Merry Christmas

December 24, 1958

 

     Late in the afternoon Margaret McGuire came knocking on our door. It was Christmas Eve, and Mom had invited her to have dinner (and drinks) with us, and then visit for a while until the start of Midnight Mass at the witching hour. Precisely.

     I’m Skip…Morley, that is…and this is what happened that night.

 

     Jimmy McGuire, my best friend who lives next door, had spent the day with me, which in itself isn’t all that unusual. We’ve spent most of our free time together since his mom bought the little brick home next to ours five years ago. That was right after she divorced George. He’d abandoned her and Jimmy; run off with some floozy to South America to check out rubber trees for Henry Ford, Mom once told me. I don’t know if that’s true. Henry Ford died a long time ago I think. But whatever happened, wherever he went, Margaret hit the sauce pretty heavy after he flew the coop. I don’t quite get it. I mean, if he took off with some other woman—well, I don’t understand all that love stuff.

     Margaret worked at Crowley Rubber Company—which is where she met George. I don’t know what he did there, but whatever it was, I think it was with a lot of the ladies who worked there.

 

     Anyway, we were bored stiff by five-thirty that afternoon, and I could see Jimmy’s brainwaves beginning to spike. In the morning we’d incinerated the last battalion of my little plastic soldiers down in the basement, which pissed Pop off because of the really foul smell that drifted up through the ceiling joists and floor. When we heard the old doorbell clank and clunk, Jimmy hopped to his feet as though he owned the place, as though he’d been rescued by some kindly saint, and he ran to answer it. I was right behind him, a guest in my own house. There stood his mother, swaying pretty bad, grinning. Even from where I stood, I could see that her eyes were only half-opened. Already she’d gotten a good start on the night’s festivities.

     “‘Who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons!’” he said to her, stopping her at the threshold with a hand on her shoulder and the scrutinizing glare of a barroom bouncer. “What’s your business here, woman?”

       I couldn’t help but laugh, watching the look of Huh? rising on Mrs. McGuire’s face. She had her bottle in one hand, and a breadbox-sized present wrapped far more neatly, it looked to me, than she was capable of doing it, tucked under the other arm. She was ready to do some serious celebrating—if Jimmy would just clear out of her way. Her hair was pretty much all fixed up—pretty much, that is, in the style of ten or fifteen years ago, and she wore a not-too-carefully applied glop of lipstick, which brilliance would make even a fire engine blush with envy. It made her lips look puckered, kinda’ like Betty Boop’s.

       “Oh, get out of the way, silly,” she laughed, trying to casually tap him on the shoulder with the bottle clenched in her hand. Her eyelids drooped a little, I think the signal from her brain floating on its sea of rolling alcohol waves that it wanted to just shut down for a while, but she went on. “And don’ be talking in nasty riddles tonight. You watch your tongue; it’s the Lord’s birthday.”

     “‘Who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight’…sure, Mother! I thought it might be you under all that paint, but I wasn’t sure ‘til I saw them sparklin’ eyes. God, ya’ look beauteous. Ya’ did a good job with the rouge, too. Get on in here, Verne and Rosie and another bottle or two are waitin’ for ya’ out in the kitchen…God weren’t born, though, for a couple more hours,” he whispered. He stepped aside and gave her a peck on the cheek as she giggled her way past him.

     “Well, that’s better,” she mumbled. Who cared what night the Lord was born, anyway, I’ll bet she was thinking? As long as there was Mr. Jim Beam hanging around.

