The night we went out we got talking about Christmas past – our childhoods mostly, when, according to memory, our affidavit against history, Christmas wasn’t commercialised, so although no one went shopping there were always presents under the tree. Kids went sledging and came home to play board games in front of the fire. Everyone had an old dog and a grandma who played piano. We all wore hand-knitted sweaters.
Everybody built a snowman with a carrot for his nose and a scarf around his neck and sang ‘Winter Wonderland’.
And on Christmas Eve you did your damn best to stay awake and see the fella in red in his sleigh – and you never did see him, but he came anyway, and drank the whisky on the kitchen counter.
‘Santa was an alcoholic.’
‘Yeah, but he spends the rest of the year in rehab.’
‘You want another bourbon? Martini? Twinkle?’
‘Come on, guys! This one’s on me.’
I got up to go to the restroom. I sat down again. Seeing double.
‘Sam? Are you OK?’
It was Lucille, squeezing in next to me in her little grey dress with the white collar. She works in the drawing office. I work in design. I tell her I’m fine.
‘You didn’t say anything when we were all talking about Christmas – don’t you like Christmas?’
The fact is: I don’t like Christmas. I don’t know what it’s for these days – except for running up bills you can’t pay and fighting with your relatives. I live alone so I have an easy time of it. I live alone. That’s good.
‘I’m going home for Christmas,’ said Lucille; ‘what about you?’
‘I’m staying home,’ I replied.
‘On your own?’ said Lucille.
‘Yeah. I need some me-time. Y’know?’
Lucille nodded like she was shaking her head. Then she said, ‘So tell me a story about your Christmas past. Just one.’
‘Choose any of them you like, they were all the same. We didn’t celebrate Christmas.’
‘Is your family Jewish?’
‘No. Just unpleasant.’
I didn’t say any more right then because the others had started singing their version of ‘Fairytale of New York’, which was even worse than The Pogues’.
I mean, what is this bonhomie? Is it because we’re in a bogus French bar that we have to have bogus French feelings, and kiss each other like it’s true?
It’s not true, but here they are, my colleagues, clinking glasses and feeding each other prawns.
Lucille leaned forward and joined in and I guessed that was the end of the Yuletide interrogation. I took a deep breath, made it to the restroom one more time, and decided to cut away right there and walk home.
I took my coat from the rail and looked back at the group. Enjoy yourselves.
Outside on the sidewalk there were people laughing, arm in arm, holding their faces up to the falling snow.
What’s the big deal? Snow’s just rain that’s been left out in the cold.
‘I love it when it snows,’ said Lucille, suddenly standing next to me in her Russian fur hat and Doctor Zhivago greatcoat. Lucille’s OK but strange. She brings flowers to the office. She said, ‘Do you want to walk for a while?’
So we set off through the white light and the gentle screen of quiet snow. The streets were noisy but didn’t seem so. The snow quieted the city and lowered the pulse rate of the place. And the late air smelled clean.
‘This broken world,’ I said.
‘What?’ she said.
‘Hart Crane.’
‘Oh . . . ’
So we walked; past the bars and the eateries, and the small shops open late, and the guy selling bags under a tarpaulin, and the bundle of rags sitting up in the doorway with a sign that said MERRY CHRISTMAS FOLKS. The vent next to him shot out steam and the chemical crack of dry-cleaning. Lucille gave him five dollars.
‘So what was your Christmas past?’
‘Nothing – nada, I told you. No decorations, no tree, no gifts, no family meal. My father drove trucks across to Canada – he always chose the shift over Christmas – paid triple, he said, though what it paid triple for, what he spent it on, I don’t know.’
‘Are you saying you’ve never had a Christmas gift?’
‘No! I’m a grown man. I’ve had girlfriends. I have friends. They’ve given me gifts, of course! But Christmas itself means nothing to me.’
There was a small dog on a leash jumping and snapping at the snow like he could catch it.
