A Little Fruitcake Read online

  Back home in our small town, there was definitely no such Firstborn Son privilege for Ignacio. In fact, because I carefully maintained my Good Boy status, I was the favored one much of the time, at least with Mom. Grammy, however, was too old to indulge either of us with any kind of coddling.

  Grammy fawned over just one person: my Uncle Russell. Neither the youngest nor the oldest of five children, he was clearly the apple of Grammy’s eye nonetheless. She referred to him as “my baby” and swelled with special pride at the mention of his name, despite the fact that his other siblings weren’t exactly chopped liver: one brother was a police chief, another was a pastor, and the older sister owned a jewelry store. Though Grammy was proud of them all, there was something about Russell that made her features soften and the twinkle in her blue eyes emerge.

  That Christmas was one of the few times Russell came home from Tennessee. He had moved south when he was younger to marry a woman twice his age who had once been his church school teacher, a development that had crushed Grammy. With no love lost between Russell’s wife and his family in Maine, when he finally came back for a visit, he came alone.

  His arrival may not have occasioned an angelic host to sing, but it certainly felt like a star was shining. Grammy instantly transformed into a playful, almost girlish person, someone I had never seen before. It was a little like the moment in Santa Claus Is Coming to Town when mean old Burgermeister Meisterburger is given a yo-yo and suddenly becomes a babbling boy. Grammy and Russell joked with each other like pals, and I marveled that he not only dared to tease her but that she’d just laugh, poking him and telling him to behave himself. And this seemed to cause a ripple effect. Mom was cheerful, Grampy relaxed, and a steady stream of friends and relatives came to our door, despite the still-growing drifts of snow.

  Russell didn’t make much of an impression on me at first. I remember him as tall, round faced, and balding by thirty—a silly putty version of Grampy, but younger and with real teeth. What won me over was a nifty feat of kitchen magic on the Saturday night of his visit. Because we were living on Grandparent Time, we had already eaten supper at four o’clock and had long been settled in for our ritualized family viewing of Wide World of Sports, The Lawrence Welk Show, and Hee Haw. As a grown-up living on real time, Russell was not interested in eating on the geriatric schedule, and several hours after we’d eaten, he announced that he was making pizza. Perhaps noticing that Grammy had her lips parted to protest, he added, “And if no one else wants any, the dough will keep.” Only because it was Russell, Grammy closed her mouth and turned her attention back to the television. It must have been an act of supreme will for her to sit there quietly, knowing that there would soon be flour all over her kitchen after she’d already done the dishes and wiped down the sideboard.

  Not finding Lawrence Welk quite as “wunnerful” as Grammy and Grampy that night, I eventually padded out to the kitchen to see what Russell was up to. The only light on was the one bulb hanging over the sink. The rest of the room receded into darkness around that small bulb’s yellow halo. Russell stood with his back to me, pulling dough and punching it. When he realized I was there, he said, “Want to see something?” Without waiting for my answer, he threw the dough into the air. It slipped briefly into shadow and then wobbled back to his balled fists, which he used to catch and flip the dough onto a cutting board with a resonant slapping sound. And then he did it again. It was mesmerizing.

  For such a son, Grammy had to make sure Christmas was perfect. That day, she started her work in the kitchen in the morning and then kept at it for hours. In addition to a turkey the size of a Volkswagen to roast, there were two pies to bake, Jell-O to set in a heart-shaped mold, cranberry relish to make from scratch, and a host of assorted side dishes to prepare, including the green bean casserole with French onions that she only made when we had guests over after church. Supper got pushed back all the way to the cosmopolitan hour of five o’clock to allow for a nominal compromise with relatives used to dining a little later. The house smelled like heaven to a little boy with a good appetite, and I was more than ready to eat when Grammy told everyone the food was ready.

  But we were in for a rude surprise. With too many people to fit in the dining room, Grammy had set up a satellite table on the porch for Ignacio and me. This demotion to a kids’ table—with only two kids, mind you—shocked me. Ignacio and I always ate at the real table, our assigned spots seemingly set in stone: Ignacio directly across from me, with Mom and Grampy on either end of the table, and Grammy at my side. This was the natural order, the way it should be. I started to protest, but Grammy had neither time nor interest.

