Christmas in July

by Alan Michael Parker

  She’s making fun of me. It’s good, I think, and kind of irritating.

  “Look,” I say. “I can jump down and fly over here.”

  Christmas puts down her pen. She’s watching the game closely, like she cares. What the hell, I think, and so I ask: “Do you want to play?”

  “What?”

  “Do you want to play?” The game’s on pause and I’m offering her the laptop. “You can sit here.”

  She scowls at me. I said something wrong. “What?” I say.

  She’s starting to cry, oh no. Now she’s really crying. The faucets open.

  “What? What is it? What did I say?”

  “Just…don’t look at me. I don’t want to learn anything,” says the girl with cancer. “You’re an asshole.”

  This is a serious moment, I think. I don’t know what to do, so I sit there. She cries. There might be words in her tears, but I can’t make them out. After a little longer, she seems to calm down.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m an asshole,” I say.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “I’m an enormous asshole. The biggest.”

  “The biggest asshole.” She’s starting to smile a little, maybe.

  “Sorry,” I say again. “Dude, like, I’m sorry.”

  “Fuck you,” Christmas smiles at me. “Dude.” She pulls down on her hat, yanking on the left and then the right, then rolling up the front a little, adjusting as though it matters, serious, but doing better.

  I save. I can come back to the game later.

  She needs something, I think.

  “Do you want to know the whole plan?” I say.

  Christmas nods, her eyes open wide, the crying done.

  “Saturday,” I say. There are a boatload of crumbs on my lap, and I brush them off. Anders is a slob, so crumbs on the floor won’t matter. “This weekend. It’s happening. Let’s go down to the basement. I want to show you something.”

  Liana and I met at Sullivan’s two years ago. She was there at happy hour on a Friday night to meet a guy, not a blind date, but he turned out to be a donk anyway, and I was sitting at the bar on her other side, and I could hear him donk out, and so I started making wiseass comments and she started paying attention. When I leaned in a little, I discovered that her hair smelled amazing, but then I thought too close, too close. But she wrote her number on a cocktail napkin when the guy went to the bathroom—she even asked the bartender for a pen. I left pretty soon after, even with nowhere special to go. When I called her two days later, she asked me what took me so long to call, and she asked me where I’d gone, why I left Sullivan’s so quickly, and I told her the truth. I didn’t have anywhere to go, I said, but I thought I’d be chill and just go. You know, no pressure. Chill, that was fine with her, she liked that. I think her previous boyfriend had been a succubus (that’s a gamer term; sorry to get so technical).

  She’s a little younger than me, but everyone thinks she’s older. Liana’s one of those old brains or old souls or previous life people—we’ve talked about that some. She’s got amazing eyes that look blue one moment and green another, depending upon what she’s wearing and her makeup and even the weather, if it’s raining, and her eyes also change depending on what she’s saying. I can never figure out the color of her eyes. Like if it’s raining and she’s saying something emotional—forget it, the colors will be blue, gray, and green all at once. It’s true she has a rocking body, which makes me glad she’s Catholic, because she could totally Instagram model, and then she wouldn’t be mine.

  When we first got together, Liana would keep a lot of herself private, she wouldn’t tell me what she knows, all the wisdom and how organized she is inside. Of course, I didn’t tell her that I’m an evil genius either. There’s no wisdom in revenge, and I’m sure it’s not very attractive, it’s probably even a deal-breaker. I’m doing everything I can not to blow it with Liana. Cool, cool, I’m so cool.

  But she’s amazing—and the most amazing with little kids. When she meets a kid, in no time she’s on the floor, she’s laughing with them, and they’re piling on her. All of the kids she’s student-taught hug her every day, including students from before. My little cousins love her, and Francesca even made a big announcement last Thanks-giving, that Liana had to sit at the kid’s table. Francesca’s four—she can’t even say her own name right, but she had to have Liana.

  I want to have ten kids with Liana, or twenty. She’s waiting for me to figure out my stuff first, that’s what she says. It’s true that I don’t talk enough; she can’t know what I’ve figured out so far. I could try to fix that, too.

  But holy Lando Calrissian, her family, they’re terrifying, even though I am Catholic too, thank God, because she has to marry Catholic.

