by Sarah Ockler
“Why is it so cold in here?” I sit up, stretch, and pull the blankets to my neck. “It’s like there’s no heat.”
“Mom wants you in the kitchen.” Bug’s got this weird, you’re-pretty-much-dead warning in his tone that’s rather off-putting, especially since he just yanked me out of a potentially good dream about number seventy-seven and/or fifty-six.
“But it’s freezing in—” Oh no. No no no! My stomach drops as the red warning strip from the gas bill—shoved somewhere in the bottom of my backpack and forgotten—flashes in front of my eyes.
I throw off my blankets, bolt out of bed, and yank a sweatshirt over my head, almost flattening Bug. In our tiny kitchen down the hall, Mom’s on the phone, pacing, one hand wrapped around a mug. The steam from her coffee is so thick it looks like her hand is boiling the liquid on its own.
“How soon before it can be turned on?” she asks. “I realize that, but it’s Christmas Eve. No. I’ve got two children here. I already—yes. I’ll hold.”
I make for the coat closet and dig out my boots. Strolling down to the service center in my pajamas is not high on my Christmas Eve priority list, but if I don’t kick into proactive overdrive before Mom gets off that call, I might not be alive to see another holiday.
“I c-c-c-can’t believe you didn’t p-p-p-pay the bill.” Bug’s teeth chatter as he tucks his hands inside his snowsuit.
“You’re the one who tried to throw it out,” I remind him.
“Anthrax detection is an imperfect science.”
“You’re not helping.” I pull on my gloves and avoid Mom’s stare. The gas company—and Mom—knows we’re always late, but I’ve never totally missed a last-chance payment before. Not like this. They don’t usually shut off service in the winter. If the pipes freeze, they could burst, and dealing with burst pipes is way more expensive for them than chasing down a few late payments.
They must be really mad at us this time.
“I’m still here,” Mom says into the phone. “Oh, thank God. No, we’ll make the payment today. Okay, Thursday then. Do I need to do anything else? Thanks again—you have no idea—right. Merry—bye.” She sets the phone back into the receiver and lets out a gust of breath. “Should be back on in an hour or two. They’ll call later to make sure it’s working.”
“Mom, I’m sorry. I’ll go now. I had the bill in my bag and I totally forgot. I was busy with—”
“It’s okay.” She downs her coffee, shoves a few things from the counter into her purse, and grabs her keys. “Go on Thursday as soon as they open. And please let me know if you don’t have the cash. I don’t want to find out like this again.”
“Sorry. I won’t—”
“Since you have your coat on, run and get some milk? We’re out, and Trick needs help with the Christmas Eve specials, and—”
“When are you coming home?” Bug’s bouncing up and down like—well, like a kid on Christmas. “Are we gonna do the tree tonight?”
“I’ll probably be pretty late,” Mom says. “Hudson will help you.”
The bouncing stops. I fight off a shiver.
Mom kneels in front of him. “The good news is that Hurley’s is closed tomorrow, and we’ll have the whole day together. Just the three of us.” She looks at me to confirm. I was planning to hit Dani’s for brunch with her parents, but no way I’m risking Mom’s disappointment now. I nod.
“Great. Trick’s coming for dinner tomorrow,” she says. “He’s cooking up a bunch of stuff for me to bring home tonight. Sound good?”
“What about pumpkin pie?” Bug asks.
“We don’t have pie, sweetie. Maybe your sister can do pumpkin cupcakes?” Mom looks at me with the same anguish that flooded her voice with the gas company. It’s quickly becoming her signature scent. What’s on everyone’s holiday wish list this year? Desperation, the hot new fragrance line by Beth Avery.
“Whatever you want,” I tell Bug. And I mean it, too, because if one lousy batch of cupcakes is all it takes to give my brother a merry merry and atone for practically freezing out the whole family on Christmas, well … deck the halls with boughs of frosting, fa la la la la, la freaking la.
They’re showing a retro Smurfs Christmas special on TV, so I leave Bug in front of the electronic babysitter with Trick’s box of robot parts and an extra wool blanket and head out for Operation Find a Store That Isn’t Closed. No way I’ll get anything nearby—all the local mom-and-pops are locked down for the holiday, except of course for Hurley’s. The world could be in the final throes of the apocalypse and Mom would find some way to keep the coffee on in that joint.
