A Christmas Story (8 page)

Early the next morning the first trickle of a flood of envy-tinged congratulations began to come in. Distant uncles, hazy second cousins, real estate agents, and Used-Car salesmen called to offer heartfelt felicitations and incidental suggestions for highly rewarding investments they had at their disposal. The Old Man immediately, once his head had partially cleared, began to lay plans. Perhaps a Spanish adobe-type house in Coral Gables, or maybe he’d open up his own Bowling Alley. Victory is heady stuff, and has often proved fatal to the victors.

The next afternoon a large unmarked delivery truck stopped in front of the house. Two workmen unloaded a square, sealed, waist-high cardboard carton, which was lugged into the kitchen. They left and drove off. Somehow an air of foreboding surrounded their stealthy, unexplained operation.

The Old Man, his face flushed with excitement, fumbling in supercharged haste to lay bare his hard-won symbol of Victory, struggled to open the carton. A billowing mushroom of ground excelsior surged up and out. In he plunged. And there it was.

The yellow kitchen light bulb illumined the scene starkly and yet with a touch of glowing promise. Tenderly he lifted from its nest of fragrant straw the only thing he had ever won in his life. We stood silent and in awe at the sheer shimmering, unexpected beauty of the “Major Award.”

Before us in the heavy, fragrant air of our cabbage-scented kitchen stood a
life-size
lady’s leg, in true blushing-pink flesh tones and wearing a modish black patent leather pump with spike heel. When I say life-size I am referring to a rather large lady who obviously had dined well and had matured nicely. It was a well filled-out leg!

It was so realistic that for a brief instant we thought that we had received in the mail the work of an artist of the type that was very active at that period—the Trunk Murderer. For some reason this spectacular form of self-expression has declined, but in those days something in the air caused many a parson’s daughter to hack up her boyfriend into small segments which were then shipped separately to people chosen at random from the phone book. Upon being apprehended and tried, she was almost always acquitted, whereupon she accepted numerous offers to appear in Vaudeville as a featured headliner, recalling her days as a Trunk Murderer complete with props and a dramatized stage version of the deed.

For a split instant it seemed as though our humble family had made the headlines.

My mother was the first to recover.

“What is it?”

“A … leg,” my father incisively shot back.

It was indeed a leg, more of a leg in fact than any leg any of us had ever seen!

“But … what is it?”

“Well, it’s a leg. Like a statue, I guess.”

“A
statue?”

Our family had never owned a statue. A statue was always considered to be a lady wearing a wreath and concrete robes, holding aloft a torch in one hand and a book in the other. This was the only kind of statue outside of generals sitting on horses that we had ever heard about. They all had names like
VICTORY
or
PEACE
. And if this was a statue, it could only have one name:

WHOOPEE!

My mother was trying to get herself between the “statue” and the kids.

“Isn’t it time for bed?”

“Holy Smokes, would you look at that!”

My father was warming up.

“Holy Smokes, would you
look
at that? Do you know what this is?”

My mother did not answer, just silently edged herself between my kid brother and the magnificent limb.

“Would you believe it, it’s a
LAMP!
”

It was indeed a lamp, a lamp in its own way a
Definitive
lamp. A master stroke of the lightoliers’ art. It was without question the most magnificent lamp that we had ever seen.

This was the age of spindly, artificially antiqued, teetery brass contrivances called “bridge lamps.” These were usually of the school of design known as WPA Neo-Romanticism, a school noted for its heavy use of brass flower petals and mottled parchment shades depicting fauns and dryads inscribed in dark browns and greens. The light bulbs themselves were often formed to emulate a twisted, spiraled candle flame of
a peculiar yellow-orange tint. These bulbs were unique in that they contrived somehow to make a room even dimmer when they were turned on. My mother was especially proud of her matched set, which in addition to brass tulip buds teetered shakily on bases cleverly designed to look like leopards’ paws.

On the kitchen table stood the lamp that was destined to play a subtle and important role in our future. My Old Man dove back into the box, burrowing through the crackling packing.

