by Billy Romp
“Now?” she asked in a tone that suggested that “now” hardly seemed possible.
How could I make myself any clearer? “N-O-W,” I spelled out. My tone was terse and definitive.
“Dad,” she groaned. “I don’t want to get wet.”
I didn’t have a lot of sympathy. “Know what?” I said, trying to make light of it. “Your clothes will dry, and your skin’s waterproof.”
Usually she laughed when I trotted out familiar sayings, but this time, she responded with a resigned smirk. She pulled on her rain slicker and stepped out of the camper behind me. In the cab of the truck, she held Santos back while I leaned the bench seat forward to remove the tarp from behind.
At the Douglas fir rack, Ellie held the tarp off the ground as I tied one end to the base of the rack. The plan was to hoist her up on my shoulders so that she could help ease the tarp over the top of the trees. (Then, when there was a break in the traffic on Eighth Avenue, I’d scamper over to the street and, with lightning speed, tie the other end down.) Before lifting her up, I reminded her to tuck in any loose branches to prevent breaking the limbs. “I know,” she answered dismissively.
We were back on the sidewalk when she brought it up again. “Remember what I told you the other night, what my Christmas wish was.” She waited for me to nod my head yes before going on. “I was wondering if you’d thought about it—taking the whole family to The Nutcracker this year.”
“Of course, I remember,” I said, watching rain stream down on her hatless head, soaking her long brown braids. I didn’t admit it but the fact is I’d questioned more than once since then if I had been too harsh in my judgment about The Nutcracker. But I remained convinced that in principle I was right. We really couldn’t afford it, and I didn’t want to set a precedent here. “It’s just not possible for us to do things like that in our financial situation, and certainly not at this time of year,” I explained. “We’re just like those apple growers in Vermont during the fall harvest season. They can’t just leave the stand on a whim.”
“But when you ask for a Christmas present, aren’t you supposed to ask for what you really want?” she said. “And isn’t that what Christmas is sort of about—giving and getting what you really want?”
I thought about it for a moment, then responded as best I knew how. “You can ask for what you want, but if it’s out of the giver’s reach, you shouldn’t be sullen about not getting it. And, no, I don’t think ‘getting what you really want’ is what Christmas is about. It’s not a material holiday.”
“Then why are you trying so hard to make all this money-—if it’s not a material holiday?”
“There’s a difference between keeping food on the table, a roof over your heads, and clothes on your backs, and spending all your money on one Christmas gift,” I said. “Someday, when you’re a parent, you’ll know what I’m talking about.”
Something I said must have triggered a reaction in her because her lips started puckering like she was starting to cry. In the rain, though, it was hard to know for sure.
“In most families, Christmas is for children,” she said, her voice quivering. “But we always do things the way you want to do them. We’re never even at home for Christmas. I mean, we are home but we get there so late, we’re never home on Christmas Eve. By Christmas Day, everyone’s so tired from the drive home that nobody has any fun.”
That one stung, but I knew for a fact it wasn’t true. Ellie loved our Christmas celebration in Vermont; either that or she was a great actress. “You don’t mean that, Ellie,” I said. “You don’t mean to say that you never enjoy Christmas.” It was true we’d always tried to keep the stand on Jane Street open as late on Christmas Eve as possible, to pick up any last-minute tree and wreath sales. I never wanted to leave much unsold inventory behind.
“I do mean it,” she said. “And I’m not going to enjoy it this year unless I get what I want for a change.” She was starting to sound like a stranger, not the daughter I thought I knew.
But how could I make my situation any plainer to her? This was our business; this was how we paid our bills. And her timing was terrible. After a week of sluggish sales, our situation wasn’t looking particularly rosy. “I don’t think you understand what I’m up against, Ellie,” I pleaded.
