Christmas in July

by Alan Michael Parker

  That was a little joke.

  As soon as I’m in the door, I empty whatever purse I’m carrying. I place each item in its spot on the tabletop built into the umbrella-cum-shoe stand. My entrance is complete, arranged. Only then can I face my house, having performed my welcome home devotions, and revel for the rest of the evening in the stillness of domestic life alone.

  Christmas learned this about me right away, and on occasion she would surreptitiously move an item, even just an inch or two, askew. Mean, mean, mean.

  One evening, early on, I tried to speak to her about it. “You know—”

  “Here it comes.”

  “Christmas. Don’t be like that.”

  We had dragged two folding chairs into the backyard and were sitting there until the fireflies came out. Or I was—I didn’t really know what she was doing.

  “My stuff. In the front hall.”

  Christmas started to laugh.

  “What if I fucked with your garbage bag?”

  She stopped laughing. “You wouldn’t.”

  “You should unpack. What if I threw out your bear purse? That’s all I’m saying. You live here.”

  I used the wrong word. I said “live.”

  “This ain’t living, Aunt Nikki.” Christmas made a series of sounds, her beatbox, and then rapped: “Pah, pu, pu, pu. That’s all yo sayin’, but I’m not stayin’.”

  A news reporter tried to find Christmas’ mom, but I wasn’t going to help. I called a few cousins and let them know I would be okay alone. My parents were devastated—their son had died, and now their only granddaughter, although they knew about the cancer, of course—and yet they debated making the trip from their Michigan cabin. My father’s diabetes was under control, although he found long drives uncomfortable and the next day worse. Having arrived home at their cabin just a month ago, after helping me close the apartment in DC, then stopping to visit friends in Ohio, they clearly didn’t want to leave, or face Saxon Hills ever again. I wanted them here, but I couldn’t ask, so I promised them a memorial service at the cabin, where we could be together again, and I’d bring Christmas’ ashes.

  My parents and I took turns being shell-shocked on the phone, unable to speak for long periods of time. During those endless silences on speakerphone, never-ending absences filled with the purest emptiness of grief, I could only stare at the phone too, that thing in my hand.

  Thankfully, the news media weren’t particularly interested in me, probably because I wasn’t listed anywhere as her guardian, “godmother” our unofficial title with her junkie mom still alive. I kept my front door closed, and the human interest story of the dead girl with the terrorist conspiracy who was killed by a hit-and-run played better without me. That Christmas had martyred herself——even though “we’ll never know” was the popular tagline—seemed to be a favorite take.

  I have another notion. I think Christmas’ death was stolen from us. Let’s say she saved Sarah Wasserman, that they were friends and Christmas pushed Sarah to safety. Who knows—we weren’t given the opportunity to be there. But if that’s how it happened, I still don’t see her death as very Christian. She didn’t die for anyone’s sins, despite what the news likes to imply. If anything, if she saved Sarah, Christmas owes me an apology. She took her dying from me, kept me from helping her. It’s like that Internet meme: one job. She took my one job.

  Sometimes, I think of her like a girl in a fairy tale. Go do something in the woods, they always tell the girl in the fairy tale, and you’ll come back a hero with a prince for a husband. It’s nice to think of her this way—that she was in the fairy tale, but she never got out of the woods. Besides, she was in my life so little, she felt a little made up.

  I am a town planner, and I know enough about demographics to understand the phenomenon of the cluster. Poorly insulated high-tension wires stretch over a neighborhood and the incidences of leukemia increase, the children miss more school, dental bills soar. Toxic landfills, downriver runoff to bespoil the drinking water, buried electronics, acid rain in a concentrated weather pattern, just a morsel of noxious metabolites in industrial emissions…we know too well what these insults to the environment entail for our public health and concentrated morbidity. Even a conspiracy theorist can be right; even a dismantled EPA could offer up the science.

