|
|
Lazy Lion
|
Second-Chance Snow by Drew
Williams We walked the five blocks to Carrie’s house in silence. It was funny, but the more I hung out with Carrie, the less we seemed to talk to each other. Sometimes we would spend entire afternoons in her basement drinking Dr. Pepper and watching soap operas and never say a thing. Once, Carrie said we had a friendship based on a mutual desire to be miserable together. I had no idea what she was talking about, but Carrie’s a lot smarter than I am, so I agreed. As we made our way to Carrie’s house, the snow started to fall. This was the second snow of the winter, but unlike the dusting we got a few days earlier, the flakes that were falling this time were large and wet. It wouldn’t take long before the streets were blanketed in a thick layer of white. It was a real snow, the kind of snow that was perfect for making snowballs and turning back alleys into sled runs. For a second I pictured my flexible flyer stashed in the back of the garage behind my bicycle, but as I turned my face directly into the winter wind, I didn’t feel the excitement the first real snow always brought me before. It just felt cold. I paused and allowed the snow to sting my cheeks and forehead, then I lowered my face and pushed the image of my sled out of my mind. Carrie didn’t notice that I had stopped, so I had to jog to catch up to her. Carrie lives in a two-story, brick-faced house with faded, tan, aluminum siding. It’s no different than most of the other houses that line either side of her street. In fact, it’s no different than my house except that our siding is faded blue. When we got to her house, Carrie bypassed the front door and headed to the side entrance. She told me I had to leave by three because her father would be home around four, and she had to have his dinner ready by the time he got there. “It takes you an hour to cook dinner?” I asked as she opened the side door that lead into the basement. Carrie stomped the flakes off her feet and frowned. “What can I say? I’m a slow cook.” She made a motion for me to go into the basement before she headed toward the kitchen. Carrie has, what my father calls, a semi finished basement. The walls are covered with cheap redwood paneling, and an old couch sits in front of an even older console television. A few feet behind the couch, the washer and dryer stand buried beneath mounds of laundry. There’s always a slightly funky smell to Carrie’s basement, like a cross between sweat and an open sewer. But I don’t mind. My basement smells like a wet dog even though we’ve never had a pet. As I came down the steps, I could see four big cardboard boxes bulging with Christmas decorations lined up next to the couch. I really didn’t want to look at them. Usually by this time in December, my father would have strung the outside lights around the house and set the plywood Santa and His Elf in the middle of the front yard. It was also around this time my family would go tree shopping. And every year it was the same. My father would threaten to buy an artificial tree because the smell of a real Christmas tree gave him a headache, and my mother would threaten to divorce him by New Year’s Day if she didn’t get a six foot spruce. My mother always won that argument. It wasn’t Christmas in my house unless there was a real tree in our living room, and my father complained about a headache. But this year my father hadn’t brought any of our overstuffed boxes of Christmas decorations down from the attic, and I don’t think he’s going to. When I got to the bottom of the steps I put my backpack on top of the nearest box and flipped on the t.v. before plopping down on the overstuffed couch. The television wasn’t connected to cable, so the only stations we could watch were two local affiliates and the all-prayer station, Channel 12. Besides the rosary in Spanish, my choices were The Guiding Light and some gameshow where people were throwing dice. A minute or two after I flipped on the television, Carrie came down the basement steps carrying two Dr. Peppers and a bag of Doritos just as The Guiding Light was going into a commercial. A familiar looking snowman with a handlebar mustache filled the screen to the tune of Burl Ives singing “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.” Carrie stopped at the bottom of the stairs and stared at the television. “Hey,” I said. “Rudolph’s on next week.” Perhaps I should have said that with less enthusiasm, but Rudolph was always my mother’s favorite Christmas show. However, I could tell by the way Carrie glared at me that something bothered her. She handed me a Dr. Pepper and sat down at the other end of the couch. “I hate that show,” she said, staring at the television. The commercial ended, quickly replaced by one for tampons. “Santa is such a prick in it.” I turned and stared at Carrie. “What are you talking about?” Carrie didn’t look at me, she just kept watching the two middle-aged women on the screen talking about the benefits of the plastic applicator. “Santa is a prick,” she repeated. I don’t know why, but at that moment, I felt I had to stand up for St. Nick. Maybe it was because Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer was my mother’s favorite