by Kate Hewitt
When our girls had arrived, I’d started to see the point a bit more. I’d got into the spirit of it, at least a bit. One year I had even dressed up as Santa. Still, over the years, Laura had pretty much done everything for the holiday; I usually swanned in on Christmas Eve with a Phillips screwdriver and a smile and spent half an hour putting some toy or other together and considered it a job well done.
I could not conceive of doing all of it—any of it—myself this year. I just wanted to pretend Christmas wasn’t happening. And what about Paul and Elaine? We usually visited them in Boston for the week after Christmas. I doubted that was going to happen this year, but I suspected they’d still want some involvement, something else I didn’t want to face.
“Daddy.” Ruby tugged on my T-shirt. “Can we get a tree today?”
“A tree…” It wasn’t such an onerous request. We usually bought one from a lot a few blocks away, on First Avenue. That was my provenance, at least; I took the girls with me and, when we got back, Laura would have hot chocolate and home-made donuts ready. Ruby licked the sugar off those last year as well, I recalled. Laura would put on Christmas music while we decorated the tree, Ruby gleefully throwing handfuls of tinsel about…
My throat thickened and I had to close my eyes. It was going to be so different this year, even if I got the tree. Even if I tried to do it all, which I knew I couldn’t. It was going to be different; it was going to be hard.
“Daddy…?” Ruby tugged on my shirt again.
“Yes, Rubes?”
“Can we go today? Pleeeeease?”
“Maybe.” It wasn’t even 7 a.m. The day, like every other since Laura’s death, felt endless, something to slog through until I could drink my whisky and go to sleep. Was this what the rest of my life was going to look like? I couldn’t imagine anything else. I could barely picture making it to this evening, much less a week from now, a month from now, Christmas.
“Daddy.” Another tug; I had to strive to keep from sounding irritable.
“What is it, Ruby?”
“Can Maria come with us?”
Twelve
Maria
After spending the evening with the Wests, my apartment felt small and silent and empty. I drifted around the tiny space, resenting everything about it—the cheap furniture, the bland walls, the lack of photos or pictures or knick-knacks, anything to make it seem more like mine.
I knew it was my own fault, a deliberate choice I’d made years ago not to live in a space that brought up memories, or made me care—except it hadn’t felt like a choice, just a way to cope. The reflection of my inner life, or lack of it. Now, to my own surprise, I disliked the fact that I might as well have been inhabiting a budget suite in the Holiday Inn for the last twenty years.
I was forty years old and I’d spent the last twenty-six years as a ghost. I hadn’t known how to be anything else, but right then I wanted to feel alive again, the way I had when I’d told that story, brimming with emotion, with laughter.
Already I felt myself waking up, wanting more, and it hurt. It made me restless; it made me want things I hadn’t even dreamed of. And it made me miss things. People. I sat in my little living room and pictured Petar at the piano, the music floating through the room. I saw my father lift his head from his book and smile in peaceful approval. I saw my mother come in, put her hand on my shoulder.
Had any of it really happened like that? It seemed so far away, so impossible. Then I pictured other, more recent things that felt just as impossible.
I recalled the warm weight of Ruby in my lap, Ella’s hand on my shoulder. I remembered sitting on the edge of her bed, singing a Bosnian lullaby to her as her eyes drifted closed. It had all been so unbearably, achingly sweet—a life lived in a single evening, a what if that would never happen.
And now I was back to my real life, the reality of work, home, solitude, loneliness. It was what I’d had to choose; it was all I knew. And for the first time in over twenty years, I didn’t want it.
So when Nathan phoned me the next afternoon, asking if I wanted to help them decorate their Christmas tree later that day, I said yes. Unthinkingly, hurriedly, only knowing I wanted to see them all again. Even if it still felt a little strange, a bit dangerous. Even if I wondered why they wanted someone like me in their lives.
“I get off work at five,” I said. “Is that too late?”
