Glimmering (43 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Hand
“. . .
billing it as the most fabulous bash since King Tut partied on the Nile!”
exulted the announcer.
billing it as the most fabulous bash since King Tut partied on the Nile!”
exulted the announcer.
The segment ended and another began, this one about millenarian cults like the Montana-based Cognitive Dissidents, who were planning their own mass suicide at the stroke of midnight, December 31. There was a commercial for telephone insurance. Then a few more worried-looking people speculated about the end of the world. Jack made a rude noise. He turned the volume off, but left the TV on—he was superstitious about turning it off—and went into the kitchen.
It was hard to believe that anything was coming to an end, except for Lazyland’s supply of coffee, which was dismayingly meager: only one vacuum-sealed bag remained. Leonard was their sole link with the world of such luxuries, but Leonard had not returned to Lazyland since he’d brought the Fusax. And Jack knew better than to hope that coffee would materialize on the shelves at Delmonico’s during one of his forays there for supplies.
Still, later that morning he was amazed to see what Delmonico’s could produce. Christmas was only a week off. Mrs. Delmonico had brought out the old cardboard decorations—Santas and elves and angels, all from Finnegan’s Variety Shops circa 1967—and strung up tired garlands. Like some old-time general store, the venerable Yonkers grocery had begun to exhibit delicacies of the season. Oranges in wooden crates, their knurled skins more green than orange, and fist-sized pomegranates wrapped in varicolored tissue. (The paper could be used for wrapping presents, Mrs. Delmonico advised Jack. Wasn’t it pretty?) White rabbits and evil-looking chickens dangled upside down from their feet above the butcher counter. There were boxes of handmade toys, cars and boats and rocket ships carved from Popsicle sticks, sock puppets, old Barbies whose plastic faces had been scrubbed and repainted with ballpoint ink, dressed in new hand-stitched clothes.
And one afternoon, beneath a churning claret sky, an ancient pickup truck pulled up in front of the grocery, its bed piled ten feet high with—
“Christmas trees!” exclaimed Jack.
A crowd was gathering,
fellahin
who camped at Getty Square and a few wary shoppers like Jack, who carried baseball bats and wore football helmets. A
fellahin
girl, dressed in shredded garbage bags, stood on tiptoe beside the truck to breathe in rapturously.
fellahin
who camped at Getty Square and a few wary shoppers like Jack, who carried baseball bats and wore football helmets. A
fellahin
girl, dressed in shredded garbage bags, stood on tiptoe beside the truck to breathe in rapturously.
“I remember these!
”
she cried.
”
she cried.
Jack smiled. He moved closer, lifted his surgical mask, and touched the soft boughs behind their protective plastic mesh. The trees were leggy, their limbs swept into torturous angles by the webbing. He ran a finger along one slender branch. Needles rained onto the truck bed—it was covered with needles, rust-colored and greenish yellow, and twisted pine cones like arthritic fingers, and scaly bits of bark.
But then Jack closed his eyes. Immediately darkness was there, the expectant predawn hush of a house buried in snow, whispers from his brothers’ bed and that smell, the holiest scent he had ever known: evergreen. To Jack that had always been Christmas. Not the toys, not the lights, not even the baby in the barn, but this: night and bitter cold, snow beneath and desolate stars above, a green tree in the wood that breathed in the darkness but breathed out spring.
“’Scuse me, ’scuse me, sir—”
He jolted from his dream, stood to let the driver and his lanky teenage son open up the truck bed. They unloaded the trees—white pine, he heard the driver say, lumber trees but they were harvesting them now, they needed the money too badly—and leaned them up against the storefront, hiding the plywood and sheet metal that covered its windows. Someone asked how much the trees were. Jack sucked his breath in at the price, but then thought of the money that would be coming from the sale of
The Gaudy Book.
Any day, maybe; besides which his credit was always good at Delmonico’s—a hundred years ago it had been his great-grandfather’s store, old Sabe Delmonico had bought it during the Depression but the Delmonicos considered the Finnegans part of their extended family, even now.
The Gaudy Book.
Any day, maybe; besides which his credit was always good at Delmonico’s—a hundred years ago it had been his great-grandfather’s store, old Sabe Delmonico had bought it during the Depression but the Delmonicos considered the Finnegans part of their extended family, even now.
He bought a tree.
“Can you get that home by yourself?” Mrs. Delmonico eyed Jack dubiously, and before he could answer shouted out at the truck driver’s son. “Hey! YOU! C’mere, we got a job for you—carry this nice man’s tree for him, okay? Just a couple blocks. Tip him nice, Jackie, eh?”
