by McMan, Ann;
A cardinal landed on the wrought iron railing that flanked the steps to her row house. Diz and the bright red bird stared at each other through the gauzy curtain of swirling snow.
Last night had been surreal. Today was on the other side of surreal. And tomorrow? Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve with Clarissa. She sure never saw that one coming. Clarissa was right. Sometimes Diz did miss the biggest clues.
But it didn’t really matter because, right now, all the omens in her life were looking good.
She gazed at the bright red bird that continued to perch there staring back at her.
Here he was, impossibly ahead of schedule. A talisman to signify the end of her darkest days—uncannily like the icon at the end of a string of rosary beads.
“Hope is the thing with feathers.”
Isn’t that what Emily Dickinson said?
She smiled at the crimson metaphor, and extended her hand.
“Hello, gorgeous.”
A Christmas Tree
Grows in Baltimore
It was a good, old-fashioned nor’easter.
At least, that’s what every TV and radio station in the Chesapeake Bay area had been jawboning about since six o’clock that morning, when Diz finally regained consciousness. The office Christmas party had been the night before, and Diz didn’t even remember how she got home. She supposed she had Marty to thank for that. Her stalwart office mate was the only real constant in her life these days—ever since Clarissa had moved on to the greener pastures of the ninth floor editorial suite.
Not that she and Clarissa didn’t still “see” each other—they did . . . in all those confusing and noncommittal ways that surrounded a fledgling, non-relationship like translucent layers of bubble wrap. In fact, they both were so well insulated from making any missteps that they didn’t move at all—in any direction. Not forward. Not backward. Not sideways. Not any ways. They were stuck. Immobilized. Just like bugs in amber.
Diz hated amber. It was one of those annoying fall colors that were supposed to look great on her. Just like topaz. Her birthstone. It sometimes seemed like she was the unhappy victim of a jewel-toned conspiracy.
She felt like crap. She needed Advil and a big, greasy breakfast. It was hard to believe that it had now been a year since the morning after last year’s party, when Clarissa played nursemaid to her. She
recalled coming home in a similar state that night—but there had been one important difference. Clarissa came home with her. And Clarissa had stayed with her, too—in the same bed. Although nothing much
happened except some grumbling (on Clarissa’s part), and some drunken groping (on Diz’s part). The following morning, they had acknowledged their no-longer undeniable attraction to each other—and Clarissa even went on to break off her engagement to her granite-jawed, rich boyfriend, “Dash Riprock.”
But that was about it. Here they were, twelve months later, still circling each other like wary dogs in a deserted parking lot. It was unfamiliar terrain for each of them. It was unfamiliar for Diz because she had never had a grown-up relationship with a smart, high-functioning woman before. And it was unfamiliar for Clarissa because she’d never had . . . well . . . any kind of relationship with a woman before.
None of that was making Diz feel any better.
But there was one bright spot. Tonight was Christmas Eve, and Clarissa was coming by for a late supper. She had even been the one to suggest it. Diz was stunned when her phone rang late on Friday afternoon and she heard Clarissa’s voice on the other end of the line.
“What’s going on down there?” she asked, with her customary brusqueness.
Diz sat back in her knock-off Herman Miller chair. “Why do you ask? Don’t tell me you can hear the screams of the oppressed all the way up there on the ninth floor.”
Clarissa sighed. “No. But the smell of fried cabbage is wafting up the elevator shaft and permeating all the cashmere coats up here.”
“ ’Tis the season,” Diz quipped. She thought she could sense Clarissa smiling.
“What are you doing?”
“Right now?” Diz asked. “I’m playing a rousing game of ‘Find the Dangling Participle’ in the latest searing broadside written by our own Grover Westlake.”
Grover wrote a monthly column for Inside the Beltway, one of Wylie Magazine Group’s flagship publications.
“What’s he on the rag about this time?”
