Evergreen.

I stared up at the tree, completely blown away by how massive it was. The sweeping branches, the thick trunk, how it positively towered over me… It was perfect. Wehad to get this one.

“Daddy! Look, look at howbig it is!”

My father came to stand beside me, looking the evergreen up and down.

“It’s the perfect one!”

“Well,” Dad started off, “I think you got me there.”

I beamed as he told me to step back, brandishing the chainsaw and starting the cut.

That tree was always my favorite, even as I grew up. More than the one in my first apartment; the crappy little dwarf tree that it was grew on me. But it didn’t hold a candle to this one.

Back when Dad was alive, our trees were always huge, majestic and beautiful. He made sure of it, going out every year, accompanied by me and my sister, and cutting one out of the forest at the edge of our property. They were decorated like the magazines: ornaments placed carefully, all red and gold and piney green. Those trees were the centerpieces of our home for the month of December. They weren’t just Christmas trees. Our family never went to church anyways. It seemed like as soon as Dad would arrive home and announce that tonight was the night, as soon as he started growing his beard, the whole world got better. Nothing bad ever happened when he put the tree up.

Until Dad died, I mean.

After that… After that, it just seemed like everything went bad. After that, we didn’t even get Christmas trees anymore. Not like we used to. They topped at six feet, and once I was fifteen I could look down on them. They looked stupid, not filling the space left in Dad’s wake, the décor haphazard. We got them from goddamn parking lot dealers.

I came to dread the month of December. When Dad died, the trees died too.

I wasn’t his fault, really. Dad rode a motorcycle. He never stood a chance against a drunk driver in an SUV.

The years wore on, and they wore on me, too. My mother, my sister, always wanted to talk about it. Group therapy sessions, visiting his grave. I hated every aspect of that. I didn’t need other people to tell me what my own father would think of me, how I should attempt to get over his memory. I didn’t want to get over it. I just wanted him back.

So as soon as I turned eighteen, I booked it up to NYC. I just wanted to get away from them, truth be told. I was fed up. I enrolled in a two-year school, majored in some business thing. I thought maybe I could play up the stock market, get rich like the stories.

Didn’t work out so well for me.

Living alone, I could never get a tree like dad could. I had no means of transport, only a little Toyota Corona to my name. Nothing like the pickup Dad used to haul the trees around in. My landlord would’ve killed me if I even tried.

That goddamn landlord.

I settled with three-footers that I probably should have hated, but ended up liking just because they were mine.

I was never really a responsible person. And when Dad died I just said, the hell with it. Funds, money, rent… It never seemed like that big a deal to me. We were well off; if I was struggling, just pull out the family bank card. I was turning into an arrogant, spoiled city boy, but somehow I liked the change.

I went to work, a tiny business that hardly paid me over minimum wage. I sat at a computer all day. I went home, I sat on the computer more, researched what to invest in. I went out for a drink with friends. I met a girl. I brought her home. I never saw her again.

People in the city, they don’t look for relationships. It’s all about sex, and, I mean, that’s always been fine with me.

The rent came monthly, as well as letters from my mom, inquiring about my health, giving me updates on my sister, since that was the only thing she was living for anymore. She’s met someone… he’s a nice boy… they might get engaged…

I never really talked to her anymore, though. I just skimmed the letters and halfway answered her questions in reply.

I thought I was invincible. Dipping into the family funds when things got rough, frequent sex; my job, although shitty, that did move things along. I’d look at homeless guys on the street, guys my age, and think, Shit, I’ve got it made. And then I’d go get wasted.

City life, right? It was sweet.

It only took one little thing to send me crashing down, though. Something that proved to me that I wasn’t, in fact, invincible.

It was about one o’clock in the morning, and the girl I’d met an hour and a half before was waiting for me as I slid the card in the ATM. I pressed the buttons by memory: Yes, I want English… No, I don’t want a receipt… It took me awhile to realize the machine wasn’t cooperating, and the display wasn’t showing anything I’d seen before. I swore softly and leaned down to read.

