on top of his kibble. He inhaled his food and stretched out on the rug with a sigh. Mike ate in silence for a while, then pushed back from his place. “I’m probably going back to the hospital tomorrow to get Lori. She and the baby are both healthy, and I expect they’ll be ready to discharge her by noon. She doesn’t have much in the way of insurance and there’s nobody she can stay with.”
“She’ll need people around. Don’t take her straight to that empty house. Bring her here and I’ll stretch out Christmas dinner.”
Jumping up from the table and hugging his mom felt like a good idea right now. But that would not be Gloria’s idea of good dinner decorum. Better to stay seated. “Great. I can’t thank you enough for being understanding about this. I know I don’t usually bring fire-and-rescue home with me, but this time something was different.”
“I’m glad you’re reacting this way. I can honestly say I’ve been where this young woman is, and it’s not a pretty place to be.” Gloria looked down at her plate. As usual she’d stirred around a small portion of dinner, hardly seeming to eat.
“At least you had money to fall back on. I don’t think there’s any there.” Mike looked at his mother. Did he dare ask a question he’d wondered about for years? Hey, it was Christmas. Why not? “And you just had me. Did you ever regret that I was an only child?”
Gloria’s smile was crooked. “All the time. Except maybe that year your dad died. Then I was thankful I didn’t have any littler ones to deal with. You were a little old man by then, so serious. I couldn’t imagine having a baby or a toddler in that situation.”
“Well, try a five-year-old, a baby, one junker car that I could see out there in the middle of nowhere and only the possessions that fill a very small mobile home that ceased to be mobile during the Nixon administration.”
Gloria actually grimaced. “Definitely bring her here. I wonder if there was any Christmas for the little boy.”
“No idea. I pretty much doubt it.” Sitting there contemplating the Harpers’ Christmas made his head hurt. “Could we have coffee and some of those Christmas cookies I know are on that tray on the countertop? I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck all of a sudden.”
Gloria got up briskly and cleared the plates before Mike could move. Putting them next to the sink, she flipped the switch on the coffeepot, which hummed to life. “I had it all set up. I figured the day would catch up to you sooner or later.” She walked over to him at the table and massaged his shoulders. Her hands were so fine boned. “Think you’ll still be awake when the carolers come?”
“Only if they make it in the next half hour. Otherwise I’m joining Dogg under the tree so we can look up at the pretty blinking lights.”
Gloria looked at the bubbling pot. “I should have brewed more coffee.” Even as tired as he was, Mike had to laugh. His mother was ever the hostess. Even with just the two of them there on Christmas Eve.
“Hey, for your sake I’ll try to stay awake until at least nine. And then we’ll open gifts. Can Dogg unwrap his this year?”
Gloria made a face. “Only if you feel like vacuuming before you go to bed.” His mother loved him. But she was definitely still the mother he’d grown up with. Somehow that gave Mike more comfort than if she would have said yes to his goofy request.
“C’mon, Dogg, let’s go plug in those tree lights.” The big beast’s ears perked up and he padded behind Mike into the living room, where they could both take an after-dinner nap.
Gloria liked her bracelet. Of course, she would have professed to like anything Mike gave her if he’d picked it out himself. But Mike could tell once she’d seen the delicate serpentine gold chain with its Victorian slide charms that she approved. It went on immediately with several exclamations.
Dogg helped unwrap his present after all. He could smell the basted rawhide bones through the package, and nosed his way into Mike’s lap to help with the paper. “Take that into the kitchen,” Gloria cautioned him. Mike didn’t bother answering because he knew she was speaking directly to the dog. And he listened, too. One prized bone in his mouth, it never touched the carpet in his trek to the right spot on the woven rag rug in front of the sink.
“Aren’t you going to open yours?”
“Sure.” Mike eyed the box. “Bet I can guess what it is anyway.”
Gloria shook her head. “I bet you can’t.”
It was on the tip of Mike’s tongue to describe in detail the baseball jacket he expected. Surely it was there in red splendor, complete with the number 25 of his favorite St. Louis Cardinals player.
But something held him back. That was his fantasy. His mom was not likely to know that’s what he’d been looking at in store windows, nor believe the kind of money to be spent on such foolishness, at least in her eyes. One look back at Dogg decked out in gold-edged plaid told Mike he was going to be vastly disappointed if he expected that jacket.
So while he unfastened the neatly taped edges of the paper, he rearranged his expectations. It was easier than asking to exchange a present from Gloria. When he opened the bulky box, there was a jacket inside. A beautiful salt-and-pepper herringbone tweed in soft wool. He didn’t even have to look inside to know that it was the 46 long he wore. “All right.” He held up the garment, trying to inject as much enthusiasm as he could into the statement. “This is some jacket.”
“You’d been hinting about needing a new one. If it doesn’t fit, you’ll have to go into St. Louis to exchange it, because nobody around here had anything nearly good enough.”
They wouldn’t, not for Gloria. “Thanks, Mom.” Mike got up and went to her chair, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “I’m sure it will fit, though.” It would also hang in his closet about twenty-nine days out of thirty until he was escorting his mother to some business-related function, but he wouldn’t bring that up.
“I think I’ll call it a night. Guess I’m going to miss those carolers after all.”
“You do look tired. Merry Christmas, dear.”
“Merry Christmas.” It sounded hollow somehow. And once he was in his room stretched out on his bed, sleep wasn’t quick in coming. He was exhausted. How could he not sleep? Easy. All he had to do was take his imagination across town to the hospital. Up to the third floor to where he knew a young woman was probably staring at a ceiling with the same intensity he was.
After half an hour Mike surrendered. He picked up the cordless phone on the bedside table and punched in the numbers of the hospital. The switchboard was long closed and he got the long series of recorded instructions. While he listened to them drone on, he cast about frantically in his memory for Lori’s room number.
Finally at the point where the recorded message was repeating itself and he was sure he didn’t remember the number, it popped into his head and he punched it in. One ring, then two. What if it wasn’t the right number? He had this vision of waking up somebody that had finally taken his or her sleeping pill and drifted off.
“Hello?” That was Lori’s voice, wasn’t it?
“Lori?”
“Yes.” She sounded puzzled. But then, Mike reasoned, the woman had no family around here, and precious few friends. It was probably kind of odd to get a call
