Going Home for Christmas

Carly Norris had seven dollars in her wallet while she sat at an airport gate waiting for the plane that would take her home.  It would be the first time in two years that she visited her grandparents’ farm.

         “Remind me again why I’m coming home for this event instead of working and making money,” she said to her father over the phone.  She looked down at her freshly manicured hands.  The manicurist didn’t do a very good job; the paint was already starting to chip and it had only been a few days.

         “She was your grandmother.”

         “So what?  She was a pain in the butt, too.”

         “Do it for your mom, Carly.”

         “Whatever.  Look, I’ve got to go; they’re about to board the plane,” Carly lied; there was at least a half hour before they’d even think about boarding.

         “I’ll see you when you get here.  I love you.”

         “Bye.”

         Carly put away her phone and wondered what to do to distract her from the horrible greeting that awaited her.  She was a little hungry, but the seven dollars wouldn’t get her much in an airport terminal.  She picked up her Coach purse and dragged her roller board suitcase around the concourse.  Even if she had money, none of the food looked appealing.  Maybe something about the daunting task of going home to face her family after two years had stolen her appetite.  Sure, she’d seen her parents a few times, and she had scheduled a flight home for Christmas.  Unfortunately, this flight was moved up since her grandmother had up and died a week before the holiday.  Now her ideal quick trip home to please her parents and collect her presents would be extended by almost a week as well as countless unwanted conversations with extended family members.  It was this family she hadn’t seen since she and Nana got in a row about the dog Coco a few years back.  Nana wanted Coco sitting at the table for Thanksgiving dinner.  Carly thought that was absurd but she probably could have ignored it if she hadn’t been assigned the seat right next to the darn dog.

         “Just goes to show how she thinks of me: one step away from the stray dog,” Carly had argued with her mother.  The dog fiasco hadn’t been the only brawl she’d had with her grandmother.  They couldn’t go through a get-together without Nana and Carly going at it.  Sometimes it was over the darn dog, sometimes Carly’s “inappropriate attire,” and sometimes Nana’s quirky habits.  It had been like this for as long as Carly could remember and the Thanksgiving fiasco with Coco was the last straw.  Carly left that Thanksgiving without eating dinner and had not been back since.

         Everyone had urged her to call and make amends with her grandmother before her passing.  Carly felt it was Nana who owed her an apology.  If Nana wanted to apologize, she would call.  Carly wanted nothing to do with her grandmother.  Unfortunately, her father called a few days earlier saying he’d moved Carly’s Christmas flight up a week, and she would be coming home whether she liked it or not.  Carly regretted allowing her father to pay for the ticket, but it gave him leverage over her.  They both knew if she had to pay for it she wouldn’t go home at all, but instead there she was, wandering around the Nashville International Airport eyeing all of the destinations that seemed more appealing than Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  Even scrounging for food in the work break room seemed more exciting than finding inexpensive airport food.

         She didn’t have a great job, but everyone was quick to remind her that she was only twenty-six and could move up the company hierarchy.  She was moving much more slowly than she would have liked.  Really, she didn’t care much about the banking industry.  She’d only taken the job five years ago after following a now long-gone boyfriend to Nashville.  Gaylord Financial was the only place that’d hire a young, outspoken teller with no experience.  Even after five years she still wasn’t being paid much more than minimum wage.

***

         Wearing black by force not by choice, Carly stepped out of the funeral home and away from the mourner and well-wishers.  She was ready to high-tail it back to Nashville when her father caught her by the arm.

         “The car’s this way,” he hissed in her ear.  “We can’t leave until you’re ready.  Do you really want to be responsible for delaying the funeral parade of your grandmother?”

         “I’m just going to go back to the house and wait for yall to get back.”

         “No, you’re going to the grave site.  Do it for your mother, Car.  And ‘yall’?  Since when is that part of your vocabulary?  Your grandmother’d be rollin’ in her grave if she was there already but instead she’s rolling in the back of the hearse,” he mocked.  “Let’s go.”

         Trying not to freeze to death, Carly stood graveside listening to the pastor drone on about ashes and dust.  She day-dreamed about the work she’d left behind in Nashville.  She’d created a great sob story about her grandmother dying and the bank willingly gave her the time off.  She didn’t really miss wondering if she was going to get robbed that day but more she missed her friends.  A mid-funeral text had told her they were planning on having a large dinner at Amerigos, her favorite Italian restaurant.  Of course, the friend sending the text didn’t know Carly had returned to the winter wonderland until she responded asking to be beamed out of the funeral home.

