Frost crackled under my boots as I made my to the porch. A light came on as I neared and the door opened, the promise of warmth spilling out from inside in the form of yellow light.
Good, I thought, Hope saw me coming. She would come out here to talk, and she would say she understood, and we would find a way to get past this. A way to be normal friends. Adults, to use Karen’s word.
But it wasn’t Hope who greeted me at the front door; it was Melody. And her face was troubled.
“She left,” Mel said. “Packed up her things as soon as you went home today, said she needed to get back to Los Angeles, that she and some producer person had made arrangements to start recording again.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“I’m sorry,” Melody said. “I wish I hadn’t come down the stairs when I did.”
I found my voice. “It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have… we shouldn’t have…”
Mel put a hand on my forearm. Her hand was warm from being inside.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this,” she said. “I like Karen. And I know you love her. But despite everything — the shooting, her injury, her depression — Hope’s happier now, with you around, than I’ve seen her in a lot of years.”
I let out a long breath. “You were the one who told me to cut things off with her, back when.”
Mel nodded. “I know I did. What I didn’t know was that neither of you would be entirely… I don’t know, ‘whole,’ without the other.”
Was that true? Was I incomplete without Hope?
My brain rejected the idea. My heart sang out that Melody was right.
“Go to her,” Mel said. “Tell her you still love her. That you never stopped loving her. She’s waiting for you to say it. I think she’s been waiting for years.”
“I can’t,” I said. My throat was suddenly dry. “I can’t because it’s not true. I love Karen. And I haven’t been in love with Hope for years. What happened the other of day… it shouldn’t have happened. It was impulsive.” My eyes wandered down the porch, like I might find an explanation for what had happened with Hope amongst the spiraled Christmas lights. “And it was only a single kiss.”
Mel made a face — amusement or disdain, I couldn’t tell. “Do you really expect me to believe the same thing you told Karen?”
“How do you know that’s what I told Karen? Did she call you?”
Melody just rolled her eyes.
“I need to get home,” I said. “Karen will be waiting for me.” I turned to leave.
“You’re too loyal for your own good sometimes, you know that?” Mel said to my back.
“I love Karen,” I said without turning around.
“I know you do,” Mel said, her tone softening. “But it’s not the same as with Hope. And it’s never going to be.”
That’s not what I need to hear right now, I thought, but I didn’t say it out-loud. “I guess I’ll see you and Andrew on Tuesday for our training session,” I said over my shoulder, and I trotted down the rest of the stairs before Mel could say anything else.
#
But I didn’t go home right away.
I drove around the sleepy tangle of streets that made up the edge of Mel’s neighborhood, listening to music, then wandered further into the quaint center of downtown Calvin. The city had decorated all the lampposts with Christmas wreaths and tinsel candy canes. Christmas. It was only three weeks away.
I still had Pandora tuned to my ’90s Alternative station. The Counting Crows, and Adam Duritz crooned out mournfully
A long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I let out a short, bitter laugh. Yes, it had been a long December so far, and we were only one week into it.
I can’t remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin’
Now the days go by so fast.
And it’s one more day up in the canyons
And it’s one more night in Hollywood
If you think that I could be forgiven I wish you would
Forgiveness. Whose forgiveness did I need the most? Karen’s? Hope’s?
I pulled the car over beneath a tinsel-covered lamppost, let out a heavy sigh while the Crows sang their “na-nuh-na-na” bridge.
My own forgiveness. That was whose forgiveness I really needed.
I turned the radio up further, leaned my head back on the headrest and sang along with Adam Duritz. His sorrow became mine, mine became his.
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her
And it’s been a long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can’t remember all the times I tried to tell myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass
16
Early December, Part 3: “Back to Black,” Amy Winehouse
HOPE CALDWELL
[ BRIDGE ]
You went back to what you knew
So far removed from all that we went through
And I tread a troubled track
My odds are stacked
I’ll go back to black
It took until Chicago before anyone recognized me. It probably wouldn’t have happened at all if I’d stuck to the hoity-toity airline lounge like I normally did, where I would’ve had relative privacy or at least be surrounded by people who could generally be counted on for politely ignoring the presence of a pop star.
But it was snowing in Chicago, my flight was delayed, and I stood next to the plate glass window that overlooked the tarmac with my nose to the window, watching the snow drift down in lazy swirls below.
I didn’t even notice the college-aged boy who’d come up behind me until he tapped me on my shoulder.
I started, spinning around. He stood there with floppy brown hair and an equally floppy grin.
Be gracious, I told myself. I pulled out my AirPods just as Amy Winehouse sang
We only said goodbye with words
I died a hundred times
“Uh, hi,” said the boy. “You’re Hope, aren’t you?”
I smiled weakly and nodded. It was the best response I could manage.
