You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas (7 page)

Of course, I knew this was untrue. I knew the monkey only resented the cage and the pencil-twirling Goody Two-shoes that came out once in a while to inspect it. A chimp needed love and tenderness, just like a person. It also needed a glitter headband, a bib, and a tambourine.

I once again snatched my paper back and scribbled
Monkey?
in the corner. “I have to revise this,” I told him. “I’ll have a fresh copy for you in the morning.”

“Margaret!” my father shouted. “Stop your damn daydreaming.”

My mother startled and looked up from the salt and pepper shakers, seeing me for the first time. “Hey there,” she said, smiling warmly. “Do you have a fever?”

“No, Margaret, he doesn’t have a damn
fever.
He’s been standing here for well over five minutes with his little Christmas list. How you could not see that is beyond my understanding.”

My mother reached for her pack of cigarettes and pulled one out. She placed it into her mouth and then turned toward my father and extended her face. She closed her eyes like she was expecting a kiss.

My father lit her cigarette.

“Listen, you bastard,” she began, blowing the smoke right in his face. “I do not need to be attacked by you today. I am on a new medication and it makes me feel very cotton-blooded.”

“It’s cotton-headed, you madwoman, the expression is cotton-
headed
. Now, I was just telling little Augusten here about my pet chimp. I’m not sure he believes I even had one.”

My mother turned and looked at me. “Oh, your father had a chimpanzee all right. It
hated
him. Now, it may not be as exotic as a captive primate, but one year my daddy gave me a goat for Christmas.”

“Oh, not this damn story again,” my father said.

My mother didn’t even look at him. She just kind of talked over her shoulder at him, her eyes on the ceiling. “John. Gordon. Robison. The day I can have those words carved onto a headstone will be the happiest of my life.” Then she looked back at me. “It was a scruffy, scrappy little billy goat and I absolutely adored it!”

“Wait, you got a goat for Christmas? But you didn’t live on a farm.”

“Of course I didn’t live on a
farm,
” my mother said, bringing her hand protectively to her neck. She laughed at the absurdity of the notion, as though I had asked her if her first boyfriend had been a rooster. “Daddy owned pecan orchards. Oh, just acres and acres of the most beautiful orchards you ever saw in your life. That’s why your grandmother, Amah, sends a box of pecans up here each year for Christmas and I make pie.”

My mother’s pecan pie. My mouth began to water and I needed to spit. “You aren’t going to make that pie again, are you?” I asked, trying to make it sound casual.

My mother was not fooled. “
Once.
I used salt instead of sugar just once.”

My father said, “N-now, I think it was more than once. I think maybe it was once or twice. Because I distinctly remember the year your friend from Portland flew out here, the unattractive girl with the facial hair. The artist?”

My mother glared at him. “Are you referring to Nadia?”

My father broke out into a smile and then he laughed. “Why yes! That’s exactly the one. Nadia. What an unfortunate appearance that young woman has.”

“You are aware that Nadia ended up marrying Clark Hayes, the head of the mathematics department out there at the University of California, aren’t you?” my mother asked. “We met Clark, John. Don’t you remember? Nice young man. About ten years younger than you? Surely, you remember. You both talked about your freshman students.”

She rose from the table and went to the sink, turning the faucet on. She stuck her cigarette under the stream of water to extinguish it and then she dropped the wet butt into the trash can. “Yes, nice Mr. Hayes. Half your age and head of the department.”

She stretched, placing her hands on her lower back. “Well, I need a nap. My body has not adjusted to these pills.”

“Wait,” I shouted.

Inspiration had struck.

In my fussiest little boy voice I complained, “This isn’t
fair.
You got a goat and you got a monkey. And last year you gave me a bunch of stupid
crackers
?”

My mother couldn’t help herself, she smiled victoriously and shot my father a look. “I told you, John. When you brought those crackers home I said, ‘Do you not know our son?’ That’s exactly what I said to you.”

Finally, I blurted out, “I want a horse. I want my own horse. A real one, not some stupid plastic horse like the girls bring to school. I want a real horse, a new one. Not some old used thing, either. A new horse with a saddle and a leash.”

Both of them were silent.

“A pony,” I added. “I want a pony.”

Then, to emphasize the finality of my decision, I crumpled my list before their eyes and I threw it into the trash. I started to walk out of the room but turned around once more before leaving. “I better get that pony,” I said. “Or both of you will regret it.”

As I walked down the hall toward my bedroom I heard my mother say, “Well, now you have done it. You and that damn monkey story of yours.”

The last thing I heard before closing myself inside my room with my Burl Ives
Have a Holly Jolly Christmas
album was my father: “I was only telling him how terrible a pet that monkey made. I never mentioned anything about a damn horse.”

