“Let’s go for a walk,” Noah suggested, rising beside her. “Come on. I’ll show Abuela the chapel. She can pray while we get some fresh air.”
“What if Mami needs us?”
“We won’t be long. And I’ll tell Agnes to page us if there’s news.”
“Agnes?”
“Agnes always works the ER desk at night. She’s nice,” Noah explained.
Noah knew his way around, and Abuela seemed grateful for the opportunity to light a candle and say a prayer for her son-in-law, so Noah and Mer left her alone in the shadowy room with the stained-glass windows and made their way outside, seeking space and a quiet not interspersed with swishing doors and canned Christmas music. The red emergency room sign above their heads gave the pale fog a pink cast, like cotton candy at a winter carnival.
“Look!” Noah said.
A fat flake, furry with ice, meandered through the air and landed in Noah’s dark hair. Another one chased it down, and he caught it in his hand. He raised his face in anticipation of more.
“We might get a white Christmas after all,” he said, trying to lift her spirits. “People wish on the first stars in the sky. Maybe we can wish on the first snowflakes of the season.”
Mercedes closed her eyes and wished with all her might, a wish that was part prayer, part pleading, part angry ultimatum. But her dread continued to mushroom.
“I have a very bad feeling, Noah,” Mercedes whispered, her chest so tight she could hardly draw breath.
Noah reached out and took her hand, threading his icy fingers through her much smaller ones.
“It’s going to be okay, Mer. It has to be. It’s Christmas.”
* * *
When your father dies on Christmas day, it tends to ruin the holiday, and Mercedes always breathed a sigh of relief when the new year rolled around, grateful another anniversary had passed. But with Cora’s passing, the memory of Papi’s death took a backseat to fresher pain. Alma, who usually struggled with the holiday as much as Mercedes, set out the nacimiento she’d had for longer than Mercedes had been alive and decorated the duplex with poinsettias inside and twinkle lights around the windows. She even bought a little tree and put it on the table in front of the windows, declaring that they needed to make a special effort this year.
“Noah and the bebé should spend Christmas here,” Alma insisted. “We’ll go to Mass and have dinner on Nochebuena, and open presents Christmas morning with Gia. This will be a hard year for Noah. He shouldn’t be alone.”
“Noah isn’t Catholic, and I don’t think Gia will make it through Mass, Mami,” Mercedes protested, although she was relieved her mother had suggested it. When she broached the subject with Noah, he seemed equally relieved.
“I’ll invite Heather too. She can have the guest room, you and Gia can have my bed, I’ll sleep with Mami, and we’ll all get through Christmas together,” Mercedes promised.
Mercedes liked to make the distinction that at almost thirty years old, she didn’t live with her mother, her mother lived with her. For a while after Papi died, Mercedes had worried that she, Abuela, and Mami would have to go back to Mexico. Abuela had a sister in Mexico City, and Papi had brothers in Veracruz who Mercedes had never met. But Mami had insisted there was nothing to go back to, and they would find a way to make ends meet without Papi’s income. They downsized to a two-bedroom apartment at The Three Amigos, and Alma took on full-time housekeeping work at the same hospital where her husband died and Shelly Andelin’s fourteen-year-old son practically ran the records department. Abuela continued making homemade tamales for the restaurants she and her daughter had been servicing for years, and Mercedes got a job cleaning a salon called Maven on Union Boulevard after school. It took her two hours every night, six nights a week, and the owner—Gloria Maven—paid her $200 a month, not terrible wages for a fourteen-year-old girl in 1989, but Mercedes made sure Mrs. Maven got more than she paid for.
At sixteen, Mercedes began doing pedicures too, bringing home another $400 on top of her cleaning job, making enough to cover the rent and a little extra all by herself. Gloria Maven liked her passion and her work ethic, and promised Mercedes a stylist position when she finished hair school, which Mercedes did—attending classes on nights and weekends—before she’d even graduated from high school.
Mercedes left the Three Amigos Apartments behind when Noah and Cora got married, but Abuela and Alma had still needed her income, so she took them with her, saving the expense of two households. She’d chafed a little at her lack of privacy and independence, but when Abuela had died five years later, she’d been grateful for the time they’d had together.
She and her mother had remained in the duplex, conveniently located a mile from the salon, three miles from the hospital, and two miles from Noah and Cora’s townhome. And though she could have afforded something newer and much nicer, Mercedes still drove the Toyota Corolla she’d driven for ten years, and she still bought her clothes at the Goodwill. She might pride herself on looking like she shopped at Dillard’s, but the money she saved on clothes and cars was put away for a bigger dream. She had single-handedly turned Maven into a high-end spa and boutique, and when Gloria Maven was ready to sell, Mercedes had every intention of buying. Gloria had been hinting that 2005 might be the year, and Mercedes was ready. In her opinion, the sooner Christmas was wrapped up, the better.
