Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets

by Jessica Fox

  “Found one!” Euan said, straightening up and holding a bar of chocolate in his hands.

  I tried not to laugh. “Great, five more to go.”

  Euan shook his head and started following the yellow string. I leaned against the wall, promising myself I would never ask Euan to take part in forced winter cheer again.

  *

  Flicking on the kettle, I walked over to the ice-covered kitchen window and ran my finger along the twirling patterns of frost. The tips of my fingers suddenly burned with cold and I was surprised to find that this beautiful display of nature was actually growing on the inside of the glass. A cold bedroom and bathroom were a challenge, but as I stood there trembling, anxiously waiting for the kettle to boil, I decided a cold kitchen was unbearable.

  If my transformation into Santa had been my baptism of fire into the holiday season (which sounded like a particularly cosy phrase as my teeth chattered over my tea), then Christmas shopping would be my first test.

  When Wigtown became Scotland’s National Book Town, two other towns were awarded titles of their own in the hope of creating a triangle of venues, south-west Scotland’s Venus flytrap for tourists: Kirkudbright, a beautiful, medium-sized town on the coast, boasting new artists and influential past residents in the Scottish Colourist Movement, was named the Art Town. Castle Douglas, filled with restaurants, cafes, upmarket butchers and food festivals, was designated the Food Town. Euan and I were heading into the latter, Castle Douglas, a village much larger than Wigtown and closer to the city of Dumfries, to visit their shops.

  Euan and I piled into the van. As he started the engine, he grinned at me.

  “Someone’s happy,” he said.

  I was. I was getting out of Wigtown for the day.

  Though I loved it, Wigtown had become an island for me without either a car or a house to call my own. So much of who I had been in LA, an independent woman rocketing up the career ladder, or who I thought I had been, a yet undiscovered director, had radically changed these past months. I was now housebound, dependent on Euan, far removed from the production world and with ample time to myself. Though it still held the excitement of being on holiday, I was getting a bit stir-crazy and I couldn’t wait to have an adventure outside Wigtown’s invisible walls.

  I hadn’t been writing my films of late either, a massive shift – though predicted – from my angst-driven urge to create and emote. Part of me felt, perhaps as many women fear, that I could have only one success in my life – a relationship or a career. Why did I think I couldn’t have it all? Surely, the notion that love and career were on opposite sides of a balancing scale was not an inherent fact, but rather the result of my inability to dream of a better balance.

  My lack of ambition, I quickly decided, was the cold’s fault. My brain was as frozen as my hands, and it was impossible to concentrate when you couldn’t sit still. Sitting in the snug, fire roaring, I would finish consulting work and instead of dreaming up projects, I would enjoy the prospect of an afternoon with nothing ahead of me. I hoped this shift was time-limited because a little voice inside had started whispering, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

  Neither Euan nor I were ones for lists, so as we arrived in Castle Douglas, a panic set in. There were gifts for his family, gifts for his friends, gifts for my friends and gifts for my family to buy. Already I started to feel the downside of Christmas. While Santa had elves, we did not, and getting gifts that everyone would like was going to be not only stressful, but expensive. How did people do this every year?

  As if we were embarking on a mad scavenger hunt, Euan and I headed off down opposite ends of the street, splitting the load of presents to buy for his family and friends. The main street of Castle Douglas, a long shop-lined road which ran straight uphill was buzzing with energy. Holiday music pumped out of the cafés, there were Santas ringing bells on every corner and decorations hung between houses. I felt a stranger in a strange land as each sense – sight, hearing, taste, smell – was bombarded with Christmas cheer.

  The allotted two hours passed quickly and I stumbled back to the van, arms swinging with fresh purchases. My hunter-gatherer instinct had gone berserk and I had bought a seemingly endless list of cashmere hats, scarves, wallets, pens, calendars, candles and jewellery. I dropped my bags next to the van, completely exhausted. In the distance, I could see Euan approaching, his arms empty. My shoulders slumped. This meant we would have to go onto Dumfries, round two of the sadomasochistic art of holiday shopping, with more mind-numbing music, more crowds and more gifts.

