The House Without a Christmas Tree Read online

“He doesn’t love me!” I said, starting to cry again. “He just doesn’t love me!”

  “Hush, now, I’m not listening to such talk! The truth is,” she said quietly, “your dad hasn’t wanted a Christmas tree in this house because it reminds him of your momma and your first Christmas with the three of you together, and it makes him feel bad.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “He misses her an awful lot.”

  “You mean the tree made him unhappy?”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but it’s not your fault. Someday he’ll get over it, and things will be all right. Think you can go to sleep now?”

  I nodded my head, and Grandma hugged me close. I tried to go to sleep, but my mind wouldn’t shut off.

  I lay there for a long while and tried to remember my mother, but I couldn’t. All I knew about her were the things I found in her scrapbook and the snapshots in the family album. My father never talked about her. I tried to remember my first Christmas, but I couldn’t remember that either. I wondered if my father had gone into his bedroom and cried when he saw the tree. It scared me to think of him being so upset over something that I didn’t even know about.

  I thought more about just what charity meant and about my father and about Gloria Cott. After a while, when I heard Grandma snoring, I quietly moved away from her across the icy sheets. There were so many heavy quilts and comforters on the bed that I could hardly make my way to the edge of it. Finally I managed to worm my way out from under the covers, and when my bare feet touched the painfully cold wooden floor, I wanted to scream.

  I tiptoed to our closet and slipped into socks and pulled a sweater on over my pajama tops. Then I sneaked into the living room and carefully tipped the tree down to the floor. I thought about taking off the decorations, but I knew I had no time to waste. I found some paper and a pencil in the writing desk, wrote a note and struggled into my boots and coat. I unlocked the front door and opened it slowly. It let out a groan like the creaking door on the opening of the “Inner Sanctum” mystery show.

  I eased the tree out onto the porch, and the frozen snow crunched under my feet. I was sure Dad would wake up. His bedroom window overlooked the porch, and he always slept with the window open a bit, even in the dead of winter. I recalled every cowboy movie I had ever seen, and tried to remember how the Indians had crept silently up on the settlers. After what seemed like an hour, I had eased the tree down off the porch steps and onto the lawn, the frozen snow making explosive cracks with every step I took.

  I had never been out alone at this hour, and I was a little frightened. It was after midnight, the dead of night for Clear River, and there wasn’t a house light on or a car in sight, only the distant sound of trains and the occasional bark of a dog. There were big dogs in the neighborhood, and they ran loose. I didn’t know if they could see in the dark the way cats could. What if they mistook me for a burglar?

  I was glad it was only a block to Gloria’s house. I slowly dragged the tree down the snowy sidewalk and across the Cott’s lawn and propped it up against their rickety porch railing. Then I pulled the note I had written out of my pocket and stuck it onto the tree. It read, “To Gloria, From Santa Claus.”

  Chapter Eight

  The next morning when I heard Grandma and Dad in the kitchen, I stayed in bed, afraid of another explosion when they found the tree gone. Grandma was so preoccupied with fixing breakfast that she hadn’t gone into the living room yet, and hadn’t noticed the tree was missing. Finally I heard Dad go into the living room. For a moment there was silence, then he went back into the kitchen.

  “What did you do with the tree?” he asked Grandma.

  “What?”

  “When did you take it down?” he asked.

  “I didn’t take it down,” she said, and she went in to see for herself. “Oh, dear! Addie must have done it. You had her so upset. I told her it made you feel bad because it reminded you of Helen. I guess I shouldn’t have done that.”

  I heard him coming toward the bedroom. He opened the door and called to me to wake up. I pretended to be asleep and finally rubbed my eyes and rolled over.

  “What did you do with that tree?” he asked.

  “I gave it away.”

  “You what?”

  “I gave it away to Gloria Cott, because they don’t have one.”

  “When?”

  “Last night, when everybody was asleep.”

  He looked at me as though I were crazy. I thought he was going to yell at me for being out alone at night, but he said nothing.

