Lord of the Ralphs

by John McNally

  I nodded.

  “Promise me,” she said.

  “Promise.”

  She took a good, long look at me and sighed. “You’re getting more and more like your father every day.”

  I liked my father, so I smiled.

  Mom got out, locking her door before slamming it shut and causing my ears to pop. And then I watched her get smaller and smaller. I held up my forefinger and thumb so that she fit into the empty space between them, as though I were holding her—and then, as she continued to shrink, I pretended that it was because I was pinching her. Before she reached the door, I pushed my forefinger and thumb together, crushing my mother so that I couldn’t see her any more, and then I started to fake-cry, pressing my face against the window, my shoulders shuddering.

  But then I stopped. I was bored. What interested me most inside the car was the lighter. My father and mother were always pushing it in and waiting until it popped back out, and then they’d light their cigarettes with it. Whenever I asked if I could light a cigarette, they’d shake their heads, as if they’d barely heard me, or they’d give me a funny look, as though a cigarette were dangling from my mouth too, before telling me no.

  Alone now, I pushed in the lighter. Just when I thought it wasn’t ever going to pop back out, it did. I pulled it from its slot. It was heavier than I’d imagined, and I almost dropped it. Inside was a series of circles inside of circles. The circles were bright orange and giving off heat. I held the lighter in one hand, but with my free hand, I pointed my finger at the glowing circles and started moving the tip of my finger toward it. As the orange circles grew dimmer, I wanted to touch them to see what they felt like, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I finally returned the lighter and sighed.

  What now? I wondered. What now?

  And then I saw Santa’s trailer through Mom’s window.

  I opened my door and stepped out. It was colder than I realized, and my nose started to run. I locked the door and slammed it shut. I walked to the back of the car and stood by the tail-pipe where grey clouds of smoke from the still-running car surrounded me. After the smoke had completely wrapped itself around me, I stepped out from it, a little dizzy, hoping someone would see me and think that I was a genie who had appeared magically from the car’s tail-pipe.

  I coughed a few times and walked to the corner. Cars and trucks flew past, one after the other. Snow whipped around my ankles, crawling up my pant legs, above my socks. I shivered. My snot froze as soon as it left my nose. I couldn’t stand there all day—Mom would eventually come back—so I started walking across the street.

  Cars honked. Another car, trying to stop, lost control and fishtailed. A man rolled down his window and yelled, “What the hell do you think you’re doing, kid?” I waved at him. I’d never walked across a street this wide before. It was fun—it was certainly better than sitting in Mom’s car—and I was already thinking about more streets I could cross.

  On the other side of Cicero Avenue, in the Scottsdale Shopping Plaza parking lot, I had to weave in and out of parked cars to reach the Santa Trailer. A few times, I lost sight of it and started to panic, but then I’d walk into a place where there were only a few cars, and there the trailer would be again.

  “Santa!” I said, bleary-eyed from the cold, my toes and fingers almost entirely numb.

  I expected to see a long line when I approached the entrance, but no one was there, and the door was shut. There were two doors, actually—one to go into and one to go out of.

  I walked up the three steps to the first door and knocked. When Santa didn’t answer, I tried the knob, but the door was locked. I was about to knock again, harder this time, when I heard around the corner someone begin to cough loudly, then clear his throat and spit. Although I couldn’t see the actual person, I saw the spit. It flew out from behind the trailer, as if shot from a gun, and landed in some snow-covered shrubs next to Goldblatt’s Department Store.

  “Santa?” I called out and walked to the back of the trailer.

  Santa was sitting on the trailer’s bumper, smoking a cigarette, and eating a Milky Way.

  “Oh,” he said when he saw me. “Hey.” He took one last long pull on the cigarette, then flicked it out into the parking lot, where it sizzled in a pond of grey slush and died.

  “Santa!” I yelled.

  Santa raised the candy bar and said, “Hold on. Mouth’s full.”

  “Can I tell you want I want for Christmas?” I asked.

