Page 5 of Christmas at the Ranch
“The village was in Chiang Mai?” she asked.
“I flew into Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand,” he said, nodding. “The village was up in the mountains. I’ll never forget driving through the countryside: rice paddies as far as the eye could see and fields as bright as emeralds. The sunsets were every color of therainbow, and in the early morning, the mist covered everything like some sort of jeweled magic carpet.”
For a moment, Samantha felt a slight twinge, like when she sat hunched over her computer for hours without taking a break. What would it be like to actually go somewhere magical instead of ogling it on the internet? To walk across fields so soft, it felt like floating? To experience a sunset that made her ache from its beauty?
When Samantha was a junior at Swarthmore, she planned on studying abroad. It was all set: a semester in Cambridge, England, followed by a summer learning Italian in Pisa, with weekend trips to Venice and Milan.
But the doctor found a suspicious lump in her mother’s breast that was possibly cancer. Samantha couldn’t leave her. By the time the succession of biopsies was completed and the results came back negative, it was too late—the semester had started. Then, Samantha won a summer internship at a New York PR firm that was too good to pass up.
After that came Roger, who was content traveling between the fridge and the television to watch his beloved Yankees games. Soon after Roger left, she started writing the Sloane Parker books and her fear of traveling began.
Sometimes she wondered how her life would have turned out if Roger hadn’t moved to California. They’d be living together in one of those New York neighborhoods that were becoming so trendy: Crown Heights or Washington Heights. Samantha would have a new job at a better PR firm and Roger would be an associate at a sports law firm. They’d spend the weekends hiking in the Catskills and summers in the Hamptons.
Her therapist, Dr. Leanne Gruber, said she shouldn’t take the breakup too personally. Obviously, Roger wasn’t capable of loyalty.A true Yankees fan would never move to Los Angeles. Samantha thought that was easy for Dr. Gruber to say. Her office walls were covered with photos of her family vacationing in exotic destinations like Hanoi and Tokyo. Samantha had Socks and her computer, and a fear of pretty much everything else.
Now Samantha was about to reply when she heard a sound. It was the flight attendants locking the doors for takeoff. She remembered it from the last time she’d flown, three years ago on a book tour organized by her publicist. The tour had been a disaster. At every stop, Samantha was so nervous about the next day’s flight, she couldn’t get through the book signings without breaking into a sweat. And she refused to take Charlie’s offered Xanax. Dr. Gruber warned her that pharmaceuticals were a rabbit hole Samantha didn’t want to go down and Samantha agreed. What if somehow her brain chemistry was altered and Sloane Parker disappeared from her imagination?
Instead, her publicist released a statement that Samantha didn’t want to disappoint her fans by not visiting their local bookstores. Since she couldn’t visit all the bookstores in America and still write one Sloane book a year, she wasn’t going to tour at all.
The plane’s cabin went dark and Samantha clutched the seat divider.
She turned to the man next to her.
“Please tell me a story,” she said.
“Excuse me?” He frowned.
“Tell me a story,” she urged. “I need something to distract me during takeoff.”
“I don’t know you,” he said. “We don’t even know each other’s names.”
The plane was moving faster down the runway. It lumberedinto the air, the whole undercarriage beginning to shake. Samantha pictured it as a giant stuffed holiday turkey before it goes into the oven.
“I’m Samantha,” she tried again. “Please, anything. A Christmas story if you like.”
“Let me try to think of something…,” he conceded. “The children in the village in Thailand had never celebrated Christmas. Most of them had never even heard of Santa Claus. I wanted to do something special so I took a little boy named Kaman to Chiang Mai to buy presents for everyone. The first thing we did was go to the zoo where the panda cubs were wearing Christmas costumes. Next we went to the Four Seasons Hotel for their holiday tea. Santa Claus always makes an appearance, and they serve the best afternoon tea in Chiang Mai. When we sat down, I’d never seen Kaman’s eyes so big. He ordered one of everything on the menu: ham quiche and chicken puffs and smoked salmon crackers. I didn’t think he’d have room for dessert but he ate two scones and a fruit tartlet, and a mango pudding so rich, he couldn’t finish it. He couldn’t stop talking about it the whole way back to the village. By the time we arrived, I wondered if I had done the wrong thing. If Kaman bragged to the other children, they might get jealous. And Kaman wouldn’t be satisfied with what his mother usually prepared at meals.
“Instead he said nothing to the others. He ate his dinner and thanked his mother for cooking. That night, he appeared in my room. He said he understood now why I insisted he learn his lessons. One day, he’d be a successful businessman and he’d take his mother to a big fancy hotel for a holiday tea at Christmas.”
The plane lifted higher and suddenly it did that thing planes do after takeoff: pausing in the air as if it wasn’t certain if it wanted togo up or down. Samantha gripped the seat divider tighter. It was only when the plane leveled off that she opened her eyes and realized she hadn’t been clutching the seat divider. Instead, her hand was firmly around the man’s sleeve.
“I’m sorry.” She removed her hand quickly. “I didn’t mean to grab on to you.”
He picked up his wrist and moved it around.
“That’s all right. I’m guessing the feeling will come back soon,” he replied. He glanced at Samantha curiously. “Are you going to be like that the whole flight?”
“No, of course not,” she said, regaining her composure. The lights had come back on in the cabin and passengers rustled in their seats. Flight attendants moved confidently through the aisle and she could see the lights twinkling on the wings.
“Well, I am when there’s turbulence, no one likes a bumpy flight,” she began. “And if the pilot asks you to fasten your seat belt because there’s bad weather ahead and the bad weather never comes. I mean, how can you relax if you know something terrible is going to happen? It’s like pretending not to be scared in the first fifty pages of a romantic thriller. You know the score: the couple is madly in love and he gives her chocolate and roses—before she discovers he’s the head of an Algerian diamond cartel and she has to poison his bowl of couscous to escape,” she mused, remembering the plot of an early Sloane Parker book. “And during the plane’s descent. Everyone knows the descent is the most dangerous part of the flight. It seems like a silly time to crash, after you’ve endured hours of foot cramps and eating nothing but salted peanuts.”
“I hope you never date a guy who gives you roses and candy.” He grinned. He turned to her encouragingly. “You do know that flying is the safest form of travel.”
“I’ve read the statistics.” She nodded. “There are five million car accidents for every eight plane crashes. But you see, I’m paid to have a vivid imagination. I can’t just turn it off.” She sighed. “I had a couple of drinks in the airport bar but it didn’t really help. If only they served alcohol on the flight. I can understand why they don’t, especially during the holidays. People get upset if the plane is late or if they get a last-minute text saying the toy store is out of this year’s version of a Disney princess and their six-year-old is going to be devastated. Then a couple of scotches only makes it worse. But a cup of eggnog right now would be nice to take the edge off.”
The man rummaged through his carry-on. He took out a small bottle of Kahlúa and placed it on the tray table.
“We can ask the flight attendant for cream,” he suggested. “Kahlúa and cream is one of my favorite drinks.”
