come see me for our day, Darla.”
We were both blubbering, the line filled with gibberish and nonsense as we sobbed and apologized to each other.
And just as I was about to turn into a puddle of goo and beg my mama to sing me Christmas songs like she did when I was little, Trevor answered a buzz in his back pocket, looked at the glowing screen, and said:
“We need to go see Liam and Sam. ”
Trevor
I felt bad. I did. Christmas Eve was supposed to be about last-minute shopping and wrapping presents and looking at the glow of the lights around the tree the night before you went to bed and woke up to the excitement of Christmas morning.
If I still lived at home, I’d spend the evening with Rick, Mom and Dad as Rick played every Christmas carol ever written on the piano, including his own arrangements of some pretty awesome Tran-Siberian Orchestra compositions. Rick loved Christmas with a fierce emotionality that had always made me smile, even as a little kid, because he was so hard to read most of the time.
Christmas gave him joy. My brother doesn’t get to experience much joy in his daily life, so the indulgence was a gift. Mom and Dad didn’t need actual presents every season. They just needed a glimpse into my profoundly autistic brother’s heart, and that’s what the holiday gave them.
I never appreciated it when I was younger.
Now? Now I could, with a dawning realization that my childhood had been filled with presents and candy and the tacit expectation that big-ticket items would come my way, from X-Boxes to iPads, while so many other kids got so much less.
Growing up in Sudborough meant that Christmas brought the season of community ser vic e with it. Coat collections for the needy, canned food drives, and the suburban version of noblesse oblige that meant doing these good deeds somehow neutralized the excess of our individual homes.
December 27.
Ouch.
Darla had been one of the kids we were collecting for .
Reeling from that, I took a deep breath, trying to know what the hell to say to her as she cried over missing her mom in Ohio, but then my phone buzzed.
It was Sam.
Why is Joe’s ass all over Instagram? he asked.
It’s a long story , I typed back.
Joe’s butt has made it onto Facebook , he replied, with a link.
Oh, shit.
And Liam’s here , he added.
What he didn’t need to say was, Come give us our pay , but I knew that was implied. Sam and Amy were leaving right away for some trip her mom insisted on taking, and Liam and Charlotte were going to Maine to see her mom. They were broke and needed the tips we’d earned.
Wait ’ til they heard the whole story.
“ We need to go see Liam and Sam,” I said. “They’re at Sam and Amy’s new apartment in Central Square.” After years of couch surfing, then renting a room from me, Sam had moved out. He and Amy shared a studio in Cambridge that was the size of my thumbprint. It was smaller than Amy’s old corner apartment on the Fenway, which Liam still had.
“Central Square?” Joe groaned.
I looked at our location on my GPS. We’d been walking, inadvertently, toward it. “We’re not that far. Walk, cab, Uber?”
“Walk.” Darla decided, her voice shaky.
By the time we arrived at Sam and Amy’s tiny little place, we’d counted seventeen homeless people carrying the candy-cane filled sleeping bags, which warmed my heart. That Sudborough kid who had been forced to do good had—with prodding from Darla—become an adult who just did good .
Maybe there was a point to all that guilt-driven volunteerism after all. My jaded, bored suburban heart loosened a little.
Loosened a lot when I thought about Darla’s childhood.
“’ S cooze me, Ma’am, you got any change?” A woman about Darla’s height, wearing mom jeans, unlaced shoes two sizes too small, about six layers of hoodies and a gap-toothed smile, clasped her hands in front of her like a choir director. She was nervous and had scabs all over her face, her
We were both blubbering, the line filled with gibberish and nonsense as we sobbed and apologized to each other.
And just as I was about to turn into a puddle of goo and beg my mama to sing me Christmas songs like she did when I was little, Trevor answered a buzz in his back pocket, looked at the glowing screen, and said:
“We need to go see Liam and Sam. ”
Trevor
I felt bad. I did. Christmas Eve was supposed to be about last-minute shopping and wrapping presents and looking at the glow of the lights around the tree the night before you went to bed and woke up to the excitement of Christmas morning.
If I still lived at home, I’d spend the evening with Rick, Mom and Dad as Rick played every Christmas carol ever written on the piano, including his own arrangements of some pretty awesome Tran-Siberian Orchestra compositions. Rick loved Christmas with a fierce emotionality that had always made me smile, even as a little kid, because he was so hard to read most of the time.
Christmas gave him joy. My brother doesn’t get to experience much joy in his daily life, so the indulgence was a gift. Mom and Dad didn’t need actual presents every season. They just needed a glimpse into my profoundly autistic brother’s heart, and that’s what the holiday gave them.
I never appreciated it when I was younger.
Now? Now I could, with a dawning realization that my childhood had been filled with presents and candy and the tacit expectation that big-ticket items would come my way, from X-Boxes to iPads, while so many other kids got so much less.
Growing up in Sudborough meant that Christmas brought the season of community ser vic e with it. Coat collections for the needy, canned food drives, and the suburban version of noblesse oblige that meant doing these good deeds somehow neutralized the excess of our individual homes.
December 27.
Ouch.
Darla had been one of the kids we were collecting for .
Reeling from that, I took a deep breath, trying to know what the hell to say to her as she cried over missing her mom in Ohio, but then my phone buzzed.
It was Sam.
Why is Joe’s ass all over Instagram? he asked.
It’s a long story , I typed back.
Joe’s butt has made it onto Facebook , he replied, with a link.
Oh, shit.
And Liam’s here , he added.
What he didn’t need to say was, Come give us our pay , but I knew that was implied. Sam and Amy were leaving right away for some trip her mom insisted on taking, and Liam and Charlotte were going to Maine to see her mom. They were broke and needed the tips we’d earned.
Wait ’ til they heard the whole story.
“ We need to go see Liam and Sam,” I said. “They’re at Sam and Amy’s new apartment in Central Square.” After years of couch surfing, then renting a room from me, Sam had moved out. He and Amy shared a studio in Cambridge that was the size of my thumbprint. It was smaller than Amy’s old corner apartment on the Fenway, which Liam still had.
“Central Square?” Joe groaned.
I looked at our location on my GPS. We’d been walking, inadvertently, toward it. “We’re not that far. Walk, cab, Uber?”
“Walk.” Darla decided, her voice shaky.
By the time we arrived at Sam and Amy’s tiny little place, we’d counted seventeen homeless people carrying the candy-cane filled sleeping bags, which warmed my heart. That Sudborough kid who had been forced to do good had—with prodding from Darla—become an adult who just did good .
Maybe there was a point to all that guilt-driven volunteerism after all. My jaded, bored suburban heart loosened a little.
Loosened a lot when I thought about Darla’s childhood.
“’ S cooze me, Ma’am, you got any change?” A woman about Darla’s height, wearing mom jeans, unlaced shoes two sizes too small, about six layers of hoodies and a gap-toothed smile, clasped her hands in front of her like a choir director. She was nervous and had scabs all over her face, her
Similar Books
