Noel Street Page 10

  “He has you. And father or not, you’ve done a great job with him.”

  “I just wish I could give him a better life.”

  “You give him love. That’s better than anything material you could give him.”

  “I know. I just wish I could give him more time. I work so much.” I shook my head. “I keep waiting for things to get easier, but they don’t.”

  “Who watches Dylan when you’re working?”

  “Fran.”

  “She’s the one I met the other night?”

  “Yes. She’s like a second mother to him.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “She worked at the diner for a while, but she didn’t last long. She’s in college now.”

  “Speaking of the diner…” He glanced down at his watch. “It’s almost time for you to go to work. I better go.”

  Just then Dylan came out of the bathroom wearing only Flash Gordon underwear. “Want to play Rock ’Em Sock ’Em again?”

  “Hmm,” William said. “Let’s see, do I want to be beaten and humiliated again? I don’t think so.”

  “Please?”

  “As fun as it sounds, I think I’d better go home. Your mom needs to go to work, and your sitter will be here soon.”

  Dylan turned to me. “Can Mr. William watch me?”

  “No, honey. Fran is coming.”

  Dylan looked disappointed.

  “I’ll be back,” William said. He looked at me. “If it’s okay with your mother.”

  Dylan looked up at me. “Is it, Mama?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Now say goodbye to Mr. William, then I’m going to step outside to talk to him.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. William.”

  “Goodbye, Dylan.”

  I led William outside, shutting the door behind me. “That’s quite an honor. He wants you to watch him instead of Fran.”

  “Probably because he can beat me at the boxing robots.”

  “Probably,” I said with a half smile. “Thank you for taking us tubing. And to lunch. Dylan had a really good time.”

  “Do you think Dylan’s mother had a good time too?”

  I smiled. “She had a good time too.”

  “Good,” he said. “I was kind of going for that.”

  “So, before you go, I wanted to ask you something.” As he looked at me I suddenly felt a little nervous.

  “Yes?”

  “I wanted to ask what are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

  “Thanksgiving. What Thanksgiving?”

  “So you don’t have plans.”

  “No, I have plans. I’ve got a date with myself and a turkey-and-mashed-potatoes TV dinner. Hold the TV.”

  “I’d hate to interrupt that feast, but would you like to have dinner with Dylan and me? I can pretty much guarantee that the food will be better.”

  “Not to mention the company,” he said. “I absolutely bore myself. Sometimes I get in arguments with myself just to stir things up.”

  I smiled.

  “What can I bring?”

  “Just your boring, argumentative self,” I said. “I get almost everything from the diner.”

  “Then how about I bring some wine?” he said.

  “I won’t turn you down on that.”

  “I didn’t think so. So do I have to wait until Thanksgiving to see you again?”

  I smiled. “I’m off Tuesday at three.”

  “Can you find a sitter?”

  “I’ll get a sitter.”

  “I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

  CHAPTER nineteen

  We do not always believe things because they’re true. More often than not, we believe things because they’re expedient.

  —Elle Sheen’s Diary

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24

  Monday night after work, Fran met me outside the duplex, which is something she never did unless she was in a hurry to get somewhere. She stood in front of the door as if she were guarding it. “You’ll never believe what happened,” she said.

  “I’m sure I won’t,” I replied. “Is it a good or bad thing?”

  “Two things. First, Dylan is still up.”

  Bad thing, I thought. “It’s a school night.”

  “I know, but I made a judgment call. I think you would have done the same. Something special happened.” She opened the door and I walked in. In the middle of our living room was a six-foot Christmas tree. It was mostly decorated and Dylan was standing next to it laying strands of tinsel across its boughs. His smile was epic. “Look, Mama! We got a tree!”

  I turned to Fran. “Where did it come from?”

  “Well, we all went on an unexpected little field trip.”

  “A field trip?”

  “Literally. William came by in his truck and we went to a field and cut it down. He set it up, and Dylan and I did the decorations.”

  I glanced around. “Where’s William?”

  “He left a couple hours ago. He said ‘Merry Christmas’ and he’ll see you tomorrow.” She shook her head. “It’s kind of a Christmas miracle.”

  “He’s kind of a Christmas miracle,” I replied.

  * * *

  I found I was thinking about him all the time. I couldn’t wait until Tuesday. How different my life felt having something to look forward to.

  William wouldn’t tell me what we were doing as he wanted it to be a surprise. His only instruction to me was to dress for winter and wear warm boots. So I threw on a turtleneck sweater and jeans and wondered if we were going hiking again. We didn’t. He picked me up a little after four o’clock and we drove north up I-15.

  We were going for a sleigh ride. It was dusk when we arrived at Hardware Ranch about an hour north of Mistletoe near Hyrum. The ranch was state-owned and encompassed nearly twenty thousand acres.

  Dylan would have loved it, but I’m glad we went alone. William and I snuggled up together under a blanket for the hour-long ride, which took us through miles of pristine wilderness and past the largest herd of elk I’d ever seen. Our driver told us that the herd had started with a couple dozen and then grew over the past decade to nearly a thousand animals.