“No, no, of course not. But only if you don’t mind…”
“I don’t mind.” I spoke too quickly, embarrassing myself. It was obvious I had nothing else going on, but it seemed as if the Wests didn’t, either.
“Who was that?” Neriha asked when I’d finished the call and went back to my station in the salon to tidy up. “A big date?” She was teasing; she knew I never dated. Never would.
“No, it was a friend.” I paused, reluctant to admit who it was, but it was clear Neriha was curious and waiting for more. “Nathan West.”
“Nathan West…” She frowned, the name not registering, and then her expression cleared before clouding again. “The man whose wife was shot on the subway, you mean? Him?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head, looking surprised and a bit suspicious. “How do you know him?”
“You know his wife worked at Global Rescue…” She nodded, unimpressed. “He came by one day, wanting to talk to me, because he knew we were friends.” I tested the word out, tasted it on my tongue. Friends. Yes.
Neriha frowned. “And you think that is a good idea?”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” I sounded defensive.
“I just don’t understand what he has to do with you.”
I stiffened at that, because I didn’t understand it either. Why did Nathan continue to invite me to his home, into his family? Surely he had people better placed, part of his own community, to help or spend time with them? “We’re friends.” I did not sound convincing, even to myself. How could we be friends?
“Friends?” Neriha arched one dark eyebrow. “Come on, Maria.”
“What?”
“We’re not friends with people like that.”
I folded my arms across my chest, abandoning my half-hearted attempt at tidying up. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Neriha shrugged. “You know.”
I didn’t respond, because the trouble was, I did know. What did I have in common with Nathan West or his family besides grief? Their Upper East Side life, their private schools and moneyed vacations, the sense of privilege they didn’t even know they had.
But what did any of that matter? It was just money. And yet, money aside, I knew I was still different, that I would always be different, no matter how much I might try to blend in. Unlike Neriha, a fellow Bosniak who immersed herself in the local Bosnian-American community, who preferred to speak Bosnian to English, and who found meaning in being with people who understood what she’d been through, I’d separated myself. I didn’t want to be Bosniak, even though I knew I always would be. It was being Bosniak that had ruined my life.
It had always been this way in the Bosnian immigrant community: people who wanted to fit in, and people who didn’t. People who wanted to remember and those who had to forget. People who had learned to hate, and people who were trying to love.
And then there was me—isolated and alone, because I didn’t know how else to be. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of opening myself up to anything—life, love, joy, pain. And yet here I was, wanting to see Nathan West and his children again. Perhaps the fact that he was so different made it safer, separate from my reality. It was never going to amount to anything, which was both a painful reminder and a needed reassurance.
I could hardly explain any of that to Neriha. I barely understood it myself. All I knew was I wanted to go to Nathan’s apartment this evening and help decorate their Christmas tree. I was going.
* * *
It was snowing as I took the bus uptown, enjoying the sight of the fat, white flakes that drifted down, cloaking the city
in gentle white, softening everything and turning it beautiful, hiding the ugliness.
The doorman waved me up without asking my name, which gave me a silly little burst of pleasure. I was known.
When I knocked on their apartment door, I heard an excited squeal, and then the sound of feet pounding down the hall. Ella threw open the door, with Ruby trying to elbow her out of the way.
“We got a tree!” Ella said, looking more animated than I’d ever seen her.
“I can’t wait to see it.” I stepped into the warmth of the apartment; already I was buzzing in a way I never was in my real life, simply by being here.
Ruby wrapped her arms around my knees, burrowing her head into my legs, and I laughed and touched her hair.
“Ruby, are you happy to see me? I am happy to see you.”
Then Nathan came around the corner, looking hassled and tired, although he tried to smile. “We bought the tree… I’m just trying to put it up now.”
“And it’s snowing outside,” Ella said, her voice full of wonder.
“Yes, look.” I held out my scarf to them, the snowflakes that had been caught in the wool still glittering. “The first snow of the year.”
