Jimmy nodded. "It looks good to me."
"How much?" asked Doc.
Fred called out to the shed, "Merle, how much for this blue spruce just came in?"
Merle called back, "Let him have it for a dollar fifty."
One more opinion poll and they all agreed and Doc said, "Have the boys bring it over and put it on the porch; we can get it in from there."
They then headed down the street to Morgan Brothers department store to look at the Christmas display in the window. As they went past the barbershop a few of the men, including James Whooten, Tot's husband, were still inside and waved at them. While they walked they could hear music playing from the speakers outside the stores. Perry Como was singing "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" and it was. MERRY CHRISTMAS was written across all the windows in red, white, and green.
To Bobby it seemed that downtown had changed magically overnight. The two large glass bottles filled with red and blue colored water that had always been in the drugstore window before suddenly looked like two huge lighted Christmas balls. Tonight even the cement in front of the theater seemed to sparkle like tiny chips of silver tinsel. When they got down to the department store, there was already a crowd of people and children standing there enjoying the "Winter Wonderland" display, amazed by the hundreds of little mechanical figures all moving at the same time. Elves and Mr. and Mrs. Santa Glaus, trains full of toys running up and down a white mountain and in and out of tunnels. Skiers in ski lifts moving up to the top of the mountain and skiing back down again. Reindeer with their heads bobbing, horses and buggies and tiny cars moved through the miniature village. Dogs wagging their tails, little figures of men, women, and children skating and twirling across a pond made out of a large round mirror surrounded by glittering snow and miniature green trees. There was an entire world going on inside the window. Bobby would have stayed there for hours with his face pressed to it if they had let him. On the way back home they passed the Civitan lot again just in time to meet Norma and Macky Warren coming out with the pink Christmas tree.
"Hi," Norma said cheerfully. "Look what we just got. Isn't it the cutest thing you have ever seen?"
Mother Smith was speechless for the moment but Dorothy jumped in. "Oh, it is. We were looking at it earlier this evening ourselves," she said, not telling a lie.
Norma said, "Please tell Anna Lee to call me when she gets home."
"We will."
After they had gone on, Mother Smith remarked, "I'd give a million dollars to see Ida Jenkins's face when she sees that thing in Norma's living room."
When they got home everyone was tired and went straight to bed and Bobby dreamed about the Christmas window all night. He was inside ice-skating on the mirror pond, twirling around and around, with the pretty little girl in the short red skirt and white skates, but in his dreams she looked a lot like Claudia Albetta, the little girl that sat in front of him in class. Three days before, Jimmy had wandered around Morgan Brothers department store looking for last-minute presents but had found that he was having trouble. A saleswoman watched him as he picked up one thing after another and put it back down. Finally, she went over to him. "Jimmy, why don't you tell me what you are looking for," she said. "Maybe I can help you."
"Well…"
"Who are you trying to buy something for?"
Jimmy was too embarrassed to tell her but did manage to say that he needed the help. "It's for a lady."
"I see. Well, how about a nice scarf?" she said. "A scarf is always nice. What color hair does she have?"
"Brown," he murmured as he followed her over to the scarf counter.
After school the next day, Betty Raye and Bobby started unwrapping the Christmas ornaments and Doc came home with three new strings of glass candle lights that bubbled. He thought bubbling ones would look nice with the blinking lights they already had.
When Jimmy came in, he and Doc hung on the front door the splendid fresh holly Christmas wreath that one of Dorothy's sponsors, Cecil Figgs, had sent. After dinner they all went into the living room and started to decorate all except Mother Smith. It was her job to sit on the sofa and point out what was needed and where. By nine o'clock that night, cream-colored cardboard candle holders with blue lights were in every window, with strings of red cutout paper letters that said MERRY CHRISTMAS hung over all the doors, and the tree in the corner was covered with green and red satin balls, and shiny red and dark blue ones with white frosted strips around them. They finished it off with silver tinsel, strings of popcorn, and, on top, a cocker spaniel angel with wings, which one of Dorothy's listeners had sent her in honor of Princess Mary Margaret.
