Please note: In case you happen to be an heiress, hoping to bestow a Christmas wish on a lonesome mystery boy/linguistic rabblerouser—I actually don’t want to get the OED as a gift, as much as I would love to have one. I actually want to earn it, or at least to earn the money (through words, in some way) to get it. It will be even more special then.
This is about as far as I can go without some sarcasm creeping in. But before it does, I must say, with utmost sincerity, that your cookies are good enough to bring some of these wax statues back to life. Thanks for that. I once made corn muffins for a fourth-grade project on Williamsburg and they came out like baseballs. So I’m not sure how to reciprocate … but, believe me, I shall.
I was worried I was being a little too much of a word nerd … but then I figured a girl who left a red Moleskine in the stacks of the Strand would understand.
Then came the hard part. The next assignment.
I looked over to the Osbournes (they were a surprisingly short family, at least in wax) and saw Boomer fist-pounding with President Obama.
Stovepiping over the rest of the politicians was Honest Abe, looking like the European tourists taking his picture were worse company than John Wilkes Booth. Next to Abe was a figure I pegged as Mary Todd … until she moved, and I realized it was the guard I was supposed to seek. She looked like an older, less bearded version of fondle-friendly Uncle Sal. There was, it seemed, no limit to the number of relatives Lily could employ.
“Hey, Boomer,” I said. “How would you feel about doing something for me at FAO Schwarz?”
“The toy store?” he asked.
“No, the apothecary.”
He looked at me blankly.
“Yes, the toy store.”
“Awesome!”
I just had to be sure he was free on Christmas Eve.…
six
(Lily)
December 24th
I woke up on Christmas Eve morning, and my first instinct was sheer excitement: Yay! It’s finally the day before Christmas—the day before the best day of the year! My second reaction was pitiful remembrance: Ugh, and with no one here to share it with. Why had I ever agreed to allow my parents to go on their twenty-five-years-delayed honeymoon? Such a brand of selflessness was not meant for Christmastime.
Grandpa’s calico cat, Grunt, seemed to agree with me about the day starting out less than auspiciously. The cat aggressively rubbed himself across the front of my neck, draping his head over my shoulder, then growled his signature grunt directly into my ear to indicate, “Get out of bed and feed me already, person!”
Since Langston was lost to Benny, I had spent the night in my special “Lily pad,” in Grandpa’s apartment. The Lily pad is an ancient, afghan-draped chaise that sits underneath a skylight built into the attic apartment that Grandpa turned into his retirement home after he sold his business on the ground floor and my family moved into the third-floor apartment, where Grandpa and Grandma once raised my mom and my uncles. Grandma died right before I was born, which is maybe why I am Grandpa’s special girl. I was named after her, and I arrived into the downstairs just as Grandpa was transitioning upstairs. So while he’d lost one Lily, he’d gained back another. Grandpa said he decided to renovate the upstairs apartment for his later-in-life bachelor digs because climbing the stairs every day would keep him young.
I take care of Grandpa’s cat, Grunt, when Grandpa goes to Florida. Grunt’s an ornery cat, but lately I like him more than Langston. So long as I feed him and don’t smother his furry head in too many unwanted kisses, Grunt would never toss me aside for some boy. Grunt’s as close to my own animal as I’m allowed to have in our living space.
When I was little, we had two rescue cats, named Holly and Hobbie, who disappeared very suddenly. They both died from feline leukemia, only I didn’t understand that at the time. I was told that Holly and Hobbie had graduated to “college” and that’s why I didn’t see them anymore. Holly and Hobbie went off to college only a couple years after the gerbil incident, so I guess I understand why the real reason was kept secret from me. But it would have saved everyone a lot of grief if they’d been honest at the time. Because when I was eight and went with Grandpa to visit my cousin Mark, who was a freshman at Williams College, I spent the whole weekend darting through alleys and peering inside every bookcase crevice I found in the library, looking for my cats. That’s when Mark had to break it to me, in the very public dining hall no less, why the poor little things were not, in fact, at Mark’s college, or at any college, other than the big one up in the sky. Begin Shrilly incident, stage 2. Let’s just say Williams College probably would appreciate me not applying there next year.
