The Beginning Of After Part 28

Two days later, Meg and I had just gotten home from school when Mr. Mita knocked on our door, holding a four-foot-tall Christmas tree in a pot.

"I remember your mother always got these live ones," he said, and we all glanced out the window toward the edge of the front lawn, rimmed with Christmas Trees Past in various stages of survival.

Christmas was my mother's holiday. Although she was half-Jewish, it was what they'd celebrated in her family, and she just loved it. Christmas music, all the TV specials, even eggnog. Toby and I got eight utilitarian gifts for Hanukkah-socks, sweaters, new parkas-and the good stuff on December 25. My dad was okay with that, and if Nana wasn't, she never let on.

When it came to the tree, Mom couldn't stand the thought of one being grown just so it could be cut down and die slowly with pretty gifts beneath it, then put out on trash day. We planted our trees on New Year's Day, and although I always thought it was ridiculous trying to dig a hole in the frozen ground every January 1, now I was so grateful we had.

"That's very sweet, thank you," said Nana, but I couldn't tell if she meant it. Mr. Mita put the tree down in the living room and after he left, with a plate of Nana's cookies in his hands, Meg and I went into the garage to look for our Christmas decorations.

"Do you have a tree at your house yet?" I asked.

"Mom put up the fake one weeks ago. Which is a good thing, because now n.o.body even cares."

"What did she say when she called this morning?"

"The usual. She wants me to come home. She swears my Dad's leaving tonight, so we'll see."

I scanned the shelves of the garage until I saw the two big red plastic bins labeled XMAS and pointed. Meg grabbed the stepladder and moved toward them.

"Is she mad at you for not being there for . . . you know . . . her?" I asked.

Meg paused, then said simply, "Yes." In a series of quick motions, she hopped up on the ladder, grabbed each XMAS box, and handed them down to me.

Ironically, the first thing we saw when we opened the first bin was our electric menorah. When Toby was little he broke the nice ceramic one my parents had received as a wedding gift, and Mom went out and found the plug-in kind at half price during a post-holiday sale. During Hanukkah she kept it on the kitchen counter between the spice rack and the paper towels, and she and Nana had a fight about it every single year.

I showed the menorah to Nana, who actually smiled a bit when she lifted it up, then placed it on a table by the Christmas tree.

While Nana and Meg unpacked the rest of the bins, I took a break to check my email, which was something I did compulsively a little too often since David and I had started writing again.

My in-box contained one new item: a picture message sent from a cell phone. I knew you weren't supposed to open stuff like that if you didn't know the source, but I couldn't resist.

First, the words i thought this might remind you of something.

Then, a photo of a van parked alongside a road somewhere. It was an older model, with a small round bubble window near the back, painted with a purple and pink desert scene complete with howling coyote and cactus.

I laughed out loud, and remembered.

One painfully hot summer day years ago, Toby and I were sitting in a small patch of shade in our front yard, trying to come up with something to do. None of the other neighborhood kids were around because of the heat, but we'd spent the morning squabbling in the house and Mom had ordered us outside for a while. We were bored and grumpy and pretty much ready to kill each other when David suddenly appeared in our driveway.

"Oh cool, you're here," he'd said. "My uncle is visiting and he's going to put on a magic show, but I can't find anyone. You guys wanna come down and watch?"

Minutes later the three of us were sitting on the back steps of the Kaufmans' house, the concrete blissfully cool against our legs, watching David's uncle James do card tricks. He was David's father's brother, and everyone knew he was kind of a wandering soul. He'd dropped out of a PhD program and was taking magic lessons. But the thing we knew best was that he had this awesome vintage van with a bubble window, a mural of planets and stars airbrushed on the sides, which was then parked in the Kaufmans' driveway. It served as a perfect backdrop for his act.

Eventually Uncle James went back to school, got married, and moved to Virginia, but I always thought of him with that van and s.p.a.ce scene behind him. Maybe David did too.

The memory of Uncle James's voice cutting through the humidity and the emptiness of our neighborhood that day, of giggling at his jokes and gaping at his "magic," of the perfectly sweet lemonade Mrs. Kaufman served to us afterward, came back to me so sharply I had to put my hand over my heart.

"What's that?" Meg asked from the doorway, startling me. She was peering over my shoulder to the photo of the van on the computer screen.

