Page 47 of Playworld
On Christmas morning, we woke to snowfall.
It was several inches, it covered everything, and there wafted from the kitchen a smell not only of sausage cooking and the scent of tarragon but also apple and pumpkin pie. Mom and Grandma had dressed the turkey and were about to put it in the oven. Dad sat on the couch,facing the fire, which Grandpa tended. Like Mom, Grandma was still in her nightgown. She said, “Merry Christmas,” to Oren and me when we greeted her, and the explosiveness of the last two syllables—we could hear this when we hugged her—caused her to bite at her breath, like a landed fish.
By now Oren had visited the tree and climbed into the La-Z-Boy, his presents neatly stacked around him. The night before there wasn’t a single gift beneath it, but now the trove covered the base. Oren had methodically begun to open his presents. With each he gave a low“Yes,”not so much ticking off a box but addressing himself to items on a bill of lading, assurances of an agreement kept, and at this moment more than almost any other, his sense of metaphysical satisfaction seemed profound, as if, for him, our family was finally properly functioning.
“What did you get?” I asked, and he held up his Simon memory game.
“Can I play?”
“If you give me your R2-D2 Pez dispenser,” he said. He had a shoebox full of unopenedStar Warsfigurines.
I got clothes.
I was not unexcited about them, but I wasn’t excited either. In one box: L.L.Bean corduroys. “We’ll have those fitted,” Dad said. In another, a pair of L.L.Bean turtlenecks. A black sweater with a zipper on its V-neck. “That’s cashmere,” Dad said. Mom said, “I picked them out for you. I thought they were very handsome.” In a small box, a pair of black leather gloves.
“This one,” Dad said, and handed me a present, “is special.”
It was too big to be Intellivision. It was too heavy to be a toy. Beneath the wrapping paper, the box readBarney’s. I removed a navy overcoat.
“Put it on,” Mom said. It was heavier than Peter Proton’s cape.
“Go get a load of yourself,” Dad said.
“I will,” I said, and sat on the couch, flapping the flaps over my legs and torso like a sleeping bat.
By now, Oren was opening his final present. “Thank you,” he said to Grandma and Grandpa, and held up the giant book for everyone to see:Ferrari:A History in Pictures.
It was now Mom and Dad’s turn to give Grandma and Grandpapresents. Grandpa was given his by my father. It was grown-up, it seemed to me, to do as Grandpa did: to demonstrate restraint and take one’s time to consider the wrapped present’s size and shape, which in this case was small, perhaps that of two matchboxes. Grandpa considered it from every angle. “Open it, Pa,” Mom said, and Oren said, “I helped pick it out,” and Grandpa opened the small box and gave a gravelly “Ha!” The box readBuck, and at the sight of this word, Dad said, “I’m told it’s the best knife there is,” to which Grandpa, having already folded open the blade, pressed his thumb with a milligram of pressure to test its sharpness. “Lo-ver-ly,” he said. He folded the blade, slid it in his pocket, and patted it there as if for later use.
Grandma was also opening her presents. The first contained slippers. “Those are real lambskin and lamb’s wool,” Dad said. “They’re supposed to be the warmest slippers made.”
“Well, I’ll be,” Grandpa said, showing everyone his Black & Decker drill.
Dad said,“Quality, dependability, and innovation.”Which was the tagline.
“Calgon,”Oren said,“take me away.”
“Oh, Lily,” Grandma said, nearly exasperated, and held up not one but two different nightgowns. “What were you thinking?”
My father said, “It’s time for that special someone to open her presents.”
My mother was surprised by this. She said, “I thought we agreed we weren’t going to exchange gifts this year.”
“I thought so too,” Dad said, “but Santa got inspired yesterday.” He got up and kneeled behind the Christmas tree to produce not one but five white boxes that readWoodward & Lothrop. Mom, momentarily gobsmacked, said, “Take this please,” as she handed Dad her mug and then sat on the floor. Even Oren was impressed by the sheer mass of the purchase. Mom lifted the top half of the first box and then peeled back the white crepe. She looked over her shoulder at my father and snorted, everyone waiting to see what he’d bought. Pinching the gift delicately between her fingers, she produced the piece of lingerie. It was made of black lace and there was a rose between the breast cups. Dad said, “I noticed your supply was low,” and then, “Open the next one.”
“Is Mom even allowed to wear those?” Oren asked.