  In truth, Christmas was a cluster unto herself. This one young person drew to herself the violence of human behavior and bad fortune. No, I don’t think she was merely unlucky. But I also don’t know what to do with my newfound belief, or this pseudoscience (which I know cannot be true, which seems to me an intuition I will never corroborate). Not a girl in a fairy tale, not a martyr, not unlucky—who was she? What do I do now?

  It’s true my grieving seems to have layers and pockets, grief within grief, mourning both Otto and Christmas, their deaths collapsed in my heart into one event. I didn’t know Christmas, and so it’s Otto I miss, but saying so makes everything worse.

  Here’s a question: did she know she was so close to dying?

  Here’s another question: did she know what Sarah Wasserman was up to, what the cult was planning?

  Here’s another question: do my compulsions make my behaviors excusable?

  One more: Christmas became her illness, her emotions victim to her sickness. Shouldn’t a person be forgiven her body?

  One evening toward the end, I came home from work to find Christmas had ordered a pizza (my money, my earlier suggestion) and that she had eaten all but half of one remaining slice, leaving me no dinner. Her behavior seemed the most willful yet, looking Aunt Nikki right in the eye.

  We fought about the pizza and other things, I don’t recall what, and I ordered another pizza, just because, and she stomped out of the house.

  Later, I went to sleep in my chair in my closet. I tried clutching a memory and then wrapping it carefully, folded in a piece of paper, and letting the gift float away on the tide. The tide wasn’t really my thing, I like the mountains more than the ocean. I tried letting the piece of paper float away in a little river, or a creek or something; carried downstream, too, I let the memory float. That seemed to be helping.

  I heard a scream. Christmas was home—something was wrong. There were terrible sounds.

  I found her in the hallway with her back to the bedroom door. She was panting and wide-eyed. She was clutching her purple hat.

  “Aunt Nikki!” she stage-whispered. “They’re in there!”

  “What?”

  We opened the door to see two furious raccoons. They hissed and spit and we gasped. We slammed the door.

  She had left open her bedroom window, and a slice of rubbery pizza on a plate on her bed. She had come home quietly—or not, I was in my closet—to find two raccoons on her bed, sharing the pizza and squabbling. The raccoons had been furious and aggressive, snarling at her, and once the light was turned on, they forgot which way they had gotten in. They squealed and chittered and spit and ran around, and now they were ready to bite us to death.

  “I think they’re lost,” I said.

  Christmas began to giggle.

  “Oh, don’t laugh,” I warned her. I began to laugh too.

  “Jesus,” Christmas said. “I’m screwed,” Christmas said. “That was the slice I saved you.” She began to laugh and laugh. “I was going to put it in your briefcase. Not.”

  It was funny, beyond funny. We both were in hysterics.

  Ultimately, I cut off the circuit breaker, thinking that in the darkness, the raccoons would find their exit window. They could eat the pizza or take it with them, to go.

  I gave Christmas a pair of safety goggles I found in the tool drawer, who knows who had left them. She pulled down her purple hat. I considered wearing a colander, but that was too sitcom—instead, I put on my bike helmet. We had on winter gloves, she wore a hoodie and I had a big scarf wrapped around my neck and shoulders like a saint’s chainmail. We were armed with pots and wooden spoons (mine a spatula-spoon), banging our absurdities in the hallw
ay to scare the raccoons away. It worked. They either finished or took the pizza; the plate was empty.

  Scaring them off was the best moment. We were together. We cried tears of hysterical delight. Banging on our pots and hollering in the darkness, wedged against her bedroom wall and drumming on our pots and yelling, we were touching, our shoulders, our hips, and we leaned into one another.

  Men play games I don’t like. My boss, Greg Rossi, is a prime example: he can dick around when directness is required. Unfortunately, the day after the news broke, he and I needed to be in contact a lot, texting and talking on the phone, to figure out what to do about the Comprehensive Plan and the imminent deadline, as I was too much a wreck to know if or when I could continue. At least he expressed sympathy. But when he texted me to say “Answer your door,” I wasn’t happy.

