Scraape
The morning dawned as grey, cold, and blustery as the day before. And the day before that, and the day before that...It didn't feel different from any other day. Christmas magic was nothing but a racket.
Christine rolled onto her back and stared up at the bare, white ceiling, matching her bare, white walls. She'd been meaning to paint, had picked out and purchased two gallons of a soft, frosty blue for the bedroom, but had lost enthusiasm for the task as the days stretched on. When she was a child, she would stare up at the textured stucco ceiling of her bedroom and search for hidden shapes, as though she were outside looking at clouds. It seemed appropriate, she thought, that the sterile white walls and ceiling were bare now...as empty and barren and boring as her life.
Three years ago, if someone would have told Christine Daaé that she'd be unemployed, divorced, and living on her own in the small house she'd inherited when her last living relative died, she'd have laughed in their face. Things like that happened to other people. Christine had a handsome husband from a good family, a job she adored, and a father who doted on her.
Then.
Another forty eight hours and it would be all over, she reminded herself.
According to Cosmo, she'd then have to contend with the indignity of having no one to kiss on New Year's Eve, but somehow that seemed less depressing than thinking about what she would do once the Hallmark Channel stopped playing an endless loop of sappy, Christmas-themed romances. The station's usual fare just didn't have the same panache as the holiday movies, the same sense of gut-twisting nostalgia. She wasn't sure why she was torturing herself every day watching them, when she spent more time yelling at the screen over the far-fetched plotlines and how many of them starred that girl from Full House, but she couldn't resist. Perhaps, she thought, if she watched enough romantic stories of Christmas miracles, one would find her.
She snorted in disgust with herself. Fat fucking chance of that.
Scraape
She would not be completely alone, she reminded herself. Meg was coming by to have dinner that evening, before making the drive to her fiance's family home on Christmas Day. She really needed to get up and start the bird, if she wanted it to be done by the time Meg arrived for dinner.
Scraape
Christine huffed in aggravation. She'd been listening to the obnoxious sound of someone shoveling out their driveway for the last forty minutes, and it was barely eight o'clock. Don't they know some people might want to sleep in on Christmas Eve?! It didn't matter that she slept in every day, she reminded herself, this was rude. Throwing back the covers, she jammed her feet into the slippers on the side of her bed and stomped to the window, throwing open one side of the curtains. Sure enough, her neighbor was down there, scraping his driveway down to the bare concrete.
Scraape
"He's lucky I don't shove that shovel right up his holly jolly ass," she mumbled to no one in particular, not that there was anyone there to hear. Christine let the curtain fall shut with annoyance. She didn't want to think about her neighbor today, or about the way her stomach bunched in nerves whenever she was forced to interact with him, or the small collection of far-too thoughtful gifts she'd recently acquired…
Turning away, she pulled her t-shirt over her head. She would actually do her hair today, Christine decided. It was the least she could do on Christmas, to not look like a hobo in the face of Meg's glossy dark perfection. She would tame her unruly rat's nest of curls, evicting anything with a tail, and maybe even put on some makeup. New year, new me, she thought, kicking off her panties.
Scraaape
She whirled back to window in irritation. That had sounded obnoxiously close. Pulling back the curtain again, Christine glared down to see what exactly he was up to. Sure enough, her neighbor, Erik, was now shoveling a neat row on the near side of his driveway, closest to her house. The movement of the curtain must have caught in his peripheral vision, for just as Christine's forehead alighted on the frosty glass, he looked up. She realized that her bare nipples were grazing the white sheers, remembering belatedly that she'd stripped out of her nightclothes and stood naked before the window, and she jumped back with a strangled little yelp.
He hadn't seen, there's no way he could see through the sheers. Right?
Crouching, she lifted the edge of the curtain, just enough to peek around. He wasn't staring up, agape at her window, and she sighed in relief. After yesterday, she wasn't sure if she could take anymore embarrassing moments in front of this man. Hesitating, Christine peered around the curtain again. Erik hadn't resumed his work, but was standing still as a statue, staring straight ahead, gripping the handle of his snow shovel.
Deciding his attention must have been captured by some mittens-wearing squirrel, or a majestic stag bearing boughs of holly in its ludicrous, 'gifts of the season'-style antlers, she left the bedroom to start the arduous task of de-rat's nest-ing her tangle of hair.
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The cheerful holiday note had been slipped through the handle of every house's front door just before Thanksgiving.
Tis the Season, neighbors!
Some of you who have lived here awhile might recall a tradition one of our residents did every year-Gifts of the Season to your neighbor. I'm sad to say that sweet lady is no longer with us, but I thought it might be fun to resurrect the tradition in her honor, and as a way to get to know some of the new faces we have on our little corner of heaven!
