Christmas at The New Yorker

by New Yorker

  Late last spring she met a man. A stock-market hotsy-totsy with a house on Block Island. Jack. Jack flew to Block Island from the city in his own plane, had never been married at age roughly forty-six. She flew out a few times with him, met his stern-looking sisters, the pretty, social mom. There was a big blue rambling beach house facing the sea. Rose hedges, sandy pathways to secret dunes where you could swim naked—something she especially liked, though the sisters were astounded. The father was there, but was sick and would soon die, so that things were generally on hold. Jack did beaucoup business in London. Money was not a problem. Maybe when the father departed they could be married, Jack had almost suggested. But until then she could travel with him whenever she could get away. Scale back a little on the expectation side. He wanted children, would get to California often. It could work.

  One night a woman called. Greta she said her name was. Greta was in love with Jack. She and Jack had had a fight, but Jack still loved her. It turned out Greta had pictures of Faith and Jack in New York together. Who knew who took them? A little bird. One was a picture of Faith and Jack exiting Jack’s apartment building. Another was of Jack helping Faith out of a yellow taxi. One was of Faith, all alone, at the Park Avenue Café, eating seared swordfish. One was of Jack and Faith kissing in the front seat of an unrecognizable car—also in New York.

  Jack liked particular kinds of sex in very particular kinds of ways, Greta said. She guessed Faith knew all about that by now. But “best not to make long-range plans” was somehow the message.

  When asked, Jack conceded there was a problem. But he would solve it. Tout de suite (though he was preoccupied with his father’s approaching death). Jack was a tall, smooth-faced, handsome man with a shock of lustrous, mahogany-colored hair. Like a clothing model. He smiled, and everyone felt better. He’d gone to Harvard, played squash, rowed, debated, looked good in a brown suit and oldish shoes. He was trustworthy. It still seemed workable.

  But Greta called more times. She sent pictures of herself and Jack together. Recent pictures, since Faith had come on board. It was harder than he thought to get untangled, Jack admitted. Faith would need to be patient. Greta was someone he’d once “cared about very much.” Might’ve even married. But she had problems, yes. And he wouldn’t just throw her over. He wasn’t that kind of man, something she, Faith, would be glad about in the long run. Meanwhile there was his sick father. The patriarch. And his mother. And the sisters.

  That had been plenty.

  Snow Mountain Highlands is a small ski resort, but nice. Family, not flash. Faith’s mother found it as a “Holiday Getaway” in the Sandusky Pennysaver. The getaway involves a condo, weekend lift tickets, coupons for three days of Swedish smorgasbord in the Bavarian-style inn. Although the deal is for two people only. The rest have to pay. Faith will sleep with her mother in the “Master Suite.” Roger can share the twin bedroom with the girls.

  When Faith’s sister Daisy began to be interested in Vince the biker, Roger had simply “receded.” Her and Roger’s sex life had lost its effervescence, Daisy confided. They had started life as a model couple in a suburb of Sandusky, but eventually—after some time and two kids—happiness ended and Daisy had been won over by Vince, who did amphetamines and, more significantly, sold them. That—Vince’s arrival—was when sex had gotten really good, Daisy said. Faith silently believes Daisy envied her movie connections and movie life and her Jaguar convertible, and basically threw her life away (at least until rehab) as a way of simulating Faith’s—only with a biker. Eventually Daisy left home and gained forty-five pounds on a body that was already voluptuous, if short. Last summer, at the beach at Middle Bass Island, Daisy in a rage actually punched Faith in the chest when she suggested that Daisy might lose some weight, ditch Vince, and consider coming home. “I’m not like you,” Daisy screamed, right out on the sand. “I fuck for pleasure. Not for business.” Then she’d waddled into the tepid surf of Lake Erie, wearing a pink one-piece that boasted a frilly skirtlet. By then, Roger had the girls, courtesy of a court order.