Christmas show, and I wasn’t about to let anyone bash it; or maybe I was in the mood for a fight, but I wasn’t going to let Carrie get away with calling Santa a prick. “That’s a load of crap,” I said. “Santa isn’t a prick.” Carrie turned to me and shook her head. “He is in Rudolph. Think about it. Dancer or Prancer, whoever it is, has Rudolph. And everything is just peachy until Santa finds out that Rudolph isn’t like all the other reindeers. Oh no, Rudolph has this shiny red nose, and Santa isn’t about to put up with any freak pulling his sled. Not jolly St. Nick.” “So what does Santa do? He tells Rudolph’s father that he’s disappointed in him because his kid ain’t like all the other reindeers. He tells him that Rudolph’s not good enough because he’s different. Santa treats Rudolph like shit just because Rudolph has a birth defect.” “A birth defect?” I had never thought of Rudolph’s nose like that before. “Yeah, that’s what Rudolph’s red nose is, a birth defect. It’s like being born with one leg shorter than the other. Or with a cleft-palate. It’s not the kid’s fault he was born like that.” Carrie stopped, her thin lips slipping into a frown. “Who does Santa think he is? Huh? Do you think all of the other reindeer would have made fun of Rudolph if Santa wasn’t such a prick to him? Hell no. If Santa wouldn’t have made a big deal out of the nose, everyone would have accepted Rudolph the way he was.” “But Santa apologized at the end,” I said, though I could tell that was a rather weak defense. “Big deal. If he wasn’t such a bastard in the beginning, he wouldn’t have needed to apologize. Just because somebody says they’re sorry, doesn’t make everything all right.” What Carrie was saying about Santa made sense, but I couldn’t let the matter drop. “Okay, but what about the Misfit Toys? Santa didn’t have to find homes for them, but he did anyway. That’s not something a prick would do.” Carrie rolled her eyes and snorted. “You just don’t get it, do you? Where the hell do you think all those Misfit Toys came from? Huh? Mattel?” She stopped, and I could tell that she wanted an answer. But I didn’t have one for her. I must have seen Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer six or seven times, and in all those times, I never thought about where the Misfit Toys came from. So that’s what I told her. “That’s what I thought,” was her quick reply. “But if you think about it, it’s pretty obvious that those Misfit Toys are rejects from Santa’s workshop because they got to be made somewhere, and there sure isn’t anyone else up at the North Pole making toys. But like having some deformed reindeer pull your sleigh, Santa would look like a nimrod handing out squirt guns that shoots jelly or polka-dotted zebras.” “Elephant,” I corrected her. “Whatever. The point is that it would be bad for Santa’s image if he went around passing out toys that were different than all the others. So what does he do? He ships them off to some island where they rot, and he doesn’t have to deal with them anymore. Out of sight, out of mind.” Carrie crossed her arms tightly against her chest and turned back to the t.v.. “That’s what people used to do with retarded kids, you know. Ship them off to some asylum so they wouldn’t be an embarrassment to anyone.” There are tears in her eyes, and I should have kept my mouth shut, but I don’t. “But Santa finds them homes at the end. Doesn’t that count for anything?” Still staring at the television, Carrie shook her head. “You never really see Santa delivering any of those toys, do you? Santa just hands them parachutes and tosses them out of the sleigh. Hell, he’s probably flying over the ocean when he dumps them.” A single tear slipped from the corner of Carrie’s eye and made a path down her left cheek. When it reached her chin, it hung there for just a second before dropping onto her sleeve. “That’s what you do with misfits,” she said. “Dump them in the ocean.” I stared at the spot on Carrie’s chin where the tear dropped, and in that moment, I wanted to kiss her. And I can tell by the way she was sitting, straight up with her head slightly bent toward me, that she wouldn’t mind it if I did. But I don’t kiss her. Instead, I sipped at my Dr. Pepper and turned my attention back to The Guiding Light. I think Carrie was surprised, but relieved, that I didn’t try to kiss her. For the next ten minutes we stared at the television, watching some old, bald guy try to seduce a woman half his age. He wasn’t getting too far, and Baldy was slipping something into the woman’s glass of champagne when the show went to a commercial break. Here we go again, I thought as another singing snowman danced across the screen. I shot a quick glance toward Carrie, wondering if she was going to rip apart Frosty the Snowman. I was a bit surprised to see her nodding her head in approval. “I like Frosty,” she said to the television. “Oh, isn’t Santa a prick in that one too?” Carrie shook her head. “No.” Carrie turned to me before tossing a Dorito into her mouth. “Santa gives Frosty a second chance after he saves that little girl in the greenhouse,” she said. “That’s cool.” By the time I started for home, the snow was coming down even harder. A solid two inches covered