A Little Fruitcake Read online

  It did—and I wanted to cry as well.

  The sheer relief of knowing that, yes, I had gotten the doll made me light-headed. The paper finally came off, the shoebox lid was removed, and there it was: a baby, very bald and all mine.

  Who knows what I (or anyone else) got that Christmas. I was busy exploring my new companion. The doll had no hair, real or painted on, so it was clearly a baby baby, which I loved. Baldness notwithstanding, I knew by its gorgeous, slightly alien eyes that it must be a girl. The molded plastic of its face featured deep cutouts for startling eyes made of what looked like green glass. Silken auburn eyelashes were affixed to lids inset in the plastic. If I held her a certain way, those freaky eyes would languorously shutter themselves, only to reopen slowly when righted, a feat she repeated over and over again at my will. Oh bliss!

  Dolly, a name that came to me in a burst of clear and deeply original inspiration, was dressed. She wore a little two-piece outfit that was soft and pink. And in the way. I began pulling it off immediately, determined to wrap Dolly in a blanket, like a newborn was supposed to be. (If swaddling was good enough for Baby Jesus, obviously it was good enough for Dolly.) But as I pulled off the top, I made a discovery that was a brief source of disappointment: Dolly cried whenever she was not on her back.

  I’m sure the designer’s logic was that if, say, a little Cher fan turned the doll face down and heard it cry, he would instinctively soothe the doll by rocking it, face up, in his meaty arms. But I had decided that babies were to be held to your chest, head on your shoulder, for soothing. I’d long had visions of myself walking around with Dolly in this position, patting her back and being a good little mother boy. Clearly, this would not work: my imagined comfort position would actually make Dolly cry incessantly until I gave in to the position she was designed to prefer. In the spirit of adaptation, I nestled my new babe in the crook of my arm, telling myself I liked the resulting Mary-in-themanger effect. I decided that maybe the baby was better this way after all.

  Without thinking, I headed up the stairs, oblivious to the fact that everyone else was still gathered around the tree.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” asked Grammy, spoiling for a fight.

  I paused, wondering how she could even ask such a thing. “I’m going to get Dolly a blanket so she won’t be cold.” I sounded aggrieved, as if I had not myself just denuded the poor thing, and I gestured toward the frosted windows as if to illustrate the danger.

  “It’s winter.” I climbed the last steps until I was just out of sight, but I waited a moment, at the top of the stairs, and heard Grammy turn on my mother.

  “Well,” she said, “you went and did just what you wanted, didn’t you? Now look at him.” Grammy couldn’t have hidden her disgust if she tried, and, really, she wasn’t trying.

  I clutched Dolly closer and headed into my room. It was a new and strange feeling that washed over me: the simultaneous sense of being both happy and sad. Grammy had succeeded in casting a pall over my delight, leaving me a little ashamed at how much I already loved my doll. I decided to take my time finding just the right blanket for Dolly.

  I couldn’t have known then that I would spend the next few months slowly driving Grammy insane on this topic, first by requesting a dress for Dolly, then extending that request to include a matching outfit for me. There was no way for me to know that, sure of my future ruin, she would eventually just trump my mother by taking the doll away and, in return, presenting me with a new set of bedsheets covered with NFL team logos (not that I knew what the NFL was).

  But that all happened later. On Christmas morning, I chose Dolly’s swaddling with great care. I rejected my first choice, a pillowcase, because it was the right size but not soft enough. I passed over my favorite flannel pajama top as well, which was soft but had buttons, too rough for a baby’s skin. In the end, I took the cozy purple bedspread off my bed and wrapped Dolly in it, despite how the fabric trailed to the floor. I lifted my baby to my shoulder and let her cry for a bit, then rocked her to stillness. “I love you,” I told her, as if to make her feel better about her rough welcome into the world.

  I knew that I should go back down to join the others and that the longer I didn’t, the madder Grammy would be. But it was my job to watch out for Dolly, protecting her from the mockery of my brother, the dismay of Grammy, and even the chocolate-fueled crankiness of Grampy. And as long as I stayed in my room, Christmas would remain whatever I wanted it to be. Everything else could wait.

