by Rachel Cohn
“And what did you get Sofia?” I asked.
“I know when she gets back she’s going to miss home, so I got all of these photos of Barcelona off the Internet and put them in one of those digital frames, and then also got one of those projectors, so if she wants to be in her room and think she’s back in Barcelona, she should be able to do that.”
I tried to remember the last present I’d bought Sofia—I think it had been a Gund teddy bear. Lily was the first girlfriend I’d ever had who I’d given presents that weren’t purchased (sardonically or not) in a toy store.
“How do you get good at this whole dating thing?” I asked Boomer. Part of me couldn’t believe I was asking him this. But a bigger part of me really wanted to know.
“I don’t think I’m good at it,” Boomer told me. “But when I’m with Sofia I’m not really thinking about whether or not I’m good at it, which is what makes it good. Then I go home and worry. But then I’m back with her and it’s good again. I think that’s what dating is.”
Mrs. Basil E.’s joint was already jumping when we got there—I recognized some of the people, and a good number I didn’t. I waved to the librarians, who raised their glasses in salute. Since I didn’t want to saddle Lily with the cookie sheets straightaway, I hid them behind a statue of Dame Judi Dench.
Boomer spotted Yonni and bounced over to him to say hi. I looked for Lily but couldn’t find her in the parlor or the drawing room.
I felt a little silly going up to Mrs. Basil E. and asking, “Have you seen my girlfriend?” Luckily, I didn’t have to ask.
“If you are searching for She Who Shall Not Be Called Lily Bear But Shall Remain Lily Bear In Our Stubborn Loving Hearts, she is in the kitchen with my brother. Please tell them to get out and mingle. A party, like the human body, will fall into rigor mortis without proper circulation.”
I headed to the kitchen. I was a little worried about what Grandpa would look like, after what Lily had told me about yesterday. It was a relief to see that even though he stayed seated rather than jump up to shake my hand, the gleam in his eye was still very much present when he saw me walk in.
“If it isn’t Long Dash Silver!” he laughed. “She told me it was bad…but, wow, you look like you lost a fight with an octopus. I hope you at least got a few shots in.”
“I got at least four of its arms. How are you feeling?”
“Fit as a fiddle! Granted, it’s a fiddle that’s been played for eighty-four years straight. But still making music!” Slowly, but resolutely, he got up from his chair. “Now I’m going to leave you two to catch up. I know Inga’s out there somewhere serving the canapés, and I’d go all the way out to Canarsie for one of her canapés.”
It wasn’t until Grandpa had shuffled out of the room that Lily said, “It makes me so sad.”
“I know,” I told her. “But if it makes his life better, and he’s okay with it, then your sadness is kinda beside the point.”
Lily recoiled at that, and her recoil made me realize how awful what I said had sounded.
I quickly jumped back in. “What I mean is…he and Mrs. Basil E. are very smart people. They know what they’re doing.”
Lily was still irate. “Are you saying I don’t know what I’m doing?”
“Agh! No!”
Lily was out of her own chair now. “Just LET ME BE SAD. Why can’t anyone let me be sad?!”
I answered carefully. “Lily, you don’t need anyone to let you be sad. Be sad. Be happy. Be thrilled. Be despondent. But don’t lose sight of everyone else. Not when you’re happy, and not when you’re sad.”
“Well, I’m sorry if you feel I’ve been ignoring you—”
“No!”
“You don’t get it. Nobody’s going to live in my house anymore, Dash. Nobody!”
“But they’re all going to be living somewhere. They’re all going to be near.”
“I know. But…,” Lily trailed off.
I tried to pick up the trail. “But?”