  “I didn’t wake anybody up,” I went on. “I just put it on their porch and put a note on it that said, ‘From Santa Claus’ so they wouldn’t be mad that it was charity.”

  He looked out my bedroom window, toward the Cott’s house down the block.

  “It’s not there now,” he said.

  I looked too. “I bet they got up early and found it!” I said.

  “That’s the damndest thing I ever heard of,” he said, and went back into the kitchen and closed the door.

  He told Grandma what I had done, and then he left for work. I was afraid now that he was so angry he might not even let us go to Uncle Will’s house for Christmas. Maybe Will’s tree reminded him of my mother too.

  The Christmas pageant was that night, and after supper we all raced around getting ready. I had to put on warm clothes under my angel costume and find a way of carrying my cardboard wings so they wouldn’t get bent.

  Grandma was getting all dressed up, and I had to help with her shoes. When she dressed up, she wore high-heeled shoes with straps and buckles on them. She could never see the tiny holes to buckle them, and it was always my job to get down on the floor on my knees and fasten them for her. I would try one hole, and then she would throw her leg up in the air and wiggle her ankle around to determine if that was too tight or too loose, and then put it down for further adjustments, if necessary.

  Finally we were ready and we all piled into the pickup for the quick drive to the church. On the way we passed the Cott’s house, and we could see the schoolroom tree in their tiny living room. All the kids were putting paper ornaments on it, and at the top, still wired securely on, was the star Carla Mae and I had made.

  “Sure looks nice, don’t it?” Grandma whispered to me as we passed, and I knew Dad had heard her. He didn’t say a word, and neither did I. I vowed I would never mention a tree in front of him again.

  When we got to the church, I met Carla Mae and the others backstage, and we milled around and whispered while the pageant began and we waited to make our entrances as angels and the animals in the manger scene. I could hear Billy Wild out on the stage, doing the narration, while everyone else shuffled on and off on cue.

  Someone dressed as a cow approached Carla Mae and me.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s me—Gloria,” she said, and took off her cow mask.

  “I didn’t even recognize you! That’s a really great costume!”

  “Yours too,” she said.

  “Yeah. My dad says I’m miscast as an angel, though.”

  The three of us laughed.

  “Guess what we have, Addie? A tree!” Gloria said. “Santa Claus brought it.”

  We smiled at each other, and I knew she had guessed where it came from.

  “You’re wearing your locket!” Gloria said, looking at the front of my costume.

  I quickly covered it with my hand, embarrassed. “Oh, I was just trying it on. I forgot I was wearing it!”

  She and Carla Mae giggled, and the three of us sat around whispering, waiting to go on. We took off our shoes to rub our feet, trying to keep warm in the drafty halls of the church, when Carla Mae and I got the bright idea of tying the toes of our long, heavy stockings together. We were both wearing our horrible garter belts, and we stretched our stockings at the toes until we had enough fabric to tie her left toe to my right toe and vice versa. Then we stood up and hopped around like a crazy, four-legged thing
with wings and halos.

  At just that moment, Miss Thompson came in and told us it was time to go on. We nearly panicked when we discovered that we couldn’t untie the toes of our stockings. They had pulled into knots while we were jumping around, and now the knots wouldn’t budge.

  “Well, let the cow through!” Miss Thompson said, and she motioned us to sit down on the floor. Then Carla Mae and I stuck our feet up in the air, and Miss Thompson worked frantically on the knots. She finally untied us, and only then did it occur to all of us that we simply could have unhooked our garters and removed our stockings.

  We quickly ran on stage as the stage manager let the big star of Bethlehem plunge into the scene, and we waved our cardboard wings and I made the “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings …” speech. As I moved toward Billy Wild, at the side of the stage, I suddenly realized that he was staring at the locket, and I slapped my hand over it. I managed to keep one wing waving as I finished my speech.

  I could see Grandma and Dad in the audience, and I gave them a little wave. Grandma waved back, and in the half-darkness, I thought I saw Dad smile.

