It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
Dave Conifer
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 Dave Conifer
Part I
Steve Havelock watched Manteo emerge from the dirty white pickup truck with a clipboard and a snarl. The dark skin, tattered clothing and muddy work boots signaled that Manteo was somebody that made his living outside. His face was brown where it wasn’t covered by a dark bushy beard that tapered to a point four inches below his chin. He wore his hair long and most of it had escaped from the ponytail that began just above his shoulders. The others had looked softer and were armed with sprinkler system brochures, a friendly smile and clean hands. This one had none of those things.
Manteo looked angry. He looked mean. While Havelock had grown up in the safe suburbs, playing rec soccer and having sleepovers, guys like this were already breaking the rules. He was the kind of guy that Havelock had learned to avoid.
“Steve Havelock?” he grunted when he reached the foot of the steps.
“Are you Mr. Manteo?”
“Yeah,” he said, extending his hand. “Rob Manteo.”
Havelock had seen that hand many times. He thought of auto mechanics, the guy who drained the septic tank and the carpenter who built the deck at his parents’ house the previous summer. There was a strip of blackness beneath each nail that gave way to a brownish tinge that coated the ridges of his fingers and palms. Havelock put his revulsion aside and shook the hand. It was firm and scratchy with calluses and abrasions. He felt strength, but knew Manteo hadn’t squeezed as hard as he could have.
“What kind of system are we talkin’ about?” Manteo asked after the introduction was complete. “Front and back?”
“Yeah, front and back. I want to cover all the gardens, too. And I’d like to be able to add on to the system later.”
Manteo looked around the property and made some sketches and notations. “Alright,” he said before walking off. Havelock watched as Manteo paced off and recorded distances using nothing but his dusty boots and a pencil.
“Who’s that?” Havelock heard from behind. It was his friend Eddie Durham, back from the pizzeria. He held a flat white box with a brown paper bag balanced on top.
“He’s doing an estimate for my sprinkler system. The guy at Home Depot recommended him when Maddie and were there the other day.”
Durham disappeared into the house with the pizza, leaving Havelock to wait nervously. He caught his own reflection in the storm window and noticed that he was everything Manteo wasn’t: flabby, pale and balding. A few minutes later Manteo returned. Havelock had invited all the other estimators into the house to go over the estimate and make their pitch, but not this one. Instead, he leaned against the railing and waited.
Manteo sat on a step and scribbled on the clipboard for half a minute before he spoke. “Sixteen hundred.”
“Dollars? I mean, that’s the bottom-line price?”
“Yup.”
“Can you leave a copy of the estimate?”
Manteo snorted and shoved his hand-scrawled notes and diagrams at him. “Do you want this?”
“No, I guess not. Sixteen hundred, you said?”
A minute later Manteo was pulling away from the curb in his battered truck. When Manteo went inside he was enveloped by the smell of hot pizza. “That was a rough-looking guy,” Durham said through a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni. “He looked like Marlboro Man meets Jerry Garcia.”
Havelock flipped open the pizza box and pulled out two slices that he plopped onto a paper plate. “Yeah, he gave me the creeps. But he’ll install my system for practically nothing. I don’t know how he makes any money. Some of them wanted four times as much.”
Durham crunched on a pizza crust as he thought this over. “You should just go with him if he’s the cheapest. So he was a little scary, big deal. You’re not hiring him to do brain surgery.”
“That’s what I was thinking. I don’t think I’ll tell Jane about his price, though. She’ll think I’m being a cheapskate.”
~~~
He told his wife about Manteo later, but left out the part about the bargain basement price. “He’s a little skeevy,” he warned. “It’s not like we have to let him in the house or anything.”
~~~
Jane Havelock saw Manteo for the first time a few days later when she came home from her nursing shift at Peninsula Hospital. Remembering everything her husband had said, she watched him in the back yard while she removed her white nursing uniform and changed into shorts. He really did look like one of those crazy killers in those cheesy TV movies. It didn’t help that he was swinging a mattock wildly over his head.