  2

  Bad to Santa

  What is growing up but a succession of moments when you understand that you have been missing out on important information that older, wiser people already know? That singsong rhyme you learned turns out to be an alphabet. Your books sound the same every time because those squiggles by the pictures are actually words that you can spell using that alphabet. Many such discoveries lead to proud displays of newfound knowledge and accompanying parental praise. But not every childhood epiphany is so obviously welcomed.

  Such is the case with the understanding that Santa may not be real after all. It is perfectly clear to most children that the grown-ups around them are invested in the success of this charade, perhaps because so many youngsters remain deeply attached to the tale. For children who figure the whole thing out, this may present the first ethical dilemma of their young lives: Is it right to play along with the ruse in order to protect others’ feelings? What should you do when “honest” and “good” aren’t the same thing?

  I liked to think of myself as a good boy. In fact, I actively cultivated this notion, playing up the contrast between my cherubic demeanor and my older brother’s devil-may-care attitude. He was not himself a demon spawn, but he just couldn’t keep a lid on behaviors that were sure to set off Grammy. For starters, Ignacio was more likely to sass back to her, a bad idea, full stop. But he was also much more likely to follow every exciting, adventurous impulse that beckoned him with promises of immediate delight, only to yield trauma and punishment later.

  One year, the impulse was to take a sled up onto the porch roof, then ride it unintentionally over melting snow directly through our picture window onto the card table where Grammy did her puzzles. As many gallons of glass-studded snow poured onto the table, Grammy, immune to shock at my brother’s antics, simply put her hands on her hips and complained, “That was a fifteen-hundred-piece puzzle!” Even the window disaster, however, was no match for Ignacio’s eventual masterpiece, which would involve an abandoned shack, a match, several fire trucks, and a hasty retreat to our bedroom.

  And where was I during these misadventures? When Ignacio was up to no good, I was most likely where I was every afternoon: curled up on the couch with my mom, as snug and harmless as a chick in a nest. When he plunged through the porch window, I just stepped back in awe to admire the colliding forces of falling grandson and fuming grandmother. And while he was discovering his inner pyro, I was reading. When Grammy asked if I knew where Ignacio had been, I touted my own benign behavior in my shameless reply.

  “My book is really, really good, so I didn’t even notice that he was gone until he ran in like he did, and I heard all the sirens.”

  The truth is, I was no angel—I just knew how to maintain my halo in the presence of others. I was ever tempted to break rules set for me about what I could and could not do. And though I remained obedient most of the time, my “good” behavior was a reflection not of moral superiority but rather of a healthy instinct for self-preservation. If I thought I would get caught at something illicit, I just didn’t do it.

  If I could get away with something undetected, though, I was all over it. One gorgeous day, for instance, I had sassed back to Mom, who grounded me in the house, barring me from a moment’s play outside. But as soon as she left on an errand, I bolted through the front door, aware that Grammy had not caught wind of my grounding. Another time, I had been told to stay out of the plastic wading pool in our backyard, but waited till Mom and Grammy were su
cked into their soap operas to wade in anyway, figuring that water, being invisible, would leave no tell-tale traces on my skin when I headed inside to join them later.

  Partly because of the opposing nature of our sins, with me breaking mere rules and my brother breaking actual buildings, and partly because I so actively cultivated the notion that I was an innocent boy, Ignacio and I were seen very differently; poor guy, he was trouble, and I was sweet. Only one other person in the world knew the truth about me: Santa Claus. Or, to be more precise, Not Really Santa Claus.

  By the time I was six and a half, I didn’t believe in Santa. The Santa story came with holes in it from the get-go, such as his tardy appearance long after the gifts had appeared under our tree. Moreover, I think Grammy had some misgivings about actively participating in such a clear falsehood, even a nice one; thus, she spent very little time reinforcing belief in jolly Saint Nick. But all that paled in comparison with a bigger issue: Wasn’t Christmas about the baby Jesus, anyway, and not the goings-on in an imaginary North Pole? Santa was clearly an add-on, one who was fun and made for great animated specials, but still. . . .