The next morning at 8:54 A.M. Dixie Cahill led all sixteen of her dance students in full costume and makeup down the stairs of the Dixie Cahill School of Tap and Twirl and out onto the sidewalk. She lined them up single file, blew her whistle, and marched them through town and over to The Neighbor Dorothy Show to make their annual Christmas appearance.
Since they were all wearing bells on their tap shoes, they made quite a racket as they marched down the street. Ed the barber said they sounded like a herd of reindeer going by. A few minutes later they marched up the porch stairs and into Neighbor Dorothy's house and lined up in the back of the living room to wait until it was time for their number.
The house was packed with people. The hand bell choir was lined up down the hall, waiting to go on after them, and Ernest Koonitz was smashed in a corner in the dining room ready to be called for his annual tuba solo. Neighbor Dorothy, in a wonderful mood, came down the hall wearing her green Christmas dress and a silver-bells corsage. It was a doubly festive day for her. She loved doing her Christmas show and Anna Lee was coming home today. After she greeted everyone, she squeezed through the crowd and stepped over children who were sitting on the floor; then she sat down, gathered her commercials, and the show started with a big "Good morning, everybody, and happy December twenty-third! We have so many wonderful surprises for you and so much fine entertainment on our show today I can hardly wait to get started.
"We are so excited over here in Elmwood Springs this morning… We have our students here from the Dixie Cahill School of Tap and Twirl to do a wonderful tap number to "Jingle Bells" and I know we are going to enjoy that. Also the hand bell choir from the First Methodist Church is here to play "It Came upon a Midnight Clear' for you. We have lots of bells this morning but I guess you can never have too many bells at Christmas time, can you. And Ernest Koonitz is here to do another solo entitled…" She paused. "Somebody stick your head in the dining room and ask him." Dixie called out the title and Dorothy relayed it to her listeners.
"He's playing "Joy to the World' but before we get to our entertainment I have another reminder for you…" Mother Smith played a chord or two of "Santa Glaus Is Coming to Town." "That's right, Mother Smith, Santa Glaus is coming to town and he will be in the back of Morgan Brothers department store today and all day tomorrow, so be sure and go down and have your photograph made with him. I'm taking Princess Mary Margaret down right after the show to have her picture made with Santa and don't forget, all proceeds go to benefit the Salvation Army, who do so much good, not just at Christmas but all year long." Suddenly everybody in the audience started to laugh at something be hind her and she turned around to see Mr. and Mrs. Santa Glaus standing on the porch at the living room window and waving. Dorothy said, "Well, as I live and breathe, here are the Santa Clauses now."
She opened the window and Santa leaned in and said to Dorothy in a deep voice, "Merry Christmas, little girl!"
Dorothy had to laugh; she had not expected this surprise visit from Santa, especially one who sounded a lot like Bess Goodnight.
Ada and Bess, who had been up at the grammar school earlier this morning handing out presents, had stopped by the barbershop for a little Christmas cheer on the way home and were feeling no pain. As modern women of the world, they often joined the boys in a friendly drink or two and had brought Mother Smith, who also enjoyed a little nip now and then, a paper cup of eggnog.
Anna Lee arrived at the train station looking wonderful and full of news about all the new boyfriends she had. No surprise there. And of course Doc was happy to have the apple of his eye home, looking so beautiful on the platform, and so was everyone. Dorothy couldn't wait to get her home. She told Anna Lee that no matter how old or grown-up they were, she just did not sleep well unless both her children were home in their own beds and she knew they were safe and sound.
That night, by the time Dorothy finished up in the kitchen, Doc was already in bed. She cleaned her face with cold cream and turned off the light and got in beside him. After a moment, she said, "Doc, are you still awake?"
"Just barely."
"Hasn't this just been the loveliest day? Practically perfect?"
"Yes."
After another moment, she said, "Doc, ask me what I would wish for if I could only have one wish come true."
He did not have to ask.
"He would have been twenty-six this year, Doc."
