The Picture Over My Fireplace

Ryan sat down on the couch when they were gone and put his face in his hands. I sat down next to him.

“You did good,” I said.

“I feel sick.”

“I know.”

“She’s going to be so embarrassed at work.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. Nobody at her work was in this room. She can tell Deb whatever she wants.”

He laughed a little at that, a wet laugh, and leaned his head on my shoulder. We sat there in the gray light under my picture until it was time for me to go.

I worked my shift. It was a quiet night, for once. Around three in the morning I was charting at the station, and I kept thinking about Sandra’s canvas grocery bag. I had seen something in it when she picked it up. A corner of cardboard.

I kept thinking about Jan in the doorway. She just wanted a Christmas so bad. That’s all it ever was.

I thought about the two-foot tree on the end table. About a box in a storage unit that had not been opened in six years. About a woman who decorates other people’s celebrations for a living and has not baked for her own in six Christmases.

And I thought about my front window, which really is the best on the block, and which I had never once put a real tree in, because I worked every Christmas Eve and it hardly seemed worth it for one.

I asked for Christmas Eve off the next week. Tammy’s replacement looked at me like I had grown a second head, because I had worked every Christmas Eve for six years running. Then she said, “Kelsey, you’ve earned about ten of them,” and wrote it in.

On the following Saturday, I drove over to Sandra’s building by the bypass by myself. I did not tell Ryan. I am not sure why. I think I wanted it to be between the two of us, without him standing in the middle again.

I climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked. When she opened the door, she was in a sweatshirt with flour on it, and no lipstick, and for a second she looked like she might close the door again.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

She stood back. Her apartment was very clean and very small. There was a recliner, a little kitchen table with two chairs, a television, and on an end table by the window, the little two-foot artificial tree, not decorated yet.

She had been baking. There was a tray of sugar cookies cooling on the stove, cut into stars, plain. Not frosted.

“Those are for the church sale,” she said, when she saw me looking. “Do you want coffee?”

I said yes. We sat at her little table with our cups.

“I came to say something,” I said. “And I want to say all of it before you say anything, if that’s okay.”

She nodded.

“I don’t want an apology,” I said. “You already gave me one, and I believed it. I know you lost your house. Ryan told me. I know you used to have Christmas Eve, every year, for twenty people. I know it’s been six years.”

Her eyes filled up, but she did not look away.

“I’d like you to have Christmas Eve at my house this year,” I said.

She stared at me.