JOEL MCKENNA USED TO SING. He gave it up. He’d given up so much. There had always been a noble reason for it and that had excused everything. He hardly ever sang except for Christmas carols, and the tree was coming down in a few days. He sang in front of Shelley, but not like he could.
He hardly ever used his vacation time. He hoarded it up for these days when he could sit at home drinking cocoa and cider and thinking about the past, watching the lights come on, come off, ponderous on the heavy deep green Spencer fir in the corner of the living room. Outside, the white fat flakes floated down and down.
“Have you seen a child the color of wheat?
the color of dawn?
His eyes are mild,
his hands are those of a king?
as a king he was born.
incense, myrrh and gold, we bring to his side
and the Eastern Star is our Guide?”
“You sing that so pretty, Joel,” Shelley told him.
When he was seventeen with feathered, honey brown hair and tight fitting jeans instead of a military buzz gone to seed and khakis, Joel really could sing it. He’d sung it for city opera and his voice rang out. His singing stance was one hip cocked to the side, one foot in front of the other and people melted when they heard his voice. His first girlfriend melted for him and worshiped him. People couldn’t believe he wasn’t sleeping with her. They didn’t understand that being worshiped is even better than sex. No one worships you when they’re sleeping with you.
Amahl and the Night Visitors was his favorite thing about Christmas. Let everyone else have their A Christmas Carol. There was something cold and windswept, something lonely about the story that touched him.
The three Magi who appeared at the hut of Amahl and his mother to spend the night. They were loaded down with all the wealth to give the child Jesus, and Amahl’s mother wondered why her son, her sick child shouldn’t have some of it. So she went to steal it. But she was caught. And then Melchior, the melodious Melchior, told her how important this child was, how he needed everyone’s love to build his kingdom. Amahl’s mother, done in by guilt, decided that the baby did need the gold more than she. And Amahl gave his crutch to the child, because it was his most important treasure. And then God miraculously healed Amahl, and he went with the magi to see the child.
“I actually believed in that,” Joel told Shelley. “I can’t believe I believed in something that is riddled with so many problems.”
He had probably believed that story until last year. Now the idea that any baby, God incarnate or not, would need tons of gold and frankincense and myrrh, or even tons of love, to the disenfranchisement of some ordinary, crippled and poverty stricken child seemed ridiculous. It seemed to miss the whole point of being a Christian. Wouldn’t Jesus, the grown up Jesus, tell the wise men that their money would be better spent on real poor people, that some of their wealth should have gone to Amahl? Someone like Sidney would even say that Amahl really was Jesus, that they really should have seen the Christ child in him. Really, now that Joel didn’t go to church that often he realized that worship was supposed to go on in the world, with the people all around you. But he’d actually always sort of felt that way.
And the last bit, about a crippled boy giving his crutch away and being instantly healed... Life was not like that—which was to say God was not like that. Giving away the thing you needed most to anyone who didn’t need it at all just seemed so stupid on so many levels.
For forty years I’ve lived like that. Never really thinking about right or wrong, Trying to worship some imaginary God who wanted all sorts of things I didn’t even think about if he really wanted or not. Just the church said God wanted it or a priest said it, or a prayer book.
Up until very recently Joel had never really done the work of finding out what he wanted, or what was right or what was wrong.
He looked at the Christmas tree. He looked at it for a long time and Shelley finally said, “What’s up, Joel?”
He was quiet because he wasn’t exactly sure how to phrase it. And then he said:
“Shelley, I just realized I’ve spent my whole life... giving my whole life up. I’ve sacrificed almost every part of me I love... like giving the crutch away. And I think I expected God to just heal my leg. Only... that’s not life.
“I look back on my first marriage and.… all the other stuff. And I think... the only reason I did half the things I did was...”
“Because you thought God wanted you to.”
Joel looked at her surprised and said, “You know... I was about to say yes. I was going to blame God—and the Church. But the real thing is... I hid behind both of them. Everything I gave up or didn’t do... it was because I was afraid, Shell.”
He bit his bottom lip and then leaned across the couch and caught her hand.
“What?”
“Let’s get married,” he told her. “Let’s just get married now.”
She was wearing the engagement ring, and her mouth was wide open. The marriage was still an eventuality out in the who-knew-where. She looked at Joel’s excited face, his eyes daring her, and then she said:
“Yes.”
The night before Christmas, and all through the mall, the Muzack version of Brenda Lee’s Rocking Around the Christmas Tree was playing again. And there was no end to the holiday shoppers. Outside of the department store, Seth could see kids still climbing onto Santa’s lap. You would have thought they’d all be home by now. You would have thought that people would have finished shopping. You would have thought the drunk woman who turned up about an hour ago had no business driving around in the snow doing last minute shopping.
In the stock room Seth was helping Jung Mei pile boxes and thinking about going over to the coffee shop and picking up a double latte. Two, actually. One to bring to Becky who was at the apartment. Next year she could move in with him. Maybe. And they could start a life together. Unless she was going off to school. And even then, there were…”
“Set! Set!”
It took a while for Seth to realize Jung Mei was calling him, and then he remembered that’s what she called him. That’s what she could pronounce.
“Set,” she said taking the box from him.
“You going to have Mewwy Cwistmas?”
“Yes,” Seth told her. He always felt the need to talk very precisely and very respectfully to Jung Mei. People laughed at her, but she had gone through so much to come here. One night at their break she’d told him about stowing away from North Korea, how she’d left her family behind.
“I’m going to go home with my girlfriend, and then my dad and his fiancé and some friends... we’re all going to Midnight Mass together like we do every year.”
“Vewy nice,” she said appreciatively. “Vewy nice.”
“My Dad’s been talking to me about school. He sort of wants me to go to Cartimandua College.”
“That’s good,” Jung Mei surprised him. Only what Jung Mei said was, “Thas goo.
“You ought go to school.”
“I don’t have to,” Seth told her. “I could stay here.”
“Oh, Set,” she said, shaking her head, alarmed. “You have to go to schoo!” She wrang her hands and gesticulated to the stock room:
“Or else you be here for west of yo life!”
Seth had to meet the parents. He’d avoided this for as long as possible. Becky had encouraged it. She really wanted her mother and father to stay out of her love life as possible. They were nice, courteous even. It wasn’t that they disliked him, they just seemed a little... withholding.
“Joel’s so nice,” Becky noted in contrast to how her parents had treated Seth. “He’s sort of like a teddy bear. Except, not fat.”
Seth looked at her strangely and laughed as he helped her over the snowdrift and into the truck.
“God, I can’t believe it got cold again in here this quickly.” He turned the heat all the way up in the cab.
“They’re just upset you’re not Addison, and they keep on trying to turn you into Addison, but as far as they’re concerned... No one else will ever be Addison Cromptley. Which is really too bad because I like him, we’re friends again and everything. But I’ll never be with him.”
“That’s good to know,” Seth told her, smiling and jerking down the bib of his cap as they drove down the street.