     Not far behind her, right on schedule from some distant planet, another voice began to grow. It was that of cousin Sylvie. She and Aunt Corey made their way up the front walk, and soon enough they too were assaulted by Jimmy and one of his raspy lines from Howl, that bizarre poem by this guy named Allen Ginsberg. Unlike his mom, though, who was used to the meaninglessness of the verses, and most times drunk enough not to pay much attention to them, neither of my relatives had the slightest idea of what he was saying. They looked at one another and then at him as if he’d gone nuts, or gotten into a bottle of bourbon. Jimmy had taken to wearing a black beret when he discovered Howl a month or so ago, and that made them hesitate and stare. They stepped back and really concentrated on it. Being old maids—secluded, in love with things like collectable salt and pepper shakers, rose gardens, fishing—dumb to the real happenings of the world, neither of them had a clue that the hat was only part of the larger costume of his new life. Jimmy had become a Beatnik. But, commandos wore berets fifteen years ago. Smartly dressed gentlemen killers of Fascists. Brave men who loved the free world and Misters Churchill and Roosevelt. Jimmy must be entering into a new and laudably patriotic, warlike phase, they had to have been thinking. Ready, these days, now, to go after Communists hiding under every rock in the country. God bless his young soul.

       But what were they to make of the gibberish?

   Aunt Corey salvaged the moment. “Merry Christmas, Jimmy. Now, take off your hat and move out of the way. We’re adults, dear. You must always remember that.” As always, her voice was low and musical, emitting an air, not of adult arrogance, but rather a soothing directness that suggested his life could actually become more meaningful if he obeyed.

     And so he did. Got out of the way, at least. He jumped aside, removing his beret, and he bowed gallantly. This seemed only to intensify the uneasiness of Sylvie, who stood behind her mother, always capable of being rattled even in the presence of a cooing baby. The poor woman’s head bobbed and jerked as though someone had hooked her up to our electrical arc super zapper, and she gritted her teeth. I thought she looked exactly like she needed a good stiff drink to calm her down. Lord knows, every summer she and Pop drank enough beer up at our cabin in the mountains, and she always seemed so at ease then…Oh, wait…no she didn’t. Alcohol just made her jitters worse now that I thought about it. If Coors made her stumble a little up there in the high country, Jim Beam was destined to bring her crashing to her knees five thousand feet lower, down here in the city. She eased past Jimmy, and he tried to plant a kiss on her cheek.

     They threw their coats onto the backs of the chairs in the dining room, and went out into the kitchen to join my folks and Mrs. McGuire who were hard at the business of setting up the evening for a first class Christmas donnybrook. I could hear the clink of glasses being joined in salutes, laughter, and here and there an, “Oh, bullshit, LaVerne!”

     After the adults had kissed and punched one another for a little while, I bent down and picked up the present I’d bought for Jimmy from its spot under the tree, and said to him, “Here you go. Open it.”  

     He looked at me with surprise, not expecting to have received a gift, I guess, and especially one that visibly moved him with its festive black wrapping.   “What’s this?”

     “It’s for you. I got it downtown this week. I hope you like it.”

     “But…I didn’t get you a thing. I…”

     “That’s okay. I wasn’t expecting anything. Really. I just thought…well, since we’re both alive and well and…oh, gosh… just Merry Christmas. Open the darned thing up.”

     I grabbed his arm and pulled it away from his side, placing the small package into his outstretched palm. He dropped his gaze, not to the gift lying in his hand, but past it to the fraying carpet. For a moment he just held it in his hand, not moving.

     “Open it! I want you to see what I got you. Go ahead.”

       He looked up and threw that crooked little smile at me, then ripped the black bow and black paper off and read the title aloud.

     “A Coney Island of the Mind. Lawrence Ferlin…Fer-lin-ged-i. Ferlinghetti? Crap, never heard of him.” Jimmy opened the cover, flipped into the body of the small text a few pages, and then silently read some of what was written. He turned another page. I saw his eyes scan down it, and then he turned another, and then another. Finally he went back to the page he’d started at and studied it for a minute.

     “This is good stuff. Whoa! Really good. Yeah, this cat knows…where’d you pick up on this guy?” he asked looking up at me. “You don’t read poetry. Gosh, thanks! Ferlinghetti. Yeah, I like ‘im. Bet he knows Ginsberg.” He closed the cover and read the title again, then turned the book over in his hands, savoring the feel of it. He lifted it to his face and sniffed it.

     “There’s a special smell that a book has…you ever notice that?”

     “Ah…no. Not really. Well, yeah, I guess maybe so.”