In the years since, I have petitioned at various times to adopt a kitten, a turtle, a dog, a parrot, and a lizard, but all requests have been denied. And yet I allowed my parents to go on holiday at Christmas, guilt free. Who was the wronged party here? I ask.
I like to think of myself as an optimistic person, especially at the holidays, but I couldn’t deny the cold, hard suckage that this Christmas had sunk to. My parents were away in Fiji, Langston was all into Benny, Grandpa was in Florida, and most of the cousins were spread far and wide away from Manhattan. December 24—what should have been the Most Exciting Day Before the Really Most Exciting Day of the Year—appeared to be one big blah.
It would have been helpful at this point, I suppose, if I had some girlfriends to hang out with, but I’m comfortable as a nobody at school, except on the soccer field, where I am a superstar. Strangely, my saved-many-a-game goalie skills have never translated into popularity. Respect, yes. Movie invitations and after-school socializing, no. (My dad is the vice principal at my school, which probably doesn’t help—it’s a political risk to befriend me, I suspect.) My athletic ability mixed with my complete social apathy are what got me elected captain of the soccer team. I’m the only person who gets along with everyone, by way of not being friends with anyone.
On Christmas Eve morning, I decided maybe I should work on this deficiency as my New Year’s resolution. A less Shrilly, more Frilly plan. Learn to be more girl friendly so I’d have some backup on important holidays should my family ever abandon me again.
I wouldn’t have minded someone special to spend Christmas with.
But all I had was a red Moleskine notebook.
And even Nameless He of the Notebook Game, while he was intriguing me to an extreme that was causing my body to feel all tingly every time I was alerted that the notebook had been returned to She Who Has Politely Told Her Name, was also a cause for concern. When not one, not two, but three relatives (Cousin Mark at the Strand, Uncle Sal at Macy’s, and Great-aunt Ida at Madame Tussauds), independent of each other, all used the same word—snarl—to describe the notebook’s mystery boy, who thinks he’s too “esoteric” and “arcane” to tell me something as simple as his name, I had to wonder why I was bothering with this charade. No one had even bothered to mention whether he’s cute.
Is it wrong that I long for that idealistic, pure kind of love like in that animated movie Collation? Oh, how I yearn to be the piece of paper gliding the stapler around the conference room, treating it to amazing visions of city skyscraper skylines and annual reports with rosy earnings forecasts, while avoiding the villainous starfish intercom phone on the boardroom table, Dante, voiced by Christopher Walken, the corporate raider who’s secretly planning a hostile takeover of the company. Secretly, I want to be held prisoner by Dante and rescued by a heroic Swingline. I guess I want to be … stapled. (Is that crude of me? Or anti-feminist? I don’t mean to be.)
Snarl is probably no dreamy stapler, but I think I might like Snarl anyway. Even if he is too pretentious to tell me his name.
I like that he wants an OED for Christmas. That’s so geeky. I wonder how he would react if he knew that I actually know a way I could give him what he wants, and for free. But he’d have to prove worthy. If he can’t even tell me his name, I don’t know.
My name is a connector
of words.
What was that supposed to mean?!?!? I’m not Einstein here, Snarl. Or Train Man (connector of Amtrak and Metro North?), whoever you are. Conductor? Is that your name?
The only other thing I want for Christmas, besides the OED, is for you to tell me what you really want for Christmas. But not a thing. More like a feeling. Something that can’t be bought in a store or gift-wrapped in a pretty box. Please write it in the notebook and deposit it with the worker bees in the Make Your Own Muppet department at FAO Schwarz at noon on Christmas Eve. Good luck. (And yes, evil genius, you should consider FAO Schwarz on the day before Christmas payback for Macy’s.)
