I slept with Hall’s sweater as a pillow, the sight of it making myheart squeeze. My gaze drifts over the hill of presents gathered around the tree, the shape of a gold-plated guitar I bought for Kaia with Hall’s money. Jennifer Lopez’s stolen Versace dress rests next to it, tied up in a bow for Athena.
These gifts, which I’d congratulated myself for picking out so perfectly, rub me the wrong way in the stark morning light. Staring at them now, I wrinkle my nose. They’re gaudy displays of wealth I don’t actually have. I envision Kaia holding the guitar in her lap, and how the big, impressive reveal will actually look to her and everyone else: like I’ve got a chip on my shoulder and something to prove. They’ll smile and thank me and say the presents are amazing, but they’ll know the intention behind them. If they found that obnoxious, I couldn’t blame them.
I don’t want to watch any of that happen.
Quickly, I grab all my presents and rush them back up to my room. Without Hall’s magic, and on such short notice, I don’t have anything to offer anybody. So I decide to take a route I haven’t visited since I was a kid and go for homemade.
While the rest of my family works together to cook breakfast, I round up construction paper, washi tape, and glitter, going to town making Christmas cards. Each of them bears a Christmassy cover: trees, wreaths, candy canes, with a goofy sentiment or joke inside. When I’m finished, I have four cards per person, which I slip into boxes folded from cardstock I found in Hall’s scrapbooking supplies. Then I use his stamp kit to emboss each withHughes & Co. Cards: Holiday Chocolate Box Edition.
Because inside, you never know what you’re gonna get.
I return to the living room as children are beginning to accumulate, faces sticky with cinnamon roll icing, impatient to learn what Santa brought. They all start ripping into their presents asmy mom trails behind, cleaning up shredded paper and bows (and a million wrappers from Band-Aids, which are this year’s stocking stuffers of choice). She’s always the one cleaning up messes, never the one who gets to relax on the sofa and enjoy. I take the trash bag from her, forcing her into a chair. She keeps trying to get back up, helping Domino remove tags from her shirt, recovering Ichabod’s glasses before Frangipane steps on them, fetching Avenue a muffin. “Sitdown, Mom,” I order, bringing her a cup of strong black coffee. I press a button on the side of her armchair to make it recline, draping a blanket across her legs. “Relax.”
Astonished, she tries to project relaxation, sipping her coffee with a timid air, like she’s gotten away with a crime spree.
Dad smiles.
“Josh Groban’s tied up in the bathtub,” Peach Tree reports placidly, bricking together a new Mario and Yoshi Lego set. “He says a weird man stole him yesterday and told him that if he ever wants to see his family again he has to serenade Aunt Bettie all day long.”
“It’s not nice to lie on Christmas,” Athena scolds her. “That’s how you get coal.”
“Look! I got a five-pound jar of peanut butter!” Minnesota Moon screams, holding it up over her small head. “That’s just what I wanted!”
Soon, the children are applying Band-Aids to each other and then taking turns to mercilessly rip them off, filling the house with howls and shrieking.
The presents in silver foil—Hall’s signature paper—are big favorites: Russell Stover chocolates for Dad, which remind him of his first date with Mom so long ago—“Wonder how Hall would guessthat?”—and a weaving loom for Mom. A picture of a new surfboard for Marilou (the real thing shipped to Marilou and Felix’s house, so that they wouldn’t have to lug it to the airport). A child-size, twenty-five-pound wooden mallard duck for Grandpa that the kids waste no time climbing on (and which has been only modestly bedazzled). Celine Dion collector’s edition Barbies for Athena. For Kaia, a blacksmithing book calledEdge of the Anvil, along with a propane forge for metalworking. “I’m gonna make so many swords,” she says with a wicked glint in her eyes, thumbing through its pages.
Felix shakes a Magic 8 Ball that produces a new kernel of wisdom each time you turn it over—Hall’s gift to him is a bottomless well of advice for how to make good decisions. From me, my brother gets the confession thatMy Eyre Ladiesisn’t real. “I knew it!” he cries, pointing his finger at me, at the ceiling, at Grandma, who hasn’t done anything bad (for once). Then he weeps, collapsing against a wall. “Oh, I’m so glad. I can’t stomach competition.”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you.” Felix and I aren’t big huggers, but I suck it up and give him one, anyway. “Thornfieldreally does sound like an interesting movie. I’m sorry I wasn’t more supportive when you told me about it.”
“Nah, it’s not a big deal...” he replies halfheartedly.
“I was an ass.”
He grins. “Yeah, okay, you were an ass. But I get it. I give you shit all the time.”
I hug him again. “Love you, Felix.”
He bumps the toe of his slipper against mine. “Hall’s really rubbing off on you, huh?”
“Nonsense. I’ve always been an angel.”
When I’m finished sweeping up ten pounds of gift wrap, I return to my seat, where a pile of presents waits with my name onthem, next to a pile of presents for Hall from my family, which I don’t touch. I go through the motions of opening mine and fixing on a smile, saying thank you. But I don’t absorb any of it. I can’t concentrate on gifts when all I want is for Hall to be here with us, with family, which he’s so badly wanted all his life and so badly deserves. I’m having a delirious, out-of-body experience, putting on a front while internally crashing. How can my family smile? How can they enjoy themselves, when the holiday spirit is gone?
Watching them laugh and hug each other, trading candy from their stockings, I wonder if their ability to carry on being merry is because Hall gave them so much of himself. They’ve already soaked up all the holiday cheer they need.
There’s one more gift on my lap, rectangular, weighing about as much as a book.To Bettie. Always your Hall.
My hands hesitate before my brain tunes out all the noise and I’m tearing it open without thinking, opening not a book but a journal, the first two pages filled with his elegant, tidy script.
I snap the book shut, heart racing.
Then open it back up again to the first page.
One of a Kind
One’s edges need not be rounded
