Remembering Christmas (8 page)

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Authors: Drew Ferguson

BOOK: Remembering Christmas
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“I gotta get back to church for eleven o'clock Mass. I'll pick you up around twelve-thirty. You didn't forget, did you?”
James must have looked perplexed.
“You're coming to my mom's for Christmas dinner. It'll be fun.”
He grabbed James's unshaven cheeks and kissed him on his stale, sour mouth.
“I've been wanting to do that since the first minute I saw you,” Jason said, blushing as he turned to leave, leaving James stunned, his knobby knees shaking and a boner stirring in the baggy crotch of his boxers.
According to Jason, three and half million cars exit the turnpike through Breezewood every year, but not a single soul actually lives there. They sped past the last stoplight at the edge of town and plunged into the wilderness, James's still bloodshot eyes protected from the snow glare by a pair of borrowed sunglasses.
“You're not kidnapping me, are you? I don't want to end up like
Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
” he chuckled, joking of course, but slightly apprehensive about leaving the last evidence of civilization, such as it was, miles behind.
“Don't worry. You're in Pennsylvania. The serial killers are much cuter up here.”
Jason reached over, squeezed James's knee, and growled, doing a damn good imitation of a buzzsaw.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Jason asked.
“No, I don't have a boyfriend.”
“Nice.”
“Do you know how old I am?”
“Old enough to have a lot of gray hair.”
Well, only since last summer, when he stopped coloring it after the famous cable news anchor he was blowing in the Meat Rack on the Island commented that James's hair was the same shade of purple as the bruise on his elbow.
“What makes you so sure I'm gay?” James challenged him, changing the subject.
“Um . . . could it have been . . . maybe . . . let me think . . . the P-town sweatshirt you were wearing last night?”
“What do you know about P-town?” he asked, sounding awfully petulant and irritated for a man who would be forty-seven on his next birthday. James actually hated Provincetown, but had grown attached to the baggy, comfortable sweatshirt the choir director he'd briefly dated had never reclaimed after the breakup.
“I told you last night. I live in Boston.”
Yes, yes he did. Berklee College of Music. He was a dual major, studying music production and engineering, because he needed to make a living, and performance, because guitar was his passion, the most important thing in his life. He intended to support himself working in the studio and play at every open mike in every coffeehouse and dive bar in Manhattan and Brooklyn, Queens even, until he got his big break. James was ashamed at sneering at the dreams of this kid who was so much better prepared to take on New York than a certain naïve young alumnus of Charlottesville who'd arrived in Gotham with a degree in English and great ambitions only to discover that the hiring editors at Scribner's and Knopf weren't interested in anything on his resume except the score on his typing test.
“I'm glad you don't have a boyfriend,” Jason said, his goofy grin illuminating his face. “I like older guys.”
James smiled and shook his head no, discouraging him, then turned and stared at the pristine fields outside the window, thinking about Ernst, wondering how he was spending what was likely his last Christmas and remembering once being a boy who had liked older guys too.
 
