A Cosmic Christmas 2 You

by Hank Davis

  She said sincerely, “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Martin.”

  The six-year-old was already reaching for my hat. From the doorway her father said heartily, “Come back again, Mr. Martin. We’ll be glad to see you.”

  He escorted me to the door, as Lilymary smiled and nodded and headed back to the kitchen. I said, “Mr. Hargreave, won’t you ask Lilymary to come in for the afternoon, at least? I hate to sound like a boss, but I’m really short-handed on weekends, right now at the peak of the season.”

  “Season?”

  “The Christmas season,” I explained. “Nearly ninety per cent of our annual business is done in the Christmas season, and a good half of it on weekends. So won’t you ask her?”

  He shook his head. “Six days the Lord labored, Mr. Martin,” he boomed, “and the seventh was the day of rest. I’m sorry.”

  And there I was, outside the apartment and the door closing politely but implacably behind me.

  Crazy people. I rode the subway back to the store in an irritable mood; I bought a paper, but I didn’t read it, because every time I looked at it all I saw was the date that showed me how far the Christmas season already had advanced, how little time we had left to make our quotas and beat last year’s record: the eighth of September.

  I would have something to say to Miss Lilymary Hargreave when she had the kindness to show up at her job. I promised myself. But, as it turned out, I didn’t. Because that night, checking through the day’s manifolds when everyone else had gone home, I fell in love with Lilymary Hargreave.

  Possibly that sounds silly to you. She wasn’t even there, and I’d only known her for a few hours, and when a man begins to push thirty without ever being married, you begin to think he’s a hard case and not likely to fall slambang, impetuously in love like a teenager after his first divorce. But it’s true, all the same.

  I almost called her up. I trembled on the brink of it, with my hand on the phone. But it was close to midnight, and if she wasn’t home getting ready for bed I didn’t want to know it, so I went home to my own bed. I reached under the pillow and turned off my dreamster before I went to sleep; I had a full library for it, a deluxe model with five hundred dreams that had been a present from the firm the Christmas before. I had Haroun al Rashid’s harem and three of Charles Second’s favorites on tape, and I had rocketing around the moon and diving to Atlantis and winning a sweepstakes and getting elected king of the world; but what I wanted to dream about was not on anybody’s tape, and its name was Lilymary Hargreave.

  Monday lasted forever. But at the end of forever, when the tip of the nightingale’s wing had brushed away the mountain of steel and the Shipping personnel were putting on their hats and coats and powdering their noses or combing their hair, I stepped right up to Lilymary Hargreave and asked her to go to dinner with me.

  She looked astonished, but only for a moment. Then she smiled . . . I have mentioned the sweetness of her smile. “It’s wonderful of you to ask me, Mr. Martin,” she said earnestly, “and I do appreciate it. But I can’t.”

  “Please,” I said.

  “I am sorry.”

  I might have said please again, and I might have fallen to my knees at her feet, it was that important to me. But the staff was still in the shop, and how would it look for the head of the department to fall at the feet of his newest employee? I said woodenly, “That’s too bad.” And I nodded and turned away, leaving her frowning after me. I cleared my desk sloppily, chucking the invoices in a drawer, and I was halfway out the door when I heard her calling after me:

  “Mr. Martin, Mr. Martin!”

  She was hurrying toward me, breathless. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to scream at you. But I just phoned my father, and—”

  “I thought you didn’t have a phone,” I said accusingly.

  She blinked at me. “At the rectory,” she explained. “Anyway, I just phoned him, and—well, we’d both be delighted if you would come and have dinner with us at home.”

  Wonderful words! The whole complexion of the shipping room changed in a moment. I beamed foolishly at her, with a soft surge at my heart; I felt happy enough to endow a home, strong enough to kill a cave bear or give up smoking or any crazy, mixed-up thing. I wanted to shout and sing; but all I said was: “That sounds great.” We headed for the subway, and although I must have talked to her on the ride I cannot remember a word we said, only that she looked like the angel at the top of our tallest Christmas tree.

