by Rachel Cohn
I don’t mean this to sound hopeless. Because in the same way that a kid can realize what “c-a-t” means, I think we can find the truths that live behind our words. I wish I could remember the moment when I was a kid and I discovered that the letters linked into words, and that the words linked to real things. What a revelation that must have been. We don’t have the words for it, since we hadn’t yet learned the words. It must have been astonishing, to be given the key to the kingdom and see it turn in our hands so easily.
My hands were starting to shake a little. Because I hadn’t known that I knew these things. Just having a notebook to write them in, and having someone to write them to, made them all rise to the surface.
There was the other part of it, too—the I want to believe there is a somebody out there just for me. I want to believe that I exist to be there for that somebody. That was, I had to admit, less a concern to me. Because the rest of it seemed so much bigger. But I still had enough longing for that concept that I didn’t want to dispel it completely. Meaning: I didn’t want to tell Lily that I felt we’d all been duped by Plato and the idea of a soulmate. Just in case it turned out that she was mine.
Too much. Too soon. Too fast. I put down the notebook, paced around the apartment. The world was too full of wastrels and waifs, sycophants and spies—all of whom put words to the wrong use, who made everything that was said or written suspect. Perhaps this was what was so unnerving about Lily at this moment—the trust that was required in what we were doing.
It is much harder to lie to someone’s face.
But.
It is also much harder to tell the truth to someone’s face.
Words failed me, insofar as I wasn’t sure I could find the words that wouldn’t fail her. So I put the journal down and pondered the address she’d given me (I had no idea where Dyker Heights was) and the ghastly Muppet that had accompanied it. Do bring Snarly Muppet, she’d written. I liked the ring of the do bring. Like this was a comedy of manners.
“Can you tell me what she’s like?” I asked Snarly.
He just snarled back. Not helpful.
My cell phone rang—Mom, asking me how Christmas Eve at Dad’s place was. I told her it was fine and asked her if she and Giovanni were having a traditional Christmas Eve dinner. She giggled and said no, there wasn’t a turkey in sight, and she was just fine with that. I liked the sound of her giggle—kids don’t really hear their parents giggle enough, if you ask me—and I let her get off the phone before she felt the urge to pass it over to Giovanni for some perfunctory salutations. I knew my dad wouldn’t call until actual Christmas Day—he only called when the obligation was so obvious even a gorilla would get it.
I imagined what it would be like if my lie to my mom was actually the truth—that is, if I was with Dad and Leeza right then, at some “yoga retreat” in California. Personally, I felt yoga was something to retreat from, not toward, so the mental image involved me sitting cross-legged with an open book in my lap while everyone else did the Spread-Eagle Ostrich. I’d vacationed with Dad and Leeza exactly once in the two or so years they’d been together, and that had involved a redundantly named “spa resort” and me walking in on them while they were kissing with mud masks on. That had been more than enough for this lifetime, and the three or four after.
Mom and I had decorated the tree before she and Giovanni had left. Even though I wasn’t into Christmas, I did get some satisfaction from the tree—every year, Mom and I got to take out our childhoods and scatter them across the branches. I hadn’t said anything, but Mom had known that Giovanni deserved no part in this—it was just her and me, taking out the palm-sized rocking chair that my great-grandmother had made for my mother’s dollhouse and dangling it from a bow, then taking the worn-out washcloth from when I was a baby, its lion face still peering through the cartoon woods, and balancing it on the pine. Every year we added something, and this year I’d made my mother laugh when I’d brought out one of my younger self’s most prized possessions—a mini Canadian Club bottle that she’d drained quickly on a flight to see my paternal grandparents, and that I’d then proceeded to hold (in amazement) for the rest of the vacation.
It was a funny story, and I wanted to tell it to Lily, the girl I barely knew.
But I left the notebook where it was. I knew I could have buttoned my shirt, put my shoes back on, and headed to the mysterious Dyker Heights. But my gift to myself this Christmas Eve was a full retreat from the world. I didn’t turn on the TV. I didn’t call any friends. I didn’t check my email. I didn’t even look out the windows. Instead, I reveled in solitude. If Lily wanted to believe there was a somebody out there just for her, I wanted to believe that I could be somebody in here just for me. I made myself dinner. I ate slowly, trying to take the time to actually taste the food. I picked up Franny and Zooey and enjoyed their company again. Then I tangoed with my bookshelf, dipping in and out again, in and out again—a Marie Howe poem, then a John Cheever story. An old E. B. White essay, then a passage from Trumpet of the Swans. I went into my mother’s room and read some of the pages she’d dog-eared—she always did that when she read a sentence that she liked, and each time I opened the book, I had to try to figure out which sentence was the one that had impressed itself upon her. Was it the Logan Pearsall Smith quote “The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection, even though it consist in nothing more than in the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star” from page 202 of J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar or, a few lines down, the more simple “Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around”? From Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, was it “He had admired the ancient delicacy of the buildings and the way the street lamps made soft explosions of light green in the trees at night” or “The place had filled him with a sense of wisdom hovering just out of reach, of unspeakable grace prepared and waiting just around the corner, but he’d walked himself weak down its endless blue streets and all the people who knew how to live had kept their tantalizing secret to themselves”? On page 82 of Anne Enright’s The Gathering, was it “But it is not just the sex, or remembered sex, that makes me think I love Michael Weiss from Brooklyn, now, seventeen years too late. It is the way he refused to own me, no matter how much I tried to be owned. It was the way he would not take me, he would only meet me, and that only ever halfway.” Or was it “I think I am ready for that now. I think I am ready to be met”?
