The Christmas Note Read online

  “Where’s the fun cereal?”

  “This is it,” I say, reaching for the Rice Krispies. “Ta-da always means whoo hoo! Look at this! Nothing says fun like snap, crackle, and pop.” I pick up the boxes of cereal and give each of them a shake. There’s hardly any Frosted Mini-Wheats left, and I wonder why I packed the box in the first place. Kyle wouldn’t have packed it. Army men pride themselves on their packing skills! “Kyle, you need to go through these cupboards,” I say to myself, throwing away the empty box. I’m feeling sorry for myself again and I hear Kyle’s voice telling me to push myself up out of the rubble.

  He grew up in Oklahoma, and when he was ten a tornado swept through his small town in the early morning hours. Kyle and his parents and brother leaped from their beds, his mother in her nightgown and the men of the house in their underwear, and ran to the cellar as the twister tore off the roof of their home. When the winds died down and his father cracked open the cellar door, the sky was jagged with splintered trees and their truck was missing along with the living room and Kyle’s bedroom. The henhouse was razed and the chickens stripped of feathers and lying dead, but the barn was standing so they walked toward it to check on the horses. Kyle heard a noise, something like scratching, and stepped toward the boards of the henhouse. He yelled for his family, and each of them stepped closer, listening for the sound. As the sun rose, the noise became more frantic and they watched as the featherless head of the rooster pushed his way through the boards. He lifted his naked body from the rubble and stumbled to the top of the boards, crowing with what strength he had left.

  Kyle told that story several times in our marriage. “He had to crow,” Kyle always said. “It was in his DNA.”

  One night during my senior year in high school, I was driving home from a waitressing job and was pulled over for speeding. The officer flashed his light in my face and the streetlight illuminated him. I tried not to smile but couldn’t help it. He took my license and car registration to his vehicle and was gone for just a minute, not long enough to issue a ticket, when he walked back to the car and let me go. “Slow down, Gretchen,” he said, making me smile.

  Days later I was at a pancake house eating with a friend when a yummy-looking guy walked in wearing jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, and I thought he looked familiar but couldn’t place him. He walked to the table, and when I looked up at him, just as I’d done out my car window a few nights earlier, I recognized him. “Taking it slower?” he asked. I laughed and felt so high schoolish but realized a guy his age (he looked twenty-something) wouldn’t be interested in me. He sat with us and we all talked for two hours, but I still didn’t think he liked me. He was seven years older than me, five years with the police department, and he’d just joined the army. Somehow, I knew that was in his DNA. He was born to help and protect. You just know that about some people. I never saw myself as an army wife, but when Kyle and I started dating I suddenly couldn’t see myself being anything else. We married after I graduated from college. My parents were adamant that I wait. I think they fully expected Kyle to lose interest, but he didn’t. Kyle had been in the army four years when we married; he wore his dress blues at our wedding and we began hanging a sign outside the door of our home at each military post that said, HOME IS WHEREVER THE ARMY SENDS YOU! The sign is hanging in my new kitchen now. I just couldn’t get rid of it.

  Ethan and Em are chattering away over their bowls when I hear a knock at the door. A sweatshirt is crumpled on the sofa, and I slip it over my head before reaching for the door. A man’s bald head is all I can see through the peephole and I open the door. He’s fiftyish, I guess, with dark bags under his eyes and heavy lines on each side of his mouth. He looks cold and aggravated. “Hi,” I say, making it sound more like a question than a greeting.

  “Sorry to bother you so early,” he says, pulling his coat collar up to cover his neck. “I’m looking for Ramona’s daughter.”

  “Nope. I’m Miriam’s daughter,” I say, smiling.

  His chest deflates, pushing a huge gust of air out of his mouth. “Do you know Ramona?”

  “I’ve never heard of her. I’m brand-new here as of yesterday.”

  He looks behind him, at what I don’t know. “Great!” He scratches his head and sighs again. “I need to find Ramona’s daughter. Another tenant in my building said she lives on this street, but he couldn’t remember her name and I can’t either.”

