The Patricia Kiyono Christmas Collection (22 page)

Randi James, the current Sunday School
superintendent, passed her in the hallway, leading her toddler by
the hand, and Helen stopped her. “Randi, I just want to remind you
that I’m starting rehearsals for the pageant. I met with some of
the students before dinner, and I’ll start writing the script
tomorrow. Could I take the people with speaking parts at the
beginning of the Sunday School hour, beginning this Sunday?”

“
Of course, Helen. How many
students will that involve?”

“
Probably not more than a
half dozen.”

“
That’s fine,” Randi
replied. “You’ll come and pick them up?”

“
Yes. I’m not sure exactly
where I’ll be able to rehearse with them right now. Oh, and one
more thing.”
Might as well get this over
with before I lose my nerve.

“
Yes?”

“
This is going to be my
last year directing the drama portion of the pageant.”

Silence. Randi stared as if Helen had grown
an extra head.

“
I’ve been doing the
pageant for almost twenty years now, ever since my own children
attended Sunday School at this church, and I feel it’s time for me
to step down. This will give you time to find a replacement for
next year. I’m sure you understand. I’ll see you on Sunday
morning.” She walked away before she could change her
mind.

There. She’d done it. She’d
quit. Already she felt better. The only thing that would make her
feel a whole lot better would be if she had quit for
this
year. But regrets
wouldn’t change things.

Now then. She just needed to get through
this pageant.

Loretta fidgeted in
the vinyl seats of the doctor’s office. “I don’t
know why we’re here. It’s a waste of time and money, and the doctor
is not going to tell me anything I don’t already know.”

Mike suppressed a sigh. Loretta had
expressed similar sentiments at least a dozen times since learning
of the appointment with the family doctor. But Matt and Kathy had
confided in him. They were worried, and after watching her the past
few days, he had to agree: Loretta was not the confident, outgoing
woman he remembered.

After the welcoming, he’d watched, puzzled,
as his mom became more and more withdrawn. She’d retreated to her
room as soon as dessert was finished, saying she’d had a long day
and needed to rest. She hadn’t emerged from that room until
mid-morning the next day, and had only made brief appearances after
that. She hadn’t gone anywhere and hadn’t worked on any of her
hobbies. A brief visit to her rooms had revealed her usual stash of
yarns and knitting patterns, but no completed projects. Something
was amiss.

For now, though, he kept his concerns to
himself. “You’re overdue for a checkup, Mother.”

“
Nonsense. I just had a
checkup a few years ago. I’m fit as a fiddle.”

He chose not to refute that.

“
Mrs. Sikkema, the doctor
will see you now.”

Mike recognized the statuesque blonde nurse
calling his mother, but couldn’t come up with a name, and her name
tag was too small for him to read across the room. He stood and
helped Loretta up and started to follow her, but his mother turned
and glared.

“
I’m perfectly capable of
taking care of this myself. You don’t need to treat me like a
child.” Then she swept through the doorway. The nurse cast him a
commiserating look before closing it.

Mike sat. What else could he do?

The nurse at the reception desk chuckled.
She waited until the examination room door closed before she leaned
toward the window. “Don’t feel bad. My grandmother was the same
way. But make sure you stay on her. She kept insisting she was okay
and refused any treatment until it was… too late.” Her eyes filled
with tears and she swallowed on the last words. She took a deep
breath and continued. “I’ve heard Matt and Kathy both express
concern about your mother. And they’re right to be worried. Any
time someone’s personality changes drastically, there’s a medical
issue involved. If she won’t tell you and won’t cooperate with the
doctor visits, you might have to take drastic measures. I’ve
already told my mother that if she ever starts pulling what grandma
did I wouldn’t just take her word for it that she’s okay. If she
won’t go for doctor visits, I’ll place her in a nursing home or get
Power of Attorney to make decisions for her.”

She sat back and reached for a tissue while
Mike gathered his thoughts. His mother could be stubborn, but if
she was sick, he wanted her to get the care she needed. Would Matt
and Kathy agree to extreme measures if she didn’t cooperate?

As if on cue, his phone beeped, alerting him
to a text. It was from Matt. “How’s the appointment?”

He texted back, “Don’t know. She wouldn’t
let me come with her.”

“
Bummer,” came the
immediate response. “We may have to start getting
tough.”

Well, he had his answer. Matt was on board
for the extreme measures.

“
I agree,” he typed back.
“She won’t like it.”

“
Too bad. She wouldn’t sit
still for us behaving like this.”

Matt had a point. But what could they
do?

None of the magazines in the rack interested
him, so he decided to check his email. How in the world had he
managed before he had a smart phone? There were several messages
from his secretary so he dealt with those first. His PA was quite
efficient, so she didn’t bother him with mindless minutiae, only
the important stuff. There were messages from friends wanting to
get together. And then a message from Monica Henderson.

He’d met Monica at a business meeting. The
financial planner was a stunning brunette — last week she was,
anyway — and for some reason she was interested in him. But whether
she was interested in him as a man or interested in his wallet, he
couldn’t be sure. She must have heard he and Lisette had parted
ways. This particular message was an invitation to a dinner party
at a mutual friend’s home. Since he had no idea how long he’d be in
Zutphen, he declined, not giving specifics about where he was or
why.

Finished with his emails, he decided to take
a look at his social media page. He didn’t check in often, but it
was handy for keeping up with his friends and family.

“
Tending to business?” His
mother had reappeared.

The phone went back in his pocket. “Nothing
that can’t wait. All set?” He rose and followed her out to the
car.