“Let’s see.” Diz tapped on her keyboard and brought her screen back to life. “At this point, he’s in the midst of a righteous rant about how developers are being allowed to rape the city by cutting down trees along historic avenues and vacant lots without proper authorization.”
“That is becoming a pandemic.”
“Like you’d even notice from your lavish digs on Boston Street.” Clarissa still lived in a high-rise, high-dollar condo overlooking the harbor—although she had been looking around for more modest accommodations closer to the magazine offices.
“That’s not fair,” Clarissa replied. “I drive past trees every day. Sometimes I even lower the window of the limousine so I can get a better look at them.”
Diz laughed. “Touché.”
“Are you through being an asshole?”
“I can maybe manage for about five minutes. Why?”
“I wanted to ask if you had plans for Christmas Eve.”
“Christmas Eve?”
“Yes. Christmas Eve—the night before Christmas day. Ring any bells?”
“Oh, a few . . . and all of them good, if memory serves.”
There was momentary silence on the line.
“What did you have in mind?” Diz asked. She was afraid to presume anything.
“I was thinking that maybe we could connect for a late supper?”
Diz felt her heart rate tic up a notch.
“I might be able to manage that.”
“Might be able? Why? Do the twins have to be in before curfew?”
Randi and Ronni were sisters who worked in the mailroom, and Diz’s one-time holiday romp with them was now firmly enmeshed in the canon of Wylie Christmas Folklore.
Diz sighed. “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”
“Let’s see . . . No. I don’t think I am.”
“I’ve completely reformed.”
“Rachel Maddow will be relieved to hear it.”
“Hey . . . is it my fault that she looks like me!”
“No. In fact, it’s one of your more endearing qualities.”
“I have endearing qualities?”
“A few.”
Diz sat back in her chair again. “Care to elaborate?”
“Not right now. I might, however, on Monday evening—if you can manage to pencil me in.”
Diz looked around for a pencil and saw one poking out beneath a stack of galley proofs. She pulled it out and tapped it against the mouthpiece of her phone.
“Got one right here.”
“One what?” Clarissa sounded confused.
“A pencil.” Diz turned it sideways so she could read what was embossed on its red barrel. “And this one’s a beauty, too—Schultz’s Crab House, An Essex Tradition.”
Clarissa sighed. “Is it sharpened?”
Diz looked at it. “Nope. It’s worn to a perfectly round nub.”
“Well, kindly use your nub to scrawl my name on your calendar.”
Diz thought about her various nubs. “Messy, but effective. Of course, I will have to take my pants off.”
“Pervert.”
“I knew you’d be pleased.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Yes . . . it does.”
Silence again. Diz thought maybe she’d gone too far. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Clar?”
More silence.
“Clar—I’m sorry . . .”
“Don’t be. It’s one of the things we need to talk about.”
Talk about? That couldn’t be good.
/> “You’re not planning to dump me on Christmas Eve, are you?” Diz asked, with more than a trace of panic.
“Planning to? Not at the moment.”
Diz rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s something, at least.”
“How does eight-thirty sound?”
Diz was planning to have drinks with her neighbor, Mrs. Schröder, who was going to be alone for the holidays this year. But Mrs. Schröder never stayed up much past nightfall, so Diz should be back home in plenty of time.
“I can make that work. Want me to cook something for us?”
“I was hoping you’d offer. With this storm rolling in, the city will probably be in lockdown mode by six o’clock.”
Diz smiled. “Just get there—I’ll take care of everything else.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Diz could hear another voice in the background. Someone had walked into Clarissa’s office.
“Gotta run,” she said. “See you later.” She hung up.
Diz sat there holding the phone in her hand like she still had something to say.
It was now three days later, and she still had something to say. A lot of somethings, in fact, but they would all have to wait until eight-thirty. One thing was clear: it was time to get off this are-we-or-aren’t-we gerbil wheel.