“But I don’t like it, okay? I don’t like how everything is changing. It’s like when you’re a kid, you think that things like the holidays are meant to show you how things always stay the same, how you have the same celebration year after year, and that’s why it’s so special. But the older you get, the more you realize that, yes, there are all these things that link you to the past, and you’re using the same words and singing the same songs that have always been there for you, but each time, things have shifted, and you have to deal with that shift. Because maybe you don’t notice it every single day. Maybe it’s only on days like today that you notice it a lot. And I know I’m supposed to be able to deal with that, but I’m not sure I can deal with that. Like us, Dash. Look at us. I mean, at first when we were together, it was like there wasn’t such a thing as time, right? We were so much in the present that it was never going to be any different—it was all about finding out, and not so much about knowing. It was all so intense and all so immediate, and I think maybe I thought, okay, this is what having a boyfriend I really like is all about. And then, this is what having a boyfriend I love is all about. But then time comes into it, and it’s not as immediate, and it’s not as intense, and you can’t help but feel that something’s getting lost there, right? The same as when someone moves away. Or isn’t around anymore. Maybe you’re okay with that something being lost, Dash. Maybe you don’t care. But I care, Dash. I care a lot. Because I feel it a lot. And I don’t have any idea what to do about it.”
“Neither do I!” I confessed. “I have been trying for months to figure out a way to make it better, Lily. And the only answer I can come up with is to tell you there are some things you can’t control, and time is, like, number one on that list. Number two is the actions of other people. I watched my father destroy my mother—absolutely destroy her. And then I watched them both destroy their marriage and the entity that was the only thing I’d ever known as family. I know I was only eight, but even if I’d been eighteen, there wouldn’t have been anything I could do but protect myself. I wanted to do anything I could, but the answer was to realize that it was not something that I got to decide. Even now. I cannot change my father. And I want to, so badly. I will even admit to you now that one of the reasons I want to change my father is because I feel that if I can change everything that’s wrong with him, then maybe I can change all those parts in me, too. Isn’t that scary? But isn’t it also natural, to want that?”
“You never told me that.”
“I know! But I’m telling you now—I’m telling you all of this now—because I know there are all of these things happening to you where what you feel is, as I said before in the wrong way, beside the point. You can’t stop time. You can’t make everyone healthy or always in love. You can’t. But you and me—what we have—that’s one thing we do have control over. That’s the one thing that’s up to us. There are times when it feels to me like it’s all up to you. And I’m sure there are times for you when it feels like it’s all up to me. But we have to move forward like it’s up to us, together. I know it’s not as intense or immediate as it used to be—but that just means that instead of having only a present together, we’re having a past, present, and future all at once.”
Lily softened then. I could see it. She wasn’t giving up. She wasn’t giving in, per se. But she was understanding. I was feeling the same way. How had we never had this conversation before?
Probably because we hadn’t been ready for this conversation before.
“It’s not fair,” Lily said, walking over to me and leaning in. “What’s the one thing we want when it comes to the people we love? Time. And what’s the scariest thing about how love goes? Time. The thing we want the most is the thing we fear the most, I guess. Time is going to run out. But in the meantime we have…everything.”
She hugged me then, and I hugged her back, and we probably would have stayed like that for a very long time if Inga the caterer hadn’t come in at that moment.
“I promise I wasn�
�t listening,” she said, which pretty much guaranteed she’d been listening. “I just need to get the cheese puffs out of the oven before they become cheese puffeds.”
As we walked back down the hall to the party, I explained Boomer’s Theory of the Blink to Lily. She liked it.
“We had our blink,” she said.
“Yup.”
“And now our eyes are open.”
“Or eye.”
“Or eye.”
“And inevitably—”
“We’ll blink again.”
“But that’s okay.”
“Because things will be clearer after we do.”
“Precisely.”
We got to the door of the party. Friends, family, and strangers spread before us. There was a music to their conversation—this strange orchestration of good company.
I reached for her hand. She took mine.
“Let’s do this,” I said. “All of it.”
Thursday, December 25th
It was an odd feeling—still so much sadness to process, and yet this felt like the best Christmas of my life.
All my favorite people gathered in my favorite house on my favorite day of the year. Laughing. Talking. Gifting. Eating. Nogging.
And Edgar Thibaud in a corner, the head of a group sitting in a circle around him, dealing a deck of cards to rapt elementary school–age party attendees, teaching them how to play poker.
