The Christmas Women Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Quote

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  EPILOGUE

  Thank You

  THE CHRISTMAS WOMEN

  by

  Elyse Douglas

  Copyright

  Copyright 2014 by Elyse Douglas

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The copying, reproduction and distribution of this e-book via any means, without permission of the author, is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and refuse to participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s intellectual property rights is greatly appreciated.

  ISBN-13: 978-1500692667

  ISBN-10: 1500692662

  Dedication

  For Mrs. Buchy, a passionate teacher.

  Quote

  So long as the memory of certain beloved friends

  lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

  —Helen Keller

  ONE

  At 6:26 in the morning, Trudie Parks received a phone call from Ray Howard—a call that would change her life forever.

  “Sorry to call so early, Trudie, but I just had to tell you.”

  Trudie stretched and yawned. “I was up anyway, Ray. What’s up?”

  Trudie sat on the cushioned kitchen window seat, staring out the bay window at the blurring world of falling snow. Dressed in blue flannel pajamas, heavy pink housecoat, and fuzzy white slippers, she watched a frigid north wind blow a chaos of snow, piling it in drifts against trees and houses, smothering parked cars.

  “I went to see Mrs. Childs last night. Bad news. She has breast cancer.”

  Trudie shook awake. “Oh, no. Is she okay?”

  “I guess so, but she didn’t look like herself. She’s still recovering from surgery and looked so old and frail. It really broke my heart to see her that way. She was always so strong and energetic.”

  Ray was an English teacher at Deer Lake High School, where he and Trudie had graduated 20 years before. They’d remained friends, meeting occasionally for dinner at Rusty’s, the local hangout. Ray was gay, something he’d confided in Trudie during their junior year, even before he came out to his family and other friends.

  Mrs. Childs had been their drama teacher. Though she’d retired 10 years ago, Ray still kept in touch with her.

  “How old is Mrs. Childs now, Ray?”

  “Seventy-six. I was reading about breast cancer on the internet. It’s harder for older women to battle it.”

  “Did she have a mastectomy?”

  “No, a lumpectomy, but she had chemo for a while before the operation, so she lost some hair.” Trudie sat gazing out at the white face of the morning, suddenly lost in thought, remembering her former teacher’s dramatic facial expressions and raised fist whenever she was emphasizing a point. Mrs. Childs was rough on the surface, but motherly and kind underneath, with an expansive heart which she offered to any student who showed an interest in learning.

  “Are you there, Trudie?”

  “Yes... Yes, Ray, I’m here. It just makes me sad. She was my favorite teacher. I learned so much in her class. I loved the shows we did, especially the Christmas shows our junior and senior years.”

  “Yeah, those Christmas shows were amazing,” Ray said. “The entire county used to come out for them. Remember?”

  Trudie smiled at the memory. “Oh, yes, of course I remember.”

  “And you and Kristen and Mary Ann were always Mrs. Childs’ favorites. She got you all together during your junior year, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, when she took the shows over from Mr. Keane.”

  Ray laughed. “Yes... Mr. Ka, Ka Keane! The superhero music teacher. White teeth, white sweaters, white shirts. He didn’t want any part of those Christmas shows, so he turned the whole thing over to Mrs. Childs. And then she informed me that I’d be in charge of the musicians. She didn’t ask me. She told me.”

  “Mr. Keane just couldn’t put in the extra hours,” Trudie said. “He had four kids and he lived way out in the boondocks somewhere.”

  They sat for a time without talking, lost in good memories.

  “Mrs. Childs knew what she was doing, though, especially when she put the three of you in charge,” Ray said. “It made her job a whole lot easier. She’d just sit back and watch the three of you go.”

  “She convinced us it would be fun and something to put on our college applications. So Kristen and Mary Ann and I made lists and called students and fought over music, boyfriends, food and clothes, and we loved every minute of it.”

  “She called you the ‘Christmas Girls,’ didn’t she?” Ray asked.

  Trudie smiled at the thought, suddenly missing Kristen and Mary Ann. “Yes, we were known as The Christmas Girls.”

  Trudie glanced over at the digital clock. The red numbers glowed 6:45. She would have to be at the dental office before 9 o’clock, and not a minute later, because Mr. Posier was scheduled for a cleaning. Snowstorm or no snowstorm, Mr. Posier would be sitting in reception bolt upright, like a general waiting for action, his impatient gray eyes narrowing on his watch, just daring her to be late. She could clearly see his white starched face and fixed chin. He was a cranky engine, whose complaining and opinions rattled on unabated until she got the suction tube in his mouth.

  “I’ve got to go, Ray. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll try to go see her tonight after work. What’s her daughter’s number?”

  Ray gave her the phone number and address. “I pity you having to go out in this,” he said. “They closed school today. Our first snow day and it’s only November 18th.”

  “Lucky you. Got to go.”

