No Sensible People Chapter Twelve (part 2)

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Bowling was a blast. Amber and Skye both said they liked Taffy. I told them the bowling party had been all his idea and they said they hoped we could do it again. Amber and Skye bowled a lot better than I did, but it was
still a lot of fun. Amber pointed out that I always got better grades in art than they did.

"That's right," Taffy said. "No one's good at everything."

We bowled three games and ate mini-tacos and drank rootbeer before Taffy said it was time to start getting everyone home. He told Amber and Skye he hadn't realized what "charming ladies" my friends were, and he gave
them each a piece of saltwater taffy before they ran into their houses. But Taffy wasn't bringing me home. He was bringing me back to Susie's and she would bring me back later.

"It's silly," Taffy said. "Susie shouldn't have to take an extra trip out in the cold with all this Christmas traffic. I'm out, I'm driving around, I should drop you off."

"My stuff is at Susie's," I reminded him. "And Aunt Lucy and Uncle Frank might not even be home."

"I know I'm not supposed to," Taffy told me. "But I want to know that you're Aunt Lucy is okay. I'd like to see for myself."

"Do you really still love her," I asked, "like Susie and Uncle Frank say?"

"I do, I guess," Taffy admitted. "I always will in a way, but it's not like what Frank and Susie suspect. I'm not trying to break up her marriage or get back together. There's so much stuff that's unresolved. There's so many
questions I never got answers to. I'd like to set the record straight, but it's hard when I can't sit down and talk to your Aunt Lucy. When I saw her once a year, when I came up with your daddy on our hunting trips I could pass
through, and put it out of my mind. But now.... Well, now it's not so easy."

Christmas isn't that far away," I reminded him. "You'll get to see both of us. Maybe you can talk then."

"I hope so, Jennie," he told me. "It's good to have people to talk to."

Everything seemed a little better after that day, and even Uncle Frank had to admit it had done me a world of good to go out with Taffy and my friends. Aunt Lucy thanked him for understanding, and it was the nicest I'd
seen them be to each other since before Thanksgiving.

Everyone got really busy buying last minute Christmas presents and making travel plans. Aunt Lucy didn't say anything else to Uncle Frank about his trip to Colorado, but she told me that maybe next year we would get to
plan a trip of our own.

Susie called and told us she was getting ready to travel herself, so she wouldn't be able to have me over until after the holidays. Aunt Lucy agreed that between my trip to Leifton, Thanksgiving, and the bowling party with my
friends, I'd seen enough of Taffy to last me for a bit.

I acted disappointed; I didn't want to ruin the secret of Taffy's surprise visit. Aunt Lucy assured me we would have a fun Christmas of our own. On Christmas Eve we could decorate the tree, and maybe Stuart would be able to
stop by late on Christmas afternoon.

On December 22nd, Stuart came and got Uncle Frank to take him to the airport for a late night flight to Denver. Uncle Frank checked the lock three times to his art studio. "The lock's good, Lucy," he declared.

"Very funny," she said. "I told you the room is safe."

"You want me to call when I check in?" Uncle Frank asked.

"I suppose you should," she told him. "In case there's an emergency."

"I am going to miss you, Lucy," Uncle Frank said.

"We've been through all that, Frank," she said.

"Well, Merry Christmas anyway," he told her, and he gave her a quick kiss.

Uncle Frank gave me a hug too, and I wished him a Merry Christmas.

He said he hoped the next trip Ryan could come to Minneapolis and I could meet him. I said that would be nice. Stuart wished both me and Aunt Lucy a Merry Christmas, but told us if he didn't get his brother to the airport he
would miss his plane and the two of them were off.

"It's not going to be much of a Christmas for you this year, Jennie, I'm afraid," Aunt Lucy told me after she watched Stuart's car go out of sight. "I'm really sorry. You wouldn't believe how glad I am that you're here."

I sat down next to her on the davenport and held her hand. "I don't know," I said, "maybe it will be okay."

Uncle Frank had decorated the outside of the house with Christmas lights and had even replaced the old Santa Claus with a statue of The Blessed Virgin holding The Baby Jesus.

Aunt Lucy had not wanted the inside decorated under the circumstances, but on Christmas Eve I convinced her that we should at least put the artificial tree up in the living room. She admitted that it would be kind of nice to decorate something together and without Frank, who went completely bonkers anytime anything was the slightest bit crooked. I reminded her that I was an artist too, but I promised not to be too picky with the decorations.

Some of the limbs were a little off by the time we finished assembling the tree, but Aunt Lucy declared that nothing was perfect and asked me to hand her the angel.

I lifted the gold embroidered angel out of the box and handed it carefully to Aunt Lucy. "Do you really think Mama died because she was sick?" I asked.

Aunt Lucy put the angel at the top of the tree then sat next to me on the davenport.

"Yes, Jennie," she said. "I think she died because she was sick."

"People in town used to whisper about her. Kids used to talk," I told Aunt Lucy. "I'm glad they don't talk about you."

"That's one of the nice things about being in the city. People don't pay so much attention to what each other is doing. It's easy to get paranoid in Leifton. I think Minneapolis would've been good for your Mama-if she
could've believed the city wasn't possessed."

"It is awful loud here," I told here.

"But you like it okay now, don't you? You have friends, and people don't whisper...." Aunt Lucy said.

"Maybe they do," I told Aunt Lucy. "Maybe it's too loud in the city to hear them."

Aunt Lucy grabbed a wooden reindeer and hung it crooked on the tree. "Whatever the case is," she told me, "I'm certainly glad I can't hear them."

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