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The
Perfect Christmas Tree
When Carl asked her to work the yard on Saturdays starting the weekend after Thanksgiving, Kim didn't even hesitate. It wasn't like she had much Christmas shopping to do since her parents had died and her sisters had moved away, not to mention she had no money for Christmas presents anyway. Her job at the bookstore didn't pay much, and what little money was left over after taxes, food, and gas went to keeping the bookstore in business by making ample use of her twenty-percent discount. Sometimes she felt like a druggie, feeding her habit, but, as her father used to say, "words on a page keep body and soul together even when the pantry is empty and the fridge is bare." Carl
and Cassandra Gibbons owned the farm next to Kim Kaplan's east of Piñon,
Colorado. The Gibbons and Kaplans
had been neighbors for over a hundred years, each family trying to eke out a
living from the dense clay soil that lay under prairie grass.
The families had worked together through fat times and lean.
Cassandra Taylor had been Kim's best friend since they had met in diapers
thirty-three years ago, and Carl Gibbons had been the only one of Cassandra's
boyfriends that Kim could even stand. She
sang at their wedding and was godmother to their children.
She endured dozens of blind dates they sent her on until finally, three
years ago, all parties called a truce and agreed that Kim was just too fussy to
be happy with a twentieth-century mate. Seven
years ago, Carl had asked Kim to lease him a portion of her land.
The government was offering a sweet deal—free evergreen seedlings to
anyone who was willing to devote at least forty acres to growing Christmas
trees. Kim leased Carl twenty acres
and he put up the rest. The twenty
acres Kim had leased was now all she had left.
The rest of it was tied up in litigation with Michael Zekendorf
Homes—Kim had sold most of the farm to the development company two years ago
after her father died, only to watch them file chapter eleven within three
months. The court sold the Kaplan
land to pay off Michael Zekendorf's other debts, and the lawsuit in which she
was suing to get either her money or her land was moving through the courts at
glacial speed. Meanwhile, Kim was living on soup and wearing lots of
sweaters so that she didn't need to turn on the heat.
Now, the Gibbons Christmas Tree Farm was finally able to start selling
the trees Carl had planted seven years earlier and maybe, just maybe, they would
turn a profit this year if Kim helped keep costs down by working the yard with
Carl, while Cassandra worked the store. November
had been lovely—crisp days and cool nights, blue skies and pink sunsets—but
Thanksgiving brought snow and bone-chilling cold. Kim had sat in Cassandra's and Carl's dining room eating
turkey and playing with their newest baby, wondering how long she would be able
to stay in Piñon. She was the last
of the Kaplans, and she was hanging on by a shoestring…or a Christmas tree
needle if you wanted to look at it that way.
Her sisters had all left Piñon as soon as they had gotten their high
school diplomas. They had gone away
to college, found husbands, and had never returned except for their mother's
funeral twelve years ago and then their father's.
But Kim wanted to stay where her ancestors had stopped their covered
wagons and laid down their roots. Ed
Kaplan had deeded her everything he had after he gotten cancer.
And, one way or another, she had just about lost it all. Friday
after Thanksgiving Kim stacked her firewood.
She was determined not to pay public service for heat when she had a wood burning
stove and friends with pickup trucks. Cassandra's family had a mountain cabin that was surrounded
by thick forest. All summer, almost
every other weekend, Kim, Carl, and Cassandra cleaned the forest.
They chopped misshapen pines and stunted aspens, hauled and stacked
fallen timber, and generated enough fuel for Kim to go all winter without
turning on the heat if need be. Saturday,
Kim put on long underwear, ski socks, flannel-lined jeans, flannel shirt,
Sorrels, parka, mittens, and hat and walked over to the tree farm next door.
Carl was opening the gates at ten that morning, and already cars were
lining up outside the chain link fence. Thanks
to Cassandra's marketing prowess, everyone within a fifty-mile radius of Piñon
knew that Gibbons was the place to buy the best Christmas trees that year.
