Page 106 of The Treasure House

“No, the smell is how you know it’s real and not fake.”

“They have fragrance sprays for that now.”

Jake looked disgruntled.

Flo threw him a bone. “Okay, we can take this one, but can I have a try with the ax?”

“I didn’t bring an ax. I brought a reciprocating saw.” He held up the power tool. “And no, you can’t have a try with it.”

Flo clamped her hands over her ears and complained that a power tool didn’t seem very Christmassy. But she was just being Flo. And Jake seemed to enjoy bickering with her. They kept it up the whole walk home, as we carried the tree awkwardly between us. The sharp resin fragrance of the cut tree was like being drenched in Christmas. It gave me a giddy feeling.

Tina had loved Christmas but could never afford a tree. She bought a little tinsel one from a dollar store one year but lost it when we moved. Another year she broke a branch off a street tree, stuck it in an empty bottle, and strung cheap battery-operated lights on it. They looked like little colored cobwebs, and I’d loved it. But I’d also stared enviously at the trees in the front windows of people’s houses, watching the lights twinkle. One time Tina was heading out to work for the night and caught me standing on our stoop, staring in the front window of Mrs. Trezona’s, where a plastic tree draped in fat, sinewy ropes of tinsel blinked with a whole starfield of lights.

“You like that tree?” my mother had said, joining me on the stoop. Something about carrying the perfect Christmas tree home through the snow with my kid, the air perfumed with balsam fir, made the memory so vivid I felt like I’d stepped back in time.

“It’s okay,” I told Tina, out there on the front stoop in the cold. I didn’t want my mom to feel bad that we didn’t have a Christmas tree.

“I can beat that tree,” she told me, grabbing my hand. “Come on.” Tina dragged me downtown, walking so fast I had to trot to keep up. She was in her work clothes, which consisted of a pair of very short denim cut-offs and tall boots. She had a fuzzy little coat on, but she must have been freezing—I could see the skin of her legs turning blue. The sound of her teeth chattering clashed with jewelry jangling as we walked.

“There. How’s that for a Christmas tree?” she said as we rounded a corner.

I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my whole life. The tree that dominated the square in the city was as tall as a small building and it blazed with light, the flashing golden bulbs cascading from top to bottom. It was topped by a shining star and, as I looked at it, I could have very well believed in magic. Tina smiled at my awe, and then she bought me a hot dog and we sat on a low wall in front of one of the city skyscrapers, watching the Christmas tree lights flash in the raw winter evening.

“You good to catch a bus home by yourself?” Tina asked, eventually standing. “I’ve got to earn us some money or we won’t be eating anything this Christmas.” She saw me to the right bus and watched me get on. I cleared the fog off the window so I could wave to her as the bus pulled away, but she was already walking off. It had started to snow lightly, in thin sleety pellets, and she had her hands in her pockets and her head down. Behind her the Christmas tree blazed and twinkled, but she wasn’t looking at it anymore. Or at me.

“Mom, lift your end up, you’re dropping it.” The sound of Flo’s voice broke me out of memory and brought me back to the chilly woods. I obeyed, lifting the tip of the tree higher. Flo and I always had a tree—the smallest one available at the lot near our apartment—and every year as we put it up, I thought of that tree in Pittsburgh that Tina had taken me to. This was the first year we would have a premium tree, and it was fresh-cut from our own land.

The tree seemed a lot bigger once we got it inside. I’d bought a stand from Jake’s hardware store, and he screwed the tree into place in the parlor, by the reglazed front windows. The parlor looked like a different room. I’d worked my ass off to get it cleared in time for Christmas, finding homes for everything I could through online platforms, notices in the local papers, and calls to antique stores and vintage dealers. I only kept the things I loved: a couple of beautiful old soft sofas, and the wing-backed armchairs by the fire. The apple blossom Tiffany lamp took pride of place on a walnut side table and made my heart sing every time I turned it on.

We tethered Hazel to an armchair so she wouldn’t go hunting the cats and Jake and I sat untangling Christmas lights while Flo fished through the record collection she’d kept, looking for Christmas music. She had the vintage record player set up on the floor, and winter sun flooded through my new windows, pooling around her on the floorboards. By the time we’d run through Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and Dean Martin, we had a tree that made my heart turn somersaults of happiness. Star fields of golden light flickered in the boughs, and the vintage glass baubles caught the light in their colored shells, spangling merrily. Our kitschy little angel perched on top of the tree, her crooked halo rakish.

“My mother bought that,” Jake said, as he watched me fiddle with her, so she’d stand up straight. “At a flea market.”

I wanted desperately to hear more about his mother—I still didn’t even know her name—but I didn’t want to spook him. He hadn’t spoken about her much since the night of the storm. Luckily, I had Flo there to pepper him with questions for me.

“What’s a flea market?”

The problem was Flo didn’t always ask the right questions.

“It’s a market where people sell secondhand stuff.”

“She needed more stuff?”

I tensed, but Jake laughed. “No, she did not need more stuff.” He shrugged. “She has a kind of OCD. From before the dementia, I mean. She compulsively collects and buys and hoards. Things make her feel better; she likes to be surrounded by her stuff.” He sighed. “It’s hard for her in the home. We tried to pack her room with as much stuff as we could, but it’s not the same. And the home won’t let her have that much anyway, because they have to keep the room clean obviously.”

“She actually lived here, even when it got so full you couldn’t get in the rooms?” Flo asked. She was sitting cross-legged by the fire, playing with Hazel, who’d rolled over for a belly scratch.

“She did.” Jake sat down heavily on one of the sofas. He looked exhausted by the topic. “She kept mostly to the big bedroom, though, in the last couple of years. That was the only room I managed to keep clear for her.”

“That must have been hard,” I said softly.

He met my gaze and I saw a complicated shimmer of pain in his sea-glass eyes. “It was.” His voice was thick with emotion. “It was really hard.”

“How come you didn’t just get rid of all the stuff?” Flo asked, curious.

Jake let out a sigh that made him sound a million years old. “I wish it was that simple, kid.”

“Why isn’t it that simple?”