We Need a Little Christmas (5 page)

Chapter 5

The next morning, Liv, Rachel, and their mother stood two inches deep in the snow that coated Nammy's front porch. Snow and crutches. Not a good combination.

But when they weren't able to get an appointment with Mom's doctor until tomorrow, Mom had insisted on starting the formidable task of sorting through Nammy's belongings. Liv could relate. She knew Mom wanted to
do
something. Sitting around wasn't in her nature.

But going inside for the first time might be the hardest task of all, and Mom had the keys to the house buried in her purse.

“Hold on,” Mom said, digging into another compartment while Liv wondered how long it had been since Mom cleaned out her purse. The organization gene didn't run strong in her family; no one was sure where Liv had gotten it.

She and Rachel each kept an arm linked through one of Mom's, which probably didn't aid with the purse rummaging, but they weren't about to see their mother do another face-plant on the snowy pavement.

Finally Mom fished out the keys on a ridiculous pink pig keychain and handed them to Liv. Liv dug her teeth into her lower lip as she unlocked the door, trying to pretend it was just any old lock in any old door. It was no use. The wash of memories hit her as soon as the door swung inward, and the indefinable scent of Nammy's home rushed out at her. What was it made of? A touch of potpourri, maybe, with some composite of Nammy's favorite soaps and cleaning products thrown in.

And sadly, it was already a little bit musty. How long since anyone had been inside? Less than a week. Maybe five days?

Liv took a deep breath, mindful that her mom's arm was still hooked through hers, and stepped across the threshold. Her mom and sister followed, like a human chain.

The assault of memories continued. The oval-shaped braided rag rug on the living room floor. The fake potted fern on its stand in the corner, because Nammy vowed she'd killed her last houseplant more than ten years ago. The wallpaper with ducks on the wing, because Liv's grandfather had liked it, so Nammy had never wanted to change it.

And, yes, her grandfather's painter's cap, hanging from the coat rack on the wall by the door.

Never mind Mom's crutches. Thirty seconds in the house, and Liv's own legs could barely hold her up.

“Let's get Mom a seat—”

“Mom, you need to sit—”

Liv and Rachel spoke at once, and they steered Mom to the nearest armchair. This wouldn't be a very efficient process; they'd need to work out a system where their mother could work from a central spot.

Mom propped her crutches against the arm of the chair. She was just beginning to get the hang of her new companions. “It's freezing in here.”

She was right. Maybe literally. The snowstorm had ended somewhere during the night, and the day had dawned bright and clear. But it was still cold outside, and with all the snow on the roof, the house would hold a chill for a long time. Liv hurried to the thermostat in the hallway to switch the heater on, then went to find the stash of boxes she knew Nammy would have in the garage. Nammy had always hated letting a good box go to waste.

* * *

“I'm
still
freezing,” Rachel said an hour later.

Deciding that the living room furniture could wait, they'd moved their operation into the combined kitchen and dining area, where the tile floor made things colder still. Despite all the moving around they were doing, the house was taking an inordinately long time to warm up. Liv went back to the hallway just off the dining area to check the thermostat. She frowned.

“It still says forty-two,” she called to the kitchen, just a couple of steps down the hall from her. “I don't think the heater's kicking on.”

“I never heard it,” Mom called back. “It makes that clicking noise when it first comes on.”

“Well, my fingernails are turning blue,” Rachel said. “I think we'd better call Scotty.”

Scotty, again. Liv should have seen
that
one coming. She fished out her cell phone. There were no reception bars. She walked back into the kitchen, but the display on her screen didn't change. “Where
is
there any reception around here?”

“Mom's house,” Rachel said helpfully. “Sometimes when you get higher up it's a little better.”

“So, what, I should climb on the roof?”

“No,” Mom said. “You should use the regular phone, the way people have been doing for the past hundred years.”

