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  The Christmas Tree

  Julie Salamon

  Illustrated by Jill Weber

  For our children

  Roxie and Eli Salamon-Abrams

  and

  Remy Weber

  Introduction

  While I was writing The Christmas Tree in 1996, the mystery of life’s journeys was very much on my mind. My daughter was in first grade and my son was one year old. I had just completed a memoir about my parents’ journey from Eastern Europe to the tiny town (population seven hundred) in southern Ohio where I grew up. Since 1975, New York City had become my home. I had a good career as a journalist and a promising start as an author.

  My expectations for this novella were modest. Could I tell a good story that adults and children would enjoy and find worthwhile? I had no expectations beyond that, certainly not for what followed. The Christmas Tree would become a New York Times bestseller, translated into a dozen languages. Two decades later people would still be writing affectionate reviews, and I would continue to receive letters from people all over the world, telling me how much the book meant to them—and to report that now their children are reading it to their own families.

  The older I get, the more amazed I am by the enduring power of stories, for both readers and writers. Creating this book provided me a way to connect the raw beauty and uncertainty of my rural childhood to the fulfillment I’d found in New York, a city that can be harsh or awe-inspiring, depending on the day. Many of the places you’ll read about in these pages were built on memories of Adams County, Ohio, as well as teachers I’ve valued and friends I’ve loved. The writing also helped me come to terms with the inevitability of loss. For each reader, the story will have a different meaning, based on a different set of experiences, yet all connected by one text.

  The Christmas Tree was the first time I’d worked with an illustrator. How lucky I was to be matched up with Jill Weber, a gifted artist who would become a friend and future collaborator. She lives on a farm in New Hampshire; I still live in Manhattan. We didn’t meet face-to-face until after we’d finished the entire book. After that, we continued on our separate careers. But we always stayed in touch and a few years ago reunited to collaborate again on books (Cat in the City and Mutt’s Promise) aimed at children in the eight- to twelve-year-old range.

  We are grateful to Open Road for reissuing The Christmas Tree in time to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its original publication. Jill’s son, Remy, had just graduated college when the book first came out; now he has children old enough to read it on their own. My daughter, Roxie, has become a teacher and my son, Eli, is a new college graduate, ready to begin life as an adult. Jill’s husband, Frank Weber, and my husband, Bill Abrams, continue to provide invaluable love and encouragement—and that most precious commodity, a fine-tuned sense of humor. As always, this book (and everything else we do) is dedicated to them, the families we hold most dear.

  Julie Salamon

  March 2016

  Prologue

  I’m not a sentimental man, but when I saw her standing there, under the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, I started to cry.

  She was not a young woman; in fact, she was fairly old. But her eyes stayed fixed on the star at the top of the tree with the curiosity and amazement of a child who has just discovered something new and wonderful. With her bright, bony face barely poking out of her black habit she looked like a little bird next to that giant tree. Only later would I understand exactly what lay behind the sparkle in her eyes, what it all meant to her.

  Her name was Sister Anthony, and she was a friend of mine.

  An unlikely friend, I suppose. I’m still not sure she ever knew what she did for me. But that’s how it goes, I guess. You’re touched by something or someone here and react to it over there and most times you don’t connect one thing to the other. With Sister Anthony I knew, and I am grateful for that.

  Forgive me. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you who I am and how I found myself in tears at an event that had become routine for me long ago.

  I am the chief gardener at Rockefeller Center, though I think of myself as a magician of sorts. It’s up to me to conjure up a Christmas tree every year—a tree so grand, so impressive—so magical—that it can stop New Yorkers in their tracks. If you’ve ever seen people flying around Manhattan, especially at Christmas, you can appreciate why I always get a little nervous this time of year.

  It’s enough to make you dread the season. We’ve had so many perfect trees perfection has become the norm. When you get 100 out of 100 every year you get no praise for getting 100 again, only complaints if you don’t.

  What is perfection?

  It’s hard to describe exactly what makes the perfect Christmas tree. The physical requirements are straightforward enough. The tree must stand tall and straight. Its branches must be thick and graceful, and they must point upward, giving the impression that they are reaching to the sky. They also have to be flexible, since they are tied down during the long journey to New York City.

  But the trees that are finally selected need something more than height, thickness and suppleness—even more than mere beauty. And that’s where I come in. I’m not an exceptional fellow in most ways, but I do have this gift. I can see if a tree has character, a spirit that outshines the ornaments and tinsel and lights—if its beauty comes from the inside and not just the outside.

  I don’t know how to put it any other way. I’ve often wished I had the same gift with people.

  Walk through any park and you’ll be able to find them, if you look for the right signs. In summer, the grass around their trunks will be flattened and brown because so many people have sat there. In winter, you feel warmer just looking at them; the wind seems to stop when it comes their way. They are contradictory, these trees: gigantic and sturdy, yet gentle and comforting. It has something to do with the way they hold their branches.

