The Gift of a Charm Page 18

  Of course, I was nervous too. We were making a big investment. But it was a good investment too. The kind that you lived your life in, a permanent sort of thing, not like buying clothes or shoes or other frivolous things that didn’t mean much, not in the scheme of things.

  Yes, I loved buying clothes and shoes as much as the next girl, but this was real estate and, truth be told, I knew it was the type of investment that would shape our lives. Hopefully for the better.

  I had never known a pair of shoes, or a jacket or piece of jewellery, to ever shape my life.

  Although that wasn’t strictly true, I realised, as my charm bracelet twinkled in the sunlight. Confining one’s life to a small number of events is always difficult, but as with the bracelet, there was always room to add more. And this journey was far from over.

  * * *

  ‘So it’s official, the Classic Six is ours!’ my beloved husband informed me a few days later.

  ‘Are you serious? They accepted our offer? Oh my God, oh my God! When can we move in? Goodness, there’s so much to do and plan…’

  We were going to be homeowners. Spectacular homeowners!

  ‘Shh, soon, soon. The closing will be handled by the lawyers. I’m sure that we can be in by the end of the month.’

  I started to do calculations. That was three and a half weeks’ time. Suddenly, my cramped living room threatened to close in on me and I pictured the space that we would be able to grow into, instead of continually tripping over ourselves trying to manage living life in a veritable shoebox. I had a longing to move tomorrow.

  ‘OK,’ I said, thinking hard. ‘Well, I wish we could move sooner, but I suppose there’s a lot to do in three weeks.’ I gave him another kiss and extricated myself from his embrace, looking for a pen and paper. ‘I need to start making lists. And, you know, I think that this occasion serves for it, so I am going to order these divine change of address cards that I saw in a stationery store over on Lexington to send out to our friends and whatnot. I also think we will have to throw a housewarming party. Now that we are going to have the space, I think it will be so fun to be able to entertain and …

  ‘… What?’ I asked, looking up at my husband, who stood there smiling.

  ‘Do you know you’re beautiful when you are all wound up?’

  I swatted at him with the pad of paper I had found on the end table. ‘Oh hush. I’m a planner, you know that.’

  ‘Yes, you are. But I think you are forgetting one important element. Something that needs to be attended to before anything else.’

  I thought briefly. Organise movers, start thinking about furniture, change of address cards, housewarming party – what was I missing?

  Seeing the puzzled expression on my face, he put his hand in his pocket. When he pulled his hand out, I saw he had something in his palm.

  ‘You are forgetting about this,’ he said, displaying a small charm. ‘Isn’t it how we always mark an occasion?’

  I squealed with delight as I took in the small piece of jewellery. It was a skyscraper. No, actually it was a high-rise building. Looking closer, I realised that in fact it was the high-rise building, the one that housed our new Classic Six apartment.

  ‘Oh my God, look at this. Is this really our building? A model of the building we are moving into? How in the world…?’

  ‘I had it made. After we made the offer, I knew that you would need a charm to mark this step in our lives. And I thought about how to represent it. I didn’t want to buy a house charm, because, well, our place isn’t a traditional house. And I found all these other skyscraper-like charms, but they weren’t right either. So I decided to take a picture of our building to a jeweller on Seventh and have a charm made. That way, it would be extra-special. Do you like it?’

  I looked at the intricate design on the charm and my heart swelled. This was just so special, and of course he was right, our place wasn’t a normal house, and how do you really represent an apartment, even if it is a Classic Six? The picture he’d taken to the jeweller must have been a good one, because this was the work of a true artist.

  ‘Like it? I love it. It’s perfect.’

  I clasped the charm tightly in my closed palm and wrapped my arms around my husband, getting up on my tiptoes to kiss his lips. I thought of the weeks ahead of me, and all that I knew I would have to do before moving, but at the top of my to-do list would be to get this charm added to my bracelet.

