The Toys We Wrapped Twice

The boxes

Before the ham was carved, Loretta said, “Now. I hear somebody has presents. Presents first, ham after.”

The boys were up before she finished the sentence. They brought two cardboard boxes in from the front room and set the presents on the end of the table, all those lumpy red and green packages with the tags in Ty’s handwriting.

I saw Jeremy see them.

He was sitting back in his chair with his coffee, and when the first box came in, he went very still. Not the kind of still where a person is relaxed. The other kind.

Hunter tore into his first box. Red paper went everywhere, all over the tablecloth, onto the floor. He pulled out the Chiefs jersey and held it up by the shoulders, number 15.

“Yes,” he said, very quietly, the way he does when he is too happy to be loud about it.

Ty got the Lego fire station. The same box. The same picture on the front. The same set his dad had carried out of that Walmart in Emporia eight days before.

Loretta clapped her hands together. “Well, look at that,” she said. “Who spoiled you two?”

“Mom,” Ty said. He did not even look up from the box. “Again.”

Loretta stopped clapping.

“Again?” she said.

“Mom’s presents got lost at Dad’s,” Hunter said. He was pulling paper off the monster truck. “They fell out of his truck on the highway. So me and Mom and Ty went and bought them all over again.”

“We had to go all the way to Lawrence,” Ty said. “For the fire station. I found it under the shelf.”

The whole table had gone quiet by then. Aunt Dot had her coffee cup halfway to her mouth. The old neighbor was looking at his hands.

Jeremy looked down at his plate. There was nothing on it but his fork, and he looked at it like there was something written there.

Loretta did not look at me. I want you to know that. She did not look at me for an answer, and I did not give her one. I sat there in my sweater with my hands in my lap and watched my boys.

She looked at the boys for a long moment. Then she looked at the tags on the presents, all of them, every one, From Mom, From Mom, From Mom, in an eight-year-old’s crooked capital letters.

Then she looked across the table at her son.

“Jeremy,” she said.

He did not look up.

“Which highway?” she said.

What she asked him

It was so quiet I could hear the furnace come on in the basement.

Jeremy opened his mouth and closed it again. He said, “Mom,” and that was all.

“You came up I-35 from Emporia on Christmas morning with those boys in the cab,” she said, in the same voice she would use to ask somebody to pass the rolls. “Your daddy taught you to strap down every load you ever hauled. You never once in your life put a bag in the bed of a pickup and didn’t tie it. Which highway, son?”

He still did not answer.

She set her hands flat on the table.

“I’m only going to ask you this once,” she said. “And I’m going to ask you right here, because I want you to think about who is sitting at this table before you answer me.”

She looked at Hunter, who had stopped pulling paper. She looked at Ty, who was still holding the fire station.

“Did you lose those boys’ presents,” she said, “or did you take them back?”

Jeremy put his hand over his eyes.

Loretta stood up. She did not raise her voice. She has never raised her voice at that table in all the years I have known her.

“Get your coat,” she said to him. “We’re going out on the porch.”