  When the moms visited, she cornered me in the stairwell in my building, on a landing, and there was no one else there, and she hissed at me like she was some kind of animal on the Discovery channel, “You’re not good enough. She knows already.”

  I’m like, “Dang, Mrs. Costa. Hold on.”

  She was jabbing her finger in my face. “My Liana, she can really hurt you.”

  I didn’t know what the hell that meant—she could stab me or something? “Mrs. Costa, I love her.”

  She backed off a little, into her own corner, and pinched her eyes at me. “I know all about you, Sammy the Nobody. You don’t love.”

  “Mrs. Costa. I…I think we should go catch up. They’re waiting for us.”

  “You don’t love,” she wagged her finger, jabbing it at me. She had to reach up to do that, she’s really short. She kept saying it: “You don’t love, you don’t love…”

  I backed up, backing up the stairs slowly until it was safe to turn away and keep going. Jesus, she was frightening. Called me “Sammy,” just like that. Like every goddamn mother in the world is my mother. How do mothers do that? Any mother in the world can make you feel like that.

  I’m off on Saturday. The plan calls for the thing to happen in the middle of the night, when everyone’s asleep and no one will see, it will be a random act of vandalism, only funnier. I tell Christmas I’ll text her when I’m ready, she knows how to sneak out of her aunt’s house, and we can go in my car, then we’ll park a couple of blocks away and slip in with the fireworks.

  For a long time before I text, I stand outside Christmas’ house, leaning on the door of my Nissan, looking at the sky. That’s already weird. I don’t look at the real sky enough. There are a few wispy clouds, and not much of a moon, but a little light, and almost no wind, the air fracking hot and sticky, a nasty July heat wave.

  I am about to change the sky. That’s an interesting thought.

  Maybe I should have gotten stoned first.

  Over there, beyond those houses, that direction’s East, and over there, that direction’s North, toward the high school and A.B. Park, and the golf course next to the park, with the big hill we called Old Glory, where I used to go sledding with Bruce. I can only remember going that one time. Bruce was a lot older than me, and he didn’t have much interest. Bruce wasn’t my friend so much, just my brother.

  I used to spy on Bruce and his buddies. Later, when I came to understand what being an evil genius meant, I understood that I had always been like this, that spying on Bruce, following him around in the woods where he used to hang out, that’s how I learned my craft.

  He never knew I was there. Or if he knew, he was good at hiding that he knew. Like me.

  Damn, it’s so weird to be thinking about him when I’m not.

  She doesn’t wait for the text. Christmas sort of runs from the house, her shoulders all hunched up, her head down. She kind of crab-walks standing up. She has on her combat boots, black pants, and a plaid shirt, really dark, and her purple hat. As instructed, all dark clothes, just like mine.

  “Hi!” she says in a stagey whisper. I’ve never seen her eyes this wide.

  “Dude,” I say.

  She hits my shoulder. “This is sooo cool! Dude!”<
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  We get in, and I start the car, put it in gear. I’ll keep the lights off. Then I reconsider and turn on the headlights.

  She’s really, really jittery. She’s making a little fist with one hand, and then opening it, and I want to say stop, or touch her hand to help, but I don’t. She stretches over the seat to scope the fireworks in the back.

  “Seatbelt,” I say.

  Deedee Smith lives on Winston Court, about a half block south of where the Heights begin. I know she’s home: I cruised Winston on my way over, nice and calm, an ordinary evil genius driving down the street, and saw her truck, a red Ford F-150, parked in the driveway. Target acquired.

  Christmas is acting really weird, not just jittery but something else. Now, as we drive, she keeps pulling her left leg up, under her, and then changing her mind and straightening her leg again.

  “Chill,” I finally say.

  “Shhh,” she hushes me.

  “Jesus,” I say.

  I don’t know if the air conditioning is broken in Deedee’s truck, but I do know she likes to leave the little sliding window open, the one between the cab and the truck bed, and that’s all we’ll need. It’s a simple plan: light a boatload of fireworks, toss them in the little window of the truck, and stand back. Maybe the truck will blow up—that would be too big, but wild. Stand back and then run, of course; I’m not stupid.

