A Lot Like Christmas: Stories

by Connie Willis

  “And I still don’t have a present for my mother,” Zara said. She turned to me. “And you didn’t get to see your movie, after I promised you would.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “We could go to the 10:00,” Zara said, “and leave before it’s over. That way you could at least see part of it.”

  “And miss the ending?” I said, thinking of Romancing the Stone, where Michael Douglas comes back when Kathleen Turner least expects it, and of French Kiss, where Meg Ryan’s already on the plane, and of Jumpin’ Jack Flash, where he finally shows up in the very last scene and is every bit as wonderful as she thought he was.

  “No, that’s okay,” I said, trying hard not to smile. “I’ll watch it when it comes out on the Net.”

  Later examination of weather reports and newspapers showed that it may have started as early as October nineteenth, but the first indication I had that something unusual was going on was at Thanksgiving.

  I went to Mom’s for dinner (as usual), and was feeding cranberries and cut-up oranges and apples into Mom’s old-fashioned meat grinder for the cranberry relish and listening to my sister-in-law Allison talk about her Christmas newsletter (also as usual).

  “Which of Cheyenne’s accomplishments do you think I should write about first, Nan?” she said, spreading cheese on celery sticks. “Her playing lead snowflake in The Nutcracker or her hitting a home run in PeeWee Soccer?”

  “I’d list the Nobel Peace Prize first,” I murmured, under cover of the crunch of an apple being put through the grinder.

  “There just isn’t room to put in all the girls’ accomplishments,” she said, oblivious. “Mitch insists I keep it to one page.”

  “That’s because of Aunt Lydia’s newsletters,” I said. “Eight pages single-spaced.”

  “I know,” she said. “And in that tiny print you can barely read.” She waved a celery stick thoughtfully. “That’s an idea.”

  “Eight pages single-spaced?”

  “No. I could get the computer to do a smaller font. That way I’d have room for Dakota’s Sunshine Scout merit badges. I got the cutest paper for my newsletters this year. Little angels holding bunches of mistletoe.”

  Christmas newsletters are very big in my family, in case you couldn’t tell. Everybody—uncles, grandparents, second cousins, my sister Sueann—sends the Xeroxed monstrosities to family, coworkers, old friends from high school, and people they met on their cruise to the Caribbean (which they wrote about at length in their newsletter the year before). Even my Aunt Irene, who writes a handwritten letter on every one of her Christmas cards, sticks a newsletter in with it.

  My second cousin Lucille’s are the worst, although there are a lot of contenders. Last year hers started:

  “Another year has hurried past

  And, here I am, asking, ‘Where did the time go so fast?’

  A trip in February, a bladder operation in July,

  Too many activities, not enough time, no matter how hard I try.”

  At least Allison doesn’t put Dakota and Cheyenne’s accomplishments into verse.

  “I don’t think I’m going to send a Christmas newsletter this year,” I said.

  Allison stopped, cheese-filled knife in hand. “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t have any news. I don’t have a new job, I didn’t go on a vacation to the Bahamas, I didn’t win any awards. I don’t have anything to tell.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” my mother said, sweeping in carrying a foil-covered casserole dish. “Of course you do, Nan. What about that skydiving class you took?”

  “That was last year, Mom,” I said. And I had only taken it so I’d have something to write about in my Christmas newsletter.

  “Well, then, tell about your social life. Have you met anybody lately at work?”

  Mom asks me this every Thanksgiving. Also Christmas, the Fourth of July, and every time I see her.

  “There’s nobody to meet,” I said, grinding cranberries. “Nobody new ever gets hired, because nobody ever quits. Everybody who works there’s been there for years. Nobody even gets fired. Bob Hunziger hasn’t been to work on time in eight years, and he’s still there.”

  “What about…what was his name?” Allison said, arranging the celery sticks in a cut-glass dish. “The guy you liked who had just gotten divorced?”

  “Gary,” I said. “He’s still hung up on his ex-wife.”

  “I thought you said she was a real shrew.”

