Christmas at The New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art (Modern Library)

by New Yorker

  And certain sacrifices of dignity will then be requested of everyone, due to this rich new news from the past; a world so much more lethal than anyone believed; nothing the way we thought it was; if they had only known, could’ve spoken out, had opened up the lines of communication, could’ve trusted, confided, blah, blah, blah. Their mother will, necessarily, have suspected nothing, but unquestionably should’ve. Perhaps Daisy herself will have suggested that Faith is a lesbian. The snowball effect. No one safe, no one innocent.

  “I’m afraid a wallet would only make him say something sarcastic.”

  (photo credit 22.5)

  Up ahead in the shadows, Ski Shelter 1 sits to the right of Nordic Trail 1—a darkened clump in a small clearing, a place to wait for the others to catch up (if there were others). And a perfect place to turn back.

  Shelter 1 is open on one side like a lean-to, a murky school-bus enclosure hewn from logs. Out on the snow beside it lie crusts of dinner rolls, a wedge of pizza, some wadded tissue papers, three beer cans—treats for the forest creatures—each casting its tiny shadow upon the white surface.

  Though seated in the gloomy inside on a plank bench are not schoolkids but Roger. The brother-in-law, in his powder-blue ski suit and hiking boots. He is not singing karaoke at all. She has noticed no boot tracks up the trail. Roger is more resourceful than first he seems.

  “It’s effing cold up here.” Roger speaks from inside the shadows of Shelter 1. He is not wearing his black-frame glasses now, and is hardly visible, although she senses he is smiling—his narrow eyes even narrower.

  “What are you doing up here, Roger?”

  “Oh,” Roger says from out of the gloom, “I just thought I’d come up.” He crosses his arms, extends his hiking boots into the snow-light like a highschool toughie.

  “What for?” Her knees feel knotty and weak from exertion. Her heart has begun thumping. Perspiration is cold on her lip, though. Temperatures are in the low twenties. In winter the most innocent places turn lethal. This is not good.

  “Nothing ventured,” Roger says.

  “I was just about to turn around,” Faith says.

  “I see,” Roger says.

  “Would you like to go back down the hill with me?” What she wishes for is more light. Much more light. A bulb in the shelter would be very good. Bad things happen in the dark which would prove unthinkable in the light.

  “Life leads you to some pretty interesting places, doesn’t it, Faith?”

  She would like to smile. Not feel menaced by Roger, who should be with his daughters.

  “I guess,” she says. She can smell alcohol in the dry air. He is drunk, and he is winging all of this. A bad mixture.

  “You’re very pretty. Very pretty. The big lawyer,” Roger says. “Why don’t you come in here.”

  “Oh, no thank you,” Faith says. Roger is loathsome but he is also family. And she feels paralyzed by not knowing what to do. She wishes she could just leap upward, turn around, glide away.

  “I always thought that in the right circumstances, we could have some big-time fun,” Roger goes on.

  “Roger, this isn’t a good thing to be doing,” whatever he’s doing. She wants to glare at him, not smile, then realizes her knees are shaking. She feels very, very tall on her skis, unusually accessible.

  “It is a good thing to be doing,” Roger says. “It’s what I came up here for. Some fun.”

  “I don’t want us to do anything up here, Roger,” Faith says. “Is that all right?” This, she realizes, is what fear feels like—the way you’d feel in a late-night parking structure, or jogging alone in an isolated area, or entering your house in the wee hours, fumbling for a key. Accessible. And then suddenly there would be someone. A man with oppressively ordinary looks who lacks a plan.

  “Nope. Nope. That’s not all right,” Roger says. He stands up, but stays in the sheltered darkness. “The lawyer,” Roger says again, still grinning.

  “I’m just going to turn around,” Faith says, and very unsteadily begins to shift her long left ski up out of its track, and then, leaning on her poles, her right ski up out of its track. It is unexpectedly dizzying, and her calves ache, and it is complicated not to cross her ski tips. But it is essential to remain standing. To fall would mean surrender. Roger would see it that way. What is the skiing expression? Tele … Tele-something. She wishes she could Tele-something. Tele-something the hell away from here. Her thighs burn. In California, she thinks, she is an officer of the court. A public official, sworn to uphold the law, though regrettably not to enforce it. She is a force for good.

