I'm Your Girl

by J.J. Murray

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Multicultural & Interracial Romance

Synopsis

For public library clerk Diane Anderson, reading romance novels and living vicariously is far easier than attracting a flesh-and-blood man of her own. It seems she's too voluptuous in the wrong places to attract the kind of black man her mama requires as a son-in-law...and just exotic enough to attract the kind of white man Mama forbids. But there's something about that lost-looking guy who comes into the library one afternoon. And when he reveals that Diane is his muse, well, she can't help being intrigued...After months spent mourning a personal tragedy, novelist Jack Browning is struggling to get back to work. Under pressure to write his second novel, Jack hits the library for ideas. The clerk who helps him is smart, sassy--and curvy in all the right places. He finds himself thinking of Diane as he creates the heroine of his book. And soon, she's knocking down the wall he'd built around himself, becoming the inspiration for his art...and maybe even for his life...

Release date: February 19, 2010

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 510

Sample

This game is rigged.

I know it’s only solitaire, but these cards just don’t want to fall for me tonight. For seven games in a row, the ace I’ve needed to win has been hiding in the last pile on the right, and twice it’s been the bottom card.

It serves me right for playing solitaire on Christmas Eve.

Solitaire is a funny game. It takes a long time to win, and when you do, you keep playing—and losing—until you win again. It’s just something to do with my hands, to keep them occupied. “Idle hands,” my mama used to say to me, and I’d finish the phrase: “are the Devil’s playground.”

I’ll bet even the Devil cheats at solitaire.

Solitaire is kind of like life, I guess. You fuss and scratch to get into college, take the right courses, get the degree that you hope will take you through the rest of your life, get that diploma…then lose your mind trying to find a job that matches that diploma. I have a degree in library science, and, yes, it is a science to run a library. I figured that this country, with thousands of libraries, would have openings wherever I looked, especially for a suede-skinned sister like myself.

I was wrong.

While I was doing some part-time work at libraries in my hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana—and living with my mama, but that’s another story—I was sending résumés to libraries all over the country. Most never responded, and four wrote nice “no-thank-you” letters, leaving me with interviews in Chicago, Louisville, and Roanoke, Virginia.

I had to look up that last place on a map.

And, of course, Roanoke is where I ended up. My official title is Grade Four Clerk, because I actually have a library science degree. I’m a clerk. I’m not “Assistant Librarian,” not a “Media Specialist”—just a Grade Four Clerk, as if I’m working in an elementary school somewhere. I shelve books, reshelve books, scan bar codes, compile overdue lists, conduct reference interviews until my voice gets hoarse, and occasionally help coordinate Saturday morning readings for the kids. Yeah, that’s me behind the circulation or reference desk, eyeing every person wandering into the library, forcing a smile and making change for the copier.

And…that’s…about…it.

“Give me a king, please!”

And I’m talking to a deck of cards on Christmas Eve.

It’s better than talking to my mama, though. She had called earlier this evening to bug me about coming home for the holidays.

“Meet any interesting men today?” she had asked. That’s all Mama cares to know, and that’s how every conversation starts.

“No, Mama.” Though there’s this homeless man who winks at me all the time. He’s a nice man, I’m sure, but he only comes into the library to bathe in the men’s room sink and dry his wet socks with the hand dryers.

“Well, you remember what I’ve always told you, Dee-Dee.” That’s what my mama calls me, and I hate it. “You can have any shade of a man as long as he’s black.”

She has a million sayings just like that one. I should write them all down and call the book Things My Mama Says That Make Absolutely No Kind of Sense to Anyone But Her. The title would barely fit on the cover, leaving only a little room for my full name: Diane Denise “Dee-Dee” “Nisi” Anderson.

And though I tell her that Roanoke is 30 percent black, she’s convinced I’m living in Caucasian-land.

“I’m more open-minded than that, Mama,” I had told her, though I’m not as open-minded as I want to be. Roanoke is, well, Southern, despite its location on the map just east of West Virginia. Folks frown on mixing salt and pepper people around here.

“As long as you have a black man up in there in that open mind, I don’t care.”

“That’s not what having an open mind is all about, Mama.”

“It isn’t?”

“No.”

“It is to me.”

But you’re wrong! I had wanted to shout. “Mama, that’s not it at all.”

“Well, you tell me what you think having an open mind is all about.”

