The Christmas Note (5 page)

“I know what God is like, Mrs. Schweiger,” I said on that Christmas Day, watching her peel potatoes.

“What is he like?” she asked, throwing the peels into the garbage.

“He’s like you.”

She stopped her work and looked at me. She knelt down and held my face, kissing my forehead: I could feel her wet potato hands on my cheeks. “Believe it or not, God loves you even more than I do, Melissy,” she’d say. She always called me Melissy, and I was surprised at how much I liked that. I loved being loved by Mrs. Schweiger.

Louie and I played with Bruce Linton from upstairs, a kid four years younger than me who always had a snotty nose. Every day in the winter his sleeve was crusty with dried snot. If things didn’t go Bruce’s way, he’d slap or kick Louie and me, but we were both bigger and could pin him down until he stopped acting like a baby. Bruce also ate dinner a lot at the Schweigers’ but not because his parents weren’t around. Many times his parents ate with us, too. Playing with Louie and Bruce and being with the Schweigers was the best three years of my life, and I gushed like Niagara on the day we moved away.

“I’ve prayed for you, Melissy,” Mrs. Schweiger said on that final day. “And I’ll keep praying, okay?” I nodded, not really believing in it too much because I prayed that we wouldn’t ever, ever move away from the Schweigers, but Ramona got a wild hair and loaded us into the station wagon. “Don’t ever stop praying,” Mrs. Schweiger said, her eyes wet and drippy. “Don’t ever stop believing.” Tears streaked my face as we pulled away, my arm flapping in the air. I think what little belief I had ended that day on those two hundred miles to Jacksonville.

To my knowledge, Ramona never really talked to Mrs. Schweiger beyond that occasional cracked apartment door. Ramona made it a point to never know anyone at any of the places we lived; it made running out in the middle of the night so much easier. She cheated landlords out of a lot of money but always waved it off, saying, “It will cost them more to track us down than what we owe them.”

I warm up another plate of chicken and dumplings for lunch and hear someone talking outside the front window. Moving the blinds, I see Gretchen on the phone again. Talking to her boyfriend, no doubt, a man the kids don’t necessarily like but someone she can’t break things off with, not yet, anyway. I sit on the sofa and eat, watching her through the blinds. The conversation is serious. She hasn’t smiled yet but keeps pushing her hair behind her ear and looking at the front door of her home. I finish eating and step to the window, watching. She takes the phone from her ear and crosses toward her door. I open mine and pretend to see her. “Oh. Hi.”

“Hi,” she says, waving at me with the phone.

“Those chicken and dumplings were really good.”

“My mom’s friend made them.”

I step out and look at her. I’m just standing here, and she feels uncomfortable, I can tell. I clear my throat and take a breath. “I don’t know how long it will take to clean out Ramona’s apartment … so if you can’t, it’s no big deal. I thought it might go fast if two.… she had a lot of junk mostly, so it shouldn’t take too long.”

“Sure,” she says, thumping the phone against her thigh. “When?”

“I work until five each day so…” I fade out and look at a passing car.

“Do you want to go today?”

I wasn’t expecting this, to do it so soon. “Could you?”

“I’ll call my mom and see if she can come over to be with the kids.”

I close the door and feel my heart racing. Why was I doing this? Why do I even care what’s in the middle of Ramona’s pile of rubble? Anger at what I just did makes me flush with heat, and I fan my shirt to get cool. I feel so stupid asking for Gretchen’s help. I didn’t need help to walk into Ramona’s apartment and kick at the garbage. I’m embarrassed and want to take it back when a knock on the door behind me makes me jump. Gretchen is on the porch, and I open the door, relieved to tell her I’m calling the whole stupid thing off. “Mom can be here in about an hour.”

“But I was going to—”

“Do you want me to follow you there, or do you want to ride together?”

I never thought things would move this fast, and my heart beats double-time. “I need to go somewhere afterward,” I say, making it up as I talk. “So it’d be best if you followed me.” She looks as relieved as I feel.

“I’ll knock when Mom gets here.”

I close the door and wonder what I need at Ramona’s? What would I find and what would I put it in? A garbage bag? A box? Just an envelope? In the end, I leave the house with a box of garbage bags because I know where most of her stuff will go. Gretchen follows me the three miles to Ramona’s, and my brain hurts trying to figure out what to say to her when we arrive.