“Dad, Emma gets to go to The Nutcracker every year. I just want to go once.” It certainly would have been easier just to peel off five twenty-dollar bills from my wad, hand them over to her, and be done with it. And I have to admit that at some level, I didn’t even understand my own resistance. But there was something about her desire to go to the ballet—with all its glamour and glitter—that I found deeply troubling. In my gut, I felt that if I let her go, this might be the beginning of a whole new way of life for her. I feared that my precious daughter would turn her back on our family’s simple life in favor of something more worldly.
“Ellie,” I started.
She cut right in. “I’ve made up my mind, Dad. I’m going to go to The Nutcracker with Emma—whether or not the rest of you go with me.” She glanced at my leg, where, under the rain suit, I kept my roll of money. “I’d rather go alone anyway.” Then she played a card I hadn’t considered. “I want to get some money from my savings account to buy a ticket.”
Ellie had a bank account back in Vermont that she’d opened to save to buy a horse. “I can’t let you do that,” I said. “That money is for your horse.”
She gave me an uncomprehending look.
“I would feel irresponsible as your father to let you spend so much money for a night out on the town. The evening might set you back a hundred dollars or more. It will make you happy for one night and then it will be over. A horse would be your friend for years.”
She looked at me fiercely. “But it’s my money,” she said. “I can’t believe this. You’re not going to let me spend my own money?” The way she looked at me was as if I were the most unreasonable man who’d ever lived.
“It’s your money,” I said. “But I’m your father. I’m supposed to prevent you from making foolish decisions. That’s what parents are for. When you’re eighteen, you can make up your own mind about money.” I considered repeating how tight money was for us this year, but I held back. I realized that Ellie had mentally separated her finances from ours. At a certain point, she clamped her mouth shut. And I wondered if I’d finally persuaded her to my thinking.
“It’s not fair,” she said in a low voice that sounded drained, even slightly defeated. Then she stepped back inside the camper, slowly drawing the door back behind her.
The next morning, our second Friday in New York, was one of those glorious days when, after a long period of rain and drizzle, everything sparkled like newly washed windows. The sun was shining and all the world—the buildings, sidewalks, storefronts, and even the pedestrians—seemed to gleam. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could have sworn that God himself had turned down the volume control on the traffic noise in the street. There were fewer honks and rapid, screeching halts and less shouting on the street. Even our trees seemed perky, like schoolchildren after a vacation who are raring to get back to class. The best news of all was that, thanks to the protection of the tarp, our Douglas firs had stayed dry enough to make it through the cold night without freezing.
Ellie climbed down from her bunk bed early that morning. It delighted me to see that her old spark had returned. She volunteered to walk the dog and slipped out of the camper.
While we were in New York City, the cab of the truck was Santos’s domain, his doghouse away from home. Most of the time, he slept not in the camper with us but in the cab, where he had more room to stretch and scratch. When he saw Ellie approaching, he reared up on the bench seat and began panting in anticipation’. He adored Ellie, who in her mood had ignored him all week. Santos stood obediently as she fastened the leash on his collar. Though he got between two and four walks a day, the morning walk was his favorite by far.
Santos was just a year old, almo
st full grown. We’d brought him home the previous Christmas Eve from an older Irish couple who worked as building superintendents on the Upper West Side and bred shepherds in their courtyard. As luck would have it, we had gotten the pick of the litter. Santos had been selected first by someone else and then returned when his would-be owner discovered that his lease forbade pets. We named him after a loyal and dependable friend in the hope that he too would come to possess those traits. It didn’t occur to us until later that the name also fit with his Christmastime arrival into our household. A lot of customers mistakenly called him “Santa.”
Over a breakfast of potato pancakes, biscuits, and blackberry jam, I commented that with this beautiful weather I was expecting “big business.” My hope was that Ellie, having cast off her gloom, would return to my side to help wait on customers, bag trees, and make change.
She answered that she was busy herself.
“What are you busy with?” I wanted to know. Ellie smiled coyly and said not a word.
I looked over at Patti, whose playful expression told me she was in the know. “Just you wait,” my wife said.
