Christmas
Present
I
turn my head to the left, tacking into the slipstream of memory, and she is
sitting on my lap just as she did that Christmas night of . . .
My
beautiful cousin Karen is 17 again. I see her in the festively form-fitting
holiday sweater she’d been given that morning, a red-plaid midi skirt and a
pair of high ‘mod’ boots that were all the rage in that swinging decade so long
ago. She lays her head on my shoulder, humming breathily, telling me her teenaged
dreams in that wonderful, unpretentiously mature voice of hers; soft, low and
smoky, the simplest sigh a seduction.
Karen
was older than me by nearly two years, an age difference that would have seemed
like an impossibly unbridgeable gulf with anybody else back then. Yet our
innocently incestuous fascination had only grown stronger with age and protracted
absence. We seldom saw one another—our families were not especially close— but
even in my callow 15-going-on-who-the-hell-cares self-absorption I could see
that Karen had blossomed into something truly extraordinary; a woman full of
sensuous mystery, cool and reserved, yet passionate, too; as vibrant and full
of fire as her poinsettia-red hair.
We
had escaped together that night with her older brother Bill and some of his
friends from college, itching to be out of our grandparents’ house with its
colorless, tasteless, joyless atmosphere of piety and boring, unremittingly
claustrophobic ‘square-ness.’ Our much-younger cousins—however-many-times-removed—
were the favorites on whom the adults lavished the lion’s share of attention
along with almost all the gifts that had been so copiously hoarded beneath the
tree the night before. Now the little ones wallowed in the squalor of seasonal abundance,
drowning in ‘stuff’ they didn’t need and would probably never play with more
than once.
“Can
you believe it?” Karen sniffed, “One of those little brats got four identical
Barbie dolls—four of ‘em! There are starving
waifs in China for Pete’s sake—”
“Jealous?”
my cousin Bill teased.
“Heck
yeah! All I got was this lousy sweater!”
“It’s
the thought that counts,” he said.
“At
least you got something,” I added,
only half jokingly.
“Most
of that junk’s going to end up at the Goodwill store inside of six months,”
Karen said, “They won’t even get around to removing the cellophane.”
“Somebody
will be happy to get it eventually,” Bill said quietly.
“Eventually,”
I echoed, however weakly, trying to keep the natural tone of weary cynicism out
of my voice, as I’d been warned that it tended to turn people off.
We
were on our way to the movies, as far away from reality as possible. The most
recent snow had fallen a week earlier and was looking anything but Christmassy,
plowed up into gray hillocks along the frigid avenues, still just barely white
enough on top to reflect the incandescent opulence of restored Victorian
mansions where vulgar footprints never disturbed the pall of impeccably curated
holiday cheer.
“I
remember this street,” I announced apropos of nothing, “I used to think those
houses were haunted.”
“Weird!”
Karen winked at me from the front passenger seat, “To me they looked like fancy
dollhouses. I always pictured the people living inside them as characters from The Nutcracker.”
“And
I’m weird?” I decided not to speak my
mind at that moment. Our banter was pleasant; breezily insouciant,
feather-light. What was the point of spoiling the mood? What sense in burdening
these virtual strangers with my pain?
For
I had been there before, riding in the back seat of my father’s ancient ’47
Buick, my 4-year-old nose pressed to the window as I looked out on the desolate
rows of darkened houses. The car lumbered along those bleak, late-night
thoroughfares, passing beneath the arching vault-work of barren branches, the outstretched
fingers of tall, black trees that lined the road like sentries in the
underworld, casting their twisted shadows beneath the hazy, half-starved moon. It
was the week between Christmas and New Year’s and I imagined waves of melancholy,
disappointment and abject loneliness radiating from over the thresholds, reaching
out for me as if recognizing a kindred spirit, trying to draw me in and swallow
me up. Only rarely did I sense a weak ember of contentment or anything like
genuine, simple happiness—certainly not from my parents, stiffly distant in the
front seat like a pair of misanthropic manequins, nursing their mutual
discontent in seething silence.
I’d
always been a rather sensitive child—too sensitive for my own good as far as my
father had been concerned. The subject had actually been broached during the
last big fight my parents had just prior to his walking out on the family once
and for all that terrible Christmas ‘Eve when I was 7. “You better find a way
to toughen that little sissy up,” he’d shouted at my mother, his parting shot
half threat, half warning as he made for the door, pointing a prophetic finger
in my direction, “unless you’ve got your heart set on having a half-mast flag-waving
faggot for a son . . ."