“Did it snow where you used to live?” Ella asked as they pulled me along the hallway towards the living room.
“Yes, it snowed a great deal up in the mountains there. In winter we would go to a resort in Jahorina. You could ski, sledge, snowshoe…” A memory flitted through my mind like a butterfly, skimming away before I could hold onto it—Petar pulling me on a sledge, the snow deep and powdery and dazzling white. I was crying because I was cold, and so he pulled faster and I fell off, making me cry harder. Petar had picked me up, brushed the snow off my face, before carrying me the rest of the way home, pulling the sled with his other hand.
“Here’s our tree!” Ruby exclaimed as I came into the living room.
The room was in just as sad a state as the dining room, with ugly olive-colored flocked wallpaper and brown-painted woodwork. A tree stood in the corner, listing heavily to one side.
“I need to get some twine,” Nathan said. “Tie it on one side to straighten it…”
“And then we can start decorating!” Ruby exclaimed.
“Ah, the best part.” I smiled at them all, filled with a fragile sense of bonhomie, as thin and translucent as a spiderweb, so easily broken and yet so beautiful.
“The best part is hot chocolate and donuts,” Ella told me. “Mom always…” She trailed off uncertainly, and I smiled at her.
“Your mother made you hot chocolate and donuts? Lucky girl.”
“Yes.” She blinked rapidly. “Yes.”
“And Daddy said we could have them today,” Ruby added with a challenging look for her father.
Nathan gave me a quick, harassed smile. “Courtesy of Dunkin Donuts, I’m afraid.”
“Well, that’s all right, then.”
But, of course, it wasn’t. It wasn’t the same, and both Ella and Ruby knew that, even if they were trying to make the best of it and be excited. I’d done the same as a child, when the electricity and water had gone off for weeks at a time, when there had been nothing to eat but tinned ham and dried prunes, when we’d tried again and again to make the best of it and laughed all the while, even as our hearts ached.
Until I couldn’t do that anymore, because there was no best of anything.
“Where’s Alexa?” I asked, and Ella shrugged.
“She’s in her room.”
“She doesn’t want to decorate the tree,” Ruby stated matter-of-factly.
Nathan gave me another grimace.
“She’s in a bit of a mood.” I nodded my understanding. “She might listen to you,” Nathan continued hopefully. “If you wanted to ask her to come out…” He trailed off, ducking his head.
“I can try,” I said after a moment, because I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t want to try, and I didn’t think Alexa would want me to, either. Surely she wanted to be left alone—just as I had wanted to be left alone, for years upon years. Yet how much had I missed, as a result? And I did not want Alexa to miss this, a seemingly small moment, but one that I knew would be important, could be a beginning.
“Come on,” I said to Ruby and Ella. “Show me where her room is.”
Looking both hesitant and intrigued, they led me to a door off the apartment’s main hallway that was firmly closed. I knocked on it once.
“Alexa? It is me, Maria. May I come in?”
A grunt was my reply, but at least it was not a no.
Gently I pushed open the door and stepped into the room. It was dark, the light turned off and the windows, which faced the next building, letting in very little natural light, the view a brick wall just a few feet away. It was also a mess—a rumpled duvet heaped on the bed, clothes scattered over the floor, makeup across the bureau top. A stale smell of cheap perfume and unwashed body hung in the air.
“Ugh. I don’t like it in here,” Ruby announced as she backed away, making a face.
Alexa, huddled on her bed, threw her younger sister a malevolent look. “Who asked you?”
Ella slipped out of the room as well; I could understand why both girls avoided their older sister. Alexa radiated a sullen rage, from the curtain of greasy hair covering her face to her hunched position, her thumbs flying over the screen of her phone.
Out of habit, I picked up a school sweater off the floor and began to fold it, before changing my mind and putting it in the clothes hamper in the corner. “You do not wish to decorate the Christmas tree?”
