The Christmas Note (4 page)

GRETCHEN

Ethan’s chatter wakes me up way too early. His voice has always had a way of drilling through hardwoods and mortar. It took me half the night to fall asleep. I tossed and turned, thinking about the look on Melissa’s face when I told her her mother was dead. Shouldn’t there have been something—a short, quick gasp, a sigh, a twitch, even a nervous laugh? Who doesn’t have some sort of emotion when a parent dies? I replay her closing the door on my face as I make pancakes for the kids and feel the irritation burrowing beneath my skin. But what’s irritating me? The fact that she doesn’t care that her mother died or that I took so long to tell her? Kyle was right. I overthink things. While the kids are playing, I check my e-mail and find myself getting teary-eyed reading them. There are several from Kyle’s parents, Tom and Alice, who attach several pictures of Kyle to each e-mail with a detailed description of when the photo was taken. I dry my eyes before the kids can see me and send an e-mail, attaching a few photos of our new home and the kids before making breakfast.

Ethan is eating his pancakes before I have time to put syrup on them. “Are we going to that lady’s funeral?” he asks.

“What lady?” I realize who he means as the question crosses the air between us. “Oh. No, we’re not.”

“Why not?”

I pour syrup over each of their pancakes and then my own. “Because we never knew her.”

“We got lots of cards and flowers and stuff from people we don’t know,” Emma says.

“I know but…”

“That’s what we should do, Mom,” Ethan says, his mouth too full to talk. “We should make her a card and send her flowers.”

I take a bite and realize that my kids are better people than I am. “You’re right. That’s what we need to do.” I don’t want to; I envision Melissa crushing the flowers in her hand like a cookie and torching the card by breathing on it.

They dig out a piece of blue construction paper and work on the card together after breakfast, and by the time I have cleaned the kitchen, the paper is covered in flowers with bloated, misshaped petals and a rainbow dripping glittery glue streaks. “We’ll let it dry and a little later we’ll go out for some flowers.”

“Let’s go now, and by the time we get back, the card will be dry,” Emma says.

I don’t want to go now. “Why don’t we get some things done and then we’ll make a trip out?”

“What’s left to do?” Ethan asks. “We already unpacked everything.”

“Yes, we did, didn’t
we
?” I say. It’s no use. They’ll just keep asking and wear me down. “Get your clothes on and let’s go.”

As we back out of the driveway I’m already planning what to say to Melissa this time. Maybe when she opens the door she’ll sock me in the eye or twist my arm behind my back or take the flowers out of my hand and clunk them over my head. None of the scenarios are looking good. I know I can’t really afford a bouquet from the florist, so I pull into the grocery store for one there. “All I have to do is tie a ribbon around this and it will look just like we bought it from a florist,” I say, picking up a small glass vase.

“Can she dry these?” Emma asks, holding a small bouquet.

I look at the flowers. “No, not really. These aren’t good ones for drying.”

“Then we need to get ones she can dry.” She looks up at me. “Like you did with all our flowers.”

“But those flowers were for your dad and … I don’t think Melissa was very close to her mom, so I don’t think these flowers are going to mean as much as—” They’re both looking at me. I set the flowers back in the container and pull out a bunch with more roses in it. “These will dry much better.”

The card is still tacky when we get home, and it takes me far too long to convince the kids that we really should wait for it to dry before we deliver it. Part of me just wants to get it over with, but the other part clearly wants to put this off until Emma’s college graduation. I spend the greater part of the morning on the phone while the kids play, and when I’m finishing the last conversation with Kyle’s parents, both Em and Ethan are staring at me and patting their bellies. We eat sandwiches and chips, and I dread one of them bringing up the card and flowers. To my surprise and delight they both forget and run back to their room to continue playing, when Ethan yells from the hall, “Hey! What about our card, Mom? When are we taking it over?”

“Right now,” I say, as if I had it planned all along. I make the kids put on their coats or else we’ll just stand out on Melissa’s porch looking like those toy monkeys with the chattering teeth and clanging cymbals. Ethan is the first to her door and knocks on it, way too loud to be polite, and I stop his hand from knocking again. I groan when I hear footsteps and put on a pleasant, barely-there smile when I know Melissa’s looking at us through the peephole. The door opens and Ethan shoves the card through the slim opening.