She winked, turned to survey the fragrant benison that had befallen her shop.
So they brought the tree home, Jack and the boy. His name was Eben, he and his dad had driven down from New Hampshire, it took them three days.
“Truck kept breaking. We ran out of gas, then some guy tried to steal our tires, but my dad pounded him, hah!” The boy was thin but tall, exhilarated to be so far away from home. He smelled of pine resin and diesel oil. He shouldered the tree like a rifle and loped ahead of Jack, repeating over and over how he’d never been to New York and his father had promised they’d go to the city, after the trees were sold.
“My mom, she don’t like that!”
Jack shook his head. “I’m with her, Eben.”
At the gate to Lazyland Jack made the boy hand the tree over. “I can get it from here,” he explained. He wanted to bring the tree down to the house himself. “But wait, here—”
He held out a fifty-dollar bill. It wasn’t much, and for a moment he was afraid Eben would refuse to take it, or complain. But the boy only smiled, shook his head, and shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Hey, no sir, you just enjoy your tree, okay? Merry Christmas!” And he spun away, whistling to himself.
The tree was heavier than it had looked, for all that it was scrawny compared to Lazyland’s trees of yore. Jack dragged it down the driveway, looking back anxiously to see if he was leaving a trail of needles. Inside he was met by Keeley and Marz and Mrs. Iverson, who exclaimed and offered advice as to how to prop it up in the dining room until the old wrought-iron tree stand could be found.
“It’s like Charlie Brown’s tree!” Mrs. Iverson poked the tree where it leaned against the china cupboard, gazing disapprovingly at the needles that littered the carpet beneath.
“It’s beautiful, dear,” said Keeley. “Hush, Larena.”
“Can I help decorate?” begged Marz.
So then he had to go up to the attic, rooting around in one of the odd-shaped closets under the eaves until he found the boxes there, each carton big enough to hide several children and stuffed to overflowing with Christmas: garlands, plastic holly, tangled strands of dangerous-looking lights, old cards that turned to dust when he touched them, waterfalls of tinsel, ancient embossed Santas with cotton-batting beards that had frightened Jack when he was small, the wrought-iron stand (hooray!), wax balls from Germany with flowers on them, pine cones, ceramic and papier-mâché and cardboard Santas, elves, reindeer, trees, bells, chapels, snowmen, angels, and wreaths, as well as four statues of crippled boys and reformed cranks.
Last of all he pulled out an enormous carton that contained box upon box of Sparkle-Glo ornaments: rubies and emeralds and diamonds of blown glass, purple grapes, grinning clowns and leering dogs, churches and fish and a sailing ship with tissue-paper mast and rigging of gold filigree.
“Oh, look,
look
!” cried Marzana, sitting on the attic floor with legs akimbo, her belly awash in wrappings and ribbons and pine needles. She held up an icicle of blown glass, striated silver and cobalt. “They used to sell these in Rybnik!”
look
!” cried Marzana, sitting on the attic floor with legs akimbo, her belly awash in wrappings and ribbons and pine needles. She held up an icicle of blown glass, striated silver and cobalt. “They used to sell these in Rybnik!”
Jack smiled. “Is that where you grew up?”
The girl watched the little dagger turn slowly in the air before her. After a moment she said, “I don’t remember,” her voice distant.
Jack waited, but she said no more. “Okay.” He picked up one of the cartons. “I don’t think you better carry any of these.”
“But they’re not heavy!”
“I know, but they’re big. Here, you can carry this down, okay, that’s the star for the top, just don’t drop it—”
He made five trips, pausing on each landing to catch his breath then plunge back upward. There was only a single naked electric bulb in the old nursery attic, which cast shadows over more of the room than it lit. Outside, night was chasing the sky in harlequin colors, crimson and cadmium yellow, giving everything an expectant, febrile glow. The sensation that something was going to happen filled Jack, as well; a subcutaneous anticipation of Christmas, even a Christmas as threadbare as this one promised to be. There had been no more visits from the postman, and no word from GFI as to when he might expect the money from the sale of
The Gaudy Book.
So Christmas would pretty much consist of what he and Mrs. Iverson could cobble together, or from the largesse of Mrs. Delmonico. He had put aside any notion of attending GFI’s party—what could he have been thinking, with Marz ready to blow like the
Hindenburg
and no one but Jack and two ancients to attend her?
The Gaudy Book.
So Christmas would pretty much consist of what he and Mrs. Iverson could cobble together, or from the largesse of Mrs. Delmonico. He had put aside any notion of attending GFI’s party—what could he have been thinking, with Marz ready to blow like the
Hindenburg
and no one but Jack and two ancients to attend her?