The high-flyers of society, for whom Christmas had become a competitive
sport, vied for bragging rights in getting first pick at the Gibbons lot.
Six
hours later, Kim and Carl had each sold over a hundred trees apiece.
They were grinning like fools, humming along to "Frosty the
Snowman" for what had to be the four-thousandth time they had heard it that
day, and were getting ready to close the gate on what was surely the
single-most-profitable day that the Gibbons Farm, Christmas Tree or otherwise,
had ever seen. Cassandra waved to
them from the store as she sent her last customer on his way—she had a bottle
of champagne icing down and it was time to celebrate.
If tomorrow and every other weekend before Christmas proved as
successful, Carl and Cassandra would be able to share the profits with Kim, and
she might be able to turn on the heat this winter after all. Carl
had just started walking the gate closed when a black BMW turned down the drive.
Carl stopped and looked at Kim. They
both rolled their eyes and groaned, then she laughed, "Let 'em in.
I'll handle them. You go pop
the cork with Cassie. This won't
take but a minute." "I
owe you one, Kim. Sell 'em a
ninety-dollar special. They look
like Martha Stewart types." Kim
took off her ski cap and shook out her short brown curls.
The back of her neck and forehead were sweaty and itchy from wearing the
cap all day. She took off her
mittens and ran her fingers through her hair as she waited for the last couple
of the day to park and get their bearings.
A
soft snow had just started to fall, and the cool, freshness of the winter air
curled up around her scalp, sending delicious shivers down her spine and
electrifying her senses. She smiled
as she recognized the feeling. It
had been a long time since she had felt it.
She had been so worried about staying warm that she had forgotten how
good it feels to let cold air caress you. She
remembered her father's stories about her childhood premonitions.
Apparently until she was about seven, she used to talk about a snow queen
who would visit her as she played in the family's frozen garden and tell her
things that would happen. Ed Kaplan
swore that Kim was always proven right when she told him what the snow queen had
foretold, but her mother hadn't liked the idea of her daughter having visions
and so Kim stopped talking about them and ultimately stopped experiencing them,
until she could barely remember them at all.
All she could remember was the feeling of icy loving fingers caressing
her neck and ears and cheeks and a vague sense of anticipation and the sweet
sorrow of knowing what tomorrow would bring. The
woman was out of the car first. A
tall brunette in a black hooded cape. Probably
worrying about ruining her designer boots in the snow, Kim thought as she
watched the woman pick her way from the car to the first row of trees.
And then the man got out and Kim met his eyes with a gasp of disappointed
recognition. He was the man from
the bookstore, Benjamin Scarpello, at least that was the name on his credit card
receipts. Kim had been fantasizing
that he was single—he didn't wear a wedding ring—and just hadn't worked up
the nerve to ask her out yet. He
had been coming in every Thursday at one-fifteen for at least two months.
He browsed for about twenty minutes, often asked to look in the special
collections case, and then bought one or more of the hard-bound classics.
Sometimes he bought something from History as well.
She assumed he lived on the hill in one of the dot-com mansions that were
transforming Piñon from a sleepy farm town to a trendy village.
He
had manicured fingernails and smelled of coffee, Armani, and leather.
He was quiet. His eyes were kind. His
voice was softly cultured. Kim
wondered what loss was behind the sadness that clung to him even when he smiled.
She wondered when the bitterness that permeated the creases in his eyes
had yielded to irony. She wondered
in what century he had been born to seem so out of place in this one.
She wondered what he thought of farm girls in flannel shirts who worked
in bookstores because they didn't know how to hang on to the land bequeathed to
them. She wondered if he loved snow
too and whether he ever held out his fingers to catch flakes so that he could
examine them before they melted. "Are
these all you have?" the woman asked, waving her hand at the precut trees
leaning in rows. "Well,
we do have forty acres of trees, if you want to pick out one for me to
cut," Kim answered, assuming that the gathering darkness and thickening
snow would dissuade the woman from even contemplating such a request. "My
friends Jean and Rick were here this morning from Denver, and she said that they
picked out the single most perfect tree she had ever seen.