  After she hung up, Trudie remained sitting, watching the wind stir the trees and create little cyclones that went spiraling off down the street. She placed her chin in her hand, as a vast distance filled her eyes. She wanted to be in that cyclone, being blown off to somewhere—anywhere but Deer Lake, Ohio. Not that there was anything wrong with Deer Lake, except that her life here had not gone the way she’d thought it would. Maybe it would be nice to be blown off somewhere else, over a rainbow or beyond a snowstorm.

  But in truth, did anybody’s life go the way they’d hoped or dreamed or planned? What about her best friends in high school? Mary Ann had married an airline pilot and moved to Denver. Last she’d heard, she was divorced with two teenage daughters.

  Kristen had moved to New York, studied for a law degree and married some rich investment banker. Trudie remembered their address, having been very impressed and a little jealous that it was on West 79th Street, in New York, NY. They’d gutted and remodeled a 3-story brownstone and Kristen had posted photos on Facebook. It looked fabulous. But the last time Trudie had heard from Kristen, she said her marriage was not going well and their only son was attending a private school in Massachusetts. She worked fourteen ho
urs a day and most weekends. What kind of life was that?

  They spoke on the phone to each other maybe once a year. Then there were the obligatory Christmas cards, with no personal news. Kristen always sent a Christmas card with a photo of her now 13-year-old son, Alexander, who was rarely smiling. From Our Family to Yours was printed across it, something Trudie struggled not to bristle at. It wasn’t Kristen’s fault that Trudie had no family, but why couldn’t she be a bit more sensitive? And why couldn’t she ever include a photo of her and her husband? It was always just the cute blond-headed boy she’d never met, standing alone next to a spreading oak tree with blazing autumn colors. How WASP.

  And then there was Mary Ann’s version of the Christmas card. Although she didn’t like social media, she now sent an electronic Christmas card with the usual blah, blah, Merry Christmas and Peace on Earth and little birds flying around. Not that there was anything wrong with little birds or wanting peace on Earth, but there was no personal news. No information about what was really going on in her life.

  They’d been like sisters in high school —maybe even closer than sisters, at least for a time. They’d shared everything, from family secrets, to backseat adventures with boys, to hopes for the future. They had truly loved each other.

  Trudie heaved out an audible sigh, missing them and their friendships. The 20th high school reunion that could have brought them back together was cancelled last May after a tornado ravaged the town. Part of the courthouse square, dozens of homes and most the junior high school had been demolished.

  Trudie padded off to the kitchen and put on the red kettle to heat water for coffee. While the water hissed and steamed, she folded her arms and leaned back against the kitchen counter, blinking around at the spotlessly clean kitchen. She scooped a spoonful of instant coffee and dropped it into the cup, pausing before she poured the water. What had that young teenage girl said to her yesterday as she was cleaning her teeth? They had been discussing some middle-aged movie star who had never married.

  “Have you ever been married?” the young girl asked.

  Trudie gave her the stock answer. “No... never found a man I wanted to live with. They’re all so messy, you know.”

  But that wasn’t the truth. Trudie poured the steaming water, filled her cup and stirred. She tipped in some milk and added a spoonful of sugar, then as she poured boiling water into her instant oatmeal, her thoughts returned to Mary Ann and Kristen and their high school days. She’d never forgotten one particular conversation during their senior year. “You’ll be the first to marry, Trudie,” Kristen had proclaimed. “You and Cole will be married right after high school, have three kids and live happily ever after.” Mary Ann had concurred. “Yeah, you’re the type. You’ll settle down and get married right away.”

  Trudie sat down at the kitchen table with a heavy sigh. Well, anyway, she had settled down, but she’d settled alone. She sipped her coffee, staring blankly into her oatmeal, suddenly uncomfortable with the full array of memories Ray’s phone call had brought back. There were happy memories, for sure, but there were also the suppressed unhappy ones, plus her own persistent sense of failure.

  Mrs. Childs had cancer; stubborn and sturdy and wonderful Mrs. Childs, whose drama class was as difficult as social studies or math. She made her students memorize Shakespeare monologues and write reviews of movies and TV shows. They had to work in groups to write and then perform one-act plays, as well as audition for both the senior class play in the fall, and the musical in the spring. No, Mrs. Childs’ class was not a breeze to pass.

  Suddenly seized by a thought, Trudie got up and strode across the polished hardwood floors into the spacious, wood-paneled den that had once been her father’s office. She searched the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, realizing, with a frown and a sweep of her index finger, that she hadn’t dusted the shelves in almost two weeks. Her eyes wandered until she saw it: her senior class yearbook. She used the two-step wooden ladder to reach up and pull it down.

