Christmas by Accident Page 4

  Abby tore open the envelope and unfolded the paper. As her eyes leapt sentence to sentence, her nostrils flared.

  “What does it say?” Seven asked.

  The letter crinkled in Abby’s hands. “I’ll call him, all right.” Her words riddled with anger. “It says they won’t pay for my car. It says my insurance was cancelled!”

  Carter gripped his highlighter like a knight wielding a sword. While the books spread before him on the table represented but a small fraction of the many Christmas books flooding the market, his college class on Statistical Analysis told him they were enough to provide an in-depth understanding of Christmas stories, their plot, pacing, characters, and more. If he was going to write a Christmas book, he had to understand every part, every piece, how they fit together, and why people purchased them.

  He picked up the first, a hardcover, flipped it open, and began to read.

  “No, no, no!” Abby pleaded. She’d been bounced around so many times already, she tried threats. “If you put me on hold one more time, I swear I’ll hunt you down and . . . Hello? Hello?”

  Too late.

  She desperately wanted to slam the phone to the floor but guessed her phone hoped otherwise.

  Chest breathe. Tippy toes. Hold. Release. Once more. Chest breathe. Tippy toes. Hold. Release.

  As she waited, she scanned the denial letter again. It made no sense because, beside it, she held a copy of Mannie’s cancelled check to the insurance company. She had yet to mention the entire incident to her uncle and had no plans to. It would be the death of him.

  It has to be a simple misunderstanding, she thought. Then, as she turned the letter over, she read the name of the assigned adjuster. There was no direct number for him, only the 800 number on which she was still on hold—and it continued to spew murder music.

  Wait, perhaps there’s another way. She pulled open the lid on her laptop, clicked on the search bar, and typed in the man’s name. There was more than one match, but it wouldn’t take her long to narrow them down.

  The words in her head were already plotting.

  “Carter Cross,” she whispered, “here I come.”

  Carter’s eyes were bulged and dry. It physically hurt to blink. His head pounded like elves on an anvil. His hands shook like a drunk sailor at sea. The stories were so sweet, he worried his teeth were rotting. But what did he expect, rapidly consuming so many Christmas books?

  He was still at the table when Yin wandered in to scour up some breakfast.

  “Carter?” His voice rattled off the cupboards with surprise. “Have you been up all night? It’s the second night in a row!”

  “I’ve had a nap or two,” Carter replied, but with words as frail and sleepy as they were hollow.

  “You’ve got to pace yourself,” Yin insisted. “I have two and a half college degrees. I should know.”

  “It’s worse,” Carter mumbled. “I still have books left.” He picked one from on top of the stack. His face read that he’d rather roll naked in snow than start on it.

  When the doorbell rang, wrinkles drew themselves across Yin’s forehead. “It’s early. Are you expecting someone?”

  Carter was already at the door, the unread book in one hand, his wallet in the other. He swung it back to welcome breakfast.

  “Good morning, Mr. Carter,” said a cocoa-colored El Salvadorian man delivering pizza.

  “Good morning, Roberto,” replied Carter.

  “How many times has Roberto been here?” asked Yin.

  It should have been evident. To help dilute the sugar, Carter had been binging on pizza. Never mind that mixing so much sweetener with equal amounts of saturated fat was akin to washing down sleeping pills with Jolt Cola.

  As Carter counted out the money, Roberto commented on the book tucked under Carter’s arm. “How is that one, Mr. Carter? Any good?”

  Carter showed no emotion—may it forever rest in peace. His words were cold, dead. “It’s a Christmas book, Roberto. Nobody cares.”

  As Roberto wandered away, Yin pushed Carter’s books aside to make room for the new pizza box. In so doing, he uncovered a logical question. “Have you considered simply skipping the rest, Carter, and jumping directly into the writing?”

  Carter winced, but it was the first spark of emotion he’d shown that day, so they both took it as a positive sign. “Yin, I have to do this right. Skipping ahead would be like reading Middle-earth before the Hobbit.”

