Christmas Music

On New Year’s Day, the first day of 1987, when the time when all things are supposed to be new, hopeful, when anything is possible, all things went to shit. Mark packed all his things into the back of our Volvo wagon and drove off to be with Melissa from Greenwich, a trust fund muffy with perfect teeth and a son called Edwin Junior. 

Perched on the side of the couch, I watched as he sailed through our half-empty apartment, stuffing muddy rugby boots and Bob Dylan CDs into his Eddie Bauer duffel. Then, I watched from the parlor window of the brownstone we’d been renovating since scraping together enough for the down-payment three years ago as he held the outside door-handle down until the double bolt settled in its casing without a sound, just like he did when he came home late, smelling of smoke and other forbidden things and thought I was asleep. I heard the single clunk of the driver’s side door closing. We only used the car for weekend getaways together to the country. Mark’s parents had wanted to give us a carriage house in Westchester as a wedding present, but Mark couldn’t say yes. He had to do it his own way.

“We’ll be happier in the long run Kate,” he’d said over his shoulder, and then he was gone, his taillights joining the dusky kaleidoscope of commuters receding into the distance.

I twisted the window sash around my fingers like I used to do with my hair until I’d pawed at it so much it started to fall out. Outside, dads in Burberry raincoats, splotchy from the gray sleet, hurried home to wives, and private school kids in plaid skirts and saddle shoes smoked in doorways, eyes darting out from under hoodies like rabid possum eyes.

***

I trod on a wino’s toes as the press of passengers and presents popped me out the double glass doors of the downtown Number 1 local train like extruded sausage meat. Why had I had taken the local instead of the express? Always more people on the local. What was wrong with me?

“Merrrrrry Chrissssstmas ta yoo toooooo,” slurred the wino, his head lolling back, exposing his grimy throat. Even the smile on his face was unsteady.

“Hey lady, watch out where you’re goin’ will ya?” said a man’s voice.

I didn’t turn to see who I'd plowed into as I drifted along the platform at the City Hall subway stop. I knew what he looked like. They all looked like Mark. It was my first Christmas Eve without him.

I slid back the cuff of my parka. 7:45 p.m. was barely visible on the misty face of the black Movado watch Mark had given me the Christmas before. The one I had thrown on what was by then “my” bathroom floor after the final divorce hearing, the one with the cracked crystal. It was getting late for shops to be open on Christmas Eve and I still had to stop for a gift for my youngest sister, Kelly. Why did I insist on waiting so long to shit I knew needed done all year, at least since I gave her that hideous jacket last year. The kinda sorta Indian one with appliques that looked like they’d been sewn on by blind people?

“Come on Katie,” Kelly had said when she’d called to invite me out to Jersey for Christmas. “It’s like in the song “Everyone knows a turkey and some mistletoe serve to make the season bright.” Dinner would be Kelly and Michael and their twin girls and older boy, and Michael’s brother and his family. And me. Bright? What a dreamer that Kelly has always been.

***

Inside Tower Music an assistant was mouthing something to herself as she stamped the gritty snow off her boots and got tangled up unwinding her woolly scarf that was longer than she was tall.

"May I help you Miss? We close in fifteen minutes, you know.”

Know? What did I know? Tower Records was always open, even at midnight when drunks thought it was a good time to buy...what do drunks buy at midnight?

Piped in Silent Night wafted around like a bad odor that just wouldn't go away. Hot air forced from large overhead vents had super-heated the store to the point that sweat was running down my back as if I were wearing a down parka in the Sahara. I took off my coat and squinted in the metallic light. What the hell was I supposed to get a woman who had everything? The house in the suburbs with five fireplaces and a refrigerator the size of my apartment—I’d sold the brownstone for peanuts at the bottom of the market.

The assistant was back, flitting around me like a bed bug. “Is there anything in particular you’re looking for, Miss?”

If she called me Miss one more time, I was going to smack her in the mouth. I was thirty-five goddamn it, my Miss days were gone with…well, whatever, they were gone.”

“Uh, yes, the Christmas music… please.”

“All the way back against the far wall beside The Blues.”

What a shocker. The Blues and Christmas music were shelf mates. I smirked. “Thanks.”

I skimmed through the racks. There was only an empty slot under “T” where The Three Tenors Christmas CD had been.

“Dammit.”

The Three Tenors were Kelly’s favorite. Not that Kelly would ever go to The Met with me when I asked. Kelly had liked Pavarotti in Central Park, though. I was more the Mahler type.

“Excuse me.” I yanked on the assistant’s sleeve, she was back, like a chronic case of hives. Do you have any more Three Tenors Christmas CD’s in the back?”

She looked at me as if I’d asked was the Pope converting to Judaism. “No way. Don’t you know it’s Christmas Eve?”

Did I know it was Christmas Eve. What the…? I swallowed hard and rubbed my eyes, feeling tears pooling in my eyes. I looked down at the industrial gray carpet and nodded.

Another clerk, not the chipper pain in the ass one, grabbed my sleeve. “But we have lots of other Christmas CD’s,” he jumped in. I looked up . He was an old man with no front teeth in a Santa hat.

“How about this one. Nat King Cole’s a classic. Never be another one like him,” he said.

“I don’t think I’ll be playing that this year.”

“Sorry?”

“Nothing.” I looked away.

“This is THE Christmas album of all time. I know all the tunes by heart.” Then he proceeded to conduct his rendition of The Christmas Song using the square plastic CD box as a baton.

I felt myself sink into Nat’s smile on the cover. It had been our favorite. Mark had brought the record home to our drafty studio above the bodega in Queens our first Christmas Eve together. I could hear the cracking of chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Last year was the first one we’d had our fireplace working. I had replaced the scratched up relic with the CD version only last Christmas, six days before New Years Eve. I kept it in the divorce, squirreled it away in a sock drawer so he wouldn’t take it with all the other CDs.

