Chapter Twenty-Three
I’m at the site for A Very Desert Christmas, and the chaos is extreme. It’s nothing like when Nathan and I were here last night, dancing in the silent night with only my voice as a background track.
This is a cacophony.
There is a choir of children rehearsing, there are donkeys. There’s even a camel. The pageantry is nearly obscene.
The cheer is aggressive. And I’m here for it.
I’m rooted, now, in the quirky over-the-top nature of Rancho Encanto, and it couldn’t come at a better time.
Reigna was pretty excited about how the children’s choir was coming along. I’m not a music director, but there is a shrill quality to the performance.
Alice is playing the piano with gusto, and I have to admire her energy.
The nativity scene next to the singing children is also quite a sight, complete with Mary, who is played by Lorena from the Coffee Wagon, and the baby Jesus, who I’m sure is played by Lorena’s new baby, while the part of Joseph is being filled by what looks like a bag of flour. I’m going to have to ask for some more information on that. Is Joseph permanently a bag of flour? Is there an understudy? Is the understudy gluten-free?
I hum as I look at my clipboard, moving through each space to make sure that the map is right and everything correlates correctly.
I’ve already double-checked that the trees are all numbered and my list is right so everything matches at bidding time, and I had a look at the area for our book event, where the chairs are set up and ready to go, so now I’m doing final spot checks on everything else.
We want to make sure all the guests have an easy time navigating through the different activities and shopping opportunities.
The different food trucks excite me most of all.
Every business has offered to do food at cost, with employees donating time, so that any profits can go toward the fundraiser.
I’m amped for the handmade noodles at the truck on the end. Unfortunately, not every truck is serving today, though some are because they’ll get some money from those of us hanging around hungrily getting things set up.
I hear my name, and I’m sure that it’s Nathan. I think I must be hallucinating even as I turn around. This man who wouldn’t even come out of his room a couple of weeks ago is standing here in the middle of this half-assembled nonsense.
“What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t pass up the chance to check it out with everything in place. I wanted to cast an eye on the venue for the panel to figure out if I needed to bring anything else.”
Except, he stopped now. With me here, with everyone here.
I want to believe he feels the same pull toward me that I do toward him. Toward something more. Something deeper.
I also ... don’t know what I would do if he did.
I’m not sure what to do. If I should move to him and display any kind of intimacy or not.
So I just stand here, clutching my clipboard when I want to be clutching him.
“This is ... interesting,” he says.
I laugh. “You have no idea.” I gesture toward the camels. “There’s livestock, which frankly even surprised me. I don’t have anything to do with the entertainment portion.” I pull a face. “I mean, obviously. Or we would’ve gotten anybody except ...”
“Yep,” he says.
“At night this is going to be amazing,” I say. “I mean ... it’s ... it’s so glorious out here.”
I look off at the mountains, steep and purple, the sun casting gold over the craggy rocks and cacti.
“Yes,” he says.
He’s looking at me, though. Not the view. My heart expands, then contracts.
“Thank you.” I don’t want to seem like I’m thanking him for saying I’m glorious, in case he wasn’t. But my heart hopes.
That’s new. I’m not sure how I feel about it. The hope.
“Come on,” I say, moving us over to where the kids are rehearsing. “I think we are legally obligated to get an early look at the show.”
As we draw closer, the high-pitched singing grows louder, and at least that does something to dispel some of the tension in my chest.
“So this is what I’ve missed avoiding Christmas services with my parents all these years,” he says.
I laugh. “I don’t know. Maybe they aren’t this elite at your parents’ church.”
There is chaos as Mary moves into her position with flour bag Joseph, and the donkey jumps, and then a camel snorts and startles.
Reigna throws her hands up and yells, “Cut! Oh, hello, Amelia,” she says. “I’m so glad you stopped by to see rehearsal.”
“This is very impressive,” I say.
“Very. I can’t wait until Christopher is here to read for us.”
“I didn’t realize you were doing a whole manger scene. I thought that it was going to be ...”
“Oh, it will be inclusive,” she says. “We have a manger and will be doing a display with the menorah and a kinara. Of course, many portions will just include Santa as a secular symbol.”
“I see,” I say.
“I thought of everything,” she says.
But the resolute refusal of the donkeys to behave makes me question this. Alice is sitting at the keyboard, and when she sees me, she waves.
And winks.
She is a scoundrel, which is why I love her.
“From the top,” says Reigna.
The choir begins to sing “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” and that’s when everything falls apart. One of the donkeys gets loose and begins to run around the choir, which makes the camel startle again. Half the manger scene is knocked to the ground.
One of the children in the choir, whom I recognize as Lorena’s oldest, gets jostled and falls over and starts crying, and Mary mobilizes. She stops in front of me, and suddenly, I find myself being handed baby Jesus.
“Can you hold her for a second?”
She races to her other child, and I find myself frozen. I haven’t held a baby since ...
