by Billy Romp
Our family dinner was early the night of the tree-trimming so that we would have plenty of time to set up for our guests. After four days in the city, Patti, the children, and I had settled comfortably into our Jane Street routine. The size of our slide-in camper (seven by eight feet) impressed New Yorkers, who were used to living in small spaces. But what amazed them even more was that Patti cooked there. Every day, hot meals sprang forth from her Lilliputian kitchen. And by cooking, I don’t mean warming canned soup or reheating frozen pizza, I’m talking cooking from scratch. And we sat down as a family together for at least one, and if we could manage it, two, meals a day.
Equipped with a three-burner gas range, a built-in oven, a shallow sink connected to a ten-gallon water tank, and a maple cutting board for a counter, the kitchen was tight, but just large enough to cook in. An antique wooden tray served as a wall-mounted spice rack that held baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, and the like. Frying pans and dish towels hung from hooks beneath upper storage shelves. Perhaps the greatest novelty in the camper was the icebox. Yes, an icebox that kept things cold the old-fashioned way—with ice rather than electricity. But because the icebox stood near our portable electric floor heater, it rarely kept things cold for long. As a result, we never left anything there longer than overnight. Which meant that we lived like the French, shopping every day for fruit and other perishables.
Every morning for breakfast, Patti rolled out biscuits on the cutting board or made bran muffins or potato pancakes. We slathered these with creamery butter and our homemade blueberry or blackberry jam from Vermont. At lunch, she whipped up some heavenly soup or stew, often using leftovers from the previous evening. Dinner was generally lasagna or a casserole, homemade bread, and cooked vegetables. Occasionally, as a special treat, she served fish or venison. For dessert, Patti made pies, cakes, and cookies. Her specialties were apple crisp, gingerbread, and oatmeal-raisin and Christmas cookies.
With pleasant smells wafting from the kitchen, the camper became a hub not only for our family but for customers and neighbors. We made it a practice to share whatever we had with anyone who happened by, to offer a bowl of stew or a fresh muffin to anyone who asked and to many who didn’t. Louie, a genial homeless man, was our only “regular.” He returned the favor by praising us to the hilt. “I always look forward to Christmastime,” he would say, “because the Romps are coming!” Occasionally, mistaking the camper for a food truck, passersby knocked on the camper door and called out: “How much are your hot dogs?” Or: “Do you serve pastrami on rye?”
For this special evening, Patti had prepared a great family favorite—shepherd’s pie. We eased ourselves onto the comfortable floral cushions around the dinette table, which stood on a small pedestal. We all held hands and waited for Timmy to start the prayer by bowing his head. I asked the blessing for the food we were about to receive. Being so close didn’t drive us to distraction, as people mistakenly assumed, but made for close bonds. Cozy—not cramped—was the word I used to describe life inside the camper.
“You did well,” I congratulated Henry, as we dug into the shepherd’s pie’s mashed-potato crust.
Henry had selected a good, solid Balsam fir tree for the corner. It was a seven and a half footer—slightly shorter than normal—but full-figured and pleasant nonetheless. I knew that once it was decked out in ornaments and finery, it would look even better than it did now.
Henry wanted to know if I would have chosen that particular one. He asked me that afternoon when we were setting the corner tree in its stand. I put him off by asking him what he thought. We had tied the top of the tree to the DON’T WALK/WALK sign so that wind wouldn’t topple it. I had added an adapter to the string of overhead lights to accommodate the lights for the corner tree.
“So, Dad,” he persisted over dinner. “Would you have chosen that tree?”
“I might very well have chosen that tree. You really picked a beauty.”
Patti glanced out the window at the tree. “It’s well anchored.” Then she did a double take: “Look, there’s already an ornament on it!”
We all turned to look out the little window above the stove. Light was starting to fade on Eighth Avenue but the corner tree with its single ornament was hard to miss. No family member admitted to having hung an ornament earlier, though it seemed like a possible Henry prank. More than likely, it was contributed by a neighbor who mistook our tree-trimming party for an invitation for guests to bring ornaments.
