Christmas in July

by Alan Michael Parker

  That night, Friday night, Phil said he had a deadline. I wanted to believe him, so I did. He texted to say he wished we could “hang out together a lot.” He also said he had fun with me. His nerdiness had some appeal. I wondered how long I’d last with him, what shoes I’d be wearing when we broke up.

  We had sex again on Saturday night, right after takeout sushi, and then watched Wings of Desire, which I had to screen again for class the next week. Turns out it was his favorite movie—I expected Blade Runner, and I got Wim Wenders. We used my vibrator during sex, which turned us both on, and I came hard.

  There were no new letters from Christmas over the next five days, I checked a lot. Okay, a real lot. Had I said the wrong thing? A couple of cutesy kiddie queries did arrive, which I answered politely, and with my Dorothy Gale trademark sweetness. Yes, Callie, you can be Dorothy in the next movie, if you practice and practice.

  And then, early on Friday morning, a new letter from Christmas. I wrote back right away, and that day, we wrote a lot to one another. I don’t teach on Fridays, so I never got out of my PJs, it was too exciting and scary. I had a responsibility to her, I kept thinking, but it was the Internet, so who knows.

  Dear Dorothy,

  I remember the song. It’s very pretty.

  My favorite part in the movie is when the witch melts. That part and the tornado. When the witch melts, the head of her army says Hail to Dorothy, and then the soldiers kneel down. They weren’t happy she was in charge either.

  I think too many people are in charge of me.

  I want to melt, but not that way.

  What do you think?

  Love,

  Christmas Danzig

  Dear Christmas,

  I know how you feel. Everyone’s always in charge of us—our families, our teachers, our bosses, everyone. I hate it too. I wish I could be somewhere that I’m the boss of me.

  You seem like a very sensitive girl. Do you cry a lot? I cry so much. I can’t help myself. Whenever I see the movie again, I think I’m crying all the time. That’s like melting.

  Love,

  Dorothy

  Dear Dorothy,

  Yes, I cry a lot, but not anymore, I have cancer. It’s dumb to have cancer and to cry about it, so I don’t. Love,

  Christmas Danzig

  Dear Christmas,

  I hope you feel okay. I hope you don’t cry too much.

  How did you get your name?

  Love,

  Dorothy

  Dear Dorothy,

  In the movie, the actor who plays the Scarecrow also plays one of the famers, right? That dude’s Hickory, and he calls himself Hick too. Everyone has a couple of names and is in disguise. That’s what I think about life. No one’s real anymore.

  That’s how I got my name.

  Love,

  Christmas Danzig

  Dear Christmas,

  Did you know that the Land of Oz was named “Oz” because the writer of the book, L. Frank Baum, couldn’t think of a name—and then he saw his filing cabinet, where the files were labeled “O” to “Z”? Oz! He had a eureka moment.

  I loved being in Oz, but I also really wanted to be back at home, with my Auntie Em. Isn’t that weird? Kansas looks so black and white, and I still want to go there. I guess home isn’t always pretty.

  If you had a land all your own, maybe over your own rainbow, what would it be like?

  Love,

  Dorothy

  At the end of the day, I texted Phil, but he had another Friday night deadline. I needed a break. I went to Cloud 9 and caught a late showing of the new Wes Anderson, even though I had already seen it in previews. It was still pretty damn good, and awfully twee. When I got home, nothing, Phil’s light was on, but Christmas Danzig hadn’t replied. What time does a thirteen-year-old go to bed in Maryland?

  Something was wrong, I knew it: she probably wasn’t okay. There was no reason she would write to me, a stranger, and kind of pretend I was real. I know, I know, the Internet, blah, blah, blah, blah, nothing exists and all those Blink! and Wink! and Think! books that say we can’t tell who’s what anymore, but this kid, a little girl named Christmas, she could tell. I was sure she knew what she was doing. But I worried she was dead.

