Baygirl Read online

  “You mean you don’t already know?” I asked as I wiped down his kitchen counter.

  Mr. Adams settled in at the kitchen table. “Why would I?”

  I nodded toward his side window. “Well, you seem to have a front-row seat to my life.”

  Mr. Adams startled me with a big guffaw. “Ha!” he shrieked, slapping the table with the palm of his hand.

  “It’s not funny,” I said. “Why are you asking something you already know the answer to?”

  Mr. Adams folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. “To see if you’d ’fess up, lass.”

  It was my turn to burst out laughing. “’Fess up?”

  “Aye. ’Fess up.”

  I threw my cleaning rag under the sink. “It’s not a crime to have a boyfriend, you know.”

  “It’s a crime to my eyes,” said Mr. Adams. “Canoodling like that in public.”

  I hid a smirk. “There are these things called curtains, you know. Not only do they open but they also close.”

  “’Ave your parents met him?” he asked.

  “No.” I snorted. “If he gets any farther than the doorstep, I might never see him again.”

  “You embarrassed of him then?”

  “No! Why would I be? He’s smart and gorgeous and funny and—”

  “I meant your father, lass.”

  “Oh. Well, yeah, obviously. He’s an idiot.”

  “Well, you can’t hide your young man forever, you know.”

  “You’re one to talk,” I said. “You kept Elspeth away from your family.”

  “Aye, I did, flower. Like I said before, they were cold to her. But your family might like your fella. You won’t know unless you introduce ’em.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Invite the lad over at Christmas,” Mr. Adams suggested. “Everyone’s jolly at Christmas.”

  What the hell, I thought. I called Elliot that night and invited him to come over on Christmas Eve. He said yes straightaway. I, on the other hand, was having second thoughts. Mr. Adams was right. Everyone is jolly at Christmas. The problem was, my father’s holiday cheer came in a bottle.

  six

  The Mystery Gift

  On Christmas Eve, when Dad heard I had a friend coming over, he put his bottle of rum back in the liquor cabinet. Mom and Iggy exchanged glances when they saw him pour himself a Pepsi, straight up, but said nothing. I guess they didn’t want to jinx it.

  Iggy put up the Christmas tree he’d bought in the Canadian Tire parking lot that morning, and once it was positioned just so, at an angle we could all agree on, we realized we had no decorations. Iggy had given his to the Salvation Army, along with his furniture, and ours were in a box in Parsons Bay, hidden away in Nan’s basement.

  “Popcorn!” Iggy said. “We can string popcorn! And cranberries!” We strung popcorn and cranberries until the Christmas tree looked only slightly more festive than Charlie Brown’s.

  Mom filled every inch of the coffee table with snacks: mini sausage rolls, chunks of cheese on toothpicks, ham sandwiches cut into little triangles and big bowls full of pretzels and chips. She also filled a three-tier cake plate with Christmas cake and shortbread cookies. Iggy put on Bing Crosby’s White Christmas and built a fire in the fireplace. It was the same old room with the same old people, but somehow Christmas always managed to make things feel different and special. Perfect, almost. Except that Nan wasn’t there. Ms. Bartlett had called and said Nan had a cold and wasn’t up to traveling. She said not to worry; they’d have a nice Christmas together and Nan would call on Christmas Day. I couldn’t wait to talk to her.

  Iggy passed me a glass of eggnog.

  “You look good, Iggy,” I said. He had on a green cashmere sweater and a pair of dark blue jeans.

  “So do you.”

  Mom had given me an early Christmas present: money for a new outfit to wear over the holidays. I had bought a fitted red sweater dress, black leggings and a pair of knee-high black boots. I hoped Elliot would like it.

  I nibbled on pretzels while I waited for the doorbell to ring.

  “Do you like him then?” asked Iggy.

  I felt my face flush. “Who, Elliot?”

  “Yeah, she likes him,” teased Dad. “Just look at her face. It’s red as a beet.”