  Yin’s entire face announced that he had no clue what Carter meant, but he wouldn’t argue. “But are you learning anything?” Yin wasn’t pandering. His curiosity was genuine.

  Carter struggled to marshal his thoughts. Perhaps they were confused by toasted pepperoni in the morning. But the longer he pondered, the higher his eyebrows rose.

  “There are patterns,” he said, “common themes I’ve noticed.” His brain strained to summarize them. “Love, faith, home, change.” Recognition rose like the sun. “As for characters, I’ve read about scrooges and saints, innkeepers and shepherds, mothers hoping for children, and orphans . . . so many orphans.” He was sitting forward, his tone taking that of a professor. “The plots are shallow, the prose trivial, believability hovers at zero. Oh, and miracles—more Christmas miracles than Santa has sleigh bells.” He’d used a metaphor. The pizza was kicking in.

  “That’s not to say every book is without merit. Dickens was the master, and had the stories ended with his, I’d have no qualms. The problem is the parade of pirates chasing Dickens to his grave, hoping they too can ride a Christmas pony to the Promised Land.”

  Yin chewed, swallowed, pointed to the obvious. “Carter, isn’t that what you’re trying to do?”

  It stopped Carter cold, roped him with chains. He squirmed, shrugged, pushed them off his shoulders. There was no point beating around the Christmas bush. “Yes, I am.”

  Yin considered one last notion. “Will you be able to do it?”

  The words stretched, waiting for Carter to exhale. “We’ll soon find out.”

  Mannie rested on the couch at home, half covered by a blue wool blanket, as the Channel 3 news anchor rambled on in the background about the upcoming Thanksgiving Day parade. Abby hurried in from the kitchen. She had stopped by to check on Mannie on her way to work, but now she was running late.

  “How are you doing, Uncle?” Abby asked as she scooted into the family room. “Is there anything else I can get you before I go?”

  It was plain he was not a man who cared to be fussed over. “I told you, I’m fine! Just ask everyone at the store to work hard and let them know that I’ll be back in a few weeks, as soon as I’m rested.”

  “Do you need me to fix your blanket?” Abby wondered as she reached to pull it up snug.

  “Abby!” His glare snarled, and so she left the blanket alone.

  She raised her hands in surrender. “Have it your way. There’s a sandwich in the fridge—roast beef, your ­favorite—and I’ve cut up some carrots and broccoli. They will do you some good, so eat those as well.”

  “Have a great day!” he answered, half sincerely, half curtly.

  Abby stared at the man for a long moment, then dipped down to kiss him on his head one last time before leaving.

  Mannie watched the door shut, listened as Abby started his car, waited for the sound of the engine to disappear. He didn’t mean to be rude, but he couldn’t have her notice: his left arm was numb and aching and his blanket was falling off because he couldn’t get enough grip strength in his hands to pull it up tight.

  He rested, prayed it would pass, rested longer.

  “It’s too soon,” he mumbled to the empty room as he pressed his fingers against the cushion of the couch. “Please, I need a little more time.” His head tipped up toward the ceiling. “There are still a couple of things I need to do.”

  When Carter turned the final pa
ge of the last Christmas book, he was certain he heard angels singing the Hallelujah Chorus—and the choir arrived not a moment too soon. One more book and he’d threatened to buy a Red Ryder BB gun and shoot his eyes out. Anything to end the misery.

  Now, nearly hypnotized by his blinking cursor, he recognized his fussing may have been premature. When the idea to write a Christmas book had first waved its eager hand, Carter was filled with unsullied excitement. Later, as he trudged through the myriad of Christmas books, digging under the hood to discover what made them tick, that excitement swirled into impatience.

  Finally, recognizing that it was time to lay words on paper—sentences, paragraphs, pages—an emotion infinitely more powerful than all the rest clenched its rusty fingers around Carter’s heart, threatening to crush him.

  Fear.

  What if, after all this, he couldn’t do it?

  Taking lessons from the books he’d read, Carter crafted his best story about a homeless double-amputee orphan with two hand-carved wooden legs and a crutch. In a soul-wrenching scene, the boy, believing the nativity display at his church to be real, offered his most prized possessions—his two wooden legs—to the manger baby. But when Carter reread his work from the beginning, he wasn’t certain whether to weep or to laugh.