the ground, and I could tell by the way the heavy flakes floated from the sky that it would be quite a while before the snow let up. With any luck, school might be canceled tomorrow. Then I realized that the next day was Saturday, so it didn’t matter. I walked home slowly, listening to the crunching sound the snow made with each step I took. My mother loved the wintertime and the snow. Sometimes she would bundle herself up in layers of sweatshirts and go for long walks in the snow. She might not come back for an hour or so, and when I asked her where she had gone, she would just smile and say “nowhere.” My father never asked her where she went on those long walks, and she never offered to tell him. Now, walking home from Carrie’s house, I think I understand what my mother meant. It’s kind of nice trudging through the snow. In a way, it’s quiet and peaceful, just like being underwater. For the next few blocks I’m able to enjoy that feeling. Then I remember that when I get home, she won’t be there. And so the tears come. I try to stop myself from crying, but I can’t help it. A thousand memories of winters and Christmases come flooding into my brain. I can see her in her bathrobe opening presents on Christmas morning; or holding my hand when I was nine as we walked to church; I can smell the cookies she burnt last Christmas; and I can feel her cradling me in her arms, her lips pressed against my ear as she lifts me so I can see the star atop the tree. And I know the memories are all I have left of her because she’s been taken from me. In a way I feel like one of those misfit toys, like I’m a train with big, square wheels. A train’s supposed to have wheels, a boy’s supposed to have a mother; if you don’t, everyone looks at you funny. That’s the way things work. Carrie was right, though I would never actually admit that to her. Santa is a prick for the way he treats Rudolph. I guess a part of me always knew that, but as I rounded the corner and headed down my street, it dawned on me that Carrie really wasn’t talking about misfit toys. She was talking about herself and the way the world treated her because of her pink hair and black nail polish. I guess she was talking about the nuns at school and everyone else who tries to force her to act normal. But Carrie’s normal isn’t like everyone else’s. I guess that’s the difference between her and me. She likes her square wheels. The wind has started to pick up, and I can feel my tears drying in my eyes. That’s good, because my father’s pickup truck is in front of the house. He’s home early today, and I don’t want him to see me crying. He hasn’t said anything to me, but I know it upsets him when I cry because he can’t do anything to make it stop. Since my mother died, he’s gotten quiet, like he isn’t interested in talking anymore. He’s only thirty-seven, but he looks older now. But I guess I look older now too. As I get closer to the house, I see that there is something in the pickup truck, like an old carpet has been shoved up against the side of the bed. It’s covered with snow, and when I get close enough to the truck and see what is inside, I can’t believe it. Still wrapped in binding string is a scraggly looking pine tree. From the way it’s twisted in the back of the truck, it is at least my size, five foot eight. When I lean over the side of the truck, I can see that it’s trunk is wrapped up in a wet burlap sack, and it smells like chewing gum. “Do you like it?” My father was standing on the porch holding a snow shovel in one hand and a bucket of salt in the other. He stood still, like he wasn’t going to move until I said something. “Yeah,” I said. “I like it.” I took my hand out of my jacket pocket and brushed it across the tree’s sharp needles. “I thought these things gave you a headache?” My father shrugged his shoulders and started down the steps. “They do,” he said. He came over to the truck and peered into the bed. “But you just get used to some things, you know.” My father stared at the tree, and at that moment, I knew there would never be any more talk of artificial Christmas trees in our house; and I knew that every Christmas morning for the rest of his life, he would wake with a headache and think of my mother. “I don’t think we need to get the house lights and stuff out this year, though. Do you?” I shook my head. The tree was enough. We would put it in its usual spot and string it with popcorn just as my mother had always done. Then its smell would fill the house, and in some strange way, that smell would get us through December. My mother’s memory would be in the scent of pine, and we would breathe it in. And as long as we could do that, we would be okay. “Why don’t you go put your stuff away, then come help me with this sidewalk. We’ll put the tree up later.” “Sure,” I told my dad. I flung my backpack over my shoulder and headed for the house as the sound of my father’s shovel scraping the sidewalk filled the snowy air. When I reached the front door, I could smell the scent of the Christmas tree being carried on the winter wind. I breathed it in deeply before opening the door. And like a pair of protective arms, the smell of pine needles followed me inside. Second-Chance Snow © Drew Williams |