  So, when my brother, hoping at the advanced age of eight to spoil the tale, came to me that year and said, “You know Santa’s just made up,” I shrugged.

  Well, duh. You might think my refusal to be wowed by Ignacio’s big revelation would have been a huge disappointment to him. Instead, it acted as a true source of bonding. If neither of us believed in Santa, we could put up a united front against all those silly adults who thought that any kid growing up in the frozen climes of Maine would ever be stupid enough to buy the notion that a fat old man could survive an entire December night outside in an open sled wearing only felt. It was a kind of power, our disbelief, and in its thrall, my brother and I could be a team, at least for a season.

  Our shared wisdom united us, even as we kept mum about it. Though we scorned neighboring children who believed this nonsense, we agreed not to mock them to their faces. When April, the girl next door, talked about staying up to see Santa when he landed on her roof, Ignacio and I smirked quietly. When Peter from across the street headed indoors from playing in the snow every afternoon so that he wouldn’t miss the half-hour television show in which Santa claimed to be broadcasting from the North Pole, we didn’t question his devotion. It was better simply to bask in the smug knowledge that we were so much more mature than our friends. We didn’t have to rub their little baby noses in it.

  Beyond that, we somehow instinctively knew that bragging about disbelieving in Santa was not an endearing quality around the holidays. We neither wanted to send a friend home in tears, with his psyche forever scarred, nor to suggest to our own family that we were ungrateful smart alecks. Instead, Ignacio joined me in my fakery as we “good little boys” made it clear to the adults that we were very eager to see what Santa would bring us.

  This playacting seemed perfectly fair: if grown-ups pretended to believe in Santa, so could we. No one got hurt, everyone got presents, and we all won. It was the earliest example in my life of how some lies are actually considered okay. I would soon notice other proofs of this, like when Grammy’s sister Marion asked how she looked, and Grammy praised her. Once my great aunt had left, Grammy went on to call Marion’s hair a bird’s nest. She was lying about her real opinion but had decided that engaging in a wee bit of falsity was a nicer way of treating her sister than invoking the Audubon Society to her face. Apparently, everyone agreed that the maxim “honesty is the best policy” didn’t apply to bad hair or men in red flannel suits.

  With everyone playing dumb, I could have my cake and eat it, too, I reasoned. I didn’t believe in Santa as fact, but I enjoyed him quite a bit anyway. I liked his rich red suit, the idea of a flying sleigh, all those adorable reindeer, and the elves, who seemed so light in their pointy loafers. And I had even gotten hooked on the Santa show, long on cheer and short on production values, which involved lots of cardboard and a hand puppet or two. For one thing, I liked it because I felt in the know: while most kids were sitting at home trusting this portly pretender, I knew the score. He would say that he had a letter from a Mike or a Betty, and he knew whether these children had been naughty or nice, and this alone was meant to be convincing. By the time he said he was reading David’s list, I just rolled my eyes. In the 1970s, Davids were like milkweed pods: we sprang up everywhere. In a school so small that there were only fifty kids in ten grades, I was one of three Davids—and not the only one in my class. Santa was going to have to do better if he wanted to convince me.

  Did this keep me from writing him a letter? Not at all. I wrote a “Dear Santa” missive in block letters, enjoying the ritual but not expecting that I would actually receive, say, a real elephant. When my mother asked me if I wanted to mail the letter to the address on the TV screen, I wasn’t sure what to make of it? Did she believe in Santa? Had my brother not clued her in? Or was she just telling the big lie, too? Not sure if I was protecting her innocence or acting as an accomplice in her deception, I simply handed the letter over. It seemed the right thing to do.

  It was one thing to watch the Santa show at home, where I could be alternately entertained and jaded. It was another thing entirely to encounter Santa face to face. I could have played along, displaying my Holiday Angel side, but instead my Inner Smarty Pants took over. And is there a Santa on earth who likes a Smarty Pants?