He walked to the far side of the room, and stared out the row of attic windows, down the black slope to the river. There was a sequined scatter of lights upon the Palisades, where for so long there had been darkness, and farther south the luminous arch of the George Washington Bridge, red and green curves like slices of neon watermelon, nibbled black where lights had burned out on the spans. The sight should have comforted him. Instead it made him uneasy. It was like seeing Marzana in his aunt Mary Anne’s bed that first night she appeared at Lazyland—he felt certain that something was very wrong, somewhere, despite this brave false show. Any moment now he would find out what it was.
He shivered and turned from the window.
What a way to think at Christmas.
Then he hefted the last carton of ornaments, switched off the attic light, and hurried downstairs to attend to the tree.
What a way to think at Christmas.
Then he hefted the last carton of ornaments, switched off the attic light, and hurried downstairs to attend to the tree.
But of course the power was down again when Jule arrived unexpectedly at Lazyland, a week and a half later. It had failed the same night that Jack and Marzana and Mrs. Iverson decorated the tree in the formal dining room, with Keeley officiating from a chair. It was not exactly resplendent. Even with the lights turned off it retained its sadly etiolated quality, and drooped in the shadow of the robust Chippendale cabinet because there was no true darkness against which the glory of glass and gold and painted tin could shine. The strings of old lights (dangerously frayed and much repaired with electrical tape) glowed bravely, but they were overshadowed by the vulgar show outside.
Still, they all stood and admired it. Jack made some adjustments (Marz lacked a light touch with tinsel). Keeley suggested that the crenellated spike that topped the tree could perhaps go a little more to the left, and Jack was just clambering back onto the kitchen stool when—
Eeeeep . . .
Dying wail of the CO detector, chorus of clicks from answering machine; and the gallant tree went dark.
“Nooo!” cried Marzana.
Jack shook his head. “It was these damn
lights.”
lights.”
He began the search for lanterns and candles, berating himself for not making a point of retrieving them while the power was on. You couldn’t find candles anymore, anywhere or batteries, or oil lanterns. Occasionally Jack might glimpse a flashlight behind the counter at Delmonico’s, bartered for food; but it would never find its way onto a shelf. The Delmonicos had family all across the city who needed light just like everyone else.
In the linen closet he found an unopened box of white tapers. He tore the cellophane wrapping and removed four, thought for a moment, and replaced one. He could find his way in the dark;
someone
had better start finding their way in the dark. Wind clawed its way through the narrow back stairwell, brought with it shrieking laughter. He turned and pressed his face against the small oriel window that faced north, to where other mansions had once stood in line with Lazyland gazing down upon the Hudson.
someone
had better start finding their way in the dark. Wind clawed its way through the narrow back stairwell, brought with it shrieking laughter. He turned and pressed his face against the small oriel window that faced north, to where other mansions had once stood in line with Lazyland gazing down upon the Hudson.
In the last few weeks he had made a deliberate effort not to look out upon them. If he saw Marz there in her customary trance, he would continue quickly up to his own room. So he never knew whether or not electric lights ever brightened the broken windows, and he tried not to think about what kind of people were inside the ruins, starving or fighting or fucking on the floor.
Now he could not turn away.
In the shattered buildings fires leapt, the broken windows gleamed as though they opened onto the inferno. He heard music, cymbals, and drums; someone singing. There was light within, light and music and many moving shadows. He imagined they were dancing amidst the rubble.
It struck him, as though he had been knocked on the head: people were
living
out there in the ruins. They weren’t holed up like himself or the other scared customers who could barely muster the courage to raid Delmonico’s for food. They weren’t killing themselves with drink and grief like Jule, or pretending nothing had changed, like Emma. Certainly they weren’t bashing their heads against the wall because there were no candles left. If they were bashing their heads it was because they were
dancing.
They didn’t wear masks or helmets to protect themselves from the world; they scarcely wore
clothes.
He recalled Marzana’s words, her first night at Lazyland—
living
out there in the ruins. They weren’t holed up like himself or the other scared customers who could barely muster the courage to raid Delmonico’s for food. They weren’t killing themselves with drink and grief like Jule, or pretending nothing had changed, like Emma. Certainly they weren’t bashing their heads against the wall because there were no candles left. If they were bashing their heads it was because they were
dancing.
They didn’t wear masks or helmets to protect themselves from the world; they scarcely wore
clothes.
He recalled Marzana’s words, her first night at Lazyland—
They were my family. We were living down by the river and the fucking cops blew us out . . .
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