“I knew it!” He punched a fist into his palm and glanced over his shoulder. I followed his gaze and saw three more college-aged guys standing a few yards off, watching us. The boy nodded vigorously, waved them over.
Great.
I kept the smile pinned to my cheeks.
The other three boys ambled over cautiously, like I was a safari animal they’d found who might spook and run off.
Run. I laughed silently at my private joke. Clearly these boys weren’t acquainted with my recent past; running was something I’d probably never do again. Unless you counted running away from home — a bad habit that even a mass shooting couldn’t break me of
“Do you mind if we, uh, is it okay if we get some selfies with you?” asked the floppy-haired one.
“Of course,” I said. “But could you do me a favor? Don’t post me on social media for a couple more hours? Otherwise… I just kind of don’t want to get mobbed at the airport, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh,” said the boy in surprise. Unlike me, he’d never had to take into consideration what a single social media post could bring into his life. “Yeah — sure, of course, of course.”
I spent the next five or six minutes posing with different arrangements of the boys while they traded phones and took photos and selfies. The whole affair was starting to attract the attention of other curious onlookers. I wasn’t in an emotional place where I could handle any more attention with proper public figure grace.
So I said, “Boys, I really have to go,” after photo number seven thousand and one.
“Is your flight boarding?” Floppy Hair asked, looking around in confusion.
“No,” I said. “It’s delaye
d, like everyone else’s. But I’m going to head to the airline lounge to rest.”
“Oh,” said one of his friends, a guy who looked like he was Indian or Pakistani. “Ohhhhhhh,” the guy said again, as if he’d just discovered some key fact he’d missed before. “You have to rest because of your leg? Does it still hurt from being shot?”
That’s one of the strangest things about being famous. People think that they have some sort of intimate knowledge of your life, along with permission to ask deeply personal questions, just because they read a few blog posts or news articles about you. These young men didn’t even look like my music was their style. Yet they thought they should have the same kind of access to my life that my family did.
I forced a smile. “My leg is coming along. But all the tramping around airports today is definitely taking its toll.”
It was more than that. Complex regional pain syndrome was often triggered by emotions. The kiss I’d shared with Julie, rather than the travel, was probably what made my leg ache so badly today.
It felt like a second heart down there, throbbing out its sorrow.
“We’ll carry your bags,” said an eager third friend. He reached for my carry-on.
“No, no,” I said, scooting the bag out of his way. “It has wheels. I can take it.”
Eager Friend looked disappointed.
“Is it hard being back here?” asked Floppy Hair. “In Chicago? This is the city where the shooting happened, right? At Wrigley Field,” he added, as if he was answering his own question.
Angela Wright
Bobby Hart
Taylor Redding
LaKeisha Harding
Gregory Wu
The drumbeat of names came on their own accord. They’d gone away for a while, in Calvin. Now they were back
This time I couldn’t force a smile.
“Yes,” I finally managed. “It’s very hard being here.”
Awkward silence.
“I’m sorry,” said Floppy Hair. “I didn’t mean to… I mean…”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just… it’s been a lot to absorb.”
“Please let us help you with your bags,” said the one who’d been silent up to that point. He gestured for my carry-on. “Please,” he repeated.
“Alright,” I said. “But only as far as the lounge. Then you guys have to give me some space, okay?”
They all nodded like synchronized cartoon characters, and I found my smile again. I thanked them and gave them all hugs the way a well-behaved pop star should when we got to the airline lounge, then disappeared inside gratefully. Soon enough, I found a leather armchair facing a window to sink into, put my AirPods back in, and got back to the business of watching it snow.
You go back to her and I go back to
Black, black, black, black
Black, black, black
I go back to
I go back to
15
Tuesday, December 20: “Last Christmas,” Wham!
JULIE ARON
[ THIRD VERSE ]
The first sign that something was wrong when I arrived home was the absence of Christmas music. Karen had kept her Christmas playlist on repeat for almost two solid weeks, blasting it so loudly from the living room that Wham!’s “Last Christmas” had practically given me an aneurysm more than once when I walked through the front door.
Last Christmas, I gave you my heart
But the very next day you gave it away
This year, to save me from tears
I’ll give it to someone special
But now as I stepped into the house and dropped my keys in the bowl next to the door, I didn’t hear anything. Not “Last Christmas,” not Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You,” not even Justin Bieber’s version of “Drummer Boy.”
The next sign that something was wrong was the way Wilson and Spalding danced up to me. Anxiety filled their big blue husky eyes.
“Hey guys,” I said, bending down to ruffle their ears. “Where’s your other mama, huh?”
Wilson let out a slight whine. Spalding, who’d always been the more skittish of the two, barked twice. But it wasn’t his happy, “Glad to see you” bark.
“Karen?” I called. She should’ve been home by now.