  Faith has had a sauna and is now thinking about phoning Jack wherever Jack is. Block Island. New York. London. She has no particular message to leave. Later she plans to go cross-country skiing under the moonlight. Just to be a full participant. Set a good example. For this she has brought her L.A. purchases: loden knickers, a green-brown-and-red sweater made in the Himalayas, and socks from Norway. No way does she plan to get cold.

  In the living room her mother is having a glass of red wine and playing solitaire with two decks by the big picture window that looks down toward the crowded ski slope and ice rink. Roger is there on the bunny slope with Jane and Marjorie, but it’s impossible to distinguish them. Red suits. Yellow suits. Lots of dads with kids. All of it soundless.

  Her mother plays cards at high speed, flipping cards and snapping them down as if she hates the game and wants it to be over. Her eyes are intent. She has put on a cream-colored neck brace. (The tension of driving has aggravated an old work-related injury.) And she is now wearing a Hawaii-print orange muumuu, which engulfs her. How long, Faith wonders, has her mother been shrinking? Twenty years, at least. Since Faith’s father kicked the bucket.

  “Maybe I’ll go to Europe,” her mother says, flicking cards ferociously with bony fingers. “That’d be adventurous, wouldn’t it?”

  Faith is at the window observing the expert slope. Smooth, wide pastures of snow framed by copses of beautiful spruces. Several skiers are zigzagging their way down, doing their best to be stylish. Years ago she came here with her high-school boyfriend. Eddie, a.k.a. Fast Eddie, which in some ways he was. Neither of them liked to ski, nor did they get out of bed to try. Now skiing reminds her of golf—a golf course made of snow.

  “Maybe I’d take the girls out of school and treat us all to Venice,” Esther goes on. “I’m sure Roger would be relieved.”

  Faith has spotted Roger and the girls on the bunny slope. Blue, green, yellow suits, respectively. Roger is pointing, giving detailed instructions to his daughters about ski etiquette. Just like any dad. She thinks she sees him laughing. It is hard to think of Roger as an average parent.

  “They’re too young for Venice,” Faith says. From outside, she hears the rasp of a snow shovel and muffled voices.

  “I’ll take you, then,” her mother says. “When Daisy clears rehab we can all three take in Europe. I always planned that.”

  Faith likes her mother. Her mother is no fool, yet still seeks ways to be generous. But Faith cannot complete a picture that includes herself, her diminished mother, and Daisy on the Champs-Élysées or the Grand Canal. “That’s a nice idea,” Faith says. She is standing beside her mother’s chair, looking down at the top of her head. Her mother’s head is small. Its hair is dark gray and not especially clean, but short and sparse. She has affected a very wide part straight down the middle. Her mother looks like a homeless woman, only with a neck brace.

  “I was reading what it takes to get to a hundred,” Esther says, neatening the cards on the glass tabletop in front of her. Faith has begun thinking of Jack again and what a peculiar species of creep he is. Jack Matthews still wears the Lobb captoe shoes he had made for him in college. Ugly, pretentious English shoes. “You have to be physically active,” her mother continues. “You have to be an optimist, which I am. You have to stay interested in things, which I more or less do. And you have to handle loss well.”

  With all her concentration Faith tries not to wonder how she ranks on this scale. “Do you want to live to a hundred?” she asks her mother.

  “Oh yes,” Esther says. “Of course. You can’t imagine it, that’s all. You’re too young. And beautiful. And talented.” No irony. Irony is not her mother’s specialty.

  Outside, the men shovelling snow can be heard to say, “Hi, we’re the Weather Channel.” They are speaking to someone watching them out another window from another condo. “In winter the most innocent places can turn lethal,” the same man says and laughs. “Colde
r’n a well-digger’s dick, you bet,” a second man’s voice says. “That’s today’s forecast.”

  “The male appliance,” her mother says pleasantly, fiddling with her cards. “That’s it, isn’t it? The whole mystery.”

  “So I’m told,” Faith says.

  “They were all women, though.”

  “Who was?”

  “All the people who lived to be a hundred. You could do all the other things right. But you still needed to be a woman to survive.”

  “Lucky us,” Faith says.

  “Right. The lucky few.”

