A Christmas Memory

the roof, and to be right there at the foot of the chimney to shake hands with Santa Claus. And on this particular Christmas Eve, nothing, it seemed to me, could be easier than staying awake.

My father’s house had three floors and seven rooms, several of them huge, especially the three leading to the patio garden: a parlor, a dining room and a “musical” room for those who liked to dance and play and deal cards. The two floors above were trimmed with lacy balconies whose dark green iron intricacies were delicately entwined with bougainvillea and rippling vines of scarlet spider orchids—a plant that resembles lizards flicking their red tongues. It was the kind of house best displayed by lacquered floors and some wicker here, some velvet there. It could have been mistaken for the house of a rich man; rather, it was the place of a man with an appetite for elegance. To a poor (but happy) barefoot boy from Alabama it was a mystery how he managed to satisfy that desire.

But it was no mystery to my mother, who, having graduated from college, was putting her magnolia delights to full use while struggling to find in New York a truly suitable fiance who could afford Sutton Place apartments and sable coats. No, my father’s resources were familiar to her, though she never mentioned the matter until many years later, long after she had acquired ropes of pearls to glisten around her sable-wrapped throat.

She had come to visit me in a snobbish New England boarding school (where my tuition was paid by her rich and generous husband), when something I said tossed her into a rage; she shouted: “So you don’t know how he lives so well? Charters yachts and cruises the Greek Islands? His wives! Think of the whole long string of them. All widows. All rich. Very rich. And all much older than he. Too old for any sane young man to marry. That’s why you are his only child. And that’s why I’ll never have another child—I was too young to have any babies, but he was a beast, he wrecked me, he ruined me—”

Just a gigolo, everywhere I go, people stop and stare… Moon, moon over Miami… This is my first affair, so please be kind… Hey, mister, can you spare a dime?… Just a gigolo, everywhere I go, people stop and stare…

All the while she talked (and I tried not to listen, because by telling me my birth had destroyed her, she was destroying me), these tunes ran through my head, or tunes like them. They helped me not to hear her, and they reminded me of the strange haunting party my father had given in New Orleans that Christmas Eve.

The patio was filled with candles, and so were the three rooms leading off it. Most of the guests were gathered in the parlor, where a subdued fire in the fireplace made the Christmas tree glitter; but many others were dancing in the music room and the patio to music from a wind-up Victrola. After I had been introduced to the guests, and been made much of, I had been sent upstairs; but from the terrace outside my French-shuttered bedroom door, I could watch all the party, see all the couples dancing. I watched my father waltz a graceful lady around the pool that surrounded the mermaid fountain. She was graceful, and dressed in a wispy silver dress that shimmered in the candlelight; but she was old—at least ten years older than my father, who was then thirty-five.

I suddenly realized my father was by far the youngest person at his party. None of the ladies, charming as they were, were any younger than the willowy waltzer in the floating silver dress. It was the same with the men, so many of whom were smoking sweet-smelling Havana cigars; more than half of them were old enough to be my father’s father.

Then I saw something that made me blink. My father and his agile partner had danced themselves into a niche shadowed by scarlet spider orchids; and they were embracing, kissing. I was so startled, I was so irate, I ran into my bedroom, jumped into bed and pulled the covers over my head. What would my nice-looking young father want with an old woman like that! And why didn’t all those people downstairs go home so Santa Claus could come? I lay awake for hours listening to them leave, and when my father said good-bye for the last time, I heard him climb the stairs and open my door to peek at me; but I pretended to be asleep.