That was when I noticed that it wasn’t just the music that was missing; the fancy Bluetooth speaker Karen had purchased six months earlier was also gone.
My pulse quickened. Had we been robbed? Was that why the dogs were acting so weird?
“Karen!”
I walked from the living room into the kitchen. Here, too, things were missing. The coffee pot. The blender Karen used to make her morning shakes. The knife set her parents had gotten us last Christmas.
With my hand shaking, I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, dialed Karen. How would she react when she found out we’d been broken into?
I went from one room to the next while the phone rang, mentally tallying all the things that were gone. Even the fancy embroidered hand towels were missing from the bathroom. Karen was going to be so upset; she loved those hand towels.
“Call me when you get this,” I said to Karen’s voicemail. “I think we’ve been robbed.”
I hung up and texted her the same thing.
“They’re only things,” I said to the dogs, practicing what I would say to Karen when she finally got my message and called me back. “It could have been worse. The important thing is that you’re okay, I’m okay, and the Wilson and Spalding are okay.”
I sat down heavily on a footstool in the living room, holding my phone loosely in my hands. Wilson came over to me, pushed his wet nose against my forearm.
“You guys are really crappy guard dogs, you know that?” I told him. Spalding laid down a few feet away, resting his face on his paws and watching me with cautious eyes. I laughed, but it came out sounding a little maniacal. “What happened, somebody offered you guys a fresh bone and you were like, ‘Sure, help yourself to whatever you want’?”
My phone dinged with an incoming text.
No one robbed us,
read Karen’s message.
I left you a note on the kitchen table.
You didn’t find it?
read the second.
Confused, I got up from my spot and walked into the kitchen, picking up the note from under the saltshaker.
Dear Julie, it began, It’s time we both stopped pretending we’re still in love.
The note went on from there, but I could barely comprehend anything past the first line. She was leaving me, she said, because she needed to be with someone stable, someone ready to act like an adult, not someone bent on chasing one dream after another like a teenager. She was going to Tybee Island for Christmas to be with her family without me, and when she got back, she’d move the rest of her belongings out of the house.
I ran a hand through my hair and tried to read the note again, tried to force the words to make sense, but I could hardly read them through the tears that had filled my eyes. Wilson whined again, and I absentmindedly reached down a hand to scratch him behind the ears.
Karen had left me.
She’d left me.
Zombie-like, I stumbled out of the kitchen and back into the living room, collapsing onto the sofa. The sofa that Karen planned to take as soon as she got back from Tybee and finished moving out.
16
Christmas Day: “Let It Go,” Idina Menzel (Frozen)
I turned down Melody’s offer to have Christmas with her and Andrew and the kids. Maybe I should’ve known better, maybe I should’ve been more “adult” about it, but I wasn’t in the mood for holiday cheer. Karen had left me five days earlier; Hope had hardly spoken to me since she fled Georgia after Thanksgiving. So I felt very “bah-humbug” about Christmas, very Grinch. I wanted to spend the day by myself with my dogs, wallowing in self-pity in my half-empty house and drinking by myself.
There was nothing about the day that felt like Christmas. Thanks to climate
change, the day was sunny and in the mid-sixties. Sure, the air had a bite to it when the wind picked up, but the neighbor kids were playing touch football in short sleeves and tank tops one yard away.
But cold weather wasn’t the only thing that was missing. The Bluetooth speaker was missing, and because there was no speaker, there was no Christmas music. There was no Christmas tree. And because there was no tree, there were no presents wrapped and stacked up beneath it. My own gift for Karen — a new set of copper mixing bowls to replace the plastic ones she always complained about — still sat hidden at the top of the hall closet.
No tree also meant no stray bits of silver tinsel littering the rug and the hardwood floors, sticking to socks and shoes and dog paws.
There was no wreath on the front door.
There were no stockings hanging from the fireplace mantel.
There was only me. And the dogs. And fortunately, a full six pack in the refrigerator.
“We don’t need Karen to have a merry Christmas, do we, guys?” I said to the dogs. “You know what we can do? We can have a Harry Potter marathon, and she won’t be here to tell us it’s a stupid idea. Or we could watch all the Lord of the Rings movies again — would you like that, Wilson, huh?” He panted happily and wagged his tail. “You always liked Gandalf better than Dumbledore, didn’t you?”
I turned on the television, about to hit the button for Netflix, when it occurred to me that some of my favorite channels might’ve thought up an even better movie marathon than the ones I had in mind. And besides, despite my Grinch attitude, I decided I wouldn’t mind catching one of the holiday movies they always played this time of year. Home Alone, maybe, or Love Actually — but no. Not that one. I didn’t want to watch a romance. But I wouldn’t mind one of the classics. A Christmas Story might make me laugh. It’s a Wonderful Life could be fun.
Winter Love Songs Page 9