“No room at the inn?” I ask the desolate streets as I pull away from our block. “No problem! Come on down to Hurley’s Homestyle Diner, where there’s always room for wayward travelers, especially on holidays when we should be home with our own families, but never mind all that.”
Stupid.
As I crisscross from one side of town to the other, I scan the radio. All the stations are doing that 24-7 Christmas cheer crap. I don’t feel very ho-ho-ho today, but I hum along with Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” anyway, searching in vain for milk. The sky is still for now, and the crisp white sheets left by last night’s flurries have gone gray, mottled and muddied by plows and salt trucks. The houses on this side of town are bigger than the one we share with Mrs. Ferris, but they’re older, more weather-beaten. They remind me of the old people at the diner, carrying the collective failure of this town in the slump of their shoulders, in the weariness of their steps.
I downshift as I cross a snow mound pushed into the intersection by the plows, tires digging through the slush, and then, without thinking, I turn onto Sibley Court.
The house is easy to find.
In three years, the place from the outside hasn’t changed—green-gray with white trim, badly in need of a paint job. A wreath hangs solidly on the front door, tied with a red velvet bow, and through the windows, the warm glow of the living room radiates into the icy cold day. Inside, behind the gauzy curtains, a woman drapes a strand of blinking colored lights over the tree. They put it in the same spot we used to, right in front of the big bay window.
We were pretty Norman Rockwell-y back in the day—at least, I thought so. Dad would take the week off, and even Mom skipped a few hours at Hurley’s on Christmas tree day. While we waited for Dad to do the lights, Mom made cinnamon hot cocoa with whole milk in a big pot on the stove, spiking two mugs with Baileys Irish Cream for her and Dad. Lights twinkling, mugs steaming, Christmas music filling the room, we’d cover the tree in ornaments, Bug toddling around the lowest boughs as we hung each glass ball, each handmade noodle wreath, each piece of tinsel with care. When the last box was finally empty, Dad would lift me up so I could place the blue-haired angel—the one he’d made in fifth-grade Boy Scouts, which, with each passing season, lost as much hair as he did—on the treetop. Bug and I were sometimes afraid of her because she looked so haunted and mean, but it was all part of the tradition, part of our family. Mom would take pictures and we’d drink from our frothy mugs and Bug and I would sing carols and when I look through that window now, tiny colored tree lights blurred by the curtains and the frosted glass, I wonder if I could just walk in the front door, stomp the snow from my boots, stick ole Blue Hair on the tree, and reclaim our old life.
The woman inside stretches on her toes to hang another ornament, and I put the truck in gear and drive on through the slush, all the way across town, all the way back to Blake Street without the milk.
“I wish we could get a real tree,” Bug says. “Then at least we’d have one real tradition, since that whole Santa thing’s a bust. I mean, if parents are gonna make up a cool story, at least do it realistically. Like, have the guy use FedEx or something—no way reindeer can fly with all that weight. Not to mention the Earth is about twenty-five thousand miles around, so to hit every house—”
“You’re totally right, kiddo. Physically impossible.” I click the last fake plastic branc
h into the base as Bug enlightens me and Mr. Napkins on the remaining holes in the Santa plot. The lights and tinsel are still wound around the boughs from last year, and when we finally plug in the cords and stand back to admire our work, we both sigh. The heat’s not on yet, the poor hamster is shivering in his plastic ball, and let’s face facts here, people: This is one sad little Charlie Brown Christmas tree.
“Let’s do the ornaments.” I wrap the hamster ball in an electric blanket and plug him in. “It’ll look better when we’re done.”
“Okay, Hud.” Unfazed, Bug smiles, tugging his mittens off and opening the ornament box. He pulls out the angel first and places her gently on the coffee table, smoothing her wild sapphire hair with his tiny fingers. “Think Dad will remember to call this year?”