     “Yeah. Like its very own perfume or somethin’. Unique. This one smells a lot like Howl, but different, somehow. Mustier.”

     I watched him run his nose up and down it, his eyes opening and closing.

     “I think it’s good that you have a friend for Howl. I have no idea what a Coney Island of the Mind might be, but it sounds a lot like a place where the wolf in the Ginsberg poem could sit on the boardwalk there, maybe go on one of the rides. Maybe that’s where the wolf really lives,” I said.

     Jimmy closed his eyes, and I saw his lips moving, reciting certain lines. And then he smiled and opened them to me. “Yeah. Could be right.” His eyes drifted shut once again, “ ‘…who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey’…Coney Island’s in New Jersey, I think. Pretty sure. Yeah, that might just be where the wolf lives,” he said.

     “No, no. It’s in a place called Brooklyn, or by it. I looked it up. They have lots of rides and stuff there, like at Elitch’s. A beach, too. Maybe you and Sara can go there someday. Maybe me and Carol can go with you! We’d have a blast, don’t you think?”

     “Well, first thing ya’ gotta’ do,” he said with a laugh, “is get her to talk to ya’ again. Then we’ll all take off to see Sara and this Coney Island joint.”

     As Jimmy and I dreamed dreams of disappearing into Beat-land and amazing romantic adventures in dark haunted houses in amusement parks, the adults waltzed back into the living room carrying their drinks and scads of good cheer. I could see Mrs. McGuire hanging on cousin Sylvie’s shoulder with one arm as they walked through the dining room, blabbing and waving the drink in her other, like she was lecturing her. Sylvie nodded her head often, though I wasn’t sure if she was actually agreeing with Mrs. McGuire, or simply displaying another of her nervous tics. Pop seemed particularly happy, or particularly on his way to getting totally blasted, and he kept interrupting Mom and Aunt Corey, who were trying to talk about some ornaments that Aunt Corey had picked up when she was a child back in 1776. Pop was in a way very amorous, his arm around Mom’s shoulder, and his fingers dancing downward. He was all smiles, and so was she as she slapped his fingers and continued to talk to her sister-in-law.

     “Roseanna, the tree is just beautiful this year,” Aunt Corey said, adding her fingers to Mom’s arm. Mom was drifting away for the moment ‘cause of Pop’s dancing fingers, though, and didn’t seem to hear the comment. Aunt Corey pursed her lips and then finally gave up and glanced over at Jimmy and me.

     “I like your gray dress, Mrs. Merton. Yeah, gray is cool; so are the polka dots!” Jimmy said to her.

     Sylvie and Mrs. McGuire stopped near the front door when they finally got into the room, and Sylvie continued nodding her head. I think she was relaxed, now. She pushed her empty glass out and waited patiently while Mrs. McGuire poured a slug of Jim Beam all over the glass, Sylvie’s hand, and onto the floor a thousand miles away from her target. Pop leaned down and kissed Mom. Aunt Corey stood uneasily between all of us, unsure if it would be better to join her daughter and spill whiskey all over herself and the floor, try to rejoin Mom and Pop like a romantic referee—or step down into the world of two teenagers who couldn’t possibly relate to slaughtering fish, listening to Lawrence Welk, or collecting salt and pepper shakers. Finally she walked past everyone to the TV set and turned the channel until Perry Como appeared. He and a boat load of fancy-ass dressed adults and kids sang Winter Wonderland on a set that was suppose to look like Vermont, or Maine, or someplace really, really cold, and oozing with holiday cheer. She sat down glumly on the edge of the couch and disregarded everyone except Perry while she waited for the roast Mom had stuck in the oven to finish cooking. From the looks of it, she was going to have to be the chef tonight.

     “Let’s go over to my house, Skip. I wanna’ call Sara and wish her Merry Christmas,” Jimmy said when the joy and excitement got to be too much for him to stand any longer.

     “Oh sure. You’ll be on the phone for hours! No way. Besides, you can wish her Merry Christmas tomorrow when it’s Christmas.”