Despair had been the perpetually uninvited
guest in our home at Christmas ever after, a presence deeply felt but never
openly acknowledged, hovering above our cursory, sullen revels, ever jealous of
joy. My mother had mostly
withdrawn into herself, leaving my baby sister and me to our own devices.
Christmas was just another day on which to contemplate disappointment, like the
anniversary of a tragic death in the family or the memorial of some momentous
military defeat; the perfect excuse to schedule a few extra hours of grief and
blame.
“Here at last!” Karen announced brightly.
We
met Bill’s friends inside the theater. The movie was Valley of the Dolls—anything to scandalize the grownups— the main
floor was packed and there was some debate about whether Karen and I would be
allowed in, even with Bill there to vouch for us. Finally, a dusty velvet rope
was parted and we were ushered up the broad, spiraling ramp of the old movie
palace’s grand promenade to one of the disused boxes on the third level.
The dim-lighted
compartment was already crowded when we arrived. Karen and I shared one of the less-than-cozy
love seats along the side wall under a gilded antique sconce, but soon more
people arrived and she scooted onto my lap to make room for another couple.
“Hope
this is OK,” she smiled down at me, “Don’t want to make you uncomfortable or
anything.”
“No.
It’s fine,” I lied and left it at that.
Some
of the kids were sharing a marijuana cigarette, passing it from stranger’s hand
to stranger’s hand like a casual communion. Karen took a practiced hit and
handed me the joint with a blasé matter-of-factness that somehow didn’t
surprise me in the least. I tried to follow her example, drawing the acrid
smoke deep into my lungs, only to choke on the effort of holding it in.
I
was suddenly convinced that everyone in the place had turned their eyes in my
direction, annoyed by my all-too-obvious lack of cool. Coughing and hacking, I was
sure some pimply-faced subaltern would shortly be shining his flashlight in my
face, informing me that I was required to leave the theater at once.
Of
course, my cousin found the whole thing hysterically amusing. Karen’s reassuring
laughter was mellowing music to my ears; the sound of her giggles like
champagne bubbles merrily bursting as they tickled the inside of a tipsy
reveler‘s nose. She smiled at me, stroked my cheek and tousled my hair.
“You’re
really cute. You know that, Michael?”
“You
too,” my reply seemed to echo and reecho inside my head until I wasn’t sure I’d
even spoken the words aloud.
“You’re
so sweet.” She leaned in to kiss me on the forehead and I became aware of the
pattern on her sweater; the white field of gaily-ornamented Christmas trees stretched
and distorted around the flowing curve of her bosom, the latticed weft and warp
of the yarn, the promiscuous bend and coil of every twisted skein. Enchanted, I
extended a curious finger to explore a single tight-wound column, tracing its
wooly pathway slowly downward through warm latitudes of red and green and white,
cognizant of my trespass only after it had been committed.
“Is this what you were looking for?” She took
my hand and cupped it over one of her breasts.
“Mm
. . .” I was confused. My curiosity was more intellectual than sexual, yet, under
the influence of cheap cannabis and the sheer novelty of being wanted, my
better judgment seemed to be floating off into space like the smoke from the smoldering
tip of that sacramental reefer. It hardly helped when the lights went down a
second later. We necked with blissful abandon through most of the movie,
reluctantly breaking contact only when the final credits flashed across the
screen, the houselights came back up and I could no longer pretend that the
bulge in my trousers had been for her—not inasmuch as I had been imagining
myself with her brother the whole time.
I
turn my head again, no longer remembering, yet nonetheless considering the memory
of that Christmas night so many years ago. I don’t know why I should look back
on that particular episode with such abundance of sentiment. Yet, recalling it now
from across the yawning abyss of decades, I perhaps begin to see what my
younger self could not.
It
was Bill who asked me if I wanted to go out with the older kids that night;
Bill, with his quietly magnetic social grace, beautiful in the unselfconscious
simplicity of his charm; Bill who laid his big warm hand on my shoulder and
invited me to be part of the group. No one had ever noticed me before. No one
had ever gone out of their way to include me in their plans. I’d never known
what it was to feel acceptance, the easy, convivial give and take of the ebullient crowd; that wonderful, buoyant sense of living in the moment without
care of what might lie beyond, neither looking forwards or backwards; simply being.
But
it was Christmas and I was in love for the first time.
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