He ruined Christmas that year, on Christmas Eve, after the mother left to serve at a cocktail party for some big shots across the bay. It was one of his happy holiday drunks, so after cooking the boys a franks-and-beans dinner, he decided it would be okay to let them each open one gift. The mother wouldn’t be back until at least 10 o’clock. What the hell? he thought. Let the kids have some fun. “Just one, you hear me?” he warned them.
He followed the boys into the basement. The gifts were kept in a dirt-floored side room that used to be a coal bin. It smelled like dust. The boys knew by then there was no Santa Claus. There was just a pile of plastic department store bags, sealed with double knots.
The mother had hunted for bargains at Grant’s and Korvettes and in the Sears catalog. She scoured five-and-dimes for little wind-up robots, miniature comics, and foil-wrapped Santas for the stockings. Socking away petty cash all year in her Christmas Club at the bank provided what she called a “good Christmas,” which was most of the childhood magic the boys got in a year.
Throughout the month before Christmas, the bags taunted the middle boy. He would sneak into the coal room and run his hands across the bags, trying to read the contents. But, oh man, he knew better than to undo any of the knots—except this time, because his father gave them permission, and what he says goes.
The oldest, a Scout who knew his way around knots, untied each bag so the younger ones could reach in and fish out their one “main present.” These cost the most, but not too much: less than ten bucks. The boys hurried from the coal room and spread out on the naked concrete basement floor to open the boxes.
The middle boy held his breath as he unboxed a G.I. Joe astronaut and space capsule, hoping the oldest wouldn’t pull one of his sneaky “Hey let me see that” maneuvers.
The oldest had a hunting knife with an eight-point buck tooled into the leather sheath. “Feel that edge,” he said, holding the blade out toward the middle boy.
The next oldest fished out a BB pistol but couldn’t find the CO2 cartridges needed to fire it— lucky for anyone in the room with working eyeballs.
The little ones, who everyone called the twins, homed in on a small inflatable beach ball with Mickey Mouse on it. The father inflated it with a few lungfuls. Then the boys sat cross-legged across from each other, rolling it back and forth.
The two eldest were excited at first, but they knew what was coming, and so retreated with the knife and the gun to the open space under the steps. The middle boy tensed every time he heard a neighbor’s car door slamming or a house door opening. He wondered: Will his mother be angry when she sees them with their presents? Or will she change out of her black-and-white nylon serving uniform and come down to play with them?
After a couple more Ballantine Ale tall boys, the father told the boys they could take another gift. Then he suddenly changed course. “Fuck it boys, open them all. Christmas comes but once a year.” He dragged the Christmas bags from the coal room and shook the contents out on the basement floor.
When the mother came home, it took them by surprise—just two nylon-stockinged legs stepping into view and one step creaking loudly. The father had just finished assembling a balsa wood toy glider for one of the twins, who tossed it into the air and watched it settle at the mother’s feet.
She looked down at the glider. She looked up in disbelief at the gifts scattered on the floor. Her mouth gaped for a few seconds. Something previously unimaginable was actually happening.
The father waited. The middle boy heard a clump of wet snow tumble off a branch on the evergreen in the front of the house.
“Oh my God, Stephan. Oh my God. How could you do this?”
He looked bewildered, a drunk who hadn’t quite figured out that he ruined Christmas. “Do what? The boys are having a good time.” He staggered a little over to his chair and plopped down, fired up a Chesterfield King, sighed.
The two oldest flattened themselves against the wall under the stairs. The middle boy and the twins stared up at her. Were they also in trouble?
Then she spotted the empty tall boy cans arranged by the father’s feet like a rack of bowling pins. “You sonofabitch! You ruined it again!” she shouted, so loud the twins covered their ears. “You fucking lousy drunk!”
The father tried to get a word in. “Elsa, come on, the boys—.”
She cursed him some more, louder each time. Then: “I’m leaving. I’ve had it. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to stick you with these fucking kids and leave. I’ll do what I want with who I want. I’ll go out to the gin mill every night like you and fuck every Tom, Dick, and Harry I meet.”
He stood, pleading, palms up and arms wide, like Jesus in the painting down at the Polish Hall. “Elsa, please.”
She went upstairs and shut herself in the bathroom. By then she was sobbing. The boys and the father silently gathered the toys and empty boxes into the big department store bags and put them in the coal room. The father told the boys to go to bed and he followed them.
Up in the small corner bedroom the middle boy shared with the twins, he changed into his pajamas. The twins kept pinching each other’s asses under the covers and giggling like morons, so he told them to shut the hell up already.
He lay in the dark, worrying. Where was she? Has she left yet? Where will she go?
He lay still, listening to her blow her nose, rinse out her serving uniform and hang it on the shower rod. She crossed the living room and opened the basement door. He crawled under the bed and pressed his ear to the heating grate that led down into the furnace room.
The Christmas bags scraped dryly on the cement as she dragged them out of the coal room. Wrapping paper crinkled as she unrolled it. Scotch tape hissed as she reeled it out.
He wondered: If his oldest brother tried to steal his G.I. Joe tomorrow, would she make him give it back? Yes, he was sure she would.
This is the reality of Christmas for many kids. Excellent story.
Love it. Great to get an appearance from mom. Adds to the complexity.