I spent hours doing this. I didn’t say a word, but I wasn’t conscious of my silence. The sound of my own life, my own internal life, was all that I needed.
It felt like a holiday, but that had nothing to do with Jesus or the calendar or what anyone else in the world was doing.
Before I went to bed, I got back into my usual routine—opening up the (sadly, abridged) dictionary next to my bed and trying to find a word I could love.
li•ques•cent, adj. 1. becoming liquid; melting. 2. tending toward a liquid state.
Liquescent. I tried to say myself to sleep with it.
It was only as I was drifting off that I realized what I’d done:
In opening the book at random, I’d only landed a few pages long of Lily.
I hadn’t left any milk and cookies out for Santa. We didn’t have a chimney; there wasn’t even a fireplace. I had submitted no list, and had not received any certifications of my niceness. And yet, when I woke up around noon the next day, there were still presents from my mother waiting for me.
I unwrapped them one by one underneath the tree, since I knew that was how she’d want me to do it. I felt pangs for her then—just for these ten minutes, just so I could give her presents, too. There wasn’t anything surprising beneath the wrapping paper—a number of books I’d wanted, a gadget or two to add some diversity, and a blue sweater that didn’t look half bad.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said to the air. Because it was still too early to call her time zone.
I lost myself immediately in one of the book
s, only emerging when the phone rang.
“Dashiell?” my father intoned. As if someone else with my voice might be answering the phone at my mother’s apartment.
“Yes, Father?”
“Leeza and I would like to wish you a merry Christmas.”
“Thank you, Father. And to you, as well.”
[awkward pause]
[even more awkward pause]
“I hope your mother isn’t giving you any trouble.”
Oh, Father, I love it when you play this game.
“She told me if I clean all the ashes out of the grate, then I’ll be able to help my sisters get ready for the ball.”
“It’s Christmas, Dashiell. Can’t you give that attitude a rest?”
“Merry Christmas, Dad. And thanks for the presents.”
“What presents?”
“I’m sorry—those were all from Mom, weren’t they?”
“Dashiell …”
“I gotta go. The gingerbread men are on fire.”
“Wait—Leeza wants to wish you a merry Christmas.”
“The smoke’s getting pretty thick. I really have to go.”
“Well, merry Christmas.”
“Yeah, Dad. Merry Christmas.”
It was, I figured, at least an eighth my fault for picking up the phone in the first place. But I’d just wanted to get it over with, and now here it was—very over. I gravitated toward the red notebook and almost started venting there—but then I felt like I didn’t want to burden Lily with what I was feeling, not right now. That would just be passing the unfairness along, and Lily would be even more powerless to stop what had happened than I had been.
It was only five o’clock, but it was already dark outside. I decided the time had come for me to head to Dyker Heights.
This involved me taking the D train farther than I’d ever taken the D train before. After the frenzied crowds of the past week, the city was almost blank on Christmas Day. The only things open were ATMs, churches, Chinese restaurants, and movie theaters. Everything else was dark, sleeping the season off. Even the subway seemed like it had been hollowed out—only a few scattered people on the platform, a thin row of passengers on the seats. Yes, there were signs it was Christmas—little girls delighting in their frocks and little boys looking imprisoned by their little suits. Eye contact was often met with friendliness instead of hostility. But for a place that had been overrun with tourists, there was nary a guidebook in sight, and all the conversations were kept quiet. I read my book from Manhattan into Brooklyn. But then, when the D train emerged from the ground, I shifted so I could stare out the window, stealing glimpses of family windows as we chugged past.
I still didn’t know how I was going to find the Nutcracker House. When I got to the subway stop, however, I had some idea. A disproportionate number of passengers had gotten off with me, and they all seemed to be heading in the same direction—clusters of families, couples holding hands, old people making pilgrimage. I followed.
At first, it seemed like there was something strange in the air, giving it a halo of electricity, like in Times Square. Only, we were nowhere near Times Square, so it didn’t make much sense … until I started to see the houses, each one more electrified than the next. These were not Christmas light dilettantes here. This was a spectacular spectacular of lawn and house ornamentation. For as far as the eye could see, every house was ringed with lights. Lights of every color, lights of every shape. Outlines of reindeer and Santa and his sleigh. Boxes with ribbon, toy teddy bears, larger-than-life dolls—all strung together from Christmas lights. If Joseph and Mary had lit the manger like this, it would’ve been seen all the way in Rome.
