Читать книгу I'm Your Girl - J.J. Murray - Страница 10

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 of same-race romances out there, I would be breaking new ground. The world was changing, the literal face of the nation was and is darkening, so I supposed with a few touches here and there—

If Noël had been here to do the final edit, I know it would have come out better. She had helped me to write the original woman’s part, and in many ways, she’s like Noël: sensibly curious, honestly shy, spiritually worldly, and glamorously uncomplicated. My character and my wife were beautiful homebodies.

Like I’ve become.

Except for the beautiful part.

True. I can’t remember the last time I’ve left the house.

You bought eggnog, Kleenex, and coffee two days ago at Food Lion, remember?

That was two days ago?

Yes.

Time flies when you’re not having fun, too.

Get back to the book.

I had told Trina early on that I wasn’t up to making appearances or traveling to promote the book because of what’s happened, and she had understood. “That’s okay, Jackie,” she had said, in her Brooklyn accent, “we weren’t planning on you making any appearances anyway. You’ll be the non-gender-specific D. J. Browning on the advance review copy.”

Non-gender-specific, a name that could apply to either a man or a woman.

You’ve been neutered.

So, here I am on Christmas Day, an anonymous, neutered man waiting on the next day’s mail missing…Noël and Stevie.

God, I need to stay busy.

So, get busy.

But where to start…where to begin? Time to get up off this love seat and do something.

Right.

The toys.

The toys?

Yeah. Stevie’s toys. Other kids need a nice Christmas, too, and though they’ll be a few days late in getting to them, at least—

At least you’ll be moving.

At least I’ll be moving.

Start with the simplest things first, and then it will become easier.

I hope so.