  “You look stupid,” Roger says.

  She intends to say nothing more. Talk is not cheap now. For a moment she thinks she hears music again, music far away. But it can’t be.

  “When you get all the way around,” Roger says, “then I want to show you something.” He does not say what. In her mind—moving her skis inches each time, her ankles stiff and heavy—in her mind she says “Then what?” but doesn’t say that.

  “I really hate your whole effing family,” Roger says. His boots go crunch on the snow. She glances over her shoulder, but to look at him is too much. He is approaching. She will fall and then dramatic, regrettable things will happen. In a gesture he himself possibly deems dramatic, Roger—though she cannot see it—unzips his blue ski suit front. He intends her to hear this noise. She is three-quarters turned. She could see him over her left shoulder if she chose to. Have a look at what the excitement is about. She is sweating. Underneath she is drenched.

  “Yep. Life leads you to some pretty interesting situations.” There is another zipping noise. It is his best trick. Zip. This is big-time fun in Roger’s world view.

  “Yes,” she says, “it does.” She has come fully around now.

  She hears Roger laugh, a little chuckle, an unhumorous “hunh.” Then he says, “Almost.” She hears his boots squeeze. She feels his actual self close beside her.

  Then there are voices—saving voices—behind her. She now cannot help looking over her left shoulder and up the trail toward where it climbs into the darker trees. There is a light, followed by another light, little stars coming down from a height. Voices, words, language she does not quite understand. Japanese. She does not look at Roger, the girls’ father, but simply slides one ski, her left one, forward into its track, lets her right one follow and find its way, pushes on her poles. And in just that amount of time and with that amount of effort she is away. She thinks she hears Roger say something, another “hunh,” a kind of grunting sound, but can’t be sure.

  In the condo everyone is sleeping. The rubber-tree lights are twinkling. They reflect in the window that faces the ski hill, which is now dark. Someone, Faith notices (her mother), has devoted much time to replacing the spent bulbs so the tree can twinkle. The gold star, the star that led the wise men, lies on the coffee table like a starfish, waiting to be properly affixed.

  Marjorie, the younger, sweeter sister, is asleep on the orange couch under the Brueghel scene. She has left her bed to sleep near the tree, brought her quilted pink coverlet with her.

  Naturally Faith has locked Roger out. Roger can now die alone and cold in the snow. Or he can sleep in a doorway or by a steam vent somewhere in the Snow Mountain Highlands complex and explain his situation to the security staff. Roger will not sleep with his pretty daughters this night. She is taking a hand in things. These girls are hers. Though how strange not to know that her offer to take them would be translated by Roger into an invitation to fuck. She has been in California too long, has fallen out of touch with things middle-American. How strange that Roger would say “effing.” He would also probably say “X-mas.”

  Outside on the ice rink two teams are playing hockey under high white lights. A red team opposes a black team. Net cages have been brought on, the larger rink walled off to regulation size and shape. A few spectators stand watching. Wives and girlfriends. Boyne City versus Petoskey; Cadillac versus Cheboygan or some such. The lit
tle girls’ white skates lie piled by the door she has now safely locked with a dead bolt.

  It would be good to put the star up, she thinks. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. The arrival of wise men couldn’t hurt. So, with the flimsy star, which is made of slick aluminum paper and is large and gold and weightless and five-pointed, Faith stands on the Danish dining-table chair and fits the slotted fastener onto the topmost leaf of the rubber-tree plant. It is not an elegant fit by any means, there being no sprig at the pinnacle, so that the star doesn’t stand as much as it leans off the top in a sad, comic, but also victorious way. (This use was never envisioned by tree-makers in Seoul.) Tomorrow they can all add to the tree together, invent ornaments from absurd and inspirational raw materials. Tomorrow Roger will be rehabilitated and become everyone’s best friend. Except hers.

  Marjorie’s eyes have opened, though she has not stirred. For a moment, on the couch, she appears dead.

  “I went to sleep,” she says softly and blinks her brown eyes.

