CHRISTMAS MORNING

"Wake up, sleepfaces!"

Jeremy's tap on Belinda's shoulder brought Belinda out of a confused, half-awake dream state. What was it that she'd been running after so desperately on that foggy beach?

She tried to lift her right arm. What was that?

Oh, it was Katharine's head, still dead asleep in the crook of her arm.

Belinda heard a rattle of silverware and pots coming from the kitchen.

"Wh-what's going on?"

"It's Christmas morning, and the men in your life are preparing your morning feast," said Dan, with an apron comically wrapped around his thick torso as he walked into the living room holding a mixing bowl.  “We've got bacon frying, coffee dripping, bagels toasting, waffles waffling."

"Don't think Dan-o has slept yet tonight," Jeremy said. “He's a little giddy, but he’s got me and Scoot as kitchen help."

"Did you find …?" Belinda asked hopefully.

Dan shook his head, turning back to the kitchen.

Katharine stirred. Belinda wished her Merry Christmas and gave her a status report.

"Acch, it feels like a small animal died in my mouth overnight," Katharine said. "Did I really sleep on the couch all night? Well, let me get cleaned up a bit."

In 10 minutes, they'd gathered around Katharine's white dining table, as Dan passed platters of waffles, bacon, and bagels across the counter from the kitchen.

Christmas carols wafted from the radio in the living room.

Reaching his seat, Dan raised a mimosa glass high. "A Christmas toast – first to Seamus and his homecoming."

Katharine looked at him, startled, "You found…?"

"No, no luck so far, but it's Christmas and I believe in Christmas miracles."

"To Seamus, then!"

"To my parents, may they be looking down and smiling at us," Dan continued.

"To Pat and Jim!” “To Jim and Pat!"

Much clinking of plastic cups.

"To my Bernard."

"Hear, hear."

"Bernie, Bernie, Bernie," Jeremy chanted until a look from Belinda shut him up.

"To Steffi, may her flight back have been smooth," Scoot said.

"To Stef, indeed," agreed Belinda, eyebrow arched at her brother.

A sharp knock sounded on the front door: "What could that be?"

They hustled to the door behind Katharine, who opened it a tentative crack.

Out on the landing stood a weathered old gent, about 80 years old if a day. He wore a golf shirt, plaid Bermudas, with sandals and white socks at the end of his bowed and mottled legs. On his head perched a ball cap saluting the destroyer on which he'd served in the Big One.

"Merry Christmas, you live here?" he barked.

"Of course I do. Who are you, if I might ask?"

"Somebody who'd be a lot happier if you had the faintest clue about the proper way to care for a dog."

"What do you mean? Do you know something about Seamus?" Katharine opened the door fully, one hand to her heart. Four young faces peered over and around Katharine's form at the curmudgeon in the ball cap.

"Is that the critter's name? Well, it's thanks to me he's still alive and right over there."

The fellow gestured to a white Mercury Marquis parked on the street. The tinted windows made it hard to spy what might be inside.

"You left him out in the hot car last night.  In that broiling heat. Poor beast was roasting so bad, I thought I'd better rescue him. Took him home last night, game him a good bath and brush, I did."

"You… you stole my dog right from my car in front of my house."

The man pulled himself upright, in military bearing: "Not steal, madame. Rescued."
Dan slipped in front of Katharine: "Listen, pal, get us the pooch and let's be done with it."

"I just felt," the man said, "that a lesson had to be taught."

"Well, you thought wrong," Dan said, "but it's Christmas, so let's not dwell on what a self-righteous busybody you are. Let's just get the dog back."

"Madame, you should teach your son some manners." But the man turned on his heel, clicked his key fob to unlock the car, opened the back door.

As Katharine came down the stairs, Seamus bounded out of the back seat. He ran up to his owner, leaped joyously, escaped her embrace, and proceeded to run around and around the front yard, his haunches comically low to the ground, his mouth open in relief and delight. After eight manic circuits, he zipped over to a palm tree and let out a long, celebratory stream.

Belinda and her crew laughed until their eyes watered, as Katharine found a leash and slipped it around the terrier's neck, dragging him reluctantly inside.

Inside, Seamus attacked his water dish as though he'd been wandering the Mojave for a week, not AWOL on Ocean Isle for a night.