  Dinner was good, and there was plenty of it, cooked by Lilymary herself, and I think I must have seemed a perfect idiot. I sat there, with the six-year-old on one side of me and Lilymary on the other, across from the ten-year-old and the twelve-year-old. The father of them all was at the head of the table, but he was the only other male. I understood there were a couple of brothers, but they didn’t live with the others. I suppose there had been a mother at some time, unless Morton Hargreave stamped the girls out with a kind of cookie-cutter; but whatever she had been she appeared to be deceased. I felt overwhelmed. I wasn’t used to being surrounded by young females, particularly as young as the median in that gathering.

  Lilymary made an attempt to talk to me, but it wasn’t altogether successful. The younger girls were given to fits of giggling, which she had to put a stop to, and to making what were evidently personal remarks in some kind of a peculiar foreign tongue—it sounded like a weird aboriginal dialect, and I later found out that it was. But it was disconcerting, especially from the lips of a six-year-old with the giggles. So I didn’t make any very intelligent responses to Lilymary’s overtures.

  But all things end, even eating dinner with giggling girls. And then Mr. Hargreave and I sat in the little parlor, waiting for the girls to— finish doing the dishes? I said, shocked, “Mr. Hargreave, do you mean they wash them?”

  “Certainly they wash them,” he boomed mildly. “How else would they get them clean, Mr. Martin?”

  “Why, dishwashers, Mr. Hargreave.” I looked at him in a different way. Business is business. I said, “After all, this is the Christmas season. At the Emporium we put a very high emphasis on dishwashers as a Christmas gift, you know. We—”

  He interrupted good-humoredly. “I already have my gifts, Mr. Martin. Four of them, and very fine dishwashers they are.”

  “But Mr. Hargreave—”

  “Not Mister Hargreave.” The six-year-old was standing beside me, looking disapproving. “Doctor Hargreave.”

  “Corinne!” said her father. “Forgive her, Mr. Martin. But you see we’re not very used to the—uh, civilized way of doing things. We’ve been a long time with the Dyaks.”

  The girls were all back from the kitchen, and Lilymary was out of her apron and looking—unbelievable. “Entertainment,” she said brightly. “Mr. Martin, would you like to hear Corinne play?”

  There was a piano in the corner. I said hastily, “I’m crazy about piano music. But—”

  Lilymary laughed. “She’s good,” she told me seriously. “Even if I do have to say it to her face. But we’ll let you off that if you like. Gretchen and I sing a little bit, if you’d prefer it?”

  Wasn’t there any TV in this place? I felt as out of place as an Easterbunny-helper in the Santa Claus line, but Lilymary was still looking unbelievable. So I sat through Lilymary and the twelve-year-old named Gretchen singing ancient songs while the six-year-old named Corinne accompanied them on the piano. It was pretty thick. Then the ten-year-old, whose name I never did catch, did recitations; and then they all looked expectantly at me.

  I cleared my throat, slightly embarrassed. Lilymary said quickly, “Oh, you don’t have to do anything, Mr. Martin. It’s just our custom, but we don’t expect strangers to conform to it!”

  I didn’t want that word “stranger” to stick. I said, “Oh, but I’d like to. I mean, I’m not much good at public enfertaining, but—” I hesitated, because that was the truest thing I had ever said. I had no more voice than a goat, and of course the only instrument
I had ever learned to play was a TV set. But then I remembered something from my childhood.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said enthusiastically. “How would you like something appropriate to the season? ‘A Visit from Santa Claus,’ for instance?”

  Gretchen said snappishly, “What season? We don’t start celebrating—”

  Her father cut her off. “Please do, Mr. Martin,” he said politely. “We’d enjoy that very much.”

  I cleared my throat and started:

  ‘Tis the season of Christmas, and all through the house

  St. Nick and his helpers begin their carouse.

  The closets are stuffed and the drawers overflowing

  With gift-wrapped remembrances, coming and going.

  What a joyous abandon of Christmastime glow!

  What a making of lists! What a spending of dough!

  So much for—

  “Hey!” said Gretchen, looking revolted. “Daddy, that isn’t how—”

  “Hush!” said Dr. Hargreave grimly. His own expression wasn’t very delighted either, but he said, “Please go on.”

  I began to wish I’d kept my face shut. They were all looking at me very peculiarly, except for Lilymary, who was conscientiously studying the floor. But it was too late to back out; I went on:

  So much for the bedroom, so much for the bath,

  So much for the kitchen—too little by half!