He was so different from her. She didn’t think she could even lift his tools. Her fair skin burned after just a few minutes in the sun, while he was brown from head to toe without any hint of sunburn. There was nothing wrong with being different from her, she reminded herself. In a way the simplicity that surrounded the man was fascinating. He looked as though he didn’t have a care in the world except for what he was doing at that or any particular moment. If it hadn’t been time to pick Maddie up at day care she probably would have kept watching.
~~~
The next day he was there again when she came home with Maddie. His shirtless body was glistening with sweat. They still hadn’t talked. That didn’t seem right. She set Maddie up with a video and decided to make some lemonade and take it out for him. She put in a pitcher on a tray, just like moms did it on all those sit-coms from the Fifties. After she mixed the lemonade and put it on a tray with two glasses she had second thoughts. I won’t even shake his hand, but now I’m letting him use my dishes?
He looked up at her halfway through a swing of his mattock. “Hi. Want to take a break for some lemonade?”
He stared for a split-second before dropping the mattock and started coming over. “I thought you might want a cold drink,” she called. “I don’t see how you can work out here. It’s so hot.”
He pulled on a tattered checkered shirt before walking over. “It don’t bother me ‘cept I already drunk up all my water.”
She poured two glasses and took a seat on a patio chair. He gulped his without sitting down. Before she could answer Maddie burst out of the house. That wasn’t what Jane wanted but it was too late. Maddie wore the carefree, boundless smile of a happy four-year old when she came out but her face clouded over when she saw Manteo. Without a word she ran to her mother and buried her face in her mother’s lap.
Jane started to explain but Manteo didn’t wait. “What’s your name, darling?” he said sweetly. Jane was shocked. His voice had transformed completely. Maddie turned and face him without lifting her head. “Maddie,” she said simply.
~~~
“I couldn’t believe it,” she told Steve later. “Within two minutes they were like father and daughter. He’s the most unfriendly guy I’ve ever met but Maddie loves him. He’s so sweet to her.”
“Just don’t leave her alone with him. He does good work but I don’t like the looks of him.”
“I know. He makes me nervous. Maddie pulled something out of his pocket by accident. It looked like a letter from a lawyer. As a matter of fact, it was from the firm across from the hospital. He snatched it up like he was afraid I might see what it was. I hope he’s not some kind of escaped convict.”
She knew he’d already tuned her out by then. He didn’t have much patience for anything she said anymore. Not like the first few years. “Are we still going to Packer Inn for dinner?” she asked when it looked like he was back from wherever his mind had taken him. “We could drop Maddie with Ann. They invited her to stay over. We could make a night of it.”
“Damn, Jane, I’m beat. Can we skip it? It seems like we were just there last week. I just want to watch baseball.”
~~~
Rob Manteo was around the Havelock house long after he finished building the sprinkler system. It was too easy for Steve to hire him to do the routine maintenance that he should have been doing himself. Manteo seemed to pull his prices out of thin air but they all had one thing in common: they were ridiculously low. “He can’t be making any money,” Steve and Jane had agreed. “Is it a tax write-off or something for him?”
Maddie’s new play set in the back yard took most of a week to build. Tearing out the rotted deck and replacing it with a multilevel cedar plank one took nearly three. When it got cold he moved inside where he installed a ceramic tile floor in the foyer before repainting the entire first floor, including ceilings. The day after Thanksgiving he began finishing the basement.
As the months went by Jane had gotten used to the stoic, hardworking blue-collar man. The opposite was true for Steve, but it was okay for him because most of the work was done while he was at the office. Nobody enjoyed having “Uncle Rob” around more than Maddie, who spent the afternoons tugging on Manteo’s beard and playing peekaboo with him whenever she got the chance. It always looked as though he was happy to make time for her. By October he was staying an hour after he finished work just so he could play with Maddie. Sometimes he even brought a clean pair of jeans and a fresh shirt to change into. Jane didn’t worry too much but she always kept them within sight. She never got used to the change in his voice when he was with her daughter. Even his grammar gets better.