Participation is not mandatory, of course, and to keep the expense down, I thought everyone could focus on their neighbors to the left. This way, the holiday cheer will flow around the circle!
As a tribute to Mamma V, I'm hoping everyone might include her famous fruitcake!
Happy Holidays, neighbors!
Christine had snorted in disgust when she'd read the note. She had a feeling the author was that PTA busybody from the middle of the cul-de-sac. That was her family fruitcake recipe this stranger was referring to, and although she wasn't terribly interested in making the labor-intensive dessert, she didn't like the idea of it being communal property. What's next? she thought. Parking on my lawn "in memory of Mamma V"?
Christine had moved into her great aunt's house at the beginning of August with a laundry list of renovations and upgrades she had wanted to make on the little three bedroom. She'd spent the remainder of the month doing little more than working on her tan and exhausting the Beach Reads shelf at the local Half-Price Books during the day, and yelling at International House Hunters on HGTV by night.
By October she'd abandoned the pretense of getting dressed every morning, and her closet full of stylish, professional clothes was abandoned in favor of what she considered her "daytime" pajamas. Leggings and yoga pants with tank tops and t-shirts and bulky cardigans when she felt chilly became the norm, and she wasn't sure if she'd ever be able to force her feet into a pair of heels ever again, if she ever got a job and rejoined the land of the living.
Her marriage had been the first thing to slip.
She and Raoul had been childhood playmates who reconnected when they were both at university. Despite the fact that her new mother-in-law didn't seem to like her much, and despite the fact that their guest list had twice the amount of country club strangers than any of her friends from the music conservatory, their wedding had been like something out of a fairytale. It hadn't mattered that they didn't have much in common, or had different priorities...or at least Christine had thought at the time.
Daddy had gotten sick the following year, and Christine spent so much time taking care of him-first spending countless hours at the hospital, then caring for him at home once he'd been released, and finally when he'd been admitted into hospice-that she hadn't noticed her husband had all but disappeared from her life. When Raoul had started working late nights at the office, she hadn't thought anything of it, as busy as she was changing bedsheets and reading at her father's side. She buried her father the first week of November, and Raoul had left two weeks before Christmas.
Afterwards, the entire world seemed to be stuck underwater, and Christine moved through the rippling waves sluggishly, in slow motion, barely registering anything around her. Her principal and co-workers were endlessly sympathetic, and she drifted through the rest of the school year. When the private corporation who had opened the arts-focused charter school decided their little experiment wasn't enough of a money maker, she and her co-workers were given their walking papers before classes wrapped up in May.
Her great aunt, Mamma V, had past away somewhere in the blur between Christmas and Memorial Day, leaving her small house to Christine's dead father, and thus to her.
When the obnoxiously cheerful holiday note was handed out around the street, Christine was shocked to realize it had already been nearly four months since she'd moved in, shocked even further when the calendar on her phone told her it was December first. She'd already felt enough like a Grinch when her entire street had wasted no time stringing up colored lights all over their houses, leaving her to be the odd man out.
At first, her quiet neighbor's house was also dark, as well as the house of college students next to him, making her feel a tiny bit better...then overnight the college students had put up a bunch of obnoxious holiday blow-ups in their yard, and a tasteful line of white twinkle lights had appeared outlining her neighbor's roof. Christine felt colossally betrayed.
She had previously only spoken to the man next door a handful of times, which suited her just fine, and didn't seem to bother him much either. Christine had pegged him as the strong, silent type, although she wondered how much of the pointed silence was a result of their disastrous first meeting.
There had been a cat, a lovely cat coming up to her back door the first few weeks after she'd moved in. The green-eyed visitor would mewl pitifully and paw at the glass, turning her to putty in its sharply-clawed paw. She'd begun leaving a little dish of tuna out on her terrace, and sure enough, it would be devoured by the sleek feline.
This is your life now, Christine. You sit in the dark and try to lure cats into your sad, empty existence. This is how they'll find your body-alone, dead for days, being picked at by Muffy and Whiskers and several dozen of their friends.
She wouldn't see the cat more than once or twice a week, and as the rainy summer came to a close, Christine grew worried about the cat's welfare once the colder months blew in. That was how she found herself, creeping through her darkening backyard, waving around a bag of cat treats one evening. When the cat had slipped through the tall hedgerow into the neighbor's yard, Christine had followed, shimmying through the branches in the dirt.
The cat had hurried to the sliding glass door of her neighbor's house, and at first she'd assumed that the little beast went from door to door throughout the neighborhood, begging for food. Christine had leaned forward in a crouch, stretching her hand out to the wayward feline, when a masculine voice suddenly rang out across dark yard as the door slid open.
"Again?! What do I need to do to keep you inside, board up the windows? Why are you such a naughty girl?"
Christine froze, shocked at the man's voice. Rich and deep and resonant, with a sensuousness she thought only existed in movies, he continued to address the sleek feline as he stepped out the door.
