She approached the salesman, a gangly kid in a KU pullover, much younger and taller than her. “How much for that one?” She pointed to a sickly pine tree about her height.
“On sale for twenty,” he replied.
“If you help me carry it to my parents, they’ll pay.”
“No way.”
Kelsey stared at him for a long moment, inching closer. She mouthed the word Please, and gave him a wide smile.
Bridged by the skinny tree, Kelsey and the boy parted the City Market crowd in a trail of needles. She imagined her and her parents sitting around the lit-up tree in the living room, with syrupy, old-timey Christmas music in the background. She could feel her blood getting warmer.
“This will be the first time our family has a real tree,” Kelsey called back to the boy, searching for the Maxfields’ car.
“Cool,” he said, his breath heaving.
“What’s your name?”
“Kevin.”
“Kevin, this tree is special. It’s kind of a tribute. To my sister.”
Kevin said nothing. He was too busy lifting his end over the hood of a car. She could barely get a word out to her parents, her friends, but people like Kevin didn’t feel the remotest bit of sadness for Michelle to begin with. Unlike her, they could only see Michelle in what she told them: from far away, an outline.
“We used to come here every month. She used to pick up onions and tomatoes from the booth and ask for the price in French, just to practice. No one could understand her. It was embarrassing.”
Kevin still didn’t care. She kept going.
“When we were eight we snuck into a concert they held in that pavilion,” she told Kevin. “It wasn’t even fun. It was just a cello. But we were proud.”
As they crossed the street, Kelsey called back to him, “Once I caught her reading aloud the steamy parts of my mom’s romance novels to her Barbies.”
That one got a laugh. Or at least it sounded like a laugh.
After ten minutes of wandering through the neighborhood, Kevin put his end of the tree down and made a noise that was supposed to be exasperation, but sounded more like a malfunctioning blender. No sign of the Subaru.
Kelsey pulled out her phone.
Her mother picked up.
“Mom?” Kelsey put on a smile.
“Where are you?”
“Fifth and Walnut. So, Mom—”
“We’re coming to get you.”
Silence. Her mother hung up. Kevin blew a bubble with his gum, popping it. As the Subaru rolled up next to them, she took the tree from him, leaning it on her shoulder. Her mother’s window rolled down, revealing a stone face, glancing at the tree.
“No, Kelsey.”
Something between a laugh and a cough escaped Kelsey. “But—”
Her mother jerked her head toward the backseat. “We’re going home.”
Kelsey threw up her hands. “We just got here!”
Her mother sighed. Kelsey noticed she had tried to put on lipstick for the first time in several weeks. She wanted to go back to normal, too. “We didn’t even make it into the market. Your father isn’t feeling well.”
Kelsey looked at her dad through the windshield, and rubbed her cold hands together. “I’m sorry,” she called to him. “Maybe this will cheer you up.”
Her father leaned across the seat toward the window, his voice cracking. “You’re a very sweet girl. But it’s not that easy. Your old dad isn’t quite there, sweetheart.”
Kelsey was sputtering, which she hated to do. “This is a nice thing, a nice thing I’m trying to do for everyone. I would really, really like to put up a Christmas tree. It’s what people do.”
“I’m sorry, Kelsey,” her mother said. But she didn’t look sorry. She wasn’t even looking at her. Kelsey stayed still.
“Please get in the car. We’ll come back and get it later.”
Disappointment cut, sharpened by the rare hope she had just felt a second ago. And the guilt of it all, of lying to Peter and lying to herself, was weighing on her, pushing her. She caught her mother’s eyes.
“Michelle would have wanted a Christmas tree.”
She shouldn’t have said that. Her mother tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Kevin stood quiet, looking back and forth between them, not knowing what to do.
Kelsey’s mom’s voice came out shaky. “Put the damn tree down, Kelsey. I love you, but I don’t have rope to tie a tree to our car, I don’t have a stand to put it in, I don’t have a working vacuum to clean up after it, and I’m tired. I don’t—please put the damn tree down.”
“Just leave it?”
Kevin’s gum popped in the silence. A family with a stroller rolled by, staring.
Her dad’s voice floated out. “We need to go home.”
“I’ll take it back,” Kevin said quietly.
Instead, Kelsey lowered the tree to the brick street and gave it a shove with her foot toward the curb. Kevin picked it up and, with a glance at her, carried it away.
She got into the backseat. No one said anything more, and her father put on the radio. “Part of you pours out of me, In these lines from time to time…” Kelsey heard a woman’s voice sing, but as they got on the highway, her mother turned down the volume so it was barely audible, a whine that got lost in the drone of the wheels on the road.
CHAPTER TEN
Twenty minutes later they were in the driveway, and Kelsey walked inside fast, ahead of her parents, closing the door behind her.
She turned to go upstairs, but a streak of primary colors on the front table stopped her. Yesterday’s mail sat on top of a pile of bills, and on top of that, an envelope with official-looking postage. Then, in careful handwriting, all capitals:
MICHELLE MAXFIELD
1316 VERMONT STREET
LAWRENCE, KS 66044
Peter’s letter. Kelsey grabbed it and took the stairs two at a time. In her room, she paused. This was wrong. But it wasn’t the same kind of wrong she had felt before. It was the wrong she felt seeing the tree grow smaller in Kevin’s arms as he walked away, the wrong that cut Michelle’s happy ghost from her. As soon as she had picked up the letter, the guilt had faded.
Michelle would want to open this, but she can’t, Kelsey thought as she slid her finger under the seal. So I’ll do it for her.
12/14
Dear Michelle,
I’m writing this sitting against a fir tree. We made it from the desert to the Kunar Province a few days ago, all rugged mountains and green valleys and meadows with cattle. We ride in huge trucks on narrow paths up through the peaks and the rock formations. It’s like a slow roller coaster. It’s so pretty I have to try not to get distracted. I’ve never been this high off the ground before. Most of the people in my company have been in these valleys once or twice already. Sam and I go on errands to the village for chewing tobacco and in exchange they show us how to find the best watch spots in the cracks between boulders. They use chewing tobacco to stay awake, and pass the time. Almost every soldier chews while they’re here, whether they chewed before the tour or not. Except for me, of course. I am the youngest. They call me Petey.
Sam is from Iowa. They call him Rooster because of his red hair. He’s short and raises beagles and loves death metal. We joke about how dumb the cows are and how the interpreter Alex (Alex isn’t his actual name, but that’s what he calls himself when he speaks English) has seen more American TV than I have.
Sam says I need to shut up about you already. He’s looking over my shoulder right now and says if I don’t cross out the part about him being short he’ll roundhouse me. Tough luck, Sam.