“Okay, you see, you have to be willing to accept anyone into your life, regardless of race. That was what Maya Angelou was all about. That was what Dr. King was saying when—”

“Don’t you bring Dr. King into it!”

Mama has had some, well, issues about Dr. King ever since she found out he wasn’t faithful to his wife. We can’t talk about Bill Cosby, Magic Johnson, or Jesse Jackson anymore either. Oh, and Kobe Bryant, too, but I mentioned Kobe once, and all Mama said was, “Those Asians took over baseball, and now they’re taking over the NBA.” My mama, who lives in basketball-hysterical Indiana, knows next to nothing about Hoosier Hysteria or the Pacers.

“Mama, you know what I look like.”

“I look at your picture all the time, and it’s like looking in a mirror.”

Not. I’ve got Daddy’s skinny face, which doesn’t quite fit the rest of my…let’s say healthy, twenty-five-year-old body, and though Mama’s body only jumps out in front (Mama’s got a bad case of “no ass at all”), my body jumps out only in back. I’m not flat in front. I’m just not “well-rounded.”

“Mama, I’m plain.” With a train. A caboose. And though I walk the stacks at least half of the time I work, I will never be able to uncouple that caboose.

“As soon as you have a husband and a baby, you’ll get some titties to match your behind.”

And Mama’s a churchwoman. Forty-three years she’s been a member of her church, and she’s the only woman I know who says “titties” like it’s any other word like “chair” or “kitchen.” She even points out other women’s chests sometimes, saying, “That woman over there has some tig ol’ bitties”—as if anyone listening can’t figure out what she really means.

Yeah, she embarrasses me sometimes.

“Mama, come on. I’m too plain for any decent-looking black man to notice me.” Not that I’ve been trying, and not that any decent-looking black men ever come into the library just to meet me. “But I’ve got just enough…exoticness”—is that even a word?—“to attract any—”

“Don’t you say ‘white man,’ because you know I won’t have that. Not since that Bobby and you in the seventh grade.”

Which was thirteen years ago. It was my first sock hop, an in-school dance, you know, all sweaty palms, red hair bows, not enough lotion on my elbows and knees, and Bobby, who was plain and quiet like me was the only one to ask me to dance, and I really wanted to dance, so…I danced with him. That was it. One dance to some old El De-barge song, something like “Love Me in a Special Way.” Our hands kept slipping off each other because of the sweat, and neither of us looked the other in the eye. He had an ashy nose. Not that I remember much about it—

Okay, it was a turning point in my life. I can’t deny it.

There I was, plain, flat as a board, just brown enough to be called black, the beginnings of my caboose slowing me down, and I was totally ignored by every black boy in the gym because I didn’t have titties. Or a weave. Or make-up. Or fingernails. Or bicycle shorts. What was that all about anyway? Hey, everybody, look at the veins in my butt! And the only boy in the room who consciously made a decision to think I was good enough for him was a white boy named Bobby. I wonder where Bobby is now. I hope he’s not a doctor with those sweaty hands of his.

“Mama, that was so long ago.”

“I remember it as if it were yesterday,” Mama had said. “The shame of it all. Getting told on Easter Sunday by Imogene Blakeney, of all people, that my youngest daughter was bumping and grinding with a white boy in plain view in public. It was a shame.”

“We weren’t bumpin’ and grindin’, Mama.” I’m starting to drop all my gs whenever I talk, and I’ve only been in Roanoke for a year. I refuse, however, to use the phrases “might could” or “How you doin’?”

Mama had growled. “Like I said then, and I’ll say it to you now. You should have danced by yourself before you danced with any white boy any time, any place.”

And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. I’ve been dancing with myself. It isn’t so bad. I’m on my own, have my own place, my own car, my own bills, and my own savings and checking accounts. The only time it isn’t fun being independent is late at night, especially if there aren’t any C batteries in the house.

And Mama will never know about any of that.

Her Baptist heart couldn’t take it. The shame of that. She’d probably find out right before another Easter service or something, and Mrs. Imogene “Couldn’t-Hit-a-Note-if-You-Hit-Her-with-a-Hammer” Blakeney would be screeching it all over the sanctuary. I know Mama has only gotten her “pleasuring,” as she calls it, from Daddy, my uniquely handsome, skinny-faced, shovel-handed, wide-footed, gap-toothed Daddy. They make a cute couple, but I doubt Daddy would ever buy Mama C batteries for anything but a flashlight.