Diz made her unsteady way across the room and slowly opened her blinds to admit one small ray of light at a time. She didn’t want to push it. But luck was on her side. The sky was the color of dull pewter, and there was no sun to be seen. She squinted her eyes and peered out.
It was snowing . . . of course. The sky was only spitting sporadic, tiny flakes at this point. But they were those nasty little insistent ones that tended to gain in intensity and add up to something truly horrendous.
Great.
She looked across her square scrap of front yard toward the street. A few of the bare branches on Mrs. Schröder’s prized linden tree were already spotted with white. They were vibrating in the wind. A bright red cardinal was clinging to one of the lower limbs. It was hard to tell without her glasses, but Diz thought something about its posture suggested that it was pissed-off, too. It kept fluttering its wings in a futile attempt to shake off the snow.
She just hoped it would still be possible for Clarissa to make it over later. Diz looked up at the sky again. Of course, if she did make it over, she’d probably have to stay the night.
Diz smiled.
Things could definitely be worse.
It snowed steadily all day. By eleven, there was nearly six inches on the ground. By two, that amount had more than doubled. And the wind whipping in from the bay was making it drift all over the place.
She decided to cook something simple for dinner. If Clarissa arrived at eight-thirty, she’d likely be coming straight from her parents’ house—and if memory served, the Wylie’s did nothing on a small scale. Clarissa would already have had plenty to eat and drink.
Diz wished she had done her grocery shopping earlier in the day. She practically needed snowshoes for the short walk to Eddie’s Market. And the winds made it even harder to trudge along in a straight line. But it had been worth the trip. She had a new recipe for Provençale Tomato and Potato soup that she thought might be just right, and she was pairing that with a fresh loaf of rosemary ciabatta bread and a bottle of Culmen Reserva Rioja.
She didn’t need any meat, but she noticed that Eddie’s had Ostrowski’s bratwurst on sale, so she picked up two pounds of the fat links for Mrs. Schröder.
Of course, that probably meant that Diz would have to eat two pounds of bratwurst when she went by there later for cocktails, but that was nothing new. Mrs. Schröder was always trying to feed her.
She was nearly home when her cell phone rang. Diz was afraid to stop walking for very long—the snow was really coming down now. Traffic on St. Paul Street had slowed to a crawl. She ducked beneath a sagging awning and fished her phone out of her coat pocket. It was Marty.
“Hello?”
“Yo, Diz?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are you? I just went by your house.”
“I’m walking back from Eddie’s. I needed some stuff for tonight.”
“Tonight?” Marty sounded confused. “What’s tonight? I thought you were going next door to the widow’s for beer and bangers, or whatever in the hell they call that shit.”
“That’s this afternoon. Clarissa is coming over tonight for a late supper.”
Marty didn’t say anything right away. Diz could hear the sound of kids yelling in the background.
“Did you say late supper?” he finally asked.
“That’s the plan,” Diz replied.
“Well,” Marty drawled. “I wish you loads of luck with that. At the rate this stuff is coming down, she’ll need a damn Snowcat to make it all the way over to your place.”
Diz ducked her head out and looked up at the sky.
Big mistake. In about two seconds her face was covered with snowflakes.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “It’s not looking too good right now.”
“Want me to come and get you?”
“Are you still out and about?”
“No. But, believe me, I’ll take any excuse I can get to escape from these chipmunks.”
Marty had three kids, ages two, four, and five and a half. And his wife was pregnant again. Marty was Jewish, but his wife was a former Franciscan nun who seemed determined to atone for her apostasy by populating the planet with little Catholics.
Diz called her “Sister Sheila.”
She called Diz “asshole.”
They had an understanding.
Diz ducked back beneath her awning. “Thanks for the offer, but I only have a few blocks to go. I’d be home by the time you got the van out.”
“Well, if you change your mind, just give me a holler.”
“Thanks, man. Hey? Why were you looking for me in the first place?”
