Marisa Carroll - Keeping Christmas

“Yes, Wainwright’s. We’ll look into it when we go pick up the brochures for our trip to Argentina.”

“Argentina?”

Jacob hid another smile. His twin aunts had been planning the trip of a lifetime ever since his grandparents had passed away fifteen years ago. As far as he knew they’d still never ventured farther away from home than Memphis, but they kept planning, and someday he hoped they made it to all the faraway, exotic places they dreamed about.

Dreams were another thing he’d learned to do without.

“Yes, Argentina,” Faye insisted when Janet had stopped laughing. “It’s a great travel bargain this winter.”

“I’ll bet it is. If you get there before the next coup attempt.”

“It’s time for Sixty Minutes,” Almeda announced imperiously. “I don’t want to miss is. Mike Wallace is doing an exposé on the savings and loan scandal.”

“Another one?” Hazel sighed. “Isn’t that ever going to be settled? You go ahead. I’ll tidy up in the kitchen.”

“I’ll help you, Aunt H,” Jacob offered. “Then I have to get back to the cabin. I can’t count on the weather being bad enough for them to cancel school tomorrow. I still have half a dozen midterm exams to mark.”

“I’ll give you a hand,” Janet said, pushing her chair back from the table as she turned to help Almeda, crippled by arthritis, to rise from her chair. “Sixty Minutes bores me to death.”

“Thanks, Aunt J,” Jacob said as he prepared to carry a stack of plates and bowls into the kitchen. “But they’re essay questions. Still want to volunteer?”

“I withdraw my offer,” Janet said with a cackle. “I’ll find something else to occupy me until bedtime.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to improve your mind a little with a good book,” Almeda said, reaching for her walker, her only concession to the infirmities of age.

“I already have one. It’s Stephen King’s newest thriller. I love the way that man can scare your socks off without half trying.”

Almeda sniffed. “Rubbish. Good night, Jacob boy,” she said, lifting her cheek for his kiss. “Sleep well.”

“Good night, Aunt,” he said, touching his lips to her cheek. His aunts were all the family he had left; all the family he would ever have, now.

“I wonder,” Faye said, lifting the lace curtain over the bowed dining-room window, “if we should move Weezer onto the back porch. It really is miserable out there.”

“I’ll bring her inside,” Jacob offered, wondering what flaw in his character caused him to volunteer for such hazardous duty.

“Would you, Jacob? Thanks. Lois and I have to finish the designs for the Christmas decorations we’re planning this year.”

“I’m not putting up any outside lights as long as the weather keeps up like this,” Janet warned as she headed for the back parlor a few steps in front of Almeda so that she could turn on the TV for her sister.

“I’ll do the lights, Aunt J,” Jacob interjected. “But I agree, not until the weather improves.”

“That’s okay,” Faye and Lois chorused, almost in unison. “We have to buy a couple of new strings of lights first, anyway.”

“How many is a couple?” Almeda asked suspiciously, half turning in the doorway, her hands planted firmly on the handles of her walker.

“Well, five or six, maybe,” Faye admitted with a quick glance at her sister.

“We thought it would be great to outline the whole house with lights this year.”

Jacob groaned. The roof peak of the big old Victorian house was at least forty feet off the ground. “Let’s discuss this tomorrow, okay?” he said, pushing his hip against the swinging door that separated the dining room from the kitchen. “I’m not sure I’m interested in climbing around on the roof at this time of year.”

“But you do such a marvelous job with the lights,” Faye said cajolingly.

“It wouldn’t be Christmas in Owenburg if we didn’t put up the lights. You know how the children look forward to it. And we’ve designed a new display for the side yard,” Lois added, her voice rising with excitement. “Christmas geese. Just like Weezer. With wreaths around their necks, and four little goslings exploring a Santa’s bag of presents that have spilled out on the lawn. We’ve already hired Wiley Harrison to make the geese.”

“Okay,” Jacob said, giving in without a fight, just as he always did when his aunts had their heart set on something. “I’ll do it. But not till the ice melts. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” The twins went off beaming.

“You’re too good to us, Jacob,” Hazel said. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Aunt H.” He kept his voice gruff, devoid of emotion. “That’s what family’s for.”

“You need a family of your own,” Hazel replied without missing a beat. None of his aunts was hesitant about voicing an opinion on the matter of his seclusion. But Hazel, a widow herself, was the most vocal of all. “You need to get out, meet someone. Find someone to love again.”

“No.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t change expression but his aunt looked as if he had.

“All right, I won’t mention it again.” She turned away from the big double sink where she’d deposited her armload of dirty dishes and opened the back door. A blast of cold, wet air and stinging crystals of sleet blew halfway across the room. “Oh, dear, Lois wasn’t exaggerating. It is sleeting very hard. And it’s miserably cold. Would you mind very much bringing Weezer up onto the porch?”

“I’ll do it right now,” Jacob offered, deciding he might as well get it over with. He grabbed his coat off the rack by the walnut pie safe his great-grandfather had built and pulled it on.

“Look, Jacob,” Hazel said, holding the door half-open as she pointed toward the small strip of the interstate that could be seen across the valley. “Goodness, see all the flashing lights. There’s been an accident. A bad one, by the looks of it. Oh, dear, I wonder if there’s anything we can do to help?”

“I doubt it.” Jacob, too, watched the array of red and blue flashing lights, but he didn’t feel any of his aunt’s quick compassion. He didn’t let himself feel anything at all but a mild curiosity as to what might have occurred. “With the roads as bad as they are, Aunt H, it’d take forty minutes to get over there. There’s nothing we can do.”

“We can pray,” Hazel said with the assurance of a deep and abiding faith.

“Do that,” Jacob said, turning away from the lights, setting off into the storm with his head tucked low on his chest. “It does about as much good as anything else.”

“I’m sorry, missus. Any other time I’d take you all the way to the Fuller place, but this here weather caught me off my guard. I ain’t got no chains on the tires. There’s no way I can get up the hill tonight. You and the little boy, though. You’re sure welcome to come on home with me. My wife’ll have my hide when she hears tell I dropped you off here, alone with it snowin’ to beat the band.”

“No, really. I couldn’t impose on you that way. The motel you mentioned will be just fine.” Just fine, Katie repeated to herself, because it was so far off the beaten track that no one would find her there. “Thanks so much for giving us a ride.” She covered her mouth with her hand as a fit of coughing threatened to take her voice away.

“That’s a bad cold, missus,” the old man said, not for the first time. “Better see about takin’ somethin’ for it.” He nodded his head, barely covered with wispy white hair, sagely. “My wife. She’s got the perfect cure for what ails you. Tea with lemon and—”

Katie broke in on his good-natured rambling. “I’m sure she does, but I’ll be all right as soon as I get a good night’s sleep.”