I could have made up a lie right there, and I could have made it sound convincing. Instead, I just opened my mouth and told her, easily, calmly, the truth. About David, about the kiss in the woods, about his emails, about Thanksgiving morning, and now, about the picture of the van.

Meg didn't get mad that I'd kept these things from her, or even seem confused. She just took it all in, shook her head slowly, and said, "Whoa."

An hour later, Meg I were stringing lights around the dwarf tree when we got a call from her mom.

"Okay," said Meg, expressionless, into the phone. "Good." She hung up and looked at me. "Dad's at the Holiday Inn, so . . . I guess I should go back. She sounds lonely."

"I'll walk you home," I said.

We were silent as we made our way down the hill in the near dark, Meg with her backpack and me carrying her school bag. It was close enough to Christmas now that everyone on our street had put their decorations up, and the leftover snow sat so delicately, it looked painted onto the doorsteps and windowsills.

We live in a nice place, I thought as we walked. You'd never know by looking at it that behind any one of these doors there was depression and drinking and parents who don't love each other anymore. And surely there were other houses that held a roof over death and grief and tragedy. It was just that mine got all the headlines.

When we got within sight of the Dill house, Meg asked, "Do you think we'll be okay?"

I thought about it, and how David might answer that question, and then said, "We will if we choose to be."

Mrs. Dill opened the back door for us and wrapped Meg in a big hug. They didn't move for a full minute.

The next day was the last day of school before Christmas break. For the past week, all anybody had cared about was who had gotten in where on their early college application. Everyone else who applied had received their decisions, so they knew I had to have mine. But I wasn't talking, and it was hilarious to watch them be too scared to come right out and ask me. In the end, it was Mr. Churchwell who spoiled the fun.

He pulled me aside as I was walking past the main office at the end of lunch period. "Did you hear from Yale yet?" he asked me, trying to sound professional.

I couldn't bring myself to lie to him. "Yeah. I got in," I said casually.

"That's fantastic! I'm so proud of you!"

"I'm still working on my other applications, though."

"You'll have lots of options, I'm sure." And then he patted me on the shoulder, the kind of pat that wanted to be a hug but knew better.

Later, on the way out of seventh period, Joe touched me on the shoulder and I turned around.

"Congrats!" he said. "I heard about Yale!"

News traveled fast.

"Thanks!" I said, trying to match his enthusiasm.

Joe looked at me nervously, then said, "Listen, I'm sure the holidays for you are . . . well, they're not . . ."

"They're going to suck."

"Yes, they're going to suck," he said, smiling in relief, and I couldn't help but smile a little too. "Do you want to get together over break? We could catch a movie. Or go into the city and see some of the decorations."

I pictured myself standing with Joe underneath the big tree at Rockefeller Center, eating roasted chestnuts from a street vendor, holding hands. Why did that kind of moment have to exist only in movies, or lucky people's lives? It couldn't be that hard to get.

"I'd like that," I said. "Just call me. I'll be around."

"Good. So . . ."

"Merry Christmas, Joe."

"You too."

Then I watched him walk down the hall in that bouncy way that was both awkward and graceful, thinking about how he was more than just a little bit mine now.

Christmas morning, Nana woke me up early and marched me to the tree so I could open what seemed like five hundred gifts. Clothes, jewelry, gift cards, socks, underwear, skin lotion, magazines. Nana had even gone to Victoria's Secret and bought me three satiny bras. It was more than I ever would have gotten from my parents, and nicer stuff, too. I could picture Nana at the mall with a list, asking herself over and over again, "What would Deborah do? And how can I do it better?"

Each box I opened made me more anxious for Christmas to be over with. Nana seemed to feel the same way, and it occurred to me that this was possibly the first Christmas she'd ever celebrated.

The only thing I was looking forward to was Nana opening her gift from me. Meg and I had gone to the Bead-iful Boutique, where we could make our own jewelry, and I'd sat for three hours carefully stringing a necklace of pearls and onyx. I tried to fake Nana out by putting it in a big, sweater-sized box. She frowned, puzzled, as she opened it and sifted through the tissue paper. And then she found the little box inside and said, "You sneaky girl!" with a sideways smile.

The necklace made her tear up and she asked me to put it on her, and I had to admit it looked pretty nice. So I did one thing right for my grandmother. A tiny superficial thing, but hopefully it counted.

"What can you give your parents and Toby for Christmas?" Suzie had asked me a few weeks earlier.