  Mom laughed.

  I threw a cushion at Iggy and went to the front door to peek out. As I scanned the street up and down, looking for Elliot, I caught sight of Mr. Adams sitting at his kitchen table, staring at his teapot. A wave of sadness rushed through me, and my heart felt three sizes too small, just like the Grinch’s. I went back to the living room.

  “Would it be okay if I invited Mr. Adams over?” I asked.

  “Sure!” said Iggy. “The more the merrier!”

  Mr. Adams looked touched when I asked him to join us. I helped him into his coat and, linking my arm through his, walked him over to Iggy’s. While the adults sat in the living room chatting, I waited.

  It was nine thirty when the doorbell rang.

  Elliot was out of breath. “Sorry I’m late. We had company drop by and I couldn’t leave.”

  I hugged him. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here now.”

  Elliot was wearing a shirt and tie, dressed to impress. And I could tell by the way the adults looked at him that it had worked. He shook their hands and introduced himself, and when he got to Mom, he added a kiss on the cheek that made her go all giggly and schoolgirlish.

  “So,” said Mr. Adams, “this must be the lad you were playin’ tonsil tennis with the other night, eh?”

  I closed my eyes. “Oh. My. God.”

  Elliot tried to speak. “We were just…I mean, I was just…I mean, it was just…I really like Kit and…”

  Mom sat on the arm of Dad’s chair. “Young love, hey, Phonse?”

  He took her hand. “I remember it well.”

  Iggy passed Elliot a drink and asked him about school. Iggy had gone to the same one, so they settled on the couch and sank into a deep discussion about which teachers were still there and how the sports teams were doing and other stuff that was boring to everyone but them.

  Mom and Mr. Adams hit it off too. She was having a great time listening to his Yorkshire stories. They spoke about me as well. I heard him say he was “very fond” of me, despite my “impertinence.” Mom asked if he’d like to come for Christmas dinner. His eyes lit up. “Did Thomas Crapper invent the toilet?” Mom didn’t get that he meant yes and said she didn’t know. Mr. Adams laughed. “He was from Yorkshire, you know.” Then he launched into a long list of amazing historical figures “birthed by his homeland.” Mom nodded her head throughout the speech and tried to look impressed.

  Dad was quiet at first, but by the end of the night he was singing along to the CD and had everyone joining in. He danced my mother around the room and almost knocked over the Christmas tree. It was clear the stuff in the bottle had somehow made its way into his Pepsi. No one except me seemed to mind.

  At the end of the night, when Elliot and Mr. Adams had gone home, Dad knocked on my door. I was sitting on my bed, doing some last-minute wrapping.

  “Your young man’s a fine fellow,” he said.

  “Yeah, he is.”

  “That went well, don’t you think?”

  He was fishing for compliments. Proud of himself for not putting on a show. Well, as he would say, whoopdi-bloody-doo. What did he want? A medal? I wasn’t about to give him any compliments for acting halfway normal for once in his life.

  “It was okay,” I said flatly.

  He just stood there, like a little boy waiting for approval.

  “Was there anything else you wanted?”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay, well, I have some presents to wrap.”

>   He nodded and, with slumped shoulders, left the room.

  Iggy banged on my door Christmas morning. “Get up, get up!”

  Bleary-eyed, I opened my door. “What are you, five? Sheesh! It’s seven AM!”

  “There are presents under the tree!”

  “Well, yeah. It is Christmas morning.”

  “Come on!” he said, pulling on my arm. “Let’s go!”

  Mom and Dad sat sleepily on the couch.

  “He’s insane,” grumbled Dad.

  Mom smiled. “You were always the first one up when we were little, weren’t you, Ig?”

  Iggy sat down by the tree. “Enough talking. Let’s get these opened! I’ll be Santa.”

  He passed each of us a gift. “These ones are from me.”