He opened the car door for her and waited
while she settled herself in. Not until they were on the road back
to Zutphen did he dare approach the topic he knew she didn’t want
to discuss.

“
So what did the doctor
say?”

“
Nothing new. I’m getting
old. End of story.”

He hadn’t expected more than that. But he
needed to know what was going on.

“
So you’re basically
healthy?”

“
Yes. I’m just fine.”
Loretta sat ramrod straight, hands on her purse, staring straight
ahead. She offered no other information.

“
What does he attribute
your change in personality to?” Might as well grab the bull by the
horns.

“
Change in personality?
Whatever are you talking about, Michael? Are you saying I’m
unpleasant to be around?”

“
I’m saying you’re not
willing to bless people with your presence. Your social calendar
used to be crammed full of events. Now we’re lucky to see you for
dinner. You can’t seem to come up with an explanation, and we’re
all worried.”

“
I appreciate your concern,
but there is absolutely nothing to worry about. I’m old and tired.
I don’t enjoy running around like a madwoman, sticking my nose into
everyone else’s business, and you shouldn’t either.”

“
If one of us changed
suddenly like that, you’d be after us like a hound dog until you
got an answer.”

Loretta turned and stared out the side
window but said nothing.

“
We’re not giving up, Mom.”
Mike told her. “I came to Zutphen because I wanted to see my
family, but I’m staying because Matt, Kathy, and I are all
convinced something is wrong and we aren’t going to stop asking
until we find out what it is. So you can be as prickly and
uncooperative as you like, but this isn’t over. Not by a long
shot.”

That got a reaction. She turned and glared.
“Are you threatening me, young man?”

He was ready for that and kept his tone
even. “Just stating the facts. We’re going to find answers, whether
you like it or not.”

Helen sank into
her recliner. Another family had moved out of the
area, far enough that the family had transferred their membership
to another church. She’d spent the morning on the phone asking,
cajoling, begging other kids to participate in the Christmas
pageant — to no avail. She had exactly sixteen who were willing to
get on stage for the drama portion of the program, and over half of
them insisted they would not speak. They would stand on the stage
in costume but did not want to memorize lines. Some even insisted
they didn’t want to wear costumes. What on earth was she going to
do with only six people willing to say anything? She’d definitely
made the right decision to give this up.

Students and families had moved out of
Zutphen looking for better paying jobs. Those with jobs in Grand
Rapids and Holland had decided to move there to avoid the long
commute. That left her with a very small cast. Joanie Bennett
reported a smaller group of first through third graders, but not to
the extent she had. What was she going to do?

She grabbed the notebook she’d found in her
desk. In past years she’d written plays according to who she had.
Sometimes she had a boy who shone, sometimes it was a girl. But now
there was no one who really had a commanding presence. There were
only four sixth graders, two boys and two girls. Five fifth graders
and seven fourth graders. None of them had seemed eager to have a
speaking part, though in the past, a few of them had had short
lines in the pageant.

There was nothing for it. She’d have to go
with a narrator, possibly an adult. What should he or she say?

Her phone rang, startling her. She found her
phone on the kitchen counter where she’d plugged it in for the
night. “Hello?”

“
Hi, Mom,” her younger son
greeted her. “Are you busy?”

“
I’m just trying to figure
out how to write a Christmas script for a cast of sixteen. Only six
are willing to speak.”

“
Only sixteen kids this
year? That’s a bummer. I heard the elementary school is really
seeing a drop in enrollment, too. All these people moving out to
find jobs in the bigger cities.”

“
I know. It’s too bad. If I
were still raising you two, I’d much rather live out here than in
the city. I’m so glad you and Paul are nearby.”

“
We are too. Listen, Bonnie
is supposed to bring a children’s book to a baby shower next week
and I told her she should take this book about the mom and her son
that you always used to read to us at night. What was the name of
it?”

“
It was called
Love You Forever.
I think
the author’s name is Robert Munsch.”

She heard him repeat the information and
assumed he was writing it down. “Thanks, Mom. And good luck on the
script. Maybe you can have someone pretend to read the Christmas
story like a bedtime story. Spice it up a little, though, to make
it interesting for the kiddos.”

Jonathan could always put a smile on her
face. “Spice up the Christmas story? I’m not sure how that would
work in Zutphen, but I’ll see what I can do.”

She hung up, replugged her phone into the
charger, and went back to her notebook. Having a narrator read the
Christmas story had been done before, but as Jonathan had reminded
her, she’d need to spice it up, so to speak. She needed to make it
interesting, like one of the stories she and Joe had read to the
kids…

An idea took seed in her head. Grabbing her
pen, she jotted down the outline of her idea. She could take the
students who’d agree to a few lines, and make them part of a little
family, listening to their father read aloud from a book. They
would be on the front of the stage, in a corner set to look like a
modern day home. He’d read the Christmas story to the kids. And the
kids would ask questions, which the father would answer. And while
the father was answering, the lights on the main part of the stage
would go up, showing the characters of long ago…

Her pen danced across the page as bits of
the script appeared in her head. By the time she headed for bed,
she’d filled several pages in her notebook and her fingers cramped
from holding her pen, but she had the framework of a workable
script. Tomorrow she’d type it on her computer and print it out. Or
better yet, she could take it to Harriet Eckman at the church
office and ask her to make copies, since her own printer was almost
out of ink. She felt much better having this done.

~~~~

The next Sunday,
she was prepared with copies of the new script.
She couldn’t wait to see how her idea would work. She knew just the
kids she wanted in each of the roles. She walked into the classroom
where they were to meet, and her heart sank.

Only a dozen students looked up at her.
Where was everyone?

Randi James rewarded her with a look of
surprise.