Yet, I persist. In spite of the solemnity of the season I have come to enjoy my celebration which begins, as I have said, with the altar of dead and so forth until the great night arrives when I turn off all my lights and—dressed as myself all those years ago—sneak away from streets teeming with Strangos of all shapes and sizes; generations of Strangos with no connection to Laurel or her life to stand beneath our tree where I beg her to forgive me, jump when a leaf falls (briefly seeing too much meaning in it) and look at my hands. So large, though once they were so small. I shiver in the cold. Walk home alone, shoes and socks dampened by frost.
The next morning I pack photographs, dress, headband, purse and the rest. I toss out the caramel apple sticks and pumpkin tea wrappers. I stand at the closed window noting how the tree limbs scratch the gray sky, the fallen leaves decomposed of color. November is the worst month, that brutal time after they found her body and my own mother began the wandering which defined her final years. She paced at all hours; locking doors, sprinkling sugar on the floor (“It will mark his footprints,” she said) and cut up tablecloths which she insisted made perfect fabric for new dresses, though I never saw any sewn. Perhaps I outgrew them in that time between the charge and my acquittal. My father found solace in fantasies of revenge, which he described in our new ritual of bedtime stories. “First, I’ll tear off his fingernails,” he said and so forth, seeding my sleep with nightmares from which I often woke to find my brother weeping in a dark corner.
I was arrested in December so it would not be unreasonable to assume the month ruined for me but I have recovered the season; enlivened by the tradition of Christmas ghosts. Laurel loved the holiday; it made sense she would use the occasion to make a grand entrance. In spite of what that movie inferred she never would have become zombified with an appetite for blood; even dead she would remain a life force. I know she wasn’t always sweet, or even good but she could make me laugh when no one else did. She told Petal Mearlot and Tina Schubert to stop throwing stones at me, and the day after Christmas—that last year—she pretended to be impressed by my meager haul then brought me to her house (it smelled of peppermint and evergreen) where she dumped the contents of a giant stocking on her bed, dividing it between us because, she said, Santa meant for me to have an equal share. “Were just so alike. Sometimes he gets us confused.”
So it came to be that I made the error of inviting the Strangos I found standing beneath the streetlamp into my house. They looked cold and forlorn and, I admit, I was curious. Why would they choose to be Strangos when they could be daughters; loved and loving on early Christmas morn?
“Why are you here?” I asked, as I hung their wet coats in the downstairs shower where they dropped chips of ice on the linoleum.
“We came to see Laurel’s tree. Did you cut it down?” they asked. “Did you save the wood? ’Cause it’s haunted.”
“Here.” I offered the blue willow cup and saucer my mother once loved, trembling with excitement at my first Christmas guests, ever. “Do you take lemon, cream, or sugar?”
“Oh, I don’t drink tea,” said the first Strango, frowning into the cup.
“Me neither,” said the other. “What else you got?”
They reminded me of Laurel. She would have sounded bossy, just like them. It put a smile on my face, it really did.
“I have Coke and milk. There might be juice.”
“What about eggnog?”
I shook my head, no. “My mother said it is dangerous because of the eggs.”
“There are no eggs in eggnog,” said Strango One, frowning into her cup.
“What about cocoa?” asked Strango Two. “But it must have whipped cream. I hate marshmallows.”
“Laurel hates marshmallows too,” I blurted.
“We know,” the Strangos said in unison.
An uncomfortable silence settled over us. I wondered how they knew this about her. Was it buried somewhere in the movie; in the early scene when we met in kindergarten, perhaps? Or maybe noted in the companion volume, which I never purchased though I did page through it once, in the library, hunkered between shelves like a voyeur, my worn copy of Rilke temporarily abandoned?
“What’s it like?” Strango One asked. “To live in her house?”
“Whose house?”
“The murderer.”
I knew how Christmas was supposed to be and, while I had never entertained visitors, I had an idea how they were supposed to behave. I decided to rise above my guest’s poor manners. “Would you like toast? I can cut it in the shape of a star, or a boot.
The Strangos, sitting side-by-side on the couch in their matching dresses with knocked knees and wet socks, looked at each other, wide-eyed then clapped their hands; three quick claps.
“Goody,” said one.
“Yes, please,” said the other. “With cinnamon.”
Laurel liked cinnamon too. It made me sad to remember, though it did make the toast glitter pleasantly. I wished I had cocoa, but the Strangos didn’t seem to mind the Coke and one of them even commented favorably on the combination, saying she planned to make it a tradition. I’m not sure if she was serious. It is very difficult for me to differentiate between mockery and affection.
After the Strangos finished their snack we sat and stared at each other. I studied them closely for clues on how to proceed but when Strango One began picking her dress with long fingernails as though harvesting fleas, I began to fear my little party was in trouble. “Would you like to play charades?”
“How about hide-and-seek?” Strango One replied.
Personally, I never liked the game and didn’t see what it had to do with the holiday but in the spirit of being a good hostess, I agreed.
“You hide,” Strango One said.
I thought it unkind, to send me off alone while they counted to a thousand and five, yet they were guests and, as such, should be graciously accommodated. How strange it was, then, to be alone again in this new fashion; knowing there were those nearby who shared companionship while I had none. Even though they were Strangos, it made me lonely in a way I hadn’t been for a long time. Hearing their voices count together brought to mind the sound of Laurel and me reciting “The Night Before Christmas,” which we learned in its entirety in second grade. The memory only made me want to create more distance between me and the Strangos. I crept up the stairs; careful to skip the third from the top. The sound of their counting became a murmur that reminded me of waking in my bedroom when I was young, listening to the sounds my parents made.
What had I been thinking? Why had I invited Strangos into my house?
Before then it had never occurred to me to enter the forbidden attic, but it offered a perfect hiding place; its narrow door blended neatly with the paneled wood and the small hole that once housed a doorknob appeared to be a whorl. It was off limits when I was a child, the occasional source of strange noises my father attributed to ghosts, though I had seen him take my brother up there and knew the moans belonged to him. I stood at the bottom of the jagged staircase, looking up the dark portal with the odd feeling of assessing a giant jigsaw piece, memorizing it before pulling the door shut and slowly walking up the stairs, imagining all sorts of frightening things like mice and bats, spiders, and the like.
The attic was surprisingly small and, once I adjusted, cozy in a way. As a child I often “played mole,” rolling up in a blanket and hiding in my bedroom closet; it made sense that I enjoyed the confined space with its low slanted ceiling jutted at odd angles over inviting corners. There wasn’t much up there—an old bed, broken lamps, boxes filled with tools—but it was surprisingly warm. I sat, leaning against the wall and felt something like happiness, or what I remembered of it. “See Dad,” I whispered. “I always knew it was you,” which led to tears that surprised me with their sudden, inexplicable arrival.