Read The Christmas Note for Free Online Page B

what’s in the middle of Ramona’s pile of rubble? Anger at what I just did makes me flush with heat, and I fan my shirt to get cool. I feel so stupid asking for Gretchen’s help. I didn’t need help to walk into Ramona’s apartment and kick at the garbage. I’m embarrassed and want to take it back when a knock on the door behind me makes me jump. Gretchen is on the porch, and I open the door, relieved to tell her I’m calling the whole stupid thing off. “Mom can be here in about an hour.”
    “But I was going to—”
    “Do you want me to follow you there, or do you want to ride together?”
    I never thought things would move this fast, and my heart beats double-time. “I need to go somewhere afterward,” I say, making it up as I talk. “So it’d be best if you followed me.” She looks as relieved as I feel.
    “I’ll knock when Mom gets here.”
    I close the door and wonder what I need at Ramona’s? What would I find and what would I put it in? A garbage bag? A box? Just an envelope? In the end, I leave the house with a box of garbage bags because I know where most of her stuff will go. Gretchen follows me the three miles to Ramona’s, and my brain hurts trying to figure out what to say to her when we arrive.
    The apartment house is a three-story, ugly light-brick building with shabby trees and cracked sidewalks. I can tell that Gretchen is sizing it up when she gets out of her car. This pit is as unkempt as Ramona always was. She follows me to the office door, and I realize for the first time that finding someone here on Sunday will be next to impossible. I ring the buzzer and hold my breath, feeling uncomfortable with this stranger who’s about to schlep through Ramona’s junk. “Maybe no one’s here on Sunday,” Gretchen says. I ring the buzzer again and wait, staring at the cheap wood grain on the door.
    A man with a balding head and potbelly walks down the stairs and faces us, smoke from his cigarette filling the small vestibule. He looks at me while squinting in the smoke. “You looking for me?”
    “My mother was Ramona” is all I say.
    He turns to go back up the stairs. “I wondered if you’d come.”
    We follow him, and our shoes squeak on the shoddy linoleum steps. If it wasn’t for tacky Christmas wreaths hung on two apartment doors, you’d have no idea Christmas was just weeks away by visiting this place. The bald man sticks his key in the door and pushes it open, leaving us without another word. I run my hand along the inside wall, looking for the light switch, and a bulb flickers on the ceiling of the entry. The light illuminates the filthy floor, and I smell the pent-up dirt and dust inside the apartment. “I’ll go find other lights,” I say, leading Gretchen inside. My shoes stick to the linoleum as I walk to the window and pull open the curtains. I turn to look at the place and feel something heavy on my chest, making my breath short. Papers, cans, liquor bottles, rotten food, fast-food wrappers, and cereal boxes—garbage is everywhere. I hold my hand under my nose. “I’m sorry I asked you to do this.”
    Gretchen’s already rummaging through cabinets in the kitchen. “We just need some trash bags,” she says.
    “I brought some,” I say, walking to the door. “I forgot them in the car.”
    “I’ll get them,” she says, holding her hand out for my keys. I reach into my coat pocket and pull them out.
    Her eyes are big and soft. “This won’t take long.”
    I hear her running down the stairs, and I feel nauseated. I crack open a window and a blast of cold air hits me in the face. I stick my head into the small bedroom and look at the mattress and box springs on the floor and wonder if that’s where Ramona died or if it was over there on the sofa or just in front of the sofa on the filthy throw rug? I step through the garbage in the bedroom and peer into the closet—nothing in here but more garbage and a few pants and shirts on the floor. I imagine some people