Behind the closed car window I feel a pinch of bravado until I realize I am doing that talking-to-myself thing again.
Music. Turn on the radio.
I tune into 99.9 FM, hoping for a happy song.
“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire …” Anne Murray’s voice fills the car.
“Not helping,” I tell the radio.
So I switch the station, then again, and again, finally just turning it off two miles down the road. Every song, even ones I’ve never heard before, reminds me of Rick.
It’s a relief to find the parking lot empty in front of the Dayton Daily News bureau, where I work. I grab a tissue from a stash in the glove box and try to repair my eye makeup. I have time to close my eyes and recuperate from the drive, time enough to get rid of my red eyes and reapply makeup before going inside.
Despite the chaos of the morning, I am still one of the first people to arrive. One by one, coworkers fill the office. We are a busy group, especially with the holidays approaching and everyone hoping to finish their work quickly and head out to holiday shop for their loved ones. I wonder if someone in the office thought to shop for my family this year and might be behind the poinsettia. I mention the mysterious morning gift, but no one seems interested. That makes me suspicious. In the newsroom, there’s no such thing as a question that doesn’t have an answer. My reporter brain immediately suspects that there must be a reason that nobody else seems curious about my mystery flower. Is it because they already know who left it?
Joann Rouse, a fellow reporter, is the last to arrive. She had hovered around me at Rick’s funeral, standing close, offering tissues when needed. In the weeks since, she has coerced me out of the office several times for lunch on the pretext of brainstorming story ideas. She always guides the conversation back to my family. I never know how to answer her queries about the kids, the house, how I’m doing. The meal usually ends in tears, both hers and mine.
At least she cares enough to ask.
Leaving an anonymous gift seems like something she might do. As I tell her about the poinsettia, I watch closely for her reaction.
“Maybe whoever sent it will own up on Christmas,” she says, punching in the telephone number to retrieve her voice mail.
Not the reaction I expected from a coworker presented with a Christmas mystery.
She’s a reporter.
We’re nosey.
“She must be behind that stupid flower,” I tell myself.
Coaxing her to fess up to leaving the gift will take finesse. I ease into the interrogation after she hangs up the phone.
“Started your Christmas shopping yet?” I ask.
Joann winces and rolls her eyes.
“Not yet. Maybe this weekend,” she says casually, glancing at her computer as she watches it boot up.
My coworker seems suspiciously anxious to attack a story assignment. She’s thumbing through a notepad that I am pretty sure is blank. I press on with an additional question.
“Have you checked out any of the Christmas tree lots in town? Megan has been bugging me to buy one.”
Joann’s attitude transforms.
“The lot up the street has gorgeous trees. I stopped there last night to buy a wreath. They had the largest poinsettias I have ever seen.”
“Poinsettias, really?” I ask. “And did you happen to buy one for a coworker?”
But instead of confessing, Joann laughs.
“Just enjoy the flower, Jo. Doesn’t matter who left it.”
Oh, but it does. And I have figured it out.
Confident that I have discovered the identity of our “true friends,” I set aside worries about the kids, and all thought of Christmas, to tackle a school-funding story. For a few hours, I am not a widow or a mother. I gratefully surrender those roles, even if only for a while.
***
Just after three thirty, the kids start calling. Megan is the first. She is home and has washed the red foil wrapping on the poinsettia with an old washcloth and dish soap.
“Looks tie-dyed,” she announces. “I like it.”
“What looks tie-dyed, the wrapping or the washcloth?” I ask.
“Both,” she giggles. “I’ve got Girl Scouts today. Can you pick me up at six thirty?”
Ten minutes later, Nick is on the phone.
“Wrestling practice until seven thirty. Don’t forget, it’s in the school gym.”
“I’ll be there. I promise.”
Forty-five minutes pass before I hear from Ben.
“Megan said we’re getting a Christmas tree this weekend. I’m busy.”
“I’m not sure when we’ll do it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ben says. “I’m busy all weekend.”
I begin to worry about getting my story edited and myself out of the office in time to pick up all the kids and get dinner ready. I finally wrap up at work at six twenty, leaving ten minutes to make the half-hour trip back to Bellbrook. I drive home at a much faster pace than the trip to the office this morning, but I start to panic as I shave the clock close. I have never left a kid waiting in the cold.
Megan is standing outside the school with several friends when I drive up. She is smiling. I am not the last mom to arrive.
“Look what we made at Girl Scouts.”
From a piece of red yarn, she dangles a Christmas tree ornament fashioned from construction paper and wooden sticks: a poinsettia.
“It’s for our Christmas tree,” she says, as if I needed to be reminded.
For weeks, my sister-in-law Charlotte has been chiding me to hustle up my holiday preparations.
“You have got to give those kids a Christmas,” has become her latest trope.
This morning, she calls before six a.m., offering to pick up Nick and Megan from their sports practices to provide me with a few hours of shopping time after work.
“Just get it over with,” she insists. “You love Christmas shopping. Getting out there might cheer you up.”
I have no confidence in her logic, but I agree to give it a try.
That is how I find myself waiting with my turn signal on for a mom and a toddler to move past an open parking space in the shopping plaza, when a gray-haired grandpa type whips his Lexus around them and nabs my spot. The mom jerks her cart back to avoid a collision.
“Asshole,” she shouts, covering her daughter’s ears with gloved hands.
“Merry Christmas,” the old guy hollers as he steps from his car. He winks at me as he passes. I want to shove his smug expression somewhere distinctly un-Christmasy, but he’s already vaulting through the store doors. I’ve never been much of a musician, but I imagine rewriting the lyrics to “Silver Bells.” In my more realistic version,