         It’s silent.  I wonder if this means this hoopla is over, she mused to herself.  She couldn’t wait to get back to her parents’ house and away from the annoying friends of her grandparents.

***

         The following day Carly found herself alone in the car with her mother driving in silence down the country roads that led to nowhere.  Nowhere good, at least.  It wasn’t long before Carly recognized the corn fields as those near her grandparents’ house.  What used to be her grandparents’ house; she didn’t know whose house it was at this point.

         “Why are we here?”

         “We need to sort out Nana’s stuff.”

         “There’s nothing I want in that house, if that’s why you dragged me along.”

         “I’ve had enough.  You need to suck it up and behave.  I know the two of you didn’t always get along but she was your grandmother, Carly.  Please tell me somewhere deep down you have some grief for the fact that she’s gone.”

         Carly kept silent.  Maybe somewhere inside she felt grief but she didn’t think so.  Nana had always made it clear that she didn’t love Carly.  She should have: Carly was the oldest grandchild.  Except a few years later came Carly’s brother and oldest and only grandson trumps oldest grandchild on the familial hierarchy.  A few years after that Aunt Julie had Mary and everyone knows the youngest granddaughter always holds the highest rank.  Carly was pushed aside like a parasite.

         Carly and her mother pulled up the familiar gravel driveway and behind the now-deserted farm house.  It stood exactly as Carly remembered: the siding was still begging for a new coat of paint, the barn roof was still two different colors, and the gravel driveway was still more dirt than gravel.  Not everything was the same.  The over-grown green grass had turned brown, making the yard look more like a field than a yard.  The sunflower patch where Carly and her cousins played as kids was long gone.  Cars scattered around the property told Carly everyone else was already here and that no one had sold a car in five years.  That hadn’t stopped them from buying new.  The farm had just become a catch-all for their discarded cars as it had always been for random junk.  Carly shuddered to think about what they would be finding in the house, or worse, the barn.  She decided she’d spend the next several hours mocking the bizarre items her grandma had accumulated over the years; it would be the only way to get through this torture.

         “And why can’t I go home yet?” she asked her mother, Ellen, as they got out of the car.

         “This is your home, Carlynda.”

         “Not anymore.”  Carly slammed the car door.  “I don’t have a job here, a house here, friends here, anything here.”

         “You have family here,” Ellen said.  “Behave.”

         The musty smell was almost overwhelming when they walked into the old farmhouse.  Both of Carly’s aunts and her youngest cousin, Mary, were standing in the kitchen waiting for them to arrive.

         “Carly, is there anything you want since you are the oldest grandchild?” Aunt Alicia asked.

         Out of here, Carly thought to herself.  “No.”

         Ellen elbowed her in the ribs.

         “—thing in particular, thanks.”

         “I want the goat skin rug!  I’m the youngest grandchild,” Mary said.  Carly didn’t care who got the goat skin rug as long as it wasn’t her.

         “Objections?” Julie asked.  “Ok, fine, Mary, it’s yours, but let’s not go claiming everything in the house.  We’re focusing on sorting today.  Since we’re all here I think we should start in the bedrooms upstairs since they’re going to be hardest.  Well, besides the barn.”

         Obediently Carly followed the crowd upstairs; every step creaked as they walked.  The creaking stairs always vexed her every time someone had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. The old farm house only had one toilet, downstairs next to the kitchen.  That’s a long walk at 3am, but everyone accepted it.  The stairs were extra annoying to Carly because growing up she had always stayed in the bedroom at the top of the stairs, affectionately known as “The Junk Room.”

         “Most of the clothes can go to Goodwill, but God knows what else we’re going to find up here.”

         A whole lot of dust, Carly thought as she almost hacked up a hairball.

         The group walked into Carly’s Junk Room.  It had lived up to its name and looked almost exactly like Carly remembered it, except with more junk.  The bed was even covered with the oddest things one could ever imagine.  Slowly they began to pick through the ancient artifacts and remnants of lives long gone.  A ceiling fan, purchased to replace the two dangling light bulbs over the kitchen table, which was never put up.  School artwork, made over forty years earlier.  A photo book of Nana as a young girl.  At least a thousand different necklaces and mismatched earrings, none of which had been worn since the 1980s.  The heaps were never ending.

