The Twelve Days of Dash and Lily

Boomer was right. This was the tree.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

“Cool,” Boomer replied. “Do you want me to wrap it? Since it’s a gift?”

I assured him that a ribbon would suffice.

Catching a cab when you’re a teenage boy is hard enough. Catching a cab with a Christmas tree in tow is nigh impossible. So I ran some errands until Boomer’s shift was done, and together we wheeled Oscar over to Lily’s apartment in the East Village.

I hadn’t been there all that often in the past year. Lily said it was so her grandfather wouldn’t be bothered, but I thought it was more because I’d be adding one more element to the chaos. Her parents had been around more than they’d been in years – which should have helped her out immeasurably, but instead seemed to have given her two more people to take care of.

It was Langston who opened the door, and the minute he saw me and Boomer with the tree, he said, “Whoa! Whoa! WHOA!” so loudly that I thought Lily had to be home and within hearing distance. But then he told me she and Grandpa were out at a checkup. His parents were out because it was a Saturday, and why would such social people be home on a Saturday? So it was just the three of us . . . and Oscar.

As we set him up on his perch in the living room, I tried not to notice how under the weather the apartment appeared, as if it had spent the last month or so coughing up dust and discolor. I knew the way this family worked, and I knew this meant Grandpa had been out of commission and Lily had been distracted. They’d always been the true guardians of the place.

Once Oscar was standing proudly, I reached into my backpack for the pièce de résistance that would, I hoped, not be resisted.

“What are you doing?” Langston asked as I looped things around Oscar’s branches.

“Are those tiny turkeys?” Boomer chimed in. “Is this going to be like the tree they had at Plymouth Rock?”

“They’re partridges,” I explained, holding up a piece of wood carved in the shape of the bird, with a big hole in the center. “Partridge napkin rings, specifically. There weren’t any partridge ornaments at that store whose name I can’t make myself utter.” (The store was called Christmas Memories, which was enough to make me want to drink Pop Rocks with Coke. I had to think of it as Christmas Mammaries in order to go inside.) “If we’re doing twelve days of Christmas, we’ve gotta do twelve days of Christmas. Lily can decorate the rest of the tree. But this is going to be a partridge tree. And on top, we’re going to have . . . a pear!”

I pulled said fruit out of my bag, expecting admiration. But the reaction went more pear-shaped.

“You can’t put a pear at the top of a tree,” Langston said. “It will look dumb. And it will rot after a day or two.”

“But it’s a pear! In a partridge tree!” I argued.

“I get it,” Langston said. Meanwhile, Boomer guffawed. He hadn’t gotten it.

“Do you have a better idea?” I challenged.

Langston thought for a moment, and then said, “Yes.” He walked over to a small photograph hanging on the wall and took it down. “This.”

He showed me the picture. Even though it had to be over half a century old, I instantly recognized Grandpa.

“Is that your grandmother with him?”

“Yup. Love of his life. They were quite a pair. ”

A pair on a partridge tree. Perfect.

It took us a few tries to get it placed – me and Langston trying out various branches, Boomer telling Oscar to stay still. But we got the pair perched near the crown of the tree as birds peeked out below.

Five minutes later, the front door opened and Lily and Grandpa returned. Even though I’d only known him a few months before he had his fall, it was still surprising to me to see how small Lily’s grandfather had become – like instead of going off to hospitals and rehabilitation centers, he’d really been put in the wash for way too long, coming back even more shrunk each time.

Still, there was the handshake. The minute he saw me, he extended his hand and asked, “How’s the life, Dash?” And when he shook, he shook hard.

Lily didn’t ask me what I was doing there, but the question was certainly in her tired eyes.

“How was the doctor?” Langston asked.

“Much better company than the undertaker!” Grandpa replied. Not the first time I’d heard him use this joke, which meant it was probably the two hundredth time Lily had endured it.

“Does the undertaker have bad breath?” Boomer barged into the hallway and asked.

“Boomer!” Lily said. Now she was definitely confused. “What are you doing here?”

It was Langston who cut in. “Much to my surprise, your Romeo here has brought us a rather early Christmas gift.”

“Here,” I said, taking Lily’s hand. “Close your eyes. Let me show you.”

Lily’s grip was not like her grandfather’s. Before, our hands used to pulse electric together. Now it was more like static. Pleasant, but light.

She closed her eyes, though. And when we got into the living room and I told her to open them, she did.

“Meet Oscar,” I said. “He’s your present for the first day of Christmas.”

“It’s a pair in a partridge tree!” Boomer yelled out.

