Cousin Rick hadn’t been in the apartment when she and Ronnie got home from school. And when their scrawny, thirtyish “cousin” (they refused to call him “Uncle Rick,” like Mom wanted) wasn’t around to hog the TV and flick lit cigarettes at their heads and hunch over the phone having hissy-whispered conversations with his creepy friends, Karen tried to make the most of it.
Today, “the most” meant soaking up Christmas cheer.
It was December 23, 1979, and the afternoon reruns were Christmas episodes. Andy Griffith, The Beverly Hillbillies, even The Addams Family — they’d all been wrapping presents and drinking eggnog and learning Very Special holiday lessons. It was totally phony and forced, but even bogus Christmas cheer with a laugh track and soap-flake snow was better than no Christmas cheer at all.
Karen and Ronnie didn’t even have a tree that year. They’d started to put one up with Mom, pulling out the big fake fir Dad used to call “the holly-jolly green giant.” But Cousin Rick put a stop to that.
“Jeez, what are you doin’? A guy can barely turn around in this sardine can, and you’re gonna plop that big S.O.B. in the middle of the room? No way. You want a Christmas tree, decorate the bushes in the parking lot. Now shut up, would you? I gotta keep my cool. The Big Call could come any minute, and those guys ain’t messin’ around.”
The kids turned to their mother.
Cousin Rick had been waiting for “The Big Call” for a week, and something was always getting on his nerves. When he wasn’t out “hustling” — his word for whatever it was he did all day — he paced the apartment like a barnyard rooster, twitchy, herky-jerky, his round, anxious eyes darting from the TV to the phone. He’d already turned off the Christmas carols (he couldn’t bear “B.J. and the Bear”) and nixed the stringing of lights (the bright colors reminded him of “a bad trip,” whatever that meant). Now he wouldn’t let them put up a tree?
Surely, Mom would stand up to him this time. Surely, she’d choose their Christmas over her boyfriend’s weird little tics. Surely.
Without a word, Mom packed up the tree and stuffed it back in the closet. The next day, Karen saw it poking out of a dumpster around the other side of the building.
Which is how Christmas came to be something out there — at school, in stores, on billboards. In the past.
Or on TV.
It was the Bradys’ turn now. Little Cindy was asking a department-store Santa to cure her mother’s laryngitis so she could sing a solo at their church Christmas service. That’s what had brought up the whole Santa Claus thing in the first place.
“Stupid kid,” Karen had snorted. And then she’d said it, blasphemed — and Ronnie had flipped out.
“There is a Santa Claus!” he howled from the floor.
His voice quavered, as if he might cry, but Karen knew it wasn’t the tumble off the couch that had hurt him. Their apartment might have been tiny, but the musty, mustard-colored shag covering the floor was as thick and soft as a dirty old sponge.
No, she’d hurt him, and she wasn’t even sure why. His faith in Santa had been irritating her, rubbing on her nerves like sandpaper, for weeks. She was a big kid — almost ten — and she knew she should let Ronnie have his little-kid dreams. Yet another part of her longed to shake him awake.
She kept her eyes on the Bradys.
“Santa’s fake,” she said.
“He’s real!”
“No, he’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“But how do you know?”
“I just do.”
“Prove it!”
Karen finally tore her gaze away from the screen.
“You want me to? Really?”
Her brother blinked at her. It was up to him now.
If he insisted on this, she’d have to go through with it, right? That’s what big sisters are for — helping little kids learn. And if a lesson stung a little, well, that wouldn’t be her fault, would it?
Ronnie nodded reluctantly.
“All right,” Karen said.
She walked over to the TV and switched it off. The reruns would come around again one day. That’s why they called them “reruns.” But this moment with her brother — it would come only once.
“Let’s go.”
She headed for the bedroom Mom had been sharing with Cousin Rick the past few months. The door was closed. The door was always closed.
“Where are you going?”
Karen looked back at her brother. “Where does it look like I’m going?”
“But... we can’t go in there.”
“Why not? Mom’s at the Tiger tonight — she won’t be home for hours. And you know how it is when he’s supposed to be watching us. He’ll probably show up five minutes before Mom and pretend he was here all day.”
“But if he catches us... you remember what he said.”
Karen did remember — the tone of Rick’s voice, anyway. If he ever found them messing with his things, he’d have to do something... ugly. Karen had understood that much even if some of the words were new to her.
“He won’t catch us,” she said. “We’ll only be in there a minute.”
She turned and opened the bedroom door. The room beyond was messy, dark. Adult.
She stepped inside.
The bed — that was the place to start. Karen got down on her hands and knees and pushed away the crumpled clothes and cigarette packs so she could take a look underneath. The shades were drawn down over the windows, yet just enough silver-gray light glowed around the edges to see by.
There wasn’t much to see, though. Just more clutter.
A single shoe. Dad’s aluminum softball bat, the one Mom kept around “for protection.” An old People magazine. A torn wrapper with the word “Trojan” printed on it.
It suddenly occurred to Karen that she might not find what she was looking for. The thought scared her.
“What’s down there?”
Karen looked over her shoulder. Her brother stood in the doorway, half in half out of the room.
“Nothing.”
She stood and started toward the closet. To reach it, she had to step around a pile of dirty clothes as high as her waist.
The apartment had never been like this when Dad was alive. But after Mom had to start working two jobs — days at the Lawn Devil plant, evenings tending bar at the Toy Tiger Lounge — things changed.
And then Uncle/Cousin Rick showed up, and things didn’t just change some more. They fell apart.
He appeared overnight, like Christmas presents or Easter eggs. One morning, Karen and Ronnie stumbled bleary-eyed from the tiny bedroom they shared and there he was. A complete stranger eating their Boo Berry at the kitchen table.
“Hey,” he’d said through a mouthful of cereal. “Your mom’s still asleep.”
After another half-hearted bite — and a full minute of awkward silence — Rick dropped his spoon and stood up.
“I don’t see how you can eat this crap,” he mumbled, and he stomped past the still-gaping kids and disappeared into their mother’s bedroom — closing the door behind him.
He’d left the bowl, still filled with milk and soggy blue blobs, sitting on the table. That was The Rick System for dining and dishwashing: Dirty bowls, plates, cups, and silverware were left out, encrusted with food, until there was nothing left to eat with. And when you reached that point, you got all your food from KFC and White Castle and ate it straight out of the box.
Cleaning (never), sleeping (late), bathing (when people noticed the smell) — soon it was all on The Rick System. Mom was on The Rick System. And it was making her seem less like Mom every day.
Dad used to warn Karen about “bad influences” at school, but she never really knew what he meant until she saw the effect Cousin Rick had on her mother. If there really were a Santa Claus, she knew what she’d ask him for. Not that the fat man would do it.