“Now your sister…”

As soon as Mama had mentioned Reesie, I had tuned her completely out. Reesie is my older, supposedly wiser, African sister, who has only made babies (three and counting) with African boys since she was fifteen. And Mama never had any shame about any of that. None at all. I danced vertically with a white boy once, and Mama was ashamed. Reesie has danced horizontally with three different black boys, and Mama’s proud as she can be.

If that isn’t dysfunctional and worthy of an entire segment of Oprah, I don’t know what is.

And Reesie, who I have no respect left for, once told me, “They found you by the side of the road, Nisi.” After Mama had straightened that lie out, Reesie told me, “They were gonna adopt a puppy, and they adopted you instead.” I have too much of Daddy in my face to be adopted, but sometimes I wonder if they switched my mama at birth or something.

“Are you listening to me?”

“Yes, Mama.” I had yawned. “I have to go.”

“Go where?”

“Out, Mama.” As in, out of the living room to the kitchen to get a slice of orange cake left over from the library Christmas party.

She had sighed. “I still don’t know why you had to move so far away.”

“Roanoke is where my job is, Mama.” And Indianapolis is many blissful hours away. Luckily, Roanoke isn’t connected nonstop by air to any city except Pittsburgh, Charlotte, and D.C.

“And why did you have to have your own place, and a whole house at that, and not even in a black neighborhood?”

“There are plenty of black people in my neighborhood. The family across the street and the neighbors to my right—”

“They aren’t really black if they live where you live.”

No, I had wanted to say, they’re just middle class enough to live here and just happened to be able to scrape up enough money for a down payment so they don’t have to live on top of other people in an apartment complex.

“Child, you could still be living in your own room right here in this house, you wouldn’t have a mortgage, and that city library you said you liked working at the most is just around the corner.”

That particular city library in Naptown was the first to turn me down for a full-time job after graduation, but I purposely screwed up the interview. I didn’t want to be working a stone’s throw from my mama! I might have picked up those stones and thrown them at her! It did, however, offer me part-time work at minimum wage; I accepted…and I endured three dreary years with Mama and Reesie’s three little monsters I collectively called “the Qwans”: J-Qwan, Ray-Qwan, and Qwanasia. If it weren’t for Daddy, I would have gone out of my mind.

“Mama, they didn’t want me for the position I deserved four years ago.”

“Well, there are plenty of other libraries around here, and maybe they have some openings now—”

“Look,” I had interrupted, “I’m blooming where God planted me, okay?” Mention “God” to Mama, and she at least takes a breath. “Staying and working the stacks in Indian-no-place at minimum wage was a waste of my time, Mama, and—”

“Excuse me?” she had interrupted. “Living with me and your daddy was a waste of time?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It sounded like you said it to me.”

My mama only hears what she wants to hear. “I said that the job was a waste of my time. It was a waste of my degree and all that money you and Daddy paid for me to go to college. Look, Mama, I’m tired. I’ll talk to you later.” Then I had waited for her to get the final word.

And this time, Mama didn’t speak right away. That gave me time to walk down my hallway, clutching a cordless phone I paid way too much for, wearing an outfit I bought with my own money at regular price at a store Mama would never shop in, into my library. Yes, I have a library. What else do you do with a three-bedroom ranch (advertised as a “handyman special”) when you only need one bedroom? I know it’s redundant and stereotypical for a librarian to have her own library. But I’d much rather buy books and shelves than beds no one will ever sleep in. If Mama and Daddy threaten to visit someday, I may have to buy a sleeper sofa or something. I’ll probably end up just sleeping on that sofa since I’m leaving the other bedroom “fallow.” It’s my storage room now.

But I don’t want to think about that. Not the buying of the sofa—the visit from Mama and all her criticisms. She’ll look at my house as her house and spend the entire visit “fixing” everything I’ve done wrong.

“You make sure to be in church on Sunday,” Mama had said eventually. “Maybe you’ll meet somebody.”

Just once, I’d like to go to church only to meet Jesus. “Good night, Mama.”

“And go to a black church this time, Dee-Dee, okay?”

Click.

Oops. I had hung up on my mama. I had only been thinking about hanging up on her, and my finger had hit the button before I could stop it. The phone had rung a second later. “Sorry about that, Mama. My finger slipped and I—”

“Are you coming up for a visit or not? At least come up for New Year’s.”