"Give them?"

"I don't mean a traditional present. More like, some way to honor them. Or honor the gifts they've pa.s.sed on to you, as a person."

I'd thought long and hard. It was the toughest shopping list anyone could hand me, but I wanted to do this.

For Toby, I emailed Emily Heinz to tell her I wanted to come back to help her run the Tutoring Club, and asked her to look for a student to match me up with.

For Dad, I bought an intermediate crossword book and started on the first one, with the goal of eventually completing every puzzle without looking at the answers.

For Mom, I began work on my first-ever portrait of someone I didn't mind mangling in the process: myself. So far it was just a sketch of the shape of my face and my hair, done while leaning over a mirror on my bedroom floor. Don't erase too much as you go, Mom said in my head. Let your hand channel your impressions of what you see.

Joy to the world, a little.

We had several invitations from neighbors who didn't want us to be alone on Christmas, and Nana accepted them all. Meg had gone with her mom and sister to her aunt's in Philadelphia, so I couldn't even drag her along for backup.

"We need to keep busy today," Nana said, straightening a stickpin in the shape of a rhinestone star on her red cashmere sweater. She had already been busy. She'd made about four thousand cookies and brownies in the last week, then divided them up onto paper plates covered in red or green plastic wrap and a bow. I helped her load them into a gigantic shopping bag, and we each took a handle as we stepped carefully around patches of ice on the driveway on our way to our first stop, the Mitas' house.

I wasn't looking forward to it, but I wasn't looking forward to anything that day. Sitting on the neighbors' couches with eggnog and a smile didn't seem any better or worse than lying in bed at home or getting my eyes poked out with hot needles. I had planned on checking out, on being there but not being there, but as I walked into the Mitas' living room I found myself making mental notes to share with David.

Later, back at home, I wrote this email to him: Hi David- I had a Blew Christmas. How about you?

Here's what I learned from the three different dinners I just attended in our neighborhood: Mrs. Mita is tiny, sure, but she can eat her weight in shrimp c.o.c.ktail. She put it out for her guests, then wouldn't let anyone get near it!

Alex Jeffrey spends most of his time in college completely high.

There's a whole third floor of the Girardis' house that I had no idea existed.

n.o.body's sure if that old guy Mr. Hirsch actually still lives in his house anymore. He hasn't been seen in months.

It's been an educational holiday over here.

Laurel When I woke up the next morning, David had already sent me a reply: ate chicken and waffles for christmas, then saw two movies. it was the best day i've had in a long time.

david p.s. it's "your" neighborhood, not mine anymore.

I read the last line over and over again, as it went from sounding p.i.s.sy and then arrogant to just plain sad. The sad version of it was still glowing on the computer screen when the phone call came from Etta, David's grandmother.

Chapter Thirty-five.

He's awake," said Etta. "Just this morning." Her voice was tight but breathy, and for two seconds I had no idea what she was talking about. She took my silence as an okay to keep talking. "He's been showing signs for several days, but they said not to get our hopes up, so I stayed in Florida. My husband, Jack, has had pneumonia and can't even travel to see our son."

"Mr. Kaufman," I said dumbly. Finally figuring it out.

"Yes, honey! Awake!" Her voice stumbled now. "He's only halfway there, if you know what I mean. But we'll take it."

"Has anyone seen him yet?"

"No, there hasn't been anyone. Laurel, I need your help. I need to reach David. Do you know where he is?"

"Where he is?" I echoed, thinking about David eating chicken and waffles somewhere in the Midwest.

"I thought you might know, since he stayed with you that time. I tried some of his friends, but they haven't heard from him."

Etta started to break down, and I heard her sniffle.

"It's going to be okay," I said. "I can help you."

David- Your dad is awake. Please call your grandmother ASAP.

Laurel I had thought about adding "It's amazing" or "Let me know what happens," but it felt like none of my business anymore. I had been asked to relay a message, so I did that. I had no rights to anything else.

After I sent the email, I stayed near the computer. Maybe he was still online somewhere and would get it right away, then write back. I refreshed my in-box every minute or so, but there was nothing. Finally, Nana came up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders.

"It's a miracle," she said. "Isn't it?"

"Yeah. A Christmas miracle. Too bad he's Jewish."

"I know it's hard, sweetie, but all we can do is wait to hear more."