Before she could dwell on how it was possible for sex to have been distilled into pure sound, Christine overbalanced in her crouch, toppling onto her hands. Her forward movement in the grass must have triggered some motion sensor, for at that moment a floodlight came on, highlighting where she'd sprawled in the darkness.
Up til that point, the man possessing the sexy voice had been a tall, appealing looking silhouette in the bright doorway of his kitchen. When the floodlight illuminated the small yard, revealing Christine floundering in the grass, it also illuminated him.
Christine would be ashamed of herself later, after she was back in her own house, panting in fear and anger and humiliation. After the adrenaline that spiked in the wake of the altercation faded, after she'd stood crying in her shower. She would feel shame at her reaction, once she'd huddled in her bed alone, wondering what had happened to the man next door.
In the moment though, she couldn't help the way she gasped in horror, the way she scrambled back, away from the man's twisted appearance. His face resembled a melted candle; the livid, shiny skin stretched and twisted over high, sharp cheekbones. His eyes were slightly sunken back beneath his brow, and the lower lid on the left seemed to be melted into the skin beneath, dragging it down slightly. The worst of the damage seemed to be confined to the top half of his face, leaving his mouth and lower jaw slightly scarred, but mostly unscathed. The livid, melted-looking skin continued down the left side of his jaw, disappearing into the neckline of his shirt. His mouth, which looked normal to her, was currently twisted in an angry, ugly scowl.
Christine had sputtered excuses as the man furiously shouted at her about trespassing. When she'd made an involuntary noise of fear as he'd advanced on her, he'd frozen. Whipping away from her, he'd brought a hand to his face.
Christine could barely hear anything over the roar of blood pounding in her ears, and with the man turned away for the moment, she decided to make good her escape, before he...did whatever it was he was planning on doing to her. She'd crab-walked back several feet, scrambling to turn over, and darted through the low hole in the hedges, just as he was turning back around, his hand splayed over his face.
When she was safe back in her own kitchen, Christine had quickly turned out the lights, and stood there panting for several long minutes. She'd scraped her forearm painfully on the low branches she'd squeezed through, and could feel another gash on her cheek. She stayed there in the dark kitchen until she'd been able to calm her breathing, until it was obvious that the man with the twisted face wasn't planning on giving pursuit to attack her, or call the police on her for trespassing.
Her fear quickly turned to anger. How dare he! All she had been trying to do was help his poor, lost cat and he'd screamed at her, had frightened her for no reason. By the time she'd moved upstairs after ensuring all of her doors were locked, her anger had dissolved into overwhelming despair. She'd stood under the hot spray of her shower, sobbing out her frustration at the catastrophe in her neighbor's yard, over the hard turn left into disaster her life had taken, at how much she missed her father and the way things used to be.
Before going to bed for the night, Christine had walked down her short upstairs hallway to turn out the foyer light, when the view from her upstairs hall window stopped her in her tracks. From here, she had a perfect view into the back of her neighbor's house, and she was able to see him now, still standing in his kitchen. He was slumped over the counter, his head bowed, a posture of abject misery. Any residual anger Christine might have had fled at the sight of him. He still wore the same grey t-shirt and dark jeans that he had when he'd come out of the house, and she wondered if he'd been slumped over his counter since then.
She felt tears prick at her eyes again once she'd huddled beneath her comforter, feeling shame burn through her. That was her neighbor. She'd gone into his yard, had tried to steal his cat, and reacted like a rude idiot at the sight of his face.
He might be a war veteran, dummy. Or he could have lost his whole life in a fire. And here you are, acting like he's a knife-wielding lunatic when you're the one climbing through the bushes.
Her interactions with her neighbor were minimal after that. She wouldn't see him again for several weeks, on a cool afternoon in September. She'd heard a delivery truck idling at the curb earlier that afternoon, had heard the muffled cursing of the driver, but no knock had sounded on her door, not that she was expecting anything. It wasn't until later, when she'd decided, in a fit of productivity after watching several hours of HGTV, that she would actually plant the tulip bulbs she'd purchased weeks prior.
If Christine had been able to choose how she'd appear the second time she encountered the man next door, on her hands and knees in the dirt-again-was not what she would have chosen. Instead, fate had her crouched over, ass in the air, as she dug a hole on the side of her yard when her neighbor backed into his driveway.
There were several giant boxes propped against his garage door, preventing him from backing directly in, as Christine had seen him do previously. The door would come up, and go promptly down, and she would see neither hide nor hair of him again, unless she spied him through her hallway window. The boxes were obviously what the delivery driver had been cursing about, she thought, as her neighbor stepped out of his car, just a few feet away from where she kneeled.