     Jimmy thought for a second. “Okay then. Let’s stay here and use your phone. I’ll just say Merry Christmas and then hang up.”

     “Yeah, right. Nix to that, too. Wait ‘til tomorrow. Let’s go downstairs and get out of this place. Your mom’s a mess. I think Pop is gonna’ be pretty soon, too.”

     He agreed to that, so we both left the merrymaking for the basement. As I passed Mom and Pop, I heard Mom whispering to Pop, “LaVerne, stop that, goddamit!”

 

 

                                       ***

 

 

     “We’d better take two cars,” Aunt Corey said after dinner. “We can’t all fit into the station wagon.”

     “Ah bullshit, Cora. Sure we can. You and me and Rosie in the front. Syl and Margaret in the back. The boys in the far back,” Pop said.

     “Good God, LaVerne, what’s the matter with two cars? Who the hell cares? We’re only gonna’ be in ‘em for ten minutes anyway,” Mom said.

     “Can’t I ever…”

     So that was that. The decision was made; we’d caravan up the icy streets to the church and, God help us, try to get through the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass without a major incident. Jimmy and I wouldn’t be allowed to bring any weapons—pea shooters or Whamos, not even paper for spitwads. Even so, the orange and gold lights from the hundreds of candles; the choir singing behind the enormously beautiful pipe organ; the altar boys and deacons; Father Blenker in robes that would make Caesar drool; the exotic late hour; the packed church with a healthy number of celebrants smelling of whiskey and beer—I was filled with excitement. Midnight Mass possessed a very special power over me. It was the smell of Benediction, the pageantry of any High Mass times ten, the time of year, all of this rolled into one, two-hour super-ritual. I was a Catholic, and so lucky to be one on a night like tonight. The only improvement, it hit me, could have been Perry Como standing like a handsome Italian saint high up in the choir loft singing Silent Night—claiming, of course, that he was Irish after all the cheering died down.

     So we got there, and up the steps we marched.

     True to my expectations, the interior of the church was ablaze like the gold room inside Fort Knox (which I’d never actually seen), a magical glow from the hundred candles unmatched by any other possible. The sanctuary was alive with evergreens—three trees on either side of the stepped altar, decorated with strands of tiny white lights, glistening ornaments and tinsel. Gold and silver and red and green everywhere. Wreaths with dark brown, raspy pine cones and soft velvet ribbons peeking out of the foliage hung from the face of the pulpit and the side altars; suspended with heavy wire from the truss rafters; on the crowned pew ends—on the columns stretching down the sides of the nave.

     Ribbon and lights and greenery in abundance. And incense burning. Exotic Arabian Frankincense and Myrrh smoldering in small, golden vessels on wooden stands, caught on the breezes wafting gently down from the altar. The breath of God. This romance was the divine child of the beautiful pagan goddess married to the one, true, Catholic and apostolic prince. The product of centuries of intense and passionate lovemaking, until, finally, the Christmas conception. It was enough, almost, to sober up any drunk, or give life back to a corpse. Of course the drunks and the dead sat and knelt and lay quietly in their various stations of worship. For the most part obscure, unobtrusive and pretty much guzzlingly happy.

     Jimmy and I walked obediently behind our folks into the church and up the main aisle like we were all part of a delegation of foreign, highly important ambassadors and dignitaries. Above us from the choir loft, the sound of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”, played soft and low by Sister Mary Carmelita, added another facet to the sparkling service. Pop swayed ever-so-slightly, and he acknowledged the many acquaintances he passed with a simple nod of his head. Mom had downed just enough Jim Beam to force her to sway in the same directions, but to loudly greet every single soul she recognized. Everyone. She stopped often, making Mrs. McGuire stumble into her back, which made Jimmy’s mom giggle and do a little shuffle on the eggs she walked on.

     The church was alive with buzzing little conversations and beehive movements in the pews. The atmosphere was light and festive, so no one really gave a hoot about the semi-sodden arrival of the lower Barnum neighborhood bunch, except maybe the Lord, and I was betting he found us all immensely entertaining, and was happy as all get out to see us.