  This will be the girls’ first Christmas without a tree or their mother. And Faith has attempted to improvise around this by arranging presents at the base of the large, plastic rubber-tree plant stationed against one of the empty white walls in the living room. She has brought a few red Christmas balls, a gold star, and a string of lights that promise to blink. “Christmas in Manila” could be a possible theme.

  Outside, the day is growing dim. Faith’s mother is napping. Roger has gone down to the Warming Shed for a mulled wine following his ski lesson. The girls are seated on the couch side by side, wearing their Lanz of Salzburg flannel nighties with matching smiling-bunny slippers. Green and yellow again, but with printed snowflakes. They have taken their baths together, with Faith present to supervise, then insisted on putting on their nighties early for their nap. To her, these two seem perfect angels and perfectly wasted on their parents.

  “We know how to ski now,” Jane says primly. They’re watching Faith trim the rubber-tree plant. First the blinking lights (though there’s no plug-in close enough), then the six red balls (one for each family member). Last will be the gold star. Possibly, Faith thinks, she is trying for too much. Though why not try for too much? It’s Christmas.

  “Would you two care to help me?” Faith smiles up at both of them from the floor where she is on her knees fiddling with the fragile green strand of tiny peaked bulbs she already knows will not light up.

  “No,” Jane says.

  “I don’t blame you,” Faith says.

  “Is Mommy coming here?” Marjorie says and blinks, crosses her tiny, pale ankles. She is sleepy and might possibly cry, Faith realizes.

  “No, sweet,” Faith says. “This Christmas Mommy is doing herself a big favor. So she can’t do us one.”

  “What about Vince?” Jane says authoritatively. Vince is a subject that’s been gone over before. Mrs. Argenbright, the girls’ therapist, has taken special pains with the Vince issue. The girls have the skinny on Mr. Vince but wish to be given it again, since they like him more than their father.

  “Vince is a guest of the State of Ohio right now,” Faith says. “You remember that? It’s like he’s in college.”

  “He’s not in college,” Jane says.

  “Does he have a tree where he is?” Marjorie asks.

  “Not in his house, like you do,” Faith says. “Let’s talk about happier things than Mr. Vince, O.K.?”

  What furniture the room contains conforms to the Danish style. A raised, metal-hooded, red-enamel-painted fireplace has a paper message from the condo owners taped to it, advising that smoke damage will cause renters to lose their security deposit. The owners are residents of Grosse Pointe Farms, and are people of Russian extraction. Of course, there’s no fireplace wood except for what the furniture could offer.

  “I think you two should guess what you’re getting for Christmas,” Faith says, carefully draping lightless lights on the stiff plastic branches. Taking pains.

  “In-lines. I already know,” Jane says and crosses her ankles like her sister. They are a jury disguised as an audience. “I don’t have to wear a helmet, though.”

  “But are you sure of that?” Faith glances over her shoulder and gives them a smile she has seen movie stars give to strangers. “You could always be wrong.”

  “I’d better be right,” Jane says unpleasantly, with a frown very much like one her mom uses.

  “Santa’s bringing me a disk player,” Marjorie says. “It’ll come in a small box. I won’t even recognize it.”

  “You two’re too smart for your britches,” Faith says. She is quickly finished stringing Christmas lights. “But you don’t know what I brought you.” Among other things, she, too, has brought a disk player and an expensive pair of in-line skates. They are in the Suburban and will be returned in L.A. She has also brought movie videos. Twenty in all, including “Star Wars” and “Sleeping Beauty.” Daisy has sent them each fifty dollars.

  “You know,” Faith says, “I remember once a long, long time ago, my dad and I and your mom went out in the woods and cut a tree for Christmas. We didn’t buy a tree, we cut it down with an axe.”

  Jane and Marjorie stare at her as if they already know this story. The TV is not turned on in the room. Perhaps, Faith thinks, they don’t understand someone actually talking to them—live action presenting its own unique problems.

  “Do you want to hear the story?”

  “Yes,” Marjorie, the younger sister, says. Jane sits watchful and silent on the orange Danish sofa. Behind her on the white wall is a framed print of Brueghel’s “Return of the Hunters,” which after all is Christmassy.