Conductor Snarl should consider himself lucky that this year turned out to be the Christmas of Suck. Because normally on this day, I would be (1) helping Mom chop and peel food for Christmas dinner the following night while we listened to Christmas music and sang along, (2) helping Dad wrap presents and organize the mountains of gifts around the tree, (3) wondering if I should put a sedative in Langston’s water bottle so he’d fall asleep early and then have no problem getting up at five the next morning to open presents with me, (4) wondering if Grandpa will like the sweater I knit him (poorly, but I get better each year, and he still wears them anyway, unlike Langston), and (5) hoping and praying I was going to get a BRAND-NEW BIKE, or any other Major Gift of Comparable Extravagance, the following morning.
I got shivers when I re-read that Snarl called me “evil genius.” Even though I am anything but, the compliment was so personal. Like he’d been thinking about me. Me me, and not just notebook me.
After I fed Grunt, I headed toward the glass screen door that opened to the rooftop garden outside Grandpa’s apartment so I could water the plants. From my warm perch inside the glass door, I looked out at the cold city, north toward the Empire State Building, which would be lit at night in green and red for Christmas, then I looked east toward the Chrysler Building in Midtown, closer to where FAO Schwarz was, should I decide to accept the dare. (Of course I would. Who was I kidding? Shrilly play hard to get with an assignment in a red Moleskine deposited for her at Madame Tussauds? Hardly.)
I noticed my old sleeping bag on the ground outside, the sleeping bag in which Langston and I used to snuggle up on Christmas Eve when we were super-little so that Dad could, in his words, “zipper up the excitement until dawn on Christmas morning.” I saw Langston and Benny curled up together in the sleeping bag now, with the blue comforter from Langston’s bed on top of them.
I went outside. They were just waking up.
“Happy Christmas Eve!” I chirped. “Did you two sleep out here last night? I didn’t hear you come in. You must have been freezing! Let’s make a big breakfast this morning, what do you say? Eggs and toast and pancakes and …”
“Orange juice,” Langston coughed. “Please, Lily. Go to the corner store and get us some fresh orange juice.”
Benny, too, coughed. “And some echinacea!”
“Sleeping outside in the dead of winter not such a smart idea, huh?” I said.
“Seemed romantic under the stars last night,” Langston sighed. Then sneezed. Again. And again, this time with a full-on hacking cough. “Make us some soup, please please please, Lily Bear?”
It seemed to me that, in allowing himself to get sick, my brother had finally, and totally, ruined Christmas. All hope for any semblance of a decent Christmas was now gone. It further seemed to me, since he made the choice to sleep outside with his boyfriend last night instead of play Boggle with his Lily Bear as she specifically asked him to do and which she specifically used to do for him during his time of need, that Langston sicko would have to deal with this crisis on his own.
“Make your own soup,” I told the boys. “And get your own OJ. I have an errand to run in Midtown.” I turned to go back inside and leave the boys to their nasty new colds. Suckahs. That ought to teach them not to go out clubbing when they could stay home and Boggle with me.
“You’ll be sorry next year when you’re living in Fiji and I’m still in Manhattan where I can order food and juice from the bodega at the corner and have it delivered to me anytime I want!” Langston exclaimed.
I swiveled back around. “Excuse me? What did you just say?”
Langston pulled the comforter over his head. “Nothing. Never mind,” he said from underneath.
Which meant it was seriously something.
“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, LANGSTON?” I said, feeling a Shrilly panic moment coming on.
Benny popped his head under the covers, too. I heard him say to Langston, “You have to tell her now. You can’t leave her hanging like that once you slipped.”
“SLIPPED ON WHAT, LANGSTON?” I almost was ready to cry. But I’d decided to try to be less Shrilly for New Year’s, and even though that was still a week away, I felt like I had to get started sometime. Now was as good a time as any. I stood strong, shaking—but not crying.
Langston’s head re-emerged from underneath the comforter. “Mom and Dad are in Fiji for their second honeymoon, but also to spend time visiting a boarding school there. A place that’s offered Dad a headmaster’s job for the next two years.”
“Mom and Dad would never want to live in Fiji!” I fumed. “Vacation paradise, maybe. But people don’t live there.”
