Part I; Chapter 3
Winter 2024
The old wood ladder creaked as I climbed up it, my hooded sweatshirt doing little to fight off the biting cold of early December. Once at the top, I slung the strand of lights over the top rung while I pulled a hammer from the tool belt slung around my waist. With numb fingers, I brought the hammer down onto the head of a nail, creating a quarter-inch long space to hang the lights just underneath the gutters.
Christmas was just two weeks away, and though we normally went out to hunt for our tree the day after Thanksgiving, Dad climbing up on a ladder to hang Mom’s favorite blue icicle lights while the rest of us put the ornaments on our fresh fir, the house looked as it did any day of the year. Dad, who would make silent appearances from his room roughly once a week, hadn’t been out since our house had been voted to host Thanksgiving. When Abe asked when Dad was going to put the decorations up, the sad look in his eyes, and the flicker of disappointment I caught across Junia’s, made me realize I would have to do it.
Standing on the rickety ladder in freezing temperatures made me regret my strong morals.
Over the course of the next hour and a half, I managed to line and successfully light the front porch with icicles. We couldn’t compete with Mr. Krazinski’s light show this year, but seeing the single strand of lights was still comforting. With my chest puffed in pride, I put the ladder and tools away in the garage and set about putting up the plastic tree I had bought at the department store after school.
“What the hell is that?” Junia’s demanding voice startled me, and I dropped the metal-and-plastic branch I held in my hand.
The heavy metal anchor landed on my foot, and I yelped in pain, turning to glare at her. “It’s a Christmas tree, Junie; what does it look like?”
“It looks fake. We always get a real tree,” she crossed her arms over her chest, her lips set in an angry line.
“Well sor-ry for trying,” I spat. “This is the best I could do. Deal with it.”
“Whatever, Shep,” she turned on her heel and walked out of the living room; a few moments later, I heard her clamor up the stairs and slam her bedroom door.
All I could do was go back to putting together the tree. Finally, I managed to get all the pieces in place, and after a bit of fluffing, stepped back to admire my work. There were spots that looked a little lopsided, but for the most part I thought the tree looked pretty good. I called Abe into the room to show him, and he high-fived me, excitedly. “You want to help me put the ornaments on?” I asked him.
“Sure!” He rushed to our ornament box, but stopped before opening it, as if he’d just remembered something. “What about Dad?”
His eyes looked sad, and though I wanted to tell him it wasn’t a good idea, my lips urged him to go ask instead. We walked up the stairs together, and I let Abe knock on the door and go in first. I followed behind and watched as he made his way up to the bed. Dad was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling; he barely moved when we walked in, only turning his eyes to watch Abe approach.
“Hi, Dad,” Abe said quietly. “Um, Shep and I were just about to put the ornaments on the Christmas tree, and I wanted to know if you would come help. Please?” His voice squeaked out the request, his face braced for a denial.
For a long moment, there was no response at all. Then, Dad just turned over toward the opposite wall, his back to us. Abe’s shoulders slumped forward and he turned to walk out of the room. “Hey; why don’t you go get started, and I’ll talk to Dad. Make sure you get his robot out for him, OK?” Abe nodded, though he still looked defeated, and went back downstairs, while I took a deep breath and walked to the bed.
Dad still didn’t respond as I sat down next to him and started talking to his back, but I had hoped he was listening. “Look. I know that you’re going through whatever it is you’re going through, and that’s fine. But you have three kids who still need you,” I began. “Could you just go get washed up and come put the decorations on the tree with us? You can come right back in here and waste away until Christmas. But please just do this one thing?”
I gave him the opportunity to respond, waiting a good five minutes before I pushed myself up off the bed and walked to the door, anger and resentment building inside my chest. I turned back to him before closing the door, and said one final thing. “What would Mom say if she saw you like this?”
It took less than a minute from the time I closed the door until I heard the shower turn on in Dad’s bathroom. Satisfied with myself, I walked back downstairs to help Abe. I found him bent over the ornament box, sifting carefully through to locate his ornaments. When he walked into the living room fifteen minutes later, Dad looked like himself again.
Abe ran up to him and gave him a tentative hug; Dad patted his back awkwardly, then managed to extricate himself and walk toward the tree. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s our Christmas tree, Dad! Isn’t it awesome? Shep bought it. It’s plastic! That means it will never die, so we can keep it up all year long!”
While Abe exuberantly listed the benefits of having a plastic Christmas tree (including how it will help reduce deforestation), I continued his previous task of separating our ornaments. My eyes kept flicking to watch Dad pace around the Christmas tree, a disapproving frown on his face. “The lights are part of the tree,” he commented, flicking one of the bulbs with his finger.
“Yeah;” I looked up from Junia’s ballet slipper ornament. “I wasn’t sure you’d be up to putting the lights on, and I always mess them up. I figured pre-lit would be easier.”
“We have never had a fake tree. Your mother will ha—“ Abe and I both froze as Dad caught himself, unsure of what to do or say; if there was anything we could do or say. Dad shook his head, his frown deepening. “I guess it doesn’t matter,” he mumbled finally, the frown relaxing a bit. Instead of a look of anger, his face took on the look of a man who had given up.
It aged him by at least ten years.
“You can go back to bed, if you want; it’s OK,” Abe said from Dad’s side, the forlorn expression on his face contradicting his words.
A forced smile came to Dad’s lips; it was contorted and ugly, but it was the first time I had seen anything other than a grimace in months. “It’s OK. I’ll stay down here.” The words sounded painful even to me as he spoke them, but somehow I began to feel cautiously hopeful for his return.
While Dad began hanging some of his favorite ornaments on the tree with Abe, I took the stairs two at a time to get to Junia’s room. I knocked hard on her door, hardly able to wait the five seconds it took her to respond that I could come in. “Junie!” I exclaimed. “Dad’s downstairs helping with the tree. C’mon,”
My excited tone was met with Junia’s steely glare. “Fuck Dad,” she spat.
“Hey!” In my shock, I was rendered mostly speechless. I could only stand there, blinking at her for several seconds, before my brain could process anything else. “Junia Rosa Ruth!” I scolded.
“Oh, shut up, Shepherd,” she rolled her eyes. “You’re not in charge of me, and I don’t need you to take care of me. I’m almost fourteen, I can take care of myself now.” She pulled her shoulders back, raising her nose in the air.
“You know what? If you don’t want to come downstairs, fine. But this is the first time Dad’s been out of his room, doing something for us since Mom died. This is important, and you should be a part of it.”
My sister stood in her room, her arms crossed over her chest for a long, silent moment, before throwing her hands in the air in defeat. “Fine, Shepherd! But I’m not happy about it!” she announced, stomping down the stairs.
I followed eagerly, praying we were on our way back to some form of normalcy.