  He deleted it all and started over, creating instead a story about Santa crashing his sleigh into a chimney, filing a claim, and then dealing with the nonresponsive North Pole Insurance Company. If reimbursement wasn’t received soon, Santa would be forced to cancel Christmas.

  Carter was fast coming to understand that embellishing adjective-laden accident reports was like a ­baby’s bumbling first step. Finishing a book, even a short Christmas story—crafting a cohesive plot, creating ­credible characters, inventing interesting dialogue, pulling forward a narrative that would touch a reader’s heart—that was running a marathon, blindfolded, uphill and backwards, a feat for which Carter had no training.

  It was eight hours later when Yin tapped softly on the door. No pizza had arrived, Carter hadn’t come out of his room, and Yin was worried.

  “Carter, are you alive?” he asked, pushing the door open.

  Carter’s eyes were lead, his neck was marble. His arms resting on his pitiless keyboard could have been stuffed with batting. They served only to connect to his lifeless hands and fingers. He was breathing—in and out, in and out—but was otherwise stiff as a corpse.

  The computer screen was once again blank, save that despicable blinking cursor.

  “Did you hear me?” Yin said louder.

  Carter stirred. He spoke. “How did Hemingway do it?” he asked, his head rattling ever so slightly.

  Although Yin had only read Hemingway in literature class, he couldn’t help but voice the obvious. “I think Hemingway shot himself.”

  “Before that?” Carter said.

  Yin sidestepped the question, dodged it by changing direction. “Do you have anything written?”

  Carter grunted, letting the disdain in his eyes translate the sound for him.

  “How about a title? Start there.” Yin spat the words out so easily, as if the likes of said plan had never dawned on Carter.

  “Splendid idea!” Carter answered, with sarcasm bleeding oceans. He pushed away from the table. “What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” he asked. His veins were swollen and pulsing. “I’ve been searching, brainstorming, investigating different titles for the last six hours. I’ve even compiled a list. Check it out!” Carter thrust rumpled pages toward Yin before gathering them back to read aloud.

  “There are already Christmas books about animals: The Christmas Cat, The Christmas Dog, The Christmas Pony, The Christmas Mouse, The Christmas Duck. There are Christmas books about places: The Christmas Cottage, The Christmas Town, The Christmas Bridge, The Christmas Street, The Christmas Manger. Nearly every piece of clothing: The Christmas Sweater, The Christmas Mittens, The Christmas Shoes, The Christmas Socks. Chen, even Santa’s underwear has been exploited! And let’s not forget the never-ending books about things: The Christmas Box, The Christmas Jars, The Christmas Quilt, The Christmas Sleigh, The Christmas Candle.” Carter latched onto Yin’s arm, pinched flesh with fingernails. His voice quaked with desperation. “I can go on forever! Yin,” Carter nearly screamed, “all the best nouns are taken!”

  Yin pried Carter’s fingers from his forearm, rubbing at the marks that looked like tiny smiles. “There must be something. How about . . . I don’t know . . . The Christmas . . . Monkey?” Carter didn’t move, didn’t blink. He wasn’t sure if Yin was joking or serious, but either way, it wasn’t funny, since he knew The Christmas Monkey had already been used.

  With no reaction, Yin tried again. “Okay, then . . . um . . .” Yin glanced around the room. “The Christmas Chair. The Christmas Carpet. The Christmas Spoon. The Christmas Fork. The Christmas Pizza. Any of those work?”

  Carter’s jaw dropped open and exasperation dribbled out. His eyes were bulging like a fat man’s belly. He’d already done the research. Why did Yin not understand? “The only one of those not already in a Christmas title is FORK!”

  Yin waited. Carter waited.

  With every passing moment, anger simmered into swampy sadness. Soon Carter lifted his head. “Yin?” he asked, so sullenly the walls almost wept. “You’re majoring in computer science, right?”

  “Currently, yes.”

  “It’s hypothetical, but say I name my book The Christmas Fork. How will anyone find it?”

