by Ariel Tachna
Popcorn Garlands
By Ariel Tachna
Carlos Mendez spends all year working hard at his Houston-based landscaping business, and he sends every spare penny he earns back to his family in Mexico. By the time the holidays roll around, he doesn’t have much patience for the unadulterated greed and consumerism paraded past him. But a chance meeting with his neighbor, Ned Williams, and Ned’s cancer-stricken daughter, might help to remind him of the real meaning of the season—something beyond the gaudy lights and extravagant displays—something he wants to be a part of.
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CARLOS MENDEZ backed his trailer into its spot in the apartment-complex parking lot and climbed out to unhitch it from his truck. He had a second spot for the truck, an expense he justified as necessary for his business. Most of the year the trailer was loaded with yard equipment—mowers, edgers, trimmers, rakes, and more—but for the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it was all ladders and Christmas decorations.
God, he hated Christmas. He made good money installing Christmas lights for people in Pearland and farther south who had no time or the wrong equipment to hang lights from second-story rooflines, but it all served to remind him of just how far from any real meaning they’d gotten.
Still, it paid the bills and let him give his team nice bonuses that they relied on to make Christmas special for their own families. The fact that Carlos came home to an empty apartment was no reason to deny them those treats.
Finished unhitching the trailer, he parked the truck in the next spot and made sure everything was locked up. He kept the extra decorations in a storage unit off-site and just picked up what he needed for each installation, but even the trailer and ladders had to be secured in Crestmont Park, or he ran the risk of them not being there in the morning.
One of these days he’d move to a nicer area where he wouldn’t have to worry as much, but right now this was all he could afford and still send money to his mother to help her out. He had his head above water, if not by much. He would make sure his younger sisters had a better chance than he’d had, if it killed him.
He trudged across the cracked concrete of the terrace around the pool area, toward his apartment. Someone had put weed killer down recently, an improvement over the usual mess of dandelions and thistle that grew there pretty much year-round. All around the courtyard, Christmas lights twinkled on apartment balconies. They were less gaudy than some of the installations he’d put in over the past two weeks, but that didn’t make them less of a reminder. He consoled himself with the few dark balconies, including his own and his neighbor’s. As he got closer, he saw his neighbor’s balcony might not be garishly lit, but it was still decorated. Were those popcorn garlands?
Madre de Dios, they were. This was a disaster in the making. They’d attract birds and bugs, even if they didn’t attract squirrels and rats and worse. He hated to rain on anyone’s parade, but if he didn’t ask them to take the garlands down, someone else would complain and then his neighbor would end up with a complaint in his records with the apartment complex. Carlos didn’t know how many of those a tenant had to get before they got evicted, but it shouldn’t happen over something as stupid as Christmas decorations.
He’d take a shower and knock on the door with a little neighborly advice.
HALF AN hour later, clean and feeling somewhat human again, Carlos knocked on his neighbor’s door. He’d seen the moving truck a month ago but hadn’t paid any attention beyond that. People came and went with alarming regularity around here, landing here when they had nowhere else to go, leaving when they lost even that or when they could afford to move somewhere nicer. He wouldn’t stay either if nicer places weren’t so expensive, but his sisters were getting an education and his mother wasn’t working herself into an early grave to pay for it, so living in a shitty apartment was worth it.
The door opened, drawing his attention to his neighbor. Easily six feet tall, the man could have been a linebacker. Nobody with any sense would be robbing this apartment. His smile, though, was warm. “Yes?”
“Hi, I’m Carlos. I live next door.”
“Nice to meet you, Carlos. I’m Ned.”
“Daddy, who is it?”
Ned turned back toward the interior of the apartment and gestured for Carlos to come inside, giving Carlos a glimpse of a table and two mismatched chairs, a ratty couch, but no TV that he could see…. “It’s our neighbor, Mr. Carlos. You can come say hello.”
A little girl with the same ebony skin and bright smile peeked around the corner from where the bedroom would be, if the apartment had the same layout as his own. “Hello,” she said.
Carlos kneeled down. “Hi, what’s your name?”
“Sonia. I’m five.”
Carlos held out his hand for her to shake. “Nice to meet you, Sonia. You’re awfully tall for a five-year-old. I bet you’ll be as tall as your daddy when you’re all grown up.”
Sonia beamed at him and shook his hand before breaking into a coughing fit.
Ned steadied her immediately, pressing a tissue into her hand and stroking her back until the coughing passed. “Go back and lie down, Sonia. I’ll talk to Mr. Carlos and be in soon to give you your medicine.”
Sonia nodded between coughs and disappeared back into the bedroom.
“Bad cold?” Carlos asked sympathetically.
“Side effects of chemotherapy. Her immune system is shot.” That explained the dark circles under Ned’s eyes and the listless expression on his face.
Carlos winced. “I’m sorry to hear that.” It made him feel like even more of a dirtbag, coming over to complain about the Christmas decorations.
Ned shrugged, looking resigned, as if he’d heard the platitude a thousand times and given the response a thousand times more. “The chemo is helping, and the doctors expect her to beat the leukemia. It’s just hell while she’s in the middle of it. But you didn’t come over to listen to me worry about my daughter.”