Ellie stepped out of the camper and made a beeline for the boxes of sawed-off tree stumps stored beneath the camper. When I went outside, it was obvious she was sorting through them.
“I’m going to sell Christmas candles,” Ellie said. “From now on, would you mind cutting the stumps as evenly as possible?” She was planning to use the stumps that I cut off from the bottom of every tree as bases for Christmas candles. She set off for Woolworth’s on Fourteenth Street (I learned that Patti had loaned her some money) and returned later with several sacks full of supplies, including small utility candles, red ribbon, paint, and glue.
How could I possibly object? She was not only showing enterprise but recycling tree stumps that were normally thrown away. Ellie brought out a folding chair from the truck cab and set up her operation outside the camper. Using my battery-operated electric drill, she drilled holes into these stumps to hold the candles. She then dressed the stumps with bows and fir sprigs and laid them out on a little metal folding table. She painted a sign in green and gold lettering: “CHRISTMAS CANDLES: $3 EACH/TWO FOR $5.”
Within an hour of hanging out her shingle and spreading our her wares, Ellie had already collected eight dollars, which she tucked into her bluejean pocket. The more I thought about it, the happier I grew over this sudden development. Clearly, Elbe’s mind had turned from this foolishness about The Nutcracker to something worthwhile. A business of her own, something she could build on. Still, it bothered me that she was so absorbed in her candles that she didn’t have much time to help me.
When I had more customers than I could handle, I called for her help.
“In a minute, Dad,” she responded, continuing to chat with one of her own customers.
I watched out of the corner of my eye as she completed that sale. When several more tree customers arrived and began milling about the “action zone”—the point where the two sidewalks converged into a giant triangle and most of our sales took place—once again, I called for her help. If someone didn’t attend to them soon, I was afraid we’d lose their business. One man, dressed in an expensive Italian suit, kept checking his watch.
Just as her customer walked off, another couple appeared and began admiring her candles. Ellie greeted them as if she had all the time in the world. “It’s another beautiful day in paradise,” she said, borrowing my well-worn line. It was flattering to be imitated in this way. But she wasn’t helping me with the tree sales, something we’d always done together. I considered ordering Ellie to come and help out. After all, that impatient customer was probably good for a fifty- or one-hundred-dollar sale, whereas Ellie would spend the same amount of time for a three-to-five-dollar sale. But remembering how unpleasant the previous days had been when she was so mad at me, I held my tongue. I turned from my own customer, who was deliberating between a six-foot Balsam and a seven-foot Fraser, and greeted the impatient customer. “I’ll be with you shortly,” I said. He glanced at his watch once again and told me that he’d be back later. I knew that there was at least a 50 percent chance that we’d lost the sale.
I was holding a wreath when I heard Ellie tell her customers why she’d gotten into the candle business: “I’m saving money to buy a ticket to The Nutcracker.” I was so stunned that I nearly dropped the wreath. The intensity of her desire to see this ballet was beyond my comprehension. Where was it coming from? Was she more attracted to the bright lights of the city than to the quiet country life that we led?
I didn’t know what else to do, so I reflexively fished into my pants pocket and pulled out my silver pocket watch. It was a Hamilton railroad watch that had belonged to my grandfather, Henry Romp. My grandmother had given it to me the year he died, when I was eleven. As the only boy in a family with four sisters, I alone could carry on the Romp name, she had told me. Amazingly, more than three decades later, I still had it, used it, and kept it in good repair. It was a family treasure that I planned to hand down to Henry, when he came of age. Whenever I looked at it, it linked me to the generations who’d come before me and the ones that would follow after. It made me see that whatever was bothering me at the moment would pass. Suddenly The Nutcracker seemed less of an issue than it had before. After all, Ellie was working for what she wanted—a philosophy I’d been preaching for years. Then I had a flash. Someday, Ellie herself might be running my Christmas tree stand.