“Maybe. He might be on vacation, though.” I blink away today’s trip down memory lane and my father’s latest blog posts, all sun and smiles from Southern California. Sometimes I think the hardest thing about being the so-called grown-up—a real one or a stand-in—is having to pretend that everything is A-OK, that things are looking up, that life will work out for the best, when all you really want to do is roll into a ball like Mr. Napkins and cry it out under the blanket.
“He has a cell phone,” Bug says. “With a national plan.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t always get reception on the road.” I brace myself for the next question, the next bit of logic and reason, but it doesn’t come. We sit in silence for a few moments, me stuffing ornament wrappings back into the empty box, Bug tracing the grooves of the angel’s corrugated cardboard dress.
“Wanna know a secret?” he asks. “I never liked this ugly angel anyway.” Bug wraps his hands around the defenseless angel and twists her in half, ravaging her from halo to toe. He yanks off the wings. Pulls out clumps of spiderwebby hair. Rips at her cardboard dress. Crushes the paper towel roll body. In a final act of vengeance, he grabs her Styrofoam ball head, breaks it off at the neck, and tosses it into my lap, scattering her other remains on the floor between us.
The whole raging episode is over in fifteen seconds, and I wonder if this is one of those things that parents of serial killers look back on as a sign. Maybe it is. But when he turns to me and that ear-to-ear gap-toothed grin rises on his face like a sun on some distant planet, my heart melts. My little brother is just fine. Pefect, even.
“Remember when we used to think she was cursed?” I ask.
“She is cursed. I mean, look at that hair. It’s like she fell in the tub with the hair dryer.”
The fragile foam head rests in my hands, clumps of bright blue hair windblown and hacked, eyes wild with some ancient, silent fury. It’s like she’s still on my father’s side. Like after all these years, she’s planning to tell him about this.
I toss her head on the floor. Good luck with that, Blue Hair. He left you, too, remember?
“Ready to make those cupcakes?” I ask, standing and holding out a hand for my brother. Bug nods and laces his fingers through mine, stomping extra hard on the fallen angel as we head to the kitchen.
The heat’s been back on for hours, but by bedtime, the wind is crazy, railing against the walls with all the power of the lake behind it. With Josh’s mix on my iPod and earbuds jammed into my ears, I snuggle into the womb of my blankets, but I can’t stop shivering, every icy lash echoing through the music and into my bones.
Whoooosh.
Back in the house on Sibley Court, I used to wait for that familiar roar off the lake. Welcome it, even—the safe harbor of my bed made warmer by the furious beat of winter’s hooves against the roof. But here on Blake Street, the wind leaks through the walls, Blue Hair’s cardboard wings skittering across my dresser with every gust.
I yank out the earbuds and fold the pillow around my head, blotting out the world. A million miles away, the train whistle blows again, straight through the glass of my windows, straight through every fake feather in my pillow, straight into my head.
Whooo. Whooo.
“Hudson?” Bug’s there in the doorway, all black and fuzzy lines, his silhouette lit up like a church statue by the dim yellow light of the hall.
I unfold the pillow and sit up. “What happened?”
“I heard a noise.”
“Maybe it was Santa.”
“Hudson,” he says. “Um … well, Mr. Napkins wants to know if you can stay in our room tonight. I think he’s a little down. Seasonal affective disorder, maybe.”
“Of course, sweet pea.” I swallow the lump in my throat and slip out from beneath the blankets, following him toward the hall. When I pass my dresser, I run my hand over the top and sweep the broken angel wings into the trash.
“Mr. Napkins says he loves you,” Bug whispers when I climb into his bed.
“Tell Mr. Napkins I love him, too.”
Bug pulls my arm across his chest and scoots closer, and I bury my face against his soft blond hair, both of us finally drifting off to sleep.
I didn’t hear Mom come home last night, but when I hit the kitchen in the morning on a critical caffeine run, there she is, kneeling in her yellow bathrobe, the dusty bottoms of her slippers sticking out as she tucks two presents under the tree. In the light of the window, she looks young and untroubled, hair falling gently around her shoulders as she hums “The Little Drummer Boy.” When she sees me, the smile takes up her whole face, and she’s beautiful. It’s like the last few years haven’t happened yet—like I’m stuck in a dream with my own Ghost of Christmas Past, one last chance to see her and remember how things looked before everything changed.