  Sex with Phil looked good for Saturday night. I booked a Pilates class in the afternoon—I had missed my regular this week—and rang him after. But I had one condition: sex, but then we had to go out together the next day, Sunday, like on a date, for brunch. It’s the LA way. He’s from St. Louis, so he maybe didn’t know, but I’m not going to screw a guy more than twice and not have brunch.

  Really, what I wanted most was to talk. I needed to be sober, not to be in Phil’s apartment in the dark, waiting for my vibrator and his dick together, but somewhere in public, where there were other people, to see what the conversation would become, to talk through what was happening. Not that I could explain what I was feeling, except to say I wanted to be near other people, people walking around, eating and laughing and flirting, and maybe going back to their apartments to have afternoon sex. Something good might be happening with Phil, I had to admit that, but I also had to see it for myself in the daylight. Plus, it was important, a Sunday brunch: the world comes together at Sunday brunch. It would make all of us real. Even the Internet teenager with cancer, even me, Dear Dorothy. All of us needed to be real.

  I didn’t know too many teenagers, as my two nieces were younger—eight and nine—and my cousins’ kids were worth ignoring, mall junkies, all about the brands and the boys. Some of my students were only eighteen or nineteen, so they were teenagers, technically, but the boys were the ones who acted stupid most of the time. The girls at community college tended to act older—they had jobs, which helped them pretend to be grown up, and to be old enough to do idiotic grown-up things. The girls in my classes lied more, too. In my classes, students tend to be schemers or innocents, and sometimes they were both, so young that even their schemes were innocent. Which is all to say that I didn’t know what to expect from a teenager living in Maryland named Christmas Danzig.

  I thought Christmas must be alone, with no one there, since she was writing to me. Then it occurred to me that I was just as alone, checking for her posts all the time. That was not a feel-good moment.

  Sunday brunch in Santa Monica, at Eggs ’n Booze, my favorite place near the pier, Phil and I waited an hour for a table, sitting on a bench out front, away from the sun but hot. Even though I was prepared, twirly in my poppies sundress and white Grace-Kelly-before-she-gets-in-the-car scarf. I had made Phil put on a polo shirt I found in his closet, a lilac-colored golf jobbie that looked like it had never been worn.

  “My mother gave me that shirt,” Phil had said, staring at the closet. “Don’t be my mother.”

  “C’mon, you chicken. Your mother doesn’t have sex with you. Remember? Sex?” I goosed him.

  “Yiy!” He hopped a couple of steps to the side. “Oh God,” Phil said. Then he laughed really hard. “Oh God! You’re so bad!”

  He liked it, I could tell. He had a nice laugh.

  Brunch meant hollandaise and a Bloody Mary or three: a mimosa’s wasted on me, as is the Champagne headache. We sat outside, under a big awning in the back, the tables at Eggs ’n Booze too close together, the servers the best, even when I show up wasted at four in the morning. Eggs ’n Booze is rightly famous for its waiters, the gayest, a whirl of restaurant tuxedos that suddenly becomes a chorus line and sings show tunes in the middle of everything, trays hoisted for effect. I’m not a fag hag, but I love a good gay man.

  “I used to come here a lot,” Phil said. “When I was at USC.”

  “I didn’t know you were at USC.”

  “I was going to be a lawyer.”

  “Really!” My ex was a lawyer: I hate lawyers.

  “Wasn’t for me.” He lowered his eyes. “So…I wanted to tell you something.”

  Someone rang a triangle: that was the signal. “Wait. Hold on. They’re going to sing.”


  The waiters were sashaying and hitch kicking together, flapping their server aprons around, shimmying shoulders, places everyone. The triangle was rung once again. From the back of the room, near the bathrooms, came a strong baritone, “There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow…there’s a bright golden haze on the meadow”

  And an answering voice, from near the bar: “ The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye…and it looks like it’s climbing clear up to the sky.”

  “OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING, OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY!”

  All of the waiters were singing, and quite a few customers.

  “What?” I had to shout to Phil, leaning across our table.

