Page 112 of Return of the Spider
After the dishes were cleared, we retreated to the front room and finished the football game. We watchedA Christmas Storyuntil Sampson had to leave.
Nana Mama went upstairs cackling after Santa told Ralphie that he’d shoot his eye out and then put his boot in the kid’s face, her favorite scene.
Damon fell asleep in my lap during the scene about the Scott Farkus affair, Maria’s favorite. She fell asleep on my shoulder with Jannie in her lap before Ralphie actually got his BB gun.
After watching all the way to the scene of the beheading of the roast duck during the Christmas dinner at the Chinese restaurant, I clicked off the TV with the remote. I sat and looked at the lights on the tree, feeling Damon shift in my lap and hearing Maria breathe with her mouth open. Jannie made fussy little newborn noises.
I felt tears come to my eyes as I gazed up at the angel ornament that always sat atop Nana Mama’s Christmas tree.
“Thank you for my family,” I whispered. “Keep them safe in the coming year.”
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By ten a.m. onNew Year’s Eve day, snow was falling steadily in the Pine Barrens. A couple of inches of it already coated the pines and the ground when Soneji drove his brother-in-law Marty’s Dodge Ram pickup up the steep two-track to his house.
He stopped shy of the gate and the multipleNO TRESPASSINGsigns, looking ahead into the yard. Seeing no tracks and nothing out of place since his visit with Bunny Maddox, Soneji got out, unlocked the gate, and pushed it open, noticing that the length of rope he’d practiced with was still hanging around the post there and was clad in snow.
He got in the truck, pulled into the yard, backed up to the porch, and turned the engine off. He lowered the window. The gentle tapping of the snowflakes deadened all other sound.
Soneji closed his eyes a second, thankful for this peace and quiet after the wedding and their three-day honeymoon at Missy’s cousin’s condo in the Poconos. The sex aside, Missy had yammered so much about all the changes to be put into effect after their marriage restart that he’d thought about hitting her over the head with a hammer at one point and cutting her vocal cords at several more.
In the end, he said he had to help an old friend do some carpentry work on his lake house to satisfy a real estate agent who wanted to list the place. Marty offered him the truck, saying he could use his Cadillac in the meantime. And Soneji told Missy not to worry, that he’d be back long before the start of Trish’s annual New Year’s Eve party.
At the back of the pickup, he lifted the window on the cap and lowered the tailgate so he could get at the eight-foot lengths of two-by-four pine studs stacked on top of drywall sheets. Soneji got the lumber into the basement in four trips.
The drywall was trickier to handle and demanded a difficult negotiation of the steep staircase. But once he had the method down, he quickly got two more sheets into position and stepped out onto his porch for the final one.
“Halloo the house!”
Soneji stopped short, looked over the truck cap, and saw a woman puffing and trudging toward him in the snow. She was in her late forties, doughy, dowdy, and wore an old navy pea jacket over a peasant dress and boots.
A bright, multicolored knit wool cap sat on her head at an angle. A matching scarf hung loosely around her shoulders.
Holding up mittens in another riot of color, the perimenopausal hippie stopped about forty feet from his truck and said,“So sorry to intrude, but I got myself stuck in the ditch a good way up from the bottom of your steep driveway.”
“Why were you comingupmy steep driveway?” Soneji asked. “There’s a No Trespassing sign on each side.”
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“My mistake! my mistake!”the woman said and then chuckled. “Had directions to my sister-in-law’s place somewhere out here and I got turned around and saw your fresh tracks and started after them to ask directions. Do you know her? Lainey Dodge?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Too bad. Anyway, I was wondering if you might help me get out of the ditch? Or let me use your phone to call a tow truck?”
“I don’t have a phone yet,” Soneji said, seeing new possibilities in this previously unwanted visit. “Let’s go take a look at your predicament and I’ll see if I can get you out.”
He came down off the porch, strode up to her, grinning, and stuck out his gloved hand. “Gary Murphy.”
She pushed back her hat, revealing sweaty hair, and shook his hand. “Cynthia Owens. My friends call me Cyn-Cyn.”
“Okay, Cyn-Cyn, lead on.”
Owens started back. “I’m clueless with maps and compasses and such. You?”
