Christmas Carols: A Romantic Holiday Story Page 3

him in the dining hall.”

  She’s right. Even toward the end of the hallway, in a room filled with tables and chairs and the smell of fresh yeast rolls, we can hear Rafe strumming away.

  There is a small buffet, still steaming, with yellow gravy and turkey slices and the rolls I’ve been smelling and stuffing and green beans. We both make a plate.

  “I’ve been wheeling folks into the Event Room all afternoon,” she says, a little defensively, “I never stopped to eat.”

  We bring our plates to an empty table, already set up for the next morning’s breakfast.

  She shoves coffee cups and saucers aside and digs in. I shrug and follow suit. The food is good; salty and bland at the same time, like cafeteria food back in high school.

  “Have you known Rafe long?” she asks, sliding a pat of butter between two yeast rolls and smushing them together to make a glistening carb sandwich.

  “I work with him at Holly Day’s Diner,” I explain, swirling my yellow gravy through a mound of thick mashed potatoes. “I’m more a fan than anything. I just… I can’t get enough of his playing.”

  “He must like you,” she says, nodding toward me, girl-talk style. “He’s never brought anyone here before.”

  “Never?” I say. “In all these years?”

  She shakes her head. I noodle over that for a minute, tearing my roll apart and nibbling it quietly as, from down the hall, Rafe merges from “White Christmas” into “Winter Wonderland.”

  Gerty bobs her head in time, cleaning her plate merrily.

  “When did Rafe start playing here?” I ask.

  Her mouth turns downward and he says, “Shortly after his mother moved in.”

  “She was a resident here?” I ask.

  Gerty nods, pushing her plate away, dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a holly covered napkin. “She started out okay,” Gerty recalls, “but went downhill fast. Memory loss, dementia, the works. We were thinking about moving her to a more structured facility, less freedom, that kind of thing. That’s when Rafe started playing. He said his music had always calmed her down before, and he was right; it did. And even though he only played the one night a week, she started looking forward to it.”

  “Is she still here?” I ask, already suspecting the answer.

  “She passed last year around this time,” Gerty says, shaking her head sadly. “Rafe hasn’t missed a single Sunday since.”

  I chuckle humorlessly, shaking my head. “What is it, Alex?” Gerty asks.

  “I’m just such a creep,” I sigh, throat tight with emotion, voice cracking.

  Gerty frowns. “I doubt that very much, sweetie.”

  “Rafe asked me to spend Christmas Eve with him a couple of weeks ago,” I explain, voice still a little shaky. “I said ‘sure’. Who wouldn’t, right? He said he wanted to bring me somewhere special and I kept bugging him about it every day. Where are we going? What should I wear? How should I dress? So… when we pulled up here tonight, wow. Honestly? Gerty? I didn’t even want to get out of the car.”

  She snorts, grabbing my forearm on the table. “Honey, I feel like that every morning. And they pay me to come in here.”

  “Really?” I ask when we’re through sharing a good-natured chuckle.

  “Nobody wants to be here, Alex. Not me, not the nurses, not the staff, and especially not the residents.”

  I smirk, feeling a little better. “Rafe doesn’t seem to mind.”

  She shrugs, seeing both our plates finished, and stands. She reaches for hers, then mine, but I grab my own. “I’m a waitress,” I say, as if that explains it.

  She chuckles and leads me past the still steaming buffet, toward the kitchen. There are pots banging and water rushing and we slip the plates on top of a stack of dishes before drifting back to the dining hall.

  There is a dessert table, Christmas cookies, gingerbread, petit fours and mugs for hot cocoa. She pours us each one and we stand, drinking it, while she nibbles a few cookies.

  “For Rafe, this place is like his second home. He has no other family. His Dad died when he was just a kid, he was an only child, his mother was his life. Now, she’s gone, and we’re still here for him. We love him here, he loves us. I don’t think it gets much simpler than that.”

  I smile, the meal warm, the cocoa warmer, in my belly. I hold up my mug, a paper Santa mug, and offer her a toast. She clinks it, giggling. “Merry Christmas,” I say.

  “Merry Christmas.”

  We drift back toward the Event Room, no longer holding hands, but closer somehow. Rafe is winding down, some of the residents sleeping as he finishes a slow, almost bluesy version of “Jingle Bells.”

  He pauses, lifting his head, and surveys the crowd. “Merry Christmas everybody,” he says in his soft way, fingers gently strumming his guitar strings. A lot of folks don’t hear him, but most seem to know what he’s saying. “I just have one song left, but I think we all know it…”

  And then, he begins to groove on “Silent Night.”

  “Jesus,” I murmur, leaning against the door jam.

  “Alex?” Gerty turns to me, as if I might be having a stroke. “You okay?”

  “Yes, fine,” I whisper. “It’s just… this song.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she says, lip quivering, reaching for a stack of poinsettia napkins from a small table just inside the Event Room. “Why do you think I always stand next to these?”

  We share them, the whole stack, as Rafe plays and plays and plays. Between crying, softly, I murmur the words in my head. A line, from the song, stands out as I blink my eyes shut and dry the tears that will no longer come: “Sleep in heavenly peace.”

  And I wonder, if every time he plays that song, he dedicates it to his mother. And I know, without having to ask, that he most certainly does.

  No wonder he plays such a long version every time…

 

  * * * * *

  About the Author

  Rusty Fischer is the author of Christmas in Snowflake: Three Heartwarming Holiday Tales, forthcoming from Decadent Publishing. Visit him at www.snowflakeseries.com for dozens of FREE stories from the fictional town of Snowflake!

  Happy Holidays, whatever time of year it may be!!