The Christmas Note by Donna VanLiere Read Free Book Online Page A

realize I can’t give any of them to Goodwill.
    “Melissa.” I look up and see Gretchen standing by the nightstand holding a stack of papers in her hands. “This has your name on it.”
    She holds out a small envelope that has never been sealed, and I reach for it. I pull out a note-size piece of paper and read it. Melissa, I know I haven’t been much of a mother to you. You do have a brother and a sister you might like to … I turn it over looking for more and laugh out loud. “You’re kidding, right! This is it?” I keep laughing and lean against the wall, reading the note again. My eyes fill with hot liquid and I close them, pressing the note to my face. Thoughts and words buzz through my brain, but I can’t pin them down. “All this time I was alone … with just her.” I hold out the note and Gretchen walks over, taking it from me. “She never could give me anything that I needed. Not even now.” A mixture of anger, resentment, and grief piles up in my throat and I want to run. “No, ‘Sorry, Melissa I really blew it.’ Even now she won’t take responsibility for anything. She couldn’t even finish the letter!”
    “But she started it.” I look at Gretchen. Her face is solemn and plain but kind. “She could have started this months ago and just couldn’t figure out what else to say and left it here at her bedside hoping for the right words.”
    I laugh up at the ceiling. “Ramona never lacked for words, believe me! Apparently, her problem was remembering she had more children! Messy lives don’t usually create good recall.” I shake my head. “She kept them from me. This could have brought some chance of happiness, you know, having a brother and sister? She couldn’t stand the thought of any glimmer of a normal life for me.” The silence in the room is too loud, and I take a step to get away.
    “I’ll help you find them.”
    I look at her. “I don’t want to know them.”
    “Yes, you do.” I open my mouth, but she talks over me. “You do. You would have wanted to know them when you were a child. If then … then why not now?” The thought terrifies and cripples me. What if they’re like me? Or Ramona? “You said she never gave you anything.” She hands the note to me. “She did today.”
    It feels like my chest is in flames and I move past her, grabbing a bag of garbage from the bedroom and another from the living room on my way to the Dumpster. The air outside hits my lungs and I feel like screaming, crying, beating something. I don’t know. The bags hit the side of the Dumpster with a thud, and I move to the couch cushions I had thrown out the window.
    “How’s it going?”
    I look up to see the bald man; a cigarette is barely hanging on to his bottom lip. Smoke swirls into his eyes, making them slits in his face.
    “Great,” I say, heaving one of the cushions into the Dumpster. “Ramona’s place is empty and ready for your next squatter. You or your tenants can take whatever furniture you want.” I walk past him and open the door to my car.
    “So that’s that?” he yells after me.
    “That’s that,” I say, sliding behind the wheel and closing the door. Sixty years of life. Done. Just like that.

 
     
    Six
     
It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another offshore.
    — C HRISTIAN N EVELL B OVEE
     
    GRETCHEN
     
    I take the kids to the new school and walk each of them to their classrooms, then cry all the way back to my car. Their little faces were wide-eyed and brave even as they squeezed my hands right up to the last second before letting go. New things are always so hard.
    It takes a while, but I find the cemetery and pull into the parking lot, looking around. Two other cars are here and I get out, shoving my hands into my coat pockets. I haven’t heard from Melissa since she ran from her mother’s apartment. There was a part of me that felt so sorry for her as we