Lost for Holidays By Alice McDermott, New York Times, December 24, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/opinion/24mcdermott.html SHE was 6 or 7 that year, and if memory served (sometimes it did and sometimes it didn't, all the clichés about old age being as dishearteningly accurate as they were), it was a particularly cold Christmas Eve in the city. She gave the story a Dickensian spin: A particularly cold Christmas Eve in Manhattan, getting on toward dusk and her toes aching with all the walking she'd done in her thin leather shoes. They had taken the train in from Brooklyn, she and her two sisters and her brother, and they had met their mother at her building at midday. There had been some business about greeting the man their mother worked for, a Mr. Nichols. She recalled being ushered into his big office, pipe smoke and leather and dark woods, the man's large hand extended and her mother poking her in the small of the back to get her to step forward and shake it. A silver dollar distributed to each of them. And then out into the cold again, buoyed by their satisfaction with the encounter, by their satisfaction with what they saw as their own limitless charms. (Their mother, of course, had offered no word of praise, but Mr. Nichols had said, "Lovely children," and in the elevator going down, their mother, in her business suit and fur- collared cloth coat, her arm crooked rigidly to accommodate her purse, had looked at the four of them briefly and briefly allowed them a small smile.) Over to St. Patrick's to light a candle, and then down the length of Fifth Avenue. It was nearing dusk, then, when they reached Gimbel's, and to give the story a Dickensian turn, she added a wet snow and the thin black tire tracks of the cars in the long streets, the yellowed circles of streetlights. She mentioned her own fascination with the shoeprints she had made on the fresh fallen snow, her toes aching - first footsteps on an untrammeled land. Or so she had told herself, pretending, following her mother and her brother and her sisters into Gimbel's - just running in, her mother had said, before they got on the train to head home. Pretending as she walked that an argument had begun between her two feet in their good Sunday shoes: one foot saying, Let me go first, and the other saying, No, me. No, me - over the muddied threshold of the store, following - I'm first. No, I am. No, me ... absorbed by the game she had devised out of the simple study of her own footsteps, after so much walking. Me. No, me. No, me. Until she looked up to discover that the good cloth coats she was following were filled with the backs of utter strangers. "You were lost!" her nephew said from the front seat. It was another Christmas Eve and they were driving through the dark, after dinner in town, a small country town somewhere in the Adirondacks where he and his partner - she knew the jargon - had their new home. The road was narrow and winding, edged with thick trees. They'd already made two wrong turns. "Lost," she said and raised her gloved hand and then dropped it into her lap where Jim, the partner, driving now, had placed a lovely mohair throw, tucking her in, when they'd left the restaurant. To her right, her daughter stirred, perhaps with impatience. It was possible her daughter had heard this story before. To her left, her niece said, "Awww," sympathetically. Memory or nightmare, even memory of a nightmare, what could compare with the terror of being a child lost on Christmas Eve? The world taken over by strangers. She felt the impulse to scream move up out of her aching toes. But something of the decorum of Mr. Nichols's hushed and lovely office, something of her mother's quiet pride in the way she had stepped forward and taken the strange man's huge hand and said, as they'd been told to say, "How do you do," kept her silent, even in her terror. Kept her measured in her steps as she continued walking, one foot in front of the other (no fanciful pretending now) through the store. Lost. "How did they find you?" Jim said, a little breathlessly. He glanced only briefly into the rear view mirror. The road was dark and winding; they'd already seen the silhouette of a crossing deer. He and her nephew had moved up here from the city only last fall. Walking calmly, the scream perched at the back of her throat, she had, at last, remembered to do what she had been told to do, and found a woman who looked nice. A woman standing at a counter, examining silk stockings lifted out of a thin box. She touched the woman's coat and the woman leaned down to hear her. She wore a lovely perfume. There was a scurrying, then. The salesclerk stepped out from behind the counter and then a man in a suit appeared. Perhaps the floorwalker. And then another elevator ride. And although she had no memory of anything but the dry weight of the scream at the back of her throat, she supposed she was actually crying by then, because they took her to a nurse who - here memory grows vivid again - gave her a piece of gauze to dry her tears. "Not a tissue?" her nephew said from the front seat, tilting the back of his head toward her voice, showing her his handsome profile, the face a little heavier than it had once been, the flesh at the throat a bit loose. It was possible that he was humoring her with his polite interest. It was possible they had all heard this story before. Her daughter, beside her, had her face turned to the window and the dark trees. Not a tissue, she said, but a piece of gauze instead to dry her eyes. The nurse saying that if she didn't stop crying she would soon wash them all away with her tears, wash everyone out of the nurse's office and into the hall and down the elevator shaft, where they wouldn't be found until after Christmas, since the store was about to close. "Awww," her niece said again. Her breath was sharp with the scent of the wine they had drunk at dinner. "That was mean." She smoothed the blanket Jim had spread over her knees when they left the restaurant, tucking her in, calling her Auntie. She was too warm with it on her lap, with the five of them in the car and the heat turned high, but he had meant well and so she kept it there. The store was about to close and she began to believe that she would never be found, that from now on she would spend Christmas alone, among strangers, accepting a piece of gauze when what she needed was her mother's large handkerchief, smelling of starch. Enduring their silly jokes when what she wanted was her brother and sisters' warm teasing. Feeling the scream perched at the back of her throat while decorum and politeness, the good intentions of utter strangers, kept her silent. "And then what happened?" Jim said, glancing again into the rearview mirror, the green dashboard lighting the reflection of his eyes. Yesterday, he and her nephew had driven down to Brooklyn to fetch her. They had said it was to be a Christmas family reunion. Her niece and her daughter and their six grown children - who tonight had stayed behind in town after dinner, to party, they had said, she knew the jargon - all gathered together in the new country house. And you, Auntie, they had said. Our matriarch. Last of the old generation when once she had been its youngest member. "She was never found again," her daughter said dryly into the dark car. They all laughed. They all, of course, had heard this story before. She had told it, perhaps, just an hour or two ago, at the restaurant. She had a memory, perhaps, of her grandchildren, her grandnieces and grandnephews with their grown-up faces, smiling at each other behind their napkins, of her daughter rolling her eyes. "You didn't know?" her nephew was saying to Jim, laughing softly. "Auntie was raised by a tribe of salesclerks from Gimbel's." She smoothed the mohair blanket on her lap, pulled herself away from the shoulders of the two women on either side of her. She folded her gloved hands. There was a certain dry weight at the back of her throat. There was the memory of what it was to be alone, among strangers. They had found her, of course, her mother and her brother and her two sisters, they had burst into the nurse's room, scolding and laughing, restoring the world for her, delivering her, just in time for Christmas. She had told the story over dinner, repeating herself blithely, naïvely, as the elderly will do, giving the happy ending a Dickensian lilt because she had seen them so vividly as she spoke: mother, sisters and brother, bursting into the room. Now she listened to the low hum of the engine as the car made its way in the darkness and the cold. If everyone is quiet when you stop talking, her mother used to say, then you've been talking too much. Outside, above the thick trees, there were the eternal stars, always brighter on Christmas Eve, even in the city. It was one of the clichés of old age, of course, that the past burned brighter than all the rest. She had told the story before, given it its happy ending, and so she did not say now: "Still lost. Still waiting for them to find me." Alice McDermott is the author, most recently, of the novel "Child of My Heart." ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Know an art & music fan? 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