Wendy was sprawled on the living room floor, her head and shoulders wedged between the wall and the Christmas tree.
“Flip the switch!” she shouted, apparently not passed out, then bounced up on her feet, mission accomplished, the locomotive of a classic Lionel Pennsylvania Flyer O-Gauge Freight Train set successfully relaunched after derailing off the platform.
“It never runs off the track where it's easy to reach,” she sighed, resigned to the misfortunes of model railroading. It was a damn impressive display: two freight trains, the Pennsy and Chesapeake and Ohio lines, running on multiple level tracks through a scale model of the Town of Motels.
“Aunt Wendy, you remember my friend Jimmy from last night?”
She took a deep breath and drew herself up to full height, an impressive five two at best. She seemed a bit softer than she had last night in her fuzzy white holiday vest with red yarn candy canes embroidered on the panels, but her voice was as intimidating as it had been in the bar.
“He's still too old for you, Jason. But I'm not your mother,” she said, her lazy eye drifting toward the train platform.
“Leave him alone,” the lady of the house barked, setting a tray with an orange cheese ball and Ritz crackers on the coffee table.
James felt his heart jump in his chest, unfairly convicted and sentenced for a crime he hadn't committed. He panicked, worried she'd witnessed his embarrassing outburst while being tucked into bed.
“Look,” he blurted, “I'm not planning on robbing any cradles.”
Jason's mother cocked an eyebrow and grumbled in a low, threatening voice.
“What's the matter? Our Jason isn't good enough for you?”
“Ma,” the boy pleaded. “She's just messing with you, Jimmy. Ma, leave him alone. It's Christmas.”
She giggled apologetically, a tough woman turning unexpectedly shy and girlish as she capitulated to her child.
“Jason, why don't you tell your friend to have a seat.”
“His name's Jimmy, Mama.”
She extended her hand for a formal introduction.
“Kay Previc. Very nice to meet you. Again.”
She cut a wedge of cheese and offered it to him on a cracker. Aunt Wendy poured out four glasses of sparkling cider and proposed a toast.
“I don't keep alcohol in the house,” Kay announced. “We see enough of that at the bar. No need to bring it into our home.”
James felt a bit defensive, suspecting she'd made a wrong assumption about his relationship with alcohol based on his completely out-of-character behavior the prior night.
“I'm not a big drinker anyway,” he asserted.
“There's nothing wrong with being a drinker. That's how I put food on the table and gas in the tank.”
He simply nodded, it being obvious that even his most conciliatory attempts at polite conversation would be challenged. Aunt Wendy tossed back her cider, twitchy and nervous, resigned to the imposition of Prohibition in the household.
“It's very nice you could join us today,” Kay declared after a long, awkward silence.
“Thank you for having me,” he mumbled, trying to swallow a mouthful of dry, salty cheddar.
The strain of trying to entertain her guest was exhausting, and Kay quickly abandoned any pretense of playing hostess and sank into an easy chair in front of the television, falling dead asleep during the second half of a Pistons / Mavericks holiday showdown. Jason suggested they go for a walk, obviously wanting to take advantage of this opportunity to spend a few moments alone. He lent James a wool cap and a pair of gloves and looped a scarf around his neck, pulling it gently, a maternal touch, solicitous. The borrowed rubber boots fit well enough over James's shoes, a little large maybe, but manageable.
The sun had lost its midday brilliance, and the afternoon had turned a soft, pale gray. Another storm was massing above the mountain range, and the wind was rising again, rustling through the naked tree branches.
“I think it's going to snow again,” James said, worried about being stranded in this desolate outpost where snowplows seldom ventured, certainly never on Christmas Day.
“It will be real pretty when it does. Wait and see,” Jason said, beckoning James to follow him down a steep, ice-crusted lane that descended through a thicket of soaring birch trees.
“Are you okay?” he asked, turning and reaching for James's hand.
“Sure,” he said, his uncertain footing betraying his false bravado.
A dog barked in the distance, and some unseen creature bolted through the dense undergrowth. Jason was standing at the bottom of the hill, holding a broken branch like a staff. He lifted it above his head and brought it crashing back to earth, puncturing the sheath of ice beneath his feet. The water gurgled as it raced below the cracked frozen surface.
“Don't worry,” he laughed. “It's only a shallow creek. No danger of drowning.”
Still, the crunchy crush of yielding ice wasn't reassuring. James liked his toes too much to lose them to frostbite.
“We're standing on the Susquehanna watershed. When I was a little kid I dreamed about building a raft and taking it all the way to the ocean.”
“Like Huckleberry Finn.”
“Yeah,” he laughed. “Except I've never read that book, but I think I saw the movie.”
He took a lumbering step toward James, threw open his arms, and wrapped him in a tight bear hug. The dull white sun was barely visible behind a shroud of thin, hazy clouds.
“My dad shot himself down here when I was eight,” he confided. “On the first day of school after Christmas. The ambulance was taking him away when the bus dropped me off. I burnt down the barn that summer. My mother always says it was an accident. But I started the fire on purpose.”
He turned away, not wanting to see the expression on James's face, and ran back up the lane. He stopped when he reached the crest of the hill, waiting for James. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they turned to survey the horizon, range after range of the ancient Alleghenies still visible in the dying light, carpeted with hibernating hardwoods waiting, as ever, to blossom again in the spring. Snow was blowing in from the north, and the sun finally expired in a last gasp of bright violet streaks that trailed beyond the farthest visible mountain ridge. James thought for a moment the boy was crying, then realized it was only snowflakes melting on Jason's broad cheeks.
“It is pretty, isn't it?” he asked, his expectant face looking impossibly vulnerable, able to be easily wounded. “I wanted to tell you what I did so you would know from the beginning, just in case you might think you could like me.”
 
The meal was simple. A turkey breast and sausage stuffing, candied yams, jellied cranberry. Aunt Wendy didn't seem to have much of an appetite except for the red velvet cake dessert; she excused herself, pleading fatigue, while James and his host cleared the table.
“Her diabetes is out of control,” Kay fretted. “She refuses to take care of herself. Shoots up with insulin, then helps herself to a piece of lemon meringue pie.”
James could see she was preparing to embark on her second widowhood, having given up on Wendy as a lost cause. He suspected the younger woman with the mullet was the insurance policy she'd taken out against a lonely future in this house high in the mountains and deep in the woods.
“You boys leave me to finish up in here. Go enjoy the rest of Christmas,” she insisted, taking a scouring pad to the roasting pan.
“What's your favorite Christmas song?” Jason asked as they settled on the sofa, the only light the soft glow of the tree.
“Not Rudolph,” James swore, cringing at the memory of last night.
“Good.”
“The ‘Hallelujah Chorus,'” James said. “It's my favorite.”
Jason looked exasperated, shaking his head. “That's Easter! Everyone thinks it's Christmas music, but it's an Easter chorus! I had to play it as the recessional at eight-thirty and eleven o'clock Mass today. It was ridiculous!”
“Then why did you do it?”
“Because the Catholics pay me twenty-five bucks a service. That's fifty bucks. And the priest gave me an extra twenty-dollar tip. That's good money.”
“But you like Handel?” James asked.
“I love Handel.”

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