  Come Westinghouse, Philco! Come Hotpoint, G.E.!

  Come Sunbeam! Come Mixmaster! Come to the Tree!

  So much for the wardrobe—how shine Daddy’s eyes

  As he reaps his Yule harvest of slippers and ties.

  So much for the family, so much for the friends,

  So much for the neighbors—the list never ends.

  A contingency fund for the givers belated

  Whose gifts must be hastily reciprocated.

  And out of—

  Gretchen stood up. “It’s our bedtime,” she said. “Good night, everybody.”

  Lilymary flared, “It is not! Now be still!” And she looked at me for the first time. “Please go on,” she said, with a furrowed brow.

  I said hoarsely:

  And out of the shops, how they spring with a clatter,

  The gifts and appliances words cannot flatter!

  The robot dishwasher, the new Frigidaire,

  The doll with the didy and curlable hair!

  The electrified hairbrush, the black lingerie,

  The full-color stereoscopic TV!

  Come, Credit Department! Come, Personal Loan!

  Come, Mortgage, come Christmas Club, come—

  Lilymary turned her face away. I stopped and licked my lips.

  “That’s all I remember,” I lied. “I—I’m sorry if—”

  Dr. Hargreave shook himself like a man waking from a nightmare. “It’s getting rather late,” he said to Lilymary. “Perhaps—perhaps our guest would enjoy some coffee before he goes.”

  I declined the coffee and Lilymary walked me to the subway. We didn’t talk much.

  At the subway entrance she firmly took my hand and shook it. “It’s been a pleasant evening,” she said.

  A wandering group of carolers came by; I gave my contribution to the guitarist. Suddenly angry, I said, “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “What?”

  I gestured after the carolers. “That. Christmas. The whole sentimental, lovable, warmhearted business of Christmas. Lilymary, we’ve only known each other a short time, but—”

  She interrupted: “Please, Mr. Martin. I—I know what you’re going to say.” She looked terribly appealing there in the Christmassy light of the red and green lights from the Tree that marked the subway entrance. Her pale, straight legs, hardly concealed by the shorts, picked up chromatic highlights; her eyes sparkled. She said, “You see, as Daddy says, we’ve been away from—civilization. Daddy is a missionary, and we’ve been with the Dyaks since I was a little girl. Gretch and Marlene and Corinne were born there. We—we do things differently on Borneo.” She looked up at the Tree over us, and sighed. “It’s very hard to get used to,” she said. “Sometimes I wish we had stayed with the Dyaks.”

  Then she looked at me. She smiled. “But sometimes,” she said, “I am very glad we’re here.” And she was gone.

  Ambiguous? Call it merely ladylike. At any rate, that’s what I called it; I took it to be the beginning of the kind of feeling I so desperately wanted her to have; and for the second night in a row I let Haroun’s harem beauties remain silent on their tapes.

  Calamity struck. My number-two man, Furness, turned up one morning with a dismal expression and a letter in a government-franked envelope. “Greeting!” it began. “You are summoned to serve with a jury of citizens for the term—”

  “Jury duty!” I groaned. “At a time like this! Wait a minute, Johnny, I’ll call up Mr. Heinemann. He might be able to fix it if—”

  Furness was shaking his head. “Sorry, Mr. Martin. I already asked him and he tried; but no go. It’s a big case—blindfold sampling of twelve brands of filter cigarettes—and Mr. Heinemann says it wouldn’t look right to try to evade it.”

  So there was breaking another man in, to add to my troubles.

  It meant overtime, and that meant that I didn’t have as much time as I would like for Lilymary. Lunch together, a couple of times; odd moments between runs of the gift-wrapping machines; that was about it.

  But she was never out of my thoughts. There was something about her that appealed to me. A square, yes. Unworldly, yes. Her family? A Victorian horror; but they were her family. I determined to get them on my side, and by and by I began to see how.

  “Miss Hargreave,” I said formally, coming out of my office. We stepped to one side, in a corner under the delivery chutes. The rumble of goods overhead gave us privacy. I said, “Lilymary, you’re taking this Sunday off, as usual? May I come to visit you?”

