Christmas for Dummies - Patrick S. (story read aloud txt) 📗

Ryan Gregory’s mother died from advanced stage breast cancer a day before Christmas Eve. The next morning, she arrived at his front door, rang the doorbell, and waited outside with a basket full of nothing but air and folded paper.
Having been present when Melanie exhaled her final breath, Ryan was not convinced of his mother’s reanimation and subsequent escape from the morgue. He studied his unlikely guest and began to understand his mistake.
Her hair was a deep chestnut brown, curled in excess, and her squat frame was covered in several layers of sweaters and overcoats. A perpetual look of irritation came courtesy of deep crow’s feet and laugh lines around her freckle-pocked face. Her resemblances to the recently-departed Melanie were there--curly hair, thick midsection, charm bracelets on left wrist--but she was not his mother. She was too young, for one thing, about fifty or sixty. Melanie died at the age of eighty-eight.
They shared an uncomfortable moment of confusion and startled silence, him in sweatpants and a T-shirt, her fiddling with the old-fashioned basket. Their impasse would have escalated into a standoff had the lady not stuck out her free hand.
“Hello. It’s nice to meet you.” Her gravelly voice further proved to Ryan that she was, in fact, not his mother but a close ringer nonetheless.
“Yeah. Um, it’s nice to meet you too. And you are...?”
“I’m sorry; where are my manners? My name is Maryann Glasser. You’re Mr. Gregory, right? Melanie’s son?”
Ryan’s wounds were still raw, and he felt tears brimming at the mention of his mother’s name.
“Your mother spoke very fondly of you, Mr. Gregory.”
“I’m sorry, I...I don’t know you,” Ryan said.
“No, of course you don’t. I’ve never introduced myself before, but I am here now. It is very cold out here, good sir.”
Bafflement turned into embarrassment, and Ryan stepped aside to let the lady enter his house. Still sniffling and swiping away tears, he closed the door and followed her into the foyer.
The house was empty. Mara had taken the kids to the doctor’s office: Lacy had to undergo dialysis and Eric had a physical that needed to be done before spring soccer started at school.
“My, what a lovely home you have. Melanie spoke of it often, and how nice it was to come visit you in such a lovely abode. She certainly wasn’t lying.”
Ryan had to admit that his house was unique, and in a time when most homeowners were drowning in mortgages and impending foreclosures, he owed not a cent to anyone.
Deep orange walls rose to vaulted oak ceilings in the dining room and adjoining living room, and were accented by industrial steel beams criss-crossing overhead. Beige leather sofas, rocking chair, and carpet were laid out in a recessed kind of family area. Family artwork and portraits graced the walls, most of them taken before Lacy’s degradation. A Christmas tree appeared to be supporting the ceiling. It was covered in garland, lights, tinsel, and a hundred kinds of balls. Lights were strung up around the walls, and stockings were hung above the decorative fireplace.
Maryann turned to him with a smile. “You’re a writer, correct?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“You must be a good writer to afford a place like this. What kind of books do you write?”
“Mystery.”
“Ah. I doubt I’ve read any, but I’m sure they’re wonderful. Now, let me get to the point, young man, before I forget why I came in the first place.”
Ryan wasn’t sure what ruffled him more: being called a young man or hearing such light words when his life was falling apart. At thirty-eight, he was far from considering himself young, certainly not with a twelve-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter. And listening to Maryann’s voice seemed to calm him somewhat, even though they were strangers.
If for no other reason than that, he was interested in what she had to say.
“Please, Maryann, how did you know my mother?”
She plopped herself down in the rocking chair and kept the basket on her lap. “I was with her in the hospital. I was there for most of her stay, actually. She and I talked. At first we were just cordial friends, but our relationship grew. We began exchanging information. As I said, she spoke a lot of you. We came to know each other so well it sometimes felt as though we were one person. Now, I’m here because your mother asked me to come. In her final days, she became very introspective. She told me that when she passed, she wanted me to pay you a visit and bring you a gift, but not before I talk to you about your daughter, Lacy.” She paused, and added, “Do you understand, dear? Because you look like you’re about to faint.”
He was