"What a cool dog!" Scoot said as he and Jeremy rolled around on the carpet, playing with the pooch, seeming five years old again to Belinda's eyes.

Another knock on the door.

"If it's that guy again for another round…" Dan said, rising from a second helping of waffles.

"Maybe he wants a reward for returning Seamus," Scoot said. "Wow. All-time chutzpah award."

Belinda ran to answer. She opened the door, beheld Steffi with her finger to her lips, whispering, "Shhhh!" Belinda's hands rose, palms upward, in the international gesture of "Huh!"

"Love makes you do strange things," Steffi whispered. "I've been back an hour wandering around looking for you all, ‘til I saw Dan's car parked out front."

Steffi slid in front of Belinda and marched into the living room, where Scoot had just risen from the floor after rough housing the dog.

Steffi walked up to him, threw her arms around his neck, pulled him close and kissed. Deeply. Jeremy hooted.

Belinda whispered to Katharine: "She's my best friend, Steffi."

"Very pretty girl; they look good together."

Steffi pulled away, but kept her arms around Scoot's neck.

Scoot stared at her.

"Wow," he said.

"You big goof, has it ever, in the last five years of me hanging around you, watching your stupid sports games, buying you pizza, playing Wii and just generally mooning around, has it ever dawned on you how nuts I am about you?"

"Wow," Scoot said. "I thought Beebs put you on a plane."

"I never got on. My mother called again, drunk again, and she ticked me off so much with what she said, never mind what… well, anyway, I never got on my flight. Or the next two. Ended up spending the night at the Holiday Inn Express. And that apparently made me smart enough to realize something. If I never came back here and made myself do what I just did, you'd never get around to telling me whether you feel the way I do."

"Wow," Scoot said.

"Well?" Steffi said, and closed her eyes, as though bracing for a blow.

"Scoot, for God's sake, say something besides Wow," Belinda said.

Scoot put his arms around Steffi's neck: "Well…"  He paused three, four, five beats. "Did you ever notice, Stef, all the way through high school and college, I never had a real girlfriend?"

"Yeah, I guess. I figured you were shy, or too into your video games."
"Well, figure again."

"What?"

"I was waiting for you to do what you just did."

"Wow," Steffi said, and pulled Scoot towards her again.

While they were at it, Belinda felt Dan's arm enfold her:

"Well, cuz, SLALOM may have just lost a few members. You and I are still pathetic losers, though.

“But at least it looks like this Christmas junket of yours may have turned out fairly OK in the end. Little shaky there for a while, but OK in the end."

"Yep," Belinda said. "Very, very OK indeed."

Listen to the radio play of Let Nothing Ye Dismay at 6 p.m. Christmas Eve or 9 a.m. Christmas morning on WHYY-FM. Or stream the broadcast online or download a podcast, using the links on this page.

CHRISTMAS EVE

“Wait 'til you meet her. She's way cool. Like the grandmother we never had."

"Whoa, slow down, Beebs," Dan said, chuckling. "You talked to her for, what, five minutes. For all we know her basement is full of buried bodies she poisoned with arsenic at Christmas dinners past."

"Her house is on stilts, like ours, wise guy. There is no basement."

"Wow, this is the most random conversation ever," Scoot said, shifting beneath his burden of two beer cases stocked one on top of the other as they shuffled along East First towards Katharine Hunter's house.

Belinda carried an eggplant casserole (another treasured recipe from a mother to whom she could barely stand to speak). Her cousin Dan carried a bag with their Christmas presents for one another, plus some cologne for Katharine, hastily bought at the CVS just off the island. Jeremy brought up the rear, with a bag of board games and a DVD player with one, precious DVD.

They got to the house early, so eager were the others to meet this maternal ghost of Christmas past whom Belinda had described.

When they rang the bell, though, no answer came. A Toyota Corolla with Carolina plates sat in the driveway.

"Hmm, wonder where she could be?" Belinda said, trying to peer in through the door's side window panel. "What's that?"

The warm breeze wafted a keening sound through the gathering dusk, up from the beach.

"Seamiiiiiiiieeeee!  Seamiiiieeeee!   Seamiiieeee!"

"That's her," Belinda said. "That doesn't sound good."

