EPILOGUE: It Closes Perfectly Now
It’s been a year now.
Pat kept her apartment. The housing fund covered January too. In February she landed a job as a receptionist at a dental office in Hamilton. The same one where I used to get my teeth cleaned. She says it’s the first job she’s ever had where she gets to sit down. She calls me every Tuesday night. We talk for an hour. About the kids. About Renee. About nothing. She says I’m the only person who ever called her brave.
Adam and Renee didn’t buy the ranch house with the finished basement. They decided to wait and save a little longer. They’re looking again this spring. In March, at my kitchen table, Adam asked whether I’d be willing to help a little with the down payment. Just a little. He asked plainly. No hinting. No waiting for me to offer.
I said yes. Because he asked.
Renee and I have lunch once a month. Just the two of us. She tells me things now. About her father, who left. About growing up without much money. About the shame she’s carried since she was a little girl, the kind that makes you push people away before they can see you. I tell her about Walter. About tuna casserole. About falling apart quietly in my kitchen.
In October she told me she’d started following Westdale’s Facebook page again. She said she’d read the post about my donation about fifty times.
“I hated it at first,” she said. “I thought you were showing off. Rubbing it in.” She looked down at her salad. “Now I read it when I’m having a bad day. To remind myself that people are good. Even when you think they’re not.”
On the first Tuesday of every month, Adam drives to Hamilton after work and volunteers at Westdale. Clare put him on the repair crew. He’s terrible at it. He’s not handy like his father. But Gus is teaching him. Last month he fixed the hinge on the supply cabinet. The one with the paper snowflake and the masking tape that says WALT’S CABINET.
He came home and called me.
“Mom,” he said. “I fixed Dad’s cabinet.”
“I heard.”
“It took me three hours,” he said. “Gus had to show me twice. Dad did it in twenty minutes, Clare said.” He was quiet a second. “It closes perfectly now.”
“It’ll outlive us both,” I said.
He laughed.
This year, we didn’t argue about Christmas.
There was nothing to argue about. In early December, Renee called me. Not Adam. Renee.
“Joanne,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about Christmas. About where we should have it.”
My heart sank a little. I braced myself.
“I was thinking,” Renee said, “that maybe we should have it at Westdale.”
I said nothing.
“All of us,” she said. “You and me and Adam and the kids and my mom. We could serve dinner. Eleven to three. Clare says they’re short in the kitchen again.” She paused. “And then we could all go back to your house after. For the presents. And your pie.” She paused again. “If that’s okay.”
I sat at my kitchen table with the phone pressed to my ear.
“That’s okay,” I said. “That’s more than okay.”
So that’s what we did.
On Christmas morning, at ten o’clock, seven of us walked into the old stockroom at the Westdale Community Resource Center. Me. Adam. Renee. Pat. Lily, who’s eleven now and taller than her grandmother Pat. Noah, who’s eight and still puts mustard on everything.
Clare handed each of us a red apron.
Adam, Gus, and Harold handled the turkeys. Renee and Pat took the stuffing in the bathtub-sized hotel pans. Lily was on rolls. Noah was on napkins, a job he took extremely seriously, folding each one into a triangle with great precision.
I did the mashed potatoes. Sixty pounds of them. Same peeler. Same drawer.
At eleven, the doors opened. Two hundred and thirty-one people this year, Clare told us later.
I stood on the serving line with a big metal spoon.
“Merry Christmas,” I said, over and over. “Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.”
Lily stood next to me with the rolls. To every person who came through the line, she said, “Merry Christmas! Do you want a roll? They’re really good. I tried one.”
Around noon, a young woman came through with a toddler on her hip. She was maybe twenty-five. Tired. Thin. In a coat too light for December.
I put potatoes on her plate.
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
She looked up at me.
“Are you Joanne?” she said.
I blinked. “Yes.”
“I saw your picture,” she said. “On Facebook. Last year. With the big check.” She shifted her little boy on her hip. “My name’s Kayla. I was on the housing list. Number six. We were going to get evicted on January third. Me and Marcus.” She nodded at the toddler. “And then on December twenty-third, a lady from here called me. And said our rent was paid. Three months.” Her voice broke. “We’re still in our apartment. Because of you. And your husband.”
I couldn’t say anything.
“I just wanted to say thank you,” Kayla said. “I’ve been wanting to say it for a whole year. I didn’t know if I’d ever see you.”
Beside me, Lily had gone very quiet.
“You’re welcome, Kayla,” I said finally. My voice was wrecked. “Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, Marcus.”
The little boy waved at me with a fistful of roll.
Kayla moved on down the line. I stood there holding my spoon.
Lily looked up at me.
“Grandma,” she said. “Was that Grandpa’s money?”
“It was, sweetheart.”
She thought about it for a long time. Then she said, very seriously:
“Grandpa would like that. More than the hockey cards.”
“Yes,” I said. “He would.”
At three o’clock, when the last plates were cleared and the last pots were washed and the last paper snowflake had been taken down and boxed for next year, Clare found me in the back by the supply cabinet.
A new snowflake was taped to the front. Made that morning by Noah. Very lopsided. Too many holes in the middle.
Under it, on the masking tape beneath WALT’S CABINET, someone had added two more words in black marker.
AND JO’S.
I looked at Clare.
“Gus,” she said. “He said it was only fair.”
Then she pointed through the open door at the wall of her office. Next to the photo of Walter carrying the folding table hung a new frame.
It was the team photo. The peewee hockey team. Hamilton Hawks, 2002. Fifteen little boys in blue jerseys. And Walter at the end of the back row in his bulky jacket and his whistle, grinning.
“Adam brought it in last month,” Clare said. “He asked if we’d hang it here. He said this is where Walt would want to be.”
I stood in the doorway of Clare’s office and looked at it for a long time. Walter laughing. Walter grinning. Two photographs. Two ends of a life.
Then Adam came up behind me and put his arm around my shoulders.
“Ready, Mom?” he said. “Kids are in the car. Pat’s got the pie warming up at your house. Lily’s already got the hat on.”
“The hat?”
“Dad’s hat,” said Adam. He grinned. “She says it’s your turn again. She says you’re better at the voices than me.”
“I am better at the voices than you.”
“Everybody’s better at the voices than me.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
I took off my red Westdale apron and hung it on the hook by the back door. Beside six others. Adam’s. Renee’s. Pat’s. Lily’s. Noah’s. And one more, an old one, faded, with a small grease stain on the pocket, that Clare had kept on that hook for two years and never let anyone else use.
It said WALT on the front in iron-on letters.
I touched it once on my way out. A light touch, with two fingers.
Then I followed my son out into the cold and the dark, where my family waited in the car with the engine running and the heater blowing, and a little girl in the back seat wore a faded red Walgreens Santa hat that came down over her eyes, practicing her biggest, boomiest voice.
“And now,” she was shouting as I opened the door, “from Grandma Joanne, number one, the CAPTAIN of the whole TEAM…”
I got in. I buckled my seat belt.
And we drove home.
Note: This story is a work of fiction inspired by real events. Names, characters, and details have been altered. Any resemblance is coincidental. The author and publisher disclaim accuracy, liability, and responsibility for interpretations or reliance. All images are for illustration purposes only.
