But my gift to myself this Christmas Eve was a ful retreat from the world. I didn’t turn on the TV. I didn’t cal any friends. I didn’t check my email.
I didn’t even look out the windows. Instead, I reveled in solitude. If Lily wanted to believe there was a somebody out there just for her, I wanted to
believe that I could be somebody in here just for me. I made myself dinner. I ate slowly, trying to take the time to actual y taste the food. I picked
up Franny and Zooey and enjoyed their company again. Then I tangoed with my bookshelf, dipping in and out again, in and out again—a Marie
Howe poem, then a John Cheever story. An old E. B. White essay, then a passage from Trumpet of the Swans. I went into my mother’s room and
read some of the pages she’d dog-eared—she always did that when she read a sentence that she liked, and each time I opened the book, I had to
try to gure out which sentence was the one that had impressed itself upon her. Was it the Logan Pearsal Smith quote “The indefatigable pursuit
of an unat ainable perfection, even though it consist in nothing more than in the pounding of an old piano, is what alone gives a meaning to our
life on this unavailing star” from page 202 of J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar or, a few lines down, the more simple “Being alone has nothing to
do with how many people are around”? From Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, was it “He had admired the ancient delicacy of the buildings
and the way the street lamps made soft explosions of light green in the trees at night” or “The place had l ed him with a sense of wisdom
hovering just out of reach, of unspeakable grace prepared and waiting just around the corner, but he’d walked himself weak down its endless blue
streets and al the people who knew how to live had kept their tantalizing secret to themselves”? On page 82 of Anne Enright’s The Gathering, was
it “But it is not just the sex, or remembered sex, that makes me think I love Michael Weiss from Brooklyn, now, seventeen years too late. It is the
way he refused to own me, no mat er how much I tried to be owned. It was the way he would not take me, he would only meet me, and that only
ever halfway.” Or was it “I think I am ready for that now. I think I am ready to be met”?
I spent hours doing this. I didn’t say a word, but I wasn’t conscious of my silence. The sound of my own life, my own internal life, was al that I
needed.
It felt like a holiday, but that had nothing to do with Jesus or the calendar or what anyone else in the world was doing.
Before I went to bed, I got back into my usual routine—opening up the (sadly, abridged) dictionary next to my bed and trying to nd a word I
could love.
li•ques•cent, adj. 1. becoming liquid; melting. 2. tending toward a liquid state.
Liquescent. I tried to say myself to sleep with it.
It was only as I was drifting o that I realized what I’d done:
In opening the book at random, I’d only landed a few pages long of Lily.
I hadn’t left any milk and cookies out for Santa. We didn’t have a chimney; there wasn’t even a replace. I had submit ed no list, and had not
received any certi cations of my niceness. And yet, when I woke up around noon the next day, there were stil presents from my mother waiting
for me.
I unwrapped them one by one underneath the tree, since I knew that was how she’d want me to do it. I felt pangs for her then—just for these ten
minutes, just so I could give her presents, too. There wasn’t anything surprising beneath the wrapping paper—a number of books I’d wanted, a
gadget or two to add some diversity, and a blue sweater that didn’t look half bad.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said to the air. Because it was stil too early to cal her time zone.
I lost myself immediately in one of the books, only emerging when the phone rang.
“Dashiel ?” my father intoned. As if someone else with my voice might be answering the phone at my mother’s apartment.
“Yes, Father?”
“Leeza and I would like to wish you a merry Christmas.”
“Thank you, Father. And to you, as wel .”
[awkward pause]
[even more awkward pause]
“I hope your mother isn’t giving you any trouble.”
Oh, Father, I love it when you play this game.
“She told me if I clean al the ashes out of the grate, then I’l be able to help my sisters get ready for the bal .”
“It’s Christmas, Dashiel . Can’t you give that at itude a rest?”
“Merry Christmas, Dad. And thanks for the presents.”
“What presents?”
“I’m sorry—those were al from Mom, weren’t they?”
“Dashiel …”
“I got a go. The gingerbread men are on re.”
“Wait—Leeza wants to wish you a merry Christmas.”
“The smoke’s get ing pret y thick. I real y have to go.”
“Wel , merry Christmas.”
“Yeah, Dad. Merry Christmas.”
It was, I gured, at least an eighth my fault for picking up the phone in the rst place. But I’d just wanted to get it over with, and now here it
was—very over. I gravitated toward the red notebook and almost started venting there—but then I felt like I didn’t want to burden Lily with what I
was feeling, not right now. That would just be passing the unfairness along, and Lily would be even more powerless to stop what had happened
than I had been.
It was only ve o’clock, but it was already dark outside. I decided the time had come for me to head to Dyker Heights.
This involved me taking the D train farther than I’d ever taken the D train before. After the frenzied crowds of the past week, the city was almost
blank on Christmas Day. The only things open were ATMs, churches, Chinese restaurants, and movie theaters. Everything else was dark, sleeping
the season o . Even the subway seemed like it had been hol owed out—only a few scat ered people on the platform, a thin row of passengers on
the seats. Yes, there were signs it was Christmas—lit le girls delighting in their frocks and lit le boys looking imprisoned by their lit le suits. Eye
contact was often met with friendliness instead of hostility. But for a place that had been overrun with tourists, there was nary a guidebook in sight,
and al the conversations were kept quiet. I read my book from Manhat an into Brooklyn. But then, when the D train emerged from the ground, I
shifted so I could stare out the window, stealing glimpses of family windows as we chugged past.
I stil didn’t know how I was going to nd the Nutcracker House. When I got to the subway stop, however, I had some idea. A disproportionate
number of passengers had got en o with me, and they al seemed to be heading in the same direction—clusters of families, couples holding
hands, old people making pilgrimage. I fol owed.
At rst, it seemed like there was something strange in the air, giving it a halo of electricity, like in Times Square. Only, we were nowhere near
Times Square, so it didn’t make much sense … until I started to see the houses, each one more electri ed than the next. These were not Christmas
light dilet antes here. This was a spectacular spectacular of lawn and house ornamentation. For as far as the eye could see, every house was ringed
with lights. Lights of every color, lights of every shape. Outlines of reindeer and Santa and his sleigh. Boxes with ribbon, toy teddy bears, larger-
than-life dol s—al strung together from Christmas lights. If Joseph and Mary had lit the manger like this, it would’ve been seen al the way in
Rome.
Observing it al , I felt such contradictory feelings. On the one hand, it was an astonishing misuse of energy, a testament to the ingenious
wastefulness that American Christmas inspires. On the other hand, it was amazing to see the whole community lit up like this, because it made it