Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
The foreboding steel gray cumulus mass of gas and water vapor loomed above the horizon of naked wintertime trees; it was a heavy burden for the air to bear and it was so widespread and low that it appeared the sky could drop it any second. An electric blue crackle of fire slithered underneath the giant just as sheets and sheets of icy liquid pelted the earth and forced all of the unsuspecting pedestrians to scurry for shelter like a family of prarrie dogs from a hungry hawk.
In other words it was raining. It was raining hard.
The girl watched longingly, disappointedly, out the window. She was presently curled in a ball, like a cat, in one of the old chairs her mom had recovered in the kitchen of her house. She sighed, put down her pen, and reached for the cup of tea resting on the small table next to her. Decaffeinated English Breakfast with a squeeze of lemon and a teaspoon of sugar. She usually preferred hot chocolate, but for this weather it somehow felt more appropriate, romantic even, to be drinking tea. If I lived in a book, she thought, it would be more aesthetically pleasing to drink tea. She was always living in a book- people’s lives were easier in a book because if something went wrong it always came out right again.
She tried to concentrate on the Biology reading she was supposed to be doing over vacation, but her heart wasn’t in it and her thoughts kept drifting to the weather. The multi-colored Christmas lights on the house across the street blinked heartlessly, almost with longing to be turned off. There was a stupid fake snowman that kept smiling from its perch on her neighbor’s yellow, unfrozen lawn. She wanted to smack that damn snowman for his false cheer and smug reminder that he would be all she saw of the cold, white stuff this Christmas. Ironically, at the same time she couldn’t help but admire the limp cardboard for its futile attempt at optimism. Then again, what did he care? He was an inanimate object.
She returned her mug to the table in its spot next to the green porcelain light-up Christmas tree that had been in her family for years. She pulled on one of the plastic lights like she used to when she was little to see if it would come off. The blue ones were stubborn and never did, but the pink ones weren’t so resistant. Bored with that she closed the heavy Biology book, deciding it was better to put off till later what could be done now. Her thoughts again strayed to the weather as she watched the ominous black cloud that would soon give way to the freezing rain the Weather Channel had been warning about for days. The horizon she had mentioned earlier was actually non-existent. The only view from her vantage point was the ugly roofs on the ancient apartments two streets over. The pedestrians? Made up. No one in their right mind would be out on the streets of her subdivision on a day like this. They all knew better.
She thought it was amusing that only yesterday, on December 21st, four days before Christmas, it had been 71 degrees outside. 71 degrees. So much for a white Christmas. Up in the north it didn’t get that warm until May. At least. She laughed as she thought about it. She could hear Bing Crosby in the background crooning, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” on NPR. She only ever listened to NPR at this time of year because they played good Christmas songs. Besides, in the south, all of the radio stations were months behind the rest of the stations in the country. You can only tolerate the Backstreet Boys for so long, especially when they’re played every five minutes. But she really hated when NPR aired a discussion where several philosophers consult each other on the impact of, say, foot fuzz and sun-dried tomatoes on the human population that call their mothers on Tuesday evening at 6:07 in the 36 to 54-year demographic. And whether or not they took a black-and-white photograph of it.
She had turned on the radio in an attempt to calm her nerves a little and to help her get into the holiday spirit. It didn’t work. She wasn’t sure whether it was the homework, the lack of snow, or the argument she had just gotten into with her mother. Probably a value meal sale priced combo of all three. Could I please have the number 7 with a diet coke and a side of screaming? She moped. She never understood how they managed to get into the biggest fights over the smallest things. She didn’t care what her mother said, the sink did not smell like tuna fish. Granted, she had just rinsed the can out in the sink, but it had been a thorough rinsing. No residual tuna remained. Just because she had no prior knowledge that the cleanser was under the sink didn’t mean that her mother had to yell at her. It all came down to the reason she’d had to scrub out the sink: on the possibility that someone else would come and want to see the house and wouldn’t buy it for the simple reason that the kitchen sink smelled like Starkist dolphin-safe tuna fish.