  Late one afternoon, the week before Christmas, my mother, Ignacio, and I were at the bank in Skowhegan. It was not our bank, the little one in Norridgewock where my brother and I each had savings passbooks we didn’t quite understand. Mom had heard that Santa was making appearances at the bank in the next town, close to LaVerdiere’s Super Drug Store. Seeing as Ignacio was eight and I was six, old enough by 1970s standards to take care of ourselves, Mom dropped us off at the bank to visit Santa while she ran to LaVerdiere’s. Can there be a sight more frightening to a hired Saint Nick than a parent receding into the distance without her children in tow?

  My brother and I didn’t even have to talk about what to do. There was something unspoken in the air, a whiff of polyester wig perhaps, that made us hungry, like wolves following deer. Maybe it was the fact that this jolly old soul lacked a bowl full of jelly, his belt cinched around a narrow waist. Or that the slip of elastic connected to his beard was clearly visible over one ear. The nerve of this man to think we could be so easily fooled! We waited until the few other children in line had left, then cornered our prey.

  “Are you the real Santa?” Ignacio asked innocently.

  “Well,” Not Really Santa said nervously. “Do you think I’m Santa?”

  Wrong question. “I think that the real Santa is going to be at the North Pole today,” I said, laying my cleverest trap.

  “That’s right,” Not Really Santa said, relaxing a little. “I will be.”

  Ignacio pounced. “He didn’t say you would be. He said Santa would be.”

  “But I am Santa. I’ll be at the North Pole tonight!” Not Really Santa was trying, god bless his hopeless soul.

  But I was ready.

  I pointed at the big bank clock. “Santa will be broadcasting his TV show from the North Pole in ten minutes. How are you going to get there in ten minutes?”

  Not Really Santa now understood, both from my schoolmarm tone and the I’m-going-to-eat-you shine in our eyes, that there was no hope of salvation.

  “Well, if you don’t really believe in Santa. . . ”

  “I believe in Santa, but you’re not really Santa, are you?” I asked, smelling blood.

  Before Not Really Santa could reply, Ignacio jumped in. “Or are you saying the other Santa isn’t real?”

  “Well. . . ”

  Ignacio kept on him.

  “Or are you both fake?”

  I moved in for the kill.

  “Why would you pretend to be Santa if you’re not?”

  It was pure evil, what I was doing. Here was this nice man trying to bring a little joy to the
world (and perhaps sign up a few new checking accounts), and I was badgering him like he was a common criminal on the stand. Moreover, I was accusing him of being the fake version of something I didn’t believe in by comparing him to another version I had already written off as fake in the first place.

  “You two move along now.” Not Really Santa’s voice was tight and decidedly lacking in cheer.

  “Yeah,” Ignacio said. “We better go, or we’ll miss the real Santa on TV.”

  “Just move along.” And just like that, Santa turned his back on us, without offering so much as a “ho, ho, ho” or a candy cane for the trip home.

  With a last, gloating “Bye Santa!” we headed out the glass door into the parking lot. Admittedly, this wasn’t our finest moment as young citizens. But for brothers more prone to sabotaging each other than to teamwork, our wicked romp was a brief moment of true bonding. For the rest of that season, we remained united in our efforts to keep all the grown-ups assured of our belief.

  When Mom pulled up, and we climbed into the backseat, she asked how Santa was. We kept our answer neutral.

  “He was okay.”

  And then we grinned like madmen all the way home.

  3

  Geronimo, Custer, Nixon, and Me

  Christmas came early in 1974. Really early, especially if you were a kid. A few days before Thanksgiving, we got some serious snow. By serious, I mean almost three feet in forty-eight hours. As the sky remained dark and heavy, globs continued to pelt the windows hour after hour, and the grown-ups all got nervous, imagining just how they would dig out of this mess. Meanwhile, we kids grew ever more excited. As a seven-year-old, I was in no danger of having to shovel the driveway; all I knew was that once it stopped snowing, the white expanse would truly live up to the term winter wonderland, a landscape for playing in, on, or under.