be a gentleman's game, as I'm sure you're aware.”

“I'm aware. And a ladies' game. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors tonight.”

He adjusted his tie. “Do you like the symphony, Laurel? If you had to choose between Beethoven, Dvorak, or Strauss, who would be your favorite? Mine would be Dvorak.”

“William!” David, Chantrea's son, called from the front deck, holding his science experiment up. “I brought it. Come on in, I need you to look at some of the wiring and routing systems.”

“Excellent. I'll be up straightaway.”

My father sighed.

You can always tell which children are not biologically related to him.

When I was boiling the gravy on the stove, Josh walked in, to much fanfare. My family hugged him, told him it was “the best” to see him. He finally made his way over to me and gave me a hug and a kiss in my red ruffled Christmas apron. Everyone clapped. I blushed.

 

“The accident we were in was such a blessing for me, Laurel. I felt terrible about the impact on you,
terrible,
but for me, it was a blessing.”

“Dad. What?”
A blessing?

“I realized”—he wiped his eyes—“that I was an incredibly selfish man who ran away at the first sign of adversity, of trouble. I left Amy and your mother when they made reasonable demands on me as a father and husband. When we were in the car together that evening, and you told me how you felt, I was devastated. You were so young, yet you knew more about life, loyalty, and love than I did. In the months that followed I understood, finally, the emotional damage I had done to you kids and to your mothers. I was a self-centered donkey's butt.”

I felt the beginnings of forgiveness. Forgiveness for myself. Finally.

“After my stroke, I had time to think about how I was as a man and a husband and father. On all counts, I failed. It broke me down, I'm telling you, honey, it did. It's odd, isn't it, how sometimes the best lessons in life come at the worst times. Family is what's most important to me. You kids, your mothers.” He sniffled, he blustered, he wiped away tears. “Twelve years ago I had a second chance to make things right, and look at our family now.”

It was actually funny, and ironic, what came next.

Chantrea asked my mother, “You think my good boys go jail because that funny joke snowman in town with plastic private? I think no.”

Oakie put a beer can on his head and shouted, “Shoot it off my head, someone, I dare you!”

Daisy and Banyan streaked in without their clothes and yelled, “See, Daddy! We naked mice!”

William Robert Rhodes II stood on a chair in his suit and said, “Let's take a moment to turn on Mozart and be quiet within our own spirits.”

I heard an explosion in the backyard. I figured it was David's science experiment. Yep, it was. I heard a whoop of glee.

Tad took off his vampire teeth and bit his brother, who bit him back. They both screamed, outraged.

Camellia and Violet clinked their champagne glasses too hard together and they shattered.

Velvet said, “This carrots and slew will make your tongue hang out.”

Zelda the cat screeched, paws scratching the air, as the dogs tried to sneak down the stairs. They scampered back up. Ah, family.

What a mess.

I turned and saw Josh wink at me. He smiled, sweet and loose. I smiled back.

Ah, Josh.

He was Plan J.

What a love.