Richard Russo - That Old CapeMagic

Other attendants, equally tired and frustrated, tried reason. “What kinda ceiling we looking at here?” Griffin remembered one asking, hoping at least to narrow the search. Of course his parents had no idea. A high ceiling was one of their requirements every year when they rented a new house or apartment, but as professional humanists it wouldn’t have occurred to them to actually measure . “Doesn’t matter,” his father would say. “We can cut a little off the top if we need to.” To which the man responded, “Look kind of funny, wouldn’t it?” At which point his mother might take the tip of a branch between her thumb and forefinger, give it a good tug and, if needles came off, complain, “When was this tree cut? Last August?”

Griffin came to understand that the perfect Christmas tree was a lot like the perfect house on the Cape, first because it didn’t exist in the real world, and second because all the imperfect trees fell into two categories. The first was the all-too-familiar Wouldn’t Have It As a Gift, and the second applied to just one tree: Well, I Guess It’ll Have to Do. He couldn’t remember ever voicing an opinion about the tree his parents finally agreed would have to do. The search over at last, his father would hand the lucky attendant a length of gray, weathered clothesline so the tree could be hoisted onto the roof of their car and secured through its open windows. Sometimes the clothesline would snap when they rounded a corner, sending the tree into the gutter. One year they didn’t even make it out of the lot. Griffin’s father, leaning forward so he could keep an eye on the tree strapped to the roof, backed into a parked pickup, and their tree leapt as if by wizardry into its bed.

Back home, they invariably discovered, by trying to stand the tree up, that it was indeed too tall, and with a curse his father would lay it back down on the floor. Some years the tree lay there in the middle of the living room for days while he canvassed his English department colleagues for a saw he could borrow. What he actually meant, they understood all too well, was a saw he could have , since he never once returned a tool. (The saw he’d borrowed the previous Christmas was no doubt hanging from a nail in the garage of last year’s rental.) Eventually, though, someone would come through, and that was when the real magic began.

The first cut never took quite enough off-here again, no measuring for the Griffins-and the second usually didn’t, either. The third would be off by a mere half inch, close enough if you forced matters (they always did), and the freshly cut top of the tree would leave a moist, six-inch, greenish-brown streak on the white ceiling, which no doubt puzzled the owners when they returned home from their sabbatical. The broken toaster oven, the missing eighth chair from the dining room set, the red wine stains on the shag carpet-these things could happen, but how on earth had the Griffins managed to scar the fucking ceiling ? And of course the tree did look funny with its top sawed off. Their Christmas trees always looked to Griffin like they’d grown right through the ceiling, as if what you were looking at was just the bottom two-thirds, and if you went upstairs, the top third would be growing right out of the hardwood floor.

Once the tree was upright, Griffin ’s father would pick the lock on the closet where the owners stored the stuff they didn’t want ruined or broken, see what they had by way of Christmas decorations and berate their bad taste. His mother thought the prettiest trees were decorated all in white, with maybe a little silver for contrast, but Griffin himself liked all the blues and greens and reds and was grateful for other people’s lack of refinement. She claimed garlands were especially tacky, but he liked those, too. He was allowed to help decorate, of course, but he couldn’t remember ever hanging an ornament or icicle that his mother didn’t adjust later. Once the tree was finished, his favorite thing was to crawl beneath it, lie on his back and peer up through the branches, imagining other worlds, himself miniaturized and climbing ever upward, from branch to branch, among all the blinking lights and shiny ornaments, until the whole world lay below him.

One year-he must have been seven or eight-he’d crawled under the tree during his parents’ annual boozy Christmas party and watched the drunken kaleidoscopic proceedings from there. Over the course of the evening, two or three of their guests noticed him back there and asked his parents if he was okay, and they responded that yes, he was fine. He remembered feeling fine. His father had spiked the eggnog that afternoon, forgetting to reserve some for Griffin. His mother said he couldn’t have any of the spiked, but his father felt guilty about forgetting him and let him have a big glass before anyone arrived. During the party he kept wishing somebody would slide him a plate of Christmas cookies, but otherwise he felt warm and happy and tipsy tucked into his own private little corner. He’d fallen asleep there, staring up into the magical branches, and eventually one of his parents must have pulled him out because the next morning he woke up in his bed, the sheets full of pine needles. Which one of them had remembered him? he’d wondered at the time.

“It’s okay,” Marguerite said, taking his hand, and only then did he realize there were tears running down his cheeks. He was pretty sure he’d never told that story to anyone before, not even Joy. He might have expected all manner of comment from the trunk, but there wasn’t a peep.

After he’d gathered himself, he said, “Okay, enough about me. Tell me about your parents,” but Marguerite shook her head. “Let’s just say that if you knew them you’d understand how I ended up with a man like Harold.”

It was the first bitter thing he could remember hearing her say, and it begged an obvious question, one he didn’t want to ask but did anyway. “And a man like me?”

“Nobody’s ever been nicer to me than you,” she said, squeezing his hand. He appreciated the vote of confidence, he really did, until she added, “I’m going to miss that.”

He started to ask her what she meant when her cell rang. It was Beth, the woman she’d left in charge of the flower shop back in L.A., with a question about inventory. By the time Marguerite hung up, they were rumbling up onto the Sagamore Bridge. “What’s that you’re humming?” she wanted to know.

He’d been humming ?

They scattered his father in a cove near Barnstable. It was serene there, with views of a marsh redolent of bluish-purple wildflowers and the sunrise. For his mother they chose a tidal inlet on the Atlantic side, mid-Cape. Across the water, a quarter mile away, sat a posh restaurant with a huge deck from which the breezes carried the sounds of moneyed voices and the occasional pop of a champagne cork and, when the wind shifted, the sound of surf. An older couple, strolling past when he was emptying his mother’s urn, saw what he was doing and came over to Marguerite, who was quietly weeping (as she’d done for his father), and offered her their condolences. “You take good care of her,” the woman told dry-eyed Griffin, as if she’d taken his measure at a glance and doubted he was up to the task.

Back in the car, Marguerite said, “Okay, I’ll tell you this much. My father hanged himself when I was a little girl.”

Now it was Griffin ’s turn to take her hand. “That’s terrible. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I don’t really even remember that much about him. Only what my mother said to me.”

Griffin didn’t want to ask, but there was no way not to.

“She said, ‘There. Happy now?’”

When he suggested they splurge on a fancy restaurant in Chatham, Marguerite again scrunched up her shoulders and said, “I have a better idea. Let’s go back to that restaurant where we met.”