  “She is,” I said. “Marcie the Menace. She calls him twice a week complaining about how unfair the divorce settlement is, even though she got virtually everything. Last week it was the house. She claimed she’d been too upset by the divorce to get the mortgage refinanced and he owed her twenty thousand dollars because now interest rates have gone up. But it doesn’t matter. Gary still keeps hoping they’ll get back together. He almost didn’t fly to Connecticut to his parents’ for Thanksgiving because he thought she might change her mind about a reconciliation.”

  “You could write about Sueann’s new boyfriend,” Mom said, sticking marshmallows on the sweet potatoes. “She’s bringing him today.”

  This was as usual, too. Sueann always brings a new boyfriend to Thanksgiving dinner. Last year it was a biker. And no, I don’t mean one of those nice guys who wear a beard and black Harley T-shirt on weekends and work as accountants between trips to Sturgis. I mean a Hell’s Angel.

  My sister Sueann has the worst taste in men of anyone I have ever known. Before the biker, she dated a member of a militia group and, after the ATF arrested him, a bigamist wanted in three states.

  “If this boyfriend spits on the floor, I’m leaving,” Allison said, counting out silverware. “Have you met him?” she asked Mom.

  “No,” Mom said, “but Sueann says he used to work where you do, Nan. So somebody must quit once in a while.”

  I racked my brain, trying to think of any criminal types who’d worked in my company. “What’s his name?”

  “David something,” Mom said, and Cheyenne and Dakota raced into the kitchen, screaming, “Aunt Sueann’s here, Aunt Sueann’s here! Can we eat now?”

  Allison leaned over the sink and pulled the curtains back to look out the window.

  “What does he look like?” I asked, sprinkling sugar on the cranberry relish.

  “Clean-cut,” she said, sounding surprised. “Short blond hair, slacks, white shirt, tie.”

  Oh, no, that meant he was a neo-Nazi. Or married and planning to get a divorce as soon as the kids graduated from college—which would turn out to be in twenty-three years, since he’d just gotten his wife pregnant again.

  “Is he handsome?” I asked, sticking a spoon into the cranberry relish.

  “No,” Allison said, even more surprised. “He’s actually kind of ordinary-looking.”

  I came over to the window to look. He was helping Sueann out of the car. She was dressed up, too, in a dress and a denim slouch hat. “Good heavens,” I said. “It’s David Carrington. He worked up on fifth in Computing.”

  “Was he a womanizer?” Allison asked.

  “No,” I said, bewildered. “He’s a very nice guy. He’s unmarried, he doesn’t drink, and he left to go get a degree in medicine.”

  “Why didn’t you ever meet him?” Mom said.

  David shook hands with Mitch, regaled Cheyenne and Dakota with a knock-knock joke, and told Mom his favorite kind of sweet potatoes were the ones with the marshmallows on top.

  “He must be a serial killer,” I whispered to Allison.

  “Come on, everybody, let’s sit down,” Mom said. “Cheyenne and Dakota, you sit here by Grandma. David, you sit here, next to Sueann. Sueann, take off your hat. You know hats aren’t allowed at the table.”

  “Hats for men aren’t allowed at the table,” Sueann said, patting her denim hat. “Women’s hats are.” She sat down. “Hats are coming back in style, did you know that? Cosmopolitan’s latest issue said this is the Year of the Hat.”

 
“I don’t care what it is,” Mom said. “Your father would never have allowed hats at the table.”

  “I’ll take it off if you’ll turn off the TV,” Sueann said, complacently opening out her napkin.

  They had reached an impasse. Mom always has the TV on during meals. “I like to have it on in case something happens,” she said stubbornly.

  “Like what?” Mitch said. “Aliens landing from outer space?”

  “For your information, there was a UFO sighting two weeks ago. It was on CNN.”

  “Everything looks delicious,” David said. “Is that homemade cranberry relish? I love that. My grandmother used to make it.”

  He had to be a serial killer.

  For half an hour, we concentrated on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green-bean casserole, scalloped corn casserole, marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes, cranberry relish, pumpkin pie, and the news on CNN.

  “Can’t you at least turn it down, Mom?” Mitch said. “We can’t even hear to talk.”

  “I want to see the weather in Washington,” Mom said. “For your flight.”

