By Proxy (25 page)

“Merry Christmas, Thomas! Thank you, sir!”

***

He had enjoyed spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with his family. More than he had in years. Not that being with his family had necessarily helped him figure out what to do about Jenny, but it was somehow comforting to spend a few days with them. Colleen had arrived with her husband and the girls on Christmas Eve morning and greeted Sam with a shocked and elated hello. Muirin arrived a few hours later with her husband and baby Colin, who was deposited with his uncle and proceeded to take a two-hour nap in Sam’s arms.

His sisters had married well: stable, loving men who doted on their wives and children. Being around his family was comforting, but Sam found that watching the couples interact only served to intensify a deep ache inside of him. He couldn’t stop thinking about how well Jenny would have fit in with his family, how much his mother and sisters would have liked her, how captivated she would have been by his little nieces and tiny nephew.

He peeked out his mother’s kitchen window as Colleen followed her daughters outside to the swing set in the backyard. Muirin came up behind him, holding her newborn son.

“When’s it your turn, Uncle Sammy?”

Sam had given his sister a tight smile, recalling his blunder when he had blurted out, “Someday. With you,” to Jenny.

He gritted his teeth with regret, remembering Jenny rush out of the courthouse after he’d yelled unforgivable things at her. He’d never apologized to her, and it had been weeks since their emotional farewell. He’d probably have a better chance at converting Ron to the priesthood than having another chance with Jenny at this point.

After church, the girls had stayed up as late as they could stand, waiting for Santa, until their dad finally carried them up to bed. Sam, his sisters, their husbands and his parents had visited in the living room, his dad occasionally stoking a roaring fire, trading stories of Christmases past and passing Colin around to loving arms.

Christmas morning dawned white with sunshine on a new-fallen snow, which delighted the girls almost more than Santa’s bounty, and the day was spent opening gifts, making snow angels, eating and drinking way too much. Colleen and Muirin finally left for home after dinner on Christmas Day. Sam would head back to the city in the morning.

He was standing on the back patio looking up at the sky when his mother joined him.

“Good night for it,” she mused, pulling a thick, wool sweater around her shoulders and buttoning it up against the cold. “It’s clear.”

Margaret Gunderson Kelley was still an attractive woman at sixty. She wore her white-blonde hair in a neat page-boy held back by a variety of hair bands, most of them blue to match her piercing blue eyes, and kept fit by taking a long walk with Sam’s dad every morning.

“Not like Montana.”

“Well,” she said, looking up and smiling, “Nowhere’s like Montana.”

She nudged Sam in the side gently with her elbow. “So, youngest child, did something happen out there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Aunt Lisabet told me what you did for Kristian. The wedding. Standing proxy. Which, by the way, it would have been nice to hear from you instead of her.” She chucked him lightly in the arm before continuing. “Still, I’m proud of you for helping him out. What a nice boy I raised.”

“You did okay,” he conceded, grinning straight ahead in the semi-darkness.

“But, you’re not acting like yourself. Coming home early for Christmas, Sam? Staying an extra day? Oh I’m not saying I don’t love every second. I do. We all loved having you here longer this year. But it’s not really
you
, son.”

He cringed at her words and turned to her. “God, I’m sorry about that, Mom.”

“Oh, honey, I’m not complaining. You work hard, you play hard. Your job means everything to you.” She seemed to hesitate, then continued. “I don’t want to pry, but I gather from Colleen that you’re not with Pepper anymore.”

“Didn’t work out.” He turned his head to smile at her. “Don’t start crying now. I know how much you liked her.”

She chuckled, shaking her head. “No. She wasn’t my favorite. I wanted more for you. I wanted something deep and lasting and…” She paused then took his arm and led him to the patio steps. She sat and pulled him down beside her on the cold, rough concrete. “So it’s not Pepper.”

He shook his head. “Not Pepper. And about my job…,” he started. “Don’t fall over in a dead faint, but I’m thinking about quitting. Downsizing the whole work thing.”

His mother’s head snapped up. “Should I be worried?”

“Nah. Just thinking it’s time for a change.”

“It’s not Pepper, and it’s not your job. So, what happened in Montana, Sam?”

He sighed and rubbed his hands together. “I met a girl.”