Observing it all, I felt such contradictory feelings. On the one hand, it was an astonishing misuse of energy, a testament to the ingenious wastefulness that American Christmas inspires. On the other hand, it was amazing to see the whole community lit up like this, because it made it feel very much like a community. You could imagine everyone taking out their lights on the same day and having a block party while they put them all up. The children walked around transfixed by the sights, as if their neighbors had suddenly become purveyors of an exquisite magic. There was as much conversation swirling around as there was light—none of it involved me, but I was glad to have it around.
The Nutcracker House was not hard to find—the nutcracker soldiers held sentry at least fifteen feet into the sky as the Rat King threatened the festivities and Clara danced through the night. I looked for a scroll in her hand, or a card on the top of one of the light-strung presents. Then I saw it on the ground—a light-dappled walnut the size of a basketball that had been cracked open just far enough to reach into.
The note I found inside was brief and clear.
Tell me what you see.
So I sat on the curb and told her about the contradictions, about the waste and the joy. Then I told her that I preferred the quiet demonstrations of a well-stocked bookshelf to the voltage of this particular street. Not that one was wrong and the other was right—it was just a matter of preference. I told her that I was glad Christmas was over, and then I told her why. I looked around some more, tried to see everything, just so I could tell it to her. The yawn of a three-year-old, tired despite his happiness. The elderly couple from the train who’d finally completed the walk to the block—I imagined they’d been doing this for years, and that they saw both the houses in front of them and all the houses from the past. I imagined each of their sentences started with the phrase Remember the time.
Then I told her what I didn’t see. Namely, that I didn’t see her.
You could be standing a few feet away—Clara’s dance partner, or across the street taking a picture of Rudolph before he takes flight. I could have sat next to you on the subway, or brushed beside you as we went through the turnstiles. But whether or not you are here, you are here—because these words are for you, and they wouldn’t exist if you weren’t here in some way. This notebook is a strange instrument—the player doesn’t know the music until it’s being played.
I know you want to know my name. But if I told you my name, even just the first name, you’d be able to go online and find all of these inaccurate, incomplete depictions of me. (If my name were John or Michael, this would not be a problem.) And even if you swore up and down that you wouldn’t check, the temptation would always be there. So I’d like to remain at that one delicate remove, so you can get to know me without the distraction of other people’s noise. I hope that’s okay.
The next assignment on the do (or don’t) list is time sensitive—meaning, it would be best if you did it this very evening. Because at this club that changes names every month or so (I gave her the address), there is an all-nighter that is about to start. The theme (seasonally appropriate) is the Seventh Night of Hanukkah. The opener is some “jewfire” band (Ezekial? Ariel?), and at about two in the morning, this gay Jewish dancepop/indie/punk band called Silly Rabbi, Tricks Are for Yids will go on. Between the opener and the main act, look for the writing on the stall.
An all-nighter at a club wasn’t exactly my scene, so I knew I had a phone call or two to make before the plan would be complete. I quickly slipped the Moleskine into the walnut and took Snarly Muppet out of my backpack.
“Watch over this, will you?” I asked it.
And then I left it there, a small sentry among the nutcrackers.
eight
(Lily)
December 25th
I decided to give myself a Christmas present this year. I decided to spend the day only speaking to animals (real and stuffed), select humans as necessary so long as they weren’t my parents or Langston, and a Snarl in a red Moleskine notebook—if he returned it to me.
When I was old enough to read and write, my parents gave me an eraser board that I kept in my room at all times. The idea was that when frustrated, I, Lily, should write down words on the board to express my feelings instead of letting she-devil Shrilly express them through shrieking. It was suppo
sed to be a therapeutic tool.
I brought the eraser board out of retirement on Christmas morning when my parents phoned in for a video chat. I almost didn’t recognize them on the computer screen. The betrayers looked so healthy, tan, and relaxed. Completely not Christmasy.
“Merry Christmas, Lily darling!” Mom said. She was sitting on the balcony of their cabana or whatever it was, and I could see the ocean lapping behind her. She looked ten years younger than when she left Manhattan a week earlier.
Dad’s glowing face wormed onto the screen next to Mom’s, blocking my ocean view.
“Merry Christmas, Lily darling!” he said.
I scribbled onto the eraser board and held it up to the computer screen for them to see: Merry Christmas to you, too.
Mom and Dad both frowned at the sight of the eraser board.
“Uh-oh,” Mom said.
“Uh-oh,” Dad said. “Is Lily Bear feeling a bit unsettled today? Even though we’ve been preparing you for our anniversary trip since last Christmas, and you assured us you would feel okay having just this one Christmas without us?”
I erased my last statement and replaced it with: Langston told me about the boarding school job.
Their faces fell.
“Put Langston on!” Mom demanded.
I wrote, He’s sick in bed. Asleep right now.
Dad said, “What’s his temperature?”
101.
Mom’s peeved face turned concerned. “Poor baby. On Christmas Day, too. It’s just as well we all agreed not to open presents until we get home on New Year’s Day. It wouldn’t be any fun with him sick in bed, now would it?”
I shook my head. Are you moving to Fiji?
Dad said, “We haven’t decided anything. We’ll talk about it as a family when we get home.”
Rapidly, my hands erased and re-scribbled.
It makes me UPSET that you didn’t tell me.