The Last Minute Gift

The long months of Grammy Rose's illness had trained Dahlia well at withholding her tears. She did her best to draw upon that training when next she spoke. "Please," she said to Bennington, looking him straight in the eye. "I must have this Christmas tree. My grandmother is terribly ill, and ..." What she knew she had to say next forced her to stop. Her eyes were beginning to moisten. She steeled her eyes and steadied her voice before she went on. "I am so afraid this will be her last Christmas to spend with me. And I know having a Christmas tree this year -- especially a tree like this one -- it would mean everything to her." The sincerity in her voice and in her eyes cut Bennington to the bone.

"I'll give you three hundred dollars for the tree." She reached into her purse and withdrew a matching, plasticized cardboard wallet. She plucked the stack of bills that were nestled inside. Without counting, she extended her arm and offered the salesman everything that she had.

Dave never knew Dahlia's strength at holding back tears. And this was all new to him. He turned his back to the scene and buried his face in his hand.

The snooty salesman buckled. "Downstairs." His voice wavered ever so slightly. "In the basement, I believe, are a few unsold Christmas wreaths. You can fashion some of those and a bare tree frame into a Christmas tree. The wreaths are two for five dollars. I have a frame that is a return item. You can have it for free."

"Thank you! Oh, thank you so much!" She shook the salesman's hand vigorously, stopping just short of planting a kiss on his cheek, too.

Bennington waved her off. "You must hurry, now. The store closes for the season in fifteen minutes."

Dave barely had time to compose himself when Dahlia jerked his hand for him to follow her downstairs.

"Wait a minute." Dave stopped. "Where is this returned Christmas tree frame?" Then, turning to Dahlia, "Don't you want to see it first? I mean, what if it's damaged?"

"Never mind that!" the salesman dismissed with a snap of his fingers. "You'll never have time to find the wreaths before closing if you wait on me to drag the tree frame out of storage first. Now go. Rush!"

Dave and Dahlia had scarcely bounded down the stairs when the salesman snatched the display model from beside his checkout station. "My work here is never done. Never done!" Bennington said to himself, as he stripped the little tree, limb by limb, down to its bare frame.

* * *

Dahlia found a shopping cart. Dave pushed it, aisle by aisle, past the herds of wicker reindeer. He navigated it through the jungle of Christmas lights that hung in tangled vines from pinewood shelves. Ornaments lay mismatched in a sea of torn open boxes that stretched as far as the eye could see. Off in the distance, a glimmer of purple caught Dahlia's eye.

"Dave! Over there." Dahlia pointed excitedly. "There are my lights!"

Dave pushed the cart to where he was directed and then stopped. Dahlia quickly loaded box after box of twinkle lights into the cart.

"Look at the detail that has gone into these lights!" Dahlia exclaimed. "Each bulb is nestled into a uniquely styled reflective base. When they twinkle, it makes the whole set look like a varietal bouquet of blossoming flowers. These are exactly like the ones I had as a child. The purples and the pinks! Why, they haven't made lights like this in ..."

"In over thirty years," a resonant voice chuckled behind her.

They both whirled around, surprised to discover someone else had been down in the basement with them.

"And on the shelf to your left, you will find they come in a lovely shade of coral, too."

"Do you work here?" Dave asked as a matter of reflex, and then he nearly slapped himself for being so dumb. The man was round and jolly. He was dressed in bright red trousers with matching fur flocked coat. He sported a lengthy, full beard as white as the driven snow. And, as if it were really necessary, his costume included a plastic nametag that bore the name, "Nicholas."

"Oh, no, no, no," he boomed. "I come here to play!" And with a theatrical sweep of his arm, a waist-high tabletop revealed its charm. An eight-car train chugged on cleverly lain track, complete with tunnels and billowing smokestack.

"Oh, you are good," Dave applauded. "I can't even see the line in your beard."

"Of course, I am good," Nicholas said as matter-of-factly as if he'd just been informed the sun rises at dawn. "You've been a very good boy this year yourself, Dave. And you, too, Dahlia." He winked.

They froze for a moment, both of them trying to remember when it was, exactly, they had called each other by name. Neither of them could recall, but they shrugged it off and decided to play along with his holiday game.

"I work here, too," Nicholas admitted at last. "Can I help you find anything else? There are some very lovely ornaments over on the next aisle. Gold and silver globes, with bright red ribbons tied on top."