         “I’ve got to get out of here,” Carly said.  Noticing her cousin Mary heard her, she quickly added, “The dust is making it hard to breathe.”  She even added a few fake coughs for believability before high-tailing it down the rickety stairs and onto the back porch.  The harsh winter air stung but Carly didn’t mind.  She glanced around the back porch.  The rocking chair seemed eerie without anyone in it.  At first Carly had thought it was rocking on its own, but it was just her imagination.  Instead, she took a seat in the chair and forced her body into the crevices once occupied by her grandmother.  Out of the cushion came a cigarette stench so strong it made Carly cough, for real this time.  She almost wished she had a cup of hot tea in one hand and a cigarette in the other, just to make the image complete.  Upon realizing this, she leapt out of the chair.  She didn’t want to turn into her grandmother.  Not now.  Not ever.           Without thinking, Carly walked back to the backdoor and leaned on the doorframe.  This was always her spot in the conversation when Nana came outside for a ‘moke.  She began to pick at the paint.

         “Get your dirty hands off there,” Nana’d always scream.

         “My hands ain’t dirty; I just washed them last week,” Carly would retort.  Now she’d cringe at her once poor grammar.  She never understood why Nana didn’t want her picking at the paint.  After all, the paint needed to be picked off before the house could be repainted.  Everyone knew the house was begging for a new coat of paint; it had been for as long as Carly could remember.  Really, she had just been doing Nana a favor and getting her one step closer to a new paint job.  Carly stopped picking but only because the white paint chips hurt when they ventured under her freshly manicured nails.  Well, they had been freshly manicured before the trip.  All of today’s sorting and cleaning and more nails were chipped than should have been after less than a week.  Another fifteen dollars down the drain.

         Instead, she shoved her hands in her pants pockets and was surprised to find a pair of earrings.  She’d found them upstairs and pocked them with the intention of adding them to the collection on the kitchen table, but she forgot when she ran outside for some air.  At first, Carly laughed at the earrings because they looked like teal buttons with yellow splotches.

         “They don’t even match themselves,” she said aloud.

         The more she turned them over in her hand the more she remembered coveting these earrings as a child.  She used to wish she had pierced ears just to wear these hideous earrings.  Of course, she didn’t consider them hideous at the time; they had been her favorites.

         “Carly!  You’ll never guess what I just found,” Mary shouted out a second floor window.  Carly was surprised the window actually opened.

         “What?”  Carly asked, setting the earrings down on the table next to Nana’s rocking chair.

         “Remember this?”  She tossed something down to Carly but missed and it landed in the nearby dead grass with a soft thud.

         “Mary Ellen!  Close that window; you’re letting all the penguins in,” someone said inside the house.

         That was a new one.  Normally the concern was for everyone to get pneumonia in the cold air, and now there were penguins invading her grandmother’s old house.  The window slammed shut and Carly reached down to grab the book, also collecting an envelope that had fallen out of its cover.  She recognized the orange book: an old calendar with infinitely more marks on it than anyone ever needed to know.  Apparently on January 4, 1983, they had had three inches of snow.  The average person wouldn’t have even considered calling into work late for three inches of snow, but Nana had felt the need to write it down.  Carly flipped a few months into the calendar to March 28.  Yup, there it was, her own date of birth was highlighted in pink.  Recorded next to her full name were infinitely more details about her own birth than Carly ever wanted to know.  She thumbed through the rest of the calendar seeing all of the major milestones for her first year: first tooth, first solid food, first hair cut, first… You name it, Nana wrote it down.  Carly closed the calendar and opened the envelope.  Carefully peeling the photos from each other and from the goop on the envelope, she collapsed back into her grandmothers’ chair.  The photos weren’t just from ‘83 but rather a small collection of photos from throughout life.  A deer her father and grandfather shot during the hunting season back when her father had hair.  A photo of a much-younger Nana holding a newborn baby, possibly Mary or maybe even Carly herself.  Based on the size of the smile on Nana’s face, Carly figured the baby was Mary.  Carly flipped over the photo; her name was written on the back.  Trying not to let this affect her, Carly flipped to the next photo: someone’s car once upon a time, but Carly didn’t recognize it or the driver.  A photo of Mary and Carly playing in the living room.  They had a city made completely of Dixie cups.  Of course, they would relish in the beauty of “Marly,” the name of their city, for a few hours until Papi went to sleep on the couch and “accidently” knocked it over.  It was the last photo that struck Carly the hardest, however.  Five year old Carly was sitting on her grandfather’s shoulders to put the star on top of the Christmas tree.  Nana, Aunt Julie, and both of Carly’s parents were beaming.  That was back when her grandparents got a real Christmas tree.  Every year since then they purchased a Charlie Brown Christmas tree from the five-dollar bin at Harry’s Tree Farm down the road.  They then argued with Harry that the tree was not worth five dollars, and they wouldn’t pay more than three for it.  Once Harry gave in, Nana would hand over a five dollar bill and tell Harry to keep the change as a tip.  The brouhaha behind the whole shebang was always more important than the tree itself.