“You don’t say.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“Samuel Gunderson Kelley, you wear your heart on your sleeve. Always have. Always will. And when I see my boy this
melancholy,
I think—no, I
know—
it’s got to be about a girl.”

“I fell hard, Mom.” He sighed loudly, leaning forward to place his elbows on his knees. “I asked her to come to Chicago, but she won’t leave Montana. And I mean, I love Montana, just like you do, but—”

She put her hand on his arm, interrupting him. “Oh, sweetheart. Sam. I don’t love Montana.”

“Of course you do.” Sam looked at her, confusion wrinkling his forehead. “W-we went back. Every year.
Twice
a year. We always went back…”

“I love my sister. I love Aunt Lisabet and your cousins. But Montana? No. Oh, Sam, I was… I was glad to go. I left
cheerfully
. An opportunity to see the big city with a man I was in love with? It was a dream come true.”

“No. No. Wait, Mom. You left with Dad, but—but—”

She was shaking her head gently, but her eyes said it all. “Sam.
You
love Montana. Always have since you were a little boy. For
me
? It was about family. Not the place. The people
.
Only the people.”

Sam’s shoulders slumped as he processed this new truth. He had always thought of Montana as “in his blood,” an affection he had almost taken for granted as inherited, like brown eyes or reddish hair, from his mother. To learn that she harbored no love for Montana meant that his affection for it was individual. It was not a part of her but solidly a part of him. Not in his blood, perhaps, but firmly in his heart, of his own choice, of his own making.

Margaret hugged herself tighter against the cold. “You pressured her to come to Chicago?”

“Yeah. I thought she’d at least consider it. I bought her airline tickets. At the time, it seemed like the only way to be”—he sighed again, angry with himself—“together. I was mad when she said no. I was hurtful. I said unforgivable things.”

His mother nodded, slowly. “Wait. Sam, here’s what I don’t get. You love Montana. If you want to be with her, why wouldn’t you go there?”

“My life is here. My job, my apartment, friends, family. She comes from this ridiculously tiny town. I couldn’t make the money there that I make here. What would I even do in some small town? I couldn’t be happy there.”

She looked at him, incredulous. “Is it the
only
town in the entire state of Montana where she could be happy? That seems unlikely.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask her to go anywhere else. I pitched Chicago. It didn’t work out.”

His mother drummed her fingers in her forehead in thought. “Bozeman’s a great town. Plenty of work there. Helena. Laurel. Great Falls is a nice little city, you know, for people who
like
Montana.”

“She likes Great Falls,” he said, thinking about her original plan to make a life for herself there. “She went to school there. But she chose Gardiner over Great Falls.”

“I need to know about her. Tell me about the girl.”

“Her name’s Jenny.” He sighed, shaking his head. “It’s no use, Mom. I said terrible things when I left and—”

“Samuel. Tell me about the girl.”

He put his hands on his knees and looked up at the sky. He got a good fix on her face in his head and smiled in the darkness. His voice was soft and tender when he started speaking, like how your voice sounds in your own head, like a stream of consciousness.

“Jenny. Her name’s Jenny Lindstrom. She’s twenty-four. She drinks Glögg on Christmas Eve. She doesn’t like it that I drink beer, but she says ‘men will have their vices’ and she can live with that one. Her mother actually used to say that, but she passed away, and Jenny misses her. Really badly. Her family’s the most important thing in the world.

“She teaches high school science and she has puppy, which is ridiculous, right? A schoolmarm with a puppy. She knows all this stuff about the stars and points out the constellations to anyone who will listen. She quotes Shakespeare and C.S. Lewis out of the blue. She said she’s a frustrated English teacher inside. It’s true. She is.

“The principal at her school, Paul, he really likes her. He’s young and good-looking and best friends with her brother. She’s got three brothers, and they’re all like these huge blond stereotypical Swedish guys. Anyway, she says she doesn’t like Principal Paul, but I’m sure he’s wearing her down.

“She’s really beautiful, Mom. She has bright blue eyes and blonde hair, and she organizes the Christmas pageant and she makes a mean omelet. She draws concentric circles on the table with her finger when she’s thinking about something. She gets all mad when she thinks something, or someone, is wrong. But she knows how to say she’s sorry and when she does, she means it.