  This made it official. We were moving in our new home. The charm in my hand served to acknowledge this landmark occasion that would take us into the next chapter of our lives. Who knew what the future held? All I knew was that right then, the present was perfect.

  Chapter 18

  The following evening, as promised, Holly and Danny went on the hunt for their first proper Christmas tree.

  After work, she picked him up from school and they scanned the nearby streets for Christmas-tree vendors close to home.

  ‘There’s one,’ Danny called out, pulling Holly in the direction of one of the bodegas renting out their sidewalk space to a tree vendor.

  ‘They look like they have plenty, honey – slow down.’

  Holly released his hand and let him spin away from her. She smiled as he raced ahead.

  He was literally jumping up and down in front of a huge spruce tree when she finally made it up the block after him.

  ‘This is it, Mom. This is the one!’ he said excitedly, pointing at it.

  She shook her head. ‘Danny, it must be seven feet tall. How big do you think the apartment is, let alone how wide…?’

  Suddenly, a young man appeared from the depth of the trees. He was bundled up from head to toe in warm clothes so that only his frosted-up glasses showed.

  ‘Do you want me to pull it out for you, ma’am?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes!’ said Danny. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

  Before Holly could protest, the man had pulled the tree off the wooden bar it was leaning on and was shaking it out for them to inspect.

  ‘Perfect,’ Danny proclaimed.

  ‘Too tall,’ she insisted.

  ‘I can cut her down a bit for you and trim the top?’ the man asked hopefully.

  Danny turned to her with pleading eyes. Holly looked from the tree to her son then back to the tree again.

  ‘Fine,’ she sighed, unable to resist that look. ‘Can you whittle it down at least a foot?’ she asked the vendor. He nodded and disappeared with the tree; they heard the saw start as he went to work.

  Danny was so excited he was fit to burst. ‘Ornaments, Mom, what about ornaments?’ he asked.

  Holly hadn’t even thought of that; they really didn’t have any. Well, they had a few, to hang on a garland, ones that Danny made at school.

  ‘I guess we could stop in on Frank and see if he has any?’ she suggested. Encore really was more of a thrift store than a clothing store anyway, despite the spin Frank tried to put on it.

  Danny nodded enthusiastically and Holly waited for the young man to reappear with the shortened-down tree. When he did so, the spruce did indeed look much more manageable and Holly was relieved. She paid for it and he agreed to hold it while they went round the corner to find ornaments.

  She and Danny made the short walk over to Encore. Frank was rearranging some clothing racks and glaring at a pair of teenage girls who seemed more interested in trying on old clothes and laughing at each other than actually buying them.

  ‘Paying customers, I hope?’ he announced pointedly as Holly and Danny approached him. The girls ignored him and continued to pull things off the rack.

  Holly realised she would have to rescue him. She went up to one of the girls and studied the leather jacket she was trying on.

  ‘Excuse me. Are you going to buy that?’ The girl looked at Holly and shrugged noncommittally. ‘Because I would really like to see it.’

  ‘Sure,’ the girl said, and shrugged the jacket off.

  Holly made a big show of going over it in every way, turning it
inside out and examining the label up close. She even pretended to examine the buttons on the sleeves. Then she turned her back to Frank and said to the girls in a loud whisper, ‘Can he see me?’

  The girls shook their head, as Frank was engrossed in conversation with Danny. Still, their interest in what she was doing was piqued.

  ‘Can you believe he only wants twenty-five dollars for this? Man, oh, man…’

  ‘What do you mean?’ the girl Holly had taken the jacket from asked a little defensively.

  ‘Well, you do know Joan Jett…? Oh, never mind,’ she said quickly and began walking away with the jacket as if about to buy it.

  ‘Wait a minute, I was trying that on…’ The girl held out her hand, demanding the jacket back.

  Holly held on to it for a moment, as if unsure of what to do.

  The other girl chimed in, ‘Lady, my friend was trying that jacket on, do you mind?’ She looked as if she were trying to get eye contact with Frank, who really was ignoring them now.