I walked over to her stand and laid my hands on her shoulders. “Ellie, you’re doing a great job!” I said. “Now I know that if I get into a bind, with your skills, you can run my business!”
But her shoulders felt rigid to my touch. Instead she pulled her money from her pocket and began counting it.
“Looks like you’re doing well for yourself,” I said, thinking perhaps she’d tell me how much she’d taken in. But she didn’t volunteer her totals. She didn’t say much of anything.
Once that day’s rush had died down, she put away her candles and went directly to Emma’s apartment for dinner.
4
Night on the town
My Christmas trees had been marching off Jane Street into their new homes in record numbers these past two and a half weeks. And Ellie had already made and sold three batches of two dozen candles each. Not one to be outdone by his big sister, Henry had started his own business. At first, his scheme was to sell candles identical to hers and undercut her price. When I put my foot down, we came up with the idea of his selling boughs.
Henry sold the branches that we snipped off trees when we pruned cumbersome boughs or trimmed the trunks. He gathered these up into a giant bundle and invited customers to pick out as many as they pleased. Then, according to the size of the bundle, he’d set a price that usually ranged between fifty cents and a dollar. He tallied his seasonal total every day and let us all know what it was. Since starting, he’d already made sixty-three dollars. And, unlike his sister, he had no expenses. For her part, Ellie refused to divulge her earnings, but I could tell she was doing well.
Probably because our totals at the Christmas tree stand kept rising and were starting to amount to something substantial, my spirits had been climbing with them. I had to remind myself not to get giddy about how well we were doing this season. Even with one good sales month, our family finances were far from being out of the woods. And I had to keep pushing myself to maximize for sales the rest of the season.
Thankfully, we had moved out of the rainy spell of early December into cool, crisp weather that was ideal for selling trees. Any retailer will tell you that you need a nip in the air to put Christmas in people’s minds. My worst season ever was the December when the weather was unseasonably warm. Christmas just crept up on everyone without warning.
Whenever possible, I make it a point to do little favors for people, to spread goodwill from our corner. I do these things not just for my customers but for regulars on the street, too. One of my favorites is hailing cab
s for the people who travel uptown every morning. I always get a kick out of pointing to where I want the cab to stop, opening the door, and settling my charge into the seat, like a concierge at some fancy hotel. Everyone—especially those who’re unaccustomed to this kind of service—is delighted.
Once I did this for a man I’d seen on the street only a few times but we’d never talked. I hailed a cab for him and opened the door precisely as he stepped up to the curb. Not one second of his time was wasted. He seemed surprised, then tried to reach into his billfold to tip me. I waved away his money. “I’m doing this for our public relations department,” I said. “Just tell your friends where to buy their tree.”
He looked puzzled for an instant. Then he smiled as it dawned on him that I was the public relations department.
My cheerful mood at the stand and in the camper helped raise my family’s spirits. Though relations with Ellie had not returned to the idyllic state of the years before, they had improved. I still didn’t approve of what she was saving for, but couldn’t argue with her enterprise. She’d stopped giving me the cold shoulder and even asked my opinion a time or two about such things as whether to buy fancy bags for her customers or to reuse the old ones that we saved.
Leaning against the camper door, making small talk with Patti, I was sipping my umpteenth cup of coffee that day. Philippe had kindly offered me all the coffee I could drink on the house for the season. “If you don’t drink it, I’ll throw it away,” he said, characteristically downplaying his generosity. I did my small part by bringing my own “container,” a thermos mug with handle and drink spout. Bonsignour’s coffee was strong and addictive and kept my blood pumping. But I knew I was drinking too much as it was putting me on edge.
Ellie returned to the camper from her regular visit to Emma’s, gleaming like a newly decorated Christmas tree. It was clear from her manner that she was carrying a big piece of news or had just achieved some major triumph. “Guess what!” she repeated several times. “Guess what the Abbotts bought me for Christmas!”