  My gift was a beautiful wooden jewelry box. Now if only I had some jewelry to put in it.

  We spent the next half hour opening gifts—gifts from me to them (mostly chocolates and sweets from Pelley’s because I couldn’t afford much else), gifts from Mom and Dad to Iggy and me, and gifts sent from Parsons Bay. There weren’t a lot of expensive gifts in the pile, but, as the old saying goes, it’s the thought that counts, and it was clear that a lot of thought had been put into each one of them.

  While Mom and Iggy started the turkey preparations, I talked to Nan on the phone. Her voice was all croaky. When it was Dad’s turn to talk, I knelt by the tree, eating a candy cane and examining my presents. That’s when I noticed an unopened one, tucked in close to the tree stand. It was a small box in plaid wrapping paper, and it had my name on it. I opened it. My heart almost stopped. It was the bracelet. The bracelet from Pelley’s. Elliot must have slipped it under the tree the night before. I put it on. It was gorgeous.

  Mom admired it during dinner. “It’s lovely,” she said. “Elliot has good taste.”

  After dessert, I phoned him. “Meet me behind Pelley’s.”

  As soon as I saw him, I hugged him. “Thank you, Moptop! I love it!”

  “Love what?”

  I held up my wrist. “The bracelet.”

  “Well, this is awkward,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t buy you that bracelet.”

  “Oh.” I was confused. My mind raced, searching for an explanation. Then I slapped myself on the forehead. “I’m so dumb. The bracelet must be from Iggy!” I said. “He gave me a jewelry box. This must go with it!”

  “That makes sense.”

  “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. “No big deal. I do have a gift for you though.”

  “You do?”

  “Yep. Wanna see it?”

  I nodded.

  He took a small gift-wrapped box out of his pocket.

  My hands shook slightly as I opened it.

  “It’s amethyst,” he said.

  I slid the gold ring with the purple stone on my finger. “I love it.”

  “I’m glad.”

  I reached into the inside pocket of my coat and passed him a present wrapped in gold paper. “I’ve got something for you too.”

  He tore the paper off. “Wow.”

  “It’s a journal. For your poems and stuff.”

  “And it’s leather too. Awesome. Thanks, Kit.”

  He leaned against the brick wall of the store and I leaned into him.

  “Have you finished your special-object assignment?” I asked.

  “Not quite. You?”

  “Almost.”

  “Maybe we can work on them together,” he said. “Your place? Tomorrow afternoon?”

  I nodded.

  “Joyeux Noël, Kit.”

  “Merry Christmas, Moptop.”

  Iggy was dozing on the couch in a turkey stupor when I got home.

  “Hey,” I said, jostling his arm gently. “Why didn’t you say this bracelet was from you?”

  “What? Huh?”

  “This bracelet,” I said, waving my arm in front of his face. “Why didn’t you say it was from you?”

  He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Because it’s not.”

  “It’s not?”

  He shook his head. “Mr. Adams, maybe?”

  “Maybe,” I said. But I didn’t think so. Mr. Adams had already given me my gift, a book called Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior. He’d said I could learn a thing or two from it. When I’d opened it, I’d wished I’d given him some smart-ass book about being old and crotchety, but I didn’t know if one existed and it was too late anyway, because I’d already bought him a Lifesavers Sweet Storybook and a package of Jammy Dodgers that I’d specially ordered from Bartlett’s.

  That left Dad. He was in his bedroom, sitting on his bed and staring out the window. He had a drink in his hand.

  “Why didn’t you just say it was from you?” I asked. “Isn’t that what normal people do? They write their name on the gift tag or, even better, they hand it over and say, ‘Merry Christmas, this is from me.’”

  “I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

  “Well, you failed. Because you’ve made a huge deal out of it. I’ve just made a fool of myself saying thank you to Elliot and then to Iggy for something neither of them gave me.”

  “Sorry, Kitty.” He downed his drink. “I can’t do anything right where you’re concerned, can I?”

