One Christmas Knight

“Don’t know how long she plans on leavin’ it here,” said Riggs. “Guess she’s gonna be stayin’ with her folks down there in Pensacola for a few more weeks, anyways.”

“You talked to her?” Jimmy Joe asked, his heart flapping against his ribs like a tire going bad.

“Oh, yeah, she called me here, couple weeks ago, now. Right after New Year’s, I guess it was. Wanted to know if I’d send her stuff to her, UPS. She had all her Christmas presents for her folks in the trunk, you know. She said she’d send me some money to do it, but, ah, you know, I went on ahead and sent ‘em for her. I knew she’d be good for it, and she was-the money come just a few days later. Say, you know, she is just the nicest little ol’ gal-sure am glad everything turned out okay for her.”

“Yeah,” said Jimmy Joe. Funny thing-it seemed like all of a sudden he couldn’t get enough air to breathe. “You, uh, you say you shipped her things to her UPS? You, uh…” He gulped oxygen and plunged. “You wouldn’t happen to still have her address, would you?”

“Well, now, I sure do.” Riggs looked at him sideways, kind of sly. “You thinkin’ about gettin’ in touch with her? Saw her on TV-my, she sure is pretty, ain’t she?”

“Aw, you know,” said Jimmy Joe, shuffling his feet like a teenager facing down his prom date’s daddy, “I just thought I’d maybe drop her a note, or something. Find out how she and that little baby are doin’…”

“Well, sure ‘nuff-I would,” said Riggs, and added casually, “You can give her a call, if you want to. I got her phone number, down there in Pensacola where she’s stayin’ at her folks’ place. Come on in where it’s warm and let me find it for ya.”

Ten minutes later Jimmy Joe was back on the interstate, heading east with a trailer-load of beer and a grin on his face, as his daddy would have said, “Like a possum with his paws full a’ paw-paws.” He felt jangled and so weak in the knees he didn’t know how he was going to shift gears. “You’re an idiot,” he said to himself. “You know that, don’t you?”

He did. But that didn’t keep him from wanting to blast everybody he met with his airhorn and shout to the heavens, “Hallelujah!”

In Amarillo he left I-40 and headed down to Fort Worth on Highway 287, which was a long, straight shot, and once he’d left the little Panhandle towns and their speed traps behind, about as fast a one as a driver could ask for, for not being an interstate. He drove most of the night, pulling over on the outskirts of Fort Worth to catch a few hours’ sleep, then slipped on into the city ahead of morning rush-hour traffic. When the wholesaler’s warehouse opened up, he was there at the loading dock, waiting.

He unloaded, then pushed on down to 1-20, to a truck stop he liked where he knew he could always find clean towels and plenty of hot water, plus a fairly decent cup of coffee. After a shower and a shave, and with a good hot breakfast under his belt, he screwed up all his courage and made a phone call.

Not long after that he was on his way again, heading east on 1-20 in a cold, misty rain.

“I have this theory,” Mirabella said, on the phone to her friend Charly Phelps in Los Angeles. “What I think is, that it’s all just a matter of chemistry.”

“No kiddin’,” said Charly in her dry Alabama drawl.

“No-I mean actual brain chemistry. To be more specific, oxytocin.”

Laughter bubbled against her ear. “Oxytocin?”

“Yeah, remember? They talked about it in childbirth class, It’s this chemical that’s released naturally during pregnancy, also during touching and during nursing. They call it the bonding chemical. It’s what triggers contractions-atso triggers orgasm, by the way.”

“Oh, that’s good to know.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been reading up on it in my childbirth books since I got my stuff back last week-did I tell you the man with the service station shipped them to me UPS? The one that talked us through the delivery, and then Jimmy Joe gave him my keys and had him pick up my car? Turns out he’s the nicest guy. Anyway, when you consider all that oxytocin oozing around inside me, then all that close physical contact-he was always touching me, Charly, rubbing my back, my legs, my feet, even my face…” And, he kissed me-don’t forget that. I’ll never forget that. “Then you throw in a whole bunch of endorphins on top of it, and I must have been a walking chemical love potion. It’s no wonder my emotions were so susceptible.”