Request invalid.

I angrily gave the machine a shake, then reached to slide the card in again.

Request invalid.

“What the fuck,” I muttered, glancing over at the girl. Jennifer, I think it was? Jenny? Her dress was way too short for the September night. She was texting, her foot tapping impatiently as she closed the phone with a snap. I wondered for a moment if she was actually eighteen like she’d said.

“Jenny–”

“It’s Jamie.”

“Right. Jamie. This, uh, might take awhile. It’s not accepting my card.”

“Mhmm.” She reached into her purse to retrieve her phone, which was buzzing again.

I proceeded to try again, several more times, actually, each with the same result. Giving up, I turned back to Jenny, or Jamie, or whatever, and escorted her to my apartment. I could sort this out with the bank tomorrow.

As it turned out, things weren’t sorted out so easily.

“I’m sorry, sir, but the account is cancelled. There’s no money in it anymore. It doesn’t exist.”

“But see,” I leaned foreword against the teller’s counter, against the glass that ensured I wasn’t going to rob her, “this is my family’s account. It has, like, my parent’s life savings in it. How could they close that?”

The woman, who was getting a little impatient by this point, retorted, “They call us up and tell us they want to cancel their account.”

“Do you want me to call your manager?” I knew fully well that I was being a douchebag, but didn’t really care.

“Look,” she said, exasperated, “I’m telling you all I can. I’m sorry your parents didn’t tell you they were closing the account, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

I exhaled in an annoyed sigh and pushed myself away from the counter, walking back out the way I came. A very sarcastic “have a nice day” followed me.

I walked home and hunted the apartment for bank statements. Fuck, how much did I have left? Payday was in two weeks, but rent was due in four days.

The reality of the situation set in as I counted and recounted the bills in my wallet. My bank account held a measly thousand dollars; rent was eight hundred, and in pocket money I had a grand total of eleven bucks. And this wasn’t counting electricity, Internet, my car…

I was broke, and I had no fucking clue how it happened. Did I really spend that much on a daily basis? I mean, I splurged sometimes, but not enough, not nearly enough to only be left with this. Beer tabs catching up with me? Did I get robbed without realizing it?

I didn’t sleep that night, needless to say.

Four days later, bright and early, my landlord was pounding on my door. This was a regular practice for us; I never turned my rent in on time, mostly because I never knew when it was due. He had to come up here every month to remind me, usually in the rudest way possible and always at six in the morning.

This time, though, I was wide awake. I opened the door before he could start shouting, and his face was so surprised at how I was fully dressed it was almost comical.

I pushed the check into this hand with the eight hundred dollars, then began trying to explain my position. “Look, I think… this might be all I have left.”

He furrowed his bushy eyebrows at me. “What d’you mean?” he asked gruffly.

“I mean…” I took a deep breath. “I mean that I’m… broke.” I had trouble wrapping my mind around that. “I’ve got like three hundred dollars saved up, but it’s not gonna be enough to get the rent to you. I don’t make that much.”

“So you’re broke,” the landlord said, gazing around my apartment with a skeptical eye. “You think? How much do you make a month, two thousand?”

“Uh, I’m at nine bucks an hour.”

“Well, look here, kid. If you actually don’t have rent, I’d be doin’ some research on apartments. I’m not an apologetic kinda guy; if you can’t afford it, you’re outta here.”

I gaped at him. “Wha– You can’t–”

“That’s what happens,” he told me, hitching up his pants, “when you can’t pay rent.”

Beginning to work out exactly how much shit I was in, I began selling my stuff to try and cover the cost. The office job didn’t pay nearly enough, and even when I picked up another job waiting tables it was too much. There was nothing in my bank account anymore, and I was living between paychecks.

I was evicted in November. I was given a few short days to pack my remaining possessions, then kicked out on the street.

And so there I was, on a curb. With the guys I once walked past, thinking how that would never be me.

