After dinner I took the scrap pail out and emptied it onto the compost heap. The still warm scraps that had been scraped from the plates and the small turkey carcass steamed in the chilly late-afternoon air. Even though it was only 4:30 the sun was already beginning to set, and the remaining three turkeys cast long shadows across the barnyard. I noticed that the wishbone was still attached to the carcass. I reached into the compost pile and pulled it free, planning to share a wish duel with Brent later that evening. The bone was tiny of course, and with one hand bandaged it was difficult to get a good grip on it.
Just when I thought I had loosened it enough to break free, it broke. I was left holding the smallest prong.
The turkey won.
But it didn’t matter. This boy from Wisconsin already had most of his wishes come true.
Chapter Fourteen
I’d been dreading the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas ever since I first learned that I’d have to spend most of them in Chicago working on the same damn health insurance project that had been dragging on for almost two years with no progress. Ever since we’d purchased the Beekman I’d had holiday season wet dreams. Ice skating. Hot chocolate. Snow angels. The Beekman Mansion’s fourteen-foot-wide center halls were practically designed for maximum boughs-of-holly decking.
Instead I was stuck in what I’d long considered the most banal big city in the Western Hemisphere. There’d been a sweeping change in marketing management at the health insurance company, and I’d been sent out to help reassure the new executives that I remained just as committed to doing nothing as I had been before. This would involve many expense account dinners and rounds of cocktails paid for by the sicknesses of the company’s membership. “To their health!”
I had a couple of down days between scheduled meetings and the resulting focus groups, and one of my clients had offered me a pair of tickets to an Oprah taping. At first I declined. I’d been nursing a slight Oprah grudge for several years, ever since my first book had been released and I’d learned through a friend who worked for Harpo Productions that several of Oprah’s producers were reading it and enjoying it. Even though the drag and drug topic seemed a little dark for your average housewife, I believed that maybe it could be the perfect, if unconventional, fit for Oprah’s Book Club—troubled young man struggling to find himself, overcoming obstacles, blah blah blah.
If Oprah had picked my book, I could be on easy street instead of toiling away on Madison Avenue. She was the most powerful force in publishing and an endorsement by her would sell millions. It seemed like a sure thing. I started to believe it was going to happen, especially after my friend forwarded me an e-mail in which her Oprah producer friend had described my book as a “good read.”
Instead, Oprah’s next pick was Sidney Poitier’s autobiography. Sure he was an Oscar-winning actor, but had he ever tried performing drunk in seven-inch heels and with live goldfish in his tits?
But even given Oprah’s obviously dubious taste in literature, a few days into my business trip I changed my mind and accepted the tickets. I realized that attending an Oprah show taping was still more appealing than sitting in my hotel room watching Judge Judy.
Sitting in the audience before the taping began, I was fascinated by the crowd. The studio was packed with women who’d traveled from all over. I knew this because there was a contest led by the audience warm-up host for who traveled the longest distance to come to the show. The winner came from Norway, but the woman next to me (from Indiana) claimed the contest had been unfair. The Norwegian was merely in town visiting family who happened to have an extra Oprah ticket. This Scandinavian scoundrel was clearly not a dev-O-tee like the rest of the eager audience.
During the twenty-minute warm-up, the excitement in the air reached a fever pitch. Looking around I realized I was the sole male in my audience section. Each woman seemed to be wearing some bright color or accessory that she believed would surely capture Oprah’s attention. They shouted out messages to the crew members, hoping that someone would pass on the information to Oprah herself. One woman had gone to the same high school as Oprah. Another was married to someone who used to cut Oprah’s hair. Yet another had brought along a copy of her own self-published diet book to pass along to the famous host.
By the time the warm-up host was wrapping up, the entire crowd was shrieking in anticipatory excitement. I was actually a bit frightened by the pack mentality. It was like a rock concert. Oprah was imminent. The lights dimmed, and the director began the countdown…
As the lights flashed on again, the crowd of women rose simultaneously and turned into one giant, screaming, clapping entity of jumping flesh and brightly colored accessories.