  “I…” Phil was shaking his head. He took my hand, the sweetie. “That’s Corey—that guy with the tats. He was my roomie.” “That guy!”

  Corey was short, ripped, and too cute, right in the middle of the chorus line. He and Phil had the same haircut, gelled up in the front. Phil waved and Corey waved back, can-canning, and I felt pride, a different kind of pride, sitting with Phil and holding hands.

  The baritone returned, easing his way toward the middle of the restaurant: “ All the cattle are standing like statues. All the cattle are standing like statues.” The chorus line preened, vogued, and froze in their funniest faces.

  “I…” Phil began again.

  “WHAT?”

  “Oh, forget it!” he shouted back. “OH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY!” he joined in.

  Later, reading the Times in the garden, lazing around while Phil did some work next to me, I realized that we had never really talked about Dear Dorothy and Christmas. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to talk about them.

  Our hips were touching. I could feel him, and could tell through his little workout shorts that he was getting hard.

  Dear Dorothy, I told myself, what are you doing with this guy? He’s a keeper, and you’re not.

  I reached for my iPad, and with Phil not paying attention, I logged in and checked the site. There were no new posts, so what’s a girl to do?

  I wrote a new letter to myself, Dear Dorothy.

  Dear Dorothy,

  How does the Scarecrow look so real?

  Love,

  Christmas

  Dear Christmas,

  We filmed The Wizard of Oz in 1938, long before you were born. I was only sixteen, but they wanted me to play a twelve-year-old girl—even though you know that Dorothy is just six in the books—and so they tried a lot of different wigs and rosy cheeks and dresses. Then one of the directors, a man who only worked on the movie a couple of weeks, told them to get rid of all the stuff, to let me play the part. I had to wear a corset inside my dress, because I was already more mature, but that was nothing compared to what the other actors had to do.

  The Cowardly Lion’s costume weighed ninety pounds! Everyone wore long underwear underneath their costumes in those days, too, and so he was really, really sweaty. The film required a lot of lights, very hot arc lights, for the Technicolor cameras, and wow, did Bert Lahr ever sweat. He swore a lot too—he and Ray Bolger and Jack Haley had been acting a long time, and they were grown men, and they really liked to make a lot of noise, practical jokes and such, and they all hated their costumes and makeup. Once the Cowardly Lion was made up for the day’s shoot, he wouldn’t be able to eat a thing at the Commissary, just drink chicken soup through a straw.

  Ray Bolger, the Scarecrow, wore a lot of makeup too, but he had to wear a kind of specially made rubber bag—with holes cut in it—over his head. The bag was supposed to look like a sack that’s called burlap. Someone once told me that they made over a hundred different rubber sacks for Ray to wear, and I believe it. Those sacks didn’t last very long, and sometimes they had to be peeled off of Ray’s face at the end of the day’s shoot. That hurt. But I think Ray and Bert are the most real-looking in the whole movie. In fact, when we were filming, the two of them used to make me laugh so hard that I would get in trouble with the director—I couldn’t stop laughing! I would laugh and laugh and then I couldn’t do my lines. When I laugh that much, I get short of breath. Does that ever happen to you?

  Christmas, there are many, many things I want to tell you. I hate that you have cancer. Your letters seem to say that it’s bad—is that true? How long do you have to live?

  I want to tell you that I’m not very good at this. Giving advice and all. Dear Dorothy, I mean. I’m kind of a fake. But life, I mean, can be fake too. I don’t think I’m very good at life. I kind of live it, but I also don’t. I mean, I got married and thought I would have a family, but I couldn’t get pregnant, which was probably okay, because my husband was really boring, and maybe not very nice, and we got divorced. I live in LA because I always have—where else would Dorothy live? You’re not going to find this Dorothy in Kansas. I have a job that lets me work with young people and teach them about movies, but they don’t really care a lot. Or maybe I don’t care a lot. Although every once in a while, one of them cares.