  I cross my arms to keep warm. “I have no idea. Did he say if she’s married or has children? That could narrow it down.”

  “She’s single.”

  “I think the woman who lives on the other side of me is single, but I’m not sure. I can’t even remember her name.”

  “Her name’s Melissa,” Ethan says, wedging in next to me.

  “That’s her!” the man says. “Ramona’s daughter is Melissa.”

  “Then that’s her place,” I say. He turns to step off the porch. “She’s not home right now. I saw her leave a few minutes ago.”

  If it’s even possible, his chest shrinks even more. “Do you know how to contact her?” I shake my head. “Okay, this has been a”—he sees Ethan and stops—“rotten morning. When she gets home, would you tell her that her mom died and I need her to come clean out her mom’s place?”

  Ethan snaps his head to look up at me, and I feel letters burbling up, but none of them are coming out as words. “What? No! I only met her for the first time yesterday. Don’t the police make that sort of notification?”

  “The police came late last night when Ramona wouldn’t answer her phone. The old dame’s hand turned the stereo up blasting loud when she keeled over and died. Had every tenant calling me to take care of it. She wouldn’t answer the phone or the door so the police went in and found her.”

  “So why can’t they notify her daughter?”

  He popped a cigarette into his mouth like it was an M&M. “I told you,” he says, lighting the cigarette and puffing. “Nobody knows Ramona’s kid. Hard to contact next of kin when the dead woman never said she had kin. If I hadn’t heard them screaming at each other a few times I wouldn’t even know it.” He turns to leave. “Tell her I’m giving her one week to go through her mother’s things and then I’m dumping all of it.”

  “I’m not going to tell her,” I say to his back.

  He turns to look at me. “Tell her I’m being nice. I could just rummage through that junk and keep what I like.”

  I nudge Ethan to get back into the house and I stand out on the porch, closing the door. “I can’t tell her that. You need to leave a note on her door.”

  He won’t turn back to look at me. “I’ve been out here for an hour knocking on doors.” He tosses his hand in the air. “I’m done.”

  Ethan is staring up at me when I step back inside. “Who was that guy, Mom?”

  “A landlord,” I say, busying myself by putting away the cereal.

  He picks up his football and tosses it from hand to hand. “Who died?”

  Emma looks up from her soggy bowl of cereal, frightened. “Somebody died? Who died?”

  I cross to her and kiss her head. “Our neighbor’s mom.”

  “Oh.” Ethan tosses the ball up and down now, and I try to ignore it as I go back to work in the kitchen. I’m not in the mood for the whole football-in-the-house argument. “You don’t like her very much, do you, Mom?”

  Great! Caught not liking someone by my own child! I stop my work to look at him. “What makes you say that? She seems fine.”

  He tosses that confounded ball higher into the air. “You don’t talk as much to her as you do other people.”

  “I just don’t know her very well yet.”

  The ball goes up again. “You talk long with other strangers.”

  “Please take that ball out of the house, Ethan.” He tosses it back and forth all the way to the front door before tossing it out into the yard.

  All the big kitchen items have a cupboard to call their own, but the counter space is littered with
things that will eventually wind up crammed into a drawer or shoe box: rubber bands, pens, old address book, two small picture frames, sticky pads, cow-shaped eraser, handful of magnets, Magic Markers, a whistle, two batteries, a tube of ChapStick, a purse-size package of tissues, a ruler, and a stack of cards we received after Kyle’s accident. I fan them out in my hand, not knowing what to do with them. I see a small, empty box and stack them in a corner of it, pushing the rest of the stuff from the counter on top of them. I sigh, setting the box on the table. There’s so much to do, but I know Kyle’s accident and the move have been a lot to take in for the kids. I wander through the hall to their bedroom and peek inside. Emma is using one of her baby blankets to make a bed for Sugar, and Ethan is pulling children’s books out of a box.

