Love and Other Words

I’d never spent Christmas away from home before, but early December that first year at the cabin, Dad said we were going to have an adventure. To some parents, this might have meant a trip to Paris or a cruise to somewhere exotic. To my dad, it meant an old-fashioned holiday in our new house, lighting the Danish kalenderlys—a Christmas candle—and enjoying roast duck, cabbage, beetroot, and potatoes for Christmas dinner.

We arrived around dinnertime on the twentieth, our car bursting with packages and newly purchased decorations, followed closely by a man from town with a gold tooth, a wooden leg, and a trailer carrying our freshly cut Christmas tree.

I watched as they wrestled with the mammoth tree, wondering briefly if it would even fit through our front door. It was cold outside, and I shuffled my feet on the ground to keep warm. Without thinking, I looked over my shoulder at the Petropoulos house.

The windows glowed, some of them foggy with condensation. A steady stream of smoke rose from a crooked chimney, curling like ribbon before disappearing into blackness.

We’d been to the cabin three times since October, and during each visit Elliot had come to the door, knocked, and Dad let him upstairs. We would lie on the floor of my closet—slowly being converted into a tiny library—and read for hours.

But I’d yet to visit his house. I tried to guess which room was his, to imagine what he might be doing. I wondered what Christmas was like for them, in a house with a dad and a mom, four kids, and a dog who looked more horse than canine. I bet it smelled like cookies and freshly cut pine. I decided it was probably hard to find someplace quiet to read.

We had been there barely an hour when the old chiming doorbell rang. I opened it to find Elliot and Miss Dina, holding a paper plate laden with something heavy and covered in foil.

“We brought you cookies,” Elliot said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His mouth was newly crammed with braces. His face was covered by a metallic network of headgear.

I stared wide-eyed at him, and he glowered at me, cheeks growing pink. “Focus on the cookies, Macy.”

“Do we have guests, min lille blomst?” Dad asked from the kitchen. In his voice I heard the mild disapproval; the unspoken Can’t the boy wait until tomorrow?

“I’m not staying, Duncan,” Miss Dina called. “Just walked these cookies over, but you send Elliot home whenever you two are ready to eat, okay?”

“Dinner is almost ready,” Dad said in reply, his calm voice hiding any outward reaction to anyone who didn’t know him as well as I did.

I walked to the kitchen and slid the plate of cookies beside him on the island. A peace offering.

“We’re going to read,” I told him. “Okay?”

Dad looked at me, and then down at the cookies, and relented. “Thirty minutes.”

Elliot came willingly, following me past the hulking tree and up the stairs.

Christmas music filtered up the open landing from the kitchen, but it vanished as we stepped into the closet. In the time since we’d bought the house, Dad had lined the walls with shelves and added a beanbag chair in the corner, facing the small futon couch against the front wall. Pillows from home were scattered around, and it was starting to feel cozy, like the inside of a genie’s bottle.

I closed the door behind us.

“So what’s with the new hardware?” I asked, motioning to his face. He shrugged but said nothing. “Do you have to wear the mask all the time?”

“It’s headgear, Macy. Usually only when I sleep, but I decided I want these braces off sooner.”

“Why?”

He stared back blankly at me, and, yeah, I got it.

“Are they annoying?” I asked.

His face twisted into a sardonic grin. “Do they look comfortable?”

“No. They look painful and nerdy.”

“You’re painful and nerdy,” he teased.

I flopped down onto the beanbag chair with a book and watched him peruse the shelves.

“You’ve got all of the Anne of Green Gables books,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve never read them.” He pulled one from the lineup and curled onto the futon. “Favorite word?”

Already this ritual seemed to roll out of him and into the room. It didn’t even catch me off guard this time. Looking down at my book, I thought for a second before offering, “Hushed. You?”

“Persimmon.”

Without further conversation, we began to read.

“Is it hard?” Elliot asked suddenly, and I looked up to meet his eyes: amber and deep and anxious. He cleared his throat awkwardly, clarifying, “Holidays without your mom?”