  Rossi’s a sweaty white guy with a classic comb-over. He’s a familiar sort from an old Saxon Hills Italian family. He’s going to retire soon, he keeps saying—that’s what I was promised, I would be the inside candidate for the town planner job and a significant raise. But no one can afford to retire today.

  There he stood on my doorstep, along with two older black people, a man and a woman. All three of them had their hands full, bearing gifts.

  “Hi, Nikki. I’m just dropping off,” said Greg. He lifted his hands to show me a dish covered with foil. “It’s Carol’s lasagna. Maybe you have the Assessment?” His voice rose with the question. “I thought I might take it? Can I have it?”

  “Hello, dear, may we come in?” The woman had sparkly eyes. She was also carrying a covered dish.

  “Miss Danzig,” the other man said. “We’ve brought dinner.” He too had a foil-covered food container, which made me abandon all hope of cake, my weakness. “We are so sorry for your loss. I am the Reverend Dr. Henry Hines, of the First Church of the Holy Spirit, and this is my outreach coordinator, Mrs. Emily Johnson. Excuse us. Could we lay these down? They’re heavy. May we have a word?”

  “Nikki?”

  “Miss Danzig?”

  I guess I hadn’t spoken yet. “Sorry, yes, of course. Come in. Hello.”

  For Rossi to leave quickly, I had to liberate my dining room table, stack the water and sewer eval pages without anyone seeing my hands shake. Hide my life, maybe.

  I showed my visitors the kitchen, to lay down their burdens, but then Greg disappeared for a moment—oh no, where was he?—only to arrive once more at the front door, come back inside bearing an ugly old orange Igloo cooler marked with masking tape and pen: ICED TEA. He nodded at me as he walked by. He looked scared.

  Me too.

  “You keep a lovely home,” Mrs. Johnson said as she came from the kitchen, a potholder in each hand. “Dr. Hines?” She looked around for her associate.

  The Reverend Dr. Hines followed her out through the kitchen’s swinging door. “Mrs. Johnson,” he said. “Miss Danzig.” He strode into the living room, swept his hand toward the couch. “Let’s sit.”

  These three people were everywhere. That preacher was too big for my house, I thought.

  “Nikki?” Rossi had to say again.

  “Yes,” I said. “Please. Sorry.” I gave him the papers I had been clutching.

  “Okay!” Rossi said. “If this is the Assessment, I’m outta your hair.”

  I had never seen Greg Rossi move so fast, waving over his shoulder as he fled. Man moves that fast, he won’t ever retire.

  “Here.” Mrs. Johnson had somehow poured me a glass of iced tea. She patted the sofa next to her. Hines had already fallen into an armchair. I sat, sipped the tea. Too sweet.

  Rossi better not have touched any of my stuff on the hall table.

  “Miss Danzig, I can see that you’re not sociably inclined at the moment. We won’t keep you.”

  He was deep in my green Ikea chair. I used to like that chair. Once upon a time, that was my chair.

  He took another big gulp of his iced tea. “Let us get to the reason we’ve gathered together. Your niece’s death is an awful matter, but she has gone to be with the Lord Jesus Christ Our Savior.”

  “I’m not a Christian,” I mustered.

  “Yes,” he said. “We know. It’s why we’re here.”

  “Don’t,” I said, and moved to stand up—but Mrs. Johnson put her hand out calmly, wait, everything’s fine.

  “We would like to hold a Unity Rally in town,” Mrs. Johnson said, lowering her hand. “It’s not a funeral. It’s non-denominational. Miss Danzig—”

  “She can’t have a service in our church,” the Reverend Dr. Hines interjected. “We can’t do that.”

  Get out, I wanted to cry.

  “Those cult people, they were going to slaughter the lambs,” he added. “Innocents. My flock…”

  “Miss Danzig,” Mrs. Johnson began again. “It will be for everyone. No one has to be a Christian. The mayor wants to say a word or two. It will start the healing of Saxon Hills.”

  “Christmas…” I began to say, and then I realized the rally had already been planned—this was a courtesy call.