  Santa grimaced as he swallowed the last bite, then he tried tossing the rest of the candy bar into a garbage can but missed it. He looked around, making sure no one other than the two of us saw what had just happened. Two giant blackbirds appeared from the roof of Goldblatt’s. They must have been the last remaining birds in all of Chicago. They fought over the candy bar, until one managed to hold it in its beak and fly off. The other bird squawked, as if to say, “Damn you!” and followed.

  “Thing is,” Santa said, “trailer ain’t open yet.”

  I stared at him. I couldn’t believe that I was actually talking to Santa Claus. I walked over and put my arms around him, burying my face in his soft velvet belly.

  “Whoa!” he said. “Easy there.”

  I squeezed him harder.

  A young woman, with hair piled up in what my mother called a beehive and wearing a long coat with leather fringe around the bottom, came up and said to Santa, “Where the hell were you last night? Were you with Midge?”

  I let go of Santa and backed up.

  Santa shrugged. “I dunno. Out? Playing pool?”

  “Bull. I’m sure you were with that…”—she looked over at me—“…you-know-what.”

  “C’mon. Do we have to do this today?” Santa asked.

  The woman cut her eyes over to me again, then back to Santa. She said, “Maybe I should call her husband and ask him.”

  “Don’t do that,” Santa said.

  Walking backwards, the woman said, “Yeah, maybe that’s what I’ll do,” then headed back to the parking lot and climbed into a VW Van with a giant peace sign painted on the side.

  “Was that Mrs. Santa?” I asked.

  “What? Oh, yeah. Yeah.” He yanked up his velvet pants and coughed, then looked around the parking lot, distracted.

  I gave his jacket a few tugs and asked, “Want to know what I want for Christmas?”

  “Hunh?” he asked, looking down. “Right, right. Christmas. Maybe we outta go inside the trailer. But we gotta make this fast, okay?” I followed him around to the door.

  “Where are your reindeer?” I asked.

  “Good question,” he said. “Probably went around back to do their business. They’re a little shy about that. Especially what’s-his-name. You know. The one with the big red nose?”

  “Rudolph’s here?” I asked.

  “Yeah, him. Rudolph. The whole gang’s here. Donald and Blister, too.” Santa crouched, felt around underneath the trailer until his eyes widened, and then he smiled. “Ah-ha!” he said, showing me the key. He unlocked the door and flipped on the light, and we walked inside.

  A half-eaten hamburger lay on a small dinette table. A crushed soda can sat next to it. It was freezing cold in the trailer, too. Each time I opened my mouth, I saw my breath. In fact, it seemed colder inside than outside, but maybe it felt that way because I was expecting the trailer to be warmer. I started shivering. My teeth clacked together.

  “Hey, man, sorry about the mess,” Santa said and kicked a crumpled paper sack out of the way. In the middle of the trailer sat a large, overstuffed chair with foam poking out of its holes. Santa fell back into it and sighed.

  I started climbing up onto his knee when the door opened and a woman entered. It was a different woman from before. She looked from Santa to me and then back to Santa.

  Santa looked at his watch. “You’re early,” he said. Lowering his voice, he said, “We’ve got a situation.”

  The woman said, “What kind of situation?

  San
ta said to the woman, “Give us a second?” He looked down at me and said, “Quick. Name one thing you want.”

  “I want Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, and I want…”

  “Groovy,” Santa said. “Consider it done.” He lifted me off his knee, reached into a plastic laundry basket next to us, and pulled out a red sucker. “Here you go. Now, scoot.”

  I took the sucker and headed for the exit. At the door, I turned for one last look. The woman was sitting on Santa’s lap now. When Santa saw me lingering, he shooed me with his hand. The woman raised two fingers, flashing me the peace sign.

  I left the trailer.

  Back at the busy intersection, sucker in mouth, I saw Dad in the parking lot across the street. He was on his hands and knees, peeking underneath cars. Mom was standing by Dad’s pick-up truck, and although I couldn’t tell for sure, I had a feeling she was crying. She kept covering her face with her hands and shaking her head.

  “Mom!” I yelled.