  She hesitated only a second. “Why, of course,” she said firmly. “We’d be delighted. For dinner?”

  I shook my head: “I have a little surprise for you,” I whispered. She looked alarmed. “Not for you, exactly. For the kids. Trust me, Lilymary. About four o’clock in the afternoon?”

  I winked at her and went back to my office to make arrangements. It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world—it was our busy season, as I say—but what’s the use of being the boss if you can’t pull rank once in a while? So I made it as strong as I could, and Special Services hemmed and hawed and finally agreed that they would work in a special Visit from Santa Claus at the Hargreave home that Sunday afternoon.

  Once the kids were on my side, I plotted craftily, it would be easy enough to work the old man around, and what kid could resist a Visit from Santa Claus?

  I rang the bell and walked into the queer South-Seas living room as though I belonged there. “Merry Christmas!” I said genially to the six-year-old who let me in. “I hope you kiddies are ready for a treat!”

  She looked at me incredulously, and disappeared. I heard her say something shrill and protesting in the next room, and Lilymary’s voice being firm and low-toned. Then Lilymary appeared. “Hello, Mr. Martin,” she said.

  “George.”

  “Hello, George.” She sat down and patted the sofa beside her. “Would you like some lemonade?” she asked.

  “Thank you,” I said. It was pretty hot for the end of September, and the place didn’t appear to be air-conditioned. She called, and the twelve-year-old, Gretchen, turned up with a pitcher and some cookies. I said warningly:

  “Mustn’t get too full, little girl! There’s a surprise coming.” Lilymary cleared her throat, as her sister set the tray down with a clatter and stamped out of the room. “I—I wish you’d tell me about this surprise, George,” she said. “You know, we’re a little, well, set in our ways, and I wonder—”

  “Nothing to worry about, Lilymary,” I reassured her. “What is it, a couple of minutes before four? They’ll be here any minute.”
>
  “They?”

  I looked around; the kids were out of sight. “Santa Claus and his helpers,” I whispered.

  She began piercingly: “Santa Cl—”

  “Ssh!” I nodded toward the door. “I want it to be a surprise for the kids. Please don’t spoil it for them, Lilymary.”

  Well, she opened her mouth; but she didn’t get a chance to say anything. The bell rang; Santa Claus and his helpers were right on time.

  “Lilymary!” shrieked the twelve-year-old, opening the door. “Look!”

  You couldn’t blame the kid for being excited. “Ho-ho-ho,” boomed Santa, rolling inside. “Oh, hello, Mr. Martin. This the place?”

  “Certainly, Santa,” I said, beaming. “Bring it in, boys.”

  The twelve-year-old cried, “Corinne! Marlene! This you got to see!” There was an odd tone to her voice, but I didn’t pay much attention. It wasn’t my party any more. I retired, smiling, to a corner of the room while the Santa Claus helpers began coming in with their sacks of gear on their shoulders. It was “Ho-ho-ho, little girl!” and “Merry Christmas, everybody!” until you couldn’t hear yourself think.

  Lilymary was biting her lip, staring at me. The Santa tapped her on the shoulder. “Where’s the kitchen, lady?” he asked. “That door? Okay, Wynken—go on in and get set up. Nod, you go down and hurry up the sound truck, then you can handle the door. The rest of you helpers—” he surveyed the room briefly— “start lining up your Christmas Goodies there, and there. Now hop to it, boys! We got four more Visits to make this afternoon yet.”

  You never saw a crew of Christmas Gnomes move as fast as them. Snap, and the Tree was up, complete with its tinsel stars and gray colored Order Forms and Credit Application Blanks. Snip, and two of the helpers were stringing the red and green lights that led from the Hargreave living room to the sound truck outside. Snip-snap, and you could hear the sound truck pealing the joyous strains of All I Want for Christmas Is Two of Everything in the street, and twos and threes of the neighborhood children were beginning to appear at the door, blinking and ready for the fun. The kitchen helpers were ladling out mugs of cocoa and colored-sugar Christmas cookies and collecting the dimes and quarters from the kids; the demonstrator helpers were showing the kids the toys and trinkets from their sacks; and Santa himself was seated on his glittering throne. “Ho-ho-ho, my boy,” he was saying. “And where does your daddy work this merry Christmas season?”