I feel Nathan get still next to me. I’m horrified by the wave of grief that threatens to swallow me whole. Because it’s been more than three years. This isn’t my baby. I’ve seen babies. I’ve been around them. I’ve even seen Lorena’s baby before. But I’ve never held her.
My throat feels too tight. My body strung out.
Nathan knows. He knows why I’m standing there, losing touch with reality. Losing touch with the ground. I know he doesn’t know what to do. Neither do I. I can feel that he’s about to take the baby for me, when suddenly, there is a gentle touch on my shoulder.
“I’ve got her,” says Alice, looking up at me with startling clarity in her blue eyes.
Like she sees me. Like she sees what’s hurting me.
She pats my shoulder and holds the baby close.
“You go on,” says Alice.
Nathan takes my hand, squeezing it slightly as we walk away from the scene.
“I’m . . . I’m sorry I . . .”
“You don’t have to apologize,” he says.
He walks me to my Jeep and stands with me, saying nothing. He reaches out and touches my face. “I wish I knew the right thing to say.”
“I don’t think there is a right thing. I spent so much time wondering if there was something ... anything ... that my friends could’ve said. That Christopher could’ve said. But we experienced the same loss, and we couldn’t even find a way to talk about it. So I don’t know how anybody else is supposed to talk about it with me.”
“What a dick,” he says.
“I don’t know if he was. Maybe he was. I ... He wanted me to be fixed. I couldn’t figure out how to be. I ... I keep thinking I’m okay, Nathan. I keep thinking that I’m done grieving. Then it hits me, in this terrible wave. What’s wrong with me? Why did I make that about me?”
“You didn’t. You lost ... Amelia, I’ve experienced loss. I understand grief. I know that it comes in waves that you can’t anticipate. I know that it tries to drown you sometimes. I get it.”
I wrap my arms around my body and try to hold myself together. “I just didn’t expect that. I don’t think about it all the time. That’s the thing. It’s the Chris trigger. He’s ... He’s engaged, and he and his fiancée are having a baby. At least, that’s what he said. That does hurt. It means he found a way to move past this that isn’t quite how I did it. I’ve just been here. Hiding.”
“Yeah. Well. I’m not exactly the person to ask about letting go of your grief. I’ve spent nearly three years working on my dead wife’s memoirs.”
I laugh, in that way you laugh when nothing is funny and everything hurts. “I mean, that is pretty impressive. I’m just the grief hide-and-seek champion. Except I think it’s finally catching up to me.”
“What can I do for you?”
“You shouldn’t have to do anything for me.”
“But I want to.” He takes a deep breath. “I haven’t wanted to do anything for anyone in a very long time. So please let me. It’s been a really long time since ...” He grits his teeth. “I know this might surprise you, but I’m kind of a hermit. Back home.”
It doesn’t surprise me, but it hurts me. I wanted to believe he had a network somewhere. That he falls apart when he comes here because this is where they went on their honeymoon. Because he’s working on her story.
“I write, and generally, I don’t associate with anyone,” he says. “I have my deadlines, I start the next book. I have old friends. Friends that were hers and ours. My in-laws. They love me. Which, actually ...” He swallows hard. “It’s a terrible thing to watch them grieve. Because ... She was everything to them. Their only child. I don’t think my parents would be half as sorry to lose me. But here I am.”
My heart twists. “That sounds suspiciously like survivor’s guilt.”
“We aren’t supposed to be talking about me,” he says.
“Why not?” I ask.
“You’re hurt.”
“The whole world is hurting.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t minimize this. You don’t have to. You don’t have to be fair. Who made you feel like you had to be?”
I close my eyes. “You already know the answer to that. Like I said. We went through the same loss.”
“You didn’t experience it the same. It felt differently to him. Or maybe it didn’t, but he expressed it differently. I haven’t learned ... I haven’t learned anything. Writing my wife’s memoirs, you would think I would learn something. About grief, about processing this. I haven’t learned a damn thing. Except that it’s not the same for me as it is for some people. A guy I went to high school with lost his wife, and a year later he got married again. I can’t imagine that. Do you have any idea how terrifying it was when I found out my wife was sick? Living in the dread of ... when she was going to go ...” He shakes his head. “I can’t imagine ever putting myself in that situation again. I mean ...”
“When you feel so happy, and then you just lose it. It comes from nowhere.”
I understand that. I felt like everything was coming together when I got pregnant. That something was going to be healed by it. Instead, something got broken. So much worse than it was before.
“Yes.”
“Anyway. This sucks,” I say.
“Yeah.”
His agreeing with me is right up there with I’m sorry .
I’ve thought for a long time I’m sorry doesn’t fix grief.
But right now, I think maybe that isn’t true. Because having him with me right now makes me feel like something might be fixable in me that I didn’t think was.
“You want to go home?” he asks.
I nod. “Yes.”
He opens the car door for me. “I’ll see you back there.”
I feel good, knowing someone is going to be waiting for me. Even in the middle of this strange, unsettling wave, I know I can reach for him.
And that changes something.