Several things occurred that kept me awake the whole night. First, the footfalls, the noise of my father running up and down the stairs, breathing heavily. I had to see what he was up to. So I hid on the balcony among the bougainvillea. From there, I had a complete view of the parlor and the Christmas tree and the fireplace where a fire still palely burned. Moreover, I could see my father. He was crawling around under the tree arranging a pyramid of packages. Wrapped in purple paper, and red and gold and white and blue, they rustled as he moved them about. I felt dizzy, for what I saw forced me to reconsider everything. If these were presents intended for me, then obviously they had not been ordered by the Lord and delivered by Santa Claus; no, they were gifts bought and wrapped by my father. Which meant that my rotten little cousin Billy Bob and other rotten kids like him weren’t lying when they taunted me and told me there was no Santa Claus. The worst thought was: Had Sook known the truth, and lied to me? No, Sook would never lie to me. She believed. It was just that—well, though she was sixty-something, in some ways she was at least as much of a child as I was.

I watched until my father had finished his chores and blown out the few candles that still burned. I waited until I was sure he was in bed and sound asleep. Then I crept downstairs to the parlor, which still reeked of gardenias and Havana cigars.

I sat there, thinking: Now I will have to be the one to tell Sook the truth. An anger, a weird malice was spiraling inside me: It was not directed towards my father, though he turned out to be its victim.

When the dawn came, I examined the tags attached to each of the packages. They all said: “For Buddy.” All but one, which said: “For Evangeline.” Evangeline was an elderly colored woman who drank Coca-Cola all day long and weighed three hundred pounds; she was my father’s housekeeper—she also mothered him. I decided to open the packages: It was Christmas morning, I was awake, so why not? I won’t bother to describe what was inside them: just shirts and sweaters and dull stuff like that. The only thing I appreciated was a quite snazzy cap-pistol. Somehow I got the idea it would be fun to waken my father by firing it. So I did. Bang. Bang. Bang.

He raced out of his room, wild-eyed.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Buddy—what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Stop that!”

I laughed. “Look, Daddy. Look at all the wonderful things Santa Claus brought me.”

Calm now, he walked into the parlor and hugged me. “You like what Santa Claus brought you?”

I smiled at him. He smiled at me. There was a tender lingering moment, shattered when I said: “Yes. But what are you going to give me, Daddy?” His smile evaporated. His eyes narrowed suspiciously—you could see that he thought I was pulling some kind of stunt. But then he blushed, as though he was ashamed to be thinking what he was thinking, He patted my head, and coughed and said: “Well, I thought I’d wait and let you pick out something you wanted. Is there anything particular you want?”

I reminded him of the airplane we had seen in the toy store on Canal Street. His face sagged. Oh, yes, he remembered the airplane and how expensive it was. Nevertheless, the next day I was sitting in that airplane dreaming I was zooming toward heaven while my father wrote out a check for a happy salesman. There had been some argument about shipping the plane to Alabama, but I was adamant—I insisted it should go with me on the bus that I was taking at two o’clock that afternoon. The salesman settled it by calling the bus company, who said that they could handle the matter easily.

But I wasn’t free of New Orleans yet. The problem was a large silver flask of moonshine; maybe it was because of my departure, but anyway my father had been swilling it all day, and on the way to the bus station, he scared me by grabbing my wrist and harshly whispering: “I’m not going to let you go. I can’t let you go back to that crazy family in that crazy old house. Just look at what they’ve done to you. A boy six, almost seven, talking about Santa Claus! It’s all their fault, all those sour old spinsters with their Bibles and their knitting needles, those drunken uncles. Listen to me, Buddy. There is no God! There is no Santa Claus.” He was squeezing my wrist so hard that it ached. “Sometimes, oh, God, I think your mother and I, the both of us, we ought to kill ourselves to have let this happen—” (He never killed himself, but my mother did: She walked down the Seconal road thirty years ago.) “Kiss me. Please. Please. Kiss me. Tell your daddy that you love him.” But I couldn’t speak. I was terrified I was going to miss my bus. And I was worried about my plane, which was strapped to the top of the taxi. “Say it: ‘I love you.’ Say it. Please. Buddy. Say it.”

It was lucky for me that our taxi-driver was a goodhearted man. Because if it hadn’t been for his help, and