I looked, I really did, for apartments, but the recession had done its job. There was nothing out there for cheap. I got fired from my office job because I didn’t have access to a shower anymore. The wait staff at the restaurant laid me off since they were downsizing and I’d only been hired two months before. I slept on a friend’s couch for awhile, but they too kicked me out; I couldn’t pay rent, I couldn’t get a job, and I was using up space and resources. I didn’t have friends that liked me enough to put up with that shit.

And going home? That wasn’t even an option. I couldn't face my mother and her repressed grief, my sister and her normal life. It was too painful. I didn’t want to face how obviously my father wasn’t there. I didn’t want to face another goddamn six foot high Christmas tree.

Christmas Eve, and I’m sitting on a street corner, wrapped in two jackets and five blankets but still cold. I’ve got to milk these people for all the Christmas joy they have. Come on, take pity on me. Alone, out here in the streets on Christmas Eve. Of course you can spare a dollar. It’s just a dollar, right? Come on. I, for one, am not going to use this as drug money. I swear, sir, I’m as straightedge as you are. Oh, you do speed? Well alright then… Welcome to New York…

How did I get here? How did I become this ragged, scruffy shadow of a man? Begging for pocket change, it was pitiful. I was pitiful.

Sitting on the corner in Brooklyn, this street one of the rare place in the entirety of New York City that actually had trees. Right in front of me there was an enormous pine, reminiscent of the ones my dad used to pick out for the house. I glared up at it, a mixture of irrational anger and degrading self-pity weighing on me. For a moment, I could see this tree, dressed up and standing tall in my living room, our entire family fawning over it. How it used to be. So far away, so out of reach. Was that really my life? It seemed like a whole different world, a different person.

It didn’t happen that suddenly, not really. My downward spiral was quick but definitely measured out. Right then, though, that wasn’t at all how it seemed. Four months ago, I had been completely fine. And now I was here, as if teleported; unsure of what I’d done to get myself to a place like this. From a large decorated tree to this snowy city one. From a life to merely an existence.

I wanted so badly, at that moment, to just go back. Go back home, go back to my mother and sister. If only I hadn’t moved. If only dad hadn’t died. If only, if only.

And all at once, I was angry, furious at my dad. Why did he leave us? I wouldn’t be here if he was still alive. I would never have left my home, my old life… I would have been fine.

But blame only goes so far.

I wondered what my father would think of me if he could see me now. Alone, left to grovel just to survive. Unwilling to face my own family.

It’s no way to live.

The night wore on, on cold sinking deeper and deeper into me. The air was thin and sliced into my throat when I tried to draw a breath, shuddering every time. I had about fifty cents in my mug, and every time someone walked past I jingled it, baiting them. The people were starting to get few and far between, though, and even though this was the city that never sleeps, people need to get home sometime on Christmas Eve.

The evergreen was still in front of me. Mocking me, taunting my every action. Deciding to give up, throw in the towel, I turned away from it. I stood, my joints unfolding themselves painfully, and started my way towards the hideout I’d found: a narrow alleyway that shielded me from the wind. The walk would take me at least thirty minutes. The mug was held in my frostbitten hand and kept clanking; I got lots of looks from the passersby.

And all at once, the weight of what I was doing just hit me. Square in the face, like a slap, like watching something you know shouldn’t happen.

I turned around, looking back at the tree, and I knew what to do. It was what I should have done all along.

I trekked the few remaining blocks, this time with determination, with purpose. I spotted a pay phone, mounted against a building, and walked up to it, counting my coins with slippery fingers. I clumsily pushed them into the slot, dialed, and prayed.

Pick up pick up pick up…

“Hello?”

“Mom,” I whispered.

“Hello?” she said again, her voice rising in pitch. “Who is this?”

“Mom.” I cleared my throat. “Mom, it’s me.”

Pause.

“David?” she breathed, barely daring to say my name out loud. “David, what happened to you? Where are you, what–”

“Shh, Mom, I– I just–” I stopped myself, taking a deep breath.

“Mom, I want to come home.”