       Jimmy and I found ourselves in front of Aunt Corey and Sylvie, behind his mother. Trapped in a sardine school, with lasting interest in the upcoming ceremony already waning. That was an uncomfortable position if ever there was one for us.

     I had to get us out of there. Last spring at Benediction we’d easily ditched the older folks...and, well…wound up wounding God’s favorite Son with our Whamo slingshots. Jesus had been inside the holy Monstrance Father Blenker held high, up there on the altar. Jimmy and I were in the choir loft, aiming for Extine Moye, Father’s altar boy standing beside the old priest.

     We both had learned an important lesson from that experience. Practice those long shots outside.

     Well anyway, as we took a seat and I heard Sylvie hiccup, I looked over at Jimmy questioningly. I could see that he was as uneasy as a preacher in a whorehouse, and that he all a sudden wanted to get a breath of fresh air, too. So I stood back up. I waited the second it took him to do the same, and that’s all it took for Mom to get hold of my coat collar and yank me across Mrs. McGuire’s lap to have a word with me.    

     “Where do you think you’re goin’, mister?”

     “To the bathroom.”

     “No you’re not,” she whispered, because a fair number of folks around us were turning to see what the commotion was about, and above all, we none of us wanted to become spectacles in Jesus’ house on his special night.

       She had me cornered. I felt extremely uneasy, half-lying across Jimmy’s mother, hooked by Mom’s indelicate fingers, searching for a way to break free without making a terrific scene right there in the middle of the church on Christmas Eve. The service hadn’t even started and the McGuires and the Morleys were already becoming the stars of a low budget B-movie. I had to think fast, or hope Jimmy could come up with a decent reason the two of us needed to go out of the church alone, down the stairs into the basement, down the long, dark hall beneath the hundreds of celebrants above us, and then up the back stairs to the rear door. Or, probably a better deal; straight out the main entrance fifty feet away.

     His mother was all beside herself, confused in the way some people get who’ve had way too much to drink. I glanced up at her very quickly and saw the eyes of a deer in the headlights—Dear Jesus Christ! Where do I go? What’s going on here? Her breathing was clipped and saturated. I coughed once and smiled at her. Time to make my break before I got drunk by exposure and, worse, give Mom any more time to put the total kiboshes on mine and Jimmy’s innocent departure plan. Neither of us, surely, had any desire to ruin Jesus’ night, we just needed to get out of that swill house and have some fun somewhere else. I’m sure he understood.

     Mom didn’t, and to make matters all the more complicated, Pop joined her with an index finger poking back and forth in my face, and the rancid sweet smell of whiskey on his breath. He gave up after a few seconds.

     “I’ll go with you. I have to…” and he spoke the next words in a whisper without moving his lips, allowing the finger to stop dead on the tip of my nose for deeper emphasis…“pee myself.”

     “Okay, okay! Let go, Mom. I guess I’ll just wet my pants.” I looked imploringly at her, but I knew the jig was up. She let go of my collar, much to Mrs. McGuire’s relief, and the satisfaction of most everyone else around us, and I swung myself off her into a defeated, upright position again. I looked at Jimmy. He mouthed, Shit.

     A man who was sitting right in front of us with his family, and who looked like he was stuck there by God Himself to keep the folks behind him in line, turned at the conclusion of Mom’s performance. He scowled. “Can you people please try to remember where you are?”

     Mom let him have it for a few minutes after that insult, until he turned back around and minded his own business.

     Extine was serving Mass, and in a déjà vu kind of way, slipped quietly out of the sacristy door into the sanctuary a few minutes after my thwarted escape plan. He carried a long, shiny-brass candle lighter in front of him like a flag bearer in battle, walked to the front of the altar steps, and genuflected. Then he began lighting more candles for Mass, ones that weren’t decoration or seasonal, just necessary for the solemn service.

 

      Jimmy had pulled out his book, the Coney Island one I’d given him, and sat reading it calmly. Beside him, Aunt Corey stared forward, watching the Negro boy on the altar reverently going about his business. Looking at Jimmy and the book, I got to thinking about that place called Coney Island. Was it an island, I tried to remember? Where was it from Manhattan where Sara and all the Beat poets she and Jimmy loved so much lived? Would Jimmy—maybe me, and even Carol—go there someday?

