Part 6
On December twenty-third, Nora took over the kitchen table. She requested a spare school photograph, yarn, glue, and cardboard from an empty food box.
Andrea cut where she was told to cut.
“Now you have to look away.”
“I’m the one holding the scissors.”
“You can look at the scissors. Not the secret part.”
Andrea turned her chair slightly. Behind her, Nora worked with the determined breathing that usually accompanied difficult spelling words.
Supper began at five on Christmas Eve.
The community center kitchen sent out trays of ham, green beans, mashed potatoes, and rolls. Pies occupied every counter the volunteers could spare. At one long table, children colored while they waited. Four older guests played cards near a radiator, including Beatrice, whose driver had collected her at half past four.
It was her first Christmas Eve meal away from home in six years.
Two serving tables were still half empty. Someone had forgotten extra spoons. Volunteers crossed paths in the kitchen doorway and apologized, then did it again. At the entrance, the director greeted people by name and found chairs wherever she could.
Andrea sat in the repaired car for nearly a minute after parking.
Nora waited with a small paper bag in her lap.
Finally, Andrea switched off the engine.
“Ready?”
Nora nodded.
Inside, Malcolm was carrying a stack of folding chairs. He set them against the wall, checked the coffee urn, and went looking for more cups. There was no microphone waiting for him.
Nora caught sight of him and looked up at her mother.
“Go ahead,” Andrea said, walking beside her.
Malcolm smiled when they reached the table. His eyes passed over the paper bag without much interest; he assumed Nora was taking it to another child.
She set it directly in front of him.
“Yours.”
“For me?”
“Open it now. Before you go home alone.”
Several people at the table grew quiet. Malcolm sat down and unfolded the top of the bag.
Inside was an ornament wrapped in tissue. Nora’s school photograph filled the center of a cardboard circle. Beneath it, she’d drawn a green tree with three small chairs arranged around its base. A yellow yarn loop passed through a hole at the top.
He turned it over.
The message on the back slanted uphill in carefully printed letters:
“Thank you for staying beside me when I was left out.”
Malcolm held the cardboard by its edges. A little glue had dried across the corner of the photograph.
“I’m not sure I’ve earned this, Nora.”
She inspected it from his side of the table.
“It’s got glue bumps. You can still have it.”
Teresa laughed first. Malcolm joined her, looking down until he could trust his face again.
Andrea pulled out the chair beside her.
“Will you have supper with us?”
He looked at the place she’d made, then set the ornament carefully back in its tissue.
“I’d like that.”
Beatrice reached beneath her chair and brought out two small packages.
“Since we’re opening things.”
Andrea’s contained gloves, soft plum-colored yarn with close, even stitches. She ran her thumb over one cuff.
“I noticed,” Beatrice said, before she could ask.
Malcolm unwrapped a pair in mottled brown-gray wool. The stitching bunched slightly at one palm, and the left thumb extended well beyond the right.
“I had a report that you were going about with bare hands,” Beatrice told him.
Nora began rearranging the potatoes on her plate.
Malcolm pulled the gloves on. He flexed his fingers, then held up the generous thumb.
“Room to grow.”
Beatrice gave him a dry look. “Don’t start.”
They ate with Teresa, volunteers, and families Malcolm hadn’t met before. Someone passed a basket of rolls over his shoulder. Nora asked for more beans, then changed her mind when she saw the pie.
No one asked him to stand and say a few words.
The tree still wouldn’t stand quite straight when he finished assembling it on December twenty-seventh, no matter how he adjusted the stand.
He stepped back to see how Nora’s ornament looked on the front branch, its photograph turned toward the room.
His phone rang before he could put the empty box away.
Luke.
Malcolm answered on the second ring. They stumbled over the opening, each asking a question at the same time. Then Luke told him about the rain, and Malcolm described assembling the tree without mentioning how long it had stood unfinished.
The call lasted longer than the first.
Near the end, Luke said, “I might be able to come next Christmas. I can’t say for sure.”
“I’d be glad to see you.”
Malcolm let that be enough and listened while his son explained his work schedule.
In January, Andrea sat in the center’s office with a short employment form in front of her. The director offered her five hours of paid work each week to coordinate family applications.
“You’ve already shown us where the problems are,” she said. “I’d like to pay you to keep helping.”
Andrea checked the hours against her work schedule before signing.
Her car ran again, though she still listened for unfamiliar noises. She still compared grocery prices and counted the days between paychecks. On the new committee, she kept a copy of the agreed conditions in her folder and brought it out when necessary.
The neighborhood table struggled. Volunteers left. Donations arrived late. More than once, the committee had to decide what it could afford and what would have to wait.
Malcolm kept one evening a week off his calendar. When Luke called, he answered. When Andrea disagreed with him, he sometimes still reached for an argument before remembering to ask another question.
They became people who could work beside one another, share a meal, and expect the other to return. Neither tried to give it a grander name.
One of Nora’s watercolors went up on the center’s bulletin board. She had painted a whole street after a snowfall, each house different, yellow squares shining from every window.
By the first Saturday of the following December, the registration sheets had been checked twice. Andrea sat behind the table with a pencil, a master list, and a separate page for corrections. Every child on the list had a gift tag.
Near the coffee urn, Malcolm was wearing Beatrice’s gloves. The long thumb made it awkward to grip the handle, but he refused the suggestion that he take them off indoors.
The side door opened.
A tall man stepped in, brushing snow from the shoulders of a rain jacket that looked better suited to the Washington coast. He paused, searching the crowded gym.
Malcolm set down the coffee pot.
Luke saw him and raised a hand.
They met without a sweeping embrace. Malcolm touched his son’s upper arm; Luke gave a small, uncertain smile. For a moment, they stood beside each other as children hurried past them with torn paper trailing from their presents.
Then Malcolm began introducing him.
“Andrea, this is Luke. My son.”
Andrea rose from the registration table and offered her hand.
Nora, eight now, waved from beside the refreshments. She started toward them, then noticed a boy on the lowest bleacher.
His family had moved to town that fall. He had a present on his lap, still wrapped, and kept turning it so he could study each side. Around him, children were finding friends to show their gifts to.
Nora walked over.
She sat a little way from him, leaving enough room that he didn’t have to shift.
“What did you get?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Want somebody to help with the tape?”
He considered her, then turned the package so she could reach the stubborn seam.
Across the gym, Malcolm stood beside Luke with a cup warming his gloved hands. His son followed his gaze toward the bleachers, where Nora had begun working one small finger beneath the tape.