  Holly begrudgingly handed the jacket over. ‘Well, I just hope you know what you have there.’

  The girl snatched it from her. ‘I certainly do!’ she announced, marching up to the counter to buy it.

  Holly watched the two girls waltz out of the store and turned to Frank, who was smiling behind the cash register.

  ‘I really wish you would come and work for me, Holly…’

  She smiled guiltily. ‘Where’d Danny go?’

  ‘Back section, something about Christmas-tree decorations? I think there are a few in the boxes back there.’

  At the rear of the store, Holly found Danny standing amid boxes Frank apparently never bothered to unpack, but had simply arranged on long buffet tables, rummage-sale style.

  ‘Oh, brother…’

  ‘Plus everything smells like mothballs,’ Danny said dejectedly.

  ‘No worries, we’ll search through it for a few minutes and if we don’t find anything, we’ll just go to Rite Aid and stock up on cheesy plastic stuff, OK?’

  Danny nodded and the two of them dived in, searching through the boxes for anything that might work on their newly bought tree.

  After a few minutes Holly called out, ‘Bingo.’

  ‘What? What did you find!’ Danny crossed to her side of the table excitedly.

  She’d salvaged two faded boxes with twelve ornaments in each, the old-fashioned kind made with mercury glass. The colours were faded, but they were charming, in various shapes of Santa, angels and silver bells.

  ‘Perfect,’ Danny grinned.

  Danny sought out an old tree stand but when they brought everything to the front towards the register, Frank waved them right out of the door. ‘Go ahead, you got me a sale. Merry Christmas and whatnot…’

  Bidding him a grateful goodbye, they made their way back to the almost frozen tree vendor, who handed over their tree.

  ‘How the heck are we supposed to get this thing home?’ Holly asked, daunted by the shortened but still disarmingly large spruce. She handed the boxes of ornaments to Danny. ‘OK, you take these and I’ll drag it,’ she said, tossing the tree to the ground so she could get a grip on its trunk.

  Danny watched her anxiously, as if she were about to pick up a human body.

  She managed to get her hands around the trunk, and to her relief it was not that heavy, regardless of the look of it. She started to drag it down the street, with Danny giving directions.

  Reaching the walk-up, she handed the keys to Danny to get them into the lobby, and hauled the tree through the slender double doors, miraculously not breaking any branches. Finally making it to the apartment, she shoved the tree into the living room, relieved.

  They decided to set it up across from the couch, next to the little TV.

  The two of them shoved the trunk into the old metal stand, and Holly held the branches straight as Danny screwed the anchors in. When he was finished, they stepped back to take a look at it.

  ‘It’s big,’ Holly said.

  ‘Now, we have to water it, to make sure it doesn’t dry out.’ Danny bounded off to the kitchen to fill a cup with water.

  ‘How do you know so much?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, my friends have Christmas trees and everything,’ he answered, getting on his knees to water the tree.

  ‘Oh, of course,’ Holly replied, watching him carefully. Did he take everything in like that? Every detail when he went over to a friend’s house? She hadn’t really thought about it before, that he was getting to the age where he might very well notice domestic issues. Like if someone’s apartment was clean or dirty, if they watered their Christmas tree – if there was a father in the home.

  Holly bit her lip; she was not going to obsess over this. She wasn’t the only single mom among Danny’s peers, but she knew she was certainly in the minority. Joey, his best friend, came from a traditional home and a large family, and lived in a huge apartment with a live-in housekeeper. His mom, Rita, was always very kind to Holly, often pressing her to come over and have a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, a glass of wine or something.

  But Holly was always too busy. She had to work, and when she wasn’t working, she wanted to have that free time with Danny. Maybe she would take Rita up on that cup of coffee sometime.

  Holly wondered what else he saw at his friends’ houses and it broke her heart. A dad, a big apartment, vacations, Xboxes and iPads … Holly sighed. They would just have to make their own memories this year, so what if they were a bit different from the mainstream? So they got their ornaments out of an abandoned box in the back of a thrift store … It would build character and tolerance and a real appreciation for what they could afford.