  “You’re leaving tonight?” Sueann said. “But you just got here. I haven’t even seen Cheyenne and Dakota.”

  “Mitch has to fly back tonight,” Allison said. “But the girls and I are staying till Wednesday.”

  “I don’t see why he can’t stay at least until tomorrow,” Mom said.

  “Don’t tell me this is homemade whipped cream on the pumpkin pie,” David said. “I haven’t had homemade whipped cream in years.”

  “You used to work in computers, didn’t you?” I asked him. “There’s a lot of computer crime around these days, isn’t there?”

  “Computers!” Allison said. “I forgot all the awards Cheyenne won at computer camp.” She turned to Mitch. “The newsletter’s going to have to be at least two pages. The girls just have too many awards—T-ball, tadpole swimming, Bible school attendance.”

  “Do you send Christmas newsletters in your family?” my mother asked David.

  He nodded. “I love hearing from everybody.”

  “You see?” Mom said to me. “People like getting newsletters at Christmas.”

  “I don’t have anything against Christmas newsletters,” I said. “I just don’t think they should be deadly dull. Mary had a root canal, Bootsy seems to be getting over her ringworm, we got new gutters on the house. Why doesn’t anyone ever write about anything interesting in their newsletters?”

  “Like what?” Sueann said.

  “I don’t know. An alligator biting their arm off. A meteor falling on their house. A murder. Something interesting to read.”

  “Probably because they didn’t happen,” Sueann said.

  “Then they should make something up,” I said, “so we don’t have to hear about their trip to Nebraska and their gallbladder operation.”

  “You’d do that?” Allison said, appalled. “You’d make something up?”

  “People make things up in their newsletters all the time, and you know it,” I said. “Look at the way Aunt Laura and Uncle Phil brag about their vacations and their stock options and their cars. If you’re going to lie, they might as well be lies that are interesting for other people to read.”

  “You have plenty of things to tell without making up lies, Nan,” Mom said reprovingly. “Maybe you should do something like your cousin Celia. She writes her newsletter all year long, day by day,” she explained to David. “Nan, you might have more news than you think if you kept track of it day by day like Celia. She always has a lot to tell.”

  Yes, indeed. Her newsletters were nearly as long as Aunt Lydia’s. They read like a diary, except she wasn’t in junior high, where at least there were pop quizzes and zits and your locker combination to give it a little zing. Celia’s newsletters had no zing whatsoever:

  “Wed. Jan. 1. Froze to death going out to get the paper. Snow got in the plastic bag thing the paper comes in. Editorial section all wet. Had to dry it out on the radiator. Bran flakes for breakfast. Watched Good Morning America.

  “Thurs. Jan. 2. Cleaned closets. Cold and cloudy.”

  “If you’d write a little every day,” Mom said, “you’d be surprised at how much you’d have to tell by Christmas.”

  Sure. With my life, I wouldn’t even have to write it every day. I could do Monday’s right now. “Mon. Nov. 28. Froze to death on the way to work. Bob Hunziger not in yet. Penny putting up Christmas decorations. Solveig told me she’s sure the baby is going to be a boy. Asked me which name I liked, Albuquerque or Dallas. Said hi to Gary, but he was too depressed to talk to me. Thanksgiving reminds him of ex-wife’s giblets. Cold and cloudy.”

  I was wrong. It was snowing, and Solveig’s ultrasound had showed the baby was a girl. “What do you think of Trinidad as a name?” she asked me. Penny wasn’t putting up Christmas decorations, either. She was passing out slips of paper with our Secret Santas’ names on them. “The decorations aren’t here yet,” she said excitedly. “I’m getting something special from a farmer upstate.”

  “Does it involve feathers?” I asked her. Last year the decorations had been angels with thousands of chicken feathers glued onto cardboard for their wings. We were still picking them out of our computers.

  “No,” she said happily. “It’s a surprise. I love Christmas, don’t you?”

  “Is Hunziger in?” I asked her, brushing snow out of my hair. Hats always mash my hair down, so I hadn’t worn one.

  “Are you kidding?” she said. She handed me a Secret Santa slip. “It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving. He probably won’t be in till sometime Wednesday.”

