Underneath The Tree: A Buckingham Nicks Christmas

A Heart That's Mine Completely

Santa Monica, California
Christmas Eve
Saturday, December 24, 2022
(5:00 pm)
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Kelly Clarkson's voice filled the living room from the sound of the speakers built into the walls.

It almost drowned out the sound of the dogs and their squeaky toys as they rolled around on the carpet and played hard with the new toys they'd gotten in their stockings. Stevie had let Lily and Luna open their presents early; they were going to be home alone tonight after she fed them and left for the big house and the Christmas party she was throwing there.

"Presents, what a beautiful sight...Don't mean a thing if you ain't holding me tight...You're all that I need...underneath the tree..."

Stevie couldn't help but sing along with Kelly Clarkson, whom she'd followed since her American Idol win twenty years before. A smile broke out across her lips as she sang, thinking of Lindsey. He had disappeared a few hours ago on "a Christmas errand" and had called to say he was finally on his way home.

After forty-five years of marriage, she found herself with a stomach full of butterflies, as if he'd called to tell her he was coming to pick her up for their first date...not to head over to the big house to have Christmas with their family, which included children and grandchildren. She couldn't wait to see him walk through the door and pass under the mistletoe so she could kiss him.

"You're here where you should be," she sang on her way through the room to the phone as it rang. "Snow is falling while the carolers sing..." She used the remote to lower the volume of the song she was playing to get in the mood for the party and picked up the landline phone she refused to give up on despite Lindsey's eye rolls. "Hello?"

"Hi, Mom. I just wanted to make sure...I have to pick up Aaron at six, right?"

Stevie smiled at the sound of her oldest daughter's voice. "Yes. Don't be late getting to West Hollywood or you'll be stuck in holiday traffic," she warned her. Julia, the most patient of her children, was also the closest to her younger brother Aaron. She reminded her so much of Robin, whom she'd named her after in her own way - Robin being just like the title character of the Jane Fonda movie they'd loved so much and always said was like watching their friendship on screen. Julia Robin Buckingham was patient, forgiving, loyal to a fault, and Johnny-on-the-spot with a smile at all times. It was as if Robin had cloned herself from Heaven.

"I'm actually leaving now, so I'm going to be too early, if anything," Julia told her mother.

"Okay. Text your brother and tell him you're on your way so he's ready when you get there." Stevie couldn't help but giggle at her son's scatterbrained artist ways, and how much he reminded her of Lindsey fifty years ago. "You know your brother."

Julia laughed. "I do," she said. There was a pause, and then, "I played that song earlier today in the car." She could hear "Underneath The Tree" playing.

"It's a good one," Stevie said. "Now get going, kid. I'll see you at the party."

"Okay. Merry Christmas, Mom." And, just as abruptly as Robin used to do because she was always on the move, Julia hung up.

Stevie restored the volume to its original level. She smiled down at Lily and Luna, watching as they now slept in the middle of the floor, draped over each other and their toys with their heads on the wooden floor that did not look comfortable, and she shrugged. She thought quickly of all the dogs she'd ever loved that were playing with their Christmas toys in Heaven tonight...especially Sulamith. That dog had been her soul mate for eighteen years.

She was on her way to the bedroom to look for something very important. She'd been thinking about it all day, and she wanted to find it before Lindsey got home. She opened the jewelry box on her dresser and dug out the key she kept there among some of her mother's rings, and went into the walk-in closet to unlock the small Louis Vuitton trunk that had once belonged Barbara as well - a gift to her from Jess when she'd accompanied Fleetwood Mac to Japan in 1977. She could still see Barbara standing at the door of the first-class lounge at L.AX., not quite fifty years old then and dressed to kill, an enormous smile across her face as her eyes beamed with pride...

"I'm flying with my Teedee-bird today! This is so exciting, sweetheart! I can't wait! Just don't take my picture or anything the first time I try sushi, hon. I'm not sure I'm going to like it and my wrinkles show more when I look unhappy in pictures."

Barbara had absolutely loved sushi, as Stevie recalled, and become obsessed with finding sushi in Phoenix when she got home.

In the living room, the Kelly Clarkson song had ended and Paul McCartney was "simply having a wonderful Christmas time." Stevie began to rifle through ziplock bags of old photographs with years neatly printed in purple Sharpie in Karen's handwriting, looking for a needle in a haystack of sorts, but she was not leaving for the Christmas party at the big house without it. She wanted to have it in her hands by the time Lindsey walked through the door, and she had just about given up when she heard Lindsey's voice from the living room at the very moment her hand touched the red envelope with the contents she'd kept inside for fifty years.

"Stevie?" She heard the door slam shut over the Paul McCartney Christmas classic. "Steeeeeeeeevie...Where's my sweet girl?"

Sweet girl. She lowered her eyes to her lap on the closet floor and smiled. Lindsey had called her that for the first time decades before, and she felt her heart flutter every single time she heard it, even now, as they barreled through their seventies and everyone around them - including their four kids - wondered how they were still so sickeningly in love like newlyweds.

"I'm in the bedroom!" she called out over the music. "Be out in a sec, sweetheart!" But Lindsey beat her to it by appearing in the bedroom doorway. He wore his leather jacket over a green sweater that was what he called "Christmas casual" because he'd owned it since The Dance twenty-five years ago and Stevie said it had seen better days. He smiled as soon as he saw her.

"You're incorrigible," he teased. "Are you seventy-four or just four? Hunting for presents? I hide shit better than that!" They both laughed.

"You're a laugh riot, Linds," Stevie said with a roll of her eyes. She lifted her arms in the air. "Help an old lady with bad knees?"

Lindsey was beside her instantly, holding her hands in his to help her to her feet. He noticed the red envelope that had dropped to the floor.

"I don't see any old lady here," he said, and he kissed her. "I see a little girl named Stephanie who knows when to be naughty and nice." He winked at her teasingly. "Ready to rock and roll? We have less than an hour."

"We'll be fashionably late," Stevie said. "Sit down, sweetheart. I have something to show you that'll knock you out!"

Lindsey sat down on the edge of the bed, and Stevie picked up the envelope. He recognized it instantly, and he was already smiling at the memory of Christmas of 1972, and what his wife had unearthed in her trunk full of memories.

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