The apartment house is a three-story, ugly light-brick building with shabby trees and cracked sidewalks. I can tell that Gretchen is sizing it up when she gets out of her car. This pit is as unkempt as Ramona always was. She follows me to the office door, and I realize for the first time that finding someone here on Sunday will be next to impossible. I ring the buzzer and hold my breath, feeling uncomfortable with this stranger who’s about to schlep through Ramona’s junk. “Maybe no one’s here on Sunday,” Gretchen says. I ring the buzzer again and wait, staring at the cheap wood grain on the door.

A man with a balding head and potbelly walks down the stairs and faces us, smoke from his cigarette filling the small vestibule. He looks at me while squinting in the smoke. “You looking for me?”

“My mother was Ramona” is all I say.

He turns to go back up the stairs. “I wondered if you’d come.”

We follow him, and our shoes squeak on the shoddy linoleum steps. If it wasn’t for tacky Christmas wreaths hung on two apartment doors, you’d have no idea Christmas was just weeks away by visiting this place. The bald man sticks his key in the door and pushes it open, leaving us without another word. I run my hand along the inside wall, looking for the light switch, and a bulb flickers on the ceiling of the entry. The light illuminates the filthy floor, and I smell the pent-up dirt and dust inside the apartment. “I’ll go find other lights,” I say, leading Gretchen inside. My shoes stick to the linoleum as I walk to the window and pull open the curtains. I turn to look at the place and feel something heavy on my chest, making my breath short. Papers, cans, liquor bottles, rotten food, fast-food wrappers, and cereal boxes—garbage is everywhere. I hold my hand under my nose. “I’m sorry I asked you to do this.”

Gretchen’s already rummaging through cabinets in the kitchen. “We just need some trash bags,” she says.

“I brought some,” I say, walking to the door. “I forgot them in the car.”

“I’ll get them,” she says, holding her hand out for my keys. I reach into my coat pocket and pull them out.

Her eyes are big and soft. “This won’t take long.”

I hear her running down the stairs, and I feel nauseated. I crack open a window and a blast of cold air hits me in the face. I stick my head into the small bedroom and look at the mattress and box springs on the floor and wonder if that’s where Ramona died or if it was over there on the sofa or just in front of the sofa on the filthy throw rug? I step through the garbage in the bedroom and peer into the closet—nothing in here but more garbage and a few pants and shirts on the floor. I imagine some people go through their parents’ things with a swelling sense of grief from love and pride and gratefulness, but then there are people like me, who move things aside with their toe. This gulf of loss is different from grief. It’s mostly dread and disappointment and regret.

“I’ll take the kitchen,” Gretchen says, startling me. She hands the box of garbage bags to me. “Should I ask you about what to save or—”

“If there’s anything that can be used again, I’ll take it to the secondhand store. From what I see, there’s nothing here that I’ll want.” She nods and makes her way to the kitchen while I move to the living room.

The garbage feels sticky on my hand, and I use another garbage bag as a glove. I’m disgusted with every piece I throw away. “You lived like a pig, Ramona.” I shove a hamburger wrapper and nearly empty bottle of booze into the bag along with a half-eaten can of Vienna sausages and a stack of magazines. “You never, ever, ever lived like a human being!” I sweep the garbage off the sofa into the bag and kick up the cushions, shaking my head. The couch is full of garbage and dried pieces of food. I throw the garbage away and stare at the stained sofa cushions that are destroyed. In an instant I pick one up and heave it out the window. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Gretchen, frozen at the kitchen sink, watching me. I lunge for the other two cushions and hurl them after the first. They lie on the asphalt below, looking small and ruined.

“Are you okay?”

Gretchen hasn’t moved from the kitchen, but I can’t turn to look at her. I nod and push more garbage into bags. On top of the TV is a picture in a black frame of Ramona and me standing in front of an enormous plastic cow. We saw it in front of a roadside restaurant as we were moving from one apartment to the next. “What a sight!” Ramona said. “Let’s get our picture.” The sun was bright, so I’m squinting up at the camera and Ramona is holding her cigarette aloft, looking as if she’d just taken me to Disney World. Propped up against that photo is a smaller shot of us taken in front of a stunted Christmas tree strung with popcorn next to an RCA television set on a metal stand. I glance around the room trying to spot any other photos or keepsakes, but there are none. The door closes and I turn behind me to see Gretchen putting two empty boxes on the counter.