  “Oh, I saw you,” Faith smiles. “I thought you were just another Christmas present. I thought Santa had been here early and left you for me.” She takes a careful seat on the spindly coffee table, close beside Marjorie—in case there would be some worry to express, a gloomy dream to relate. A fear. She smooths her hand through Marjorie’s warm hair.

  Marjorie takes a deep breath and lets air go smoothly through her nostrils. “Jane’s asleep,” she says.

  “And how would you like to go back to bed?” Faith says in a whisper.

  Possibly she hears a soft tap on the door. The door she will not open. The door beyond which the world and trouble wait. Marjorie’s eyes wander toward the sound, then swim with sleep. She is safe.

  “Leave the tree on,” Marjorie instructs, though asleep.

  “Sure, sure,” Faith says. “The tree stays on forever.”

  She eases her hand under Marjorie, who by old habit reaches outward, caresses her neck. In an instant she has Marjorie in her arms, pink covers and all, carrying her altogether lightly to the darkened bedroom where her sister sleeps on one of the twin beds. Gently she lowers Marjorie onto the empty bed and re-covers her. Again she hears soft tapping, although it stops. She believes it will not come again this night.

  Jane is sleeping with her face to the wall, her breathing deep and audible. Jane is the good sleeper, Marjorie the less reliable one. Faith stands in the middle of the dark, windowless room, between the twin beds, the blinking Christmas lights haunting the stillness that has come at such expense. The room smells musty and dank, as if it has been closed for months and opened just for this night, these children. If only briefly she is reminded of Christmases she might’ve once called her own. “O.K.,” she whispers. “O.K., O.K., O.K.”

  She undresses in the master suite, too tired to shower. Her mother sleeps on one side of their shared bed. She is an unexpectedly distinguishable presence there, visibly breathing beneath the covers. A glass of red wine half-drunk sits on the bed table beside her curved neck brace. The very same Brueghel print as in the living room hangs over their bed. She will wear pajamas, for her mother’s sake. New ones. White, pure silk, smooth as water. Blue silk piping.

  She half closes the bedroom door, the blinking Christmas lights shielded. And here is the unexpected sight of herself in the cheap, dark door mirror. All still good. Intact. Just the small scar where a cyst has been removed between two ribs. A meaningless scar no one would see. Thin, hard thighs. A small nice belly. Boy’s hips. Two good breasts. The whole package, nothing to complain about.

  Then the need of a glass of water. Always a glass of water at night, never a glass of red wine. When she passes the living-room window, her destination the kitchen, she sees that the hockey game is now over. It is after midnight. The players are shaking hands in a line on the ice, others skating in wide circles. On the ski slope above the rink, lights have been turned on again. Machines with headlights groom the snow at treacherous angles.

  And she sees Roger. He is halfway between the ice rink and the condos, walking back in his powder-blue suit. He has watched the game, no doubt. He stops and looks up at her where she stands in the window in her white p.j.s, the Christmas lights blinking as a background. He stands and stares up. He has found his black-frame glasses. Possibly his mouth is moving, but he makes no gesture to her. There is no room in this inn for Roger.

  In bed her mother seems larger. An impressive heat source, slightly damp when Faith touches her back. Her mother is wearing blue gingham, a nightdress not so different from the muumuu she wears in daylight. She smells unexpectedly good. Rich.

  How long, she wonders, since she has slept with her mother? A hundred years? Twenty? Odd that it would be so normal now. And good.

  She has left the door open in case the girls should call, in case they wake and are afraid, in case they miss their father. She can hear snow slide off the roof, an automobile with chains jingling softly somewhere out of sight. The Christmas lights blink merrily. She had intended to check her messages but let it slip.

  Marriage. Yes, naturally she would think of that now. Maybe marriage, though, is only a long plain of self-revelation at the end of which there’s someone else who doesn’t know you very well. That is the message she could’ve left for Jack. “Dear Jack, I now know marriage is a long plain at the end of which there’s” etc., etc., etc. You always think of these things too late. Somewhere, Faith hears faint music, “Away in a Manger,” played prettily on chimes. It is music to sleep to.

