The drive to Hope Cemetery took ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Louise spun the radio dial in search of a station that played anything other than Christmas music. She declared she was thoroughly sick of listening to “every darn version of ‘White Christmas’ ever made.” There are actually over 500 recorded versions of that classic, so clearly she was exaggerating. Nevertheless, WJOY insisted on playing a different version of it every third song. In truth, Louise was exhausted after spending hours maintaining the cheery face she’d slapped on that morning along with Maybeline Foundation #110, Yardley’s Pink Whip blush, and Coty’s Pure Plum lipstick.

Sitting behind her, I cradled the arrangement of spindly pine needles, fragrant evergreens, peppermint poinsettias, tiny spruce pinecones, and blood red holly berries. I straightened the gold bow affixed to the plastic Santa sleigh being pulled by eight tiny reindeer. The bouquet was cheery, though would be meager in comparison to those gracing Hope’s neighboring headstones.

When the florist wrote up the order, Louise told him, “We’ll take the large one with the crèche,” and opened her purse.

“Thank you, no,” I said and pulled out my wallet. “The small one with Santa.”

Mr. Emslie covered my gloved hand with his wrinkled one. “It’s Christmas, Honey. Let Mom treat.”

I shook my head and counted out fifteen one dollar bills.

“Fine,” Louise said and snapped her purse shut. It was one of a handful of times she’d acknowledged me lately. I figured her offer was less a desire to speak to me than a way to impress Mr. Emslie who’d been our family’s florist for at least two generations.

Crunched against me, Idina fluffed Barbie’s ponytail with a tiny hairbrush; already blonde strands were tangled in pink spikes. On my sister’s other side, Antonio leaned against the frosty window, pouting because he couldn’t visit Melody. Francis had pronounced the icy roads too dangerous for a teen driver. Marie, the youngest of us, sat in the front because she fit between Francis and Louise without being squashed. There was dead silence from the way-back where my youngest brothers stretched out, likely daydreaming about unwrapped presents stacked beneath our Christmas tree. Or conjuring another prank on poor Mr. Graziano.

We’d left festivities early for a change. My grandmother, who suffered from MS, had had a relapse. Rose phoned our house at 7:00 a.m. to say the doctor wanted to admit Grandma to hospital. In broken English my grandmother asked Dr. P if he planned to put on an apron and prepare Christmas dinner. Would he cook the turkey? Finish the polpettes? Reheat the sugo—had Rose taken it out of the freezer? Was Doc planning to bake her cornetto? Decorate four dozen bocconotti? Doc understood most of what she rattled off, due to her hand gestures and the fact that after decades treating our family’s matriarch, he’d picked up a couple dozen Italian expressions, including those we kids were’t allowed to repeat.

“I understand, mio cara, but you must go.” He looked to my grandfather for support. “Non aspettare.”

“She’s the boss,” Grandpa said and left the room. He’d long accepted his place as second in command of their world. After much negotiation, Grandma agreed to let Rose and Louise, along with the aunts, prepare the meal. We’d eat at noon—two hours ahead of schedule—and open gifts immediately after. Under those conditions, Grandma declared that at 4:00 she’d be at the hospital waiting for Doc P.

Francis’s brothers arrived by 9 so the wives could help with cooking. By then, a thirty-five pound turkey roasted in the smaller of Grandma’s ovens. The aunts shaped the polpettes as Louise and Rose sat at the everyday table to glaze bocconotti with glasse reale. I decorated a few with swirls of fondente then begged off, claiming a headache and went upstairs to rest in Grandma’s old bedroom.

Hours later we gathered in the parlor. Grandpa snuffed out his cigar in consideration of the kids and tossed the racetrack form he’d been studying on to the radiator next to his centuries old recliner. He got the first gift: box seats to next year’s Pimlico’s running of the Preakness. Held in Baltimore, it’d give my grandparents a reason to visit—or snub—their families of origin. The kids got toys which they immediately fought over. I got a copy of Joan Didion's SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM and a cashmere sweater. Grandpa’s gout was acting up so he couldn’t drive. Thus, at 3:30 the aunts brought my grandmother to the hospital where they’d spend the evening complaining about their various ills.

