Love Letters to the Dead(39)

When Dad came home and saw the lights, he said that I’d put him in the Christmas spirit, so we went out and got a tree from the lot where we always go, in a rural neighborhood in the middle of the South Valley. The thing about traditions is that they hold up the shape of your memory. I saw May and me running up and down the aisles with our hands in our mittens, looking for the sort of tree that we thought would be left behind if we didn’t take it. I picked out the scrawniest tree again, and Dad and I laughed about it.

Then we took it home and started to decorate it. Dad put on Bing Crosby’s Christmas record—the one with “Mele Kalikimaka” on it—but as he sat down on the couch and watched me put up the ornaments, it might as well have been silent. Each one seemed to carry the whole weight of our family and what had become of it. The bells I made in first grade, with glittered foil over egg cartons and unraveling red yarn to hang them by. The Play-Doh stars, the animals, the pinecones. My favorite, which is a glass angel with May’s name etched on it. I hung that in front.

When I was putting the tinsel on, Mom called. I heard Dad’s voice strained as he carried the phone into the other room to talk to her. Then he brought it to me.

Mom said it’s strange to see it sunny and still warm at Christmastime. She said the light is bright and clear in California. I tried to picture where she was at the ranch and imagined horses with sleigh bells running around a field of palm trees. It didn’t make any sense. I told her I thought maybe I’d bake moon cookies. I thought that might make her wish she was home, because she always baked them every Christmas. The powdered sugar sounds like pushing clouds through the sifter and sticks to the cookies when they’re hot. I remember stealing them off the cooling rack with May.

“That’s great, honey. The recipe is in the brown box.”

“I know.” Then I blurted out, “When are you coming home?”

“I don’t know, sweetie.” She sounded tense. “This is good for me, okay?”

I was just quiet. I guess Mom decided to change the subject. “Dad says that you have a boyfriend now?”

“Yeah.”

Her voice turned excited, like a gossipy girlfriend. “So, tell me! What’s his name?”

“Sky.”

“Is he cute?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you being careful, Laurel?”

“Yep.”

Mom sighed a long sigh. “I mailed some presents. They should get there tomorrow.”

“Okay, thanks.” Then I asked, “Have you been to the ocean?”

“Not yet,” Mom said. And then, “Merry Christmas, Laurel.”

“Merry Christmas, Mom,” I said, and I hung up the phone.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear River Phoenix,

Have you ever heard of luminarias? They are a tradition in New Mexico for Christmas Eve. You fill lunch-size paper bags with sand from the sandbox, or if you don’t have a sandbox, you get some from one of the sand banks that are in parking lots around town for the holidays. You set up the bags outside your house, put candles in, and pull the wicks up to a flame.

I think they are most beautiful at the cemetery, where people leave them on graves. I went there alone tonight to see the ocean of light, which makes the quiet so much quieter. Each bag in the night was made by someone’s hands. Left for someone that they loved.

I brought a luminaria for May and found a place to leave it under a tree. I wanted to do something to show that she’s still glowing. We cremated her body. That feels so strange to say. We haven’t scattered the ash. I don’t want to see it. Honestly, it still feels sometimes like I’ll wake up one day and there she’ll be. That night plays in the back of my head like a movie where everything is out of focus on the screen so you can’t see what’s happening. The road races by. The river rushes on. I try to turn down the volume and just focus on the ocean of light.

Above me, the stars twinkle like they want to be as bright as the candles, but distance dims them. I bet your brother and sisters miss you tonight. I guess I just wanted to write to say hi. Or Merry Christmas. Or maybe to see if you are up there, in the sky with the stars, and if from where you are, they look brighter than a flame or a bonfire or the dawn.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear E. E. Cummings,

Christmas night is practically the most silent time that could exist. Like the whole world is made up of memory. After Dad went to bed with the tree lights still on, Sky came and I crawled out my window. We opened the presents we got each other in the dark of my driveway.

The newspaper he wrapped my present with was fragile, so I opened it carefully, not wanting to tear. What I uncovered was a heart that he had carved out of driftwood. It had my name on the back. It was perfect. He had sanded the wood down so it was smooth, but the grains don’t go away. I told him it was my favorite present I’d ever gotten. He looked proud.

I’d gotten him a book of your poetry. I made a bookmark from pretty paper with geese on it and put it in to hold the poem “somewhere I have never travelled,gladly beyond.” We read it in English class, and I loved it. When Sky unwrapped the book, I read the poem out loud to him.

The line at the end that says, “Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands” makes perfect sense to me. It means they can go anywhere inside of you, because like the rain, like water, they find places that nothing solid could pass through. It explains the way that Sky gets into me, into places that I never even knew were there. How he touches a part of me no one has ever touched. We both have secret places in us.