         Carly glanced in a window to where the Charlie Brown tree should have sat.  After all, it was December 20.  Everyone had a Christmas tree in their living room.  Except Nana since she was dead.  For the first time all weekend, Carly felt remorse but only because she’d missed the last few Charlie Brown Christmas trees.  Mary had told her last year’s was too thick to put on ornaments and two years’ ago had two tops so there was a constant discussion as to which should hold the angel.

         Carly walked back into the kitchen where she found Mary sitting at the table untangling her Grandmother’s necklaces.

         “Mary, grab your coat.  Come here,” Carly said.  She picked up some keys off the “clutter counter,” retrieved her purse and jacket from the dining room table, and headed out the door.

         “Where are we going?”  Mary asked, searching for shoes.

         “It’s a secret.”  Carly stopped, remembering she still only had a few dollars in her wallet.  She grabbed the pickle jar of change off of the top of the fridge and fished out five dollars in quarters.  She and Mary climbed into the cab of her grandfather’s truck and took off down the road.  Papi had been gone almost five years, but his truck was still in good shape.  Probably the best cared for piece of equipment on the farm.  Everyone loved Papi.  He’d been the life and laughter of the family.  When he passed away the conflict began to tear apart the family.  Carly liked to think if he’d been there the day Nana tried to seat Coco next to Carly, the whole thing would have blown over instead of driving a wedge deeper.  Carly wanted to pick up a tree for Papi more than she did for Nana.

         “Please tell me where we’re going because if we’re going to town you missed the turn,” Mary begged.  Carly had been ignoring her whining for at least five minutes, but she figured it was time to spill the secret.

         “Is something missing?”

         “What do you mean?”

         “From the house.  Isn’t something missing?”

         “You mean Nana?”

         “No.”

         “Coco?  Nana gave Coco to the neighbors because walking a dog every day was too hard on Nana’s knees.”

         “Not a person.”  To Carly, Coco was a dog.  A useless, drama-causing dog, but to Nana, Coco was a person.

         “Well, my next guess was going to be Papi.  I don’t have any idea.  What’s missing?”

         “It’s December.  What’s missing?”

         “A tree!”  Mary screaming as Harry’s Tree Farm came into view.

         An hour later, the girls returned to the farm beaming.  Their smiles vanished upon being greeted by an angry three angry aunts.

         “Where on earth did you ladies go?  And you took Papi’s truck!  What were you thinking?”

         “Chill, Mom.  Come here,” Mary insisted, dragging Aunt Julie by the hand out to the truck.  Everyone else followed as Mary showed off the brand new, perfectly atrocious, five-dollar Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  Angry eyes turned teary as they unloaded the truck bed and took the tree to its proper position in front of the window.  True to the Charlie Brown tradition, this tree was not worth the five dollars they’d spent because even with the tree in front of it, everyone had a perfect view out the window.

         “This was your idea?” Ellen asked her. 

         Carly nodded, noticing the tears in her mother’s eyes.  Ellen wrapped her arms around her daughter and the two cried together.

***

         For the second time in two weeks, Carly sat in an airport terminal.  Most of Nana’s belongings had already been sent to Goodwill.  The family was still unable to agree on what to do with the old farmhouse.  Carly had come to realize there were too many memories—both good and bad—held within that poorly painted white siding.  Selling the house was out of the question.  Instead, the question became who would care for such a family heirloom.  If no one else offered to occupy it, Carly wondered if she would be strong enough to leave her job and life in Nashville and start over again, this time at home. 

         “Ouch,” she said to herself as she dug through her Coach purse trying to find her plane ticket.  She pulled out two teal and yellow earrings and had her answer.