Part II
“Get this,” Steve said to Eddie as they each carried a bucket of golf balls onto the driving range. It was a balmy December day and they were taking advantage of it. “I set a record last night. Jane was all over me after she got Maddie to bed. Fifteen minutes later I’m in my chair watching Sports Center with a cold one in my hand! Just a few commercials and the deed was done, dude! Sometimes I think I’m living in a Man’s paradise.”
“You’re a romantic devil aren’t you?” Eddie asked. “Ever heard of foreplay? Did she see the stopwatch?”
He laughed. “Now you sound like the old lady herself. Foreplay’s for single people.”
“So the Neanderthal is still working around the house, huh?”
“You mean Manteo? Yeah, we keep him busy. He’s doing the basement now. He’s a strange bastard but he works practically for free. If he wasn’t doing that stuff I’d have to. It’s a win-win.”
“I’ll bet Jane doesn’t see it that way,” Eddie said as he pulled clubs from his bag and wiped the heads off with a cloth. “She’s the one who has to hang around with him.”
“She doesn’t mind the guy anymore. And Maddie loves him. She’s absolutely wild about him. It kind of gives me the willies. After he does the basement I think I’ll send him on his way.”
~~~
“We only have two weeks left before Christmas,” Jane told Steve one night a few minutes after Manteo had left. “I’m not ready. Can I go shopping? Can you feed Maddie something for dinner?”
“Sure. Have fun. By the way, what was the cave man getting so pissy about? He didn’t like the Christmas lights you strung up in the hallway? I was just about to tell him to knock it off when he stormed out.”
“He’s been grumpier by the day. He doesn’t seem to like holidays, especially Christmas. The lights really set him off. He didn’t even say goodbye to Maddie. Maybe he needed those outlets for his tools.”
A few minutes later she was heading up route 9 toward the mall when she saw Manteo’s beat up pickup crossing the highway. On a whim, she veered left to follow him. She watched his taillights as he wound along a leafy two-lane black top. At the crest of a hill he slowed and turned into a driveway between two stone pillars. In the background was a huge brick house that was easily four times the size of her own. Curious, she parked on the side of the road and watched as he unloaded tools into a shed that was illuminated by his headlights. After closing the shed he continued on to the house in his truck, disappearing behind it.
Is he moonlighting here? Or maybe it’s just somebody who gives him a place to keep his equipment. She was about to turn her own headlights back on to leave when a car roared back up the driveway from the direction of the house. It paused only briefly as it passed through the gateway, before it pulled onto the roadway and raced away. A Mercedes, she said to herself. I bet they pay better than we do.
~~~
On the way to the mall she couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d seen. Were they about to lose their handyman? Was Maddie about to lose her Uncle Rob? Maybe there was still something she could do.
“Rob, I saw you the other night,” she told him a few days later when he and Maddie were packing up his tools. “I was just passing by. You were putting your tools into a little building. Are you working for somebody else? We’d hate to lose you.”
He put Maddie down gently and glared at her before walking out of the room. By the time she found him in the living room he’d put on his quilted work coat and was walking out the front door carrying a drill case and a toolbox. She caught up to him outside his truck, where he whirled to face her. “Did you follow me?”
“No, of course not. I was heading for the mall and I saw your truck, that’s all.”
“Ain’t no mall near there. Are you spying on me?”
“I’m not, Rob, I swear.” Why am I pleading with him, she asked herself. What’s going on here?
He passed the drill and toolbox into the truck bed before reaching into his pocket for his keys without answering, but she wasn’t ready to let it go. “Don’t be mad, Rob,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. It was stupid.” He threw her hand off, yanked the door of his truck open and sped away without looking back. Every day for the next week she and Maddie waited for him to come back to work on the basement but he never came. The same thing happened the following week.
~~~
Jane finished a double shift at noon on Christmas Eve day. After punching out she stopped in at the cafeteria for a cup of coffee and a donut because there was still over an hour to kill before picking up Maddie. She eyed the professional center across the street and remembered the letter from the lawyer, the one with the Senk and Weiss letterhead. Manteo hadn’t come around for weeks, to work on the basement or anything else, since he’d gotten so angry that night. Maybe she could drop in at the law office. They might know where he was. It’s lunchtime, isn’t it? That basement isn’t going to finish itself.