She said a man cut it down for them.
Ben ..?" she said turning to the man, "wouldn't it be fun to
pick out a tree and have this girl cut it for us?
It will make our party so much more special…" "Andrea,
please, let's just take one of these trees and be done with it."
He turned to Kim, "These are every bit as good as those, aren't
they," he asked, nodding his head to the rows of living trees behind him. "Better,
in fact, since they're already cut. We’re
hoping we find homes for all the ones we already cut down.
It's just that some people like the novelty of having their tree cut
before their very eyes, so we let them…" "All
right, all right," Andrea conceded. Half
an hour later, Kim and Ben were wishing she hadn't conceded.
Kim's arms were aching from holding up tree after tree, while Andrea hemmed
and hawed and agonized over each one. Too
tall. Too short.
Too bushy. Too gangly. You
get the picture. Kim's still bare
head was covered with snow. She
thought about shaking it, but decided not to risk impersonating a wet dog.
Not the image of her she wanted Ben Scarpello to carry with him.
Of course, schlepping in the snow at the mercy of Miss Saks Fifth Avenue
wasn't an appreciably better image, but the half hour of tree shopping had at
least revealed that Andrea was still a Miss, though it was clear she was going
for an upgrade. She kept on talking about "our party," when in fact
Kim learned that the event was actually a house-warming for Ben who had finally
finished relocating from LA. "I
want a perfect tree," Andrea insisted when Ben 's good nature had finally
been exhausted and he stalked towards the car.
She turned on Kim in desperation, "I thought this place was supposed
to have perfect trees. Show me a
perfect tree. Stop trying to unload
these rejects on us." "You
won't find a perfect tree here," Kim answered calmly.
She noticed that Ben stopped to listen when she spoke.
"These trees are grown in rows and trimmed into that symmetrical
shape you like so much. But
symmetry isn't indicative of perfection. Come
to the bookstore next week and I'll show you a perfect tree if you really want
to see one." "All
I want is a tree as good as Jean's and Rick's." "Then
let me get the chain saw and turn on the flood lights.
We're wasting our time with these trees." One-fifteen
Thursday afternoon the bell over the door jingled merrily as Ben Scarpello
walked into Piñon’s tiny, but well-stocked bookstore. Kim was perched on her stool behind the little wooden
counter, her curly head buried in a book. French
carols and the scents of warm gingerbread and spicy pine swirled around her and
the glossy angels, dusty roses, and brazen best-sellers that filled the shop.
Kim
had spent much of the morning rotating the Christmas books on display in the
window and throughout the tiny store. She
had checked the special collections case, adding a new acquisition that Minerva
Middleton, the owner of the store, had shipped back from Tuscany.
It was just the kind of book that Ben Scarpello often selected whilst
browsing, and Kim sighed as she imagined him turning it over and caressing its
soft calf-skin cover before gingerly leafing through its gold-tipped pages. Kim thought she might ask Mrs. Middleton about stocking
antique bookmarks—such a book deserved an accessory worthy of it instead of a
scrap of paper or flimsy rectangle emblazoned with the store’s logo.
And it would be lovely to be able to offer Ben a selection of bookmarks
to linger over as well. Kim
raised her head and smiled at Ben, "Here to buy the perfect gift?" He
chuckled, "Yes, Andrea does need a present still, but I hadn't thought of a
book for her." He casually
picked up a book from the St. Nicholas table.
"You've met her. Any
suggestions?" Kim
suppressed the smirk that threatened to appear, thrilled that she was actually
having a conversation with a man who wore Armani and bought hard-bound classics.
