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plants. From my warm perch inside the glass door, I looked out at the cold city, north toward the Empire State Building, which would be lit at
night in green and red for Christmas, then I looked east toward the Chrysler Building in Midtown, closer to where FAO Schwarz was, should I
decide to accept the dare. (Of course I would. Who was I kidding? Shril y play hard to get with an assignment in a red Moleskine deposited for her
at Madame Tussauds? Hardly.)
I noticed my old sleeping bag on the ground outside, the sleeping bag in which Langston and I used to snuggle up on Christmas Eve when we
were super-lit le so that Dad could, in his words, “zipper up the excitement until dawn on Christmas morning.” I saw Langston and Be
up together in the sleeping bag now, with the blue comforter from Langston’s bed on top of them.
I went outside. They were just waking up.
“Happy Christmas Eve!” I chirped. “Did you two sleep out here last night? I didn’t hear you come in. You must have been freezing! Let’s make a
big breakfast this morning, what do you say? Eggs and toast and pancakes and …”
“Orange juice,” Langston coughed. “Please, Lily. Go to the corner store and get us some fresh orange juice.”
Be
“Sleeping outside in the dead of winter not such a smart idea, huh?” I said.
“Seemed romantic under the stars last night,” Langston sighed. Then sneezed. Again. And again, this time with a ful -on hacking cough. “Make us
some soup, please please please, Lily Bear?”
It seemed to me that, in al owing himself to get sick, my brother had nal y, and total y, ruined Christmas. Al hope for any semblance of a
decent Christmas was now gone. It further seemed to me, since he made the choice to sleep outside with his boyfriend last night instead of play
Boggle with his Lily Bear as she speci cal y asked him to do and which she speci cal y used to do for him during his time of need, that Langston
sicko would have to deal with this crisis on his own.
“Make your own soup,” I told the boys. “And get your own OJ. I have an errand to run in Midtown.” I turned to go back inside and leave the
boys to their nasty new colds. Suckahs. That ought to teach them not to go out clubbing when they could stay home and Boggle with me.
“You’l be sorry next year when you’re living in Fiji and I’m stil in Manhat an where I can order food and juice from the bodega at the corner
and have it delivered to me anytime I want!” Langston exclaimed.
I swiveled back around. “Excuse me? What did you just say?”
Langston pul ed the comforter over his head. “Nothing. Never mind,” he said from underneath.
Which meant it was seriously something.
“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, LANGSTON?” I said, feeling a Shril y panic moment coming on.
Be
you slipped.”
“SLIPPED ON WHAT, LANGSTON?” I almost was ready to cry. But I’d decided to try to be less Shril y for New Year’s, and even though that was
stil a week away, I felt like I had to get started sometime. Now was as good a time as any. I stood strong, shaking—but not crying.
Langston’s head re-emerged from underneath the comforter. “Mom and Dad are in Fiji for their second honeymoon, but also to spend time
visiting a boarding school there. A place that’s o ered Dad a headmaster’s job for the next two years.”
“Mom and Dad would never want to live in Fiji!” I fumed. “Vacation paradise, maybe. But people don’t live there.”
“Lots of people live there, Lily. And this school caters to kids like Dad was, who have parents in the diplomatic service, like in Indonesia and
Micronesia—”
“Stop it with al these -esias!” I said. “Why would the diplomatic parents send their kids to a stupid school in Fiji?”
“It’s a pret y amazing school, from what I’ve heard. It’s for parents who don’t want to send their kids to schools in the places where they’re
posted, but also want to not send them so far away as to the States or the UK. For them, it’s a good alternative.”
“I’m not going,” I a
Langston said, “It would be a good opportunity for Mom, too. She could take a sabbatical and work on her research and her book.”
“I’m not going,” I repeated. “I like living here in Manhat an. I’l live with Grandpa.”
Langston threw the comforter over his head again.
Which could only mean there was more to the story.
“WHAT?!?!?” I demanded, now feeling truly scared.
“Grandpa is proposing to Glamma. In Florida.”
Glamma, as she likes to be known, is Grandpa’s Florida girlfriend—and the reason he had abandoned us at Christmas. I said, “Her name is
Mabel! I wil never cal her Glamma!”
“Cal her whatever you want. But she’s probably soon going to be Mrs. Grandpa. When that happens, my guess is he wil move down there
permanently.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Langston sat up so I could see his face. Even sick, he was pathetical y sincere. “Believe me.”
“How come no one told me?”
“How come no one told me?”
“They were trying to protect you. Not cause you concern until they knew for sure these things would happen.”
This was how Shril y was born, from people trying so hard to “protect” me.
“PROTECT THIS!” I shouted, lifting my middle nger to Langston.
“Shril y!” he admonished. “That’s so unlike you.”
“What is like me?” I asked.
I stormed away from the garden rooftop, snarled at poor ol’ Grunt, who was licking his paws after breakfast, and continued my storming, to
downstairs, to my apartment, to my room, in my city, Manhat an. “No one’s moving me to Fiji,” I mut ered as I got dressed to go out.
I couldn’t think about this Christmas catastrophe. I just couldn’t. It was too much.
I felt especial y grateful now having the red Moleskine to con de in. Just knowing a Snarl was on the other side to read it—to possibly care
—inspired my pen to move quickly in answer to his question. As I waited for the subway en route to Snarl’s Midtown destination, I had plenty of
free time on the bench at the Astor Place station, since the notoriously slow 6 train seemed to take its usual forever to arrive.
I wrote:
What I want for Christmas is to believe.
I want to believe that, despite al the evidence to the contrary, there is reason to hope. I write this while a homeless man is sleeping on the
ground under a dirty blanket a few feet away from the bench where I’m sit ing at the Astor Place subway stop, on the uptown side, where I can see
across the tracks to the Kmart entrance on the downtown side. Is this relevant? Not real y, except that when I started to write this to you, I noticed
him, then stopped writing long enough to dash over to the Kmart to buy the man a bag of “fun size” Snickers bars, which I slipped underneath his
blanket, and that made me extra sad because his shoes are al worn out and he’s dirty and smel y and I don’t think that bag of Snickers is going to
make much di erence to this guy, ultimately. His problems are way bigger than a bag of Snickers can resolve. I don’t understand how to process
this stu sometimes. Like, here in New York, we see so much grandeur and glitz, especial y this time of year, and yet we see so much su ering,
too. Everyone else on the platform here is just ignoring this guy, like he doesn’t exist, and I don’t know how that’s possible. I want to believe it’s
not crazy of me to hope he wil wake up and a social worker wil take him to a shelter for a warm shower, meal, and bed, and the social worker
wil then help him nd a job and an apartment and … See? It’s just too much to process. Al this hoping for something—or someone—that’s