school. Or put up with your sister.”
Meg glanced at the train, all noise and slick metal, as it chugged up to the platform. Then she smiled at me and threw her backpack over her shoulder, leading the way back up the stairs to my car.
Chapter Thirty-four
Two days later, Meg and I had just gotten home from school when Mr. Mita knocked on our door, holding a four-foot-tall Christmas tree in a pot.
“I remember your mother always got these live ones,” he said, and we all glanced out the window toward the edge of the front lawn, rimmed with Christmas Trees Past in various stages of survival.
Christmas was my mother’s holiday. Although she was half-Jewish, it was what they’d celebrated in her family, and she just loved it. Christmas music, all the TV specials, even eggnog. Toby and I got eight utilitarian gifts for Hanukkah—socks, sweaters, new parkas—and the good stuff on December 25. My dad was okay with that, and if Nana wasn’t, she never let on.
When it came to the tree, Mom couldn’t stand the thought of one being grown just so it could be cut down and die slowly with pretty gifts beneath it, then put out on trash day. We planted our trees on New Year’s Day, and although I always thought it was ridiculous trying to dig a hole in the frozen ground every January 1, now I was so grateful we had.
“That’s very sweet, thank you,” said Nana, but I couldn’t tell if she meant it. Mr. Mita put the tree down in the living room and after he left, with a plate of Nana’s cookies in his hands, Meg and I went into the garage to look for our Christmas decorations.
“Do you have a tree at your house yet?” I asked.
“Mom put up the fake one weeks ago. Which is a good thing, because now nobody even cares.”
“What did she say when she called this morning?”
“The usual. She wants me to come home. She swears my Dad’s leaving tonight, so we’ll see.”
I scanned the shelves of the garage until I saw the two big red plastic bins labeled XMAS and pointed. Meg grabbed the stepladder and moved toward them.
“Is she mad at you for not being there for . . . you know . . . her?” I asked.
Meg paused, then said simply, “Yes.” In a series of quick motions, she hopped up on the ladder, grabbed each XMAS box, and handed them down to me.
Ironically, the first thing we saw when we opened the first bin was our electric menorah. When Toby was little he broke the nice ceramic one my parents had received as a wedding gift, and Mom went out and found the plug-in kind at half price during a post-holiday sale. During Hanukkah she kept it on the kitchen counter between the spice rack and the paper towels, and she and Nana had a fight about it every single year.
I showed the menorah to Nana, who actually smiled a bit when she lifted it up, then placed it on a table by the Christmas tree.
While Nana and Meg unpacked the rest of the bins, I took a break to check my email, which was something I did compulsively a little too often since David and I had started writing again.
My in-box contained one new item: a picture message sent from a cell phone. I knew you weren’t supposed to open stuff like that if you didn’t know the source, but I couldn’t resist.
First, the words i thought this might remind you of something.
Then, a photo of a van parked alongside a road somewhere. It was an older model, with a small round bubble window near the back, painted with a purple and pink desert scene complete with howling coyote and cactus.
I laughed out loud, and remembered.
One painfully hot summer day years ago, Toby and I were sitting in a small patch of shade in our front yard, trying to come up with something to do. None of the other neighborhood kids were around because of the heat, but we’d spent the morning squabbling in the house and Mom had ordered us outside for a while. We were bored and grumpy and pretty much ready to kill each other when David suddenly appeared in our driveway.
“Oh cool, you’re here,” he’d said. “My uncle is visiting and he’s going to put on a magic show, but I can’t find anyone. You guys wanna come down and watch?”
Minutes later the three of us