  I didn’t tell Christmas that Deedee is black because who cares. I don’t know if the cops would care, or if it would matter that I’m white and Christmas is extra white, but I’m not going to let them find out, this isn’t about that. It never mattered to me, only moms notice that stuff.

  We park on Timmins—three blocks away—grab the fireworks, one bag each, and I lock my car. Lots of people have parked their cars here, it’s perfectly normal.

  I didn’t plan on the hot weather being so hot. I’m pretty sweaty as a guy.

  Christmas and I walk ever so easily down Timmins to the corner, left on Eighth, past Dill Court, Harlan Court, and then left again on Winston Court. The street ends in a cul-de-sac, but not yet, Deedee’s house down just a little ways, before the circle. There are more trees than I remember.

  “Sam,” Christmas says really quietly.

  “What?”

  She’s not answering right away. “I don’t…” She doesn’t finish her sentence. “I’m sorry,” she says, although I can’t imagine why.

  Here’s my evil genius plan. The fireworks, the truck, Deedee, revenge—none of it matters. I’m here to let Christmas feel some danger, the rush of the adrenaline, to get all toasty with life before she dies. I know how those feelings feel, so I have taken full responsibility. A girl can’t just die, she has to feel it all.

  One house from Deedee’s. “There,” I say, and point with my chin. That’s dumb, I realize, not only is it dark but she’s not looking at me.

  I stop, Christmas stops. We’re there. We stop.

  Someone’s standing next to Deedee’s truck.

  “Sam,” the person says, stepping up. It’s Liana.

  “What the fuck? No!” I say. “What are you doing here?” I hiss.

  “Sam, you can’t do this.”

  “What? Liana!”

  The three of us are standing there. I bet Deedee’s inside the house, sleeping like nothing’s happening. I look at Christmas, who looks away.

  Liana’s also dressed in really dark clothes, and she’s wearing a Pirates hat. She never wears a Pirates hat. Where’d she get that hat? Is she wearing my Pirates hat?

  “She told me,” Liana says.

  “Who?”

  “Christmas. She doesn’t want you to do this. You’re hurting yourself, Sam.”

  “You told her?”

  Christmas kicks her foot, at a rock or something. She’s not looking at me.

  “C’mon, let’s go.” Liana puts her hand on my arm. “I know the perfect place.”

  “You’re ruining it,” I say, meaning both of them.

  “C’mon, Sam.” Liana tugs gently on my arm. “Let’s go. I need you to go, Sam. Let’s go. Sam, this is me. It’s me.”

  What should I do? I want to think, or decide.

  I’m really thirsty—I notice that.

  When all you want is time, there’s never any time. When all you want is the future, and the future’s different, that’s fate too, you can die a little each moment, in each thing that happens, but that’s okay. If there are people with you, I think that’s better, unless it’s not.

  The three of us are on the football field behind the high school. It’s the middle of the night, I don’t know how late, my phone’s off because they made me, and the sky looks like it’s been turned off too. The screen’s off. We drove here, Liana led, and here we are.

  I’m an evil genius, I try to repeat to myself. I am, but I’m not.

  “How do you do it?” Liana’s got out the Fiery Frogs and one of the two Bic lighters from the MiniMart, and she’s looking at me funny. “Sam?”

  She’s going to light my Fiery Frogs. I don’t know what to say. “I want to do it,” Christmas says, pulling the Shagadelic Mojos out of the bag.

  “Sam? Shouldn’t we light them all at the same time? The cops could come if we take our time. Sam, where’s yours?”

  “It’s in my bag,” I say.

  I look at Liana, who nods. That nod tells me things. Okay. I look at Christmas, who takes her time, she was looking at something else out there, but then she finally looks at me. We look at each other, a long look, her eyes shiny. Something feels right.

  Maybe I am an evil genius—I got Liana here, didn’t I?

  “I guess,” I say. “Yeah,” I say. “Together. All at once.”

  DEAR DOROTHY

  When my mother and father came to the United States from South Korea in 1970 and moved in with my uncle in Los Angeles, and then I was born, and then my little brother, and then we moved to our own apartment, there was only a golden future to imagine, and not a No. 720 bus. That was the bus that slid, its right front wheel climbing up the back of a Datsun to avoid a bicycle, and then, catching air, the enormous red monster groaning up onto its left side, skidded along on two wheels, rubber shearing to the rims and metal tearing as it screeched down the sidewalk. Then the No. 720 bus took out a line of little trees and a couple of big palms, and finally killed two nice little Korean immigrants, my mother and father.