  And how would they deal with tomorrow? Not the eternal tomorrow, but the promised, practical one. Her thighs feel stiff, though she is slowly relaxing. Her mother, beside her, is facing away. How, indeed? Roger will be rehabilitated, tomorrow, yes, yes. There will be board games. Songs. Changes of outfits. Phone calls placed. Possibly she will find the time to ask her mother if anyone had ever been abused, and find out, happily, not. Looks will be passed between and among everyone tomorrow. Certain names, words will be in short supply for the sake of all. The girls will learn to ski and enjoy it. Jokes will be told. They will feel better. A family again. Christmas, as always, takes care of its own.

  1998

  (photo credit 22.6)

  COMMENTS

  E. B. WHITE

  At this season of the year, merry to some, not merry to others, we should like to send greetings abroad through town and country. We particularly greet people on benches, and others who wait, motionless, for something to happen. We send Christmas wishes to little auks, and to hunger marchers. To tree surgeons’ mothers, and to men in change booths in the Eighth Avenue subway. To candlemakers and all manufacturers of tops that whir. To people whom clams poison. To people who can’t remember names, and to the persons whose names they can’t remember. To Schrafft’s hostesses. To conditioners of dogs everywhere. We greet all makers of the coffee that beggars want a dime for a cup of. Greetings to the wives of retired army officers. We greet all minor poets, and men who started a mustache Wednesday. To the prisoners in the Yonkers jail, and to little boys whose birthday is December 21. To the fattest woman in the world save three. To receptionists and to the young graduates of universities who fill out cards marked “To see—About—.” To people whose food doesn’t agree with them. To the hatters of Danbury, Conn. To judges of pigeon races, and to manufacturers of gum labels. We greet retouchers of photographs of all sorts, and people who wrestle with bears. Most particularly, though, we send greetings to people on benches, and others who wait, motionless, for something to happen.

  1932

  They are not wrapped as gifts (there was no time to wrap them), but you will find them under the lighted tree with the other presents. They are the extra gifts, the ones with the hard names. Certain towns and villages. Certain docks and installations. Atolls in a sea. Assorted airstrips, beachheads, supply dumps, rail junctions. Here is a gift to hold in your hand—Hill 660. Vital from a strategic standpoint. “From the Marines,” the card says. Here is a small strip of the
Italian coast. Merry Christmas from the members of the American Fifth (who waded ashore). This is Kwajalein, Maloelap, Wotje. This is Eniwetok. Place them with your other atolls, over by the knitted scarf from Aunt Lucy. Here is Gea. If the size isn’t right, remember it was selected at night, in darkness. Roi, Mellu, Boggerlapp, Ennugarret, Ennumennet, Ennubirr. Amphibious forces send season’s greetings. How pretty! A little reef-fringed islet in a coral sea. Kwajalein! A remembrance at Christmas from the Seventh Division. Los Negros Island. Put it with the others of the Admiralty Group. Elements of the First Cavalry Division (dismounted) have sent Momote airfield, a very useful present. Manus, largest of the Admiralties. Lorengau, taken from the Japanese garrison in the underground bunkers. Talasea airdrome. Wotho Atoll (a gift from the 22nd Marine Regiment). Emirau Island, and ten more atolls in the Marshalls to make your Christmas bright in 1944: Ujae, Lae, Lib, Namu, Ailinglapalap (never mind the names), together with a hundred-and-fifty-mile strip of the northern New Guinea coast, Tanahmera Bay and Humboldt Bay, together with Hollandia. “From some American troops covered with red mud.”

  (photo credit 23.1)

  Here is a novel gift—a monastery on a hill. It seems to have been damaged. A bridge on Highway 6. A mountain stronghold, Castelforte (Little Cassino, they used to call it). And over here the roads—Via Casilina and the Appian Way. Valleys, plains, hills, roads, and the towns and villages. Santa Maria Infante, San Pietro, Monte Cerri, and Monte Bracchi. One reads the names on the cards with affection. Best wishes from the Fifth. Gaeta, Cisterna, Terracina, the heights behind Velletri, the Alban Hills, Mount Peschio, and the fortress of Lazio. Velletri and Valmontone. Best wishes from the Fifth. The suburbs of Rome, and Rome. The Eternal City! Holiday greetings from the American Fifth.