Alexa gave me an unfriendly look before turning back to the phone. “No.”
“Because it won’t be the same?” I spoke calmly, and her lips trembled before she pressed them together.
“No. It won’t.”
“Of course it won’t,” I agreed, gentling my voice. I felt as if I were feeling my way through the dark, and yet at the same time meaning every word I said. “How could it? Nothing will ever be the same again.”
Tears pooled in her eyes, turning them glassy, as she nodded.
Carefully I sat on the edge of the bed, wondering at myself and the wisdom I offered. Was I in any place—did I have any right—to try to comfort this child? Did I even know what she wanted or needed to hear?
“There is a saying in my country,” I began after a moment. “Hrabar čovek retko povređen u leđima.” Alexa looked at me blankly. “A brave man is seldom hurt in the back,” I translated quietly. “It is hard to go forward, into this unknown future that you didn’t ask for. It is also brave.”
Alexa shook her head. “I don’t want to.”
“I understand.” I rose from the bed, deciding not too push too much, knowing this had to be in her own time. “But if you change your mind, there will be hot chocolate and donuts in the kitchen.” I smiled and dared to pat her shoulder, amazed at my boldness. What was it about these children that allowed me to speak and act in ways I never had before? Was it how I saw myself reflected in their pain and bewilderment? Or was it that they fulfilled a need and deeply held desire in me that I’d never been willing or brave enough even to admit, that was now forcing itself out into the light, like some tender, green shoot? I smiled at Alexa and then left, gently closing the door behind me.
Back in the living room, Nathan had righted the tree and Ella and Ruby were taking decorations out of a cardboard box.
“Careful, Ruby,” Ella scolded. “They’re special.”
“I know that,” Ruby snapped, and then a shiny gold bauble slipped from her fingers and crashed onto the floor, splintering into a thousand tiny, glittering fragments.
“I told you!” Ella shouted. “You’re so stupid!”
Ruby’s face turned red with fury as her eyes filled with tears. “I hate you!”
“Girls!” Nathan’s tone was ineffectual, his face bewildered.
“That one wasn’t so special, eh?” I said as I stooped to brush the fragments into my hands; one caught and snag
ged on my thumb, drawing a tiny droplet of blood that I quickly dabbed away. “Look, there are three more in the box, just the same.”
Ruby sniffed and peered into the box, while Ella glowered. “Mom bought those last year.”
“There are lots,” Ruby said. “Even more than three.” She held up two more gold baubles, tear-streaked and triumphant.
“They’re all special,” I told Ella. “But some more than others, yes? Why don’t you show me your favorite?”
Ella dug through the box before she found a pine cone sprinkled with red glitter. “I made this in preschool.”
I took it from her and held it up to the light so the glitter sparkled. “It’s beautiful.”
“I made one too,” Ruby declared, and started searching through the box.
“Yours is in the kitchen, Rubes,” Nathan said. He sounded so tired. “You made it just last week.”
Ruby ran off to find it, and Nathan smiled at me.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “Alexa…?”
“In her own time.”
He nodded, and I wished I could have comforted him as I seemed to his children. He looked so sad.
“Shall I make the hot chocolate?” I asked after a moment, unsure if I was presuming.
Ella perked up. “Do you know how to make it?”
“I think I can.”
“And what about donuts?” she asked hopefully. “So we don’t have to get them from the store? Could you make them here?”
“Ella, Maria’s here to decorate, not to cook…” Nathan began in his half-hearted way, leaving the decision up to me, as he often seemed to.
“I can make donuts,” I said quietly. “If you want me to.” The last thing I wanted to do was to try to take Laura’s place in any way.
“You can?” Nathan looked startled, as if I’d just declared I could perform brain surgery. It almost made me smile.
“Yes, kroffie!” Ruby exclaimed as she ran back into the room with her precious pine cone. “Remember?”
“Krofne,” I corrected her gently. “Yes.”