It was only five o’clock, but it was already dark outside. I decided the time had come for me to head to Dyker Heights.
This involved me taking the D train farther than I’d ever taken the D train before. After the frenzied crowds of the past week, the city was almost blank on Christmas Day. The only things open were ATMs, churches, Chinese restaurants, and movie theaters. Everything else was dark, sleeping the season off. Even the subway seemed like it had been hollowed out—only a few scattered people on the platform, a thin row of passengers on the seats. Yes, there were signs it was Christmas—little girls delighting in their frocks and little boys looking imprisoned by their little suits. Eye contact was often met with friendliness instead of hostility. But for a place that had been overrun with tourists, there was nary a guidebook in sight, and all the conversations were kept quiet. I read my book from Manhattan into Brooklyn. But then, when the D train emerged from the ground, I shifted so I could stare out the window, stealing glimpses of family windows as we chugged past.
I still didn’t know how I was going to find the Nutcracker House. When I got to the subway stop, however, I had some idea. A disproportionate number of passengers had gotten off with me, and they all seemed to be heading in the same direction—clusters of families, couples holding hands, old people making pilgrimage. I followed.
At first, it seemed like there was something strange in the air, giving it a halo of electricity, like in Times Square. Only, we were nowhere near Times Square, so it didn’t make much sense … until I started to see the houses, each one more electrified than the next. These were not Christmas light dilettantes here. This was a spectacular spectacular of lawn and house ornamentation. For as far as the eye could see, every house was ringed with lights. Lights of every color, lights of every shape. Outlines of reindeer and Santa and his sleigh. Boxes with ribbon, toy teddy bears, larger-than-life dolls—all strung together from Christmas lights. If Joseph and Mary had lit the manger like this, it would’ve been seen all the way in Rome.
Observing it all, I felt such contradictory feelings. On the one hand, it was an astonishing misuse of energy, a testament to the ingenious wastefulness that American Christmas inspires. On the other hand, it was amazing to see the whole community lit up like this, because it made it feel very much like a community. You could imagine everyone taking out their lights on the same day and having a block party while they put them all up. The children walked around transfixed by the sights, as if their neighbors had suddenly become purveyors of an exquisite magic. There was as much conversation swirling around as there was light—none of it involved me, but I was glad to have it around.
The Nutcracker House was not hard to find—the nutcracker soldiers held sentry at least fifteen feet into the sky as the Rat King threatened the festivities and Clara danced through the night. I looked for a scroll in her hand, or a card on the top of one of the light-strung presents. Then I saw it on the ground—a light-dappled walnut the size of a basketball that had been cracked open just far enough to reach into.
The note I found inside was brief and clear.
Tell me what you see.
So I sat on the curb and told her about the contradictions, about the waste and the joy. Then I told her that I preferred the quiet demonstrations of a well-stocked bookshelf to the voltage of this particular street. Not that one was wrong and the other was right—it was just a matter of preference. I told her that I was glad Christmas was over, and then I told her why. I looked around some more, tried to see everything, just so I could tell it to her. The yawn of a three-year-old, tired despite his happiness. The elderly couple from the train who’d finally completed the walk to the block—I imagined they’d been doing this for years, and that they saw both the houses in front of them and all the houses from the past. I imagined each of their sentences started with the phrase Remember the time.
Then I told her what I didn’t see. Namely, that I didn’t see her.
You could be standing a few feet away—Clara’s dance partner, or across the street taking a picture of Rudolph before he takes flight. I could have sat next to you on the subway, or brushed beside you as we went through the turnstiles. But whether or not you are here, you are here—because these words are for you, and they wouldn’t exist if you weren’t here in some way. This notebook is a strange instrument—the player doesn’t know the music until it’s being played.
I know you want to know my name. But if I told you my name, even just the first name, you’d be able to go online and find all of these inaccurate, incomplete depictions of me. (If my name were John or Michael, this would not be a problem.) And even if you swore up and down that you wouldn’t check, the temptation would always be there. So I’d like to remain at that one delicate remove, so you can get to know me without the distraction of other people’s noise. I hope that’s okay.
The next assignment on the do (or don’t) list is time sensitive—meaning, it would be best if you did it this very evening. Because at this club that changes names every month or so (I gave her the address), there is an all-nighter that is about to start. The theme (seasonally appropriate) is the Seventh Night of Hanukkah. The opener is some “jewfire” band (Ezekial? Ariel?), and at about two in the morning, this gay Jewish dancepop/indie/punk band called Silly Rabbi, Tricks Are for Yids will go on. Between the opener and the main act, look for the writing on the stall.
An all-nighter at a club wasn’t exactly my scene, so I knew I had a phone call or two to make before the plan would be complete. I quickly slipped the Moleskine into the walnut and took Snarly Muppet out of my backpack.
“Watch over this, will you?” I asked it.
And then I left it there, a small sentry among the nutcrackers.
eight
(Lily)
December 25th
I decided to give myself a Christmas present this year. I decided to spend the day only speaking to animals (real and stuffed), select humans as necessary so long as they weren’t my parents or Langston, and a Snarl in a red Moleskine notebook—if he returned it to me.