  She couldn’t hear me, but then I heard my own name: “Hank!” It was Dad, standing at the corner. “Don’t move!” he yelled. “Wait right there!” He ran all the way across the street without anyone swerving or honking. “Where the hell did you go?” he asked. Before I could tell him, he said, “You really threw us for a loop, you know that? I was looking everywhere for you, kiddo. Come on,” he said. “Hold my hand.”

  His hand was as hard and cold as a frozen chicken thigh, but I held onto it anyway. After we crossed the street and started approaching our cars, he yelled, “Hey, look who I found!”

  Mom uncovered her face. I expected her to be thrilled to see me, but her eyebrows pushed together, and I knew I was going to be in trouble.

  “Mom!” I said. “Guess who I met!”

  “I don’t care if you met the Pope,” she said.

  Under his breath, Dad said, “Ease up, huh? The kid’s alive.”

  Mom glared at Dad, then shook her head and turned around.

  Dad said, “You locked Mom out of her car, Chief. Good thing your old man has a key.” He walked over to the car, reached into his pocket, felt around, but came up empty. Then he turned toward his pick-up and stared at it. Smoke rolled out of the tail-pipe.

  “Crap,” he said.

  “What?” Mom said, turning around.

  “I locked my keys in the truck,” he said.

  “How could you?” Mom asked.

  “Habit, I guess,” he said. “It’s not like I normally keep the truck running, you know.”

  “Now what?” Mom said. “What the hell do we do now?”

  “Hey, hey. Don’t jump all over me,” Dad said. “I’m warning you.” He looked like he was grinning, so I grinned, too.

  “Warning me?” Mom said. “Warning me? Or what?”

  Dad looked around, kicking snow out of the way, until he found a large stone. He picked it up, carried it over to Mom’s car, and pounded it against Mom’s window three times until the window shattered.

  “There,” Dad said, dropping the stone. “It’s unlocked.”

  “Perfect,” Mom said. “Just perfect.” She walked over to the driver’s side, brushed the broken glass of the seat with her gloved hand, and slid inside.

  “Just give me your keys now,” Dad said, “so I can unlock my door.”

  Mom shifted the car and drove away, leaving the two of us behind. We stood there watching her until we couldn’t see her anymore.

  I cleared my throat.

  Dad said, “That woman. I swear.”

  I pointed at the stone. “You want that?” I asked.

  Dad said, “Yeah, in a minute.” He pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his coat pocket, shook it a few times, and extracted a cigarette with his teeth. “Here. Stand in front of me. Help me block the wind,” he said, ducking his head while striking the match. “Dammit,” he said each time the match blew out, but I didn’t mind. I liked how the smell of the burnt match tickled the inside of my nose, and I liked feeling needed. To block the wind even more, I held both of my hands up near my father’s face, as if his head were a balloon that I was about to pick up. The match stayed lit this time, and Dad managed to get the cigarette going. Smoke surrounded me, and when I backed up and wiped my stinging eyes, Dad said, “Don’t cry, kid. Your mother just gets beside herself sometimes. That’s all.”

  I wasn’t crying, but I didn’t tell Dad that. Instead, I wiped my eyes some more and sniffled loudly, and then I crouched down and picked up the stone. Dad stared at me a while and then took the stone.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  With the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and smoke blowing through his nose, he wound back his arm, as though the stone were a baseball. I looked across the street and saw Santa Claus. He was in a headlock and getting punched repeatedly by a tall man. The woman who had flashed me the peace sign was trying to pull the tall man away from Santa.

  “Look!” I said to Dad.

  “Yeah,” Dad said, “it’s beautiful, ain’t it?” He was looking up at the sky. The grey clouds had begun delivering snow. It was as though a hatch had opened, and down it came. It arrived in large, wet flakes, and Dad started to laugh. He opened his mouth, letting snow pile up on his tongue.

  I looked back across the street. The tall man, pulling the woman by her elbow, was walking away from Santa, who was on his knees. I raised my arm and flashed Santa the peace sign. Santa stood slowly and brushed himself off. Then he walked closer to the street to see who I was, holding his hand up to his brow to block the snow.

  “Merry Christmas!” I yelled.