I had taken a deep breath and closed my eyes. “No, Mama. As I’ve told you before, I have—”

“Your own life now. I know, I know.” Silence.

“And I only have one day of vacation left this year.” More silence. “I promise to come home for Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving? That’s in…eleven months!”

“Bye, Mama.”

Click.

I had waited a few minutes, and the phone didn’t ring. After that, I had started shuffling cards and…here I am.

I really shouldn’t be playing solitaire at all. I should be making cookies for Santa, which only I would eat in the morning. I should be wrapping gifts (mainly for myself) or listening to carols or even looking out the window for the snow showers they’re predicting. Roanoke might have a white Christmas for the first time in anyone’s memory. But aren’t all Christmases white anyway? You have a white Jesus, white shepherds, white angels, and white stars. It’s a Caucasian Christmas. At the library, we’ve been listening to a country station that plays only Christmas music from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. Our library isn’t completely quiet, because Kim “Prim” Cambridge, the library director says, “We have to compete with the mall, and they’re playing that music, too.”

Kim is…odd.

So, I’ve been subjected to eight hours of “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Silent Night,” “White Christmas,” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” Oh, and “The Christmas Song” sung by some white guy with a twangy voice. Where are Nat King and Natalie Cole? Or just Nat? Mmm. I could get used to Nat’s creamy-butter voice in my life. I doubt I’ll hear him on that station, though I did hear a little Luther Vandross one day. It surprised me so much when he belted out “O Holy Night” that I did a little chair dance right there at the reference desk.

Francine, the other Grade Four Clerk, had then had the nerve to ask if I needed some lotion for my behind. “You look all itchy and twitchy,” she had said.

White folks just don’t know a good chair dance when they see one.

I was listening to that station earlier tonight, but I’m all Christmased out. Those reindeer keep hitting grandma—because grandma is drunk—and the little drummer boy (all seventeen different versions, three every half hour) is giving me a headache with all that rum-pum-pum-pumming. I’m no Scrooge, but when you start hating “The First Noel”—the first Christmas song I learned to sing when I was five years old—you don’t have any Christmas spirit left.

I look at the gifts under my Charlie Brown Christmas tree, a remnant of a tree I actually bought at a Christmas tree lot. “Topped it off a real big one,” the man had told me, and I had talked him down to three dollars.

You know you’re horrible at celebrating Christmas when you talk a man down to three dollars for the top of a “real big one” and your tree fits in the front passenger seat of your Hyundai.

And, you know you’re lonely when there are only four gifts under that tree. Two are from anonymous coworkers (one from a gift exchange with the circulation staff, one from a gift exchange with the reference staff), and both are books: The Da Vinci Code and The Handmaid’s Tale. Neither book is my cup of tea, but they’ll look nice in my library. The third gift is a sweater I bought for myself at Lane Bryant. I had tried on several sweaters ranging from sizes ten to eighteen, and though my heart had said, “Give yourself a size ten, girl,” and my mind had said, “You’ll look just fine in a fourteen,” my body ordered me to wrap up the size eighteen. It actually fits me better, though I’m embarrassed that it fits me better. It will give me an excuse to get out after Christmas to exchange it…for a sixteen…or a fourteen, who knows? I may take a couple walks around the block tomorrow.

And the last gift really isn’t a gift at all. They’re books I get to review for the Mid-Atlantic Book Review, an on-line book club I’ve belonged to since I arrived in Roanoke. “We’re MAB, and we’re Mad about Books!” is our slogan. I didn’t make the slogan, and, for the most part, I’m “Mad at Books.” The trifling stuff they publish these days…At least these books will keep me busy for a week or so.

Until then, I’ll just—

“Finally!”

Now if I can only find a red jack, I’ll be…

Set.

Time to shuffle.

Again.

Merry Christmas, girl.

I don’t know why I’m putting up this tree.

Old habit, I guess.

Yeah.

It’s something to do.

There are so many ornaments. Baby’s first, second, where’s the—There it is. Baby’s third. Stevie opened it last year…before tearing into his other presents.

Without a second thought.

He was a kid. He was excited. He opened this bear on a train in about five seconds. He loved his bears. I wanted to get him a plane, or an old car, or even a Harley-Davidson ornament, but Noël said to stay in sequence. “We’re creating heirlooms for him to share with his own family one day.”