“I ran down to the Dumpster to see if I could find a box for the plates and pots.”

I didn’t even know she had left. The dishes and pans clank as she fits them into the box, and she steps into the living room. “I threw away all the food. There wasn’t much of anything but it was all open and stale or—”

“Ruined,” I say.

“Everything she had is here in the boxes if you want to—”

I don’t let her finish. “No. I don’t want it.”

We work in silence for the next hour or so. Gretchen hauls bags of trash down to the Dumpster, and a couple of times I hear her talking in the stairwell on her phone. Checking on her kids, I suppose. Three more trips are taken to the Dumpster, and on her return she walks beyond me to the bedroom and I hear her snap open a trash bag. I finish pawing through the garbage in the living room and then stand in the bedroom doorway. Gretchen has taken the sheets off the bed and is pushing the mattress off to see if there’s anything under it. I help her lean it against the wall, and together we prop the box springs on it. The bed’s metal railing looks like a picture frame around the trash that was under the bed. “Unbelievable,” I say, snapping up a bag and pitching cans and bottles into it.

Gretchen works through a stack of magazines and papers on Ramona’s nightstand as I reach for the garbage and clothes inside the closet. At one time, Ramona had nice skirts, dresses, and slacks that fell over her curves and long legs in soft lines. I pick up worn shirts, stretched-out sweaters, and holey pants and realize I can’t give any of them to Goodwill.

“Melissa.” I look up and see Gretchen standing by the nightstand holding a stack of papers in her hands. “This has your name on it.”

She holds out a small envelope that has never been sealed, and I reach for it. I pull out a note-size piece of paper and read it.
Melissa, I know I haven’t been much of a mother to you. You do have a brother and a sister you might like to …
I turn it over looking for more and laugh out loud. “You’re kidding, right! This is it?” I keep laughing and lean against the wall, reading the note again. My eyes fill with hot liquid and I close them, pressing the note to my face. Thoughts and words buzz through my brain, but I can’t pin them down. “All this time I was alone … with just her.” I hold out the note and Gretchen walks over, taking it from me. “She never could give me anything that I needed. Not even now.” A mixture of anger, resentment, and grief piles up in my throat and I want to run. “No, ‘Sorry, Melissa I really blew it.’ Even now she won’t take responsibility for anything. She couldn’t even finish the letter!”

“But she started it.” I look at Gretchen. Her face is solemn and plain but kind. “She could have started this months ago and just couldn’t figure out what else to say and left it here at her bedside hoping for the right words.”

I laugh up at the ceiling. “Ramona never lacked for words, believe me! Apparently, her problem was remembering she had more children! Messy lives don’t usually create good recall.” I shake my head. “She kept them from me. This could have brought some chance of happiness, you know, having a brother and sister? She couldn’t stand the thought of any glimmer of a normal life for me.” The silence in the room is too loud, and I take a step to get away.

“I’ll help you find them.”

I look at her. “I don’t want to know them.”

“Yes, you do.” I open my mouth, but she talks over me. “You do. You would have wanted to know them when you were a child. If then … then why not now?” The thought terrifies and cripples me. What if they’re like me? Or Ramona? “You said she never gave you anything.” She hands the note to me. “She did today.”

It feels like my chest is in flames and I move past her, grabbing a bag of garbage from the bedroom and another from the living room on my way to the Dumpster. The air outside hits my lungs and I feel like screaming, crying, beating something. I don’t know. The bags hit the side of the Dumpster with a thud, and I move to the couch cushions I had thrown out the window.

“How’s it going?”

I look up to see the bald man; a cigarette is barely hanging on to his bottom lip. Smoke swirls into his eyes, making them slits in his face.

“Great,” I say, heaving one of the cushions into the Dumpster. “Ramona’s place is empty and ready for your next squatter. You or your tenants can take whatever furniture you want.” I walk past him and open the door to my car.

“So that’s that?” he yells after me.

“That’s that,” I say, sliding behind the wheel and closing the door. Sixty years of life. Done. Just like that.