Liv sighed. Mom had never owned a cell phone and probably never would. Up in Tall Pine, the reception was so inconsistent, there just wasn't much use for them. She wondered if they'd even be able to reach Scotty. He was probably out working. Fixing someone else's heater.

As Rachel dialed the old black rotary phone on the kitchen wall, Liv had the feeling she'd fallen into a technological time warp.

She pulled up a dining chair alongside the one Mom sat in. They'd found an old needlepoint footstool for her to prop up her leg.

Liv caught herself asking, “How are you doing?”

“Not too bad,” Mom said. “I like the Motrin better than that other stuff. It doesn't make me woozy. But all this—” She gestured around the kitchen.

“I know,” Liv said.

With clients, it was easy to go into ruthless-with-discards mode. She taught them to ask themselves basic questions:
What will I use it for? Would I buy it again if I lost it? What's the worst possible thing that could happen if I throw it out?

But generally, she was helping clients deal with their own clutter, not a lifetime of someone else's belongings. Just about everything in Nammy's house held memories for at least one of them. Even the pots and pans had been hard, although everyone had a set at home. Rachel had kept a cast-iron skillet, and Mom had decided to keep the baking sheets.

Rachel was speaking into the phone now, but her voice had the recitation-like tone of someone leaving a voice mail. There was no telling when Scotty would hear the message.

“Maybe we should break for lunch?” Liv asked when Rachel hung up. “Go somewhere warm?”

Liv didn't usually procrastinate, but this seemed like a great time to start.

“It's not even eleven o'clock,” Mom pointed out. “And we wouldn't be here if Scotty calls back.”

“We could call back and leave him my cell—” Liv slapped her forehead. Her cell phone number wouldn't do any good if they were in a dead spot.

Rachel grinned at her. “Hang in there. You get used to it after a while.”

Nevertheless, Liv took one more glance at her phone. There were no messages on the display, but did that mean anything? She realized she hadn't heard anything from Terri about the business since she got here. Hopefully that meant the holiday doldrums had set in, as expected. If an emergency did come up, it might be hours before Liv heard about it.

“Okay.” Liv sighed and pocketed her phone. “Where were we?”

They'd started two piles in the living room: one to keep, and another one, nearer the door, to go. The to-go pile was bigger, but not by much. Liv girded her loins and pulled open the hall closet. Nammy's coats—not easy. Liv kept a bright red car-coat for herself, and Mom kept a cardigan sweater she'd given Nammy for her eightieth birthday. Clenching her teeth, Liv finally packed up the rest.

The boxes on the closet floor and on the top shelf all appeared to contain Christmas ornaments. “I'm surprised she hadn't started decorating yet,” Liv said.

“She had a rule,” Mom said. “December first. When I was little, I had to wait till December before I could put on the Christmas records. I would have driven her crazy otherwise. I played ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' all month long.”

Liv grinned. Then her heart twisted. She'd heard the same story countless times from Nammy.

Rachel must have seen her falter; bravely, she reached past Liv and pulled out the two metal canisters Nammy had used for her tree decorations.

“Liv?” Rachel said uncertainly. “Maybe you keep one and I keep one? And Mom, you could go through and pick out your favorites?”

Mom nodded, her eyes glistening. “Let's don't open them right now.”

“That's what I was thinking,” Rachel said.

Liv silently hauled the two canisters to the to-keep pile. The growing stack would catch up to the to-go pile if they weren't careful. But she wasn't ready to sift through the Christmas ornaments either.

When Liv returned to the hallway, Rachel had dragged out a box containing Nammy's artificial tree and was reaching into the back of the closet. Her muffled voice exclaimed, “Holy cow! Is this what I think it is?”

Rachel hauled out a long blue-and-white box that Liv recognized immediately.

Liv gasped. “I didn't know she still had it.” A surge of childhood nostalgia hit her. Taking over where Rachel left off, she pulled the box the rest of the way into the dining area.

“Look, Mom.” Liv brought the box to rest at their mother's feet. “The silver tree.”