  “Food won’t taste a bit different just for being on the porch. It’s not like you can’t see us from there.”

  And that was that.

  An outrage, but I couldn’t make a big stink about it, or everyone would think I was a spoiled brat—not my goal. Exiled to the tan folding table reserved for Grammy’s puzzles, I felt as if I’d been abandoned on the island of discarded grandchildren. I brooded, and brooded some more, not that anyone noticed. I could hear the grown-ups talking over each other, their voices creating a clamor seldom heard in our house. Compared to the average Buena Noche celebration in Miami, this was probably a dinner party of church mice, but by Norridgewock standards, it ranked as a festive blowout. Ignacio didn’t seem to care, instead fiddling with a transistor radio to see if he could find Wolfman Jack or something just as good, but I was annoyed to be so excluded. And, contrary to Grammy’s claims, my green bean casserole did not taste as good as I knew it would have at the table.

  I was dying to be in on the hubbub. I had to concoct a plot that would somehow display my exemplary longsuffering nature, prove that I had the holiday spirit, and earn my return to the action all at once. I couldn’t whine or look petulant, for it was crucial that everyone realize for themselves that they should be including me. Then inspiration hit: I could achieve all of this with Legos.

  These were old-school Legos, which is to say they were just rectangles. That’s it. No curves or hinges or wheels. Making elaborate designs required cunning, skill, and a kind of imaginative blindness: you had to be willing to see the idea of a creation, not its literal squareness. Once I hit upon this idea, my cooling food was of even less interest. Leaving Ignacio and his radio, I skirted the edge of the dining room, squeezed quietly behind Mom’s chair, and headed into the living room to produce my masterpiece—the first-ever Lego Nativity.

  Kneeling beneath our tree, I moved presents around to create a place of honor for the crèche-to-be. Though the building process was not, as it turned out, effortless, it started out smoothly enough. The stall it- self was easy to make, and I used all of my yellow Legos on its thatched roof. The manger was even easier to build, as if Legos had been designed specifically so one could construct a perfect baby-sized feedbox. The color was an issue: I knew a trough in those ancient days would have been made of wood, but I didn’t have any brown Legos, so I picked metal-looking blue pieces instead. But the degree of difficulty increased exponentially from there.

  For those intent on creating holiday dioramas using only rectangles, here is a partial list of the things that are impossible to replicate convincingly: angels, sheep, oxen, camels, a little drummer boy, three wise men, Mary, Joseph, and anything resembling a baby. The animals stumped me for so long that my relatives were on seconds before I had the first livestock completed. This was not good, as I needed to be done with the scene before the plates were cleared and dessert was set out; according to my plan, in that postmeal lull before the pies arrived, my family would notice what I was doing and be awed by the simple beauty of my handiwork. They would all bring their dessert plates into the living room and gather around my Nativity scene to eat. I would join them for pie and adoration, and Christmas Eve would thus be restored.

  That meant I was on the clock. Fortunately, I had an epiphany; I realized that if I did not stack the Legos horizontally, but instead stood them up
vertically, using their length to form legs, I could approximate living creatures. And if it could work for beasts, why not kings and shepherds? Yes, this meant that cows and wise men were roughly similar in height, but a little tinsel from the tree helped to mark the Magi as more royal.

  The holy family posed a greater challenge. While it was fine for the bit players to be faceless, expressionless stick figures, I could not accept this for the leads. Joseph and Mary needed eyes, noses, and mouths, and Jesus had to be soft and sweet and babyish. The solution for the first part of that dilemma waited several branches up on the tree. We had two bright-red mouse ornaments that had adorned every tree since the 1950s and were supposed to represent Grammy and Grampy. One mouse was tall and skinny, and one, short and round; in theory, the short one was Grammy, though in life, she was more physically imposing than Grampy. Beyond that, the Grampy mouse had a gold lamé fringe around his entire neck, which seemed better suited to Elizabeth-Taylor-as-Cleopatra than to Grampy, a mouse, or Joseph. I hesitated, really wanting Mary to have the pretty necklace, but as I knew everyone would see the tall mouse as Joseph, I gave in and placed it behind the manger in the manly head-ofstall spot. I settled the shorter mouse next to it, where Mary would be, which turned out to be perfect—the Mary mouse was at the ideal height to gaze in at her babe. Not that he yet existed.