  Gary came in, his ears bright red from the cold and a harried expression on his face. His ex-wife must not have wanted a reconciliation.

  “Hi, Gary,” I said, and turned to hang up my coat without waiting for him to answer.

  And he didn’t, but when I turned back around, he was still standing there, staring at me. I put a hand up to my hair, wishing I’d worn a hat.

  “Can I talk to you a minute?” he said, looking anxiously at Penny.

  “Sure,” I said, trying not to get my hopes up. He probably wanted to ask me something about the Secret Santas.

  He leaned farther over my desk. “Did anything unusual happen to you over Thanksgiving?”

  “My sister didn’t bring home a biker to Thanksgiving dinner,” I said.

  He waved that away dismissively. “No, I mean anything odd, peculiar, out of the ordinary.”

  “That is out of the ordinary.”

  He leaned even closer. “I flew out to my parents’ for Thanksgiving, and on the flight home—you know how people always carry on luggage that won’t fit in the overhead compartments and then try to cram it in?”

  “Yes,” I said, thinking of a bridesmaid’s bouquet I had made the mistake of putting in the overhead compartment one time.

  “Well, nobody did that on my flight. They didn’t carry on hanging bags or enormous shopping bags full of Christmas presents. Some people didn’t even have a carry-on. And that isn’t all. Our flight was half an hour late, and the flight attendant said, ‘Those of you who do not have connecting flights, please remain seated until those with connections have deplaned.’ And they did.” He looked at me expectantly.

  “Maybe everybody was just in the Christmas spirit.”

  He shook his head. “All four babies on the flight slept the whole way, and the toddler behind me didn’t kick the seat.”

  That was unusual.

  “Not only that, the guy next to me was reading The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. When’s the last time you saw anybody on an airplane reading anything but John Grisham or Danielle Steel? I tell you, there’s something funny going on.”

  “What?” I asked curiously.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re sure you haven’t noticed anything?”

  “Nothing except for my sister. She always dates these losers, but the guy she brought to Thanksgiving was really nice. He even helped
with the dishes.”

  “You didn’t notice anything else?”

  “No,” I said, wishing I had. This was the longest he’d ever talked to me about anything besides his ex-wife. “Maybe it’s something in the air at DIA. I have to take my sister-in-law and her little girls to the airport Wednesday. I’ll keep an eye out.”

  He nodded. “Don’t say anything about this, okay?” he said, and hurried off to Accounting.

  “What was that all about?” Penny asked, coming over.

  “His ex-wife,” I said. “When do we have to exchange Secret Santa gifts?”

  “Every Friday, and Christmas Eve.”

  I opened up my slip. Good, I’d gotten Hunziger. With luck I wouldn’t have to buy any Secret Santa gifts at all.

  Tuesday I got Aunt Laura and Uncle Phil’s Christmas newsletter. It was in gold ink on cream-colored paper, with large gold bells in the corners. “Joyeux Noël,” it began. “That’s French for Merry Christmas. We’re sending our newsletter out early this year because we’re spending Christmas in Cannes to celebrate Phil’s promotion to assistant CEO and my wonderful new career! Yes, I’m starting my own business—Laura’s Floral Creations—and orders are pouring in! It’s already been written up in House Beautiful, and you will never guess who called last week—Martha Stewart!” Et cetera.

  I didn’t see Gary. Or anything unusual, although the waiter who took my lunch order actually got it right for a change. But he got Tonya’s (who works up on third) wrong.

  “I told him tomato and lettuce only,” she said, picking pickles off her sandwich. “I heard Gary talked to you yesterday. Did he ask you out?”

  “What’s that?” I said, pointing to the folder Tonya’d brought with her, to change the subject. “The Harbrace file?”

  “No,” she said. “Do you want my pickles? It’s our Christmas schedule. Never marry anybody who has kids from a previous marriage. Especially when you have kids from a previous marriage. Tom’s ex-wife, Janine, my ex-husband, John, and four sets of grandparents all want the kids, and they all want them on Christmas morning. It’s like trying to schedule the D-day invasion.”