  Whenever Kyle was home the kids would beg him to read to them every night at bedtime. I always read using inflection and different, even if sometimes weak, voices, but Kyle had a certain flair when he “read” Charlotte’s Web or Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In Kyle’s translation, Charlotte the spider spun the words armpit, nose hair, and burp into her web. Ethan and Emma especially liked burp because Wilbur the pig then walked through the barnyard belching. For Goldilocks and the Three Bears, I could hear Ethan’s high-pitched belly laugh as Kyle read, “Then Mama Bear said, ‘Somebody’s been pooting on my chair,’ and then little Baby Bear said, ‘Somebody’s been pooting on my chair and blew a hole right through it!’” It didn’t matter how many times Kyle read that story, the kids would howl like it was a brand-new telling. I watch the kids and pray. I’ve never prayed so much in my life. I wash the dishes and pray. I fold laundry and pray. I shower and cook and scrub the floor and pray. It keeps me tethered, grounded, buoyed, or from going insane.

  I hang on to their door as I stick my head into their room. “Hey! Do either of you know where the box of games is? We could play something.”

  “Right now?” Emma asks, pushing Sugar’s head hard into the blanket.

  “Sure.”

  “I thought you were busy,” Ethan says.

  I step into their room. “Why don’t we get the books and games and everything put away in your room and then it will be totally done! That should only take a few minutes. Then let’s play a game.” I feel the crush of things to do, but know I need to spend time with them.

  We finish their room and we celebrate by playing two games of Candy Land and then one of Sorry! and then Battleship with Emma before Mom picks them up to take to her house to eat lunch and spend the rest of the day. Hopefully, by the time they make it home tomorrow I’ll have most everything in order. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay and help you?” Mom asks.

  “You are helping by giving the kids a break from tripping over of all this stuff,” I say, waving my arm into the living room. “Hopefully, I’ll find a spot for all of it.” I kiss Emma and Ethan and resist asking them to stay with me so I can see them, touch them, and hear their voices. My throat tightens as I wave to them from the front door.

  I haul out the final empty boxes from the kids’ room and feel good that their bedroom is organized. I make a quick trip to the school to take the kid’s shot records and fill out the rest of the enrollment papers and then spend the rest of the day working in my bedroom and organizing the linen and laundry closets. I walk through the condo and know I need to put up some Christmas decorations soon. The sight of lights, evergreen swags, stars, bulbs, the tree, and nativity will make all of us feel better. The first Christmas after my parents divorced I hated putting up the tree and dragging out the nativity, but once they were up, my feelings changed. I search for the boxes filled with all things Christmas so the kids and I can start decorating in the next few days.

  The stack of flattened boxes is growing at the front door, and I start to take them out when I see the neighbor’s car pull into her driveway, so I close the door before she sees me. Through the window sheers I can see her walking to her mailbox. I set the boxes down. I’m not going to the curb now. If I see her, I’ll wonder if anyone has told her about her mother and then be plagued with guilt that I didn’t tell her. I shake my head. What a preposterous situation!

  This place is too quiet without the kids. I fall into bed and dial Mom’s number to say good night to them but discover they’re too busy to come to the phone. “They’re distracted,” Mom says. I smile. She’s always been very distracting, and right now that’s a good thing. I hang up and stare at the ceiling, thinking of my neighbor. Kyle would have told her her mother had died. Even if his world had collapsed in on him, Kyle would have pushed his way up through the rubble and done what he was supposed to do.

  “Someone has to tell her,” he’d say. “If the landlord is a coward, then someone needs to step up.” Kyle would get out of bed at this very moment and go knock on her door, but I turn the light off and pull the blankets up to my neck.

  Three

  It is dismal coming home, when there is nobody to welcome one!