“
AHA!
Here’s the shade!”

A monstrous, barrel-shaped bulging tube of a shade, a striking Lingerie pink in color, topped by a glittering cut-crystal orb, was lifted reverently up and put onto the table. Never had shade so beautifully matched base. Within an instant the Old Man had screwed it atop the fulsome thigh, and there it stood, a full four feet from coquettishly pointed toe to sparkling crystal. His eyes boggled behind his Harold Lloyd glasses.

“My God! Ain’t that great? Wow!!”

He was almost overcome by Art.

“What a great lamp!”

“Oh … I don’t know.”

My mother was strictly the crocheted-doily type.

“What a great lamp! Wow! This is exactly what we need for the front window. Wow!”

He swept up the plastic trophy, his symbol of Superiority, and rushed out through the dining room and into the
living room. Placing the lamp squarely in the middle of the library table, he aligned it exactly at the center of the front window. We trailed behind him, applauding and yipping. He was unrolling the cord, down on all fours.

“Where’s the damn plug?”

“Behind the sofa.”

My mother answered quietly, in a vaguely detached tone.

“Quick! Go out in the kitchen and get me an extension!”

Our entire world was strung together with “extensions.” Outlets in our house were rare and coveted, each one buried under a bakelite mound of three-way, seven-way, and ten-way plugs and screw sockets, the entire mess caught in a twisted, snarling Gordian knot of frayed and cracked lamp cords, radio cords, and God knows what. Occasionally in some houses a critical point was reached and one of these electrical bombs went off, sometimes burning down whole blocks of homes, or more often blowing out the main fuse, plunging half the town into darkness.

“Get the extension from the toaster!”

He shouted from under the sofa where he was burrowing through the electrical rat’s nest.

I rushed out into the kitchen, grabbed the extension, and scurried back to the scene of action.

“Give it to me! Quick!”

His hand reached out from the darkness. For a few moments—full silence, except for clickings and scratchings. And deep breathing from behind the sofa. The snap of a few sparks, a quick whiff of ozone, and the lamp blazed forth in
unparalleled glory. From ankle to thigh the translucent flesh radiated a vibrant, sensual, luminous orange-yellow-pinkish nimbus of Pagan fire. All it needed was tom-toms and maybe a gong or two. And a tenor singing in a high, quavery, earnest voice:

It was alive!

“Hey, look.”

The Old Man was reading from the instruction pamphlet which had been attached to the cord.

“It’s got a two-way switch. It says here: ‘In one position it’s a tasteful Night Light and in the other an effective, scientifically designed Reading Lamp.’ Oh boy, is this great!”

He reached up under the shade to throw the switch.

“Why can’t you wait until the kids are in bed?”

My mother shoved my kid brother behind her. The shade had a narrow scallop of delicate lace circling its lower regions.

“Watch this!”

The switch clicked. Instantly the room was flooded with a wave of pink light that was pure perfume of illumination.

“Now that is a real lamp!”

The Old Man backed away in admiration.

“Hey wait. I want to see how it looks from the outside.”

He rushed into the outer darkness, across the front porch and out onto the street. From a half block away he shouted:

“Move it a little to the left. Okay. That’s got it. You oughta see it from out here!”

The entire neighborhood was turned on. It could be seen up and down Cleveland Street, the symbol of his victory.

The rest of that evening was spent in honest, simple Peasant admiration for a thing of transcendent beauty, very much like the awe and humility that we felt before such things as Christmas trees and used cars with fresh coats of Simonize. The family went to bed in a restless mood of festive gaiety. That is, everyone except my mother, who somehow failed to vibrate on the same frequency as my father’s spectacular Additional Major Award.

That night, for the first time, our home had a Night Light. The living room was bathed through the long, still, silent hours with the soft glow of electric Sex. The stage was set; the principal players were in the wings. The cue was about to be given for the greatest single fight that ever happened in our family.