‘Christmas does mean something to you,’ said Lucille. ‘Christmas means sadness.’
Oh, no, I said to myself, she’s New Age or she sees a shrink five times a week. Gimme a break.
We reached the corner by the deli – its plastic frontage protecting a row of Christmas trees in pots. I smelled cold pine and detergent.
‘This is where I turn off,’ I said.
‘Your beard’s white,’ she said. ‘Seasonal.’
I brushed the snow from my chin, pushed my hands into my coat pockets and set off down the block. About halfway I turned round. I don’t know why. Lucille had gone. Of course she had gone. Girls don’t stand on street corners in the snow.
I went up the stairs to my apartment – it’s a one-bedroom in a building with a doorman who is dead but kept for show, and because it’s cheaper than getting someone who’s alive, I guess. He sits in his booth with the TV on. I’ve lived here two years. I’ve seen the back of his head but I’ve never seen him move.
I unlocked my door – three locks in a rectangular blank plate of unforgiving steel – and turned on the light. My apartment is like my clothes – I don’t care but you have to wear something. I took this place furnished. I have never brought in anything of my own.
Right in front of me in the middle of the room like it belonged there. A Christmas tree.
I ran back downstairs and thumped on the booth where the doorman is supposed to be alive and well and willing to help the residents of the building.
No response. I swear he turned up the sound on the TV.
Then I’ll have to call the police . . .
I’d like to report an incident.
What kinda incident?
There’s a Christmas tree in my apartment.
Fella, you been drinking tonight?
No. Yes. But not a lot. I mean, somebody has broken into my apartment and left a Christmas tree.
Any material damage? Anything missing?
No.
Buddy, call your pals, say thank you, and say goodnight. Happy holidays, and goodnight.
The line went dead. I phoned downstairs to the dead doorman. He didn’t pick up.
The following day was my last day at work. I got up early, which was easy as I hadn’t slept much. The Christmas tree was still there. I had to walk around it to reach the door. As I looked back, as I was closing the door, I was sure the tree was smiling.
At the office I said to Lucille, ‘Do you think trees can smile?’ She smiled in return, an open, kind smile I had never noticed before.
‘That’s not like you, Sam. That’s almost romantic.’
‘I’m a little distracted,’ I said.
It was a day of winter sun that sparkled the city into diamonds and pearls. Electric-blue sky lit like a neon. The windows of the big department stores like magic mirrors into another world.
I started to walk towards the Rockefeller Center, I don’t know why. The crowds are crazy, and everyone has six bags and no one can get a cab.
Every year the city brings in a seventy-foot Christmas tree and strings it with five miles of lights and tops it with a giant Swarovski crystal star.
I went forward, I don’t know why. Standing under the tree. The scale of it makes a grown man feel like a tiny child again.
Sam! Sam! You come on
in now.
I want to see the tree, Mom. They’re bringing the tree from the forest!
You heard what I said. Get inside now or no supper.
Into the dark house. Into bed. And nothing.
‘Sam?’ It was Lucille. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Me, oh, I had an errand midtown.’
Lucille was still smiling – is she always smiling, and if so, why? She said, ‘I love coming to look at the tree. It makes me happy.’
‘It does? How does a tree make you happy?’
‘Because it’s free, and nothing’s free in New York, and it’s beautiful, and look how relaxed people are – with their children – and that old lady over there like she’s dreaming something good.’
‘She’s probably going to be all alone at Christmas,’ I said.
‘Are you?’ asked Lucille.
‘No, no. Of course not. Listen – have a good one, Lucille; I have to . . . ’
‘I was just heading into Bouchon for a hot chocolate. Want one?’
And so we sat – and Lucille was still smiling, and I was still not, and she was chatting about the holidays and suddenly I said, ‘Last night, in my apartment, there was a Christmas tree. It just appeared.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I called the police.’
‘You called the police because there’s a Christmas tree in your apartment?’