We ate heartily that night. Actually, something about the entire season made our appetites expand. That was true of everyone in the family, including Timmy, who was now old enough to hold his own spoon and deliver most of its contents to his mouth without spilling. Everyone at the table joked about how much harder Timmy’s “workload” was in the city and what it consisted of: learning how to count; learning how to walk a straight line without stumbling; learning how to pet Santos without yanking his fur!
In our marriage, Patti and I are usually compatible. We rarely have trouble with major matters—such as how many children to have, how to raise them, where to live, and how to make a living. And we seldom disagree on matters of principle. It is the little things that cause us to form stubborn positions from which we refuse to budge.
Little things like tinsel. Patti likes tinsel, and I loathe the stuff. My argument is that tinsel is a poor substitute for the icicles it was meant to portray. Patti’s argument is that tinsel is festive, fun, and easy to use, so why not?
Rather than have the same argument each year, we came up with a simple solution. We decorate the corner tree on alternate years. Patti takes one year and includes tinsel. I take the next and put on the same ornaments but leave off the tinsel. This particular year belonged to me.
We finished our dinner and moved outside to prepare for the tree-trimming party. We stacked several cardboard boxes together to form a tabletop, which we covered with a red tablecloth decorated with holly leaves. Ellie and Henry helped me carry out boxes of tangerines and large bowls of hot popcorn drizzled with melted butter. Our friend Tom contributed a plate of hors d’oeuvres. Our official landlord, Bill Bowser, who oversees the Jane Street Community Garden, contributed two gallons of apple cider, which Patti spiced and warmed for the carolers.
When a small crowd of guests had arrived, I led a round of songs starting with “O Christmas Tree!” We continued caroling for five minutes before we began stringing the lights on the tree. One of the guests confessed to hanging the reindeer ornament that afternoon when no one was looking. “I shouldn’t have told you,” she confessed. “Then you might have thought Kris Kringle had left it.”
Our gaiety attracted by passers. One woman, dressed in a fur coat and leopard-print turban, stopped and asked: “Is this a TV commercial?”
I had just about persuaded her to join the fun when Anne Abbott and her children, Emma and Lucie, arrived. Though shorter and thinner than Ellie, Emma had shot up since the previous year. She looked very pretty in a green wool coat with a black velvet collar and matching hat. For a fleeting moment as I looked Emma over in her coat, I thought of how elegant Ellie would look in such an outfit.
Ellie rushed over to her friend, and they hugged like long-lost sisters. The two boys, Henry and Lucie, picked up where they left off the year before: racing around the corner to scope out the new secret hideouts. The girls smiled and beamed at each other for a long time before settling into a session of serious girl talk. Occasionally, almost as an afterthought, they reached for a piece of popcorn or hung an ornament; but it was clear that the main thing was each other.
Though I stayed busy filling our guests’ cups with cider and making small talk, occasionally I overheard snatches of their conversation. I heard Emma tell Ellie about some of the things she wanted for Christmas. I heard her ask Ellie what she was getting for Christmas. I cocked my ear to hear Ellie’s reply, but a noisy truck lumbering down Eighth Avenue muffled it.
No matter. I knew what Ellie wanted for Christmas. I
had been laboring for months to make it for her.
It’s a Romp family tradition that each child receive one major present each Christmas, a gift meant to last a lifetime. Ellie had been dropping broad hints all year long for what I thought she most wanted. She adored my toolbox and borrowed it repeatedly for one project or another. I had almost completed custom-making her own toolbox, a miniature version of my own. I had begun to fill it with tools, some of which I’d found in duplicate in my shop; others I’d picked up at yard sales. I tried whenever possible to get smaller versions of my tools, ones that would fit her smaller hands as a child and work for her in the future when she became a woman. I planned to fill in with other tools from Garber’s Hardware down the street from the camper.