about to faint. Ryan sank onto the couch and took a deep breath, savoring the pressure of air in his lungs. It was too soon after her death, and the mention of Lacy only made it worse.
“I’m going to leave this basket here,” Maryann said, rising. “You don’t look like you’re ready to see just yet, or hear what I have to say. I’ll see myself out, dear.”
She set the basket on the floor next to the rocking chair and was halfway to the door when Ryan managed to rise. Tears were once again welling in his eyes. “Maryann, please, what...what did my mother say to you?”
When she turned, she gave him a smile that nearly erased the wrinkles on her face. “I’ll tell you later. I live just down the street now, at the old Gilbert place--just moved in--and I’ll come back. You need to hear my words, though, I can see that. Your house is an homage to Christmas for Dummies.”
“Christmas for...what? Excuse me?”
The smile remained. “You’ll see, dear. Adios for now.”
An angry gust of wind fluttered Ryan’s hair. He remained, dumbstruck, for several minutes after her departure.


“She really said that? Christmas for Dummies?”
“Yep. I’m telling you, it weirded me out so bad that I spent the rest of the day staring at the damn basket. I was convinced some kind of magical genie would pop out and demand my soul.”
Mara gave him a peck on the cheek and winked. “Ah, a writer’s imagination. I never tire of it.”
“You’re the one who married me.”
“Yeah, because I’m one of the few women who doesn’t mind your constant imaginative streak.”
“You’re a doll.”
“Damn right.”
He pulled her close. She smelled of lemon. It always startled Ryan how much she could affect him, even after all these years: seeing her hazel eyes, slightly cleft lip that drew her smile into a wondrous smirk, and feeling her slender body made his heart thump wildly.
They shared a kiss.
“God, Mom. We’ve only been gone a few hours; you don’t have to make out like you haven’t seen him in years.”
Ryan turned to see Eric pulling off his jacket and shaking a few snowflakes out of his red hair. The twelve-year-old hurried up the stairs, shaking his head.
“It’s good to see you, too, Eric,” he called.
“Yep,” the kid answered.
Ryan turned to his wife. “He’s in a lovely mood.”
“Physicals always set people in the holiday spirit, don’t they?”
Mara had bought a few bags of groceries, and she started unpacking them. Her grip on the milk carton was hard enough to make cauliflower-like streaks on her knuckles.
They had broached the subject of doctors. No amount of holiday décor could lighten that discussion. With their family, it meant one bad report after another.
“How is she?” Ryan asked.
“The same.”
“Nothing new?”
“Nothing worth mentioning.”
Whenever he thought of Lacy’s condition, he reverted to a state he’d come to think of as a faux heart attack: his pulse became thick in his neck, as if his blood had been transfused with viscous tar; breathing was accompanied by an awful wheeze; every muscle felt like it had just undergone an intense workout; his eyesight blurred with tears. Last night, at the hospital, he’d been certain a real heart attack had claimed him. When Melanie Gregory’s chest fell for the last time and the machines screamed their monotonous song, his own breathing had ceased. His throat had clenched tighter than it was ever supposed to. No amount of willpower could make his lungs release their gaseous prisoners, and stars had crept up in his vision. The nurses on duty had to call for a separate unit just to take him away and get him help.
It happened now as it had happened before.
Ryan wondered if he would ever again feel true, untainted happiness or a moment of levity not overshadowed by grief.
“I’m going to go see her.”
“She’s upstairs,” Mara said.
As if their daughter would be anywhere else.


Her room was cold. The curtains were pulled because she claimed the sun bothered her; a single bulb overhead made all the shadows lengthen, warp. She sat on her bed, coloring in her oversized sketch book Ryan had bought for her eighth birthday a few months ago. The walls were covered in childish depictions of fantastical creatures, families, dragons, wizards, farms, plants, buildings, and animals.
Her skin was paler than usual, and her gaunt face appeared as little more than a sack thrown over brittle bones. Long strands of brown hair fell in limp braids on either side of her face. Though she wore a regular white T-shirt and blue jeans, her shoulders and legs did little in the way of filling out the cloth.
“Hey sweetheart,” Ryan said.
“Hey Daddy,” she said, putting aside her colored pencil and smiling up at