Dahlia's mouth hung open like it did when she was three, when Grammy Rose had said, "You can open them now, Dolly," and a magical silver tree dazzled before her wondering eyes.

"I don't believe this is happening," she whispered to herself. When she went over to the next aisle, the ornaments were exactly as the uncanny salesman had described them. As far as she could tell, they were the very same ornaments that hung from the tree of her childhood. Dahlia stared down at her distorted reflection in the mirrored ornaments, lost in a trance.

"We are looking for Christmas wreaths," Dave said at last. "Can you help us find them?"

"Helping is what I do best!" Nicholas answered merrily. "But I'll have to go look in the back room for them. If they are anywhere in this store, that's where they'd be. Please wait right here." And then salesman Nick disappeared into an alcove to go fetch the wreaths.

"Are you okay, Dahlia? You look like you saw a ghost."

"I'm pretty sure," Dahlia said, "I just did."

* * *

Rose had just seen a ghost, too. It came, as it always had come, in the darkness of her dreams.

It was a glorious, late autumn day. The aspens and maples wore their full palette of fire, blazing against the evergreen pines beneath a crystal blue sky. A twin-layer chocolate cake lay cooling on the kitchen window sill, fresh from the oven. It was Dahlia's third birthday, and she would soon be there.

Rose was so proud of George, her one and only child. But he was special for more than just that. George had just been promoted. He was assigned to a project manager position at a company where he'd only been working for five years. That made today a double celebration. But it would be bittersweet, she knew. George's new assignment meant that his lovely wife Emily, to whom Rose had grown quite close, would be moving away to California, too. In the four years that she knew her, Emily had become more than just a close friend. She was fast becoming the daughter Rose always had prayed for but never had. And, of course, her precious little Dolly would be leaving her, too. Her entire family -- her entire life -- was about to pack up and leave her behind. Rose checked the film in her Kodak for the fourth time that day as the hour grew near. A dozen rolls more, lined up like soldiers, were at the ready on her living room table.

The fancy huge Cadillac George was so proud to own had a distinctive horn, which carried quite a distance over a lonely country road. Rose, her camera aswing on the strap on her neck, was practically out the front door the moment it sounded. George blew the horn once more when his car rounded the final curve in the road that passed in front of the house he grew up in. Rose was already waiting at the unpaved shoulder. She was lining up a picture before the car had even rolled to a stop. Emily and Dahlia both had their arms out the windows, waving and smiling.

"Look, Grammy! Look!" Dahlia screamed, as a rainbow of colors flashed from the pinwheel she waved out the window. "I got for my birf day!"

Rose hastily aimed the camera for one picture more. And then she yelled something that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

"Wait! Don't get out of the car just yet," she had said.

By the grace of God, Dahlia had pulled her tiny arm back inside the car before the oncoming lumber truck swerved across the center of the road. It slammed into the Cadillac with such force as it passed, the car spun around twice and burst into flames. George died instantly from the impact. Emily wasn't nearly so lucky. The lumber rig driver kept right on rolling. He was never seen again.

Although Rose forever blamed herself, she was actually a hero that day. She made all the local papers. Rose ran to the burning car before she could even imagine what was happening. With the impossible strength adrenaline can provide, she reached into the flames and pulled Emily's unconscious body free of the fiery wreckage. And then she rescued Dahlia. When the ambulance and fire trucks finally arrived, a smoking metal frame that was all that remained of the car. They found Rose unconscious some thirty feet clear. Her tattered clothing reeked of gasoline smoke, and her face bore the blisters of unthinkable heat. She held Dahlia tight in the wrap of her fire-scorched arms, still protecting her from the flames.

Rose shook awake from her dream. But just as she had done every night for thirty-two years, she didn't cry out nor shed one single tear. Like a smothering blanket of snow, she held every last bit of it in.

* * *

It was five minutes to closing. The store had gone quiet. Salesman Nick emerged from the back room, empty handed.

Dave looked quickly to his watch, and then he raised his voice. "And just what is this? You made us a promise, Nicholas. Where are the Christmas wreaths?"

"Oh, there never were any wreaths" Nicholas answered coyly. "I said 'if' they were anywhere in the store. Remember? But there are none. We haven't carried Christmas wreathes in this store in years."

Dahlia's hopeful look crumbled like a broken dream. Dave stared speechless at a lying, unshaven fat man. They were the victims of a bizarre prank, Dave thought, and they had just been played for suckers.