~~~
Jane didn’t get very far with the receptionist, who didn’t know anything about Manteo and wasn’t interested in finding out. She was walking through the atrium on the way out when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“I know Robert Manteo,” a young black woman in a business suit said. “She doesn’t,” she said, jerking her head back at the receptionist. She’s new. I’m Angela Gaskill. I’m a junior partner here.”
Jane introduced herself and explained that Manteo had disappeared while in the middle of some work at the house. “I’m worried about him,” she finally said.
“We used to see him a lot but he never comes in anymore,” Angela said, motioning Jane over to a set of overstuffed chairs clustered around a coffee table. “It’s all faxes and e-mail with him. He owned a small business and we handled all of their legal work. One of the girls called him ‘Pierce.’ You know, because he looks so much like Pierce Brosnan.”
“Pierce Brosnan? His company’s legal work? I’m starting to think we’re not talking about the same person.”
“I guess you know about the accident.”
“Accident? I don’t know a thing about it.”
Angela paused and looked towards the reception desk. “I’m not so sure I’m supposed to be talking about this.”
“What happened?”
Angela sighed. “Well, it was Christmas day. Four years ago, I think. His wife and his little daughter left in the afternoon to visit the grandparents up north.”
“He had a wife and kids?”
“If it’s the same guy. They got caught in an ice storm. I don’t remember the details but their car ended up getting flattened by an oil tanker truck.”
“My God. How old was his daughter?”
“Four, I’m pretty sure.”
“Same as my Maddie.”
“She was everything to him. His wife told me she was jealous. The good kind of jealous, she always said.”
“Oh my God. So what happened after that?”
“Maybe nothing. Next thing I know we’re dissolving the business. I know I never saw him in here again.”
“This was about four years ago? You said?”
“I think so. But he still has some legal troubles.” She paused long enough to sniff and take a deep breath. “Sorry,” she said, smiling as she dabbed at her eyes. “We really liked Robert.”
“What kind of business was it?”
“It was a software company, but it had nothing to do with that. It was his wife and daughter.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “This is the part I shouldn’t talk about. It’s ongoing.”
“I understand,” Jane said, knowing she would anyway.
“They both survived the accident, you see,” Angela continued in a hushed voice, looking back at the reception desk. “If you can call it that. They were in intensive care up near the city. Both on life support. It looked bad. Then they both died suddenly at the same time. Like, exactly the same time. There was a lot of talk. The prosecutor didn’t like it, and he knew Robert had been hanging around a lot, so us lawyers were back in the picture.”
“Oh my God,” Jane said. “I’m a nurse. I work right across the street. I know what you’re talking about.”
On the way to pick up Maddie Jane tried to visualize Manteo without the long hair and beard. Pierce Brosnan? It can’t be the same guy. Could it?
Part III
Jane rustled up some leftovers for dinner that evening. Maddie was so excited about the impending visit from Santa Claus that she didn’t eat a bite. After the dishes were cleared she tracked Steve down in the living room where he and Maddie were cleaning out the fireplace. “I have to run out for a few minutes. I’ll only be an hour. Can you read ‘Night Before Christmas’ to her if she looks like she’s about to conk out?”
“Sure,” he said. “But it sure doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon.”
~~~
She was relieved that the metal gates between the pillars were open. The house was dark as she eased up the driveway to where it circled in front. She got out anyway and walked up the brick steps and between the pillars. Nothing happened after she pushed the doorbell once, so she did it again. And again. She wasn’t going to leave until she was sure nobody was home. She wanted answers.
After the fifth push of the doorbell a garish chrome porch light came on above her head. She heard the clack of locks being undone, and then the oak door with the brass finishings swung away from her. Suddenly, standing in the shadows of the doorway directly in front of her with his hand on the doorknob was – Pierce Brosnan? Was it her imagination?
She laughed. Why did I just laugh? “Rob? Is that you?”
“What do you want?”
“Do you – do you live here?” she asked incredulously.
