Nothing to Lose (J.P. Beaumont #25)(3)

Mel is nothing if not organized. The boxes are loaded onto four heavy-duty rolling shelving units. The three boxes containing the pre-lit tree are pretty much self-explanatory: top, middle, and bottom, with the tree skirt neatly folded in the one labeled “Bottom.” The rest of the otherwise identical moving boxes are labeled on every visible side: “Red Balls,” “Silver Balls,” “White Balls,” “Blue Balls,” “Poinsettias, one Red and one White,” “Holly Sprigs,” “Ribbons,” “Bows,” “Angels,” “Santas,” “Nutcrackers,” “Christmas Linens,” and “Wreaths.” As I surveyed the assortment of boxes, I realized this was like one of those gigantic Lego sets my grandson, Kyle, loves so much. Everything I needed was there—some assembly required.

Since I didn’t remember seeing blue ornaments on any previous tree display, and since blue is my favorite color, I chose the box labeled “Blue Balls.” It seemed to me that white poinsettias would be a good bet with blue balls, so I took down a box of those as well as ones labeled “Angels,” “Santas,” and “Nutcrackers.” I also set aside boxes marked “Christmas Linens” and “Ribbons.” After hauling all those inside, I went to work.

Before Karen and I divorced, I remember Christmas decorating mostly as an ordeal of organized chaos. I wasn’t exactly encouraged to participate, and for good reason. Because I’m over six feet and Karen was only five-five, it was usually my job to install the angel at the top of the tree, a task that was always accomplished after the tree was fully decorated. One year, having had a bit too much holiday spirit (I believe I already mentioned I’ve been in AA for years now), I came to grief with the ladder, and so did the tree, right along with a large number of decorations. Karen started speaking to me again sometime after New Year’s, and from then on my help with the angel was no longer required.

This year, doing the job on my own and determined not to repeat that disaster, I decided to put the angel on the top of the tree before I put the tree together. I unloaded the angels from their box, lined them up on the kitchen island, and picked out one with a blue skirt. Then, using a pair of zip-ties, I fastened that angel to the top in a fashion that I doubt even an earthquake could dislodge. Only then did I finish putting the tree together. Fortunately, all those little multicolored LED lights lit right up without the slightest hesitation.

I was somewhat disappointed when I opened up the box labeled “Blue Balls.” What I’d had in mind was something truly blue—royal blue, I suppose you’d call it. These were more turquoise than deep blue—some shiny and some frosted. I didn’t use all the balls in the box, but I think I hung most of them. Then I filled in the blanks on the tree with dozens of white poinsettia blossoms and punctuated those with a flock of silver bows and ribbons.

I was standing there asking Sarah what she thought of my decorating job. (Yes, I do talk to my dog when no one else is around.) That’s when the doorbell rang. Sarah beat me to the door, but due to our security system’s monitor in the entryway hall, I knew without cracking the door that the person pressing the bell was Ken, our regular Roto-Rooter guy, come to present his bill.

After putting Sarah on a sit-and-stay command, I opened the door. “All done?” I asked.

“Yup,” Ken said.

“What was it,” I asked, “a tree root of some kind?”

Ken glanced at me and then sent a reproachful glare in Sarah’s direction. “I wish,” he said. “By the time I was able to scope it, it looked to me as though someone had tried to flush a gigantic dog turd down a toilet. The damned thing got hung up on an ice dam in the main sewer pipe and stopped everything cold—at this point very cold,” he added with a chuckle. “Fortunately, I finally managed to break it up. That’ll be three-fifty—card, cash, or check?”

I used my Amex and paid the $350 with a happy heart, grateful as all hell that Mel hadn’t been home to hear the cause and effect, both of which, as it turns out, were entirely my fault. Then I went back to decorating. I lined up the angels, Santas, and nutcrackers on the kitchen island in preparation to actually distributing them. Then I opened the linens box. The top layer of that was a selection of holiday-themed guest towels. I knew from past experience that those needed to be rolled up and put in the basket on the counter in the powder room. Then I sorted through the holiday tablecloths, runners, and doilies. Once I had those on various flat surfaces throughout the house, I deployed the angels, nutcrackers, and Santas, placing them in sad little groupings of three, like so many trios of mismatched carolers.

It wasn’t exactly the elegant effect Mel usually produces. My results were more ham-fisted than beautiful, but I figured Mel could do some embellishing once she got home. In the meantime, giving myself a pat on the back, I settled with a newly made cup of coffee into my favorite chair by the gas-log fireplace to survey my handiwork.

The whole process had become more or less a meditation on Christmases past, first the memory of that Christmas-tree screwup with Karen and the kids and then going all the way back to Christmases when I was a kid. My mother was a World War II–era unwed mother. She was engaged to my father and pregnant with me when he died in a motorcycle accident. Rather than give me up for adoption, she had—against her father’s wishes—chosen to keep me and raise me on her own. We lived in a small two-bedroom apartment over a bakery in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. She supported us by working as a seamstress, making clothing on a treadle Singer sewing machine next to a worktable that took up a good third of her bedroom.