In the silence followed, Dave leaned into Nicholas and said in a collected tone, "Let me tell you something, Nicholas. As one salesman to another. I know that if I ever tried to pull a stunt like yours, my butt would get --" He never finished the thought. It died in his throat when the reality of having no job to return to finally slammed home. He turned to kick the metal shopping cart in frustration and nearly fell over when, to his surprise, his foot swung only through open air. The cart Dahlia had loaded, with just the right trimmings, had mysteriously disappeared.

"Now, now. Allow me to finish." Nicholas showed them his palms in an overt gesture of peace. "There are no wreathes," he continued, "but your Christmas tree is waiting for you upstairs. Bennington is putting the finishing touches on it right now. And we are certain you will be very pleased."

Dahlia was so overcome she bent deep at the knees and thrust herself into the air. "Yes! Yes! Yes!" she squealed when she landed. She stamped her feet in a frenzy of motion and clutched fists of air, seemingly desperate to burn off the excess of her excitement before it blew her apart. Her face lit up like ... well, like a Christmas tree. And tears. Unstoppable tears of joy rolled down her cheeks until, at last, she was finally able to speak.

"Thank you, Nicholas! I knew you would come through. I knew it!"

"You're welcome," Nicholas said to Dahlia alone. Dave had already wandered off, on a mission to find their missing cart.

"But you'd better run along now. Bennington is a funny old elf. He'll lock the place up and throw you out in the snow if you're five seconds late."

"Thank you so much, again." She shot a quick glance over in Dave's direction. "That makes two very sweet and caring salesmen I've met tonight."

"I've done all that I can, and a little bit more. But now I must go" Nicholas said, neglecting to thank her for likening him to a good salesman. "I have a very busy day ahead of me." And with that, Nicholas turned on his heel and hurried towards the back room.

Step by step, as his boots receded towards the shadows, Dahlia got that feeling again, of sinking into the snow. "I want to play, too!" a memory reverberated deep in her soul. "I want to catch magic!"

"Santa?" a trembling voice reached out across the decades to touch him.

Nicholas halted and spun, helpless to mis-heed the voice of a child.

"Will Grammy be okay?"

Nicholas let out a long and heavy sigh. "I can't change destiny, Dolly. But I assure you, Grammy Rose will be just fine."

Dahlia laughed and cried in the same stuttered breath. "Thank you. I know now that she will be." She ran up to give him a great big teddy bear hug. But Nicholas had already vanished. He disappeared as mysteriously as the shopping cart had gone moments before.

It was one minute to ten, and Dave was still staring down the long aisles in search of their vanished cart.

"Never mind the stupid cart!" Dahlia screamed at him. "We have only a minute to run upstairs and get our tree!"

* * *

Dahlia slept nearly the entire way back, utterly spent from the ordeal she'd been through. And for that, Dave was grateful. It took every ounce of his attention to deliver them safely through the worst of the blizzard. Though often tempted, he couldn't bring himself to wake her until he'd found his way back to the vacated parking lot of Ditman's Furnishings. Even then, he was reluctant to do so. She looked so beautiful in her feminine slumber.

He scanned the whitened lot in search of her car. Now that the crisis of time had passed, he had a half-baked notion he could be hero once more by jump starting her car. It was a disorienting search. The storm had obliterated virtually every landmark. At last, he located an oversized lump in the flat expanse of snow, a frosty tomb where, he realized then, her Corolla must be. Dave shook his head and silently mouthed the word wow.

He nudged Dahlia awake. "Hey there, sleeping beauty. I'm going to need some directions if you're going to get home tonight."

Dahlia blinked awake and smiled up at him, only somewhat embarrassed when she realized she had been sleeping on his shoulder.

"That was some dog and pony show those two jokers put on back there, huh?"

Dave was the type who liked to get to the bottom of things. He wanted to know what that trickster salesman had said to her while he was off looking for the missing shopping cart. He never did find it. Who would have made off with it, only to load its contents into his truck? Why all the sneaking around? Dave had been burning to ask her these and a slew of other questions ever since they left Carlton's. If that even was Carlton's. He had thought to return there another time, under more clement conditions. But he knew there was little chance he would ever find that place again. They had stumbled there blind, and it was miracle enough he'd found his way back. Had he not thought to use the local AM station as a beacon and drive in the direction of increasing signal strength, they may have frozen to death out there in the Minnesota wilderness. He was beginning to doubt that Carlton's had ever been. Perhaps, on hypothermia's edge, he had imagined the whole thing.