Oprah appeared at the studio entrance to my left and waited a moment until the director motioned for her to make her entrance—which she did, immersing herself in the outstretched worship of the audience like one of John’s goats facing into a welcome stiff spring breeze.
I have to admit I wasn’t immune. During the hour-long taping, we were treated to several guests who’d transformed their lives into what Oprah called their “Best Lives.” It seemed to be a mantra of sorts. One woman left her boring corporate job to work with handicapped animals. Another started a small confectionary business that had hit the big time. The audience oohed and aahed at a young man who fled his abusive parents and spent three years helping African tribes dig wells for freshwater.
By the end of the hour of taping, I too had been magically transformed from a cynical ad guy into a full-fledged Oprah banshee. I clapped when the director mimed for us to. I frowned in concerned empathy whenever an audience camera zoomed by my head. I clapped with wild abandon until my palms hurt each time we went into a commercial break.
The stories of personal transformation and triumph of Oprah’s guests buzzed through me the way vodka used to. It was addictive. And no matter how hard I fought it, it was inspiring.
There I was, stuck in Chicago on a business trip while Brent was making goat milk hot chocolate and pulling Christmas ornaments down from the attic. Was this my Best Life? I was boring myself to tears watching the same hotel pay-per-view movies each night after spending all day shilling taglines and thirty-second commercials to clients who were more concerned with not making a wrong decision than making any decision at all.
I was nearing forty years old—six years removed from the eighteen-to thirty-four-year-olds that advertisers lusted after. The clients who paid me to come up with ad ideas weren’t even interested in advertising to me. I didn’t know of many people who lasted in advertising past forty-five or fifty, no matter how talented they were at doing nothing.
I needed to get back to the Beekman.
I wasn’t exactly sure what my Best Life was supposed to be, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with cooking Thanksgiving dinner with food from the garden, canning enough tomatoes to last through the winter, sweeping up zombie flies, picking apples, and baking cherry pies for a Fourth of July picnic.
I needed to make some Best Life changes before it was too late.
Oprah told me to.
Chapter Fifteen
For true Martha-philes, the real spirit of Christmas is giving or, more specifically, giving up every moment between Thanksgiving and New Year’s in pursuit of beating baby Jesus at his own game.
The stakes are even higher if one happens to work at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. While most of us merely have to deal with the ten-dollar Secret Santa swap at our offices, MSLO employees find themselves having to put to practice the crafts they’ve been preaching on television and in glossy print for the last twelve months. Exchanging Isotoner gloves and Starbucks gift cards aren’t going to put anyone on the fast track to the MSLO boardroom.
Brent had been fretting since Halloween, trying to come up with a handmade gift worthy of bestowing on his colleagues—and Martha herself. The previous year he’d scored a hit with gingerbread cookies decorated with an elaborate white-and-Tiffany-blue snowflake des
ign, accented with silver dragées. We’d spent an entire weekend baking and decorating, and by that Sunday night I was lying on my stomach on the floor, squeezing royal icing from the pastry bag onto the nude cookies. My back had given out from bending over the kitchen counter, but Brent wouldn’t let me stop until the final gingerbread fellow was properly dressed. Worse yet, he acted as quality control, quickly weeding out unacceptable ginger-dudes for transgressions such as cracked limbs and lopsided torsos. It had been pastry eugenics of the most sinister sort.
But they had been a hit. Martha dutifully gave her gracious approval on receipt, which only meant that the bar had been raised for the next year’s effort.
“Why don’t we just do the cookies again,” I asked Brent as we drove to the cut-your-own-Christmas-tree farm in Cherry Valley. This December morning was the coldest morning of the year so far. The thermometer on the truck’s visor read 6 degrees. Plus there was a steady wind blowing up the valley. Since we hadn’t visited Sharon Springs in the months between last fall’s discovery of the Beekman and the springtime closing on it, we had no idea how harsh the winter could be.