A guy in a plaid fleece squeezed by carrying two gingerbread mochas. He leaned down and said to Lucille, audible for my benefit, ‘Get yourself a better date, sweetheart.’
Lucille laughed, but I didn’t see what was so funny. I called at his back, ‘She’s not my date!’
The guy in plaid turned round. ‘So you’re stupid. I get it. Happy holidays.’
‘Somebody broke into my apartment! Asshole!’
But the guy in plaid had gone, and I was on my feet, embarrassed and alone. I wasn’t alone. Lucille was still there.
‘Did you like it?’ she said.
‘The chocolate’s great, yeah . . . thanks.’
‘The tree. Did you like the tree?’
I was walking back home, alone, thinking about what she had said. Do I like it that for the first time in my whole life of thirty-two years I have a Christmas tree in my home?
I rounded the corner. The Afghans who run the deli were standing outside. I said, ‘Did you deliver a tree to my apartment last night?’
They shook their heads and offered me some chestnuts from the hot pan. Am I going home for the holidays? No? They would like to go home. One of them took out his wallet and showed me a crumpled printed picture of the house where his parents lived – a single-storey building made of concrete set against a steep mountain topped with snow. He didn’t say anything – held the picture, like it was a light or a mirror, or an answer to a question. Then a woman came in wanting oranges.
I went inside and bought some cooked chicken with rice and cashews and apricots, and headed round the corner towards my building. My apartment is on the fourth floor with the living-room window onto the street.
There’s a light in my window, coming from inside, somewhere. Like a low lamp. I don’t own a low lamp. I’m a centre-light man.
I rushed into the building.
The Dead Doorman was in his booth watching TV. I stood outside waving my hands to attract his attention but all I heard was the TV set turned up louder. He’s gonna explode the set.
There’s no elevator in my building, so I climbed up the stairs two at a time, spilling some of the juice out of the chicken container. I opened the door – all three locks are tumbled. No sign of a forced entry. Inside, I reached for the light switch but there’s no need.
The Christmas tree is lit up.
Outside on the stairs I can hear someone breathing heavily. I hang back in the doorway, tense, expecting something to happen. Instead Mrs Noblovsky from the fifth floor comes heaving by, carrying or being carried by a flotilla of gaudy bags. I can barely see her. ‘Let me help you,’ I say, because I have to say that.
Mrs Noblovsky pauses, panting, outside my apartment. She sees the serenely glowing Christmas tree through the door, and sighs. ‘So nice, Sam; mine own iz plaztik.’
‘Would you like this one? You can have it if you want it. I can carry it upstairs for you.’
‘Such a good boy. A kind boy. No vank you. I am goink to my daughter tomorrov in Feel-a-del-fia. You must ve havink Christmaz here to hav that fine tree.’
And then she’s on her way up the next flight of stairs, me behind carrying the bags, hearing about Christmas in Soviet Russia and her grandmother’s special vodka that made anyone who drank it clairvoyant.
‘When I voz three, Grandmama says to me, “Agata, you vill live in Amerika.” And here I am.’
There’s no arguing with that. She opens the apartment and I dump her bags in the hall. Her place is bigger than mine. I’ve never seen inside before.
Everything is brown – chocolate carpets, caramel furniture, velvet curtains the colour of coffee. There’s a mahogany standard lamp with a seaweed-brown fringed shade and an ancient TV in a veneer cabinet on legs. The distinct low rumble from the fridge makes the apartment sound like it’s digesting. It’s like she’s living inside a big brown bear.
Mrs Noblovsky fetches me a bottle from a cupboard. ‘Vodka,’ she says, pressing it into my hand. ‘Clairvoyant. My babushka’s recipe. My brother in Brooklyn makes it from potatoes.’
‘Are potatoes clairvoyant?’
‘There iz a secret ingredient. Family secret. Take it. You are a good boy.’