Christine wondered if he would seem as tall as he did if she ever encountered him while standing. As it was, from her repeated position on the ground, he was tall and slim, with a rangy build, and she reflected again that he had appealing silhouette, was precisely the type of man she would normally find attractive. She was close enough to see the subtle striping on the white dress shirt he wore, tucked into dark grey pants, the matching suit jacket slung over his arm. He stopped short when he saw her sitting there in the grass, his shoulders tensing. Christine watched his sinewy forearm tighten and flex as it shoved the car door shut with more force than necessary before he stalked off without a word.
It wasn't until the front door had slammed behind him that she realized his face had been covered.
She remained crawling around in the dirt for another half hour or so, realizing once she'd had all of her holes dug that she hadn't brought all of the tulip bulbs that she'd purchased outside. When she'd returned to the yard, bulbs in hand, the boxes had been removed from in front of her neighbor's garage, and his car secured within. Christine couldn't shake the feeling that he'd waited for her to leave to do so.
That first week of December had brought with it a vicious cold snap, and Christine huddled under several blankets on her sofa. She'd spied puffs of white coming from the chimney stacks of her neighbors all around the street, as she left to make a grocery run before the snow started falling in earnest. She hadn't even considered the need for firewood before right that very second, even though she knew how expensive it would be to run the old fashioned boiler all winter to heat the house. Upgrading the HVAC had been on her to-do list when she'd moved in, she reminded herself.
She'd returned home that evening, lugging several over-laden bags, to find a neat stack of firewood on the side of her porch, complete with a big red bow and a note written on green foiled holiday stationary.
Stay warm this winter!
She had whipped around, upending one of her grocery bags in the process, looking for the mysterious wood-bearer. There was no one. Leaning over the railing of her porch, she surveyed the street suspiciously. The house that she had remembered being on the left when she was a child and would visit Mamma V with her father, had been torn down some years back. The land was purchased by a developer, but as of yet, it remained an empty field. The two houses directly across the street were populated by families with middle and high school-aged children, proudly displaying signs for various sports and theater boosters in their yards. The women were always on the go, hustling children in and out of their big, luxury SUVs, while the men were only glimpsed on weekends, blowing leaves and washing cars.
Christine didn't think either of them would have bothered noticing she hadn't used her fireplace. Her head turned hesitantly to the right. Her quiet neighbor's house was black from the street, the only light coming from the tiny white lights across his roof and those were on a timer. That didn't mean he wasn't home, she knew. The front of his house was always black and deserted looking, but from her little upstairs window, she 'd be able to see that his kitchen light would be on, and whatever room was adjacent to it.
She certainly couldn't imagine him caring about how she was faring in the cold, she had barely spoken to the man half a dozen times since moving in.
She bent over to quickly gather her spilled groceries and tossed them into her open door. She lugged several logs of the firewood into the house, one at a time, as inconspicuously as she could. Regardless of who had left it, she was grateful. It wasn't a mystery she was going to solve that night, not if she wanted to eat her mac and cheese and watch the girl from Full House marry the millionaire heir to a Christmas tree farm, as ludicrous as that was.
Mac and cheese placed in the oven, her terrible holiday movie channel put on and paused, Christine jogged upstairs to put on her fuzzy socks. She was still ruminating on her mysterious firewood giver as she exited the bathroom, when her attention was caught by the light of her neighbor's backyard.
He was bringing in several logs of his own, and Christine watched him as he crossed through his kitchen several times, the lines of his back flexing through the thin t-shirt he wore, before closing the sliding door and turning out the yard light. The pretty little cat was sitting on the kitchen counter, evidently waiting for him, and she watched as he retrieved something from his refrigerator for her. The cat was rearing up before he'd even made it back to the counter, and Christine laughed the spoiled little feline's greedy display
The sound startled her. How long had it been since she had laughed? Not the forced, self-deprecating grimace/chuckle that had become her norm, but an actual, unself-conscious laugh? She couldn't remember. It's not like she had anything to laugh about, not when her life was such a shitshow, and not like she'd had anyone to laugh with...
The stupid "gifts of the season" letter crossed her mind then and her eyes narrowed. The note on the firewood had been written in a thin, spidery hand, which didn't denote itself to being especially masculine OR feminine...she was the "neighbor on the left," but why would he even participate in the stupid cul-de-sac game? Not when he disliked Christine so much, for ample reason...
She turned away, pushing the thought of her odd neighbor and his funny little cat out of her mind. It didn't matter. He didn't like her, and that was fine. He was probably a jerk anyways, and she'd sworn off even being nice to men after her year.
It wasn't until she was back on the sofa, settling into the ass-groove she'd created since summer, wrapped in her fluffy throw blanket with her mind-numbing holiday movie and mac and cheese, a warm fire crackling in the grate, that she realized she hadn't even noticed if her neighbor's face had been covered.