At Caldor, where my mother and I went shopping for gifts for her friends, she kept trying to tempt me away from my pony, which I had now secretly named Al Capone. “Look at this beautiful gold neck chain,” she said at the jewelry counter. “Augusten, did you see this? I think it’s called a snake chain.”

I looked at it from the corner of my eyes. “Yeah, it’s a snake chain. With a lobster-claw clasp. I already have one. And mine’s electroplated, not
filled
like
that
.” My tone was snotty and contemptuous and a normal mother would have spanked such a child or taken him home and drown him in the bathtub.

The child of such people has little choice but to resort to petty manipulations and threats. And in some way, she seemed to know this.

Still, aisle after aisle she tried to unhook my little fists from the reins. “Oh, what a beautiful stereo,” she said, running her hands over the plastic lid of the turntable. “And isn’t that one of those fancy new eight-track players?”

I ignored her.

“Say, how would you like to have that in your room? Oh, imagine! A gumball machine!”

I said, “Maybe you should make one of your pecan pies this year.”

She brightened. “Would you like one? Would you, really? Oh, I would love to make another pecan pie.”

“Horses like salt,” I said. “They lick it.”

She glared at me and pushed the cart forward.

Store after store, day after day, both of my parents tried to interest me in other, more ordinary gifts. My father, pitifully, even dragged me with him to Hastings to get refills for his Parker ballpoint pen. “Son, have a look at this,” he said. He was standing before the glass counter in front. I scanned the contents inside but couldn’t imagine what it was he wanted me to see.

“Now, I’m sure it’s very expensive, but as a special Christmas present, well, you never know. Just maybe Santa would bring you one of those,” and he tapped the glass with his finger.

I said, “
That?
On top?”

And my father smiled.

To make absolutely certain I said, “In the white box?”

“That’s real gold, son.”

I looked at him and I said, “If you get me that for Christmas? You’d also have to get me a Zippo lighter, just like the one you have.”

He had begun to smile, but now his smile had turned into a question mark. “What would you need with a Zippo lighter, son?”

I began to drift away from the counter, trailing my finger down the length of the glass display case. “I would use it to light the house on fire after I opened your Cross pen set
for ladies.
”

My father nearly seemed insulted. “This is no pen set
for ladies
!” he insisted. Then he turned to the clerk. “This set of Cross pens, right here in front. That’s not designed for ladies, is it?”

The clerk replied with a nod.

“It
is
? It’s for ladies?”

I was standing in front of the cigarettes. “Excuse me,” I said to the guy behind the counter. “Could I see a Zippo lighter? Just like my father’s.” Then I shouted to him: “Hey Dad! Take your Zippo out and show the guy behind the counter so he can see which one.”

We were back in the car not even five minutes later. My father was just disgusted. “They should really mark those things clearly. I might easily have purchased that for my damn self and then I would walk around signing documents at the university with this effeminate pen.”

The rest of the way home we listened to Christmas music on the radio. “Jingle Bells” and “Deck the Halls” were performed back-to-back with acoustic guitars. My father hated it. “Well, this is just terrible Christmas music, it sounds like that damn Joan Bylezz your mother is always playing. A pipe organ sounds so much nicer.”

“Baez,” I corrected. “Not
lezz.
”

During the station break the announcer said, “Here we are folks, just six more days left until Christmas. And that reminds me of a song. So get comfortable, and get ready. Because Christmas morning will be here before you know it.”

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me ...

I sang along, intentionally messing up the words:
“One brand-new pony and a partridge in a pear tree.”

There was a certain tension in the air on Christmas morning. It was not yet seven and I’d been up for two hours. My parents had forced me to wait until seven and now that it was exactly seven, I was in the living room, just beside the fireplace. I looked at the tree. Then I looked at the stockings hanging beside me.

I knew my brother would wake up in five hours, walk over to the fireplace, and lift up his T-shirt, then dump the candy from his stocking onto his shirt, making a sort of hammock. He would then retreat to his bedroom where he would remain until dinner.

I reached into his stocking and felt around. I located a few chocolate gold coins, which I unwrapped and popped into my mouth. I crumpled up the foil and tossed this back into his stocking so that he would see it.

There were lots of presents under the tree.

But not a single one was shaped like a pony.

My parents came into the room, smiling. “Merry Christmas,” my mother said. “Yes,” my father said, enthusiastically, “a merry, merry Christmas to you, son.”

Their grins were so wide, it was clear they were disguises. I said, “Merry Christmas. Is it outside in the backyard?”

Neither of them spoke. “Is what in the backyard?” my mother asked with make-believe innocence.

I scanned their faces. They both lit cigarettes at the same time.

For the next thirty minutes, I sat on the floor beneath the tree opening present after present; more presents than in previous years—too many presents, really. walkie-talkies, an O-scale Lionel Santa Fe train set, an LED watch, gold electroplated.