  Danny had finished watering the tree and sat back next to his mother on the couch.

  ‘We need lights,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  Damn, Holly had forgotten about that. Where was she going to get fairy lights at this hour? Then she had a brainwave.

  ‘Tell you what – we’ll take them off the fire escape.’ They had a whole string of fairy lights they hung on the fire escape every year to make it festive. She would simply crawl out there and get them.

  ‘But when, Mom?’ her son asked, and she knew he was trying his best not to sound impatient.

  She grinned, getting up from the couch and crossing the small room to her bedroom area. She pulled the window open and the cold air came rushing in.

  ‘I’ll make you some tea!’ Danny cried, and ran into the kitchen, as if she were about to embark on a major expedition.

  Holly crouched on the fire escape, unwinding the lights carefully with freezing fingers. ‘Oh, the things we do for Christmas…’ she grumbled good-naturedly.

  Once the fairy lights were unwound, she hopped back inside. Danny met her with hot tea. She handed him the lights and took the warm mug, basking in the steam.

  Holly nodded. ‘Go ahead, you do it – you don’t need me for this bit.’

  His eyes brightened as he immediately began to navigate the tree with the string of lights, trying to figure out how they would look best. When he was finished, he shut off the main light, and he and Holly sat on the couch and stared transfixed at their newly decorated tree.

  ‘Why haven’t we ever had a tree before?’ Danny asked, his youthful face illuminated by the lights.

  Holly took a sip of her tea and thought about it. The truth was, it had always seemed like a man’s job. Her father had done it at home. When she left Nick, she hadn’t much felt like celebrating Christmas anyway. Then after Danny was born, her mom had swooped in and they were always invited to Queens for holidays.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘That’s a good question.’

  ‘Can we do this every year?’ he asked hopefully. ‘Whether we go to Nana’s or not?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Holly firmly, ‘we can. Absolutely. I think it’s your best idea yet.’

  Danny snuggled close to her on the couch, and the two of them sat there, happy in the glow of the lights, and each
other’s company.

  ‘Next step, a puppy,’ he grinned, and Holly nudged him playfully with her elbow.

  Chapter 19

  The following morning began with Holly and Danny walking briskly to his school. Well, Holly was walking briskly; Danny was lagging behind her. She guessed that most kids got that way around this time of year: they knew time off was on the horizon and simply couldn’t bring themselves to bear another day of school.

  ‘Come on, Danny, you’ll be late and I am not writing you an excuse note.’ She ploughed ahead without turning round; she was running late – again – so he would just have to keep up. She heard him grumbling a bit behind her, but when they approached the entrance to the school, he suddenly let out a whoop.

  ‘Dad?’

  Holly felt all the blood rush to her face. There was Nick, bundled up in a puffy coat from North Face, sitting on the steps of a building next to the school, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

  Her heart pounding, she let Danny run ahead of her to give his dad a hug. Nick looked sheepishly at her over Danny’s head, which was now buried in the puffy coat.

  ‘Really, Nick, smoking? In front of an elementary school?’ Holly was not going to waste her time with formal hellos.

  ‘Oh sorry, I forgot.’ He stubbed out the cigarette and gave her the ‘are you happy now?’ look that she hated. It always made her feel like a nagging harpie.

  ‘So, what brings you here?’ she asked, her tone even.

  ‘Came to see my son, of course. Hey, buddy!’ Nick punched Danny in the shoulder, who beamed widely. He was trying not to, but couldn’t help it. Holly sighed. Of course he was happy to see his dad; he always was. Problem was, of course he’d be angry with his dad later when Nick let him down again.

  ‘Well, he’s got to go in now – the bell rang, he’ll be late.’ Holly pointed at the lines of children filing into the school building.

  ‘Aw, does he have to go today? I have a day off…’ Nick watched her face darken and added quickly, ‘I know, I know, I should have called, I should have, but it was kind of a last-minute thing.’