“I saw your decorations,” Carlos said. “I think they’re really great, and I bet Sonia had fun making them, but I don’t know how the complex management will feel about them. They’re likely to attract birds and animals. I wanted to warn you so you didn’t end up with a record of complaints. You’d think people around here would realize we’re all in the same boat and leave other people alone, but I swear they revel in making other people’s lives more difficult, like that somehow makes their own better.”
Ned’s face tightened. “I don’t want any trouble, but damn it, that’s about all I can afford for Christmas decorations.”
“I’m sorry,” Carlos said. “Maybe I’m wrong. I mean, I’m not going to complain about them. Maybe no one else will either.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Ned said.
Carlos smiled weakly. “You’re welcome. I’ll let myself out.”
When he reached the door, he glanced back over his shoulder. Ned sat on the couch, head in his hands, looking utterly defeated. Carlos could have kicked himself. He didn’t know how Ned and Sonia had ended up his neighbors, but they didn’t deserve a Scrooge like him messing up what little holiday cheer they’d managed to find, even if he’d done it with the best intentions.
CARLOS STILL hadn’t shaken the guilty feeling churning in his gut when he got home from work the next day. Ned had next to nothing, but that hadn’t stopped him from trying to make Christmas special for his daughter, as special as he could with his limited resources. And Carlos had to go and spoil it. Granted, someone else probably would have if Carlos hadn’t, but if he’d kept his stupid mouth shut, t
hey might have gotten another couple of days’ enjoyment out of the decorations before people started complaining. After all, it would take that long for animals to figure it out and start making a nuisance of themselves, and that’s what would cause their neighbors to complain.
When he looked up and saw the garlands gone from the balcony next to his, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He stalked back to his truck and headed to Walmart. He could afford a damn string of Christmas lights for a little girl with a thousand-watt smile.
An hour later, he knocked on Ned’s door again, bag in hand.
“I took them down,” Ned said irritably the moment he saw Carlos.
“I know, but then I felt bad for ruining Sonia’s Christmas,” Carlos admitted. “They’re nothing fancy, but no one will complain if you put them on the balcony railing.”
Ned opened the bag Carlos handed him and pulled out the package of multicolored lights, the brightest set Carlos had found at a reasonable price.
“Thank you, man. You didn’t have to do this.”
Carlos shrugged. “I spend my days hanging Christmas lights for people who have too much money and not enough sense. Those installations pay the bills, but there’s no heart in them. Your decorations might have been impractical, but they were real, and I made you take them down. The least I could do was give you something to replace them with.”
“Sonia’s resting, but if you want to stay for a bit, you could help us hang them when she wakes up,” Ned said. “I mean, I’m sure you’ve got things to do, but she’ll want to say thank you.”
Carlos grinned and took Ned’s invitation to come inside. “I live alone with the noise from the boob tube to keep me company, and the only things on TV right now are cheesy holiday specials and bad reality shows. I got nothing better to do than hang another set of Christmas lights. At least Sonia will appreciate my hard work.”
“She certainly will,” Ned said. “You want something to drink? I’ve got soda water, milk, and orange juice.”
“I’m good. Thanks, though.”
Carlos sat on one end of the couch, hoping it wouldn’t collapse beneath his weight, but it held. Ned sat just as gingerly on the other end. “Christmas lights, huh? That’s very… seasonal.”
“Not a lot of call for landscaping in December,” Carlos replied with a cynical huff. “That’s what I do the rest of the year. I’ve got a crew of four, including myself. We’ve got about a hundred customers we do a variety of things for weekly, biweekly, or monthly, plus special jobs. It’s hard work, but it pays the bills. What about you?”
“I’m an electrical engineer, or I was. Then Sonia got sick. She can’t go to school or daycare, and I didn’t have anyone else to keep her. So now I’m doing maintenance on the apartments here. It’s a roof over her head and enough left over for food. One day she’ll be well again, and we’ll get out of this shithole.”
Carlos could have kicked himself for his blunder. “I didn’t mean to hit a sore spot.”
Ned shook his head. “You couldn’t have known.”
The details, no, but nobody lived here if they had better options.
“What about Sonia’s mother? Or is that another sore spot?”
“Not really. I was trying to prove something to myself, made a mistake, and got a girl pregnant. She wasn’t interested in the baby or in sticking around. I convinced her not to have an abortion and to give me full custody. Her name is on the birth certificate, but we haven’t seen her since we signed the custody agreement when Sonia was a month old. It’s just us, and that’s the way we like it.”
“That was really brave of you,” Carlos said. “I couldn’t imagine trying to raise a kid on my own, even if I didn’t live here.”
“Lots of people do it.” Ned gripped the arm of the couch, betraying a tension Carlos was at a loss to explain.
“Yeah, but you don’t see a lot of dads doing it. It’s really admirable. Seriously.”
Ned’s smile twisted into something self-deprecating. “I figured it was my only chance to be a dad, and I wasn’t going to waste it because the baby momma didn’t want her.”