She waves me over and pulls me into a hug, gray-blond hair clean and soft on my cheek. “Look in the tree outside. Do you see it?”
I follow the line of her finger out the window, across the tiny backyard. The snow is thick and unbroken, dazzling white, and from the branches of a sycamore, a red cardinal watches us, silent and majestic.
“Merry Christmas, sweetheart.” Mom wraps me in another hug, longer and tighter this time. For a moment I forget everything but what’s here, right now. The smell of her just-washed grapefruit hair. The red bird, keeping watch as the snow falls. The quiet of Christmas morning, our lives clean and crisp in the new dawn.
From the kitchen counter, Mom’s purse warbles suddenly, shattering the fragile peace. She practically trips over me to get to her purse, dumps the whole thing on the counter, locates her cell under a pile of makeup and receipts and loose change, and answers breathlessly as if she’d been waiting on that call her entire life.
While Mom chatters on, I sit beside the Charlie Brown tree and sip my coffee, staring out the window until my eyes water from the bright white intensity.
The cardinal is gone.
“Good news!” Mom clicks her phone shut and refills her coffee, joining me again on the living room floor. “That was Nat. Turns out her sister-in-law works for the Watonka Chamber of Commerce now. You know how they do that big New Year’s to-do for local business owners?”
I nod, still watching the snow fall.
“Nat scored me an invitation! Isn’t that great?”
“Totally.” I smile. “Especially if you like eating food on toothpicks and standing around with a bunch of old people in black clothes.”
Mom laughs and swats me with the tie from her bathrobe. “You don’t go for the food, hon. It’s a good opportunity to chat up the business, especially if they get news coverage. Channel Seven was there last year.”
I tug on an old Snoopy ornament dangling from one of the tree’s lower branches. Poor dog’s missing an ear. “Sounds fancy.”
“It is. Ooh, can I borrow that black dress? The one with the spaghetti straps?”
“The dress is no problem. But Bug might be.” I head to the kitchen for a coffee refill. “I already have plans for New Year’s.”
Mom follows me. “I thought Dani was going to Toronto.”
“For your information, I have a life outside Dani.”
Mom raises an eyebrow.
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“I have a date. With a boy.”
“What boy?”
“A guy from my school. He asked me to dinner and a party.”
Mom sips her coffee, eyes darkening. “Hudson, we can’t find a sitter on such short notice. Not without paying a fortune.”
“What about Mrs. Ferris?”
“She’s got her grandson this week, and I don’t want to impose on her any more than we already do.”
“But you never go out on New Year’s, Ma.”
“This is important. Not just for me, but for the diner. For all of us.”
I slump into a kitchen chair. “That’s your excuse for everything.”
She sets her mug on the counter and pours herself a warm-up, draining the pot. “Who is he? That Josh boy from the diner? You didn’t even introduce him.”
My cheeks burn, but I don’t feel like explaining about Will and Josh and Abby, so I just nod. “I’ll introduce you next time. But we need to figure out what to do with Bug, because—”
“What to do with me?” Bug shuffles into the kitchen in his camouflage footie pajamas, his morning face all scrunched up and disoriented. His hair is completely flat on one side, totally spazzing out on the other, and his forehead is creased with diagonal sheet marks. Equally disheveled, Mr. Napkins rolls alongside him, fur dotted with hay, his plastic hamster ball bumping into the kitchen table at least three times before he disappears under a chair. “What to do with me for what?”
“What to do with you … for breakfast!” I grab Bug into a spinning hug, pretending to bite his neck. “Bug omelet special, today only! Nom nom nom!”
Mom joins in on the munching, and Bug squeals and giggles and finally squirms out of my arms.
He ducks behind the kitchen curtain and peeks out the window, the light illuminating his shape under the fabric.
“Holy tortellini, you guys,” he whispers. “I just remembered something important.”
“What’s that, buddy?” I ask.
“It’s Christmas!” He bursts out from behind the curtain and holds out his arms for a group hug, and Mom and I move in for the crush. Mom looks at me over the top of Bug’s fuzzy head and smiles, her eyes shiny with fresh tears. Behind his back, I lace my fingers through hers and squeeze.