Janice Johnson - What She Wants for Christmas

She was examining a pretty little Jersey when the farmer said gruffly, “That one has a blocked teat. Feels like a pea in there.”

“I’ll take a look when I’m done,” she said.

They herded the Jersey into a station in the milking parlor, where Teresa could stand in the center aisle, three feet below the stall level. As the cow shifted restlessly, she manipulated the long pale teat.

“Let me tranquilize her,” Teresa said after a moment. She chose the base of the tail for the injection and waited until the cow swayed. Then she pulled out her forceps and probed inside. It took only a moment to remove the hard whitish blob.

She showed it to the farmer. “Scar tissue. Probably left over from mastitis.”

He grunted. “Snipped the teat, did you? I suppose we’d better treat her for mastitis now.”

“I didn’t have to cut it,” Teresa said. “Just keep an eye on her.”

“Ah.” The look he gave Teresa wasn’t warm, but it had thawed. Treating for mastitis meant the cow’s milk was unusable. She’d just saved him some bucks.

He, too, walked her out to the truck. “So you’re the new partner.”

“That’s right.” She unbuckled the rubber overalls and peeled them down.

“I suppose I’ll be seeing you again.”

“We’ll try to accommodate preferences,” she said evenly. “But that may not always be possible.”

He nodded, which could have meant anything from understanding to acquiescence. Teresa chose to take it as the latter. She’d done well.

Eric agreed when she got back to the hospital. “Two phone calls saying they liked you,” he informed her when she’d tracked him down to the kennel. Their resident cat, a huge fat tortoiseshell, sat slavishly at his feet. He was petting the still-groggy shepherd, who now had one floppy ear.

She crossed her arms. “And the two who wouldn’t let me in their barns?”

“One wants to know when I can come. The other says he’s changing services.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” She stomped across the room, then swung around violently. “If they’d just give me a chance…”

Eric closed the cage door and rose to his feet, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Ol’ Man Eide says he did only because he couldn’t wait. He sounded grudging, but he’s willing to concede you’re okay.”

“Eide? That was my last call.”

“Yup.”

“And he phoned you to praise me?”

“I think ‘okay’ is praise in his book.”

Teresa pumped her fist. “Yes!”

Eric slapped her on the back. “You’ll win ’em over.”

Already, she reflected as she unloaded the truck, it felt as if she and Eric had worked together forever. As if they were best friends. It was a good thing they didn’t stir each other’s hormones.

“HE’S HERE AGAIN,” Nicole said into the telephone to her best friend from Bellevue. “He didn’t even make an excuse for stopping by this time!”

“He?” Jayne echoed. “Oh. You mean that guy. The one your mom is seeing.”

“If she marries him, we’ll be stuck here forever!” Nicole said hopelessly.

“Hold on. My call waiting is beeping.”

While Nicole sat listening to silence, she brooded. Couldn’t Jayne tell how upset she was? Like some other phone call was so important.

Leaning against her bed, her door shut, she could still hear voices drifting up the stairs. Laughter. She felt…shut out. Even though she knew she wasn’t really. Mark was down there in the kitchen with them. But she didn’t belong.

Five minutes must have passed before her friend came back on the line with a rush. “That was him,” she said dramatically.

“Him?” But Nicole knew.

“Russ Harlan. He wanted to know if I’m going to a party tomorrow night. As if I’m going to say no.”

Nicole’s chest burned with envy and hurt. She struggled to say something. Cool. I hope he asks you out. Something. But she couldn’t. It was a relief to hear a beep in her ear.

“My call waiting,” she said. “Just a sec.”

The voice was hesitant and male. “Can I talk to Nicole?”

“Speaking,” she said coolly.

“Hi. This is Bill Nelson. I’m, uh, I sit next to you in English.” He waited for her to agree that she knew who he was. When she didn’t, he stumbled on, “I have brown hair. I play football. I’m, you know, a linebacker. We…we talked yesterday. After class.”

