Wrap It Up!

I got a phone call from Frank mid-morning. I was pretty surprised.

“Hi Frank. Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” he said with trepidation.

“What’s going on?”

“I…need your help, Faith. I need you to come shopping with me.”

I was a little confused but agreed to go with him. He picked me up about half an hour later and headed to the mall. In the car I asked him some more questions.

“What do we need to get from the mall?” I asked.

Frank pulled out a worn piece of paper and handed it to me.

“Betty would do all the Christmas shopping for the kids. She got most of it done,” he said indicating the check marks on the list, “but not all of it  before she…and I have no idea what I’m doing or where to get most of that stuff. She always did it and the kids are going to have a hard enough Christmas without her so I just…”

“You just wanted to make it as normal as possible.” I said quietly.

“Right.”

I perused the list while Frank tried to find a parking place. The mall was so busy and we’d be lucky to find the gifts that Betty still had to buy since it was so close to Christmas. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to get everything.

After searching for a parking place for what seemed like an hour, Frank and I high-tailed it into the mall.

“Okay, well, we should probably go to a bookstore to get the book for Sarah on here and I think there’s a department store that sells sweaters in Mike’s size.”

It took us four hours but Frank and I were able to get everything except one last gift for Maggie. We sat down to take stock of it all and make sure we didn’t miss anything (and also eat lunch because OMG I was starving).

“Why didn’t they wrap anything?” Frank asked over a French fry.

I felt bad for Frank. It was obvious he was so out of his element with trying to run the holiday like Betty would have. I don’t think he really did anything but decorate the outside of the house and yard and haul up the Christmas tree every year. It dawned on me that Frank had probably never even wrapped a gift and wouldn’t know how to do it like Betty did (there are gifts sitting under the tree that have already been wrapped by her and, you guys, they are like works of art; it’s obvious Betty really loved the holidays).

“Oh, um, there’s a wrapping table somewhere around here, we could have them do it.” I said sipping my hot chocolate.

Frank looked relieved at my suggestion.

“It’s a blessing that Maggie is going to cook the dinner; I think I’d kill someone if I tried.” Frank joked, “I feel bad that we couldn’t find that cookbook for her.”

“You know,” I said, “I bet Maggie would probably really appreciate it if you gave her a compilation of all of Betty’s recipes. I think it would mean more than a normal cookbook.”

“Betty does have a recipe box. I could get Sarah to help me type them up on the computer and put them in a nice organizer…” Frank said.

We got done eating and headed over to the wrapping table set up in the mall by the Santa Clause meet and greet area. I think Frank really liked my idea. He was telling me how he planned to decorate the cover of the binder and put a picture of Maggie and Betty on the inside. It was touching to see how excited he was to make such a gift for his daughter. We swung by a scrapbooking store to buy some supplies for Frank to make it once we were done at the mall.

When we got home, Frank snuck into the kitchen to grab Betty’s recipe box and then headed up to Sarah’s room to work on it. I started putting our gifts under the tree.

“Where were you guys?” Claire asked coming around a corner with a cup of tea.

“Oh, your dad just had some last minute gifts to pick up.” I said bending down to put one last gift under the tree.

“You guys went Christmas shopping?” Maggie asked me. She was standing next to Claire.

“Um. Yeah, didn’t he tell you?” I said feeling uncomfortable.

“No, of course he didn’t tell us, that’s clearly why both of us asked where you went.” Maggie snapped, “If he’d told us he needed to go to the mall, one of US would have taken him, obviously.”

“Oh, well, he had to buy gifts for all of you, so he probably didn’t want you to see what he was buying for you and ruin Christmas.”

“Oh, it’s already been ruined.” Maggie said walking into the kitchen in anger.

I looked at Claire stunned. She smiled at me sadly before sitting on the couch.

“She doesn’t like me very much, does she?” I asked sitting next to her.

“Don’t take it personally…Maggie is….very protective of all of us, including Mike. She’s never been very welcoming to his girlfriends. Maggie has…she’s become very cynical about Mike’s girlfriends, I think, but she’ll come around to you, eventually. Things are just…it would have been better had mom not died right before we met you and right before the holidays, that’s all.”

About an hour later I left and went back to my apartment to wrap a few gifts and hang out with Murphy (Molly left yesterday for her mom’s place in Michigan). I’m going over to Frank’s house for Christmas Eve tomorrow and I’ll also be going over there for Christmas day, too. I have a bad feeling about being there, especially with Maggie’s chilliness towards me but I think it’s important for me to be there for Mike.