One Christmas Knight

whose baby he’d helped deliver, or somebody whose life he’d saved, and that she might feel grateful and tender toward him, too. Sure, that would just be natural. But did these people go around falling in love with the ones they’d helped, or getting all involved in their lives? Uh-uh. That just didn’t happen, except maybe for remembering birthdays, cards at Christmas, things like that. Mostly, though, their worlds were separate, and once all the excitement died down, everybody went back to their own world and got on with their lives. That was the way it was supposed to be.

And all for the best, too. At least that was what he told himself over and over again on that long drive home. He told himself he had J.J. to think of, a family that loved him and a trucking company to build, and that ought to be enough to keep him happy and occupied. He told himself just about the last thing he needed in his life was a headstrong and independent career woman from L.A. who hated country music and thought it was perfectly reasonable to go and have a baby without even knowing what it was like to make love with a man. It took him close to a thousand miles, but by the time he got home, he almost believed it.

Two days after Christmas, at four o’clock in the morning, Jimmy Joe’s mama came downstairs and found him sitting in her living room in his daddy’s old favorite chair, watching television in the dark. She stood in the doorway with her glass of antacid fizzing in her hand and watched with him for a while, then said, “Son, you’re gonna wear out that remote.”

He looked over at her. “H’lo, Mama, sorry I woke you up.”

She shrugged and waved the glass. “Oh, I was up anyway. Always eat too much of that rich food over the holidays, then I have to take a few days and get my stomach straightened out.” She came and sat on the couch and put her feet, which were clad in slippers that looked like a pair of pink lapdogs, up on the coffee table. “How long ago’d you get in? I didn’t hear your rig.”

“It’s down at my place. I parked it and drove the car over. Didn’t want to rouse everybody.” He spoke absently, his eyes following the images on the screen. Images of a mother with burgundy hair with her newborn baby. The baby was dressed up in a Christmas stocking like a little bitty elf.

“Which one is that?” his mother asked, then answered herself. “Oh-The Today Show. I think CNN’s after that one.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve already been through ’em once.” Actually, he was on his third go-round, but he didn’t tell her that. Or that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to turn the tape off. Or what a shock it had been to him to see Mirabella’s face, hear her voice again, and how turning it off had seemed worse than leaving her all over again, and how lonely he’d felt in the silent darkness of that cozy and familiar living room.

“Son,” his mama said quietly, “are you in love with this woman?”

A laugh burst from him. “Trust you, Mama.” But he knew from long experience she wasn’t going to leave it alone, so he tried to joke her out of it, which was a tactic that never had worked with her very well. “Do you know how ridiculous that is? Now, how in the world am I gonna fall in love, huh? I got a child to raise, a trucking company to build, a house to take care of-”

His mother interrupted him with a sigh. “Yeah… sometimes I forget you’re not my oldest child. Son, you’re not even thirty, and you’re older than any of them, you know that? I don’t think you ever were a kid-you’ve been saddled with so many responsibilities all your life. There you were, taking on the responsibility for Patti when you were just in high school, then your daddy dying and you taking over the business, and trying to raise J.J. all alone. Tell me something-are you ever gonna think about yourself sometime in your life? Do what makes you happy?”

Jimmy Joe pressed the Pause button, freezing Mirabella’s face just as she was looking down at the baby in her arms. Pain punched him in the gut. “I am happy, Mama.”

“Yeah,” Betty Starr said with a snort. “A happy man sits all alone in the dark watching a tape of a beautiful woman over and over.”

His thumb moved on the remote and the image sprang to radiant life. His heart lifted. “Yeah,” he breathed. “She is beautiful, isn’t she?”

His mother chuckled softly. “So, I’ll ask you again. Are you in love with her?”

He sighed and scrunched down farther on his tailbone. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I am, and sometimes I’m sure, and then other times…I’m sure I’m crazy.”

“Well, good, you’re confused. That’s a good sign you are in love.”

Jimmy Joe snorted. “I’m not confused, Mama. I know right well when a woman is out of my league.”

The lapdog slippers hit the floor and the empty glass hit the top of the coffee table. “Now, you just stop that right there. I know I raised you to be humble, but I sure never raised you to be ashamed of who and what you are.”

He sat up straight and raised a calming hand; grown-up or not, all of Betty Starr’s kids knew to steer clear of her temper. “Now, simmer down, Mama. It’s not a case of being ashamed of who I am. You know me better’n that. It’s a case of knowin’ who she is. We’re from two different worlds. We’re just-” he took a deep breath to ease the ache in his chest “-too different.”

“Well, now,” said his mother thoughtfully, “you know that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

With one savage gesture Jimmy Joe shut off the VCR and slapped the remote down, then got up to pace in the restrictive area in front of the coffee table. He felt restless and jangled, overloaded with feelings he didn’t know what to do with, and like any overloaded child needing to blow off some steam, he knew he was safe with his mama. “I’m not just talking likes and dislikes,” he said with controlled fury. “Different politics and opinions, things like that-that’s nothin’. What I mean is, we don’t even think alike. We don’t believe in the same things.”

“You know this for a fact?” his mother said mildly. “That’s an awful lot to know about somebody in just two days.”

“She’s a Californian, Mama, through and through.” He paused to put up a hand, holding off what he knew she was going to say next. “I’m not judging-I’m not. But I’ve been around those people out there enough to know they don’t think like anybody else in this world.” He shook his head and blew out air in a breathy whistle. “She’s got some strange ideas.” You don’t know the half of it, Mama. She’s a virgin at thirty-eight-a virgin! And she’s just had a baby-a baby she made herself from a damn test tube. What kind of woman does that?

Betty Starr watched him for a moment, then settled back on the sofa cushions, once more installing the lapdogs in comfort on the coffee table. “I don’t know. I saw her on that interview, and she sounds like a real nice woman to me.”

“Well-” he lifted his arms and blew out another exasperated gust of air “-sure, she’s nice. She’s intelligent and funny and fiesty and opinionated, and she can be a real pain in the butt sometimes.” And a whole lot of fun to argue with. He looked sideways at his mama and grinned. A lot like somebody else I know who’s near and dear to my heart. He leaned over to kiss her.

She patted his cheek and smiled at him. “Well, then?”

He pulled away, exasperated again. “Okay. So, say I do love her. Say I love her enough to get past all the differences-what about her? What’s a woman like that gonna do out here? She’s a city girl. She’s got a career, friends, family…”

“If I heard right, she said her parents live in Pensacola.”

“Yeah, yeah, they do, but she’s got a couple sisters, some friends out there in L.A. The point is, she’s got a life there. You think somebody like that’s ever going to be happy living in a place like this, a hick Georgia town-”

With a sly smile, she finished it for him. “With a bunch of Crackers and rednecks?”

“You said it, I didn’t.”

They both laughed, and his mama sighed and said, “Oh. Jimmy Joe…”

After a forgiving silence, she said gently, “Let me ask you this, son. Who do you think you are to make that decision for her? Did you even ask her how she feels about it?”

He went back to his daddy’s old chair, sat in it, and leaning earnestly forward with his elbows on his knees, began to shape pictures for her with his hands, the way he sometimes did when he had something complicated to explain.

“It’s like this,” he said patiently, ignoring his mother’s broad smile. “There’s ducks, and then there’s chickens. Ducks live in the water, and chickens live on dry land, and there’s no way they’re ever gonna find a way to live happily together. Now you take the chicken-that’s me-and throw him in the water-that’s the big city-and he’s just