You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas (16 page)

But I was back the next day as if I had never been gone, not even for a night. When I walked in the door he said, “Oh good, can you hand me the box from the top of the front closet?”

He was at the dining-room table writing checks. I had arrived at the perfect moment. I handed him the box and stuck my tongue out at the top of his head. And because his head did not then turn around with knowledge of what I had done, I felt a terrible regret and stood for a moment looking at his head, wishing I could take back the gesture, suddenly feeling only tender toward him, feeling he was precious and that any time spent away from him was an extravagant waste.

There we were: less than a week before Christmas.

New Yorkers are notoriously blasé about the holiday, though their very city is most famously dressed for the occasion. With every tree along Park Avenue not merely strung with lights but encased in them; strands of bulbs wrapped around and around and around each branch, every twig, right to the very tips. The unique anatomy of every tree, celebrated with light—the knotty elbow of a particular branch, a gleeful
V
that opens up with reaching fingers.

When I first moved to the city, the only Christmas present I ever needed was to hire a cab to drive me up and down the length of Park Avenue. With a bottle of cognac secreted in my coat pocket and the window all the way down, I pressed my face into the breeze like a dog. I closed my eyes for the longest moment, and when I opened them again I saw exactly what I had seen before. Block after block after block of
dazzling.
This was naked, full-frontal splendor.

Then there was the tree at Rockefeller Center. Dwarfed by the cluster of buildings that surround it, on the day the tree is lit, it instantly surpasses every one of them in magnitude. Almost more thrilling than the tree itself was the fact that so many people made a pilgrimage just to see it. A colorful winter sea of people, all of them exhaling elegant puffs of white smoke, like hopeful engines.

My love for Christmas had nothing to do with the birth of Jesus. It was the lights. It was the fact that grown people really did believe in Christmas miracles; longed for them even. New Yorkers, nonetheless.

So when George out of the blue pressed his body tight up against my shoulder as we walked along Hudson Street, then reached down with both of his hands and found my one, taking my fingers between his own and squeezing my hand from all directions at once with precisely the force needed to say
Mine
, I was automatically euphoric. Ten fingers can overpower more than just one hand; ten fingers doing precisely the right thing, at the moment you least expect it, can make you forgive everything.

He had seen the tree stand up ahead and thought,
Why not get a tree tonight?
Disbelief was kicked right out by an eager, mindless,
yes, yes, yes
excitement. I wasn’t going to ask why. The gift-horse law was instantly enacted.

We carried the tree home together. That was the word that he used,
home.
“Let’s get this home, stick it up, and then watch a movie.” Usually, he said, “the apartment” or “my apartment.” Sometimes he even called it “Perry Street.” He had never called it
our home
before. And while he hadn’t said
our,
I’d heard it.

Halfway down the block he said, “Hold on,” and let the peak of the tree drop to the sidewalk.

I continued holding the trunk. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, then leaned forward and placed his hands just above his knees, bent his legs. He took a deep breath, then another.

I held mine.

He straightened and smiled tightly at me. “It’s nothing,” he said. He didn’t even say it. He mouthed the words, just like he had the day of the wake:
“... of always having you here by my side
.”

We continued walking toward the building but I was no longer aware of walking or carrying a tree. Suddenly, there was only a clock. It had appeared instantly, from nothing. And the red secondhand had begun to travel the dial in halting, unstoppable clicks.

And I knew: even if we are able to make us
really, really
good—there will be a limit.

There will be a day.

There will be an hour.

There will be a wake.

I thought George might lie down after we got upstairs but he didn’t. Instead, we began extracting boxes from the cleverest storage spaces imaginable. A tree stand seemed to have been plucked from the space between two books. I could not imagine how he had devised such devious methods of hiding so great a volume of holiday paraphernalia.

“Steph did it,” he said. “He loved what he called
finding space
.”

I closed my eyes and let out a breath. That was
exactly
the feeling. I wanted to be
finding space
.

There was a magnificent optimism locked in the center of the phrase; the implication that there
was
space that did exist and could be found. The only question was,
How clever are you?
It was a phrase that nearly made me weep in relief. I steadied myself.