"Honestly, Dave." Dahlia pouted. "I can't imagine why a grown man such as yourself cannot accept the simple and logical explanation that we were assisted tonight by Santa Claus and his elfin Christmas tree craftsman, Bennington." She gave him so serious a look when she said it, her face nearly split in two when she could sustain it no more. She erupted into a girlish fit of giggles.

"Ho, ho, ho" Dave laughed derisively, to which Dahlia held her sides and laughed all the harder. Dave rolled his eyes. It was late. He knew he'd have to return to this another time.

It was long after midnight when the powerful Tundra ground to a stop in front of Dahlia's house. The snowfall had abated to a gentle dusting. Dave ran to the back of his truck and hoisted a silvery Christmas tree up on his shoulder. Lariats of pink and coral lights looped around his neck and across his chest. Tucked under an arm was a motor and gear assembly. Dahlia's arms were laden with as many boxes as she could carry. A glittered white blanket draped over her shoulder. Like thieves in the night, they crept silently into the living room and set up the tree.

* * *

The following morning was the worst one yet. Grammy Rose's lungs had filled with so much fluid overnight, Dahlia had to fight off the urge to turn the old woman upside down and shake her. Dave waited patiently downstairs. His back was sore from having slept only three hours on Bram Stoker's old sofa. But thoughts of his own aches and pains wilted to nothingness when his ears absorbed the moans of an old, old woman and those of a machine slurping and sucking death from her lungs for the very last time.

"Why must I close my eyes, Dolly?" Grammy Rose asked, as Dahlia led her down the stairs. "I can barely see with them open, anyhow."

"Because I have a surprise for you. You'll see."

But Grammy was in no mind for games. She peeked.

"A man!" Rose exclaimed with shocking volume for a woman so recently rescued from drowning in her own phlegm.

"Hi, I'm Dave," he blushed and waved. He felt "here to help You!" rising in his throat but managed to swallow it down like a dry-mouthed pill.

"That's not the surprise," Dahlia corrected. "Now close your eyes, Grammy." She placed a hand over Grammy Rose's eyes this time, steadying her shoulder with her other.

"The hell he's not!" Grammy insisted. Dave laughed in the background.

Dahlia maneuvered her crazy old grandmother in front of the tree and then lowered her hand. "Okay. Now you can open them."

Grammy Rose's eyes grew wide and her mouth hung open. They had placed the tree up on a pedestal, in front of the large bay window that overlooks the pines. The frosted silver tree dazzled and danced. Silver and gold mirrored globes adorned with bright red ribbons on top rotated slowly before her. Grammy's face went blank as stone. From within her stone, Rose peered out at 1978 once more. Everything about the tree was exactly the same. The purple and pink and coral lights. The rotating base. The glittered white blanket that shrouded the motor ... not a single detail was missing.

Rose had asked for a Christmas tree to stir a sweet memory of Dolly, from when she was only a child, so innocent and sweet that she could be swept away in the wonder of magic. But Rose could never have imagined this. The roles, now, had been reversed. It was she who was swept away by the power of Christmas magic, and Dahlia who witnessed unbridled joy burning bright within the eyes of a rediscovered child. Tears rolled down from ancient wells Dahlia was certain had dried up a long time ago. She held tighter to her Grammy Rose, but she did not say a word. Together they embraced, as silence wept across a vast sea of time.

Finally, Dahlia could stand the silence no more. "Well, Grammy?" she asked, breaking the spell. "Do you like the Christmas tree we got you?"

Grammy Rose looked over and smiled like a three-year-old girl at the other half of we. Then she turned back to Dahlia. "Next to you, sweet Dolly," she said at last, "Next to you, it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

* * *

Grammy never made it to Christmas Day. She died quietly in her sleep during the night of Christmas Eve. When Dave and Dahlia found her in the morning she had her bobbin lace nightgown on and rabbit fur slippers on her feet. She was still smiling. An embrittled family scrapbook lay open in her lap. Dahlia stooped to examine the book and wondered why she had never seen it before. But Grammy had known. The scrapbook was filled with memories that were too close to "that time." As Dahlia would later discover, it was a precious, last minute gift. It contained letters and newspaper clippings, along with hundreds of photos of George and Emily and of herself as a baby in their arms.