Joe's Promise
“It’s getting late,” Michelle said. She ran her fingers through her dark hair.
“One more for the road. It’s Christmas Eve,” Joe said as he drained what was left in his beer glass. The couple had been married in June. This would be their first Christmas together.
“All our friends left an hour ago.”
Joe smiled. His bearded, round face might one day make for a good Santa. He waved the server over and asked her for two more bottles of Budweiser. “Michelle, I got your Christmas gift today. It’s under the passenger seat if you want to peek when we leave.”
“No way. I love surprises,” Michelle said. The server brought the beers and lingered, waiting to give them their check. They were her last customer and she wanted to get home. Joe didn’t notice her, but Michelle did. “I think our server wants to leave. Get the check, honey. We need to hit the road too. We haven’t even bought a tree yet.”
Joe paid the check and guzzled his beer from the bottle, finishing it. He looked at Michelle. “Ready to go?”
Michelle took another sip of Bud and said, “It looks like it’s getting cold out there. What time is it?”
“My watch broke, remember?”
Michelle checked hers. “Uh-oh, it’s 9:30 already. You think any tree lots will still be open?”
Joe pulled his coat on and laughed. “They probably don’t close until midnight on Christmas Eve. They wait for stragglers like us. They just have to throw away what they don’t sell tonight.”
“I hope you’re right, Joe. It’s our first Christmas and I really want a tree. I bought lights yesterday.”
The couple shivered as they walked the two short blocks to the parking lot. As they were getting into their car, it started snowing.
“Hey, how about that. A white Christmas for our first one.”
“I hope it’s only flurries. We have a forty-minute drive ahead of us and you’ve had too much to drink,” Michelle said.
“We’ll be home before you know it. Just one stop for the tree. That guy up on Route 46 has some nice ones.”
They drove out of the city, winding through some sketchy neighborhoods out to Route 21, which led to Route 46, a four-lane road with a divider in the center. Their apartment was about a mile off the highway.
As they were merging onto Route 46, Michelle asked, “Are you sure the tree lot you’re thinking of will still be open? Doesn’t look like much of anything is open tonight.”
“They’re open, Michelle.”
“I really want a tree, Joe.”
“I know. You said that earlier.”
They drove west on the highway going slower than usual because the snow that had fallen was making the road slippery. The temperature had dropped to the high teens.
When they got to the tree lot, it was dark. The string of lights that circled the perimeter of the lot were out.
“Now what?” Michelle asked.
“Look, there are still trees on the lot. We’ll just take one, leave a note and go back tomorrow or the day after and pay for it.” They walked onto the lot and headed for the trees. In the darkness they had failed to notice something. The trees had been sawed in half. “I guess they figure if they can’t sell them, they aren’t giving them away,” Joe said.
“Our first Christmas, ruined,” Michelle said.
Joe gave her a hug. He tried to kiss her, but she turned her face away. “Are you crying?”
“Why didn’t we leave Dwyer’s when everyone else did?”
“We were having a good time,” Joe said.
“You were having a good time. You wanted to keep drinking. It’s the same thing every time we go out, Joe.”
“If you wanted to leave when the others did, why didn’t you say so?”
“Because in the six months we’ve been married, I’ve learned that you never leave until you’ve had your fill of beer.”
It was cold and the wind was biting their cheeks. Michelle turned to go back to the car. Joe kept clutching trees, hoping that the owner with the chainsaw, missed one. He almost tripped over a tree that was lying on the ground, but kept his balance. He picked it up and saw that it was still, sort of, in one piece. The guy had only sawed about halfway through the upper part of the shaft. He picked it up and gently placed it in the trunk.
“Got us a tree,” he said when he started the car. “It has a hinge, but we’ll have a tree for our first Christmas.”
When they got into their apartment, they leaned the tree against the corner wall in the tiny living room. Michelle looked at the tree. A sad tree even before the chainsaw disfigured it. She went into the bedroom and found Joe passed out on the bed, still fully clothed. She cried as she crawled in next to him.
The next morning, when Michelle woke up, Joe wasn’t there. She smelled coffee, though, a good sign. She walked into the living room and found her husband trying to string lights on the leaning tree. Her present sat underneath it.
Forty years later, on Christmas Eve, one month after Joe died, Michelle told her two sons the story about that first Christmas. They had heard the story many times before, of course, but they listened as if they were hearing it for the first time. The ending was always the best part.
“I gave your father a watch that Christmas and he gave me a beautiful, engraved leather portfolio. It was the best present ever,” she said. “When I opened it, I saw he’d written a letter, a promise. He never had another drink after that night.”