  Chapter Nine

  The next afternoon after lunch, Grandma and I started our annual Christmas project—baking dozens of gingerbread men. My special job was to decorate them after they came out of the oven. We talked as we worked.

  “That was a wonderful thing you did with the tree, Addie,” she said.

  “Oh, well,” I said philosophically, “I’m too grown up for trees. Trees are for little kids, like Gloria’s brothers and sisters.”

  “Can’t be a very good Christmas at their house, poor souls, him out of work and all.”

  “She doesn’t know how to figure out the odds the way I do, so she’d never have won it,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “The only way for her to get a tree was for me to give it to her.”

  “I’m sure you made her real happy,” said Grandma. “I never got around to askin’ you—how’d Tanya Smithers like her gloves?”

  “She hated them!” I said gleefully. “I knew she would!”

  “Call that Christmas spirit?” Grandma asked disapprovingly.

  “Tanya Smithers is my worst friend in the fifth grade. I don’t want to give her something she’d like!”

  “Oughta be ashamed of yourself,” said Grandma, trying not to smile. “Who got your name?”

  “I’m not telling.”

  “Was it a boy or a girl?” she asked. “Someone you like or don’t like?”

  I shook my head silently. I wasn’t going to tell even Grandma about the horrible, embarrassing locket from Billy.

  “Did he give you a present you like or don’t like?”

  “How do you know it was a he?” I asked.

  “Was it a she?”

  “No more questions,” I said firmly. “I’m not going to talk about it.”

  Then Grandma put her hand in her apron pocket, and walked over to the table where I was working. She brought her hand out of her pocket and dangled Billy’s locket in front of me.

  I grabbed it quickly out of her hand. “You looked in my private drawer!”

  “Nobody looks in anybody else’s private drawer in this house, Addie.”

  “Oh, I know where you found it,” I said, turning crimson with embarrassment.

  “Under your pillow,” she said, nodding her head.

  “I meant to hide it this morning, but …”

  “You’ve had a lot of things on your mind,” she said, smiling. “Besides, it sure wasn’t hidden last night at the pageant. Sparkled like a star itself up there, even with you fussin’ around tryin’ to cover it up!”

  I opened my hand and looked at it again. “Isn’t it disgusting?”

  “I think it’s real pretty,” she said. “From Billy Wild?”

  “How did you guess that?” I asked, more embarrassed than ever.

  “Because I’m a smart old character!”

  “I’m never going to wear this disgusting thing again as long as I live!”

  “Why not!”

  “If I wear it again, he’ll really think I like him!”

  “Guess he likes you all right,” said Grandma.

  “Ha!” I said derisively. “How do you know?”

  “Wouldn’t give a heart locket to a person he didn’t like,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You like him a little too …”

  “I’ve told you a thousand times I despise him!” I said angrily. “I won’t even speak to him!”

  “Mmmmmmm,” said Grandma.

  “What do you mean, ‘Mmmmm’?”

  “Some people don’t speak much. Doesn’t mean they don’t feel anything.”

  I thought about that for a minute as I finished another row of gingerbread men. Finally the delicious aroma got the best of me, and I chose one to eat.

  “Doesn’t he look just like Billy Wild?” I asked Grandma, as I held the little man up in front of me.

  “Yes,” she laughed, “I guess he does a bit.”

  “Good!” I said. “I’m going to bite his head off and chew him up!”

  “Glory, Addie!” she said, laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I pity the fella you really fall for some day,” she said. “He’ll be black and blue before he realizes that’s your way of likin’. Heavens! It’s all right to let on you like people, if you do!”

  I looked at her skeptically, then picked up the gingerbread man and bit his head off.

  We had almost finished decorating all the gingerbread men when I heard Dad’s truck in the driveway. Instead of coming in through the kitchen door as he usually did, he walked slowly around to the front door.

  “Addie, open the door!” he shouted, pounding on the door.