She could hear him sweating. Bill Nelson was an okay guy, just kind of big and dumb. But she didn’t care right now. Did he really think she’d go out with him?

“What do you want?”

He swallowed, making a gulping sound. “I…well, there’s this movie in town. Steven Seagal. I thought…that is, I hoped… Would you go with me?”

She felt mean suddenly. “You’re joking.”

Pause. His voice got a lot quieter. “No.”

He must be the tenth guy to hit on her since school started. She’d been nicer to the others. They were all such hicks they didn’t deserve it. Hicks, like the one sitting at her kitchen table right now.

“I have a boyfriend. In Bellevue. I’m really not interested.”

“Oh.” Bill cleared his throat. “Okay. I, uh… Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No big deal,” she said ungraciously. “See ya.” She pushed the button to cut him off and bring Jayne back onto the line.

“Who was that?” Jayne asked.

“Some guy.” Nicole felt a little sick. She shouldn’t have been so hateful. It wasn’t Bill Nelson’s fault that her best friend in the whole world had just snatched the coolest guy she knew away from her.

“Are the guys all lame?” Jayne sounded pitying.

Nicole gritted her teeth. “Of course not. You ought to see the quarterback of the football team. He’s really fine. If I can just figure out how to meet a senior…”

“How hard can it be in a school that small?” Jayne didn’t let her answer. “Well, listen, I gotta go. I’m supposed to help Mom with dinner. Then I need to call Kelly and Roz and tell them all about Russ.”

“Sure.”

“Wow, I wish you were here like you used to be.”

Nicole strained to decide if Jayne meant it or not. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Me, too.”

She had other friends she could have called, but they’d been sounding distant, too. It just wasn’t the same, when she hadn’t been there at school to see Liza tell off her boyfriend, or hear the new government teacher make an ass of himself, or watch Coach Murphy get a speeding ticket right in front of the high school. Everything was different. One-sided. They told her all the latest, and she grumbled about being stuck in this backwater town. But life hadn’t changed for them.

The kitchen door slammed. Nicole lifted her head. Was he leaving? But she could hear Mark talking excitedly and a low calm counterpoint. Careful not to be seen, she went to the window. Sure enough, Mark the traitor was taking a football out onto the lawn with Joe Hughes. They started throwing it, Mark’s passes wobbling, Joe’s perfect spirals.

Like Joe was his dad or something. Didn’t Mark have any discrimination?

What made her maddest was that she was jealous. He never offered to do stuff with her. Actually, she thought she made him uncomfortable. Well, that was how he made her feel. Like neither of them belonged when the other one was around.

But watching her brother and him through the window, Mark chattering, Joe not saying much but making every catch look easy, as though her little brother had a great arm, she had this flash of déjà vu. Their yard in Bellevue hadn’t been very big, but she remembered looking out from her bedroom window seat because she heard her father’s voice out there and seeing him and Mark throwing a football. In her memory, it was bright blue—probably a Nerf ball. But there’d been some connection between them, a closeness that had made her feel jealous for a moment, before she’d heard footsteps on the stairs and her mother’s voice calling her. She’d jumped off the window seat and run to her bedroom door—

She shook her head, jolted out of the dream remembrance. Had she heard her mother calling? But the house was silent. And when she looked out again, standing to one side of her window, she saw that her mother sat on the back porch steps, arms wrapped around her knees, watching Mark and that guy. Why would she bother calling her, Nicole?

Nicole yanked the ugly curtains closed and threw herself facedown on her bed. She told herself she was crying because she missed her father. Sometimes it was hard even to picture him. But she’d just now seen him so vividly, as though it was Dad down there right now, not that redneck logger. She remembered stuff they’d done together, like the time he’d taught her ballroom dancing. Sometimes while Mom was cooking dinner, her father would put on a CD, a waltz, maybe, and bow to her. He was a really good dancer. She could almost forget he was her father. They’d twirl and twirl and twirl, perfectly in time. She guessed that was his way of throwing a ball with her. Maybe that was why she loved to dance so much.

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