I was so startled by the question that I quickly blinked away. Inside, I begged him not to ask more. Even three years after her death, my mom’s face swam continuously in my thoughts: dancing gray eyes, thick black hair, deep brown skin, her lopsided smile waking me up every morning until that first one she missed. Every time I looked in the mirror I saw her reflected back at me. So yeah, hard didn’t cover it. Hard was like describing a mountain as a lump, like describing the ocean as a puddle.

And neither of those things could contain my feelings about Christmas without her.

He watched me in the careful way he had. “If my mom died, holidays would be rough.”

I felt my stomach clench, my throat burn, asking, “Why?” even though I didn’t need to.

“Because she makes a big deal out of them. Isn’t that what moms do?”

I swallowed back a sob and nodded tightly.

“What would your mom do?”

“You can’t just ask stuff like that.” I flipped onto my back and stared up at the ceiling.

His apology came out in an immediate burst: “I’m sorry!”

Now I felt like the jerk. “Besides, you know I’m okay.” Even just saying it backed up the emotional eighteen-wheeler. I felt the tears retreat down my throat. “It’s been almost four years. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“But we can.”

I swallowed again and then stared at the wall, hard. “She started Christmas the same every year. She made blueberry muffins and fresh orange juice.” The words came out in a woodpecker staccato. “We would eat in front of the fireplace, opening stockings while she and Dad told me stories from their childhood until eventually we started making up crazy stories together. We would all start cooking the duck, and then open gifts. And after dinner, we would curl up in front of the fireplace and read.”

His voice was barely audible. “Sounds perfect.”

“It was,” I agreed, more softly now, lost in the memory. “Mom loved books, too. Every gift was a book, or a journal, or cool pens, or paper. And she read everything. Like, every book I saw on the tables at the bookstore, she had already read.”

“It sounds like I would really like your mom.”

“Everyone loved her,” I told him. “She didn’t have much family—her parents died when she was young, too—but I swear everyone she met claimed her as their own.”

And they all floundered like fish out of water now without her, unsure what to do for us, unsure how to navigate Dad’s quiet reserve.

“Did she work?” Elliot asked.

“She was a buyer for Books Inc.”

“Wow. Really?” He sounded impressed that she was part of such a large Bay Area retailer, but inside I knew she’d grown tired of it. She always wanted her own store. It was only when she started getting sick that she and Dad were in a position to afford it. “Is that why your dad is building this closet for you?”

I shook my head, but the idea hadn’t even occurred to me until he said it. “I don’t think so. Maybe.”

“Maybe he wanted a place you could feel close to her.”

I was still shaking my head. Dad knew I couldn’t possibly think of Mom more. And he wouldn’t try to help me think of her less, either. It wouldn’t help. Just like holding your breath doesn’t change your body’s need for oxygen.

And as if I’d said that aloud, he asked, “But do you think of her more when you’re in here?”

Of course, I thought, but I ignored him, fidgeting instead with the edge of the quilt hanging over the side of the beanbag. I think of her everywhere. She is everywhere, in every moment, and also she’s in no one moment. She misses every single one of my moments and I’m not sure who that is harder for: me surviving here without her, or her without me, existing wherever she is.

“Macy?”

“What.”

“Do you think of her in here? Is that why you love this room?”

“I love the room because I love reading.”

And because when I find that book that makes me lose myself for just one hour, maybe more, I forget.

And because my dad thinks of Mom every time he buys me a book.

And because you’re here and I feel about a thousand times less lonely with you.

“But—”

“Please stop.” I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling my palms sweat, heart race, stomach curl into a knot around itself and all the feelings that sometimes felt too big for my body.

“Do you ever cry about her?”

“Are you kidding?” I gasped, and his eyes widened but he didn’t back down.

“It’s just that it’s Christmas,” he said quietly. “And when my mom was baking cookies earlier, I realized how familiar it was. It must be weird for you, that’s all.”

“Yeah.”

He leaned in, trying to get me to look at him. “I just want you to know you can talk to me.”

“I don’t need to talk about it.”

He sat up, watching me for a few more breaths of silence, and then returned to his book.