A tiny, well-wrapped box stood beneath our Christmas tree for thirty years, making fun of the life I was attempting to create with Tyler. When I first met him at the age of thirty-two, I thought our relationship was a unique, shimmering form of enchantment for a very long time. He was calm and stable, a man who didn’t say much, and I thought that he was quite self-assured. It wasn’t until long later that I realized his silence was a sign of cowardice rather than courage.
I saw the gift on our first Christmas together. In contrast to the colorful bows and new ribbons of our festivities, it had a flattened bow and old wrapping paper. With a well-honed nonchalance, Tyler dismissed my question about whether it was for me. He informed me that his first love had given it to him as a present just before their breakup. Although he had never opened it, he claimed to have placed it beneath the tree annually as a memorial. I decided to see it as romantic at thirty-two, a bittersweet tribute to a man who treasured his history. After managing twenty-three years of marriage and raising two children, I came to the realization that it was a haunting at fifty-five.
The box was still there as the decades passed us by. It made it through the hectic years of toddlers and teens, as well as our first apartment and starting home. That ghost showed up like clockwork every December. My interest had become a dull ache by the seventh year. He got defensive and told me to “leave it be” when I asked why he was still holding on to it. The box became a silent third party in our marriage, even though I preferred serenity to answers. It symbolized everything we avoided discussing, including Tyler’s emotional detachment from me and his persistent assumption that I was just a stand-in for a woman he never really let go of.
Last Christmas, the tipping point was reached. Now that our kids were off to college, the house was eerily silent, and the holiday lights seemed to highlight my tiredness even more. While I stood in the living room gazing at that arrogant, unopened box, Tyler was upstairs ignoring his chores and withdrawing into his virtual world. I had a sudden, crystal-clear realization that I was sick of being a ghost’s second-best friend. The paper, which was thirty years old, shredded easily in my hands as I snatched the box and ripped it open.
A letter, yellowed by time and containing a truth Tyler had been too scared to confront, was found within. My knees buckled as I read the words. His first love was begging for a future rather than merely saying goodbye. She wrote that her parents were evicting her and that she was pregnant. In order to flee together, she pleaded with Tyler to meet her at the bus stop on December 22. She assured him that she would wait for him there, dressed in a green coat.
Tyler was enraged to see the torn remnants of his “precious memory” when he returned downstairs. But when I shoved the letter into his hands, his rage subsided. I referred to him as a coward. For thirty years, he had fantasized about a box that held a call for assistance that he was too afraid to respond to. He sobbed as he sat on the couch, understanding that he had truly abandoned a woman and a child in the process of “preserving” a memory.
I left without consoling him. The last nail in our marriage’s coffin was the revelation. I had had enough of battling a history that only existed because he didn’t have the guts to let me in. It was a calm divorce, a straightforward separation of two lives that had been bound together by habit. After a while, Tyler managed to locate her, but she had gone on by then. Now that he was an adult, her son had no desire to associate with the absent father.
My new flat does not have a tree this year, and there are no boxes beneath the boughs. I finally enjoy the silence as I sit by the window and watch the snow fall. The room is peaceful and free of ghosts for the first time in thirty years.