“Oh . . . yeah. I was out picking up some extra lights for the Christmas tree. Simon and Teddy pulled the whole goddamn thing over fighting to reach a candy cane and blew half the strands out. Goddamn cheap shit is all made in China these days. I had to put the fucking tire chains on and drive to six damn drug stores before I could find enough replacements. Sheila kept yelling at me to find the starter bulb, but that’s like trying to find the verb in a sentence written by George W. Bush.”
“So you came by to see if I had any starter bulbs?”
“No. I came by to see if you were still alive after last night. You got pretty toasted, girlfriend.”
“Whose fault was that? As I recall, you were the one who kept pouring drinks down my throat.”
“I know. But you were acting so pathetic it was making me sick. You need to get off this damn ledge you’ve been on with the Duchess for the last year. You should know by now that she’s never gonna leave that penthouse and take up with a lowbrow like you.”
“I’m hardly a lowbrow, Marty. I have a fucking Ph.D.”
“Yeah. And I have a ten-inch dick. What did that get me?”
“Three and a half kids, at last count.”
“My point, exactly.”
Diz sighed. She knew Marty was right. And with the way things were going, she was pretty sure that Clarissa was coming by to unreel her own version of the same assessment—probably with a lot more profanity, and, hopefully, without a ten-inch dick.
“Okay. I hear you. Let’s just see what happens later on, okay?”
“Hey? Give us a call if the Duchess gets snowed-in and can’t make it. I’ll come and pick you up so you can spend the evening with us.”
Diz smiled. “You really are a sweetheart, you know that, Marty?”
“Sweetheart my ass. Alvin’s had the shits for the last three days. I’m just looking for somebody else to wipe his ass for one night.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“What are friends for? Call me later, okay?” He hung up.
Diz shook her head and a cascad
e of white powder dropped from the brim of her hat like a puff of exhaust. She put her phone away and slapped at the front of her coat to try and clear it off. It was pointless. The snow had reached critical mass. It was in charge now, and there was nothing any of them could do but hunker down and wait for it to run its course.
She stepped back out into the open and began to plod her way along the narrow path that used to be a sidewalk. If she hadn’t walked this way so many times before, she’d have no idea where to go. East 31st Street looked unfamiliar. It looked . . . clean. Not like Baltimore at all.
On days like this, she understood the allure ageing Eskimos once were reputed to have for just forgetting about everything and getting lost in a blizzard.
Not today.
She cinched-up her hold on her canvas grocery bag and turned right on Guilford Avenue.
She had promises to keep.
Christa Schröder was a big, blue-eyed, large-bosomed woman from Königsberg in Bavaria. Her late husband, Karl, moved the family to Baltimore in 1958, when he got a job at Natty Boh—or the National Bohemian brewery. The young immigrant started out by unloading grain trucks in ten-hour shifts, before graduating to the bottling plant. He spent the last fifteen years of his career wrangling Boh’s huge copper brew kettles.
Karl Sr. worked for Natty Boh for thirty-one years. In 1970, he moved his wife and son out of their small rented apartment into a spacious rowhouse in the Abell neighborhood of Baltimore. Diz became their neighbor four years ago, when she lucked into the property via a short sale, and now her “Painted Lady” shared a front porch and a scrap of lawn with Christa’s.
Karl and Christa had only one son, Karl Jr.—or K2. K2 stayed on in Baltimore and followed in his father’s footsteps, going to work for Natty Boh right out of high school. After the company sold out to Stroh and closed its Baltimore operation in 1996, K2 moved with his wife and four children to Eden, North Carolina, to work for Miller/Coors. He came home as often as he could, and his noisy brood was always a fixture next door during the holidays—until this year.
In mid-August, on the hottest day of the summer, the tall, handsome man who had never been sick a day in his life, dropped dead on his front lawn. Christa found him lying at the foot of her prized linden tree, still holding his morning copy of The Sun in his right hand.