“What if I do?”
“Rob, I know all about you. I know all about the accident. I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine.” She moved forward but stopped when she saw him lurch away.
“Just leave me alone.”
“I was worried about you. Maddie keeps asking about you.”
“She does?” Jane heard his voice crack.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
“I like your haircut. And you look nice without a beard.”
“Tomorrow I’m going to see some folks I haven’t seen in years. I wanted to look my best. The way they remember me.”
“I’m so sorry about your wife and daughter. Can’t I come in, just for a minute?”
“No.”
“What was your daughter’s name?”
Tabitha. We called her Tabbie.”
“She sounds sweet.”
“The last time I saw her she looked like a loaf of bread. Everything was so swollen. I couldn’t look anymore.” She could hear his breathing now.
“Won’t you let me come in?”
“I should have gone with them. I shouldn’t have let them go.” His voice sounded robotic. Something felt wrong.
“Please, Rob, let me come in.”
“No. You should go be with your family. Take it from me.” The door slammed closed, the brass knocker clanging with finality.
~~~
It was midnight by the time Steve and Jane finished assembling toys and arranging them under the Christmas tree. They each sipped a glass of wine to wash down Maddie’s leftover graham crackers before crawling into bed exhausted. She hadn’t told him where she’d gone after dinner and didn’t plan to. Her husband didn’t like Manteo and it would be a bad way to end the day. The last thing Jane remembered before drifting into sleep were Rob’s words: “Tomorrow I’m going to see some folks I haven’t seen in years.”
~~~
The presents were opened and Maddie was engrossed in a princess dollhouse that Steve had slaved over the night before. Jane slipped into the kitchen for a breather. She flipped on the radio, ground some beans and set the coffee maker up. While she waited she stared out the window with an elbow propped on the counter.
A blackbird hopping around on the grass looking for a meal had her attention when a subdued male voice from the radio interrupted. “Police estimate that the car was traveling at a high rate of speed when it crashed through the railing and plummeted into Antioch Bay. Divers located the car, a late model Mercedes-Benz E-class sedan, and removed the driver, thirty-four year old Robert Manteo, who was pronounced dead on the scene. An eyewitness told police that there was very little traffic on the bridge and so far there is only speculation as to what could have caused---“
“Jane! Wake up! It’s a dream!”
She sat up in bed and stared into the darkness.
“Are you awake?” Steve asked. “You had a bad dream. You were all over the place.”
“It was so real.”
“It didn’t take long. We only came to bed twenty minutes ago.”
The idea of driving back over to his house to make sure crossed her mind but she dismissed it. It didn’t make sense. It was a dream. Besides. He’d said it himself. It’s Christmas Eve. I should be here with my family.
~~~
When she happened to look out front to see a burgundy Mercedes pull to the curb the next morning as Maddie tore through her presents, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She did both. A moment later she let Manteo in. Steve didn’t recognize him but Maddie did. “Uncle Rob!” she shouted as she dropped a stuff unicorn and ran to the door.
“Why are you crying?” Steve asked his wife.
“I’m not exactly sure,” Jane told him. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” Jane said to Manteo. He was as handsome standing there as he had been repulsive before. Angela was right. With his hard jaw and dark hair he did bear a striking resemblance to one of the recent James Bonds. Angela’s story suddenly got a lot more believable.
“Holy cow!” she heard her husband say after he understood. “I can’t believe you’re the same guy!”
“Is this what you were talking about last night when you said you were going to visit somebody?” Jane asked him. Steve shot her a glance. “It hasn’t been that long,” she added.
He said nothing as he stroked Maddie’s hair.
“Rob, this isn’t what you meant, is it?” she repeated.
“No,” he finally said. “No, it wasn’t. I had a changed of heart. I can’t explain it. Something snapped back into place when you came by last night. Then I had this really awful dream that hit home. A wonderful, awful dream.”
“I had that dream last night, too,” Jane said in a near whisper.
“This all started on Christmas and that’s when it’s going to end. I’ll tell you one thing. From where I’m standing, for the first time in years, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.”