“Do you need this?” I asked, holding out a never-opened box of tinsel.

He was standing on a chair, level with the top of the tree and hanging the first strand of lights. He paused, arms outstretched, the string of bulbs bowing at the center. He looked hard at the box, wrinkled his forehead.

I smiled, seeing his eyes so busy in their search.

George had the most beautiful eyes. They were brown and therefore retained much of their information. You could not read them instantly like blue eyes. You had to keep looking, you had to
study.
Like searching for familiar forms in a darkened room. And there were sparks of mischief firing along the thin gold wires that streaked the iris. They were loyal eyes. Deeper, there was warmth, almost a glow. Just the crumbs from a fire, smoldering on. I loved most when his eyelashes twitched and he blinked, and suddenly
happiness
was there inside his eyes. Unmistakable. Like a single word printed on a clean white page. I used to love seeing that word in his eyes.

George finally recognized the box of tinsel I was holding. He said, “Oh no, I don’t need that,” and returned his attention to the tree.

We were going to spend Christmas alone together
at home.
We’d even talked about what to make for dinner.

“Should it be a roast beef?” I’d asked.

George had smiled at me, shrugged. “Could be, if that’s what you’d like.”

I said, “I just cannot wait to be the guy sitting in front of the fireplace with the Christmas tree over his shoulder and all the lights glittering away and the only present I have ever wanted is right here, where I can do with him exactly as I please.” And I’d leaned over the single sofa cushion between us and moved for his neck.

He let me kiss his neck but it was a favor. I could sense him looking at the wall, waiting for me to finish.

I withdrew, but maintained my smile and said, “Yeah, it’ll be so amazing. I can’t wait.” And I slid back to my former position, slowly, as if my body had merely stretched briefly and returned.

“Augusten, listen,” George began.

That was all he had to say for me to understand; there always was a new and terrible medical complication. A treatment-resilient
itis
or
oma
or
osis
.

So I was truly stunned when he said, “No, not that. It has nothing to do with my health.”

I was blank.

How
sorry for me
his face became as the seconds emptied from the room, drained away from us forever.

But how could it have nothing to do with his health?

There
was
nothing besides his health.

The best and only
everything
that I had ever known depended solely and completely on the health of his every living cell.

When he told me what it was, I burst out laughing. It was from relief, more than anything else.

“Well, gee, Auggiedoggie, I never meant to upset you so much.” He began to chuckle, tentatively at first, like a child at a fancy restaurant who watches the adults take a bite of food first, before venturing forward with his own fork.

Then he was laughing right along with me.

George and I would not be spending Christmas together after all. Actually, that had never been the plan. Because he always spent Christmas with his family.

My laughter trailed off and I asked, “But what about when you guys used to have Christmas?”

And George said, “He would never come. Sometimes he would move into a hotel room in case my family decided to stop over and see the apartment.”

“You hid him away in a hotel room, like he was a dirty magazine you could stick under the mattress?
And he let you live?
”

“No, Augusten, it wasn’t like that. My parents are great people but, you know, they don’t need to know
everything
about me. They wouldn’t be happy, and why upset them unnecessarily?”

I felt grateful, just then. Because I actually
hated
him at that moment and this hatred made me feel free. But the feeling was a vapor and it dispersed almost immediately.

I was facing the tree, which was reflected back into the room once again by the windows, now black with night.

The two candles on the dining-room table were lit, the flames so smooth they hardly quivered.

I didn’t know what to say.

I just watched him, standing with his back to the tree he had decorated. He had placed each ornament with such
exacting precision,
ever the investment banker.

No, that’s not it,
I thought.

He had placed each ornament with
excruciating care.
Because it was the one and the only thing he could make perfect.

He would turn his back on this tree and leave this home—leave me,
leave us
; this family he built himself. He would leave us behind on Christmas Day so that he could be by himself with the family that he came with.

It was Christmas Eve and he was leaving for his parents’ house. We stood beside the front door. He was in his black wool coat, the one he wore over his suits to the office. His face was strained and he looked so tired. I could see that he felt both powerless and guilty.