  We’ve had a white spruce now and again over the years and there were a couple of Douglas firs, but that was before my time. Usually, though, we’ve had our best luck with Norway spruces. They’re nice and green, not like the Colorado spruces, which have a blue tint. Sometimes when I’m asked why so many of the Christmas trees have been Norway spruces I’ll make up a story about how they’ve got the right spirit because they grow so close to the North Pole. People like that.

  But the real reason isn’t quite so romantic. The real reason is that Norway spruces are easy to find. And they grow pretty fast, for an evergreen tree.

  You wouldn’t catch me planting them, though. They don’t live all that long. They can start getting ragged and broken when they’re as young as thirty, just when other trees are hitting their stride. Although that hasn’t seemed to bother anyone else. Norway spruces were brought here by the Germanic people of Northern Europe when they settled the Northeast, maybe for sentimental reasons. And people have been planting them ever since.

  Even so, the search for the Christmas tree can take a long time. I start looking for next year’s tree before this year’s tree is lit. I never want to relive the year we didn’t find the tree until September. That might not seem late at all, but Christmas is a very big deal at Rockefeller Center. The preparations alone are enormous. We have these super-giant ornaments that take a week each to install, not to mention the mountains of pinecones and bells we put up all over the place, the giant toy soldiers, the poinsettias. You can get lost in Christmas.

  I have people scouting for m
e in all the states around New York, even as far as Canada. They call me when they think they’ve found the tree and after they’ve checked with the owners, who couldn’t be more delighted to have us come and take away this giant monster growing in their backyard before it falls and breaks through their roof.

  I always go to check it out, even though I know before I go this probably won’t be the one. But you have to go, because the one tree you overlook is sure to be it.

  No matter where I go, I’m always looking for the tree. Sometimes I take a helicopter; I can cover half a county in a day. But most often I’m in my car. As I drive along I keep one eye on the road, and one eye in the sky, hoping to see that tantalizing bit of green, that mysterious mixture of majesty and magic. Sometimes when I’ve been on the road too long I imagine the trees are waving to me, calling me over.

  For a minute I feel exhilarated. I’ve found it, I’ll think. But then I have to figure out how to reach that seductive treetop. A lot of times the trees are in somebody’s backyard in a suburb filled with one-way streets. You can spend an hour circling around trying to find this beautiful tree. Then, when you get there, you discover the bottom’s a mess. It’s jammed up against a wall or has been ruined by trimming.

  Other times, I may find the right tree—but that turns out to be only the beginning. This may sound peculiar, but sometimes the search for the Christmas tree feels a little like an old-fashioned courtship. A lot of people grow very attached to their trees. They love them. I’ve been amazed to discover the hold a tree can have on a person. I have learned to wait for the moment when, for one reason or another, the owners are ready to part with their trees—and that can take years.

  Why am I telling you this?

  Well, I’ve seen where the Christmas trees come from. I’ve seen them when they were glorious without a single ornament on them. But like most of us I’ve been so busy getting to where I’m going I haven’t had a lot of time to think about where I’ve been. It only hit me, how lucky I am, that day at Rockefeller Center, when I realized I would never look at the Christmas tree—or my life, for that matter—the same way again.

  Which brings me back to Sister Anthony.

  Chapter One

  Brush Creek

  We’d flown over half of New Jersey, it felt like, and we were ready to call it a day. Not a single one of the trees I’d been told about had come even close to what we needed. I was barely paying attention by then, just enough to notice that this was one of the prettiest parts of the state. The landscape was lush and green, scarcely populated.

  My head was nodding and I was just about to doze off. Then something made me sit up and look hard at the ground. For a second I couldn’t tell if I was awake or asleep, I was so tired. But as my head cleared I knew I wasn’t dreaming. There it was! No question about it.

  This tree was a star. Everything about it said so: its rich color, the regal way it held itself—even where it stood, just apart from a whole group of evergreens, as if it was special.

  “Can you go down a little?” I shouted over the noise of the chopper.

  I held my breath. Usually closer inspection means disappointment. Half the branches are floppy, or the tree holds them too stiff.

  Not this tree. It seemed to have that improbable combination I was looking for—the size of King Kong, and the suppleness of Giselle.

  My eyes wandered over the surrounding terrain, and settled on a large, elegant building.

  “Do you know who owns this place?” I asked the pilot.

  He glanced at a map. “That’s what I thought,” he said.

  “What is it?” I asked, impatiently.

  “Nuns own it,” he said. “This is the Brush Creek convent.”

  “A convent?” I said. “Isn’t this a little plush?”

  The pilot was a New Jersey boy and knew his way around.

  “This is no ordinary convent,” he began.

  I interrupted. “I can see that,” I said.

