The Hundred Dollar Bill on Christmas Eve

What I did, and didn’t do

I want to be honest about this, because I have thought about it a long time.

That first year, I froze. I had been part of that family for four years, and I had never once seen Gene do a mean thing on purpose. He was a gruff man, a quiet man, the kind who shows love by fixing your car battery without being asked. I could not make sense of it fast enough to say anything.

On the drive home, Addie was asleep in the back seat before we hit the county road. I looked at Ryan in the dashboard light.

“Your dad skipped her,” I said.

“I know.”

“Ryan.”

“I know, Kris.” His hands were tight on the steering wheel. “I’ll talk to him.”

He did, I think. Or he tried. Ryan is a good man, a steady one. He manages a sow farm for an outfit out of Iowa, twenty-four hundred head, and he can walk into a barn at four in the morning and know by the sound which pen has a problem. But with his father he is still sixteen years old.

Whatever he said, it didn’t take.

The second year, Addie did not line up. She sat on the couch beside me. When the bills came out, she watched Caleb and Emma and Wyatt and Lily, and she smiled at them, and she clapped when Lily said thank you without being told.

I tried to say something that year. I really did. I leaned forward in my chair and opened my mouth, and Ryan put his hand on my knee.

“Not tonight,” he said under his breath. “Not on Christmas. Please.”

So I didn’t.

Later, in our bedroom, I asked him why. He sat on the edge of the bed with his work boots still on.

“Because if you say it in front of everybody,” he said, “then Addie is the reason Christmas Eve blew up. Her cousins will remember that. My dad will dig in. And she’ll be the one who has to sit there while it happens.”

He was not wrong about that. That was the hard part. He was not wrong.

The third year

Last year, Addie brought a book.

She sat on the couch and read it during the line-up. A library book about horses, the kind with a sticker on the spine. She didn’t look up. Wyatt held his hundred-dollar bill up to show her, and she said, “Wow, Wy, that’s awesome,” and went back to reading.

On the way home, Wyatt asked from his car seat why Addie didn’t get one.

Ryan and I looked at each other.

“Grandpa just does it that way,” Ryan said, finally.

“That’s dumb,” Wyatt said. He was five.

Nobody told him not to say dumb.

That night, after the kids were asleep, I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and decided this was it. One more Christmas Eve, and then I was going to say it.

Not in front of the kids. Ryan was right about that much. But after the kids were in bed, after the presents and the ham and the bars, after Lisa and Tom had packed Lily into the van. I was going to sit down at Pat’s kitchen table with Gene and tell him plain.

I practiced it in the shower all year. I practiced it in the car on the way to work. I practiced it on the dental chair while I was sterilizing instruments.

“Gene, Addie has been a Vogel since she was three. She’s at your table every Christmas Eve. She calls you Grandpa. You need to stop doing this to her.”

I had it down. Twenty-nine words. I was going to say all twenty-nine of them.