"Well," she began archly, "how about the new Martha
Stewart book on decorating with dead flowers…I mean, dried flowers?" At
this Ben laughed, much to Kim's relief—after the words had left her mouth she
was afraid she might have sounded snippy. "Andrea's
not so bad. She's my best friend's
sister and between marriages and bored, so she took me on as a project….you
call that a perfect Christmas tree?" Ben
had spied Kim's tree at the end of the store, and now walked up to it, jaw
gaping but with a huge smile spreading across his face, wiping away the last
traces of bitterness and mopping up the irony. The
tree was shaped like a question mark, six feet tall. Its trunk took a right turn
about two feet above its base and then curved around and back to center. The
tree was mounted in a standard Christmas tree stand and strands of Christmas
lights emanated from it, star like, anchoring it to the walls to keep it from
toppling over. The angel on top was
flying horizontally and the arc of the trunk created the illusion that the
decorated tree was flying after her, swirling up and out of the floor, a melee
of colored balls and wooden soldiers, Santas and stars being sucked along in the
wake of an angel. It
was the single most beautifully bizarre, grotesquely gorgeous thing Ben had ever
seen. He
stared, whistled under his breath, and finally said, "Okay, I give, why is
this perfect?" "Because
I had to cut it down anyway. It was
growing in a place in the forest where it couldn't reach the sun no matter how
much it bent and twisted itself all its young life. There were too many other bigger trees in its way, and it was
starved for sunlight and dying. It
would have become diseased and then probably would have infected other trees.
Too many trees can kill a forest and this one had to go.
So I cut it down and brought it in here so it could be a Christmas tree
for a little while before it becomes mulch." Ben
smiled slightly at Kim and tentatively touched the needles on the tree.
His life had always been so black and white that it was hard for him to
understand what this woman in flannel and hiking boots standing by this
misshapen caricature of a Christmas tree was trying to tell him.
Always first class, always top drawer, Ben Scarpello had always picked
the prettiest girl and the hardest major. And
he had always prevailed, except once. “My
wife died nine years ago,” he said suddenly, almost defensively.
“She contracted AIDS during a blood transfusion for an operation I
thought she didn’t really need. She
hung on for so long—she kept her body so healthy, took vitamins and exercised.
She couldn’t believe she actually got the pneumonia that killed
her." “I’m
sorry,” Kim said. He
touched the angel flying from the tree. “We
had the perfect marriage…” “Except
that she died.” Ben
looked sharply at Kim, and a flash of pain seared his lungs and then was gone.
Nine years of perfect pain gone as he realized that she was right. “Except
that she died,” he repeated her words as if they were somehow liberating. The
bell over the door jingled, and Kim headed back to her post behind the counter.
Ben began browsing, every so often glancing at the tree and wondering
where the pain had gone. For so
long, every breath he had drawn had hurt, as if his lungs were encased in ice.
And now, he thought he could actually feel the warm spicy air of the
bookstore melting the ice within him, revealing a heart ready to love again, a
soul ready to find another mate. The
bell jingled again. Ben was again
the only customer in the shop. He
asked Kim to open the special collections case.
She smiled to herself as she watched him pick up the calf-bound Tuscan
book she had put there for him. She
watched as he turned it over and caressed it, then gingerly leafed through its
pages. "Someday…not
today, though," he said, placing it back in the case. The
bell jingled again as the door blew open, sending a swirl of snow into the shop.
Kim ran to shut it but stopped as she suddenly felt icy loving fingers on
the back of her neck. For an
instant, she thought they were Ben 's. She
stood for a moment in the doorway enveloped in tingly embrace of cold and ice
and felt herself a child again, seven again, playing in a frozen garden, smiling
at a beautiful woman dressed in icicles, a woman who told her secrets. And then,
unexpectedly, she didn't feel the cold anymore and realized that Ben had come up
behind her and had closed the door for her. "Are
you alright?" he asked. She
smiled slightly and went back to the counter to ring up his purchases. "Would
you like to have dinner with me sometime?" he asked, folding his credit
card receipt inside his wallet. "That
would be perfect," she replied with a slight smile. They
exchanged numbers and names—they had never actually introduced
themselves—and then Kim walked him to the door.
As she let him out into the swirling snow she felt a vague sense of
anticipation, and the sweet sorrow of knowing what tomorrow would bring.
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