fresh coffee. After taking a moment
to pour her another cup, they sat down again.
She sought for a topic of conversation when
the silence stretched out a hair too long. “Tell me about your
family,” she asked. “How did you celebrate Christmas before?”
He made it to a real smile this time, though
it was gone within moments. “I had two brothers and a sister. I
left home for school at sixteen, but I always returned for the
holidays, even when I got my degree and moved to Atlanta—until that
last year, when I stayed to celebrate Christmas with Lucy’s family
and to propose to her.”
His face darkened for a moment until he
dismissed that memory to concentrate on happier ones. She watched
his expression lighten, erasing some of the deepest lines. “I had a
great family and Christmas was a wonderful time. My mother would
bake for a week ahead of time so we had an abundance of cakes, pies
and cookies. The house smelled unbearably wonderful with the aroma
of it. Of course, my brothers and I would sneak into the kitchen
every chance we got and try to snatch some. We got our hands
smacked for it a couple of times. My mother made the best sugar
cookies.
“And my father and I would go out on
Christmas Eve to find the perfect tree and bring it back. We had a
special bucket we’d put the cut end in, then shovel in enough dirt
all around it to hold it upright. In theory. In fact, it kept
tipping over. Or the tree would slide to one side… We had lots of
fun getting it to stand up straight. We had a couple of glass
ornaments my dad bought for my mom, but most of our decorations
were made of paper or beads or pieces of tin we cut and hammered
into different shapes. There was no electricity in this area in
those days and my dad wouldn’t risk putting candles on the tree
except for while we ate Christmas dinner.”
The fire popped and he turned to stare into
it for a moment. His voice changed, getting rougher and deeper when
he added, “I watched them afterward, though I tried not to get too
close. Watched the kids grow up, get married, have kids of their
own, mom and pop grow old and die, then the kids got old and died
and so did their kids…”
He looked at her, his eyes shadowed with
sadness. Tremors shook him periodically, but he didn’t mention them
or react except with an occasional sharp, indrawn breath. “The
worst, but in some ways also the best, memory of my undead time was
a Christmas about fifteen years after I’d been turned. I never feel
the cold or heat anymore, so I stood in the snow outside and looked
in and listened, though I made sure they didn’t see me.”
* * * * *
Children raced back and forth across the
room, sometimes scooting out to the porch, where the chill wind
soon fetched them back inside. They yelled with high spirits and
tried not to look too hard and too longingly at the pile of
colorfully wrapped packages under the Christmas tree. Three of the
children belonged to his brother John, two to David and one to his
sister, Jenny. Her handsome, sandy-haired husband held an infant
while Jenny helped his mother convey food from kitchen to the
table. John’s wife mashed potatoes in the kitchen, while David’s
stirred a pot of gravy.
Pop sat in a chair, with a blanket tucked
around him, watching the chaos of preparation and children’s play.
He looked thinner and grayer than Michael remembered. It shocked
him to realize Pop was an old man.
Once dinner was ready, everyone gathered
round the table. His father stood to say the blessing.
“Lord, thank you for bringing us all together
again this holy day. Thank you for the gift of your son given to us
on this same day so many years ago. Thank you for the gift of love
and family and food you’ve graced us with and the many other
benefits you’ve given us this year. And, Lord, we remember the one
person who should be here with us this day, but isn’t. We’ll never
forget Michael and can only hope that he is with you in paradise
this day.