His hands still seared by the thorough stab of the winter’s chill, he gripped his rattling fingers tightly over the sterilized doorknob, checking once again the room number before allowing the foreign door to creak open.
The man was in his bed, back turned to the clamoring world from where his visitor came. The ample supply of fluorescent brightness created contrasts of shadow and light that seemed a bit too harsh for a Christmas Eve night. The visitor shivered besides the grunting radiator.
After two or three minutes of unnatural silence that, in other circumstances, would have been taboo for a communications major like himself, the intruder, rubbing his hands in a manner he had acquired from the office, drew a folding chair up to the bedside and took his right to sit. “Pop, hey.”
The man only turned his head slightly to acknowledge his son before he twisted back into his former position, a dreamy smile resting between the creases and wrinkles of his face in a manner that his son had never seen.
“I’m decorating the Christmas tree,” the old man announced. “See? Got the box out and everything.”
The Parkinson’s ridden hand shook in front of something phantasmal on the bedside counter.
“Remember this one?” Gingerly, lest it break, he removed an ornament from the quivering branches in his mind’s eye. “You made this one for us back when you were in Kindergarten. And proud too, eh?”
The son took a good look at the mirage in his father’s hands. “Yes,” he agreed, slowly. “I was proud of it.” He cupped the Styrofoam snowflake, complete with glitter entrails, into his own hold. “Always wondered why you didn’t throw this old thing away.”
“Hey, we can’t just throw things away because they’re old, can we?” The old man gave a wink so unnatural that his son shivered. Perhaps all the analgesics had placated his spirit. Had the blood the doctors fed him belonged to some kinder soul and replaced his own treacherous fire?
“It’s such a beautiful tree, isn’t it? We always pick out the best ones, son.”
The son couldn’t suppress a bitter laugh that rose out of his choking throat. “We? Really, Pop, I haven’t seen you in years.”
The old man laughed too, a drawn out, shallow laugh from the depths of whatever body he had left. It was pathetic, really, the criminal in old age. “Oh you, silly boy, what are you talking about? I just saw you that day, with Marcy…you came over for Thanksgiving, didn’t you? Now why would you not come over for Thanksgiving?”
The son bit his lip, half-expecting his father to snap at him for it. Turning towards the counter, he squinted his eyes, drawing up his own mirage of that childhood Christmas tree—a beauty that threaded together his family during those two weeks of God-given joy, no matter how transitory the compulsory period was. There was that one year where Mama showed them how to make popcorn decorations as she did when she was younger, and it nearly became a tradition too—nearly, until Pop came home, probation, and threatened to thrash them if they dared waste good food like that again.
But it was beautiful, that tree. Certainly more so than that seven-foot concoction in the shopping mall, hidden in its enormous, gaudy ornaments that had a nearly nauseating effect. Certainly more sacred than the church’s tree in front of the nativity, with its hand-carved angels dusted in the fresh December snow. More dazzling, too, it was, than the most-celebrated Rockefeller tree, that Pop had begrudgingly snuck them to when the son was ten—when the son decided that he would work underneath its shelter one day as a real, respected man—everything Pop was not. Even then, that tree provided no competition. His tree—their tree, was generic, disorganized, festooned with Mama’s lilac bows and plastic ribbons; it was splendid, entrancing, unique, with its hodgepodge of ornaments that held more sentiments than beauty.
“And I love that one, oh, where is it…”
“Which one?” The visitor asked, after a couple of minutes of empty searching amongst the translucent branches.
“The one with the family picture, right when Joey was born…Photographer said he’d make it into an ornament for twenty percent off…oh, why can’t I see it?”
Because Pop, you’re insane. A smile twisted on the man’s face as he considered saying it out loud. But I’ve always had to play your games, didn’t I? Even now, as you lie there connected in green and red to a thousand buzzing contraptions, feeding you whatever bits of life you threw away because you didn’t believe in your own mortality. Ironic, really.
“I see it,” the younger man said presently. “It’s up there, near the very top. Kind of hard to see from your angle.”
The old man gave out a wheezing laugh. “Why, of course! No, no, I see it now. Such good days, weren’t they.” The glint of his eyes was too genuine to be real.
“And this one, remember it? The coach gave it to your brother after that nice baseball game. He scored three home runs, didn’t he, that boy?”
He remembered. Gilted plastic, a molded representation of a baseball with “#1 Player!” bumping out over its front. A novelty gift. Except it wasn’t Joey’s—his brother had never even made it onto the league. But of course Pop wouldn’t know that—he was too busy swindling lives.
“Now where’s that Mama of yours? Did she start roasting the chicken for tomorrow?”
The words spit out abruptly through clenched jaws. “Ma’s dead.” You murdered her. We know.
“Ha! She will be dead if she doesn’t put that chicken in on time. Always forgetting things, isn’t she?”