  After the ride we drove to the nearby town of Brigham City (named after the Mormon prophet Brigham Young) and had dinner at a little restaurant called the Maddox Ranch House. The restaurant was one of the oldest in Utah and had garnered a reputation of having some of the state’s best fried chicken, bison steaks, and hot buttered rolls.

  We both ordered comfort food. William ordered the breaded trout while I had the chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes.

  “Thank you for the tree,” I said again. “You should have seen how excited Dylan was.”

  “I did,” he said.

  “Of course. Was it hard getting the tree out?”

  “A little. I could have used a horse to help pull it out,” he said, buttering a roll. “Speaking of which, you seemed comfortable around the horses tonight.”

  “I grew up with horses,” I said. “My father raises them. At least he did. I have no idea if he still does.”

  “So your dad was a horse breeder.”

  “My dad was into a lot of things. He was in the military until he was thirty-five, then he retired and bought the ranch in Cedar City. He’s an entrepreneur and an investor. We never wanted for anything.

  “Growing up, we lived frugally—my father wore old clothes, mowed his own lawn, drove an old car—but I realize now we were well off. My dad wasn’t showy, and he’s not obsessed with money; it just kind of flows with him.” I looked at William. “Does that make sense?”

  He nodded. “I knew people like that in the military.”

  “I certainly didn’t inherit it from him. I’ve been poor since the minute I left home.”

  He grinned. “You mean you’re not getting rich at the diner?”

  “No. Are you getting rich at Renato’s?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I hear Renato is as tight as a tourniquet.”


  “That’s a little harsh. Renato has been good to me,” William said. “I’m not getting rich, but I don’t really need much either. When I got back from the war, I had a lot of back pay from the military, so I’ve got savings. I’m doing okay.”

  “This is an odd question, but do you get paid as a POW?”

  “It’s considered time served. POWs also get a little extra—sixty-five dollars a month, for imminent danger pay. Sounds absurd hearing it that way: I made an extra two dollars a day for putting my life in greater danger.”

  He took a bite of his fish, then said, “You also progress through the ranks, so your salary goes up.” He smiled darkly. “I didn’t get to do a whole lot of shopping in Hanoi, so the money just stacked up.”

  “You said you were sent to Vietnam by a judge.”

  He nodded. “I was facing hard jail time.”

  “That’s hard for me to believe.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because you’re one of the sweetest men I’ve ever met.”

  He smiled at the comment. “I put on a good show.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m a pretty good judge of character,” I said. “What’s your family like?”

  “Dead.”

  His reply stunned me. He noticed.

  “Sorry,” he said quickly. “That was… crass.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “The truth is, I had a great family and an idyllic childhood. I had both parents at home, two little sisters, Little League baseball on Saturday, church on Sundays. We were pretty much the Cleaver family—until they were killed in a car crash.”

  “Your whole family?”

  He nodded. “Everyone but me. I was supposed to be with them, but I got in a fight with my mother before leaving and said I wouldn’t go. I was stubborn. I locked myself in my room. My dad wouldn’t have put up with that nonsense. He would have knocked my door down and dragged me out, but he wasn’t there. He was in Ohio on business. He was an auto parts salesman. My mother and sisters met up with him and were headed to Cincinnati for the week.”

  “What was the fight about?”

  William shook his head. “I don’t remember. I should have been with them.”

  “You would have died if you were.”

  “I’m not sure that would have been such a bad thing.”

  The comment hurt my heart. “Maybe you weren’t supposed to be with them. Maybe God was looking out for you.”

  “I’m not that fatalistic,” he said. “It would make me wonder why He wasn’t looking after them.” After a while he breathed out. “After they died, I had no one. We had one of those isolated families where neither of my parents had any familial connections. My father didn’t get along with his family, and my mother didn’t have one. I think she was an accident. She was an only child and born late in her parents’ lives. Her father was sixty-five when she was born. Her mother was fifty-two. Her father died when she was nine, her mother passed away the same year I was born.

  “So with no family and since I wasn’t yet eighteen, I became a ward of the state and was put in the foster care system. It didn’t go well. At that age, I was too old to assimilate into another family. Not to mention, I was pretty messed up. My family had just died and the last thing I had said to my mother was that I hated her. The guilt and shame were eating me alive. I think some part of me blamed myself for their deaths.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “I know—I knew it then—but I didn’t believe it. Belief and knowledge aren’t the same thing. Belief is much more powerful.

  “During that time I actually tried to join the army, but I was too young. So I ended up as a foster child with a caseworker. I honor anyone who takes in a foster child, but the family I was put with was a mistake. They owned a dry-cleaning business and were basically looking for free labor. I was working sixty hours a week cleaning and pressing clothes. I told my caseworker that I was a slave, but she just thought I was exaggerating. Finally, after a year and a half of that, I ran away.