“You can’t give the same thing twice.”
“Why not? It’ll be your ‘thing.’ A tradition.”
“At Martha we don’t have traditions, we make traditions,” Brent recited. “I’d rather give something from the farm.”
“How about the apple butter we made?”
Brent scoffed.
“Pickles?” I offered.
“Not something that any old farm could make,” Brent explained. “Think more Martha-ish.”
“Hand-knitted scarves made from molted goat fur dyed with turkey blood.”
“Something from the goats would be cool,” Brent said, perhaps not realizing that I was joking.
The wind had caused a four-foot snowdrift across the driveway leading up to the Christmas tree farm. So we parked the truck on the side of the road and hiked toward the small cabin with a picturesque puff of smoke coming from its stovepipe chimney. Our plan for the day was to bring home our tree, decorate it, string some homemade garlands for the front of the house, and go to bed with sugar plum faeries dancing, etc., etc.
“It’s really freezing,” Brent said.
“Yep.” I forced myself to bite my tongue. It’s a particular pet peeve of mine that Brent doesn’t dress for the weather. Sometimes I think he dresses as if he’s going to a photo shoot of whatever occasion we’re attending rather than the actual event. It’s especially maddening in the winter, and was even more so at the Beekman than in the city. I have to remind myself, however, that he’s a southern boy at heart. In his head he really doesn’t understand the difference between 32 degrees and -15 degrees. To him there is simply “hot,” “warm,” and “I should put on a jacket or something.” The concept of windchill is completely beyond his imagination.
Brent knocked on the door of the little shack, and a man opened it just enough to stick his head out. He seemed surprised that we were there.
“We’d like to cut down a tree,” Brent said.
“Today?” he asked, as if the thought of someone visiting a Christmas tree farm in early December was somehow not part of his business plan. “Kinda cold, don’t you think?” he elaborated, giving Brent’s light flannel jacket and baseball cap the once-over.
I looked across the hills and fields scattered with evergreens.
“Which direction should we head?” I asked.
“Depends. Whacha lookin’ for?” the man asked. Didn’t we just go over this? A Christmas tree. What did he think we’re looking for—the lido deck?
“Well, up over there I’ve got your blue spruce, and on that other hill are the white pines. And those are Douglas firs down by the creek.” Except he pronounced “creek” like “crick.” Clearly our years of buying stumpy trees from New York City sidewalk stands hadn’t educated us on the intricacies of Christmas tree selection. It was too confusing. And everywhere he was pointing seemed miles away.
“Great, thanks. We’ll find something,” I said.
“Good luck! Twenty-five bucks apiece, no matter the size,” he explained. “Pay on your way out.” Before closing the door he pointed out a pile of rusty saws leaning against the doorframe for our use.
We began trudging through the snow up a hill toward a distant stand of white pines…or maybe Douglas firs. It didn’t matter. We were overjoyed to be there, traipsing through the snow to pick our very first Christmas tree for the Beekman. Later in the day we’d string up the garlands, come back inside, and decorate the tree while drinking cups of homemade goat milk hot chocolate. We loved Christmas. We didn’t even pretend to hide it. We were one of those cliché couples who purchased Christmas ornaments from every place we visited together, so decorating the tree each year was like reliving all of our fondest memories.
“Oh tannenbaum, oh tannenbaum…!” I hollered against the wind at the top of my lungs.
“How lovely are thy branches!!!” Brent sang back. We sang our way up the hill, starring in our own perfect little Christmas variety hour, until twenty minutes later we reached the most windblown, barren, and gnarled stand of trees I’d ever seen. Each one we came upon was sparser than the last.
“These are hideous!” Brent yelled above the wind.
“Let’s try down there.” I pointed down the hill toward the stream. We began trekking even farther away from the cabin and truck. The snow whirled around my face, creating almost whiteout conditions. I tried to remember my Cub Scout training on how to survive outdoors in a snowstorm, but quickly remembered that the only badge I earned was the “Showman Badge” for writing, directing, and starring in a finger puppet show about playground safety. (“Don’t stand too close to a swing set in use…LOOK OUT!!!”)