He reached over and patted her hand. "I know, honey."
No matter how many years had passed since their first son, Michael, died, every holiday had always been tinged with a secret sadness. For the first ten years every Christmas morning the two of them had gone out to his grave and decorated it with a small tree and little toys, and every Easter an Easter basket had been placed there. Every year on his birthday and on the anniversary of the day he died they missed him more. Rarely did a day go by when one or the other did not think to themselves Michael would be six or twelve or whatever the age he would be that year. Although they never discussed it with anyone, donations made in memory of Michael Smith had paid for beds and wallpaper for an entire wing of the Children's Hospital. Most of the money to buy a Seeing Eye dog for Beatrice Woods came from a large donation to the Princess Mary Margaret Fund in his name.
Now twenty-two years had gone by. Dorothy wondered what kind of man he would have been. What young girl would have loved him and maybe even married him by now? What would his children be like, and would they look like him? Although he had been gone for many years, a picture of him as a child was always alive in Dorothy's mind. She continued to see him standing there and waving at her, the little boy that did not live. She often thought about the bud that never bloomed, the egg that never hatched, and wondered what happened to them. Did they just disappear, never to exist, lost forever, or would they come back again some spring? For years she looked for her little boy in every small child she saw, looked for him in the eyes of every blond boy with blue eyes like his. But she never found him again.
On the morning of December twenty-fourth, Bobby could hardly wait for the night to come. Ever since Jimmy had become their boarder and lived with them, the Smiths had started to open their presents on Christmas Eve. Jimmy had to catch the 11:45 P.M. bus to Kansas City to spend Christmas Day visiting his friends at the veterans hospital. And it was a good thing, because by that time Bobby and Mother Smith, both too curious for their own good, had usually poked, shook, and rattled their presents almost to death and the gifts might not have lasted until Christmas morning. Still, it was a long wait. Once Dorothy had seen a newsreel of Joan Crawford, her favorite movie star, and her children gathered around a piano singing carols on Christmas Eve, they had to do the same thing. Now, every year after dinner she made them all go in and gather around the organ and sing. Bobby hated the custom with a passion. As far as he was concerned, it just delayed the real meaning of Christmas: presents. At around 9:30 that night, when they finally sat down to open them, the phone rang. Dorothy said, before picking up the phone, "Wait a minute… let me see who this is… Don't open anything yet." Oh, rats! thought Bobby, who was just about to tear into the big box with his name on it.
They could hear Dorothy saying to someone on the phone, "Oh no… oh, you poor thing… Oh… well, bless your heart… Yes… I'm sure he will… Oh, you poor dear." She came back in and looked at Doc. "That was Poor Tot. Her mother stole all the presents she had wrapped and hid them in the backyard and now she can't find them and she wondered if you would go down and open up the drugstore for her so she could get a few things for the kids to have in the morning. I told her you would."
"All right," said Doc and got up to get his coat. "You all go ahead and open the presents. I'll be back in a little while."
Dorothy said, "We will do no such thing. We are not going to open anything until you get back."
Bobby asked his mother, "Can't we open just one?"
"No, Bobby, put that back down."
Mother Smith sighed. "Poor Tot, to have to work all day and then to have to put up with that crazy mother of hers and try to raise those two children at the same time. I don't know how she puts up with it all myself."
"I don't either, and to make matters worse," Dorothy said, "James fell into the tree and broke everything again."
When Doc got downtown he went in and turned on the lights in the drugstore and Poor Tot came in right behind him wearing her aqua chenille robe and house shoes, looking as frazzled as she had the last time this had happened. They went through and picked out a Sparkle Plenty doll and some hair barrettes for Darlene, who was seven, and a few stuffed toys for Dwayne Jr." who was two and a half As they walked around looking, she picked up a little plastic see-through purse and said, "I just don't know what to do next, Doc, scream or jump off a building. James is spending my money faster than I can make it. I'm fixing hair all day, and he's out all night drinking it up."
Doc told her what he had been telling her for years. "Honey, what you need to do is throw the bum out."