One day.

Don’t think about it.

I can’t help it.

You and Noël were just keeping Hallmark in business, you know.

I was getting to like that tradition.

You can’t miss putting together his toys.

They were fun.

You cursed the directions too much.

They weren’t written in decent English half the time.

I look up at the goofy tree topper, a star I picked out at Wal-Mart. Half of the lights have the colors of the rainbow, and the other half are clear white. I don’t know why they keep burning out.

That’s what lightbulbs do.

But they only put in two replacement bulbs. How nice of them.

That’s how they keep you coming back, year after year.

Noël always winced and shrugged when we had completed the tree, but she took the picture anyway with Stevie in front of the tree, all warm in his footy pajamas, his stuffed teddy bear named Mr. Bear in his arms, his eyes sparkling like all the tinsel—

He was a cute kid.

The cutest.

I’m sure Mr. Bear is still in Stevie’s closet. I ought to donate it and all the Christmas gifts Noël bought for Stevie during the year to the Salvation Army. She was always thinking about Christmas, even in July.

You thought she was crazy.

Yeah.

I just can’t open her closet door to get at them yet, mainly because I can’t quite get myself to open the door to that room. My back aches from sleeping on the bottom bunk of Stevie’s bunk bed, and I ought to wash those sheets…but that little boy smell is still in them.

Have I done everything correctly?

Something’s missing.

The train! Why didn’t I put that together before I hung the ornaments? I did the same thing last year. We put up the tree, wrapped it in lights, hung all the ornaments, and threw on lots of tinsel, so much so that it choked Tony the cat.

Tony deposited a very interesting, shiny fur ball in the kitchen the next day.

And then Noël said, “Don’t forget the train”…and here I am forgetting the train again.

There are some outdoor decorations in the laundry room. Don’t forget them.

It’s too late. It’s Christmas Eve.

It’s never too late to celebrate Christmas.

It is this year.

I piece together the track around the base of the tree, getting tinsel in my hair and pinesap on my forehead. “You look silly, Daddy,” Stevie would say. Then I place the train on the track, hooking all the cars together and hitting the switch on the locomotive. The batteries are still good.

Chug-a-chugga, chug-a-chugga.

But where’s the smoke? Oh, yeah. I have to add cooking oil to the smokestack. Maybe later.

Tony the cat hated the train, and I keep expecting him to appear out of nowhere to swipe at the caboose. He left soon after…that day. He’s better off anyway.

You forgot to feed him most of the time.

I forget to feed myself most of the time.

Yeah, your diet should consist of more than alcohol and pretzels.

I wonder if Noël bought me anything before…

You know she did.

But my presents would be in that closet, too. I’ll bet she got me some clothes. Yeah. She was always trying to dress me better.

Anything would have been an improvement.

But I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’ll bet there are ties in that closet. Noël wanted me to look professional on the job—which would be over for a while anyway, at least until after New Year’s, though I’m sure I’d have plenty of papers to grade. I’m on an extended holiday break from teaching. You can’t call it “Christmas break” anymore.

That isn’t politically correct.

And you really shouldn’t say “holiday,” because it comes from “holy day.” So I guess you just say, “Have a good whatever.”

Try putting that phrase on a button and see if you don’t offend anyone.

The school, Monterey Elementary, called me in again to substitute last week. It’s nice to know they’re thinking of me, but I’m on permanent sabbatical, prematurely retired at the ripe old age of thirty-two. I should have gotten hazard pay to teach social studies to fifth-graders, and they want me to substitute? No way, I said, even though subs are now making eighty bucks a day. I’m okay for funds—for now. The life insurance…

I don’t want to think about the reason I have so few debts now.

You will anyway.

I don’t want to, but…they only gave me $5,000 for Stevie! That’s all he was worth! Five thousand dollars for a priceless little life! I got more money from the settlement on the van! A child’s life has to have more value than a van!

Stevie was priceless.

It was as if he were leased to me for a few years, and I could trade him in for…for this…for this.

Stevie was on loan from God, Jack. We’re all only on loan to this world.

It’s just not fair.

I get up and walk down the hallway to Noël’s door. All the times I used to come up from grading or writing, turning this doorknob silently, easing the door open only to have the hinges squeak, but Noël slept through it, even though I bumped a dresser drawer with my knee almost every night.

