Are You Sitting Down? (22 page)

I left the room alone or maybe with someone
from my past
I d
id
n’t remember or had never met before.
I tried to turn back and take another look at us, but had somehow quickly forgotten I was ever there.

I felt light on my feet.
Every burden,
and even
the cancer, had been lifted.
It
had
all washed away
.
Passing
through the door
, I
went away too.

Mrs.
Black

I woke up to find all the lights on the tree had gone out.
I leaned behind it to see if it had come unplugged.
It had not.
The last of the working lights had just burned out during the night.
A few days ago the tree looked like some odd planeta
r
ium map of the constellations with some
parts
still twinkling
and others
in the dark
.
I had left the tree up all year
, since last Christmas,
and left it plugged in
.
About mid-January
this year
, I intended to take it down.
Then, February came and it was still there.
I cut pink and red hearts out of crepe paper and tucked them onto the limbs for amusement, shamrocks for March, and Easter eggs for April.
Thanksgiving was here before we knew it, when others had just begun to look forward to putting a tree
up
again.
Ours was already up
, adorned in the traditional sy
m
bols from every holiday that had passed since last Christmas
.

I stood at the tree unraveling the strings of lights from the branches and letting them fall to the floor.
After a few feet of lights and knocking a few ornaments off in the process, I d
e
cided this was too time consuming.
I was just going to thro
w
the dead lights away anyway.
I went to the sewing machine table and retrieved my fabric scissors from the drawer.
I returned to the tree and unplugged the lights from the wall just to be sure there was no electricity or just a shortage in the wires.
I used my scissors to cut the strings of lights so they could be removed from the tree more easily in smaller pieces.

Trimming them like hair, I threw the twines of lights behind me and let them fall to the floor with a crackle-like snap.
I avoided breaking any more ornaments in the process.
 
Having to touch almost every limb stirred up the
layer
of fuzzy dust that had settled over the branches during the year.
I would have Manny
buy new
lights to store away for next year.
Christmas had almost come and gone
again
now
.
It amazed me that some of those strands of lights had lasted
all
year.

The tree looked sad in the dark, sadder than it looked when it was only half lit.
Maybe the lack of its glow would i
n
spire me to take it completely down this year.
I went to the kitchen to get the broom to sweep up the tangles of wire and bulbs.
From the darkened doorway, the tree looked like a stranger waiting in the shadows.
It would bother me, or startle me, each time I came down the stairs.
So, it would have to come down now.

I ignored the crunching of some of the tiny bulbs b
e
neath
my shoes
on
the hardwood floor as I walked back by the tree to go upstairs.
The ornament boxes were kept on the floor in Justin’s old room.
Manny had never placed them back in the attic last year after I put the tree up.
I’d made an effort to carry all of the boxes back up the stairs and sit them in the hallway.
And there they sat half way through December.
I pushed them into Justin’s room and closed the door upon the unexpected arrival of a guest or some boring relative.
I don’t remember who.

I had not actually been inside that room at least since last year,
although Manny had left
the door open
from time to time
.
I had walked pas
t
the open doorway and looked in, wondering why the door was left open.
I assumed that Manny might have gone into the room for one thing or another since it had become a somewhat temporary storage place and an excuse for not having to crawl into the attic.
Maybe some old house ghost liked to leave the door open.

The cat had died in Justin’s bedroom this year.
Appa
r
ently, it was a mute cat.
I’d never heard it cry or scratch at the door.
Not once.
Or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, and neither was Manny.
We left the door closed for too long.
It pissed on the bed and eventually lay down to sleep forever.
Manny di
s
covered it and removed its body in a trash bag.
The outline of its stiff body against the black plastic made me na
u
seous.
I had Manny gather the bedspread and sheets and dispose of them too.
Since the room
wa
s on the second floor and faces the back of the house, we left the windows open for a week to air
it out
.
The mild breezes of spring didn’t help much.
It still stank of cat piss.

I push
ed
the door open now, letting go of the knob as the door creak
ed
open, like some snooping parent spying on their kid’s doings.
The room
wa
s cold and musty.
The smell of cat urine still linger
ed
just a bit, only adding to the stale scent of mildew.
The bare white mattress on the bed remind
ed
me of white sheets draped over the furniture in a house that ha
d
been boarded up for the season.
I kn
e
w it
wa
s a bed but it still look
ed
like the shape of something else
, perhaps a coffin
.
I fold
ed
my arms to somehow shield me from the
cold bitter
air now escaping the room.
These days, everything reminded me of death.

Justin’s room was a tiny square
space
filled now with  boxes and crates, all waiting for something useful, or meanin
g
ful, to be put in them
.
The ornament boxes ha
d
been moved further into the room, stacked neatly on the floor against the bed.
Stacks of magazines we never read line
d
the walls and hid the top of Justin’s old desk.

There
wer
e some empty shoe boxes I kept to recycle next to two or three thin plastic grocery bags
,
each stuffed with more grocery bags I always kep
t
.
Manny ha
d
added some empty mil
k
crates he collected from work, and some packages of model trains.

He and Justin
had
built a model train replica of the town
when Justin was a kid.
It
encompass
ed
over half the basement.
Manny left it alone for several months after Justin moved away, but he spent more time in the basement now than he did when Justin was here to help him with it.

The room and its contents were all alike.
Even this house was like that
, w
aiting for something meaningful that would never come.
I knew what it felt like to be an empty box sitting in a cold room.

The ornament boxes had perforated handles cut into the sides of them.
I lifted two at a time and moved them into the hallway.
Under the bright light outside the room, I could make out a thin layer of white dust across the boxes.
I pressed a fi
n
ger down on top of the first box, leaving a perfect fingerprint in the ashy film.
I examined my finger, holding it up close to my face, rubbing it against my thumb until the dust I’d collected was gone.

After moving six boxes into the hall, I carried two of them down the stairs and sat them by the tree.
Piece by piece, I b
e
gan removing glass balls from the limbs first, leaving the hook on each of them as I tucked them between the dividers in the box.
After filling the two boxes, I put the lids on and pushed them aside.
M
ost of the other ornaments were heavy c
e
ramic figurines, characters blown from mercury glass, and craft
projects
Justin had made as a kid.
With their gold mac
a
roni pieces, crayon colored popsicles sticks, and red pipe cleaners, they were as faded as the rest of the memories I clung to.

I climbed the stairs to pick up another box.
Removing its lid, I discovered crumpled pieces of
yellowed
newspaper I had used to wrap the ornaments
before storing them
away.
When I unwrapped them and hung them on the tree last year, I stuffed the wrapping back into the box with intentions of using it again.
There were plenty of fresh papers and magazines in this house now.
I could throw out all th
e
old paper and wrap the ornaments in ye
s
terday’s news.
I emptied the box on the floor next to the pile of
C
hristmas lights.
Tinkles of red and silver glitter littered the floor, remnants that had rubbed off some of the ornaments from the last time they were in the box.
A flat folded corner of one of the papers caught my eye.