Bright Lights, Big Christmas(69)
“Nah. I better go. Still gotta finish breaking down the rest of the stand, then I’m having Dad’s truck towed to a storage facility until you can drive it back home.”
“Was it sad, watching Spammy get hauled away to the junkyard?”
“Sad? It’s a fifty-two-year-old trailer, Kere, not your grandma. With all the trees we sold this year, Dad can afford to buy a new trailer. One with working taillights and plumbing. Mom was pretty pissed at me, but she’ll get over it.”
Kerry nodded. Her brother and father were definitely cut from the same cloth—only sentimental about their dogs and guns. In that order. “Where’s Queenie?”
“Vic’s watching her for now, then I gotta figure out something else until we head home. Claudia’s cat is not a fan.”
“Bring her up here to me,” Kerry said impulsively.
“Really?”
“I don’t think Heinz will mind. I get the impression he likes dogs better than people.”
“Sweet. I’ll bring Queenie tonight when I drop off your clothes.” He hesitated, then leaned in and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “Thanks, sis.”
* * *
She cracked the door of Heinz’s bedroom and studied the patient. He was snoring softly. His color had improved, and he wasn’t coughing.
Finally, she gave in to the urge she’d been fighting since she’d arrived in the apartment. She took her mug of tea and went into the studio.
Surveying all the colorful art materials, she felt like a kid in a candy store. She found a new oversized sketch pad on a table near the window, opened it, and placed it on the easel. The tubes of oil and acrylic paints were long since dried out, but she reached into a Folger’s coffee can and pulled out some colored pencils.
Humming, she started doodling. Thumbnail sketches of the dogs she’d met in the neighborhood, then sketches of their owners.
She flipped the page and began drawing the Tolliver Family Christmas tree stand, with Spammy in the foreground. She imbued the battered and rusty vintage camper with a charm and personality it didn’t actually possess in real life, round porthole windows that resembled eyes, a trailer hitch that could be interpreted as a button nose, and an oversized bumper that looked like a slightly upturned smile. Maybe Murphy wasn’t sentimental about the old girl, but Kerry discovered that she was already recalling fond memories of the weeks she and her family had spent in the little canned-ham camper of her childhood.
As she colored in the details, adding rows of Fraser firs crisscrossed with colored lights, wreaths hanging on hooks, and customers (and their dogs) browsing for trees, she began thinking of a story of her own.
The whimsical story of a spunky little vintage camper who leaves her tiny mountain town for an exciting adventure in the big city. A camper named Spammy.
Her tea grew cold and the minutes flew by as she filled the pages of the book with her story and illustrations.
When she looked up from the easel she glanced at her phone and realized that three hours had passed. Night had fallen, and it was time to check on Heinz.
She heated up the soup Mrs. Lee had sent, pouring it into a thick china mug, and placed it on a tray, along with a glass of water and the medicine the pediatrician had prescribed.
Heinz was sitting up in bed, yawning. He scowled when he saw her. “Don’t tell me you’re still here.”
“Afraid so,” she said, resting the tray on his lap. She pointed to the soup. “Mrs. Lee at the Red Dragon sent that over for you. She says you’re to eat every last drop.”
He took a sip and grimaced. “Gaaaah. Terrible.”
“It smells okay to me. What’s it taste like?”
“Ginger. Garlic. Fish paste. Something fetid and stagnant. Fermented ditch water.” He took another sip and shuddered.
“My grandma would say if it don’t kill you it’s sure to cure you.” Kerry handed him his antibiotics. “Drink it down and then take these.”
Heinz dutifully finished the soup and swallowed his meds, placing the empty mug on the tray.
“I do feel slightly better,” he admitted. “So I suppose I should thank you for that.”
“It’s my pleasure,” Kerry said. “You really had us all very worried when you disappeared like that. Austin was beside himself. We were ready to post Wanted posters with your picture on them all over the West Village.”
Heinz reached for his glasses from the nightstand, put them on, adjusted them, and gazed at her. “I don’t quite understand why you would choose to stay here and play nursemaid to a virtual stranger, when you could be home, celebrating Christmas with your family.”
His question gave her pause. “We’re not strangers,” she said. “We’re friends. You, me, Austin, Patrick, Murphy, and Claudia. What’s that saying? Friends are the family you choose? I guess we’ve chosen you. Whether you like it or not.”
He fiddled with his glasses again and took a sip of water. “Friendship is not something that comes easily to me. I’m not used to being taken care of,” he said matter-of-factly. “As you can tell by all this…” He gestured around at the room and the apartment beyond. “I’ve been alone for a very long time. By choice.”
Kerry chose her next question carefully. “But you weren’t always alone, right?” She glanced at the nightstand and noticed that Heinz had placed the framed photograph upright again.