  Dad, thinking I was talking to him, said, “Merry Christmas, son,” and winged the stone at the window as hard as he could. The window shattered. “Sweet mother!” he said, laughing. “What a day.” He looked down at me, grinning, and said, “Hey, listen. I want you to tell me what you want Santa to bring you. It’s only a week away, you know. Christmas, that is.”

  “I already told him,” I said. “He’s over there.”

  “Who?”

  I pointed, and Dad turned around. Santa was bent over, hands on his thighs, vomiting in the snow.

  “Oh,” Dad said. He stared for a while at Santa before flipping away his still-smoldering cigarette. “Good enough, then,” he said. He ruffled my hair with his big palm, and then together we brushed the broken glass from the truck’s front seat, climbed inside, and braced ourselves for the bitter-cold ride home.

  9

  Our neighborhood was pinched on two of its four sides by factories. My father worked at the 3M plant, the one that made tape. I couldn’t have told anyone exactly what it was my father did there, but every few weeks he’d bring home rolls of scotch- or packing-tape or a box of packing peanuts, in case we ever needed to mail something fragile, which we never did. One year he came home with six hundred rolls of shrink-wrapped duct tape. “Bastards don’t give us a Christmas bonus,” he said, “so I thought I’d give one to myself. What the hell, right?” Since it normally took us two years to use up a single roll of duct tape, my parents doled out the extra rolls to our friends whenever an occasion to give gifts came up, but even doing this left us with over five hundred rolls. As far as I knew, nobody had that many friends.

  I’d never really thought much about the things my father brought home until the winter of ’78, the year I was in eighth grade. That December, three weeks before Christmas, my father came home with a large but severely crooked pine tree he’d found poking up out of a Dumpster behind Dunkin’ Donuts, where he stopped off each morning for coffee on his way to 3M.

  “It’s a perfectly good tree,” he said, standing with the front door wide open and pointing to it on the sidewalk. In Chicago, during winter, opening the front door was like opening the door to a walk-in freezer, and the first icy gusts of wind caused me to shiver. Snow whirled into the house as my father retrieved the tree and dragged it inside. A few dozen branches caught on the door frame and snapped off along the way. He said, “I figure somebody took an early vacation and thr
ew this baby out.”

  Mom said, “You found it in a Dumpster? It’s probably crawling with vermin, Frank.” Instead of helping with the tree, she headed for the kitchen. Whenever she was mad, she loved to pretend that she was cleaning the cabinet that held the pots and pans. She could clang around in there for hours.

  “Vermin?” Dad called out over the racket. “In December? I didn’t see any rats, if that’s what you mean.” Dad rolled the tree across the living room and into a corner. He sat on the edge of the sofa, lit a cigarette, and stared into the tree. “First real tree we’ve ever had,” he said, “and your mother’s putting up a stink.”

  My sister had begun walking everywhere barefoot. I almost always heard her before I saw her, and tonight it was her voice I heard first (“What’s all the noise down there?”) followed by stomping. And then Kelly appeared, tromping down the stairs. The living room carpet was jungle-dense green shag, and when her bare foot met the main floor, a pine needle inserted itself into her sole. She screamed and fell to the carpet, as if she’d stepped on a landmine, only to have another needle jab her knee when she landed. “Oh my God,” she said, afraid to move, staring up at us, frozen in place. And then she started bawling.

  Mom ran into the living room, looked at Kelly, and said, “Did something bite her?”

  Dad didn’t answer. He blew smoke out his nose and shook his head.

  •

  The next night, my father came home with a set of plastic reindeer. One reindeer was completely flat, as if a semi had run over it. Another was missing a head. All had been smeared with a mysterious dark soot.

  “Where on earth did you find those?” my mother asked.

  “Oh, next to the highway. They were just lying there, so I pulled over and threw them in the back of the truck.”

  Kelly came downstairs wearing combat boots she’d bought earlier that day from an Army surplus store. She took one look at the reindeer and said, “They’re deformed.”

  “You’re getting gunk all over the carpet,” Mom said, testing the soot by touching it with her forefinger, then holding her finger under a hundred-watt bulb to get a better look.