  Nothing on the tree seemed a good option for Baby Jesus. Reindeer were out, as were glitter-covered bulbs. I looked at a snowman for a while, but when laid horizontally, as it would be in a manger, he appeared to be a pregnant woman. How confusing would that be? So I stole a page from the soap operas we watched and decided that just a bundle of cloth would be enough to suggest a baby. A box of Kleenex sat on the end table next to the couch, and within moments, a soft, white babe had been born and placed gently in his hard plastic crib. And once I had the Kleenex out, I expanded beyond swaddling clothes to clothes in general, wrapping Mary and Joseph in attire that resembled the drapey outfits they wore in Bible illustrations. You could hardly tell they were red felt mice at all. As a grace note, I moved a star ornament to the branch just above the scene. At last, I was done.

  I was also late. When I turned to see if dessert was being served yet, I found, to my horror, that the pies had been cut long before and consumed as well. Relatives were already standing around in their we’re-justabout-to-leave poses. There was no time for subtlety. “There’s a Nativity in the living room,” I blurted out, as if I had just myself noticed. No one heard me. “There’s a Nativity in the living room!”

  Not wanting to reveal my desperation, but actually desperate that someone should notice before it was entirely too late, I went straight to the golden boy. “Uncle Russell,” I said. “Come see!”

  Still talking to my Aunt Jean, Russell let me drag him into the living room. I pointed beneath the tree.

  This is what I saw: a baby sleeping in his manger, with his mother leaning in close and his father standing tall above, while animals, kings, and shepherds stood guard in even numbers on either side beneath a perfect roof that kept out the winter winds.

  This is what Russell saw: a big Lego triangle containing a dozen tall plastic block formations, some strung with tinsel, all gathered around a pair of mice and a tiny blue box stuffed with Kleenex. He was silent for a moment, working it out.

  Finally, he pointed to the manger.

  “It’s a swimming pool, right? And that’s water?” Indicating the taller pieces, he went on, “And those are palm trees around the pool?” He didn’t even try to guess what the mice were.

  I was mortified.

  “It’s a Nativity!” I bellowed, so aggrieved that I wanted to throw my precious scene at him, instead of showing it off.

  He sat back on his heels. “Really?”

  I nodded.

  “With the mice from the tree?”

  I answered at length, pointing out my soap opera swaddling trick and how I hoped everyone knew the big mouse was Joseph, even though it reminded me of Elizabeth Taylor. Russell rose and gestured to my aunt.

  “Jean,” he called, “You have to see this.” That’s more like it, I thought. He’s impressed! “Little David made . . . a . . . a Nativity.” His voice sounded a little strangled. Was he touched?

  “He did what?” Jean came over and looked around the floor for evidence that Russell’s claim was true. She looked right past it. “Where?” And when she saw what he had seen, she just shook her head. Clearly, she was trying to find the words to describe my efforts. I waited for her verdict, but then Uncle Russell interrupted.

  “It’s hilarious!” He bent down and gave me a hug. “You’re hilarious!”

  It is remarkable how quickly blindness can become sight. My imagination instantly stopped softening the forms and rounding the edges, all the life draining away from the shiny blocks. Suddenly, I could see that this was the homeliest, squarest, least convincing nativity scene ever. Look how tall the sheep are! Look at how tacky Joseph’s jewelry is! And don’t get me started on Mary’s whiskers! Look, look, look! No, don’t.

  Just as quickly as I gained sight, I adapted to the new view and tried to play along, at least as far as Russell could tell. “It’s pretty funny, huh?” I managed. “The kings are wearing tinsel!” I wasn’t sure that Aunt Jean bought my act, and she didn’t say anything at all, only led Russell out to the kitchen where goodbyes were being said. But I have a hunch she may have had a word with my mother along the way.