Like a thousand times before, he wanted to throttle the wheezing piece of wrinkling flesh right then, but knew that he couldn’t do it. In his cashmere scarf, tailored brown trench-coat--he was a human. That man would have the comfort of dying on his own terms. A guiltless death-wish on the holy night; this was family.
The old man continued in his little bubble of Christmas ecstasy, “And your brother, where’s that boy? Down in Chicago, making a fortune? Always knew he’d make it big, always believed in our Joey, oh yes.”
Yes, Joey’s down in Chicago. A man who spends his days trying to forget his debts, and his nights trying to forget his life--just like you, isn't he? At least he’s too drunk to cause harm.
“You never believed in him.” The hatred that had festered with years of alienation finally burst out. “You never supported anyone, hell, even Christmas can’t stop you from lying! Why pretend we were a family? You know what? You should be grateful that I went out of my way to come here for you." The tides of self-pity washed over him, buried him under with their pull and tug, until any last pretenses of a professional, clean-cut man fell over. "I didn’t have to. I have my own things to think about. Do you remember these words? They’re yours. That’s what I learned from you, Pop. That’s all I learned from you.”
There. He had dared to break into his father’s wreathe of Christmas fabrication.
The old man’s eyes went wide, and for a second, the younger man nearly thought he would rise from the covers and re-surge, reincarnate into that hulk of an egoistical, incorrigible, deranged figure of his childhood. But the color soon faded away from the sickly man’s cheeks, and his son remembered again that times had changed, no matter how they dared to smother it.
And now his father was decking out another lie. Draping it in blinking bulbs of red and yellow, blue and green, covering its odor with the smell of gingerbread and hot cocoa. It was a tinseled atrocity.
“Don’t start that with me here,” the old man said. He had turned paler than was safe. An unexpected wrench of guilt clawed into the son’s heart, strengthened by obligations of peace and love that Christmastime demanded.
“But then, stop lying. You know you never cared.” His voice sounded as feeble as his father’s.
“What are you talking about! You see this tree here? You see it? All of these ornaments? You know all of them, I know all of them. I was always there for you, and you know I cared!”
There was no point in arguing with a senile man. The son set his face into rigid alignment and avoided his father’s gaze, staring instead at the counter and nearly believing that a Christmas tree was really there.
“You could have come and help me set this up, you know. In my age, it’s not so easy to move.”
“Well, you were never there before to help us!” And the son turned away to the window, his eyes threatening to burn with unrealized childhood tears.
Outside, snowflakes fluttered down and stuck in familial clumps to the naked branches of wintry maple, clad by the city counsel with their own supply of sparkling starry lights. If he hurried, he wouldn’t have to worry about a storm. Through the snap of the darkened night, the steam rose from a still-busy restaurant across the street--Il Ricordando, its placard claimed. Seven o’ clock. His own wife, his own Max and Lucia were waiting for him to come home, telling them that he had had another wonderful day in the office, lots of sales, and then to lead the prayers before the Christmas Eve meal.
He hadn’t told them where he would be, figuring they would probably stop him. Or tell Joey. And there were stockings to stuff and the children’s presents to retrieve out of hiding.
“Pop, I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you around, alright?”
“What are you talking about? Go where? What about dinner?” The man’s voice became shrill, unused to its own weakness.
“I need to go.” He got up, legs stiff from the tension he had been holding. He pushed the folding chair back to its original place, glanced one more time at the wall where the tree was supposed to be leaning against.
“Bye.” He dared to look one more time at the withered piece of a man, shriveling underneath the starched covers. His father didn’t respond, mutely staring still at his fantasized ornaments, twisted still in the same position his son had found him.
A nurse came in. “Visiting time’s over,” she confirmed, opening the door for the man to step out.
“Thank you.” He patted down his pockets to make sure he had his belongings secured, and walked as briskly as he could past her, trying to force his mind back into the rhythm of everyday thoughts.
“Wait.” The old man’s voice, more air than sound, brought him to a halt by the door. He didn’t turn around, staring into the artificial gleam of the hospital wing. Doctors scurried by, counting the seconds till they too could leave.
“What?”
“Here, I’ll give it to him.” The nurse’s shoes padded softly around the ward.
A small scrap of paper, still warm, moist, wrinkled. The nurse nodded her head politely and closed the door behind him.
Anchored to his spot, his legs feeling as if they had overdosed on anesthesia, the visitor dared to bring the present close enough to read. A wobbly scrawl, in a barely visible trace of ink.
“Got twelve more days. Doctor says. Funny, isn’t it? Proud of you for leaving me. Merry Christmas, kid.”
Funny. It was.
The son dropped the hilarious piece of paper on the floor, then picked it up again. It was too funny to bear.
“Merry Christmas, Pop.”