She opened the next one and laughed even harder this time. It was another piece of lingerie, this one pink with a yellow flower, which she tossed atop the previous one. Mom might as well have been alone in the room with Dad. It was, I thought, an amazing trick, a perfect bit of acting that was, of course, not acting because it was my mother. The next box contained another negligee, and Mom, clutching it to her chest, slowly shook her head at Dad as if to say,You are so bad.The thick silk piled on the floor in many-colored disarray. Mom was, by now, embarrassed, but her embarrassment carried no retribution with it, as if it were my father’s privilege to embarrass her, each new box making her laugh harder, its contents a rich, soft heap mounting higher, until she was nearly crying, and this generosity of spirit made all of us seem not just in on the joke but ancillary to their joy and partaking of it. “Shel,” Mom said finally, “they’re beautiful.” She took his neck in her arm to pull him toward her and kissed him, once, on the mouth. Oren was also smiling. And it suddenly filled me with optimism for this new show, for my father’s career, and it made me think, for the first time in a long time, that something good was coming. I even said it to myself in my mind:Something good is coming.And after watching the fire roar with wrapping paper, a sight we all took the time to enjoy before Grandma excused herself to finish preparing breakfast, I decided I would put on all my clothes and, after the meal, go for a walk in the snow.
In our room I tried on my new corduroys, tight at the waist. I pulled my new sweater over the white turtleneck with blue stripes, donned the overcoat, and then considered myself in the mirror. I’d have never chosen such an outfit for myself and I liked what I saw in the reflection, but I felt a terrific need to be seen. When I returned to the living room, Mom, in passing, said, “Don’t you look sharp.” Dad said, “Verygrown-up.” Oren, who was reading his new book with his Walkman on, eyed me with pity, shook his head in disappointment, and said nothing. When I tapped his shoulder and asked him if he wanted to go for a walk after breakfast, he removed his headphones and said he would but he didn’t have a tuxedo. When I asked him if he wanted to play a game together before we ate, he said, “I’m reading right now.” At the table later, after he finished solvinghis Rubik’s Cube, he handed it to me and said, “Merry Christmas,” and returned to the La-Z-Boy.
I drank my brewer’s yeast so that I might be dismissed from breakfast. The pumpkin pie from last night’s meal remained on the buffet, and I snarfed a slice to fuel my walk after I was excused. I slipped on my boots and rolled up my corduroys’ cuffs and exited via the garage. I crossed onto the number three fairway. With each passing minute the snow came down harder. I rounded the water hazard before the green and walked up the hill toward the fourth hole. One of Grandpa’s watch caps would’ve been a good idea, but it didn’t go with the outfit. I felt like I’d been beamed by a transporter from Madison Avenue to the golf course. IwishedI were on Madison Avenue looking so natty. The bare trees lining the fairway appeared black while the evergreens’ branches shook off some of the accumulation in the gusts. A good five inches had already covered the golf course, and the tee box markers were topped with cone-shaped caps of powder. It was lovely to be outside, but I wanted to be holding a girl’s hand. I felt dressed for such an occasion, and I once again tried to imagine the perfect girl. I’d screen-tested with Brooke Shields once; I was playing her younger brother in the scene, and she was so tall, I was practically looking up at her chin. But in my fantasy I ignored this fact. I pretended she had relatives in Manassas, she called to me from one of the fairway-facing houses like we sometimes did to Grandma and Grandpa when they were playing golf, she came running out to join me, and then she and I walked the course’s entirety together, her mitten in my leather glove, our understanding of each other’s souls so perfect we need not utter a word. Surprisingly, I felt a tad winded, perhaps because of all my layers and the heavy boots and the accumulation that made progress a slog. As I ascended the fifth fairway, it occurred to me that I hadn’t exercised since we’d been here and that perhaps walking for as long as I could was a good idea, if for nothing else than to make room for dinner. I passed the fifth hole, then the sixth. I had never been this far on the golf course before. The snow came down more heavily now. Although the sun was still visible through the cloud cover, it was a white eye, as on certain overcast days at the beach, and from the seventh green I looked back to note my discrete footprints, the only blemishes on this perfect world. For all our freedom in New York, our lives, I realized, wereunwittingly circumscribed by familiarity, by paths so narrow it would be like turning around right now and walking back to Grandma’s atop my own tracks. Here, this great white way was like the financial district or the East Village or Alphabet City back home—it was right there, and I had never been, and it was entirely new, and I vowed to explore Greenwich Village as soon as I returned to New York, maybe finally figure out how the street names worked in SoHo. The ninth hole was the steepest uphill of the front nine, a par five, and I noticed a figure in the distance. Whether it was a man or woman, grown-up or child, was impossible to tell. The snow was a blinding ticker tape. The person walked directly toward me, he or she wearing a white down coat and white hat. The wind blew into my face. I lifted my hand to shield my eyes and I saw that it was Bridget.
She walked straight up to me and said, “I thought that was you.”
Now that I wasn’t moving, I noticed how quiet it was. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Looking for my golf ball.”