  When Mom came in, I was sitting under the tree, trying to decide whether to start breaking up camels and shepherds or just to hide the entire thing under some presents and go upstairs. She took a gentle tack. “What’s that, Sunshine?”

  I didn’t answer. She bent down.

  “Is it a Nativity?”

  I looked up at her, badly wanting to cry, and if I had spoken, I probably would have. I just nodded.

  “Well, I think it’s beautiful,” she said, and I hugged her, so deeply glad she did.

  5

  The War of the Fudges

  He had more fudge.

  There is no way those four words can convey to an outsider the magnitude of the injustice that occurred in 1975, two weeks before Christmas. The “he” in question was my brother, which immediately explains why it was a problem that he had more of anything. The fudge was not just any confection but the thick squares of primed-to-melt heaven that Grammy made herself and packed into the holiday tins she filled for every family member. These boxes were supposed to be filled equally with goodies, and yet, that December night, when she handed each of us our tins and the lids came off, it was clear that something had gone terribly awry: Ignacio had more fudge in his tin than I did.

  I suppose if you are an only child, you may not immediately see the problem. But if you ever had a sibling close to your own age, you will well understand the seismic effect of this discrepancy. Giving one brother more of something than the other implies favoritism, a complete misunderstanding of sibling psychology, or just a wicked desire to start a dogfight. I wouldn’t have put it past Grammy to have intentionally overloaded Ignacio’s tin, as a way of balancing out how my mother always favored me, but it could just as easily have been the mere miscalculation of a woman trying to fill as many tins as quickly as possible. Whatever the reason, Ignacio and I both spotted the error right away, which he announced in a singsongy taunt: “I have more than you do. I have more than you do.”

  There were a number of ways to respond. For one, in church, we were taught to turn the other cheek, which in this case would have meant letting my brother taunt me even more. But a somewhat more recently written moral guide came to my mind first: Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I was totally hooked on the tale, especially adorable Tiny Tim, who got all the best presents in the end without ever having begged for them. And I loved how Scrooge, a man even crankier than Grammy, could become a sweetie overnight after a little heart-to-heart with a few witty ghosts.

  The twin lessons of A Christmas Carol were instructive. F
irst off, good boys earned presents through the sweetness of their demeanor, not through petulance. Secondly, if I was such a selfish idiot that I begrudged my brother a little extra fudge at Christmas, I was surely forging heavy chains to be dragged around in the afterlife. Because I was a good Seventh-day Adventist boy with a firm grip on the book of Revelations, I knew this chain business was only metaphoric as I would either be in heaven (and thus not chainworthy) or consumed by the fires of hell (and so unable to drag anything around anywhere). But the point was clear nonetheless: the Christmas spirit was about giving, not hoarding. Parity was not part of the program. My mandate was clear: rise above my covetousness to display the true spirit of generosity.

  Except that I was eight and a classic younger brother.

  “Ignacio has more fudge!”

  Grammy came over and peered into our tins. Before her, she saw the fruit of many nights’ labor. Hour after hour, she had worked to make chocolate fudge, peanut butter fudge, pink divinity fudge, date balls, oatmeal-raisin cookies, ginger snaps, mincemeat squares, sugar cookies, and fat popcorn balls, a trove she herself then divided up into tins, to be joined by mints, ribbon candies, and mixed nuts. The boxes were apportioned out, one each for herself, Grampy, all her nearby children and grandchildren, and her sister’s family. She had put in the equivalent of a full workweek to make each of us our own individual cornucopia of indulgence, and what did I do? I skipped right past “Thank you, Grammy!” to something more like “I’ve been robbed!”

  She examined my tin, then Ignacio’s. To me, the extra piece of chocolate fudge towered like Mount Everest. Grammy was unimpressed.

  “That’s what you’re making all the fuss over?”

  I couldn’t help myself. “It isn’t fair! We’re supposed to have exactly the same!”

  White fingers precise as pinchers, she plucked the offending piece from Ignacio’s tin—and popped it into her mouth.