“So what you’re saying is, it wasn’t that this Jimmy Joe guy was so wonderful, just that he was there?”

“Charly, at that point I’d have probably bonded with a BarcaLounger.”

This time Charly’s hoot of laughter held the derision that is completely permissible between old and trusted friends. “Bella,” she said fondly, “you are such an idiot.” And then, after a brief pause to see if she would deny it: “So that’s your theory, huh? Tell me this-are you buyin’ it? Because I’m not.”

“I’m working on it.” Mirabella sighed and kissed the top of the downy head nestled like a sun-ripened peach against her heart, then leaned her head back against the crocheted afghan that lay draped, as it had for as long as she could remember, across the back of her mother’s old rocking chair. “Right now it’s too soon to tell. I mean, I’m nursing, you know? And that oxytocin is still flowing, so…it stands to reason I’d still have all those feelings and memories.”

Just as strong and clear as if it had been yesterday we were together in that truck… Christmas carols playing on the radio, and Jimmy Joe’s arms holding me and his voice yelling in my ear, “One more… one more!” And his face when he laid Amy on my stomach and said, “Marybell, say hello to your new baby girl…” so vivid in my mind I feel sometimes he’s just in the next room, and if I call to him, in the very next moment he’ll be here beside me, smiling his sweet, Jimmy Joe smile…

On her chest, Amy stirred and uttered a tiny squeaking sound, and Mirabella’s hand began a slow stroking and patting rhythm to counteract the effects of her own rueful laughter. “Anyway, I’m hoping it will all go away once I get my body back to normal-like a bad dream, you know?”

“How’s that coming, by the way? I know you, you’re probably thinkin’ you ought to already be wearing your regular clothes by now, and driving yourself nuts if you’re not. Are you working out?”

It was Mirabella’s turn to snort-but softly, so as not to disturb Amy. “I’m not that compulsive.” But she smiled when she said it, because she knew full well that a few months ago she had been, about her physical self, anyway, and especially about her weight.

But now…she didn’t think she could have explained it, certainly not to Charly, but since Amy’s birth she’d noticed, well, a distinct difference in the way she viewed her own body. Where once she’d focused on and criticized its every flaw, now when she looked at her body she felt what could only be described as pride. Yes, the feelings seemed to say, what a wonderful, marvelous body you are, to have done this miraculous thing! Instead of her usual restless dissatisfaction, her constant drive to improve herself, she felt a kind of complacency that was almost catlike, bordering on smugness.

And something else-something she’d never known before, and so couldn’t begin to explain. It was as if something sleeping deep inside her had been awakened, like jillions of tiny seeds sprouting where everything had been barren before. As if all those tiny new shoots and buds were pushing, straining, reaching for warmth and light, because like all newborn things, they demanded nourishment. She felt a new restlessness now-not of dissatisfaction, but of longing; an itch not of compulsion, but of desire. Having a child had fulfilled her, as she’d known it would; fulfilled the caring, giving, loving and nurturing woman she’d always known herself to be. But at the same time it seemed to have awakened a strange new woman, one she’d never met before. One who needed nurturing. One who needed, one who yearned, one who deserved to be cared for…given to…touched…loved.

“It’s coming pretty well.” she said, drawing a shaken breath. “I feel really good-I think the nursing’s helping me get back in shape, if you don’t count my chest, which of course is still enormous. I’ve been walking-not today, though. It’s raining, and it’s cold.”

“It’s beautiful here,” said Charly with typical California smugness. “Just your basic January in L.A. After all the lousy weather in December, suddenly the sun’s shining and the hills are green. So, when are you coming home? I miss you, and I’m dyin’ to see Amy.”

Home? Mirabella gazed at the rain-drenched Mandevilla vine growing up the trellis beside her parents’ patio door and wondered how she was ever going to tell her best friend that Los Angeles didn’t seem like home to her anymore. It seemed as far away to her as the moon, and about as hospitable. Sometimes her life there seemed like a rapidly fading dream.

But if my home isn’t there anymore, she thought with a vague sense of bewilderment and sadness, then where