My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(74)

Put another jewel in the Baron family crown. “Why did he offer?”

“Shelby is playing Joseph.”

“Gotcha.”

Just then, Gracie’s father rushed to the center of the stage, holding a clipboard and an enormous cup of coffee. He looked too young to head up a congregation of five hundred people. Like, boy-reporter young. Gracie shared his dark hair but not his eyes. They looked older than the rest of him.

He waved to get the attention of the people arranging the set. “Okay, let’s finish blocking these scenes so we can do a run through. I’m sorry, but that horse—when it’s replaced by a donkey—will have to take a left, behind the Wise Men, after they approach the Holy Family. Can you move that bale of hay to make it easier? Donkeys don’t jump.”

As adept as I am at predicting outcomes, I had to ask the obvious question. “What happens if that horse poops?”

As if it had been cued, the horse lifted his tail and took his evening constitutional.

“Wow,” Gracie said.

Pastor Robinson’s coffee sloshed onto the ground as he tucked the clipboard under one arm. I waited for the anger—for him to yell at someone to clean it up, to throw the clipboard, or to slam down his coffee cup. I’d never seen him show anger, but that’s what would happen if someone screwed with my dad when he was conducting business.

I heard Pastor Robinson’s reaction before I saw it. It didn’t register because it was illogical, to me at least. When he lifted his face, it was wet with tears.

A horse dropped a dump in the middle of his rehearsal, and the man was laughing.

“Not … what I expected,” I said. Humor wasn’t a typical emotion at my house even when my dad lived with us. Especially when he lived with us.

“If you don’t do bathroom humor, we can’t be friends.” She elbowed me in the side. When I didn’t respond, she said, “It’s funny, so he’s laughing. People do, you know.” Like she knew what I was thinking. Like she understood the differences in the ways we were raised.

Pastor Robinson’s hand rested on his shaking, Christmas-plaid-covered stomach. His wedding ring shone on his finger. It surprised me. Gracie’s mom had died when we were in the second grade.

“Vaughn?” She touched the top of my hand. “You can laugh, too.”

“Right.”

I pulled away and grabbed a shovel.

*

My family didn’t react to calamity with laughter.

My dad left when I was eight, and my mom never recovered. I’d tried to convince myself that it wasn’t my fault he left, but I never succeeded. I was hell at eight, in trouble all the time, and I’d always wondered what kind of strain my behavior put on their marriage. I had a distinct feeling that my dad didn’t like me, but he’d always been the one to handle the teacher’s conferences and suspensions. He made sure I had food and money, but that’s where penance for leaving his family stopped.

On the medication wagon, my mom could handle things like balanced meals and clean clothes. When she was down, she could barely take care of herself, much less her kid, and when she was up, she was a lightning strike—beautiful and unpredictable. I worked hard to keep her condition private, which is not a thing a kid should have to do. Fodder for country ballads, but also the reality of my life.

Shame leads to secrets, and secrets lead to lies, and lies ruin everything. Especially friendships. No kid wants to explain that his mom can’t bring snacks to class because she ran out of Xanax before the pharmacy would refill the prescription. Other parents stop inviting you to birthday parties, because you don’t reciprocate. No one asks you to join sports teams, because you never meet the registration deadlines, and if you do, no one ever remembers to pay your league fees. Soon enough, people forget you altogether.

So you do things that make them remember.

*

I kept my head down as I scooped the horse’s early holiday gift into a rusty wheelbarrow. It had seen its fair share of manure. The wheels squeaked, but it rolled just fine. The wooden handles were worn and sturdy. I shook the contents into the compost pile, turned the wheelbarrow up against the wall, and washed my hands in the utility sink backstage. I jumped when Gracie’s fingertips grazed my shoulder.

She was a toucher. I hadn’t noticed before.

“Why did you do it?” Gracie asked.

“Um, the displeasing aroma?” I yanked on the paper towels too hard, fifteen came off in my hand, and the roll detached from the holder. “Because all the church robes drag the ground? Because somebody had to?”

“You know what I mean. The firecrackers.”

I studied the paper towels, lining up the edges as I rolled them back onto the cardboard. “I do lots of things without a specific reason. I was bored. I wanted to see what would happen.”

“Experiments are why you take a chemistry class, not why you blow up a bunch of pigeons.”

“I wasn’t trying to blow them up.” I faced her. “I don’t abuse animals.”

“Hippity.” She raised one eyebrow. “Hop.”

“That wasn’t abuse. That was art. Unfortunate, six-year-old art. As for the birds, I just wanted to scare them out of the tree.”

“It worked.”

“And they all lived.”

Gracie took the roll of paper towels from my hands and hung it back up. “You still haven’t told me why you did it.”