For Liv, just looking at the closed box conjured up a host of warm memories. Inside would be the branches and base for Nammy's old silver aluminum Christmas tree—the kind that came with a color wheel to shine different shades of light on the branches. Four panes of plastic rotated in front of a bulb aimed at the tree, making the metal branches reflect red, blue, orange, and green. Nammy used to put the tree up when Liv and Rachel were little, and the two of them would sit on her living room floor for what seemed like hours at a time, watching it change colors.

Mom viewed the box with a little more reserve. “You're kidding. She kept it?”

At her less-than-joyful tone, Liv and Rachel exchanged a mutual look of betrayal. “Mom!”

Rachel added, “You mean you didn't like it?”

Mom flushed, as if she'd been caught in a guilty secret. “Not that much. But I knew you girls loved it.”

Liv remembered her mother helping Nammy set up the tree for them, year after year. She didn't remember any complaints. “I never knew you didn't care for it.”

“Maybe just because it was the first tree we had when I was growing up. Sometimes you want what you don't have. I was always kind of jealous of kids who had real trees. When I was older we started getting them from the tree lot at the home store, and I was glad. Nammy started putting up the old silver tree again for you kids when you were little. You got a big kick out of it.” Mom nodded at the box with a rueful smile. “You've got to admit, it's pretty cheesy.”

Liv lowered her eyes and studied the box reluctantly. Through the eyes of an adult, she supposed, it was sort of hokey. But still . . . “I wonder what kind of shape it's in by now.”

She hadn't seen the silver tree since she and Rachel were in their teens. By that time Nammy had switched to a typical green artificial tree, most likely the first one Rachel had found in the closet. But what were they going to do with the trees now? None of them really needed either of the Christmas trees. They needed to start getting more practical, or they'd never make it through this.

The doorbell saved her from continuing the discussion.

“I'll get it.” Liv nodded at Rachel. “You sit down.”

Rachel hadn't complained about anything except being cold, but to Liv, it looked like her sister was tottering under all that extra weight around her middle. Sure enough, Rachel plunked into the chair next to Mom with no argument.

“Coming,” Liv called.

She opened the door and stepped aside to let in Scotty Leroux. Today he definitely looked the part of the handyman, wearing a warm-looking tan winter vest over a plaid flannel work shirt. Liv quickly closed the door after him, although the air outside didn't seem any colder than the air inside.

Were Nammy's ceilings lower than normal? Either the small home made Scotty seem even bigger, or he made the house feel smaller. Liv held herself up as straight as she could.

“I got Rachel's message,” Scott said. “She wasn't kidding. It's like an igloo in here.”

“You got here fast.”

“I check messages every time I stop by Coffman's Hardware. It's a decent system.” Scott looked over her head into the dining room. “Hi, Rachel. Hi, Mrs. Tomblyn.”

“Call me Faye,” her mom said. Scott already called her grandmother Nammy. Now he was going to call her mother Faye?

Liv walked past him to lead the way to the thermostat. It had to be her imagination, because he'd just come out of the cold himself, but the air around him felt warmer as she brushed past. “The thermostat's right here,” she said unnecessarily. Scotty flipped down the plastic cover of the little wall-mounted box and gave it a cursory glance. She went on, “And I think the main unit is on the right as you go into the garage.”

“That's the water heater. But thanks for playing.” He quirked a smile at her as he took one long step down the hall to the door that opened to the garage. The rush of air that came in from the garage was definitely colder than the air in the house.

“Wait here,” he said as Liv started to follow. “You guys can—burn some kindling or something.”

Liv stared at the door as it closed after him, hugging herself against the chill. Like Mom and Rachel, she hadn't taken her coat off. She returned to the dining area, arms still folded.

“He knows his way around here, that's for sure.” Her lips felt almost numb, and she wondered if they were as blue as Rachel claimed her fingernails were.

“Well, he would,” Rachel said. “He's been here a lot.”