  My heart sank. He was right.

  I sat next to him and fiddled with the bracelet.

  “How did you know?”

  “Mr. Pelley told me.”

  Why was it so hard for Dad to just give it to me?

  Why was it so hard for me to just say I liked it?

  I took a deep breath. “I love it, Dad. I really do. Thanks.”

  He patted my knee awkwardly. “You’re welcome, Kitty.”

  I got up and went to the door. “Merry Christmas, Dad.”

  Elliot and I spent the next few days working on our special-object poems. I couldn’t wait to share mine with Mr. Adams. I stood on his doorstep in the freezing cold and rang his bell. He took ages to answer it, and when he finally did, he said, “What are you doing just standing there? Come in out of the cold, you silly girl.”

  He made some tea, and when he stretched the tea cozy around the pot, my heart skipped a beat because that’s what I’d written my poem about. The tea cozy was my special object. I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to read it to him.

  “Mr. Adams?”

  “Aye?”

  “Um, I have a poem for you.”

  “Lovely jubbly. Is this from that writin’ class of yours?”

  “Yeah, we had to write about a special object. I don’t really have a special object, but I know you do, so I thought I would write about it…in your honor.”

  He settled in with his tea and bickies.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  I took the poem out of my back pocket and cleared my throat.

  “Oh,” he interrupted, “there’s something I’ve been meanin’ to tell you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Did you know that the tallest tree in Yorkshire is a lime tree? One hundred and fifty feet tall. It’s in Duncombe Park.”

  “Oh, that’s…interesting.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m ready.”

  I had just opened my mouth to speak when a fly appeared, landing on the side of Mr. Adams’s teacup.

  “Ee, will you look at that,” he said. “A fly. In the middle of winter.”

  “Yep, it’s a fly.” I held up my paper and cleared my throat. “Now, my poem.”

  “’Ave you ever seen a Yorkshire fly? Jolly good things, Yorkshire flies.”

  I put my paper down and indulged him.

 
“Okay, tell me. What’s so good about a Yorkshire fly? And what’s the difference between a Yorkshire fly and non-Yorkshire fly anyway?”

  “Aha!” Mr. Adams exclaimed, as if he’d just made an amazing discovery. “A Yorkshire fly is not a livin’ fly!”

  “So a Yorkshire fly is a dead fly? So does that mean that all dead flies are Yorkshire flies?”

  “Nay, lass. A Yorkshire fly is a fishin’ fly.”

  “A fishing fly?”

  “Aye, a fishin’ fly. I’ve caught many a trout with the trusty Yorkshire fly. It’s made with a very lightweight wire hook and just a sprinklin’ of game feathers.”

  “Cool.”

  “Now then, let’s get back to more important matters,” Mr. Adams said, opening his door and waving goodbye to the fly. “Cheerio, old chap.”

  “Right,” he said. “I’m ready for the poem. As you young folk say, hit me with it!”

  I’d never said “hit me with it” in my life, but I cleared my throat and began.

  “Object Of My Affection”

  Written by Kit Ryan

  For Reginald Adams

  Oh, lovely, wooly tea cozy

  What a warm hug you give my tea

  You fill me with such glee

  Wooly, warm, knit by angels

  Sweet as tea itself

  Your multicolored hues

  Brighten my day

  Every day

  Without fail

  Oh, lovely wooly tea cozy

  I looked up from my paper. Mr. Adams was staring at the tea cozy. He looked deep in thought.

  “Bloody hell.” He sounded astonished. I smiled. I’d blown him away with my writing.

  “I take it you like it?”

  “Like it? I bloody hated it. It’s bloody awful. Knit by bloody angels? Sweet as bloody tea itself? What a load of bloody rubbish.”

  Well. I might not have been the best writer in the world, but I knew “overuse of a word” when I heard it, and to say that Mr. Adams had just overused the word bloody was an understatement.