Christmas Town. Peggy Gilchrist
women were often the real backbone of the family. Considering the mess that had developed following his mother’s death, he had no choice but to believe it. Steel magnolia, indeed.
Although as a child he’d always wanted a softer, warmer mother, Jordan was now grateful for all that Eugenia had been. For he was, thankfully, more like her than he was the Scoville side of the family, both in appearance and temperament.
Eugenia had been statuesque where her husband was stocky, golden skinned and dark haired where her husband was pale, assertive where her husband was tentative. She had been an aristocrat and her husband a man with the common touch. Growing up, Jordan had admired neither option. He’d hated being regarded as the little prince in the village where his parents were benevolent monarchs. But he’d been too much like his mother to play the role of the common man at his father’s side.
In the end, he’d followed his natural inclinations. He supposed, after all, he’d become his mother’s son.
Uncle Truman cleared his throat. “Well, then, Jordan. I see. That is, we’re so glad you’re home. For the holidays and all.”
Jordan frowned. Another sore spot struck. All his adult life, Jordan hadn’t been able to think of the holidays without thinking of Christmas Town, U.S.A. And as much as everyone else in Bethlehem had loved the elaborate celebration, it had done nothing for young Jordie Scoville but remind him that he didn’t fit in. He’d hated the extravagance and the knowledge that it was bought and paid for by his parents, that it wasn’t the product of anybody’s real Christmas spirit.
Since leaving, he managed to find ways, each December, to concentrate on anything but the holidays. Big deals closed on December 24. Trips to scout property took place on December 25.
Jordan frowned and walked to the window overlooking Main Street. “I’m not here for the holidays, Uncle. I’m here to shut down the mill.”
He heard the little hum of dismay that was his father’s response and wondered if other sons could handle all this with more grace, more sympathy. And, if so, why couldn’t he? Why did all this family stuff bother him so?
And why couldn’t he manage to be tough enough that it really didn’t matter?
“Well, of course, Jord…an. Of course. But it is almost December and we will all be together.”
“Not all of us,” Mitchell reminded his brother gently. “Not Eugenia.”
“Well, I didn’t mean that, of course. I’m not senile, Mitchell. I know the dear woman is departed. All I meant was—”
“Do you have all the records I asked for?” Jordan interrupted, impatient with their prattle. Impatient with himself for his impatience. He couldn’t stand seeing them like this, so helpless and so clearly in need of someone’s help.
But there was no one but him, and that was out of the question.
Little wonder Scoville Mill was bankrupt. What had Eugenia been thinking, dying and leaving the family business in their care these past ten years? “Is everything in order?”
“Oh, yes,” his father said. “To be sure. Venita has everything you’ll need, doesn’t she, Truman?”
Jordan shut out the sound of their cheery debate over who would summon the woman who had served as their secretary for as long as Jordan could remember. This was taking its toll on him already, dredging up memories he preferred to keep buried.
He studied the block-long Main Street of the town where he’d grown up, the town he’d left without looking back as soon as military school, followed by Duke University, offered an escape. He remembered Main Street as busy, like a midway at a rural carnival. People milling around, talking, in and out of the post office and the general mercantile and the diner. All the storefronts were still the same, except for being about fifteen years drearier. Few cars or pickups were parked along the street. No third-shifters moseyed along carrying out the day’s errands. The yellow caution light at the end of the hill didn’t even blink now, simply stared out dark and unseeing over the narrow, deserted street.
Just as Jordan had decided that Bethlehem was already a hopeless cause, with blessedly little left for him to dismantle, the door opened from the basement of the Little Bethlehem Baptist Church at the top of the hill. People poured out, talking, gesturing. In their denim and flannel they were more than animated, they were agitated. And all their agitation seemed directed toward one person at the very center of the frenzy.
The eye of this human hurricane was a petite woman, also wearing the requisite denim and flannel—snug jeans and a red-and-yellow-plaid shirt open over a red turtleneck. She kept shaking her head. They kept shaking their fingers at her. Finally she slapped a baseball cap on her short, dark hair and stalked away, dismissively waving them off. Without his realizing it, Jordan’s lips curled into a small smile.
They can’t push you around without your permission, he thought, remembering the words his mother had said to him more times than he could count. The woman in the baseball cap looked ill inclined to be pushed around, despite being heavily outnumbered.
The heavy oak door to his father’s office closed with such determination Jordan knew at once that Venita Tanner had made her entrance. He turned to her, his smile automatic. Surely, if there was anything left in this town to feel good about, it would be Venita.
She didn’t disappoint him. She stood in the doorway like a tall, dark warrior, broad of shoulder and sure of stance. The turquoise of her suit lent a glow to her ebony skin. She still defied her black hair, now shot through with silver, to return to its natural waves by yanking it back in a knot so severe it had always made Jordan stand straighter, even as a boy.
After all this time, he noted, squaring his travel-weary shoulders, Venita Tanner was still a formidable woman. Although Venita was called secretary, Jordan knew she had run much of the show herself for years. He also knew the African-American woman would never have been hired for such a responsible position if not for his mother. Thirty years ago Eugenia had been adamant that this college graduate was a better choice than a local high school girl of eighteen, who could barely find the shift key on the old Underwood typewriter. Jordan believed that if Venita hadn’t come of age at a time when black women didn’t easily go far, Venita could have owned the world, or at least a substantial portion of it.
She didn’t smile back, but he knew there was welcome in her big heart, even for the Prodigal Son.
“You always said you’d marry me when I was as tall as you,” he said, hanging on to the small smile prompted by the petite woman at the center of the storm on Main Street. “I’m back to see if you’ll keep your word.”
She grunted. “As long as they’re still selling four-inch heels, Jordie, you don’t stand a chance.”
“Oh, um, Venita, you see,” Truman began, nervously, “he wants us to call him Jordan now. Of course.”
She grunted again, hands on her generous hips. Jordan had the strangest notion she was waiting to see if he had enough human being left in him to hug the woman he’d spent more time with, growing up, than he had with his own mother. He didn’t want to disappoint her. He tried to remember the last person he’d hugged. Really hugged, not one of those phony social embraces at cocktail parties when some client’s anorexic wife remembers you from the last cocktail party.
By the time he’d made up his mind to give it a try, Venita had clearly grown tired of his indecision.
“Okay,” she said briskly, thrusting a folder in his direction. “Here’s what I’ve got. You better sit down.”
Feeling more completely alone than he had only moments before, Jordan caught her eye as he took the thick file folder from her, one that looked identical to the one she retained for herself. She looked apologetic and resigned. If he’d seen an ounce of fight in Venita’s eyes, he would have harbored some hope. Instead, he gave up any notion of salvaging anything from the wreckage that was the once-mighty Scoville Mill.
He’d hated