“You invited Edgar Thibaud here?” Dash asked me.
“Grandpa did.”
Actually, what Grandpa had said was, “You didn’t invite Edgar Thibaud, did you? That woefully neglected hooligan high-fived me at the senior center and said he’d see me at my sister’s Christmas party, and we could gather round the hearth and share a flask of hooch with some hoochie mamas.”
I shuddered, recalling my grandpa repeating Edgar’s vulgar words. But I couldn’t sustain the lie for more than a second. I amended my statement to Dash. “I mean, I did. Grandpa feels sorry for Edgar. He has no one at Christmas.”
“For a reason.”
“We must open our hearts to the downtrodden, and to scoundrels,” I told Dash, and gave his hand a gentle squeeze. “ ’Tis the season.”
“Edgar doesn’t get a copy of the List, does he?”
I started to sputter “Nnnooo,” but Dash brushed my response away. He leaned in to me and whispered, “Should I be worried about your fascination with Edgar Thibaud? You don’t look at that preposterous buffoon and wonder what it would be like to kiss him, do you?” Dash’s one visible eyebrow was raised, about to the height of the eye patch on his other side, and his lips had a vague half turn to them. He was teasing me.
“I do wonder,” I confessed. “In the same way I wonder what it would be like to make out with an orangutan just before it has diarrhea.”
“Thanks, now I lost my appetite for Inga’s canapés.”
I placed a kiss on his lips. “Is that better?”
“Delicious,” said Dash. “Gingerbread-y.”
My boyfriend really knew the words to excite me. I felt I should give the man who loves language a word gift in exchange. “Edgar’s a sycophantile.”
“What?” Dash laughed.
“Someone who likes to surround himself with people who will fawn all over him. He pays them to do that, you know. The chess players in the park. The Korean party kids. Probably those little second-grade hustlers on the floor there.”
“Edgar pays people to hang out with him?”
“Yup. He has a roll of fivers in his argyle pockets at all times for just that purpose.”
“It all makes sense now,” said Dash.
Mrs. Basil E. stood on top of an ottoman and clinked her champagne glass. “Attention, my dear friends!” she called out. Usually at a party with that many people and that much nog in circulation, it takes more than one pronouncement to hush a room, but Mrs. Basil E. commanded that reaction immediately. She continued. “First, thank you for coming tonight. And Merry Christmas!”
“Happy Kwanzaa, Mrs. Oregano!” Boomer called back.
Mrs. Basil E. nodded at Boomer. “Thank you, Ricochet.” She moved her eyes around the room to direct the crowd, landing her gaze on Grandpa, sitting by her side. “As you may know, we’ve had our share of challenges this year, and next year will bring a new set. So we are thankful now, for your friendship, to celebrate with you, to—”
Grandpa nudged her ankle with his cane. “Let me talk already!”
Mrs. Basil E. stepped down from the ottoman. “You don’t have to be a Sadie about it,” she chided him.
Grandpa smiled and stood up. He said, “It’s a tradition going back many years that in the later hours of this Christmas party, when the adults turn to singing—”
“And singing and singing and singing,” his many nieces and nephews chimed in.
Grandpa continued, “Yes, and more singing, and the younger ones are exhausted and ready to go home to bed, that the grown-ups buy extra time for ourselves by putting a movie on in the basement for the kids to watch, and fall asleep to.”
“Wizard of Oz!” said Kerry-cousin.
“The Sound of Music!” said Cousin Mark.
“Make the Yuletide Gay!” cried out Langston.
“What’s that?” said Mrs. Basil E., looking scandalized—a Christmas movie she’d never heard of!
“Kidding,” said Langston. “That was the after-after party. For those of us who could stay awake that late.”
“Well, this year we have a special surprise,” said Grandpa. His gaze fell fondly on me. “Lily, if you’ll accompany me downstairs, my Christmas present for you is there. Those of you who want to watch a movie, please join us. Those of you who don’t, don’t! Continue making merry up here.” He looked at Edgar Thibaud and shook his cane at him. “Any gambling wins tonight will be donated to the center.”