Your bruises must have healed by now.

They have. I even have a few scars.

It was a sharp dresser. Get it?

Ha-ha.

I’d feel for the corner of the bed on my side, slide in beside her, kiss her cheek, maybe spoon with her a while before returning to the cold side of the bed….

I can’t turn the knob today. I just can’t. Maybe tomorrow.

You’ve been saying that for the last six months.

I know. Maybe tomorrow.

I return to the tree, plugging in the lights. Then I take a picture of…no one with big eyes giggling into the camera.

Oh, God, this is so hard.

No one said it was going to be easy.

I down the rest of my eggnog, toasting the tree and carrying on a conversation with myself while the train chug-a-chugs in circles.

I like living alone, and I even like living in a house that continuously falls apart, all at once sometimes. I’ve met some interesting men that way, and they don’t have to bathe or dry their socks in my bathroom.

It all started about three months after I moved in, not that my house in northeast Roanoke—which is mostly blue-collar and white—would ever be the first cover home of Better Black Homes and Gardens. At first, it was a series of little things. Nothing major, just minor problems to fuss at like drafts, creaks, funny smells, and peeling paint and siding.

After all these minor headaches, the small deck at the back of the house simply fell into the yard, taking a huge strip of siding with it, after some heavy rains during my only week off from the library last summer. Why do bad things always seem to happen on your vacation? I called around for estimates, didn’t have the $2,000 (over my dead body!) necessary to rebuild it “to code” (whatever that means), and ended up taking a card off a wall at the entrance of Food Lion for a handyman. I called and left a message, and the next day Robert Maxwell showed up.

I have only dropped my jaw past my ankles once or twice in my life, and when I saw Robert Maxwell, my jaw was dragging on the ground behind me, grass and little stones and dandelions all up in my teeth. Imagine a six-five black Fabio with good hair, muscles on top of muscles, a smile right out of GQ, and hands the size of tree stumps. I showed him the damage to the deck and the siding.

“It’ll take me uh couple uh three days,” he had said real slow. “It won’t be no trouble ’tall.”

Except for his constipated, country accent, I had enjoyed my handyman. I had watched that mountain of a man through the miniblinds in my bedroom. That man could dig him some holes and cut him some wood, and the way his sweat dripped down his massive back to his behind…I had even thought about smoking cigarettes afterward. I had felt like such a ho. When it rained on what was supposed to have been his last day and he hadn’t shown up, I had been depressed all day and prayed all night for a sunny day.

On his last day, while he was laying and nailing the floorboards, I had brought him some sweet lemonade and sat on the finished section wearing my tightest shorts and an electric pink tank top.

“You do nice work,” I had said in my hoochie voice.

“Thanks,” he had said.

“You sure five hundred will be enough?” I had wanted to tip him real nice with my body. I had wanted to climb Mount Maxwell. I still do.

He had looked at me with those sleepy eyes of his. “My wife says I shoulda asked for more.”

His wife. Of course he had a wife. She has to be the happiest woman in world history. She probably has an orgasm every time Robert opens the front door to their house.

“She say one of our boys needs him some braces, and my oldest daughter needs her car fixed.” That added up to at least four children. Robert Maxwell was a potent man.

I had felt terrible for taking advantage of him just to save me some money, so I had paid him $750 cash after taking an advance out on my MasterCard. I had reached up to shake his hand, and I had watched my hand disappear into his. “Take care,” I had said, hoping to see my hand again.

“Call me anytime.”

And I do. I call that man, a real man that only the Lord God in the highest heaven could make. I have Robert Maxwell’s number on speed dial, and I call him every time something inside or outside the house breaks, just to see him in the flesh.

I even break stuff…just because.

Hmm.

I think I’ll need him to redo my sidewalk. It’s all pitted like the surface of the moon. Yes. He’d have to break it up with a jackhammer or sledgehammer….

That makes me dizzy just thinking about it. And maybe I’ll get some real cigarettes this time, you know, to support Virginia’s economy.

But can I see the sidewalk from my bedroom window? Hmm. I may have to get comfortable in the living room. But can you pour concrete in December? I bet you can’t.

What else can I break around here?

Merry Christmas, Daddy….

“Stevie?”

I sit up too quickly and hit my head on the slats for the top bunk of Stevie’s bed.

Again. When will you learn?

