Janice Johnson - What She Wants for Christmas

“Can we look around?” Nicole asked when they left the office.

“Well, of course.” Teresa nodded at the map and schedule Nicole carried. “What’s your first class?”

“Um…algebra. Room 233.” She peered around doubtfully. “Are we on the second floor here, do you think?”

They were; 233 was just down the hall. Nicole insisted on glancing in. It looked like any other classroom to Teresa, if a little old-fashioned. The ceilings were high, the woodwork dark, and a smell of floor polish was underlaid with that of chalk and the pages of new textbooks, piled on a table by the door.

The chemistry lab looked perfectly adequate to Teresa, as well; Nicole critiqued it as they wandered between high black-topped tables furnished with microscopes and glass beakers and petri dishes. Teresa, filled with nostalgia for her own high-school days, was able to tune her daughter out. She’d had a mad crush on her biology/chemistry teacher, in part because he inspired her with his own passionate interest in the unseen organisms that cause disease or well-being. It had taken her a while to realize she was more excited by cell division than she was by him.

They progressed to the library, where Nicole prowled the shelves, returning to announce, “This collection is ancient! How does anybody do any research here?”

“Fortunately White Horse belongs to an excellent public library system,” Teresa reminded her. “In fact, the local branch isn’t two blocks from here. You can go over there on your way home from school.”

Her daughter frowned at her. “Don’t you think they ought to have a better school library?”

“Yep. I’ll join the PTA and campaign for a bigger book budget.”

“Fat lot of good that’ll do me,” Nicole muttered.

“Probably not,” Teresa admitted, “but it might achieve something before Mark gets to high school.”

“I suppose you think his education is more important than mine!”

Teresa gave an inward sigh. “You know that isn’t true. But I see no reason you won’t get a perfectly adequate education here. Let’s face it, at this level it’s the teacher that counts. The teacher, and the effort you are willing to expend.” She added some briskness to her voice. “If you get bored, next year you can start taking some classes at the community college in Everett.”

“I’m supposed to be happy when you pulled me out of a great high school—”

“Rife with drugs and gangs.”

“—and moved me here.” Examining a banner decorating the wall above a bank of metal lockers, Nicole curled her lip. “This one is full of Future Farmers of America.” Every word was a sneer. “What am I supposed to do, learn how to milk a cow?”

“Wouldn’t hurt. I had to,” Teresa said unsympathetically. “Have you seen enough? Shall we go find Mark?”

Rolled eyes. “Yeah, I’ve seen enough.”

Outside they found Mark involved in an impromptu soccer game with a bunch of boys who ranged from third or fourth grade on up to middle-school age. He trotted over.

“Can I stay awhile, Mom? For an hour or two?”

“You bet.” She cuffed him lightly on the shoulder. “Have fun.”

Nicole turned the full battery of entreaty on her from wide brown eyes. “Since we have an hour, can we go shopping, Mom? Please?”

Teresa hated to shop. She didn’t care about clothes, seldom bothered with makeup, couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn a dress. How she’d given birth to a child obsessed with appearances would forever remain a mystery to her.

But this struck her as an intelligent moment to compromise. “Fine. We’ll see what the town has to offer.”

A smug smile curled her daughter’s pale mouth. Because she’d won? Or because she figured she had a chance to show her mother how inadequate White Horse was? Self-absorbed as she was, she probably hadn’t noticed that Teresa visited malls only under duress.

Teresa decided the answer was the latter when she shocked Nicole out of her socks by actually finding an outfit she liked. White Horse only had two clothing stores. One of them had beautiful, high-quality casual clothes for women. Teresa looked around happily. “I’ll never have to hit the mall again. I’ll just come in here and snap something up.”

“But this is old-lady stuff!”

“You mean, it’s not teenage stuff. I am not a teenager, believe it or not.” She headed for a display of cotton sweaters.

“Mo-om.”

She waved Nicole off. “Let me try these things on.”

Twenty minutes later, she paid for a pair of slim-fitting pants, a tunic-length sweater and a chunky silver necklace to wear over it.

A very sulky teenager followed her out onto the sidewalk. “Where am I supposed to shop?”

“The Everett Mall is only forty-five minutes away.”

“Everett!”

“Bellevue Square isn’t much over an hour. Surely some of those friends who used to pick you up every morning will come up here and get you once in a while.”

“Oh, right.” Nicole flung herself into the passenger seat of the car and slumped down, her expression tight. “They’re supposed to drive for almost four hours just to see me.”

Once behind the wheel, Teresa studied her daughter. She looked and sounded so unhappy Teresa reached out and stroked her hair. “Sweetheart—”

Nicole averted her face. “Oh, please. Spare me the lecture about making the best of it.”

Teresa hesitated, then started the car. Maybe, determined that her children be as happy about the move as she’d been, she had been insensitive to Nicole’s misery. On one level, she understood it; on another, she didn’t at all. She hadn’t been as social a creature as her daughter was. At that age, she’d been absorbed in her books and her studies and her ambition for the future. She’d had friends of course, but she didn’t remember missing them all that much when she went off to college. Probably she wouldn’t have missed them any more if her family had moved.