  *

  Two days before Christmas, Deirdre arrived holding a package. Inside was a knee-length hand-knitted Christmas jumper. It was a gem from the 1980s, with a massive Christmas tree under which were presents and a giant teddy bear. Any hipster from Los Angeles would be proud to wear something so retro.

  “Deirdre, thank you, I adore it,” I said, holding it up and loving the long, lean shape.

  Euan walked into the kitchen and stared in horror. “What God-awful thing is that?”

  Deirdre put her hands on her hips. “Euan, that is my Christmas jumper.” She turned to me. “I hardly wear it now, though, Jessica, so it is all yours if you like it.”

  “I love it.”

  “Really?” Euan refilled his tea.

  “Yes.” I glared at Euan. “Thank you, Deirdre – do you mind if I add some bells and whistles to it?”

  “You mean that literally?” gasped Euan, clutching his mug. I did. In my mind I pictured adding light up LEDs or jingle bells.

  “It’s yours to do what you like with, my dear.” Deirdre smiled her kindred-spirit smile. I looked at her admiringly. There was a wonderful sparkle and magic to Deirdre, making me feel that anything and everything was possible.

  As if wound up like a tight rubber band that was about to snap, the anticipation for Christmas was mounting. Days passed quickly, and when I woke up on Christmas morning, watching my breath appear before me and hearing neither the jingle of Santa’s sleigh nor the distant cries of “Merry Christmas” – like they do in the movies – I felt deflated that Christmas was as ordinary a day as any other. Though we had slept late, Euan shot out of bed first as usual, and with my crucial heat source gone, I reluctantly followed.

  Hopping on the ice-cold floor, I quickly slid on trousers and my now flashing-light-adorned Christmas jumper.

  “That is hideous.” Euan looked at me, delighted. He seemed privately to revel in my unselfconscious attempts to embrace new things, watching with school-boy eagerness as they led often either to disastrous consequences or accidental transgressions in propriety. “Are you actually wearing that to church?”

  “Why not?” I shrugged. “It’s festive.”

  *

  From inside the church, I watched as the snow swirled outside. Snow blanketed the rooftops, trees and pavement, downy and thick.

  Opening the Bookshop door on to Wigtown’s main square that morning had been an unexpected Christmas present. I had changed my black flats for knee-high wellies and enjoyed tramping through the snow hand in hand with Euan towards Wigtown’s Catholic church. We were late and had walked more quickly than I wanted to. I’d like to have had more time to savour the landscape which had been transformed from dark stone and grey skies to a fresh bright white, as if Wigtown were smiling and flashing its pearly teeth.

  The sound of a page turning roused me from my thoughts. We were about to sing another carol. I was sitting on a wooden pew, surrounded by people. Euan and the couple next to me suddenly kneeled and I followed, never having knelt at a worship service in my life. I felt humbled and extremely uncomfortable. Everything about the service and my surroundings felt new and foreign.

  In my childhood synagogue, most of the service had been in Hebrew. This, I now realised, had been essential to my spiritual welfare because the less I understood the less I had to disagree with. Now, in church, understanding every word as the priest read aloud in English, instead of feeling the touch of the
divine, I felt a touch argumentative. The tunes were beautiful, though, haunting and dramatic. As I blurred my listening to this lovely soundtrack, my eyes fixed on the handful of statues gathered around the pulpit. Worshipping graven images is strictly forbidden in Judaism and going to synagogue for me was always a cerebral experience with words, ritual and song serving an abstract concept of a God, one you can neither see nor even begin to picture. In the Catholic church it seemed to be something very different. To me this was a powerfully emotional experience, with iconography, readings, ritual and song giving a concrete concept of God, one that I could see, right before me.