It was Gia who made the season bearable. She made everyone try a little harder when it would have been so easy to just ignore the holiday altogether. She had begun babbling in recognizable words—mimicking sounds and syllables, scolding her father and reading stories in enthusiastic gibberish—and making them laugh at her antics. Nothing was safe from her busy hands or mouth, and Noah was stringing lights and hanging ornaments starting halfway up his Christmas tree to keep her from stripping it bare and biting the bulbs.
“If you squint your eyes, your tree looks like it’s wearing an ugly Christmas sweater,” Mercedes said, looking at the half-dressed tree through her eyelashes.
“It looks like the Grinch in his Santa suit, with his green belly sticking out below it,” Noah mused, standing beside her, a star in his hands, his eyes narrowed to slits.
“It does!” Mercedes chortled. She pulled the drooping Santa hat from her head and waved it excitedly. “Let’s put this Santa hat on the top, instead of that star. Then it’ll really look like the Grinch. Give me a boost.”
Noah lifted her up, his arms bracketed around her thighs, so she could reach the top of the tree, and Gia chose that moment to wrap herself around his leg, tripping him up and sending them all crashing into the branches. Fortunately, nobody was injured. Gia cried but Noah and Mercedes couldn’t stop laughing.
Noah didn’t even bother putting gifts beneath his tree. Gia unwrapped everything immediately, and he ended up turning everything he purchased over to Mercedes for safekeeping. Christmas morning at Mercedes’s house was a free-for-all, trying to keep Gia focused on one gift at a time. Mercedes bought Gia too many presents; they all did. Gia had more clothes and toys under the tiny tree than any little girl could ever want. And she didn’t really want them. She pulled the paper from every box and then retrieved her old red ball from Mercedes’s bin of toys, leaving the adults to exchange their gifts.
Noah bought Mercedes some heated seat covers for the Corolla and magnetized window coverings, so Mer wouldn’t have to scrape her windshield when it snowed. He also bought her a vintage record player and a stack of vinyls he knew she liked—Nina Simone, Al Green, Donny Hathaway, and The Jackson 5. She squealed like a little girl and insisted on playing the latter immediately so she could dance to “I Want You Back.” Noah refused to dance but laid on the floor, his hands folded beneath his head, laughing as she shimmied and shook and mouthed every word. Gia loved it too and joined in, her stance wide, her head bobbing, hips and arms swinging. Alma and Heather clapped and laughed at the baby and egged Mercedes on.
Mercedes presented Noah with three new shirts, two new pairs of slacks, a deep purple tie with tiny white polka dots that on closer inspection were basketballs, and a navy blue coat that was similar to the coat she’d bought him the year Papi died. The eighties style had come back in fashion, and she’d noticed Noah had a dress coat, but nothing casual to wear in the cold. She’d seen the coat in the Orvis store window, and it had immediately taken her back to the night he’d driven her and Abuela to the hospital, cruising down the dark streets with all the confidence of an old soul.
She’d thought a great deal about that night in recent days—his concern, his companionship, and his endearing belief that nothing would go wrong because it was Christmas. Mercedes had known, even then, that fate had a fatalistic sense of timing, and that Christmas miracles only happened in Hallmark movies. He should have known it too; Noah was not a stranger to disappointment. But he had still believed. Or maybe he’d believed because she’d needed him to.
He’d driven them all back home—Mercedes, Mami and Abuela—without Papi in the early hours before dawn, three distraught women who had no idea how they would go on. For years, Mercedes had been unable to reflect on those hours. Now, sixteen years later, sitting by his side with memories of her father in her head, she marveled at the boy who’d taken care of them all that day and in the days to come too. Noah was already the man of his own house, and he temporarily became the man of theirs.
“You look very handsome, Noah,” Heather said. “That coat fits you perfectly.”
Noah ran his hand down the quilted sleeves. “It does. It looks like the coat you gave me when we were kids, Mer.”
“I know. It reminded me how you took care of us that year, and I thought it was time I said thank you.” Noah’s eyes rose and caught hers, and grief shimmered in the air, tempered by the knowledge that they’d all made it through heartache before.
“And now you are taking care of him,” Heather said, her voice soft, her eyes bright.
“We are all taking care of each other, Heather,” Mercedes said as Noah leaned over and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
Heather nodded, and Alma patted her hand. Alma pointed at the last gift beneath the tree.
“For you, Heather,” she said in accented English.
“That one is from me and Gia, Heather,” Noah said, and Mercedes heard the nerves in his voice.
Heather pulled the wrapping off a large canvas painting and stared, transfixed. Cora was captured in swirls of color—vivid reds and bold blues, blushing pinks and shades of gold and bits of shadow glowing from the page. It was magnificent.
“I thought you should have it,” Noah said, his eyes on his mother-in-law. Her red hair was faded and her eyes worn, but the resemblance was unmistakable between mother and daughter, and when she covered her mouth on a sob, they all cried with her.
“Gia should have it,” she choked.