  “Well,” Faith says. “Your mother and I—we were only nine and ten—we picked out the tree we desperately wanted to be our tree, but our dad said no, that that tree was too tall to fit inside our house. We should choose another one. But we both said, ‘No, this one’s perfect. This is the best one.’ It was green and pretty and had a perfect shape. So our dad cut it down with his axe, and we dragged it through the woods and tied it on top of our car and brought it back to Sandusky.” Both girls have now become sleepy. There has been too much excitement, or else not enough. Their mother is in rehab. Their dad is an asshole. They’re in Michigan. Who wouldn’t be sleepy? “Do you want to know what happened after that?” Faith asks. “When we got the tree inside?”

  “Yes,” Marjorie says politely.

  “It was too big,” Faith says. “It was much, much too tall. It couldn’t even stand up in our living room. And it was too wide. And our dad got really mad at us because we’d killed a beautiful living tree for a bad reason, and because we hadn’t listened to him and thought we knew everything just because we knew what we wanted.”

  Faith suddenly doesn’t know why she’s telling this particular story to these innocent sweeties who do not particularly need an object lesson. So she simply stops. In the real story, of course, her father took the tree and threw it out the door into the back yard, where it stayed for weeks and turned brown. There was crying and accusations. Her father went straight to a bar and got drunk. And later their mother went to the Safeway and bought a small tree that fit and which the three of them trimmed without the aid of their father. It was waiting, trimmed, when he came home smashed. The story had usually been one others found humor in. This time all the humor seemed lacking.

  “Do you want to know how the story turned out?” Faith says, smiling brightly for the girls’ benefit, but feeling completely defeated.

  “I do,” Marjorie says.

  “We put it outside in the yard and put lights on it so our neighbors could share our big tree with us. And we bought a smaller tree for the house at the Safeway. It was a sad story that turned out good.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Jane says.

  “Well, you should believe it,” Faith says, “because it’s true. Christmases are special. They always turn out wonderfully if you give them a chance and use your imagination.”

  Jane shakes her head as Marjorie nods hers. Marjorie wants to believe. Jane, Faith thinks, is a classic older child. Like herself.

  “Did you know”—this was one of Greta the girlfriend’s cute messages left for her on her voice mail in Los Angeles—“did you know that Jack hates— hates—to have his dick sucked? Hates it with a passion. Of course you didn’t. How could you? He always lies about it. Oh, well. But if you’re wondering why he never comes, that’s wh
y. It’s a big turnoff for him. I personally think it’s his mother’s fault, not that she ever did it to him, of course. I don’t mean that. By the way, that was a nice dress last Friday. You’re very pretty. And really great tits. I can see why Jack likes you. Take care.”

  At seven, the girls wake up from their naps and everyone is hungry at once. Faith’s mother offers to take the two hostile Indians for a pizza, then on to the skating rink, while Roger and Faith share the smorgasbord coupons.

  At seven-thirty, few diners have chosen the long, harshly lit, sour-smelling Tyrol Room. Most guests are outside awaiting the nightly Pageant of the Lights, in which members of the ski patrol ski down the expert slope holding lighted torches. It is a thing of beauty but takes time getting started. At the very top of the hill, a great Norway spruce has been lighted in the Yuletide tradition just as in the untrue version of Faith’s story. All is viewable from the Tyrol Room through a big picture window.

  Faith does not want to eat with Roger, who is slightly hung over from his gluhwein and a nap. Conversation that she would find offensive could easily occur; something on the subject of her sister, the girls’ mother—Roger’s (still) wife. But she is trying to keep up a Christmas spirit. Do for others, etc.

  Roger, she knows, dislikes her, possibly envies her, and is also attracted to her. Once, several years ago, he confided to her that he’d very much like to fuck her ears flat. He was drunk, and Daisy had not long before had Jane. Faith found a way not to acknowledge this offer. Later he told her he thought she was a lesbian. Having her know that just must’ve seemed like a good idea. A class act is the Roger.