  On taking my first steps ever into a Catholic church I had come face to face with a large statue of Jesus, his bloody wrists and ankles nailed to the cross and his forlorn eyes looking up to heaven. Across from him stood a statue of Mary, cloaked in blue robes, holding a baby surrounded by candles and flowers. The archetype of a woman holding a child flew past my consciousness and into my subconscious, igniting emotions that were not spiritual, nor intellectual but deeply visceral. It was mysterious and primal, and it was a feeling I associated with theatre, or with the time I had seen a Native American powwow enacted. This was the realm of myth, as defined by Joseph Campbell – a journey that is universal but deeply essential to us as individuals, like a depersonalised world dream. I understood the awe and desire to worship the divine relationship between a woman and a newborn baby; it was one of the great mysteries of human experience.

  After church, Euan and I sat together in the warmth of his parents’ sitting room, with his sisters, their husbands and children. Wrapping paper covered the floor and the contented silence of post-gift-giving filled the air. We had demolished an extraordinarily large Christmas feast not moments before, and I leaned into the cushions of the sofa, my stomach throbbing with rich food. My massive stocking, now empty, lay at my side, and a vast pile of presents was stacked neatly before me. I was both touched and embarrassed by the way I had been spoiled by Euan’s family and so warmly included in their Christmas rituals.

  Euan’s phone beeped and he looked at the message, quickly leaving the room. I had seen him send out a handful of Christmas cards weeks before, many to female names I did not recognise. A now familiar jolt of panic rose within me. I tried to ignore it and instead watched Deirdre demonstrate her new Christmas gift. Henry, Euan’s father, an engineer and brilliant inventor, had transformed a hard hat into an eyeglass cleaning machine. Gears were carefully positioned so that two toothbrushes hung perfectly in front of Deirdre’s eyes. When she switched it on, a battery-powered bird at the top spun and moved the gears and made the toothbrushes move in a windscreen-wiper motion.

  Applause and laughter filled the room. Henry, satisfied that his invention worked properly, quietly slipped outside to smoke his pipe. The children clamoured up to Deirdre, each begging for a turn.

  A hollow longing appeared like a sink hole in my chest. I felt so at home here and yet still so far from my own family. Surrounded by Euan’s old childhood pictures and holiday decorations, and with my belly full of foreign delicacies, I realised that I had thrown myself into the Christmas spirit with such reckless abandon that I had all but forgotten my own identity.

  Chapter 34

  “Got hot bashafn a velt mit veltelekh – God created a world full of small worlds.” – YIDDISH PROVERB.

  “What do you mean just us?” Euan was standing behind me in the kitchen. His eyes followed my hands as they rolled out three long strips of dough and delicately folded them into a braid.

  “No one else could come,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. I slid the lopsided, braided challah bread into the oven.

  It was three days after Christmas and Wigtown was about to have its first ever Hanukkah. Part of the fun of living in a different part of the world, I had decided, was not just embracing the new culture, but bringing your own to it. For the party I had hung decorations that my mom had sent over on the kitchen mantelpiece, silver dreidels with blue confetti. I set out a traditional table, with an eight-pronged candle-holder known as a menorah (for the eight nights of Hanukkah), which I had made out of an egg carton.

  “What’s that?” Euan asked. He watched as I crushed thin crackers with a stone mortar and pestle.

  “It’s supposed to be matzo meal for the matzo ball soup – remember? I made it for you before.”

  Euan winced. I handed him the pestle. “Feel like having a go? We have to do the whole packet.”

  In my imagination, all of our friends, and their children, would have come so I had cooked enough for an army. I had prepared traditional latkes, fried potato pancakes, and my multi-course meal was almost all complete, including a slow-cooked beef brisket in beer, spices and vegetables. In the end, though, everyone was busy and even Euan’s parents had committed to other plans.

  “Jessy, why don’t you rest in the snug? I’ve lit the fire,” Euan said, handing me a glass of champagne. “I can take it from here.”

  Euan, to my delight, was enjoying the idea of celebrating Hanukkah. His enthusiasm had come as a surprise to me because of his disdain for Christmas cheer, and the fact that he seemed to be suspended in a state of perpetual culture shock. As if in a sitcom, he could be heard sighing, “I never thought I’d date an American” after I did anything typically foreign. When I’d hug his friends goodbye, he’d groan, “You’re so American, Fox.” Or when, overwhelmed with a feeling of warmth and happiness, I told him I loved him, he would reply, yet again, “Jessy, you’re so American.” But now, in contrast, Euan seemed to be revelling in my Jewish identity and his affectionate interest in my different background warmed my heart.