  “Yes,” the reverend said gravely.

  “With your blessing, we hope,” Mrs. Johnson said. Now her hands were folded so nicely in her lap. “Maybe you will join us? The Unity Rally has the town’s go-ahead. Christmas…well, she touched so many of us.”

  “She did?”

  I didn’t know what to do with that. It sat there like another casserole.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I won’t have to speak?” “Of course not.” Dr. Hines laughed. “I can talk enough for the Devil’s army!”

  “Miss Danzig,” Mrs. Johnson said softly. “I’ll be with you the whole time. Would you like that? Arm in arm, I won’t let you go. We’ll soldier on. Miss Danzig, my nephew met your Christmas once. He liked her so. We’re all family here.” She smiled. “It’s what we do in Saxon Hills.”

  I was trying to believe her smile. That’s what I focused on, believing what I could see.

  There is a band shell downtown, and a goodly expanse of lawn for summer Pops concerts. Green spaces are my specialty, and as such, I actually liked this part of the Saxon Hills downtown area, its peacefulness at the edge of Memorial Park, the creek, the footbridge, the slight slant of the broad lawn in front of the open structure to allow for sightlines and proper drainage, the tile done right. Walking towns—I like that shift in urban design. But we were too close to the famous intersection. Everything was too close to everything else, even outside.

  A rainbow flag had been hung from the front of the band shell, with the word TOGETHER in script in the bow of the rainbow. I liked the banner. That was a surprise.

  Amplifiers had been set up on either side of the microphone on stage, and row upon row of folding chairs waited at attention, the town maintenance crews still unloading the chairs when I walked through at 5 p.m. I knew those guys, or maybe just their boss. The first three rows of seats in the right and left orchestra areas were taped off, as were the first couple of rows in the center, another twenty seats for dignitaries. I thought I would be seated in the taped-off section in the center—so maybe the other sections were for the choirs? Surely there would be singing.

  I didn’t know what had made me leave my house to scope out the venue, but here I was, two hours early. I had decided that if they used Christmas’ picture on a poster, or on flyers, I would object. Or I could draw a moustache on her—or give her gray hair to match her skin tone.

  I was crazy with grief. I knew it. Days of grief, grief for Otto, weeks of grieving with her alive, and now, another grief. Standing there, unable to be anywhere else.

  I didn’t want to be there, and there I was, hours early.

  “Hey,” a voice behind me spoke. “I’m Sam.”

  I turned to see a young couple, in their early twenties, holding hands, looking at the empty stage. He was much taller than she.

  “This is Liana.”

  “Hi,” she said.

  “We knew her, you know,” Sam said. He l
aughed to himself. “I caught her shoplifting.”

  I didn’t want them to know me. I said nothing.

  “I’ve gotta go to work,” Sam said. “We thought we’d stop by.”

  “Me too,” I was able to say.

  “Shame,” said Liana.

  “Shame,” said Sam. “She was a cool kid.”

  I don’t know what I did, or where I walked, except I avoided West Starkweather. I bought a bottle of water, I sat somewhere for a while. I had heels on, a mistake: blisters for sure, although a good long walk might have let me miss the whole rally. There were already people in the seats, and on blankets behind where the rows of chairs ended, up the hill, when I returned. There was music playing.

  It was too early again. I couldn’t go sit in the front row, I wouldn’t.

  I turned around again, walked away again, walked around a block, past the post office, over by the CVS, past a shuttered family grocery, the family longtime Saxon Hillers, a portent of the town’s future, the big box stores coming in, the working poor sure to struggle. I checked the time on my phone.

  I was being Christmas, I realized. Walking and skipping out and ducking out and showing up and walking and walking. Never texting Aunt Nikki, never answering a question directly, a simple, polite question such as How are you?

  I was a deer looking for a truck.

  There was a choir in robes in the front of the stage, the sections each being handed their repertoire in a black folder by a director, her collar up but not priestly, and some high school kids were monkeying around with the microphone, one of them wearing a technician’s headset.