Three
Kristmas
December 2018
I hate my birthday.
Which basically amounts to hating Christmas, as far as my Nan is concerned.
How in the whole, wide world did a Scrooge like you get stuck with a name like Kristmas? She says it to me every time she catches me rolling my eyes when she asks me to hang the mistletoe or when she nags me into hanging her Christmas lights.
Want to know how?
Try spending it alone.
That’s not really fair. I’m not alone. I have Nan. She’s with me. I hang her lights and mistletoe and let her browbeat me into drinking eggnog with her and watching It’s a Wonderful life but the reality of the situation is this: my family has pretty much abandoned me.
Mom and Mark got married the week before Christmas in a quickie courthouse ceremony while Mad and I were at school. Now that I’m grown and out of the house, and they are currently without grandchildren, they don’t feel like it’s necessary to stick around for the holidays. They travel. Last year it was Dubai. This year it’s Italy.
Mark and I want to travel while we can, Krissy. When you and Mad start giving us grandchildren, we’ll start staying home for the holidays.
The implication is clear.
I won’t get my family back until I start making one of my own.
And not with Mad. That’s not what she meant.
I haven’t heard from Mad in years.
None of us have.
Not since he joined the Marines.
Not true.
You’ve heard from Mad plenty.
He just hasn’t heard from you.
Pushing the thought aside, I snag the mail from the box before crossing the yard between Mom and Mark’s and where I live with Nan, careful to dodge Mom’s slumbering rose bushes. Even though they’re technically not hers anymore, she still takes care of them because as Nan so eloquently put it when she moved in to our old house a few years ago, who has time for that shit?
Not Nan. Between her book clubs and bingo nights, my grandmother’s dance card is pretty much full. When she called this morning and said get your ass over here and take me Christmas tree shopping, I was surprised. I grumbled about it, because I’m supposed to but to tell the truth I’m sort of looking forward to it, if only for the potential for human interaction. I haven’t had much since I came home from college a few months ago. Not to mention the fact that being alone in the house reminds me of Mad.
Shoving Mad firmly from my mind, yet again, I knock on my Nan’s front door and count to five before entering. The last time I did my usual knock and barge routine I caught sight of Mr. Lewinsky’s bare-white ass disappearing over the back of the couch and found Nan sprawled out on the couch, covered with one of her hand-crocheted afghans. Trust me, catching your grandmother test-driving the mailman’s Viagra is not an experience you want to repeat.
When I don’t hear the scurry of feet or the thump of Mr. Lewinsky landing face-first behind the sofa, I cautiously open the door. “Nan…” I call out, while shuffling through the mail. “We better get a move on if we want to get a good...”
There it is.
A letter.
Not a letter. The letter.
Addressed to me in Mad’s careless scrawl.
Kristmas E. Cavanagh
1221 E. Junebug Ln.
Lindburg, Connecticut 06759
I get one every month around this time.
Every month since the first one that arrived on my birthday, exactly ten years ago.
They follow me wherever I go. The first one came here over Christmas break. The month after that, one showed up in my mail slot in my college dorm. When I moved off campus with my boyfriend (much to the disappointment of my mom) halfway through fall semester of my junior year, I found one in our mailbox. It started a fight. Who’s Maddox McAllister? If he’s no one why won’t you open it? Why can’t I read it? Back to campus housing when that disaster of a relationship inevitably went to shit. The boarding school I taught at in New Hampshire for a few years after graduation.
And now home again.
Every month, year after year, like clockwork.
Like always, I feel the urge to open it. To read what he wrote to me. To see how he signed it. If he’s angry at me because I won’t write back. Hurt because I’ve sent every single letter he’s written back to him with the same carefully written message penned across the back of the envelope.
RETURN TO SENDER
I have no idea how he knows where to find me. How he gets my address. Knows when I move. I suppose I could ask him if I wrote him back.
“Whatcha got there?”
I close my hand around the letter, crumpling it in my fist as I look up. Nan is standing a few feet away, shrugging into her coat, an anatomically snowman beanie already perched on her head. How do you make a snowman anatomically correct, you ask?
Move the carrot a few inches south.
“Are you really going to wear that thing in public?” I say, scowling at her.
“Someone needs to wear it,” she says with a huff as she tugs on her gloves. “I spent a lot of time knitting it for someone’s birthday.”
Me. She’s talking about me.
I have an arsenal of vulgar, hand-knitted accessories, all of which I am required by grandmother law to wear at least once before I’m allowed to hide it in my closet.
“I teach second grade, Nan,” I remind her as gently as I can. “I can’t just wear it around town. One of my students might see—”
“Then it’s a good thing we’re going to the tree lot in Tarkington,” she says giving me a decisive chin jerk. “All the good trees are gone in town, and Tandy Alderman said that—”
“Fine.” I make a gimme gesture with my empty hand as I jam the other, and the letter it’s wrapped around, into the pocket of my coat. “I’ll wear it.” The only thing worse than wearing your grandmother’s sexually explicit birthday gifts in public is standing next to her in line at the post office while she wears them.
Nan gives me a suspicious once-over. “You mean like yesterday when you took me grocery shopping and forgot it in the car?” She hangs finger quotes around forgot. “It’s like you don’t appreciate the hard work I—”
“No,” I butt in, even though that’s exactly what I meant. “I’ll really wear it this time. Promise,” I add the last when she just stands there and stares at me like I can’t be trusted. Finally she pulls it off her head and holds out to me with a grin.
“Great,” she says, beaming like she just won the black-out card at bingo while she watches me yank it on. As soon as it’s secure, she pulls a second hand-knitted beanie out of her coat pocket, flashing me the bright orange yarn she used for the offending carrot. “We can be Christmas twins!”