I protest, hesitate, hesitate, protest. Then I suddenly think of something. ‘Mrs Noblovsky, the doorman – downstairs – is he alive, do you think?’
‘I think zo,’ she says, ‘vhy?’
‘I’ve lived here two years now and he’s never spoken to me.’
‘He spoke to me about twenty years ago. I had a gaz leak. Vhy you want him to speak to you? You hav a gaz leak?’
‘He’s the doorman.’
She shrugged and turned on the TV. I thanked her for the vodka and went downstairs.
Back in my apartment there’s the tree. The glowing tree. Whoever did this had good taste in fairy lights but that is not the point. I ate the chicken and rice and cashews and left the apricots. I could have turned off the tree lights. Instead I sat staring at them. By the time I’d had four of Mrs Noblovsky’s clairvoyant vodkas I almost liked the tree. I could see myself buying something similar next Christmas.
I fell asleep on the couch.
‘I bought this for you, Mom. It’s a Christmas present.’
‘We don’t celebrate Christmas, Sam.’
‘Why not?’
‘We never have and we never will.’
‘I saved my pocket money.’
My mother unwrapped the present. It was a butter dish made of aluminum. In the shape of a clam shell. ‘It’s silver, I think,’ I said.
‘Thank you, Sam.’
‘Do you like it?’
Cold light of day. The garbage truck woke me. I went to the window. Still dark on the block. More snow in the night like a secret we keep. The truck pulled away and the dirty tyre tracks were soon filled with white feathers from the snow goose in the sky.
Snow goose? What’s the matter with me?
Get up and go out, get what you need. It’s Christmas Eve.
I went down to Russ and Daughters. Bought lox and cream cheese and pastrami. They were handing out free cookies. I took some. Round the corner is their eat-place and I thought maybe some roe on toast and a cocktail would be the right thing at 9am on Christmas Eve.
I swung in, sat at the counter and picked up the menu that serves as a mat.
‘Hello,’ said Lucille.
She was drinking coffee at a table. ‘Care to
join me?’
Why not? I thought. Hell, the same woman is everywhere I go, and I have a light-up Christmas tree and a bottle of clairvoyant vodka in my apartment.
I explained this to her. Not the part about her but the other parts. She nodded sympathetically. ‘Shall we have an ice-cream?’
‘At nine-thirty in the morning?’
‘That’s somehow worse than a Martini at nine o’clock in the morning?’
She had a point. We ate the ice-cream; ginger for me, strawberry for her. ‘Are you at your friends’ place tomorrow,’ she said, ‘or will they come to you?’
‘We’ll decide later on,’ I said, panicking. I mean, I do have friends, but not at Christmas, but I’m not telling her that part either.
She nodded. ‘So do you want to come shopping? A few last-minute gifts?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t do gifts. It’s not a tradition of mine.’
‘Didn’t you ever make a list for Santa Claus?’
‘He’s make-believe,’ I said.
‘Wasn’t there ever anything you wanted so badly you wrote to Santa about it?’
‘Are you kidding me?’
She wasn’t.
‘Well, I always hoped I’d get a toboggan, a real wooden one with a leather rein and steel runners.’
‘You could get one now.’
I shook my head. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘The thing about time,’ said Lucille, ‘is that it’s always there. You didn’t do it then, so do it now.’
‘Too late.’
‘To be a child prodigy, yes, it’s too late. To own a toboggan – no, it’s not too late.’
I smiled at her smiling at me. I stood up and reached for my coat. ‘Happy holidays, Lucille. See you at the office in the New Year.’
She nodded and looked down at the menu. I hesitated. I’m a jerk. But because I am a jerk I didn’t say what I wished I could say. I left.
Heavier snow now and fewer cars. Time to go home. I read somewhere that more than half of the people in Manhattan live alone.
At the deli on my corner Farouk was roasting more chestnuts. He gave me a scoop, rattling the tin shovel against the coals. ‘We’re closing at four. Having a party. Want to come?’