“You better watch your time, Miss. We’re about to close.”

We’d crooned along to the music together, barely noticing the smoke coming back down the chimney because the flue wasn’t open. We’d just lain there together on the floor of the unfurnished room, laughing and tickling and clutching.

“Yes, indeed, that is THE Christmas album. At least it used to be. Thanks for your help anyway,” I said to the clerk.

At 7:59 p.m. I grabbed the Johnny Mathis’ Christmas Album for Kelly and went to pay.

I dropped the yellow plastic bag from under my left arm as I struggled to get my leather gloves on fingers swollen from the heat.

“Excuse me, I think…”

A man reached down and handed me up the bag, then I saw him.

“Mark, it’s you. I mean, what are you doing here?”

“You know how I am. I always leave my shopping to the last possible nanosecond.” Mark waved his yellow bag at me. He pressed himself up to his full six feet three from one knee with both hands.

“Yeah, me too, at least this year.”

Mark rearranged his camel coat and brushed the floor dust from the knees of his pants.

“Excuse me,” said the security guard at the door. “You’re going to have to leave. We’re closed.”

***

Big damp snowflakes had started to fall dampening the urban pre-Christmas frenzy. New York was always a kinder place in the falling snow. We both poked thumbs into the traffic for cabs, but we were not alone. After five minutes of trying, I felt the clammy weight of my parka on my shoulder blades. I started to shiver.

“I think, I’ll take the subway. It’s not that late. It was nice to see you. Mark.,” I said. The sound of his name replayed in my ears as if I were back at the piano learning my scales.

“Listen, it’s getting really cold out here. Why don’t we go next door and grab a hot cocoa until the cab situation frees up a bit.”

Hot Cocoa. He’d been the first person I’d ever heard call hot chocolate hot cocoa. I hadn’t said anything the first time in the NYU cafeteria. I knew Park Avenue, Manhattan, was different from Astoria Boulevard, Queens.

“It’s just after eight o’clock. Everyone’s going home. They’ll be there in half an hour and we’ll get cabs then. Besides, Kate, you always catch colds at this time of year.”

***

The steamy atmosphere of Sal’s Diner merged with the frigid air outside, causing rivulets of condensation to run down inside the windows and puddle on the sills.

“Here, let’s put the bags on the chair so they don’t get soaked.”

Mark put the two yellow plastic bags from Tower Music on a spare chair and our dripping coats on another. I rubbed her crossed hands up and down the tops of my arms to warm myself.

“So, how’ve you been?”

“Good,” I said.

“What’ll it be?” said a waitress in a faded peach uniform with a ruffled apron.

I looked into my lap. Mark fidgeted with his tie.

“What can I get uze?” she said, louder this time. Maybe she thought we were deaf.

“”Hot Cocoa,” he said.

“Make that two.”

I fixed my eyes on the parade of plates lined up on the pass-through from the kitchen. Meat loaf and gravy and fried chicken and gravy under heat lamps. Both with peas and mashed potatoes. The waitress was using a huge blade to separate a slab of German chocolate cake from the three story blond tower. Mark played with the holder full of sugar and Sweet n’ Low.

“I’m the head ER nurse now,” I said.

“How’d that happen, I mean when did that happen? I guess it’s been a while since we’ve talked.”

“Order up for number seven.” A rail thin woman with a wrinkly face in once white vinyl earth shoes picked up a tuna on rye. A huge pickle peered over the side of the oval plate.

“Last month.”

“Congratulations, all your hard work finally pays off. You deserve it.”

“Thanks. How about you?”

Mark stirred peaks of whipped cream into the mahogany liquid, clanking his spoon against the inside of the chipped earthenware mug. He didn’t look up.

“I’m doing well. I’m still an Assistant VP, but it looks from all the new responsibilities they’re loading on me that I’ve got a good shot at a VP spot next year.”

I heard my phony happy voice speak. “That’s great.”

I watched as a stooped bald man in a yarmulke held up a mink for a six foot tall red head as she eased her arms down through the furry sleeves. What were people in mink doing in this dive on Christmas Eve? Oh, wait, What an idiot! They’re Jewish. I chuckled.

“What’s so funny,” Mark said.

I shook my head. “Nothing, just amusing myself.”

“I’ve just bought a new coop,” Mark said. “A one bedroom on East 86^th between Park and Madison. Pre-war. You know, with great high ceilings and a claw-foot tub. Plenty big enough for just me.”

For the first time since we’d sat down, I looked in Mark’s eyes. I hesitated. “Upper East Side, your old stomping ground,” I said as Mark fiddled with an unraveling button on his gray suit jacket.

Under the table, I pushed back the cuff of her pink angora sweater. The cracked face read 8:50 p.m.

“I should be going. I still have gifts to wrap.”

“Me too,” he said, immediately scraping his chair back from the speckled Formica table.

“It was nice to see you,” I said.

“Yes, it really was.”

We gathered our belongings and slithered into our damp coats.

Out on the street, we chorused a “Merry Christmas,” and ducked our heads into the back seats of separate cabs.

***

Standing at the kitchen table, I held up the last scrap of gold foil paper and hoped it would cover the CD. At least I didn’t get a book,” I thought. I took the cellophane wrapped CD from the dewy yellow bag and wiped it dry on the leg of my ratty sweat pants. As I drew it across my thigh, I froze. It was Nat King Cole’s The Christmas Song. “But I had bought Johnny Mathis’ Christmas Album.” And then I remembered the two yellow plastic bags together on the red vinyl chair and my heart smiled bigger than my face had all year.