Because I knew it was important for the children to own their things and not have everything drawn into some collective family pot, I planned to make a special mark on each of Ellie’s tools. That would be my last job. I hadn’t yet decided how I’d mark her tools. Perhaps it would be her initials in green. Or maybe I’d engrave her initials in the tools’ handles.
Even if they weren’t in my direct range of vision, I was always aware of my children’s presence or absence in the space around me. Suddenly I sensed that Ellie had disappeared. Along with the other kids. I found Patti, who, seeing the alarm in my eyes, indicated back toward the camper. When I looked, I could see it rocking with boisterous children inside.
Through the narrow camper window I saw Ellie and Emma and Henry and Lucie hurling pillows at one another. Some good-natured insults could be heard coming from inside as well. It appeared to be a war of the sexes, with Santos uncertain which side to pick. Only Timmy, who had gotten hold of the gold garland and was walking it around the mailbox, remained outside.
Patti was discussing with Anne how the children had grown in the year since they’d seen each other. I chatted with several people and broke loose to make a sale to a man who seemed delighted to have a cup of cider thrown into the deal.
At about that time, Ellie stepped out of the camper purposefully. With Emma right behind her, she made her way up to me.
“Daddy,” she said, speaking louder than usual. “I’ve figured out what I want for Christmas.”
I smiled. If this was how she wanted it—to make her announcement publicly with Emma looking on—I wasn’t about to spoil her fun. I looked away for a moment, hoping that I wouldn’t give away what I already knew.
“You know what I want?” she asked, then hesitated before continuing. “I want to go to the Nutcracker ballet at Lincoln Center with Emma.”
I was floored. I looked at her and, for an instant, felt that my daughter was a complete stranger. I said nothing; I didn’t know what to say.
She must have taken my silence as a license to continue. “I mean, I don’t just want me to go, I want our entire family to go, just like Emma and her family.”
“Where did this come from?” I asked, my eyes landing on the velvet collar on Emma’s fine coat.
“It’s my Christmas wish—the one gift I want above all others,” she said. I noticed that for the first time since we’d been in New York she was not carrying Zippy.
She would think better of it in the morning, I thought. This was some fanciful idea that would be here today, gone tomorrow. “Why don’t you sleep on it?” I suggested, trying to downplay the thing.
She looked at me intensely. “It’s not going to change. I want to go to The Nutcracker. Can we go?”
Since she was pushing it, I felt compelled to respond. I explained to Ellie that we couldn’t afford to shut down the stand for the evening in high season. It would mean a loss of hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in tree sales. On top of that, you’d have to add in the cost of the evening, which would mean several hundred more dollars in tickets, cab fare, dinner, and the works. It was just not possible.
Ellie seemed not to be listening at all. She looked exasperated, like when a customer she’d spent a long time with just walked off without buying. “But if it’s my Christmas wish…” she pleaded.
I told her how finances were especially tight that year. I explained the Romp family philosophy. “We only spend money on things of lasting value.”
It was then that my daughter gave me a look I’d never seen in her eyes before. For a moment it frightened me, it appeared so hard and distant. All she said was: “Well if you’re going to be that way.” With that, she turned and, with Emma following behind, returned to the camper.
3
The Candle Stand
It started raining that first full week in December and wouldn’t let up. Though the amount of rain varied—it drizzled some of the time and poured at others—the skies remained gray and gloomy. Even when I’m outdoors all day, I try not to let rain or snow dampen my spirits. I always think of my mother’s wisdom on the subject. She used to say that she “never met” weather she didn’t like. “If the weather makes you unhappy, it’s not the weather’s fault, so it must be yours.”
Actually, rain is good for my trees. They drink it up. Literally. They flourish during a downpour and are pumped up for hours afterward. They seem to stand taller and fuller, and are more alive somehow, the way a person is who’s just been well fed or showered with praise.
The rain wasn’t the reason, but it was a challenge to remain upbeat that week, given how things had gone with Ellie. Strained is the word I’d have to use to describe relations between us ever since the tree-trimming party. She’d grown cold and distant, performing her duties at the stand like a sullen employee rather than my golden girl. She was arriving at the stand later and later each morning. On this particular day, she hadn’t come out of the camper at all.