“You might have met someone else who’d want to stick around and have a family with you.” Carlos had watched his crew build families over the past few years. It hadn’t always been easy or with the first person they’d tried with, but they’d made it. If they could, Ned could too.
“The people I’d want to stick around wouldn’t be able to have kids. I told you I was trying to prove something to myself. I found out the opposite of what I’d hoped, Sonia aside.”
Carlos took a minute to work through that vague sentence. “You’re gay?” he blurted out.
Ned’s expression closed off. “Is that a problem?”
“Hell no, amigo. I just didn’t get that vibe from you, that’s all. I can usually pick out a fellow maricón, and you didn’t ping.”
Ned relaxed. “You didn’t ‘ping’ for me either. Shows you how far out of the game I am these days.”
“You’ve got a sick kid to worry about. You’ve got more important things to do,” Carlos said even as he catalogued Ned’s appearance now in a way he hadn’t let himself do before. He’d noticed the dark skin and wide smile, but now he took in the rest—the muscles that lurked beneath the long-sleeved T-shirt Ned wore, the way Ned’s short-cropped hair emphasized his strong features, the soft, full lips that—he stopped that train of thought before it got away from him. Ned might be gay, but that didn’t make him interested, and even if he was, he had other considerations. Specifically—
“Daddy?”
“In here, Sonia,” Ned called. “Come say hello to Mr. Carlos.”
“Hello, Mr. Carlos,” Sonia parroted, a smile as bright as the sun on her face as she walked into the room.
“Mr. Carlos brought us some Christmas lights to put on the balcony.” Ned opened his arms, and Sonia walked right into them, cuddling against Ned even as she waved to Carlos. “Do you want to help us string them up?”
Sonia’s smile got even brighter, something Carlos would have said was impossible until he saw it happen.
“Can I, please?”
“Of course you can,” Carlos said. “That’s why I brought them.”
She bounced out onto the balcony with Ned and Carlos trailing behind her. As soon as they were all outside, she reached for the lights.
“We have to find a place to plug them in first.” Carlos made a show of looking around the balcony. “So we can make sure we can turn them on when we’re done.”
“There’s a plug next to the door.”
Carlos figured there was since his balcony had one there as well, not that he used it for Christmas lights, but he did plug in a lighter for his grill from time to time. He helped Sonia plug in the string of lights and then stretched the coil toward the railing. “Now wrap it around carefully,” he told her.
Sonia took the lights from him and wrapped them around the metal.
“Perfect,” she said after a few minutes.
It was the simplest installation of lights Carlos had ever done, but the excitement on Sonia’s face made it by far the most gratifying.
“WHERE’S YOUR head, boss? You been wandering all day,” Joseph said when they paused for lunch the next day.
“Just thinking about my neighbor’s little girl,” Carlos said honestly. He had hired Joseph a month after he opened his business and realized he couldn’t do it all himself. He’d never regretted it.
“What about her?” Joseph asked.
“She’s not gonna have much of a Christmas this year, I’m afraid. She has cancer and her dad’s barely making ends meet. I gave them a string of lights, but that’s not much.”
“Bless her heart,” Joseph said. “How old is she?”
“She’s five. Ned—my neighbor—says she’s beating the disease, but that doesn’t help pay the hospital bills.”
“No, I don’t imagine it does.”
“I want to help, but I’m already sending Mamá les
s money in December than I usually do,” Carlos said.
“And even twenty bucks makes a big difference for her and your sisters. I know. We’re doing better now, but I remember when Thursdays were rough because we didn’t get paid until Friday. You gave me a loan more than once, but sometimes you didn’t have it either.”
“Exactly. She relies on that money to pay rent and school fees,” Carlos said. “And Ned and Sonia have a place to live. They just don’t have anything for extras, from what I could tell. I’d be stealing from Peter to pay Paul if I keep back money to help them out. Especially since January is always slow too.”
“I don’t envy you, bro.”
“MORNING, CARLOS.”
Carlos looked up from where he sat in the truck outside their first customer’s home, waiting for the crew to arrive so they could get started. Joseph was walking toward him with a black garbage bag in his arms.
“What’s that?”
“We always make Melissa go through her toys before Christmas to make room for anything new,” Joseph explained. “I thought your neighbor girl might like some of them. They’re all used, but they’re still in good shape. It’d be better than nothing.”
Carlos took the bag and stowed it in the passenger seat of his truck. “Thank you, Joe. You didn’t have to do this.”
“We take them to Salvation Army usually, all while talking to Melissa about helping out people who have even less than we do.” Joseph grabbed one of the ladders and helped Carlos unload the truck. “This year we told her it was to help a specific little girl. She was extra generous. Domiki is going through Melissa’s clothes, too, to see if there’s anything she’s outgrown. That’s not as fun as toys, but more necessary.”
“Thank you. Really. I warned Mamá not to expect as much as usual. I couldn’t stand the thought of Sonia not having any Christmas.”
“You? Our resident Scrooge?” Joseph teased.
“It’s not Christmas I have a problem with,” Carlos said. “It’s everything that comes with it that has nothing to do with Christmas. This, though”—he gestured toward the bag Joseph had brought—“that has everything to do with Christmas.”