  —ANN RADCLIFFE

  MELISSA

  I never knew my father, but when one of Ramona’s men traipsed through our apartment late at night I’d tiptoe out to the living room, kitchen, or her bedroom where I could see them drinking, smoking, or dancing while each of them held on to a bottle of Jack. I’d imagine which, if any, of those nightly visitors was my father. I asked Ramona one time who my father was, and she slapped me across the face. “It’s none of your business,” she said, her rancid liquor breath burning my eyes. “The only thing he ever did was plant the seed of a fool.” It took me years to realize that seed was me. She has gone out of her way to let people know she doesn’t have children, least of all a daughter, the most worthless of seed. The fact that I live less than three miles from Ramona is ironic to the point of being absurd. We lived in Florida for as long as I could remember. Ten years ago, out of loyalty or extreme stupidity, I followed her here to Grandon, where the winds are as cold in winter as Ramona was on any given day. We talk when she needs money, and the sick, crippled part of me actually wants to help her, while the other part loathes her whiskey voice and the sight of her swollen, overliquored face. She called two nights ago and asked for a hundred bucks to “see her through,” calling me “baby girl” and “lamby,” the names she’s always called me after she’s cussed me or slapped my face until it welted in stripes. “Don’t leave me, baby girl,” she’d say when I was a child. “What would Mommy do without her lamby?” When I refused to give the money to her two nights ago she called me every four-letter word in the book and I reciprocated. I learned how to do combat with her years ago.

  This condo is as barren as I am: white, empty walls, cheap carpet, and tacky furniture. It’s a reflection of me and I hate it. I groaned when I saw the moving truck next door and two small children running through the yard, their high-pitched voices slipping through the cracks in my windowsills. I work two jobs to pay my bills and I don’t have the time or the interest in “learning more” about my neighbors. They’ve lived there two days and already the mother has a Christmas wreath on the front door. The condo on the other side of me, owned by an older husband and wife, is bloated with Christmas decorations: lights, wreaths, evergreen swags, nativity set, and two reindeer that move their heads as if they’re eating. My condo is the thorn between two roses. I’ve never owned a Christmas wreath or put up a Christmas tree. What’s the point when you live alone? I was married once; it lasted almost two years, an eternity really, considering neither of us was fit for marriage.

  As I pull out of the garage I see my new neighbor draping Christmas lights over the miserly shrubs in front of her condo with the phone pressed to her ear. That’s the second time I’ve seen her wandering in the cold, talking on the phone. From the corner of my eye I can tell she’s watching me pull away, probably hoping for a moment of witty banter between us or to invite me in to their warm, smells-like-pumpkin-bread home that’s already fully decorated for Christmas. I dislike her already, and I can’t even remember her name.

 
I’ve worked in the mail room of Wilson’s Department Store during the morning hours for two years now. It’s only part-time work, so I transfer hard copy files on to the computer for Layton and Associates, a small law office, in the afternoon. In the same sense, I take the latest cases, which are on computer and make a hard copy file for each one. Feels like they’re doubling up on their work, but hey, they’re paying me to do it, so I don’t complain. Both jobs are what Ramona calls “grunt work,” perfect for grunts like me, she says. Before that, I worked on the assembly line at the pencil factory. You’d be surprised how many pencils don’t make the cut and get pitched into a huge trash barrel. I do my jobs and go home. How I learned to work is beyond me because Ramona couldn’t hold a thought in her head let alone a job. She’d been a cashier, gas station attendant, waitress, prep cook, night janitor, and Avon Lady all in the same year. “I change jobs like I change men,” she said to me once, all boozed up and proud. I pay my bills. I stay out of the way. I probably drink too much, although I’ve always said I’d never be like Ramona. I’d cut my right hand off before I turned into her.

  Robert Layton is a good twenty-plus years older than me, but I think he’s good-looking with the lines shooting out toward his temples and curving the sides of his mouth. He’s not slobby; he hasn’t let himself go like some older guys you see. I guess he’s a good lawyer because his office is busy, with Jodi and Susan turning more people away than taking them on as clients. Robert’s a grandfather and doesn’t run, in his words, the hamster wheel anymore. I don’t pal around with Jodi and Susan, the other women in the office, and when Robert invites the staff over to his house on the Fourth of July and for the annual Christmas dinner, I never go. The file room is at the back of the office and I’m always in there alone so I’d feel out of my skin if I was plopped down at a dinner party next to Jodi or Robert’s wife, Kate.