“Good for us,” Faith says.
“Right. The lucky few.”
This will be the girls’ first Christmas without a tree or their mother. Though Faith has attempted to improvise around this by arranging presents at the base of the large, plastic rubber-tree plant stationed against one of the empty white walls of the small living room. The tree was already here. She has brought with her a few Christmas balls, a gold star and a string of lights that promise to blink. “Christmas in Manila” could be a possible theme.
Outside, the day is growing dim. Faith’s mother is napping. Following his ski lesson, Roger has gone down to The Warming Shed for a mulled wine. The girls are seated on the couch side by side, wearing their Lanz of Salzburg flannel nighties with matching smiling monkey-face slippers. Green and yellow again, but with printed white snowflakes. They have taken their baths together, with Faith to supervise, then insisted on putting on their nighties early for their nap. They seem perfect angels and perfectly wasted on their parents. Faith has decided to pay their college tuitions. Even to Harvard.
“We know how to ski now,” Jane says primly. They’re watching Faith trim the plastic rubber-tree plant. First the blinking lights, though there’s no plug-in close enough, then the six balls (one for each family member). Last will come the gold star. Faith understands she is trying for too much. Though why not try for too much. It’s Christmas. “Marjorie wants to go to the Olympics,” Jane adds.
Jane has watched the Olympics on TV, but Marjorie was too young. It is Jane’s power position. Marjorie looks at her sister without expression, as if no one can observe her staring.
“I’m sure she’ll win a medal,” Faith says, on her knees, fiddling with the fragile strand of tiny peaked bulbs she already knows will not light up. “Would you two like to help me?” She smiles at both of them.
“No,” Jane says.
“No,” Marjorie says immediately after.
“I don’t blame you,” Faith says.
“Is Mommy coming here?” Marjorie blinks, then crosses her tiny, pale ankles. She is sleepy and could possibly cry.
“No, sweet,” Faith says. “This Christmas Mommy is doing herself a favor. So she can’t do one for us.”
“What about Vince?” Jane says authoritatively. Vince is ground that has been gone over several times before now, and carefully. Mrs. Argenbright, the girls’ therapist, has taken special pains with the Vince subject. The girls have the skinny on Mr. Vince but want to be given it again, since they like Vince more than their father.
“Vince is a guest of the state of Ohio, right now,” Faith says. “You remember that? It’s like he’s in college.”
“He’s not in college,” Jane says.
“Does he have a tree where he is,” Marjorie asks.
“Not in any real sense, at least not in his room like you do,” Faith says. “Let’s talk about happier things than our friend Vince, okay?” She is stringing bulbs now, on her knees.
The room doesn’t include much furniture, and what there is conforms to the Danish modern style. A raised, metal-hooded, red-enamel fireplace device has a paper message from the condo owners taped to it, advising that smoke damage will cause renters to lose their security deposit and subject them to legal actions. These particular owners, Esther has learned, are residents of Grosse Pointe Farms and are people of Russian extraction. There’s, of course, no firewood except what the Danish furniture could offer. So smoke is unlikely. Baseboards supply everything.
“I think you two should guess what you’re getting for Christmas,” Faith says, carefully draping lightless lights onto the stiff plastic branches of the rubber tree. Taking pains.
“In-lines. I already know,” Jane says and crosses her ankles like her sister. They are a jury disguised as an audience. “I don’t have to wear a helmet, though.”
“But are you sure of that?” Faith glances over her shoulder and gives them a smile she’s seen movie stars give to strangers. “You could always be wrong.”
“I’d better be right,” Jane says unpleasantly, with a frown very much like her mom’s.
“Santa’s bringing me a disc player,” Marjorie says. “It’ll come in a small box. I won’t even recognize it.”
“You two’re too smart for your britches,” Faith says. She is quickly finished stringing Christmas lights. “But you don’t know what I brought you.” Among other things, she has brought a disc player and an expensive pair of in-line skates. They are in the Suburban and will be returned back in LA. She has also brought movie videos. Twenty in all, including Star Wars and Sleeping Beauty. Daisy has sent them each $50.
“You know,” Faith says, “I remember once a long, long time ago, my dad and I and your mom went out in the woods and cut a tree for Christmas. We didn’t buy a tree, we cut one down with an axe.”
Jane and Marjorie stare at her as if they’ve read this story someplace. The TV is not turned on in the room. Perhaps, Faith thinks, they don’t understand someone talking to them — live action presenting its own unique continuity problems.
“Do you want to hear the story?”
“Yes,” Marjorie, the younger sister, says. Jane sits watchful and silent on the green Danish sofa. Behind her on the bare white wall is a framed print of Bruegel’s Return of the Hunters, which is, after all, Christmas-y.
“Well,” Faith says. “Your mother and I — we were only nine and ten — picked out the tree we desperately wanted to be our tree, but our dad said no, that tree was too tall to fit inside our house. We should choose another one. But we both said, ‘No, this one’s perfect. This is the best one.’ It was green and pretty and had a perfect Christmas shape. So our dad cut it down with his axe, and we dragged it out through the woods and tied it on top of our car and brought it back to Sandusky.” Both girls are sleepy now. There has been too much excitement, or else not enough. Their mother is in rehab. Their dad’s an asshole. They’re in someplace called Michigan. Who wouldn’t be sleepy?
“Do you want to know what happened after that?” Faith says. “When we got the tree inside?”
“Yes,” Marjorie says politely.
“It was too big,” Faith says. “It was much, much too tall. It couldn’t even stand up in our living room. And it was too wide. And our dad got really mad at us because we’d killed a beautiful living tree for a selfish reason, and because we hadn’t listened to him and thought we knew everything just because we knew what we wanted.”
Faith suddenly doesn’t know why she’s telling this story to these innocent sweeties who do not need another object lesson. So she simply stops. In the real story, of course, her father took the tree and threw it out the door into the back yard where it stayed for a week and turned brown. There was crying and accusations. Her father went straight to a bar and got drunk. Later, their mother went to the Kiwanis lot and bought a small tree that fit and which the three of them trimmed without the aid of their father. It was waiting, all lighted, when he came home smashed. The story had always been one others found humor in. This time the humor seems lacking.
“Do you want to know how the story turned out?” Faith says, smiling brightly for the girls’ benefit, but feeling defeated.
“I do,” Marjorie says. Jane says nothing.
“Well, we put it outside in the yard and put lights on it so our neighbors could share our big tree with us. And we bought a smaller tree for the house at the Kiwanis. It was a sad story that turned out good.”
“I don’t believe that,” Jane says.
“Well you should believe it,” Faith says, “because it’s true. Christmases are special. They always turn out wonderfully if you just give them a chance and use your imagination.”