  No one dies in the future we imagine. In the future they never went beyond, my parents stepped out of their new store on Wilshire on a sunny day in 1975, lowered the security gate and locked the Uline lock, and got ready to pick up their toddlers from Uncle’s duplex. They were going to go home together and watch their kids grow up. Then my parents died.

  I think about my parents’ story a lot, take it apart, look again, wonder at the second act no one wrote. I try to picture it, and I can’t, and I do anyway. Seeing the bus like this, I apparently resemble my mother, or so I have been told by Uncle—she liked to dabble in back room fortunetelling. But it’s more like telling the past. Get out of the way, it’s a bus, I tried to tell them over the years. That didn’t work. No fiddling with the spirits, no hollering across the divide, nothing would warn my parents on Wilshire. It’s a bus.

  Then I tried it as a movie, in film school. There I learned to call the story of my parents’ death the “Do Not Touch” script—because that’s the script that stays the same, the green-lighted pages sent from the writers’ room to the producer and then into principal shooting. My parents’ story was the one-camera documentary I always wanted to make, the one I saw in my head, until I tried doing so when I finally got the chance. But that didn’t work either (for which actually, I’m grateful). My student film flopped in development, as soon as I failed to match the vision with the form, and so I quit making movies, choosing to teach them instead.

  My mother named me Dorothy, after the one true Dorothy, the most American girl, Dorothy Gale of Kansas. I see it as a natural choice for my mother, an immigrant born in
1939 and obsessed with the United States. I have a Korean name, of course, Kim Mi-sook, but I have always gone by Dorothy, been Dorothy, and wanted to be Dorothy. Once my parents were killed and my brother Jimmy and I moved in with Uncle, Dorothy was the only name to which I would answer.

  How awful it would have been if my mother had loved Gone with the Wind, another classic from the year of her birth. I could have been a shy Korean orphan in the Los Angeles public schools in the ’70s named Scarlett, my kimchi thermos hidden inside a Tara lunchbox. Or, worse, I could have been named Aunt Pittypat—that could have happened—a new American christened after the insane, saccharine aunt who warns us with a shout, “Yankees in Georgia!” There are too many examples of those gaffes in cross-cultural communication, and not just in Hollywood, poorly translated howlers between new immigrants and their adopted ways, and maybe it’s just me, but so often it seems like the work of off-the-boat Korean knuckleheads who think they’ve got America right. I consider myself lucky to be named Dorothy.

  Still, I keep being reminded that life is probably a “Do Not Change” script. Now that I’m forty-two, single again, teaching film courses at the community college in the Valley, going to Wednesday night Pilates and the occasional Sunday morning Quaker meeting, and trying to find time for myself, so much of who I am seems written. The settlement money from the accident ran out years ago. Now the future’s just the present, only longer.

  So I thought I might start something, use what I’ve learned and maybe make some cash on the side. I want to have an egg to put in a nest, and ultimately buy a tidy house up near Sacramento, or better yet, maybe a two-bedroom in Sonoma. I love Healdsburg, my favorite town in California. I dream of a little house near the river, in Healdsburg, some place not LA.

  Which is why I started DearDorothy.com. Few people know as much about The Wizard of Oz as I do, and I was tired of being that woman at those parties, waiting to show off her trick—ask me anything about The Wizard of Oz. Even then, or maybe even more so, people didn’t want to talk to me. A website made more sense, especially with Phil Papadopoulos helping, the guy who’s sort of the super in my building, who lives in the garden apartment in the back and who’s a coder, the day job he does at night. We had my friend Ellen, a lawyer, draw up the deal, proceeds split sixty-forty, and since I’m the talent I get sixty. To start, for sure, we would have been happy with what the little-known Judy Garland made in 1938—the girl star was paid $500 per week for twenty-three weeks of filming, while the vaudeville veteran Bert Lahr was paid six times as much to be the Cowardly Lion. Girl stars were worth one-sixth of old white men, and probably still are. Granted, he was amazing.