Edgar laughed. I don’t think he’d ever been ordered what to do by anyone besides a judge. The appalled stares from many partygoers let Edgar Thibaud know that Grandpa had not been joking. Edgar shrugged and said, “Okay, fair enough.” A Christmas miracle! Generosity!
Some cousins started to head into the basement as Dash and I went to either side of Grandpa to lead him toward the stairs, and then help him down. “Did you know about this?” I asked Dash. It seemed weird to interrupt the party so early with a movie. I hoped it was an old home movie converted to DVD of Grandpa and his siblings as little ones.
“It’s all been a grand conspiracy,” said Dash.
When we reached the basement apartment, which Mrs. Basil E. kept as a man cave for family members during football and soccer seasons, with a proper bar and enormous television (she didn’t allow TVs in any other room in the house), the TV was already on, with a blank screen. The bar was set up like a movie concession stand, with a popcorn maker and a glass display case of candies like M&M’s, Milk Duds, Junior Mints, and an entire shelf with my favorites—Sno-Caps—tiered in the shape of a Christmas tree.
If I had any doubt what we were about to watch, it was removed when the blanket covering a life-size cardboard cutout next to the TV was removed. It was Helen Mirren as frail, elderly Bess, wearing a silk head scarf tied under her chin, and holding her movie corgi, Scrumpet!
“WHAT?” I shrieked, with all the decibel power of a tween girl getting a personal concert by the world’s biggest boy band.
“Down, Shrilly!” Langston called out from somewhere inside the crowd of people.
My heart was beating so fast, I thought I might die of happiness. “How?” I asked Grandpa.
He said, “My friend whom you know as Mr. Panavision gets these lovely little doodads called screeners, because he’s an awards-season voting guild member. He helped me get the screener and the promotional cutout. But Mr. Panavision has let me know that this is precious intellectual property, and the FBI will be called if the screener winds up in the hands of criminals, so no one give it to Edgar Thibaud or let him down here.”
Mom said, “The
movie concession stand is from us, sweetie.”
Dash said, “I arranged the Sno-Caps.”
Langston said, “Poorly. It looks more like a poo pile.”
For everything that was wrong in the world—war, global warming, Grandpa having to move to a nursing home, my lifelong family home being dismantled and probably sold—there was so much that was so right. My brother and my boyfriend bicker-bantering. My dad eating most of the Reese’s Pieces before the other guests could get to them. Mrs. Basil E. holding court over a sea of guests. The smell of popcorn. My grandpa hugging me. All the people I loved most gathered in one room, to watch a queen and her dog.
I’d thought my dream date would be sharing this movie alone in a movie theater with Dash. This cave was so much better. These people were my coven. Merry Christmas, Lily. Your Highness.
—
I loved the movie. I loved the party.
But, priorities.
Eighty-seven screen minutes of that precious nugget Scrumpet, and I needed to be reunited with my dog, immediately.
Certainly Boris’s behavior had improved over the last year—he was down to maybe one or two pinning-a-human-to-the-floors per month, but he was not yet socialized to big parties, so he’d been left at my apartment during the Christmas party. So Dash and I took an early leave of Mrs. Basil E.’s after the movie so we could walk him and I could smother my face in his beastly fur.
After we walked him and I cried, telling Boris how much I loved him and would be honored to get lost in the deep forest surrounding Balmoral Castle with him, Dash and I returned to the apartment so I could give my boyfriend and my dog their Christmas presents. First, I gave Boris a chew toy that he massacred within a minute of receiving. One moment it was a perfectly good Donald Trump doll. The next it was a flying toupee and dismembered body parts.
“That was beautiful, Boris,” Dash told him, patting the satisfied dog’s head. Then Dash crouched down to face Boris on Boris’s level. Using his most queenly Helen Mirren voice to intone Corgi & Bess’s catch phrase, Dash reminded Boris: “ ‘Always chew with dignity, dear Scrum.’ ”