“Lots of people live there, Lily. And this school caters to kids like Dad was, who have parents in the diplomatic service, like in Indonesia and Micronesia—”
“Stop it with all these -esias!” I said. “Why would the diplomatic parents send their kids to a stupid school in Fiji?”
“It’s a pretty amazing school, from what I’ve heard. It’s for parents who don’t want to send their kids to schools in the places where they’re posted, but also want to not send them so far away as to the States or the UK. For them, it’s a good alternative.”
“I’m not going,” I announced.
Langston said, “It would be a good opportunity for Mom, too. She could take a sabbatical and work on her research and her book.”
“I’m not going,” I repeated. “I like living here in Manhattan. I’ll live with Grandpa.”
Langston threw the comforter over his head again.
Which could only mean there was more to the story.
“WHAT?!?!?” I demanded, now feeling truly scared.
“Grandpa is proposing to Glamma. In Florida.”
Glamma, as she likes to be known, is Grandpa’s Florida girlfriend—and the reason he had abandoned us at Christmas. I said, “Her name is Mabel! I will never call her Glamma!”
“Call her whatever you want. But she’s probably soon going to be Mrs. Grandpa. When that happens, my guess is he will move down there permanently.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Langston sat up so I could see his face. Even sick, he was pathetically sincere. “Believe me.”
“How come no one told me?”
“They were trying to protect you. Not cause you concern until they knew for sure these things would happen.”
This was how Shrilly was born, from people trying so hard to “protect” me.
“PROTECT THIS!” I shouted, lifting my middle finger to Langston.
“Shrilly!” he admonished. “That’s so unlike you.”
“What is like me?” I asked.
I stormed away from the garden rooftop, snarled at poor ol’ Grunt, who was licking his paws after breakfast, and continued my storming, to downstairs, to my apartment, to my room, in my city, Manhattan. “No one’s moving me to Fiji,” I muttered as I got dressed to go out.
I couldn’t think about this Christmas catastrophe. I just couldn’t. It was too much.
I felt especially grateful now having the red Moleskine to confide in. Just knowing a Snarl was on the other side to read it—to possibly care—inspired my pen to move quickly in answer to his question. As I waited for the subway en route to Snarl’s Midtown destination, I had plenty of free time on the bench at the Astor Place station, since the notorious
ly slow 6 train seemed to take its usual forever to arrive.
I wrote:
What I want for Christmas is to believe.
I want to believe that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, there is reason to hope. I write this while a homeless man is sleeping on the ground under a dirty blanket a few feet away from the bench where I’m sitting at the Astor Place subway stop, on the uptown side, where I can see across the tracks to the Kmart entrance on the downtown side. Is this relevant? Not really, except that when I started to write this to you, I noticed him, then stopped writing long enough to dash over to the Kmart to buy the man a bag of “fun size” Snickers bars, which I slipped underneath his blanket, and that made me extra sad because his shoes are all worn out and he’s dirty and smelly and I don’t think that bag of Snickers is going to make much difference to this guy, ultimately. His problems are way bigger than a bag of Snickers can resolve. I don’t understand how to process this stuff sometimes. Like, here in New York, we see so much grandeur and glitz, especially this time of year, and yet we see so much suffering, too. Everyone else on the platform here is just ignoring this guy, like he doesn’t exist, and I don’t know how that’s possible. I want to believe it’s not crazy of me to hope he will wake up and a social worker will take him to a shelter for a warm shower, meal, and bed, and the social worker will then help him find a job and an apartment and … See? It’s just too much to process. All this hoping for something—or someone—that’s maybe hopeless.
I’m having a hard time processing what I am supposed to believe, or if I’m even supposed to. There is too much information, and I don’t like a lot of it.
And yet, for some reason that all scientific evidence really should make impossible, I feel like I really do hope. I hope that global warming will go away. I hope that people won’t be homeless. I hope that suffering will not exist. I want to believe that my hope is not in vain.
I want to believe that even though I hope for things that are so magnanimous (good OED word, huh?), I am not a bad person because what I really want to believe in is purely selfish.