  Yin didn’t realize he wasn’t supposed to answer. Perhaps he didn’t hear the word hypothetical. “They’d have to search by Christmas and also Fork, and, well, there are some other search tricks I can teach you to . . .” Yin’s mouth kept moving, explaining the finer points of search engine optimization, but all that reached Carter’s ears was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

  If presuicidal Hemingway had been there, Carter would have put his arm around the man and his barstool, explained to him that he completely understood, and the pair would have swigged away their sorrows for the balance of the evening—and Carter didn’t drink.

  Yin must have realized he was being ignored because he started to shuffle from the room. Just before he reached the door, he paused. “You know, it’s too bad you can’t simply string a bunch of the book names together. You’d totally come up first on Google.” And then Yin cackled like the Joker in Batman, but Carter couldn’t decide if he sounded more like Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight or Jack Nicholson in the version circa 1989.

  As he was weighing the two Jokers in his head, Yin’s words hung like stagnant smoke that Carter couldn’t help but breathe. When he chewed his lips, he could taste it, and then the smoke sparked an idea that flickered.

  Carter cranked his head. “Say that again,” he demanded.

  Yin turned. “I said that if you could put a bunch of the Christmas book names together, you’d search great on Google and . . .”

  Carter stood. Carter paced. His arms now flailed. He wasn’t bouncing yet, but he was about to. It was a Christmas miracle after all. “Yin, you’re brilliant!” he said. “You’ve just named my book!”

  Yin’s eyebrows mobilized as one. “The Christmas Fork?”

  Carter was now laughing. “Fork? No! My book is going to be called . . .” He waited for the words to line up on his tongue. When they finally filed out, they were tap dancing.

  “The Christmas Carol, Angel, Box, Wish!”

  Mannie punched the numbers on the phone slowly, deliberately. “Doctor, this is Mannie McBride. I noticed you left a message on the machine.”

  “Thank you for calling me back. How are you doing, Mannie?”

  Mannie returned a sarcastic sigh. “At times I’m short of breath. My limbs go numb and throb . . . oh, and, according to you, my heart could give out at any moment. But otherwise, I’m fabulous. How are you?”

  He imagined
the doctor grinning. “I have a tiny bit of good news,” the voice coming through the phone replied.

  Mannie sat taller. “I’m listening.”

  “This isn’t a cure, Mannie. The ending will still be the same, but there’s a new drug trial that you qualify for. And while I wouldn’t classify it as promising—that would raise expectations too high—I think if your heart can hold out, this drug will relieve some of your other symptoms and buy you some extra time.”

  Mannie had a single question. “How much time?”

  He could hear the doctor speaking with someone else. Their voices were muffled. A moment passed before the man answered. “Best guess is two to six months.”

  Mannie couldn’t spit the words out fast enough. “When can I begin?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. I have the pharma rep sitting in my office as we speak. We’ve been discussing your case. There will be some paperwork to fill out, but in short, you can start right away. I’ll have everything here. Come down at your convenience.”

  The words stuck in Mannie’s throat. It took a moment to jar them free. “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Mannie hung up the phone, winced, rested, and then punched in the number for a taxi. Once he confirmed that a car was on the way, he attempted to process what had just happened.

  His eyes were glassy but brighter than they’d been in days. The muscles in his face that he used to smile received a sudden call to action. He reached for a tissue to wipe his nose, which had decided to run.

  While he waited for the ride that would take him to retrieve the drugs necessary to extend his life, Mannie McBride dropped gently to his knees and began to weep.

  While a story about a wooden-legged orphan felt overly contrived, and one with a sleigh-crashing Santa who battled an evil insurance company swerved too close to home, a different kind of story was chaining itself together in Carter’s head.

  It came slowly: a slivered thought here, a slice of vision there. An idea gusted in through a window crack and hung momentarily in the air, free-floating a foot or two above Carter’s monitor, daring him to find the right words before it splintered into fragments and faded away forever. It was a serious story that didn’t match Carter’s whimsical title, but he hoped to eventually link them together.