Francis and Louise packed their family into the Woody—which wasn’t officially a Woody because those were discontinued in the 1950s, but Francis always called our station wagon The Woody, as in, “Okay, kids. Time to pile into The Woody.” We drove down Washington Street in a near white-out, over to Elm, Sumner, then Maple. Roads were slippery and Francis clenched his teeth and the steering wheel as we slid on to Maple. The snowplows hadn’t kept up and if it wasn’t Christmas break, school kids would have had a snow day—the third one that year. Francis drove unusually slow—whether to be careful or put off arrival as long as possible. It was dusk by the time we veered off Maple where houses that lined the snow-packed streets had turned on their Christmas lights.

Francis wove the tan Ford with faux wood side panels through Hope and stopped at the bottom of the hill upon which her grave sat. He shifted the car into park, then looked at me in the rear view. “Snow’s too deep,” he said, “Let your brother take the flowers up.”

I ignored him and got out of the car to look up at the granite slab buried in three-foot-deep snow. The Parks’ family headstone was modest by Hope Cemetery standards. A five by three-foot rectangle with rounded corners and a trail of lilies of the valley formed a border around the name PARKS which was etched into polished stone. Louise came to my side.

“I don’t know where she— where it— is,” I murmured.

She slid an arm around me and I flinched. “Down from the R.” Louise squinted up the hill then tapped her lip. “No. No.” She pointed. “There. In between A and R. They haven’t placed the marker but you should see a brick place holder.”

I took a step, then Louise tightened her grip. She pointed to my shoes. To say they were impractical for a Vermont winter is a gross understatement: thin fabric, sling back, kitten heels over tights which did little to protect my feet.

“You can not walk up there in those,” she said in the whispery voice I’d little heard in two months.

“I’m fine.” I pressed the too small bundle of greenery to my chest.

“You’ll catch your death of cold,” she said and squeezed tighter.

Like it matters, I thought to myself, and shook off her grip to step forward.

“Let me do it, Honey. Please.” Honey. I tried to not react but felt disarmed. I turned to see tiny white flakes falling on to Louise’s pale eyes. They were moist and she looked sad. I’d presumed she was everything but: angry, disappointed, ashamed. Ashamed. Ashamed that the daughter she’d raised, a golden child with limitless potential, a child who always did things perfectly was so imperfect. From the way Louise behaved toward me, looked at me, spoke to me—or, rather, didn’t speak to me--I could sense she hated me. Both of them—Francis and Louise—hated me, the child to whom they’d given so much. The child everyone saw as far too smart to make a mistake. The perfect child who made such a ghastly mistake that it cost Francis and Louise their first grandchild. I didn’t blame them; afterall, I hated myself. To bear their hatred, I erected an iron shield. No longer “Mom” and “Dad,” they were Louise and Francis. Strangers whose opinion of me was of no consequence.

Sensing my weakness, Louise took the arrangement and began the climb up the hill. Her feet sunk into the snowbank and covered the black fur-lined boots that reached just inches above her ankles. She made tracks in the shimmering white that led to and rounded the first row of headstones. Coming down faster, snowflakes fashioned a lace doily over her perfectly coiffed hair. She passed in between ROSSI and BUTURRA and stopped just below the “K” in PARKS. She bent to brush away snow and I saw she’d forgotten her gloves. She stretched to clear a spot just below the A in PARKS. She straightened and turned, raising her voice so I could hear over the howling wind. “I think she’s here.” I wasn’t certain it was the right spot, but looking at her bare hands and legs, I nodded.

With that, she brushed away more snow and placed the arrangement. She turned and gave me a “is that okay?” look. I nodded again so she navigated her way back down the hill, careful to step in the footsteps she’d made on the climb up. As I watched Louise wade through snow, I pictured the tiny child who, instead of spending her second Christmas ripping open presents, lay in a white box on a hill beneath layers of dirt and mounds of snow. It hit me that the cotton dress and thin yellow sweater I dressed her in two and a half months earlier was no protection against sub-zero weather. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself. Just one more bad decision, I thought, made in a too long series of bad decisions. I hugged myself again.

When Mom joined me at the bottom of the hill it was dark. I didn’t resist when she put an arm around my waist and led me back to the car. As I opened the door, I took a last look up the hill to see that Santa and his eight tiny reindeer were blanketed in snow.

Leave a comment