Gloomy December

My father moved out.  That is how things change.  He moved into a duplex about fifteen miles away, not really a duplex, but an old wooden house that had been divided in two.  One bedroom, a small, half kitchen with a small table, a tiny living room, and a half-sized bathroom.  It was dreadful.  He had left the house to my mother and that was that.  I didn't see my mother much from then on.  She was out at night.  

All the old things transmuted.  I went numb.  

I sat on the couch at night alone watching television, watching the Christmas specials that came on each year, watching the Christmas specials and variety shows with Bing Crosby and Perry Como, schmaltzy things that showed a rich, full family life and the happiness of being together at the seasons, parents and grandparents, music and quiet smiles, the rapture of children. . . . 

Tommy and I went out.  Our town had gotten a bright, brand new thing, a shopping mall that was enclosed, all the stores under a single roof like that miracle Astrodome in Houston.    We would go there and wander around just to watch the people.  They made us laugh.  It was our defense against the rottenness of our own lives, I guess, to sit and watch the people, to pick out the odd features and comment on them, to become quietly hysterical.  We were there and not there, floating above the pedestrian mass, spirits, cynical observers who saw what they did not, holograms without substance. 

We went to Pier One, an import store with thousands of cheap items.  We liked the carved and painted wooden figures the best, hideous statues of pirates and organ grinders and monkeys.  Who would buy such junk, we wondered hilariously, thinking that we would buy them for Christmas gifts just to watch the inner contortions on the happy faces of the people who opened them.  Yes, yes, yes, we thought, to do such a thing, to really do it, to turn it upside down.  

Everywhere it was Christmas, the colors of the season, dark and rich, houses trimmed with lights, the closeness and the sharing.  It enveloped me, entered me.  The days, the nights, full-throated, heavy-limbed.  

I watched television, listened to the carols, heard the happy voices.  At school, there was anticipation.  Boys and girls stood closer as the air cooled.  December.  There were dates, parties.  There was Jill, the drama teacher.  She was going to Kentucky for Christmas, she told us.  She would see her family.  I wanted to give her something, I thought.  I would give her something.  I would.  

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