And here she’d been accusing Nicole of being self-absorbed. Maybe, Teresa thought ruefully, she was the selfish one. She’d convinced herself that the kids would be better off in small-town America because this was what she wanted for herself. She still thought this was a better place to raise children—but maybe Nicole was already too formed by her environment to adjust. Maybe, along with the veterinary practice and the farmhouse, Teresa had bought her daughter unhappiness.

The thought was an unsettling one.

IT WAS STILL on her mind on Friday as she dressed for her date with Joe Hughes. Nicole hadn’t been happy to hear that her mother was going out with the logger and that she was condemned to baby-sit her little brother. It didn’t help when Teresa pointed out that Nicole would have been sitting home, anyway.

Realizing her mistake immediately, Teresa tried to amend it. “You haven’t picked up any baby-sitting clientele yet—”

“How can I? I don’t know anybody.”

“Why don’t I put up a notice for you at the clinic?”

Nicole lifted one finger and traced a dispirited circle in the air. “Wow.”

“Joe mentioned brothers and sisters. Maybe they have kids.”

“Mom.” Nicole waited until her mother turned to look at her. “I don’t care if I baby-sit. I don’t need the money. There’s nowhere to shop, remember? Nobody to shop with? Okay?”

Teresa gritted her teeth at the snotty tone, but decided to let it pass. This time.

She ended up wearing the outfit she’d bought in town that day with Nicole. If Joe showed up in a suit and tie, she’d whisk back into the bedroom and exchange the leggings for a calf-length gauzy skirt.

As it turned out, he wore jeans and a plaid sports shirt that echoed the extraordinary blue of his eyes. His eyes took in her appearance with one swift assessing glance and returned, obviously approving, to her face.

“Do you like Mexican food? I thought we’d go to La Hacienda here in town.”

“Love it,” she assured him, standing aside. “Joe, I’d like you to meet my kids. Nicole, Mark, come here.”

He shook hands solemnly with both, didn’t remark on Nicole’s teenage sulkiness and agreed with Mark that soccer was a popular sport in White Horse.

“One of my nieces plays select soccer,” Joe said. “She’s darn good. They go to tournaments all over the state.”

“That’d be cool.” Mark’s eyes were wide.

Briskly Teresa ended the preliminaries. “See you, guys. I don’t know what time I’ll be home.”

In the pickup, Joe said, “I feel a little guilty leaving them behind. I could feed them, too—”

“No!” she exclaimed, then saw his surprise and amusement. She made a face. “Nicole’s driving me nuts,” she admitted. “I need a break.” There was more, of course. The moment she’d answered the door, she’d remembered why she’d wanted so badly to go out with this man. The fantasies she’d indulged in this past week had not included her children.

“You ought to talk to Jess. Her oldest is, uh—” he obviously had to calculate “—twelve going on thirteen. She’s been a pain in the butt lately.”

“Maybe I will. Tell me, how many nieces and nephews do you have?”

“Uh…” More calculations. “Seven. Lee has four, Jess two and Rebecca one. Although she’s expecting another.”

“And you all live here in town?”

He offered her that heart-stopping grin. “Pretty overwhelming, huh?”

Had she sounded rude? She would have liked to see her own sisters and their families more often, but…

“My younger sister was so nosy,” she said. “Still is.”

“My mother is the nosy one.” His big shoulders moved. “I ignore her.”

Teresa could imagine that. His rock-solid steadiness was part of what attracted her, but it wouldn’t make him a flexible man. So to speak.

“You don’t have any kids?” She hoped her question sounded casual.

“Never been married.” The statement so carefully held no inflection it should have stopped her from commenting. It didn’t.

“You’re kidding.”

Joe shot her a glance. “Why’s that so surprising?”

“Because you’re, ah…” Fumbling for words, she settled for the truth. “You’re a hunk. I can’t believe some woman didn’t snap you up.”

“Like a tasty fly?” he asked wryly.

Teresa couldn’t resist it. She chanted, “There was a young woman who swallowed a fly…”

“And now she’ll die?” he concluded.

Of happiness, maybe, Teresa thought, but had the sense not to say.

“I guess the whole analogy is a little—” she grinned “—distasteful.”

He groaned. “Oh, God, a woman who likes puns.”

“Didn’t someone say it’s the highest form of humor?”

“Are you sure it wasn’t the lowest?”

“You should have heard us in vet school,” Teresa said cheerfully. “We were bad.”

“Question is, are you hungry?”

She blinked and looked around. Heavens, they were parked in front of the restaurant. How long had they been here while she blathered?

“Starved,” she admitted. “A day of standing around always makes me think about food.”

He started to circle the truck, presumably to get the door for her; she didn’t wait. If he wanted a lady, he could look elsewhere. But all he said was, “Things no better at work?”

“Heck no.” Teresa sighed. “Let’s talk about something else.”

Over enchiladas, they did. She chattered on about her years of school; he merely shook his head when she asked if he’d gone to college.

“How’d you get started in logging?”