Real-life man and wife, mother and father battles rarely even remotely resemble the Theatrical or Fictional version of the Struggle between the Sexes. Homes have been wracked by strife and dissension because of a basic difference of opinion over where to go on a vacation, or what kind of car to buy, or a toaster that made funny noises, or a sister-in-law’s false teeth, not to mention who is going to take out the garbage. And why.

In all my experience I have never known homes that had the kind of fights that appear in plays by Edward Albee and
Tennessee Williams. It would never have occurred to my father to bellow dramatically in the living room, after twenty-seven Scotches:

“You bitch! You’re not going to emasculate
me!”

The Old Man would not have even known what the word “emasculate”
meant
, much less figure that that’s what my mother was up to.

On the other hand, my mother thought “emasculation” had something to do with women getting the vote. But, in any event, Sex is rarely argued and fought over in any household
I
ever heard of, outside of heaving novels and nervous plays. That was not the kind of fights we had at home. There was no question of Emasculation or Role Reversal. My mother was a
Mother
. She knew it. My Old Man was … the Old Man.
He
knew it. There was no problem of Identity, just a gigantic clash of two opposing physical presences: the Immovable Body and the Force That Is Not To Be Denied.

The lamp stood in the middle of the window for months. Every night my mother would casually, without a word, draw the curtains shut, while Bing Crosby sang from the old Gothic Crosley:

the theme song of the Kraft Music Hall. The Old Man would get up out of his chair. Casually. He would pull the curtain back, look out—pretending to be examining the
weather—and leave it that way. Ten minutes later my mother would get up out of her chair, casually, saying:

“Gee, I feel a draft coming in from somewhere.”

This slowly evolving ballet spun on through the Winter months, gathering momentum imperceptively night after night. Meanwhile, the lamp itself had attracted a considerable personal following among cruising prides of pimply-faced Adolescents who night after night could hardly wait for darkness to fall and the soft, sinuous radiation of Passion to light up the drab, dark corners of Cleveland Street.

The pop company enjoyed sales of mounting intensity, even during the normally slack Winter months. Their symbol now stood for far more than a sickeningly sweet orange drink that produced window-rattling burps and cavities in Adolescent teeth of such spectacular dimensions as to rival Mammoth Cave. Night after night kids’ eyes glowed in the darkness out on the street before our house, like predatory carnivores of the jungle in full cry. Night after night the lady’s leg sent out its silent message.

The breaking point came, as all crucial moments in History do, stealthily and on cats’ feet, on a day that was notable for its ordinariness. We never know when lightning is about to strike, or a cornice to fall. Perhaps it is just as well.

On the fateful day I came home from school and immediately opened the refrigerator door, looking for Something To Eat. Seconds later I am knocking together a salami sandwich. My Old Man—it was his day off—is in the john. Hollering, as he always did, accompanied by the roar of running
water, snatches of song, complaints about No Pressure—the usual. My mother is somewhere off in the front of the house, puttering about. Dusting.

Life is one long song. The White Sox have won a ball game, and it’s only spring training. The Old Man is singing. My brother is under the daybed, whimpering. The salami is as sweet as life itself.

The first fireflies were beginning to flicker in the cotton-woods. Northern Indiana slowly was at long last emerging from the iron grip of the Midwestern Winter. A softness in the air; a quickening of the pulse. Expectations long lying dormant in the blackened rock ice of Winter sent out tentative tender green shoots and yawned toward the smoky sun. Somewhere off in the distance, ball met bat; robin called to robin, and a screen door slammed.

In the living room my mother is talking to the aphids in her fern plant. She fought aphids all of her life. The water roared. I started on a second sandwich. And then:

CAAA-RAASHH
!

“… oh!” A phony, stifled gasp in the living room.

A split second of silence while the fuse sputtered and ignited, and it began.

The Old Man
knew
. He had been fearing it since the very first day. The bathroom door slammed open. He rushed out, dripping, carrying a bar of Lifebuoy, eyes rolling wildly.

“What broke!? What happened?!
WHAT BROKE!!?
”

“… the lamp.” A soft, phony voice, feigning heartbreak.