I shouldn’t have bothered to clean it, she mused, then we wouldn’t sell the house and the sink can stink like fish all it wants. She hated that she never lived anywhere permanently anymore, she hated that her parents had no money, she hated that they would have to move into an apartment because they had no money, and she hated that it was going to be a very small apartment. She hated having to hide her jewelry box every time she left the house, and she hated wiping out the bathroom sink every time she used it. On the odd chance that someone would want to see the house, everything had to be spotless. For God’s sake! Didn’t it ever occur to a person buying a house that the houses they looked at were lived in by the people who owned them? Whatever happened to logic and reason? Or did that all disappear with the Starr Report?
She detested not being able to leave her bed unmade and throw her clothes on the floor. Not that she wanted to. She was very neat and it bothered her when her room was a mess. What bothered her even more was not not being able to do these things, but no longer having the choice to do them or not. And the crap about the jewelry box ticked her off even more. To not be able to put your things where you want them and to have to hide your jewelry box in a drawer so that nothing gets stolen is not only disconcerting but also very sad. Would you trust taking money from a person for the sale of your house when they stole your daughter’s cheap cubic-zirconia ring that her grandmother gave her from a wooden box? I think not. She didn’t think so either.
Bah Humbug. So much for getting into the holiday spirit.
She again picked her mug up to take a sip of the now lukewarm tea and glanced at her hand. The nails on her left hand were admirably long, but the ones on the right, the hand she wrote with, were short and stubby. > she thought, I’ll have to paint them soon. She had discovered a rather stupid thing a while ago: she had to have nail polish on to prevent them from breaking. However, clear never did the job so she could never see how nice her nails looked under their double coat of Mulberry. This defeated the purpose of long nails because they’re supposed to look natural. It was a vain observation, but very true. I’m sure there’s got to be another woman out there who understands exactly what I’m talking about, she smiled at the ridiculousness of the mental note.
Crossing to the sink to wash out her empty mug she caught a glimpse of the family Christmas tree. The colored lights blinked on and off in the dim surroundings trying to scare away the gloom. Bing warbled away at, “White Christmas.” Yeah, she thought, you have no idea. As she was shoving the cup in the top rack of the dishwasher she heard her mother call out, “Hon, you done with your homework?”
She must not be mad at me anymore, she actually used a term of affection. She sighed, “Not even close, mom. I can’t think straight at all.”
Her mom poked her head into the kitchen, “Can it wait until this afternoon?”
“I suppose so, why?”
“I was wondering if you could roll out that dough from the freezer and help me make some gingerbread cookies. What d’ya say? Hmm?” She waggled her eyebrows and grinned.
She laughed, “When you put it like that, Mom, how can I refuse?”
“All right. Let me go and dig some cookie cutters out of the attic. I’ll be right back.” She started to leave, but the girl called her back.
“Hey, mom?”
Returning, “Yeah?”
“What if the Realtor calls with another person wanting to see the house?”
She grinned and affected a southern accent, “ ‘Frankly, ma dear, Ah don’t give a damn.’”
The girl laughed, “Seriously?”
“Yeah, it’s Christmas. I’m not letting anybody ruin that, and I’m certainly not keeping the house clean for someone else.”
“But, the tuna fish...”
“Sorry, about that. I thought it over and I figure that if anyone else is going to live here they might as well see what it looks like lived-in. Just not too messy.”
How does she always do that? “Great minds think alike, I guess.”
“Ah, yes,” she said, “But fools seldom differ. And the fool doesn’t fall far from the tree, now does it?”
The girl put on her innocent face, “Who me?”
“Quite right.” She left calling out, “And you still have to put your jewelry box in the dresser.”
Shaking her head the girl thought, Strange, strange woman. She glanced out the window at the snowman again. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all, she conceded, then thought better of it. But if I get yelled at for making the sink smell like icing, you’re firewood, Frosty. And she could swear she saw that goddamn snowman wink.
Lisa Game, 1998
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