Rob nearly topples off the ladder as he jerks around to see Faye coming off the porch, nearly in flight, her mouth emitting a siren of “EEEEE-EEEEE-EEEEEE.” I almost retreat back to the truck but am frozen at her approach. She stops in front of me, and I can’t tell if she is happy or sad or angry. Does she think I am my mother’s ghost coming back to haunt her? She is on a mission, brisk and efficient, folding me in her arms, wrapping me in the complex scent of her perfume and baby powder. I hug her back and am surprised at how strong she is, but then I remember how I’d thought the exact same thing the one time she’d slapped me. The memory makes me smile, from all this distance away. So much has happened since then; I can’t quite put into focus what I was so angry about.
Rob has scrambled down the ladder and is standing just outside of the circle of our hug, and I reach out a hand to him. He lets himself be drawn in. We stand there on the sidewalk as if I am a prodigal son returning from the road, home at last. Faye is sobbing. I don’t know what I’d expected, but this was definitely not it. She hadn’t liked me much at all. I had played out the conversation in my head beforehand, thinking it would be along the lines of me thanking her for being a good friend to my mom and apologizing for not understanding that she was just trying to help. Thanking her for the kindness she showed us. This stop was supposed to be just a pause on the journey to somewhere else. When we finally break the hug, she is talking; a million words are falling out of her mouth, and I am standing behind a sheet of glass unable to understand a single one.
“Come in, come in.” She tugs my hand, and the three of us move up the steps and past the box of fallen lights and into their cozy home. They are in full-on decoration mode, a plastic tree stands naked in a corner, its branches compressed from its year in the box. There is Christmas music coming from the record player, with the slight pop and hiss that comes with vinyl. There are questions, but none of them are asked in the manner I expect.
“Where have you been?” sounds like I had disappeared in a magic trick, never to be seen again, not that I had run away without a forwarding address.
“What have you been doing?” sounds like “You look great.”
“What are you doing here?” sounds just like “I’m so happy to see you!”
We sit in the living room, with the naked tree staring at us, and I begin to feel the need to do something, not just sit. I’ve never been good at being still, and I need to have something between us besides the questions and answers.
When the first rush of questions have passed, and we have a minute of sitting, listening to the popping of the needle on the record, I ask, “Can I help you with the tree?”
She looks at it standing sad and cramped in the corner. “I could use some help with the tree.” We laugh.
“Well, I’m gonna get those lights hung,” Rob says, and he pats my head as he moves toward the door.
I join Faye over at the tree, and we set to fluffing branches. “I miss your mom,” she says, after we’ve been at it for a few minutes.
“I know.” I almost say that I do, too, but hesitate, not sure it is true. “You were a good friend,” I say to her.
She nods, and I see that pucker on her chin, and I know she could cry again any second.
“I’ve always felt bad about how I acted that time.”
She looks at me, and there is something in her eyes that I don’t understand. It’s not sympathy, and it’s not sadness, but maybe some mix of those two. “Honey, you have nothing to feel bad about.” She reaches out and touches my shoulder.
“I was such a brat. I was so rude.”
“Well,” she starts, but doesn’t finish. There is laughter in her voice. She can’t deny it; I was a brat. I respect her for that, she’s a straight shooter. I take the ornament she offers and hang it from a freshly fluffed branch. We work our way around, and I can feel all the questions she wants to ask but doesn’t. She isn’t sure of who I am, so she is nervous and uncertain.
“You know you can ask me anything, and I’ll tell you if I know,” I say, not looking at her and placing another ornament on the tree.
She is silent for a few minutes, letting the dulcet tones of Bing Crosby fill the air between us. Then, “Do you think he killed her?” I hear the apology in her voice, the not wanting to ask, but needing to know.
“Cal?” I ask, and she nods. “No, he didn’t. He was already dead by then.” I think that is all I’m going to say, and then my mouth opens and the next words come out before I even know I am going to say them. “I think she killed him.” I don’t think she did; I know she did, if anything Warren had told me was right.
“No,” she says with a gasp, and I hear the Jerry Springer tone in her voice, the getting hold of a juicy tidbit and wanting to tear into it but hesitant at what might come next.
I nod. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Why?” Her voice is hushed as she hands me another ornament, a plastic reindeer with a faded pink nose.
“I think . . .” I start but stop, feeling this strange desire to just tell her everything. If anybody would understand what my mother had been thinking, it would be her, being some breed of the same crazy person. “I think she was trying to protect me,” I finally say, and I let the weight of that wash down over me. I have not thought about it in those terms really—instead it has always been that she was just crazy and all hopped up on drugs and alcohol. The words hanging in the air are true. I know, the same way I know she was my mother and that once I was her little fish.
“You really think so?” she asks, hushed and awed.
“Did she never say anything about it? To you, I mean. I’ve thought about those last weeks a lot, and she was trying so hard to get clean.” I hang another ornament, as high up the tree as I can, and when I come down off my toes, I catch her eyes, wide and brimming, through the branches. “You were a big part of that, you know.” I look her in the eyes, giving her credit for what she had tried to do, giving her credit for taking time out of her life to get my mother to meetings. I wonder how many hours she had spent listening to my mother, how many times she had been the person who talked her through the cravings. It feels so big, this gratitude I feel now. I should have felt it all along. “I don’t think I really understood what a good friend you were to her. You know? I know you were really helping her get to the meetings and all. That means a lot to me. I had shut her out by then, and you were there.”
She nods and the pop and hiss of the record player winds out until the needle lifts and resets itself at the beginning of the album. I blow out a breath. What if I had not given up on my mom? That’s my own guilt, and I have to carry it. I will never know how it would be if I could have forgiven her. Would I be decorating a tree with her this Christmas if I had?
“I’m sorry,” Faye says suddenly. “Here you come to visit me, and I make you talk about the worst day of your life.”
I let out a laugh, but bite it on the way. That wasn’t the worst day of my life. It was a horrible day, for sure, but the worst day was later. “It’s okay. I mean, I’m okay. I don’t understand her completely yet, but I think I’m getting there. Hey, did you know I met her parents?”
Her painted-on brows arch high into her forehead. “No. I always thought her parents had passed away.”
“She has a brother, too,” I say and smile thinking about Uncle Steven picking me up at the airport.
“How curious. So, you’ve met them, huh?”
I tell her about the letter mom had left and about the whole box, actually—the box I have still only dented. I tell her about moving to St. Louis and finding my grandparents from the letter. I leave out the part about Warren, because it is important that she believes I was independent and strong.
“Oh, what a treasure she left you,” she gushes. I lean around the tree and look at her. I haven’t thought of the box as a treasure. I’ve thought of it as a burden, as something I have to carry around like my guilt. I tell her that, and she draws her brows together. “I would love to look through that box with you someday,” she says, “just to understand a little bit about who she was and what made her the way she was.” I nod and almost wish I had brought the box with me, to share with her, to see if she could help me put together the pieces of my mother. “Did she tell you anything about your father?”
“A little bit. I have picture of them together, and I know he was from somewhere down in Southern Illinois.”
“Well, isn’t that interesting. I sure would love to see that picture.”
I promise to bring it with me the next time I visit.
Was I wrong about everything in my life? Why had I despised Faye? What had I seen in her that had made me dislike her so much?
“Tell me about you? What are you up to out there in California?” she asks, shifting away from my mother.