Chunks of ice were forming on my knit scarf from my breath. I couldn’t imagine how Brent was tolerating the bone-chilling cold in his light jacket. I thought that we really should’ve turned back, but Brent was too far ahead of me to shout to.
The next stand of trees turned out to be no better than the first. But there was no way we were going to move on to another. We must’ve covered three miles already. The trees in this stand were all about two stories tall, and mostly bare of branches the first ten feet up from the ground.
“Let’s just chop down a tall one and use the top,” I suggested.
We circled through the trees with our necks craned upward, looking for one that was fullest at its peak. Around and around we went, deeper into the woods. I was about to point out a possible contender when I heard Brent yell from about twenty feet in front of me.
“Fuck!”
Brent doesn’t swear. Ever. He doesn’t even use the word “swear.” Some parts of his southern Holy-Roller background cannot be shaken. I rushed over to him to find him shaking his left leg as if it were on fire.
“What happened?”
He pointed downward toward a rushing stream of water under the snow. We didn’t even realize that we were walking around staring upward at the “Douglas firs down by the crick.”
“You’re not even wearing boots!” I scolded as Brent sat in the snow taking off his thin athletic socks to wring them out. “Why the heck would you wear Crocs in the middle of a snowstorm?”
“Let’s just pick a fucking tree and get out of here.” His feet were almost a translucent white as he struggled to get the wet socks back on.
It took us fifteen more minutes to saw, chop, and hack one of the monsters to the ground. This one’s top looked much fuller when it was two stories above our heads. On the ground it looked more like a giant toilet brush with half of its bristles missing. I wasn’t going to point this out to Brent, however, since he was jumping back and forth from one foot to the other trying to keep blood flowing into his wet appendages.
“Grab that side,” he said. I did as he instructed, and we began to drag the behemoth back toward where we believed the cabin and truck to be. It must’ve weighed two hundred pounds. Soon I was wheezing.
My heart was racing and throbbing so loudly that it was all I could hear under my ski cap. Ten years ago—hell, even five—this sort of task might’ve tired me out, but it wouldn’t stop me in my tracks. I couldn’t believe how badly my body was rebelling against me. I started thinking about all the stories I’ve heard about friends of friends who’ve dropped dead of heart attacks at forty years old.
“I…can’t…make…it…” I wheezed to Brent. “It’s…too…heavy.” I dropped my end and bent over with my hands on my knees trying to catch my breath.
“C’mon. Don’t be a drama queen.”
“No. REALLY, I can’t.” I wondered how long Brent would be able to administer CPR on me before his feet froze solid.
Brent muttered something I couldn’t hear above the wind and began yanking and tugging the tree all by himself. He was really pissed. We made our way back slowly, in fits and spurts. I joined in the pulling when I could, and collapsed into the snow whenever I ran out of breath again.
When we finally reached the driveway, the old man stuck his head out of the cabin again.
“Saw ya draggin’ that thing all the way up the hill! That’s a monster!” he yelled. “That’ll be thirty-five.”
Brent, ignoring him, continued to drag the tree toward the truck while I walked over to pay.
“I thought…wheeze… you said…wheeze… they were twenty-five dollars…wheeze… no matter the size.”
“Yeah. But that’s a big one.”
I was too utterly spent and freezing to argue, so I pulled two twenty-dollar bills out of my wallet and pushed them into his hands.
“Keep the…wheeze… change.”
“Merry Christmas! Keep warm!” he shouted after us, before quickly disappearing back into the cozy cabin.
The rest of our perfect holiday Saturday didn’t go much more smoothly. We gave up on our garland-making attempt after we’d laid out hundreds of boughs down the center aisle of the barn, carefully wired them together, and then watched them fall back to pieces the moment we tried to lift and carry them outside.