In her defense, the rain had cut into my business, and the few customers I had rarely lingered to pick my brain about tree upkeep or decoration. So I didn’t really need her. It’s just that fourteen hours, standing out in the rain, can get lonesome. In years past, Ellie would always come out to sip hot chocolate and lend moral support.
No more. All through this week, she observed what I was wearing in the morning, then found something as close to the opposite as possible. Pink and purple when I wore brown. Black when I chose white. The message she seemed to want to send was that she was nothing like me. Pointedly trying to get to me, she was succeeding, though I tried not to let on.
Actually, no one except the family saw my clothes those days because they were covered over by the hooded orange rain suit that I wore all day. Amazingly, it kept me dry even during deluges. Designed for commercial fishermen, it was made of heavy vinyl on canvas with snap closures. I wore it along with waterproof boots and a visored hat that kept my eyeglasses dry and clear.
Periodically throughout that slow business day, I stuck my head into the camper, where Patti was cooking and the children playing. I say “stuck my head” because, all decked out in my rain gear, I didn’t dare go inside and get the camper wet. For meals on wet days, I either had to extricate myself from my rain suit, which was a bother, or Patti would hand me a hot plate covered over in aluminum foil. If it was an off hour and a table was free at Bonsignour, across the street, I’d take my meal over there. As I ate, I kept an eye on the stand out the giant plate-glass window.
Ellie had been holed up in the camper all that day making Christmas cards. Every year, Patti’s mother sent the children a care package containing colored paper and envelopes, glitter glue, and Magic Markers from which they spun out magical Christmas creations. Sometimes they’d attach a few Balsam needles to the cards for aroma and effect. My mother-in-law addressed the package to “The Romps, Christmas Tree Sellers, Corner of Jane Street and Eighth Avenue, New York, New York, 10014,” and it never failed to reach us, which gave everyone a great kick. With the rain pounding the tin roof, the camper felt cozy and cavelike. Like white noise, the rain somehow muffled the sound of the street.
When I stuck my head in and tried to make conversation, Ellie rebuffed me with one-word answers. “How are the cards com
ing?” I’d ask, and she’d say, “Fine.” Or I’d try, “Getting hungry?” and she’d answer, “Nope.” The subject of the Nutcracker ballet hadn’t come up again between Ellie and me since the tree-trimming party. Had I not known her better, I would have assumed that she’d forgotten all about it. But her behavior was so unlike the girl I knew that it was obvious something was wrong.
The boys had mixed Henry’s toy soldiers—a present from Jane Street friends the previous Christmas—with my tools. Soldiers were setting up camp inside an area on the floor bounded by a wrench and hammer. Command headquarters appeared to be the inside of my toolbox. My tools weren’t toys, and I didn’t appreciate their being used that way. But, as a parent, you have to choose your battles. And I didn’t feel like getting into it with Henry just then. Ellie was as much as I could handle. Which may have been why Henry had chosen that moment to dive into my toolbox. He knew that he could get away with it that day.
I tuned in to the weather station on my transistor radio. It was then that I heard a weather advisory: the temperature was going to plummet into the mid-twenties that night. Though it was still early afternoon, you could feel the cold knocking at your bones, frigid fingers poking your body. My thoughts immediately turned to the trees—especially the Douglas firs.
The most delicate of the trees I sell, the Douglas firs have a finer needle than the Frasers and Balsams and are less hardy after being cut. If they’re wet when it freezes, they lose color, shed needles rapidly, and appear limp and lifeless. In short, they become unsalable. Thousands of dollars of inventory was standing in the balance on that tree rack. “Ellie,” I said in a businesslike way. “I need your help.”
She waited for just a moment before acknowledging me. When she did look up from the page, she squinted at me, as if she didn’t want to see my entire face but only a fraction.
“I need your help,” I said. “Covering the Douglas firs.”