  “I couch-hopped for a while, then I got a job with one of my dad’s old clients at a car dealership detailing cars. It was a pretty good gig. Then one day, at the dealership, I ran into a group of guys a few years older than me. I thought they were cool. They talked tough, and they had hot cars and foxy girlfriends. They all shared an old home together, kind of like a commune. None of them worked; they just, like, hung out all day. One of them invited me to move into their place. They gave me cigarettes and beer. I thought I was pretty cool because they liked me.

  “It never occurred to me how they were supporting their lifestyle. I didn’t realize they made their money stealing or that they brought me in because they were grooming me for something. One night after a few months, they came to me and said, ‘You’ve been living off us far too long. It’s time you earned your keep.’ I had no idea what they were talking about, but they told me that if I didn’t help them break into the car dealership I worked at, they were going to beat me up for freeloading and then make me pay them back for all the food and beer and back rent.

  “I offered them all the money I had, but they came up with some ridiculous amount of money I owed them, like five thousand dollars, nothing I could have afforded.

  “So I helped them break in. They stole two cars. Then one of the security men walked in on us. One of the guys had a gun and shot him. It didn’t kill him, thankfully, but it was considered attempted murder.

  “The security guard recognized me and we were caught. I had just turned eighteen a week before, so I was tried as an adult. Those guys I thought were so cool showed their real colors; they told the court it was all my idea. Since I worked at the dealership, the judge believed them. It was their word against mine.

  “That’s when he gave me the option to go to Vietnam or prison. I had already tried to join the army, so it was pretty much a no-brainer for me.”

  “And I thought I had it tough,” I said.

  “What I went through doesn’t make your life any easier,” he said. Then he forced a smile, saying, “That conversation turned heavy fast. Let’s talk about something lighter.”

  I smiled back. “Like what?”

  “Like, did you know your name is a palindrome?”

  “What’s a palindrome?”

  “It’s something that reads the same forward and backward. Like the words radar or racecar.”

  I worked it out in my head. “Racecar. That’s kind of cool.”

  “They can be more than one word,” he said. “My favorite palindromes are Do geese see God? and the world’s first greeting, ‘Madam, I’m Adam.’ ”

  “You know, the man they named Noel Street for was a palindrome. His name was Leon Noel.”

  “I assumed they named it Noel Street because the town’s name is kind of… Christmassy.” He looked at me. “Is that a word?”

  “Christmassy. Works for me,” I said. “Mistletoe is definitely Christmassy. You arrived just in time for the Noel Street Christmas Market.”

  “I saw them putting up booths in the park,” he said. Suddenly his expression softened. “Fort Wayne used to have something like that. They called it ‘Christmas in the Park.’ It was only one day, but there’d be horse-drawn wagon rides and groups singing carols. They had booths with crafts and things. There were food vendors, hot wassail, eggnog, and fresh donuts.” His eyes had the soft glaze of nostalgia. “We used to go there every year as a family…”

  “Dylan and I look forward to the market every year. This year will be the best ever.”

  “Why is that?”

  I looked at him and smiled. “Because you’re here.”

  * * *

  William dropped me off at home a little before midnight. He walked me to the door. “So I’ll see you on Thursday?”

  “What’s Thursday?” he asked.

  I glared at him.

  He grinned. “Oh, right. Thanksgiving.”

  “Oh, Thanksgiving,” I mocked.
>
  “I’ll come hungry,” he said.

  “I promise you won’t leave that way.”

  “I believe you.” He looked into my eyes. The mood grew more serious. “I had a really good time tonight.”

  “Me too.”

  Then he leaned forward and we kissed for the first time. It was delicious.

  After we separated I said, “Thank you again for tonight.”

  “I’ll see you Thursday.”

  He turned and walked back to his truck. I waved as he drove off, then went inside. Fran was at the kitchen table doing homework. She looked up at me wearily. “How was the date?”

  I smiled. “Perfect.”

  “Perfect,” she repeated. “I think that’s good.”

  My brow fell. “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just, where do you go from perfect?”

  CHAPTER twenty

  For better or worse, this is a Thanksgiving I will never forget.

  —Elle Sheen’s Diary

  Thanksgiving was special. For starters, I got the day off with pay. The diner was closed. It’s not that there wasn’t enough business. The opposite was true. Thanksgiving always provided a stream of travelers, truck drivers, and Eleanor Rigbys but, as a courtesy to her staff, Loretta shut the place down.

  What made the day even better was a self-imposed tradition started by our chef Bart. The day before Thanksgiving Bart made a meal for all of our families, which included his delectable cornbread stuffing, pecan-crusted sweet-potato soufflé, Parker House rolls (just the dough so we could serve them hot), and mashed potatoes with turkey gravy. For dessert I purchased one of Loretta’s famous Granny Smith apple pies, the kind with a cinnamon-and-sugar latticework crust. Instant Thanksgiving, just add turkey.

  Or, in our case, roast chicken. Dylan liked chicken more than turkey, and since it was the right size for the two of us, that’s what we usually had. But this year with William coming, I opted for the larger species of bird.