  Back in the kitchen, she laid the yearbook down before her. She spooned her oatmeal and stared at the yearbook. She sipped coffee, staring at it. She made a steeple of her hands, staring at it. She hadn’t looked through it in years. The group photos and senior portraits always provoked both fondness and an aching regret. Some of her classmates had already died. Some had seemed to vanish. Most had moved away after college. Like a lot of Midwestern towns, Deer Lake had suffered manufacturing losses and most of the young people had fled to the cities for better opportunities. It was only in the last three years that the town had managed a sort of renaissance, mainly because a company called CodeMobile had moved into an old, abandoned factory on the edge of town and, miraculously, it had flourished, hiring programmers and IT professionals from all over the country. The company had become a leader in mobile IT services and internet security. As a result, Deer Lake was flourishing again.

  Trudie had never considered moving away, even during the town’s lean years. Right after she graduated from college with a degree in dental hygiene, she landed a job with their family dentist. She had hoped to live with her parents only until she could afford her own apartment, but tragedy struck: her mother died suddenly of a ruptured brain aneurysm. Since her older brother, Tommy, had attended college in Maine and fallen in love with a local girl, he’d decided to stay in Portland. Trudie did not have the heart to leave her father alone, especially when he asked her, in his quiet, unassuming way, to stay and keep house for him for just a little while, until he got adjusted to living alone.

  Her father, Thomas Parks, was not a social man, and they both knew he would never remarry. He worked as an accountant for a supermarket chain. A shy, bookish man, he retreated even further after his wife died. Trudie lived with him all through her twenties, always dreaming about striking out on her own, but never meeting a man who would give her an excuse, and never thinking it was worth the expense to pay for a small apartment when she had almost an entire house rent-free. She and her father ate dinner together most nights, and then he went into his study and she went upstairs to watch TV or read, except for the nights she tutored local high school students or went out to dinner with co-workers. Sometimes on week-ends, she and Ray went to plays or concerts in Cincinnati.

  Shortly after her thirtieth birthday, her father developed a rare form of bone cancer, and Trudie cared for him during his long, unsuccessful battle with it. She celebrated her thirty-second birthday a few days before he died.

  And so here she still lived, in the grand Victorian house on Oak Street, with its gables and turrets and wide, wrap-around porch and formidable wrought iron fence and gate. The house had been in her father’s family since 1900 and Trudie loved it. When her father died, she bought her brother’s half of the house and became the sole owner. She’d surely live in the old house for the rest of her life.

  Trudie pushed the bowl of oatmeal aside, turning reflective. She was 38 years old, galloping toward 40. Lately, as she rambled through the three-bedroom house, it seemed larger and quieter, absent of any real life, as if its glory days were far behind it and an uncertain future promised much of the same old, same old. How lonely the house had become. How fast the years had flown.

  Trudie ran the flat of her hand across the surface of the royal blue yearbook with the raised embossed letters, Deer Lake High School. She was reluctant to open it, as if it were some Pandora’s Box that would release unwanted dark spirits from its dusty old glossy pages. The yearbook documented an important phase of her life—a crowded and restless senior year. The static images catalogued frenetic activity, sexual awakenings and secrets she’d never shared with anyone. There was that cool autumn night with Jon Ketch at the “haunted house” in the ghost town ten miles away. There was Cole Blackwell, the 6-foot 6-inch star basketball player she’d fallen for. He’d made the vow that he would always love her, so why shouldn’t she sleep with him? He loved her. They’d get married right after high school. But that was in early November of their senior year. By
late April, it was all over. Cole had moved on.

  And then in early May, Mary Ann had let it slip that Cole and Kristen had been dating for weeks behind Trudie’s back. Trudie went ballistic, refusing to speak to Kristen for a month. In fact, the memory of that betrayal still nearly nauseated her. But with Mary Ann’s pleading that The Christmas Girls were meant to be life-long friends, Trudie reluctantly reconciled with Kristen right before graduation. It had helped that Kristen and Cole had not flaunted their relationship by going to the prom together. Trudie, too, had stayed away, unable to bear the indignity of not having a date, after the entire class had assumed that she and Cole would be together forever.

  But all that had happened a long time ago, Trudie thought. She and Kristen had talked it all out a few years later, and when they met for their ten-year high school reunion, Kristen had again apologized repeatedly, and they had finally decided to lay it to rest. It had happened in high school, after all. Like most things that happened during their teenage years, it was an old, moldy memory. Over time, old relationships and old hurts become blurry, confused and mostly forgotten. You learn to forgive and forget and, hopefully, you grow up.

  But there it was—the yearbook—staring back at her—beckoning her to open the cover and dive back into the past. It seemed to steal all other thoughts from her brain, demanding her entire interest. With an unsteady hand, Trudie slowly opened the yearbook’s cover, unaware that she was holding her breath.

  TWO

  Trudie stared at the pages, absorbed in the images and titles. She carefully read her classmates’ inscriptions, written right after graduation, before they embarked on their shiny, new, promising lives.

  To a really smart and sweet girl. Keep your warm, sincere smile, Trudie, and you’ll never have trouble finding friends, or keeping them. – Lots of love, Connie Baker

  To a great girl, with star quality. What is it about your great smile and deep blue, penetrating eyes? Always thought you could see right through me. –Best of luck in all you do. – Molly Cahill