  He was nicer than I was, ignored my wise-guy rudeness.

  “Brush Creek was modeled after the grand estates of Europe,” he said, with the polish of a tour guide. “The man who built it wanted his children to see beauty wherever they looked and he had the means to do it. So the place has all kinds of orchards and pretty little valleys and woods. From what I’ve heard, sounds like he was an interesting guy—besides making everything look nice, he started experimenting with conservation long before most people knew what the word meant. They say the house has so many windows that no matter where you go in it, you feel the pull of nature. He named it Brush Creek after the little stream that runs through the middle.”

  He studied the map more closely, then pointed. “See, there it is. That squiggly line. That’s the creek.”

  I glanced at the map, then leaned forward to get a better look. The old man certainly accomplished what he set out to do. Brush Creek had beauty to spare. From the sky you could see its almost perfect design. I responded the way any professional gardener would—with delight and not a small dose of envy.

  “How did the nuns come to live here?” I asked.

  The pilot shook his head. Funny, I’d been up with him on maybe a dozen trips and this was the first time we’d said more than a few words to one another.

  “He planned to pass the estate on to his children,” he said. “But some things you can’t plan for, I guess. His wife died a long time before he did and his kids had no real interest in keeping the place up. So when he heard about this group of nuns who devoted themselves to taking care of poor children all over the world he decided to give his home to them, as a place for them to take a rest from their work. Only one condition: They had to keep it exactly as it was.”

  Neither of us said anything for a while, as if even this small exchange of local lore had been too intimate.

  I broke the silence with a laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” the pilot asked.

  “I was just thinking,” I said. “This should be a breeze. Who better to ask for a Christmas tree than nuns?”

  I relaxed on the way back. It was still only Spring and I might just have gotten Christmas out of the way.

  ❄ ❄ ❄

  I drove out to the convent the next day.

  I didn’t mind getting out of the office. The building janitors were on strike and the place was in chaos. Now on top of everything else I had to do I was in charge of making sure everyone had trash bags. What a mess!

  I’ve got a 22-acre operation at Rockefeller Center. We change the garden arrangement on the Promenade eleven or twelve times a year. I do the design, find the plants and am in charge of the planting, the primping and the pruning. Plus, we have 500 street trees to tend to and who knows how many indoor flowers and plants that have to be redone every two weeks.

  And then there’s the tree.

  The guy who hired me used to take care of the tree. Now he was a sentimental guy. He loved doing it. Even when he got promoted he kept that part of the job. Once in a while he’d take me out with him. I thought he just wanted company. Little did I know he was grooming me to take over.

  He knew I wasn’t keen on it. But just before he retired he told me, “You’re the gardener. You take care of the greenery around here. The tree is green. It’s yours.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, making no attempt to hide my lack of enthusiasm.

  “It’ll be good for you,” he said laughing. “Soften you up a little.”

  “Besides,” he added, “you’re good at it.”

  I’ve thought about giving the tree to someone else—but the truth is, much as I complain about it, I am good at it.

  At least it gets me outdoors. I may be a gardener, but I spend most of my time parked in front of the computer or on the telephone. So spending a pleasant spring day in the country seemed just fine to me—especially when I knew I had that tre
e in my sights. No dreaded dead ends in front of me this time.

  It was a long drive into the prettiest part of New Jersey. The convent was set back quite a distance from the main road. The gravel drive leading to it was lined with dogwood trees in full bloom and I rolled down my window so I could bask in their scent.

  Though I had seen the convent from the air, I wasn’t prepared for the way it looked when I rounded the last bend. Propped up on top of a gentle slope, it had the imposing size of a castle, but the charm of a little girl’s dollhouse. Mysterious tiny windows popped out of the steeply angled roof like secret peepholes, while the downstairs windows were huge, clearly designed to make the outdoors and indoors part of each other. The building seemed to go on forever; just just when it seemed my eyes had finally found the end of it, I spotted yet another wall angling off in another direction.

  The nun who answered the door invited me in and then went to get Sister Frances, who ran the place. We had spoken on the phone.

  As I stood in the foyer, I caught a glimpse of a large room full of beautiful paintings, comfortable furniture and luxurious carpets that looked like something out of the Arabian Nights.

  I was taken aback by the swell surroundings.

  “Do you like our home?” a friendly voice asked.

  I looked up and saw a nun with a round pink face and amused, intelligent eyes watching me gawk. I laughed, a little embarrassed.

  Sister Frances took me on a tour. Every room seemed flooded with light. “The Old Man made sure you could always look out, no matter where you sat,” she explained. So even chairs whose backs were to windows faced large mirrors angled so they offered a perfectly composed view of the outdoors. The main rooms were grand; the bedrooms were cozy and all of it was deliberate. We ended up in a large parlor, sitting in front of windows that opened onto the garden and the fields beyond.