  But I did meet a new guy. He’s cute. Something about him seems weird to me, but that wouldn’t be a surprise. I’m not very good at relationships either.

  I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I guess I’m sorry for what you won’t experience, because you’re dying, so you won’t get to suffer from all of the stupid decisions people make. But I’m sad you won’t get to make those stupid decisions yourself too. Dying is like having a house dropped on you by someone you’ve never met.

  But I also want to cheer you up. The Wizard of Oz is a sappy movie, I know that, and I think you do too. It lets people be sappy and forget that their real lives are kind of bad.

  So what to say to cheer you up? I hope dying doesn’t hurt a lot. I think that we could write to each other like this, and that I could come visit you. I’m not going to look like Dorothy Gale—but I imagine you know that.

  I think being dead won’t be so bad. I think it’s probably pretty peaceful.

  Will you write to me soon? Please?

  Love,

  Dorothy

  I sat back from my iPad and put my hand on Phil’s leg. He put his hand on top of mine, without looking at me. Nice Phil. Then he went back to his project.

  Within a minute, an answer appeared.

  Dear Dorothy,

  I’m not very good at this either, but I want to be. I will write to you and write to you. I think you’re awesome. I don’t really know how to talk to you.

  We should have brunch again next week.

  Love,

  Christmas

  I read her letter once, twice. I looked over at Phil. He put down his laptop. The expression on his face: that was the truth.

  “You…?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “The first one was real. She…I…”

  “You…?”

  “I didn’t know what to do.” He looked away, and then came back, and looked at me. He was Phil, looking at me. “I’ve…I liked you since the beginning, like over a year. You didn’t know, I couldn’t…I can’t…I don’t know. Then we did this together, and it means so much to you, and you were checking all the time, and you seemed like you needed to write to her, and then she didn’t write back. And now you like me. So I did, I wrote the rest of the letters. I’m, like…I’m Christmas. I don’t know how to talk to you.” He put his head down. “I’m not a girl with cancer.”

  “You,” I said. “You wrote those letters. Fuck you.”

  “I know,” Phil said. He looked at me again.

  “Phil…this is so fucked up. It’s sad. I want so much.” I was crying, I didn’t think I would be. “We’re talking through her. She’s dying.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hold me.”

  BLUE THE DOG

  “Blue the Dog, stay.”

  The girl was trying to vomit again, retching, and Blue the Dog was worried, whining with that little huffing noise, his nostrils flaring, his big tail smacking against the leg of the table. The girl had been puking on and off for about an hour, and now, worse, she la
y suffering on my porch sofa. I held a cup of spring water to her lips so she could sip, but she wasn’t keeping down even a dribble—her body was being hateful, and making not to stop. She couldn’t calm her singleness: the toxins must be deep in her cells.

  I put a mop bucket nearby, thinking she wouldn’t have the strength to get up and step to the railing to vomit on the butterfly bush. The butterfly bush was being so nice. Blue the Dog butted his way past the bucket, though, wedging closer. He wasn’t ready for the next moment, or maybe he was owning this. Blue the Dog sat right there staring into her, the way he does, less than a foot away, having found her and chosen her, and now she was his. Blue the Dog is always who he is: six years old, some Lab, some Pit, some Boxer, some other giant breed, block-headed, with one black ear and one white ear and an underbite, a huge mutt, and the best.

  The girl would hang her head off the edge of the couch cushion, open-mouthed, spit and moan, the puke and spittle stringy, her head in the bucket, right in front of Blue the Dog. He stared, uncertain, every once in a while stamping his back feet. He hadn’t once growled at her. I never saw his dander up around her. Blue the Dog doesn’t like children, but he liked this girl.

  Blue the Dog had come upon her first, in the woods. We had been moving from the birches toward the clearing to the south, a field and a swamp still to go on the way to my beehives, and even though Blue the Dog had been on a scent, he had broken form.

  “Something!” Blue the Dog had said to me.

  Blue the Dog talks, no matter that I don’t really understand.

  “Blue the Dog? What is it?”