“We made this for you,” he says, propping his fisted hands onto his hips.

“Thanks,” Melissa says, glancing at the card.

I work hard at a smile but feel awkward.

“We got these for you, too,” Emma says, handing her the vase full of flowers.

“Thanks.”

All four of us stand in gangly silence before she says thanks again. “Okay, come on, kids,” I say, turning them back to our house. The door closes before I can even get the kids off the porch, and it takes all the willpower I have not to say something ugly. “There,” I say, opening our door. “That was a nice thing to do, and the flowers and card will be just the things to make her home a little happier.” I doubted this completely, but it sounded convincing enough so that the kids ran back to whatever they had been playing in their room.

When Mom drops by later in the afternoon she is carrying a big pot. Mom doesn’t cook; she never did. My father did most of the cooking when they were married, but when it was up to Mom we mostly ate a lot of canned soups, boxed rice dishes, and noodle dinners. Mom’s third and final husband, Len, was a great cook. I still miss his sweet potato bread pudding he made every Thanksgiving. Len was a great fit for my mother, whereas she and Dad could rub each other the wrong way without even being in the same room. It wasn’t always that way. I remember them being happy together. I don’t know how things went south in their marriage.

“I didn’t make this,” Mom says, reading my face. “Gloria made a huge pot of chicken and dumplings for you and the children.” I step forward to take it from her. “I did make a salad, though, along with a batch of chocolate chip cookies.”

“You made cookies?”

She stops on the sidewalk and turns back to me. “I have learned to make some things over the years.” Her red silk scarf blows in the wind as she reaches inside her car. “Since Gloria insists on serving cookies to the children at Glory’s Place she also insisted that I learn how to make them.” She steps inside and looks around. “Look at this! You are all put together.”

“Still odds and ends that don’t have a place, but most of it’s put away,” I say, taking the cookies and salad from her.

The kids tackle Mom when they hear her voice and drag her by the hand to their room. I lift the lid of the pot and breathe it in; I haven’t had chicken and dumplings in ages. I yell for the kids and Mom to wash up as I gather some plates. Kyle always complained that I didn’t make chicken and dumplings enough. “They take so much time,” I always said to him. If he was here today I’d double the recipe so he’d have chicken and dumplings for days. As I scoop it onto the plates I wonder if I had ever made it for him at all?

“We bought flowers for the woman who died,” Ethan says, taking a seat next to Mom.

“What woman who died?”

I shake my head, filling Ethan’s plate with food. “A man showed up here and said the mother of the woman next to us died and that I had to break the news to her.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

I laugh. “Yeah. Neither did I, and I told him I wouldn’t do it.”

“So he told her and you bought her flowers?”

“No, he didn’t tell her. Kyle told her.” Mom glances up at me. “His voice kept nagging me … so I did it.”

“What an awful way to break the ice. Was she just devastated?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” I say, choosing my words. “The guy has given her a few days to clean out her mom’s place, but I don’t think she’s going to do it.”

“I’d clean your house out if you died,” Emma says. Mom and I both laugh. “And I’d take every single picture of you and Dad and Sugar and the toy box Dad made me.”

“What about my stuff?” Ethan says. “What about my plastic soldiers and all my animals?”

“I don’t want those things,” Em says.

Ethan opens his mouth to fight about the soldiers and fluffy lambs when I stop them. “Hey! I’m not dead.” They both look at me with fallen, flat faces. I laugh and point to their food. “This is delicious!”

Mom dips another helping of chicken and dumplings onto her plate. “Well, there must be something in her mother’s place that she’d want. Surely, she doesn’t want a complete stranger rifling through her memories.”

“Yeah,” Ethan says. “I wouldn’t want some stranger touching my soldiers!”

“Nobody would want your soldiers!” Emma says.

“I want ’em! Dad gave them to me.” Mom distracts the kids with the story of the time she took my brother and me to the zoo and I thought it’d be a good idea if we just left him there. Em thinks that is especially funny.