“She blushes all the time. I mean,
everything
embarrasses her, but she’s so tough too, Mom. Like, really honest and straightforward, and she has this amazing backbone. You know, youngest of four with three older brothers. She gives it back, you know? You think she’s all lily-white innocent and then she…well. She’s, um, surprising.

“And smart. Really smart. She knows everything about Yellowstone Park, practically grew up in the park. Her father’s a tour guide in Yellowstone, really highly rated, I guess. She cleans closets at her church when they need a hand and she drives the girliest light blue SUV I’ve ever seen. She has these beat-up cowgirl boots she wears all the time.

“She braids her hair with flowers for Midsummer just like her Mom did. Just like you and Aunt Lisabet and the girls. She likes Christmas movies and hot cocoa and going to the symphony. She loves little kids and wants her own someday. You should have seen her face hearing about the girls and Colin, seeing their pictures on my phone.

“She’s got the best heart of anyone I’ve ever met. She hated that we took the vows for Kris and Ing. It was tearing her apart because she thinks you should only say wedding vows once to one person in your life…but she did it anyway because she promised Ingrid and she believes in keeping a promise to someone she loves, and…and…”

His voice trailed off, as he was lost in the memory of their vows. He had shut down those memories at all costs since returning home, because they were the most visceral of the moments he spent with her. He couldn’t bear to remember because it was too damn painful. But now the floodgates were open and he closed his eyes against the intense longing that accompanied the memory, her eyes searching his so fiercely across the table for comfort, for support, for—

“What, Sam?”

“Love,” he breathed, in a trance, saying the words out loud for the first time. “I love her, Mom. I am totally in love with her.”

“Yes,” his mother whispered.

Uncertainty and panic made him speak faster. “How can I be in love with her when I only knew her for a weekend?”

“Oh, Sam. There’s no rulebook. There’s no rhyme or reason to love. No logic. No checklist. For some people, it takes a lifetime to find someone, for others, a weekend. For me? A week. You got to know her very well in only a few days. And Sam,” his mother said, putting her arm around his shoulders. “She sounds worth knowing. Does she love you, too?”

He rubbed his jaw with his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t know. She
had
feelings for me. I know for sure. She told me. I could see…” He closed his eyes tightly, reviewing their final conversation in his head. “I think I might have blown it, Mom. At the end, I-I might have—”

“Sam?”

“Hmm?” He looked up at her, searching her face for hope.

She took his cheeks between her cold hands and smiled at him tenderly. “Sam. When you finally find what you want, you have to claim it. No matter what. Go back to Montana. Go to Choteau or Great Falls or Gardiner. Go wherever you need to go. Figure it out. Don’t give up on her yet.”

***

He opened his laptop and let it warm up for a moment, pouring himself a beer. After he wrote the e-mail he would pack a bag. Not just a change of clothes this time; he planned to stay for a few days, at least. He’d drive out to Midway in the morning and make his way to Great Falls, probably via Minneapolis. He’d made the trip 100 times by car; it wasn’t so bad by plane.

He sat down on his black leather sofa and pulled the laptop onto his lap, double-clicking on his e-mail icon. He stared at the screen for a moment, thinking about Kristian so far away from Ingrid, so far away from home.
How do I start?
He hadn’t written to Kris since the brief e-mail he’d sent from the Billings airport to tell him he was a married man.
Just start typing, man. It’ll come to you.

Dear Kris,

Been a few weeks since I got back from MT. How’s married life? Just kidding. I’m an idiot. How was your Christmas? I hope you’re staying safe and that you’ll have some leave soon. I am sure you and Ingrid will be spending whatever time you get near her in Germany. I was glad to hear that she was moved to the big army hospital there so that she’s out of harm’s way; she’s a great medic, but she shouldn’t be out in the field in her condition. Speaking of, I’m guessing Baby Sven is coming sometime in the late spring. Will she be coming home then? If I can help in any way, you just let me know.

I never really told you much about my time out in MT. I don’t know if Jenny’s talked to Ingrid at all, but if she has, you probably know that something was going on between us during that weekend in Gardiner. I fell hard for that girl, Kris. Hard like rock-hitting-pavement hard. I didn’t even realize how bad it was at the time. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I got home. (“Home” being a joke since I have never felt so out of place as I now do in Chicago.)