They set down their packages, clattered down the wooden steps, ducked beneath the elevated house, hoisted themselves over the railing onto a walkway a little bit up the dunes and raced single file to the beach.

Katharine stood in the middle of the beach, a leash tossed over her shoulder, turning frantically to and fro, her hands cupped to her mouth as she trudged up the strand: "Seamiieeee!"

Belinda ran up to her: "Katharine, what is it, what's wrong? Is Seamus lost?"

"Oh, dear, I'm so glad you're here," Katharine said, her shaking hands clutching the outsides of Belinda's arms. "Yes, he's lost. I don’t… I don't know what happened. I was cooking dinner, when I realized, silly me, that I'd forgotten some ingredients. So I just ran to the IGA, you know, just over the causeway and Seamus comes along, because he just loves the car, you know."

"And then …?" Belinda prompted.

"Well, I came back to the house and I had enough things that I had to make several trips up and down you know, because I kept buying things, you know, treats, that I thought you young people might like, so I left Seamus in the car while I did it .. because he loves the car, you see."

"And… ?

"When I came down the last time, he was gone. Door closed, but no dog. Just gone. Gone. I've been searching and searching for a half hour, but I can't find him. I can't imagine where he went."

"Did you leave a window open in the car, maybe?" Dan asked.

"No, no, I don't think. Oh, I just don't know. It's not open now, is it? I just don't get it. He's never run off before."

"We'll find him," Scoot vowed, with the most emotion Belinda had heard from him all week.

Dan deployed his considerable logistical powers to plan a search: by car, by bike, on foot. Each person got a sector; Dan took Katharine in his car. They surveyed dunes, peeked over fences at swimming pools, quizzed the rare pedestrian, pounded on the windows of just-closed stores to quiz merchants.

Nothing. A glum search party reconvened in Katharine's living room about 7.

The ham, forgotten in Katharine's oven amid the crisis, was done to a leathery crisp. Jeremy sliced a few chunks, and picked at them in a bowl. The rest steered clear of the charred hunk, but Dan and Belinda had tossed an array of snacks into a few bowls. They munched empty calories as Dan plotted new search strategies for the morrow.

"We'll find him, Mrs. Hunter," Dan promised.  "In daylight, it'll be easier. He can't have gone far. He'll be fine. "

"We'll find him. For sure," Scoot echoed.

Katharine put her head in her hands, stifled a sob. "It's my fault. Bernard always told me not to leave him out in the car. But he loved it there so."

Belinda wrapped an arm around Katharine's slight frame: "It's not your fault, dear. Like Danny said, we'll find him in the morning. There’s nothing to be done right now in the dark. Seamus is a smart dog; he’ll be OK."  She turned the old woman's streaked face to her. "So, hey, do you ever watch The Christmas Story?"

"What's that?"

"The movie with Darren McGavin and the chubby little guy with glasses, Ralphie, the one they show in marathon on TNT every Christmas."

"Never saw it, dear."

"Well, then, that's just what we're going to do. Scoot, hook up the DVD and fire up the Ralphie movie."

And that's what they did, deep into the night, while eating Poppycock and chocolate pretzels and gingerbread cookies with icing.  As the movie spun its web of whimsy and nostalgia, even Katharine's mood lifted, as she chuckled at Flick's tongue getting frozen to the flagpole, Santa's elves shoving Ralphie down the slide, and the Bumpus' dogs.

As her eyelids drooped, Katharine's head nestled into the crook of Belinda's shoulder. Belinda held her tight, rocking slightly, stroking her silver hair as Dan covered the two of them with an afghan he borrowed from a nearby chair. Scoot had checked out in a recliner, while Jeremy was curled into fetal position on the floor, snoring lightly. A clock in the room chimed.

"Merry Christmas, Beebs."

"Merry Christmas, Danny."

"You OK there with Mrs. Hunter on you? Is your arm asleep?"

"A little but soon the rest of me will be asleep, too. I'm going to drift off, Dan. What will you do?"

"You do that. I'll go look for Seamus a little more. The pooch is probably gone for good, but I didn’t want to admit that to her on Christmas Eve. But I’ll give it a try. Want me to turn off the TV?"

"MMM-mmm" Belinda said as her eyes squeezed shut.

Next Scene: Happy returns of the day.

Posts Thursday afternoon.