When I was old enough to read and write, my parents gave me an eraser board that I kept in my room at all times. The idea was that when frustrated, I, Lily, should write down words on the board to express my feelings instead of letting she-devil Shrilly express them through shrieking. It was supposed to be a therapeutic tool.
I brought the eraser board out of retirement on Christmas morning when my parents phoned in for a video chat. I almost didn’t recognize them on the computer screen. The betrayers looked so healthy, tan, and relaxed. Completely not Christmasy.
“Merry Christmas, Lily darling!” Mom said. She was sitting on the balcony of their cabana or whatever it was, and I could see the ocean lapping behind her. She looked ten years younger than when she left Manhattan a week earlier.
Dad’s glowing face wormed onto the screen next to Mom’s, blocking my ocean view.
“Merry Christmas, Lily darling!” he said.
I scribbled onto the eraser board and held it up to the computer screen for them to see: Merry Christmas to you, too.
Mom and Dad both frowned at the sight of the eraser board.
“Uh-oh,” Mom said.
“Uh-oh,” Dad said. “Is Lily Bear feeling a bit unsettled today? Even though we’ve been preparing you for our anniversary trip since last Christmas, and you assured us you would feel okay having just this one Christmas without us?”
I erased my last statement and replaced it with: Langston told me about the boarding school job.
Their faces fell.
“Put Langston on!” Mom demanded.
I wrote, He’s sick in bed. Asleep right now.
Dad said, “What’s his temperature?”
101.
Mom’s peeved face turned concerned. “Poor baby. On Christmas Day, too. It’s just as well we all agreed not to open presents until we get home on New Year’s Day. It wouldn’t be any fun with him sick in bed, now would it?”
I shook my head. Are you moving to Fiji?
Dad said, “We haven’t decided anything. We’ll talk about it as a family when we get home.”
Rapidly, my hands erased and re-scribbled.
It makes me UPSET that you didn’t tell me.
Mom said, “I’m sorry, Lily bear. We didn’t want to make you upset before there was anything to really be upset about.”
SHOULD I BE UPSET?
My hand started to feel tired from the erasing and writing. I almost wished my voice wasn’t being so obstinate.
Dad said, “It’s Christmas. Of course you shouldn’t be upset. We’ll make this decision as a family—”
Mom interrupted him. “There’s some chicken soup in the freezer! You can thaw it for Langston in the microwave.”
I started to write: Langston deserves to be sick. But I erased that and wrote, Okay. I’ll make him some.
Mom said, “If his temperature goes up any more, I’m going to need you to take him to the doctor. Can you do that, Lily?”
My voice broke free. “Of course I can do that!” I snapped. Geez, how old did they think I was? Eleven?
The eraser board, and my conviction, were both mad at my voice’s betrayal.
Dad said, “I’m sorry this Christmas is turning out not so swell, sweetheart. I promise you we’ll make it up to you on New Year’s Day. You take good care of Langston today and then have a nice Christmas dinner at Great-aunt Ida’s tonight. That will make you feel better, right?”
My silence returned in the form of my head nodding up and down.
Mom said, “What have you been doing with your time, dear?”
I had no desire to tell her about the notebook. Not because I was UPSET about Fiji. But because it, and he, seemed to be the best part of Christmas so far. I wanted to keep them all for myself.
I heard a moan from my brother’s room. “Lillllllllllllllyyyy …”
For the sake of expediency, I typed a message to my parents rather than speak or write it on the eraser board.
Your sick son is calling to me from his sickbed. I must anon. Merry Christmas, parents. I love you. Please let’s not move to Fiji.
“We love you!” they squealed from their side of the world.
I signed off and walked toward my brother’s room. I stopped first at the bathroom to extract a disposable mask and gloves from the emergency preparedness kit to place over my mouth and hands. No way was I getting sick, too. Not with a red notebook possibly coming back my way.
I went into Langston’s room and sat down next to his bed. Benny had decided to be sick at his own apartment, which I appreciated, since tending to not one but two patients on Christmas Day might have tipped me over the edge. Langston hadn’t touched the orange juice or saltines I left for him a few hours earlier, the last time he called “Lillllllllllllllyyyy …” to me from his room, at about the approximate time when on a normal Christmas morning we should have been ripping through our gifts.
“Read to me,” Langston said. “Please?”
I wasn’t speaking to Langston that day, but I would read to him. I picked up the book at the point where we’d left off the night before. I read aloud from A Christmas Carol. “ ‘It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.’ ”
“That’s a nice quote,” Langston said. “Underline it and fold down the page for me, will you?” I did as instructed. I can never decide what I think about my brother and his book passage quotes. Sometimes it’s annoying that I can never open a book in our home and not find some part of it that Langston has annotated. I’d like to figure out what I think about the words myself without having to see Langston’s handwritten comments, like lovely or pretentious BS next to it; on the other hand, sometimes it’s interesting to find his notes and to read them back and try to decipher why that particular passage intrigued or inspired him. It’s a cool way of getting inside my brother’s brain.