“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 branch 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.”