       What seemed a few weeks later, Father and about ten altar boys, and twenty or so seminarians from St. Thomas out at the south end of town, arrived at the Kyrie in the Mass. It was a long, long way—maybe months—to the Sanctus and the Benedictus, and I began to wonder as the time dragged endlessly by exactly what my attraction for the Midnight Mass really had been. As the incense filled the already stale air of the church to nearly suffocating proportions, the drone of Father’s voice became monotonous—little noises everywhere collided in my head. I began to lose interest in high ritual and drifted into a glass-domed coach beside a smiling and beautiful Carol Hudson. And then with a rapid shake of my head, back to reality and up to the altar where Ex knelt faithfully; over to the right side of the nave when a bald man coughed. At the conclusion of four or five blinks of my eyes and a few yawns, I gratefully returned back to the glass-domed carriage, and instantly every other distraction melted. I closed my eyes and took hold of Carol’s hand beneath the blankets of fur covering our legs.

     How many times had we journeyed together along these same pathways through the stars? How many times had we had this same conversation? Little variations of, “I love you because…” In every way, though, they were a mighty script written by Shakespeare’s own pen. Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending. Her hands. Her hands were silken. Her eyes were brighter, more glorious than any star we’d ever passed. Her smile turned to desire as I leaned close to kiss her.

 

     “Jesus Christ! She’s throwing up!”

     I left Carol.

     Before I saw a blessed thing, I heard the sound of soup splashing onto the floor in the kitchen. But it was the foulest smelling stuff my mom could ever have made. All the dinner guests were disgusted, too, and I heard “Ughs!” and “Yecchs!” and even one “Ah, Jesus H. Christ!” And then I remembered where we all were, like I was just waking from a beautiful dream into a real-life nightmare Jimmy had created. Like he’d finished reciting one of the black verses from Howl, then dynamited the Cathedral downtown to protest God checking out and running off to mess up the lives of the Martians, now that he’d messed up all ours here on Earth. And then I saw God getting attacked by the Chicken Monster from outer space and…gosh, Midnight Mass was turning into a real weird event.    

     And God saw Sylvie hucking up Jim Beam and what looked like peanuts. A lot of it flew straight out of her mouth when she spasmed, right onto the chest of the smart aleck guy in the pew in front of ours. He’d tried to get away, but there was nowhere for him to go, because all the people in his pew had grabbed onto their noses and were tripping over one another like they would if Jimmy or some Commie terrorist had sticks of dynamite, and was lighting them and throwing them everywhere. So he leaned as far into the back of the pew in front of his as he could, holding onto it for all he was worth with fingers that had suddenly turned into eagle’s claws. He looked like the Chicken Monster From Outer Space was just about ready to swoop in on him after it had finally finished beating up on God.      

     Mom was cussing up a blue streak because she couldn’t do a damned thing. Yeah, that’s what she always did in a serious crisis situation. Cussed. And I’m sure God heard her—being so close in his house and all. It wasn’t real bad cussing, just a few Godammits and Christ Almighty’s, and I don’t think he minded too much because he was probably saying about the same things.      

     Pop, who had been sitting on the far end next to Mom, was standing by the time I woke up, and his eyes were painful looking. Red and pink, with hardly any white in them, and his jaw hung about a foot down onto his chest, but he didn’t move a muscle to try and get to Sylvie—or anywhere else.

     Mrs. McGuire sat slouched over with her mouth hanging open a little, unfazed. Snoring. Out like a light, finally. Aunt Corey stood there next to her sick daughter making the sign of the cross over and over, with her head pointing up toward Heaven. She was praying to be somewhere else right then I’ll bet.

     And Jimmy:

     “‘…who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated…’”

 

     Amen.

     We were asked to leave, and not come back to Midnight Mass ever again.

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 20.12.2015

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To Sister Mary Dolorine