Mom plays a card game in the living room with the kids as I put our plates in the dishwasher and work at finding something for the leftovers. “There’s enough food here for twenty,” I say, looking for bowls I hope will be a good fit. I find two bowls and pour the chicken and dumplings inside them, thinking. Why was that blasted woman next door making me wrestle so much? I toss some cookies into a plastic bag, pick up one of the bowls, and walk over to the card game in the middle of the living-room floor. “Be right back,” I say, before any of them can question me. I knock on Melissa’s door and decide I’ll just leave everything sitting here if she doesn’t answer. It’s dark on the porch and inside her home; her place doesn’t even
feel
like Christmas! When she opens the door I can see from the streetlight that her face is puffy and her eyes are small. “We had extra food,” I say, keeping it short. “A friend made it. It’s delicious.”

She opens the door a bit and reaches for it. “Thanks.”

I turn to leave but look at her over my shoulder. “I can go with you if you want.” Her face is blank. I don’t know why I suggested such a thing, but I’m still blabbing away. “I can help you clean out your mom’s place.”

“I’m not going to.”

“I know. But … one day you might really regret that … letting a stranger go through her stuff.” She opens her mouth and I plow ahead. “There may be something there that you didn’t know about or had forgotten about or something you want to give to somebody.” She is shaking her head, and the air is sitting on my cheeks, hurting them. “You can let me know. The kids start school on Monday and I can go then, or my mom can watch them if you want to go tomorrow.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“All right,” I say, stepping off the porch, relieved she doesn’t want to do it. “If you change your mind, you know where I am.”

I shiver going through the door and plop down on the sofa. “Where’d you go?” Mom asks, shuffling the cards.

“Tried to deliver some Christmas cheer.”

“And how’d that go?”

“People make it hard,” I say, picking up the cards Mom is dealing for Go Fish.

“Well, you know, I’ve always been a very good judge of people,” Mom says, organizing the cards in her hand. “That’s why I like so very few of them.”

I laugh out loud and look at the kids. “She doesn’t mean that.”

“I wasn’t even listening,” Emma says.

Mom rears her head back and cackles. I organize my cards and realize I’ve been dealt a bum hand. That’s how it goes sometimes.

Five

Grief can’t be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.

—
A
NNE
M
ORROW
L
INDBERGH

MELISSA

I never went to bed but stayed on the couch watching mindless television. I wondered if Ramona died in her bed or while watching TV on the sofa, or was she about to leave her apartment when death came for her? I wondered if it was snowing out when she died and if she was standing at the window watching it fall? I wondered, too, if the man who was my father would even remember her or care that she was dead? He wouldn’t, I say aloud to no one. I don’t care, so why would he? I ate some of the chicken and dumplings at one in the morning. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had something that good. When I was seven or eight, Ramona and I lived next to the Schweigers, a family whose apartment always smelled like a bakery. Mrs. Schweiger was Hungarian or something; I don’t remember, but I loved her accent. She invited me over a lot for dinner, and years later I wondered if she suspected that I didn’t eat much at my place. “Would your mother like to come, too?” she’d say, looking over my head for anyone who might be supervising me.

“She’s not here,” I said every time. Most of the time it was true, but sometimes Ramona would be inside the apartment, passed out on the sofa or sleeping with the man of the hour. The Schweigers ate every meal together: bacon and eggs, pancakes, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, baked chicken, scalloped potatoes, or spaghetti with meatballs, and there was always dessert. Karla was fifteen when I met them, Madden was twelve, and Louie was eight. I played with Louie every day. Sometimes I fell asleep on their couch and Mrs. Schweiger would leave me there. She’d knock on Ramona’s door, and if Ramona wasn’t there she’d leave a note on the door, letting her know I was with them.

The Schweigers took me to church every Sunday. I remember the first time Mrs. Schweiger asked if I wanted to go with them. I shrugged and said sure. I’d never been inside a church before, but if it meant being with the Schweigers, I was all for it. There was nothing complicated about the Schweigers’ faith; it was dirt plain and natural. When I remember Mrs. Schweiger I realize she never talked about religion. She talked about God and Jesus like they were part of the family. I spent three Christmases with the Schweigers. Ramona and some sidewalk Santa Claus spent one Christmas together at his apartment, and I don’t remember where she was for the other two Christmases I spent inside the Schweigers’ apartment, opening presents, like a baby doll and a purse, that I never expected.