How did I get here?

You were drinking heavily.

I only had three—

Five.

Okay, five mugs of eggnog. At least I won’t need breakfast. I’ve already had my dairy and eggs for the rest of the week.

I look up at the torn black lining under the top bunk. One little hole, and Stevie had found it, taking one tiny finger and rrrrrrrr-ip. And instead of fixing it properly, I had only duct taped the sides and put a few pushpins here and there.

It did the job.

But it looks tacky.

I’m a grown man sleeping in my boy’s bed. Funny, I hardly had to do that when he was…when he was here. Noël did most of the soothing in this house, whispering him back to sleep whenever he had a bad dream. He would call out only to her in the night.

And here I am calling out to him in the morning.

Merry Christmas, Jack.

What am I going to do today? There’s no need to check the mailbox since it’s a holiday. That’s one of my few daily errands. It takes forty-seven steps to get to the mailbox. The fact that I know this makes me sad.

It took you forty-three yesterday.

It was cold. I had to move fast.

I’ve been waiting for my first novel to come out, a romance of all things, as if romance will ever happen to me again. I had waited too long to find a wife, to start a family…and to buy a safer vehicle than that van.

Stop thinking about that van.

I go to the kitchen and turn on the coffeemaker before I realize I haven’t put in any coffee. The water that drips into my cup is slightly brown and smells like coffee, but it tastes like…hot brown water. Instead of searching through the mess I’ve made of the kitchen pantry for the coffee, I take a tea bag I used yesterday and dunk it into the water. It should be good for at least two more cups.

You’re going to need vice grips to squeeze out any flavor.

Probably.

I return to the living room and plug in the lights of the tree before curling up on the love seat with my “coffee water tea.”

“It’s a nice tree, honey.”

It never was, but Noël was always looking for something positive to say. The four trees I bought for us before…the accident…leaned right or left, were too bushy or had bald spots, or were too short or too tall.

One even had a bird’s nest.

Yet, after we decorated those trees, they always looked better—in Noël’s eyes, anyway—than any tree in any window in the neighborhood. We used to walk through the neighborhood looking at other people’s trees, and though there were many grander than ours, Noël always said, “It’s a nice tree, honey.”

“Thank you,” I say now. “Thanks…honey.”

Change the subject. You’re already out of Kleenex.

I’ll use napkins.

You’re out of them, too.

Oh. Paper towels?

Just the part stuck to the roll.

I’ve killed a lot of trees.

You’re the champion of the forestry industry. Think about the novel.

My novel has been sent out to reviewers, and my agent, Nina Frederick, is supposed to be sending their reviews to me the second she gets them. My editor, Trina Lozell, has told me to keep my fingers crossed, but I’m not superstitious. “It’s a great summer read,” Trina says.

Then why is it coming out in April?

Beats me.

My book will finally be on the shelves in bookstores after all those late nights away from Noël and Stevie. I had wanted to make it big as a writer to allow Noël to stay home with Stevie instead of working as a medical transcriber at Roanoke Memorial. And if the money was good enough, I could quit teaching and write full-time.

All those dreams…and only mine came true.

Until the insurance money runs out.

All those dreams!

Change the subject, Jack! What’s left of the paper towels will feel like sandpaper on your nose!

And I’m all out of lotion.

There’s bound to be some lotion on Noël’s vanity.

I’m not going in there. I’m…I’m thinking about the book.

I’m not nervous about the reviewers as much as I was about the revisions Trina suggested I make. She had me add more profanity, sex, attitude, and drama to what was originally a simple love story. I’m a little embarrassed about it all. I even had to add stereotypical, one-dimensional characters who are more like caricatures than people. Noël would barely recognize the novel, mainly because it wasn’t originally multicultural.

You mean, it wasn’t originally interracial.

I prefer the word “multicultural.” We are all, after all, from the human race.

True.

My simple, sweet little novel had two lonely white people meeting, getting together, and falling in love. Nina had agreed to represent my manuscript if I changed a few “colors” and added some more “colorful family and friends.” I ended up padding the word count with gratuitous sex, adult humor, and cursing—all of which seems to be in vogue in today’s literary world. “The book needs more dramatic, guilty pleasures,” Nina had advised, and I had still wanted that dream even if I didn’t have Noël and Stevie to share it with me, so…I did it. I even rationalized that since there is a glut. . .