  I couldn’t imagine what was going on, and I ran into the living room and pulled the front door open. I couldn’t see Dad at all—the whole doorway was filled with a huge Christmas tree. He pushed it inside and shoved some boxes of ornaments toward me.

  “Don’t stand there,” he said, in his usual impatient manner. “Help me.”

  I was speechless.

  “Careful, now,” he said, as I took the boxes. “Those are breakable.”

  Grandma came into the room, and stopped, staring at the tree. “Oh, James!” she said softly.

  “If we’re going to have a Christmas tree, we can buy it ourselves.”

  “Isn’t it beautiful!” said Grandma, coming over and putting her hand on my shoulder. I just stood there holding the boxes, frozen to the spot.

  Grandma took the boxes from me. “Oh, look, Addie. Decorations—silver icicles and lights!”

  Dad was setting up the tree at the end of the room, and I finally came out of my daze and looked down at the boxes I was holding.

  “Is there a star?” I asked.

  “Oh, James,” said Grandma. “You forgot to get a star.”

  “The one I made is still on the other tree,” I said.

  “Maybe you can make another one,” said Grandma.

  “I haven’t got any foil left,” I said.

  “Maybe Carla Mae has some,” Grandma suggested, “You can go over and ask her.”

  “She won’t have to do that,” said Dad quietly. “Just wait a minute.” He went through the kitchen and downstairs into the basement, and came back with a dusty box. He handed it to me.

  I looked at him for a second and then sat down on his footstool and unwrapped the box. Inside was a wonderful glittery gold star with tiny bells and shiny Christmas balls trimming the front of it.

  “It’s the niftiest star I ever saw in my whole life!” I said. “Where’d you get it, Dad?”

  “It was … put away,” he said hesitantly.

  I saw Grandma smile and go back into the kitchen then, as though she wanted to leave us alone.

  “I … I was saving it,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “Well, for our tree, I guess.”

  “It shines! Ge
e, Dad, it must’ve cost a lot of money!”

  “Your mother made it,” he said quietly, and he sat down in his chair beside me.

  “My mother made this? She must’ve been an artist!”

  “She … liked to paint and draw, the way you do.”

  “I didn’t know that! Nobody ever told me that!”

  “She made this star for your first Christmas tree.”

  “I don’t remember … I don’t remember.”

  “You were only a few months old. She made presents for you, too.”

  “What?”

  “Knitted booties and a sweater. And she made you a bib with a … a big yellow duck in the middle of it.”

  “A bib? Was I a messy eater then too?” I asked, laughing. “Didn’t my mother give me any toys?”

  “There was a thing—it was like a bunch of jingle bells suspended from a ribbon. We tied it across your crib, and when you kicked at it, the bells rang.…”

  “Wow. Do you think I look like my mother? Grandma says I do!”

  He gave me a look that seemed a little sad, and then smiled. “You’ve got the same hair … you look like her, especially when you smile.”

  “Did I smile a lot when I was a baby?”

  “Yeah, but your mother said it was indigestion. She’d put you on her shoulder and rub your back …”

  “Oh, I wish I could remember! What else did my mother do?”

  “Well, she sang to you …”

  “Is my voice like hers? When I sing?”

  “The other night, during that Christmas carol … you sounded like her.”

  “I’m a real combination, aren’t I? Because I’m going to be very tall, like you!”

  He smiled at me, and I held out the star to him.

  “Put it on the tree, Dad.”

  Instead of taking the star from me, he picked me up in his arms and held me up high so I could put the star on the tree. I placed it carefully on the top branch, and he put me down.

  “It looks terrific, Dad!”

  “It’s yours now, Addie,” he said, and I turned and put my arms around him, and he hugged me close.

  Epilogue

  We never talked to each other about what happened to us that Christmas—we still weren’t much for telling our feelings in my family—and I won’t pretend that it solved everything between my father and me. We continued to do enthusiastic battle for another twenty years. But after that, each of us knew that there was a person somewhere behind the defenses on the other side, and we never forgot it.