  I grabbed my glass of champagne and kissed him on the cheek.

  “The matzo balls should be put in right as the guests come,” I said, watching as he ground the crackers into a fine powdery dust.

  “I get it.” Euan looked insulted. “Go, please, relax.”

  “Okay, chef.”

  The door to the snug was shut to keep the warmth of the fire in, so I struggled with my glass and the bowl of crisps in one hand as I turned the knob with the other.

  Inside, I found myself face to face with Eve. I shrieked and dropped my drink onto the carpet. She was perched happily on the sofa, drinking a glass of wine as if she’d been there all afternoon.

  “Happy Hanukkah, you American,” she said with a grin.

  I scooped up my now empty glass and sat down on the couch and hugged her. Fumbling for what to say, my mind raced, quickly putting together the facts that she had come all this way, that she must have crept up the spiral stairs when I was cooking in the kitchen, and moreover that Euan had orchestrated it all.

  “Surprise.”

  “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “You certainly look shocked. If not horrified.” She smiled and refilled my glass from a massive bottle of champagne that had been keeping her company on the table next to her.

  “I’m thrilled you’re here.” I hoped my voiced showed how deeply I meant it. “I just can’t believe you came all this way.”

  Eve shrugged. “Euan and I thought it would be fun as a surprise.”

  I had always supposed expecting something was half the pleasure of experiencing it and had subscribed to Anne of Green Gables’ philosophy that “anticipation is as glorious as soaring through the sunset and almost worth the thud”. I was so wrong. Seeing Eve in the snug was a complete joy. Surprises were better.

  “I can’t stop smiling. I just can’t believe you’re here.” I squeezed Eve’s arm affectionately.

  “Well, believe it.” She took a sip of her drink. “Who knows what else is in store?”

  Soon afterwards, to my delight, more surprise guests arrived. Euan had told everyone to come in fancy dress with the theme “American”. Besides our neighbours’ daughter, who dressed as the Statue of Liberty, and Eve, who dressed as an annoying Irish American tourist, everyone else came as an obese person. Laura and her boyfriend showed up
, each with a duvet stuffed into their trousers. Callum arrived sporting a massive pillow-padded belly and a suit whose buttons looked about to burst, while Euan came downstairs, looking all too comfortable in a dress of mine, which annoyingly fit better over his hips than it did my own.

  “Happy Hanukkah!” they all shouted in clashing accents, looking a little like an American freak show.

  The crowning moment of the evening, as everyone indulged in juicy brisket and poked curiously at the sweet noodle dish called kugel, was when Euan’s parents arrived. Deirdre not only entered the kitchen singing “Hava Nagila”, but Henry brought a menorah that he had made in his workshop. He had found a picture online and copied it exactly, carving the wood to make eight perfect candleholders.

  I quickly replaced my egg-carton attempt with his beautifully carved one. This evening was the perfect antidote to my post-Christmas homesickness, and as the candles burned brightly, and I half listened to the friendly chatter around the table, I felt my sense of longing fall away. I suddenly was at home in Wigtown, not because it was Hanukkah, but because the holiday was an opportunity to show me that, despite my different background, and the fact that I was unfortunately “so American” – from the land, apparently, of the obese – I was surrounded by true friends.

  Chapter 35

  “When she woke up both Prince and castle were gone and then she lay on a little green patch, in the midst of the gloomy wood.” – Peter Christen Asbjornsen, EAST OF THE SUN AND WEST OF THE MOON: Children’s section, left side, along the window sill.

  January passed in frozen time. The house was at its coldest, with nowhere to escape the icy chill. Some mornings I would start crying, frustrated by the intensity of the cold, my teeth constantly chattering at the impossible task of staying warm. I made endless cups of tea, challenging it not to grow cold before I had had a chance to drink at least half.