Lily took it in. She looked surprised. Or maybe the stillness of her reaction was further tiredness. Then something kicked in, and she smiled.

“You really didn’t have to . . .” she began.

“I wanted to!” I said quickly. “I really, really wanted to!”

“But where’s the pair?” Grandpa asked. Then he saw the photograph. His eyes welled up. “Oh. I see. There we are.”

Lily saw it, too, and if her eyes welled up, they welled inward. I honestly had no idea what was going on in her head. I shot a look at Langston, who was studying her just as hard, without getting any ready answers.

“Happy first day of Christmas,” I said.

She shook her head. “The first day of Christmas is Christmas,” she whispered.

“Not this year,” I said. “Not for us.”

Langston said it was time to retrieve the ornaments. Boomer volunteered at the same time Grandpa made a move to get some of the boxes. This snapped Lily back to attention – she shuffled him over to the couch in the living room, and said he could oversee them this year. I could tell Grandpa didn’t like this, but that he also knew it would hurt Lily’s feelings if he put up too much of a fight. So he sat down. For her.

As soon as the boxes were brought in, I knew it was time for me to leave. This was a family tradition, and if I stayed and pretended I was family, I would feel every ounce of the pretending, in the same way that I could feel the weight of Lily pretending to be happy, pretending to want to do what we were encouraging her to do. She would do this for Langston and her Grandpa and her parents whenever they got back. If I stayed, she would even do it for me. But I wanted her to want to do it for herself. I wanted her to feel all that Christmas wonder she felt last year at this time. But that was going to take more than a perfect tree. It might just take a miracle.

Twelve days.

We had twelve days.

I’d spent my whole life avoiding Christmas. But not this year. No, this year what I wanted most this season was for Lily to be happy again.

Saturday, December 13th

I’m mad at global warming for all the obvious reasons, but mostly I’m mad at it for ruining Christmas. This time of year is supposed to be about teeth-chattering, cold weather that necessitates coats, scarves, and mittens. Outside, there should be see-your-breath air that offers the promise of sidewalks covered in snow, while inside, families drink hot chocolate by a roaring fire, huddled close together with their pets to keep warm. There is no better precursor to Christmas than a quality goose bump chill. It’s what I count on to usher in the good cheer, happy songs, excessive cookie baking, favorite-people togetherness, and the all-important presents of the season. The days before Christmas are not supposed to be like this one was, a balmy seventy degrees, with holiday shoppers wearing shorts and drinking iced peppermint lattes (yuck), and tank-top-wearing Frisbee players nearly giving concussions to dogwalkers in Tompkins Square Park with their carefree spring-day bad aim. This year the cold couldn’t be bothered to bring in Christmas, so until it could, I wouldn’t bother getting too excited about the best time of the year.

There wasn’t enough cold outside, so instead I brought it inside and turned it on Dash, who didn’t deserve it.

“If you have to go, then go,” I said brusquely. Brusque. It was such a Dash word – obscure, unknowable, distant – that it felt strange I even knew it. Along with the other million obligations overwhelming me at the moment, there was SAT study time, which left an amaroidal taste in my mouth. (How could an SAT taker possibly be more prepared for university by knowing such a word? Right – not at all. Complete waste of word, complete waste of time, complete certainty I will still not achieve my parents’ hopes for my college admissions prospects by the addition of the word amaroidal to my vocabulary.)

“You don’t want me to stay, do you?” asked Dash, as if he was pleading for me not to demand his spending any additional time with my beleaguered Grandpa and my brother, who at best tolerates my boyfriend and at worst is downright rude to him. I’d feel bad about Langston and Dash’s animosity except it seems to be an enjoyable sport between them. If Lily was the subject on Jeopardy!, the answer would be, “She does not understand it at all,” and the question would be, “What is the human male species?”

“I want you to do what you want to do,” I responded, but what I meant was: Stay, Dash. Please. This Christmas tree gift is so lovely and exactly what I didn’t know I needed – for the season, and from you. And even though I have a ton of other things I need to do right now, there’s nothing I want more than for you to decorate the tree with me. Or for you to sit on the sofa and watch me bedazzle it while you make snarky comments about pagan traditions misappropriated by Christianity. Just to have you near.

“Do you like the tree?” Dash asked, but he was already buttoning his pea coat, which was too heavy for such a warm day, and looking at his phone like there were text messages on it beckoning him to better places than at home with me.

“Why wouldn’t I?” I said, not willing to further profess my profuse thanks. I had only just started sorting through the decorations when Dash announced his intention to leave, and he did it at the exact moment that I opened the gift box from the Strand that Dash had given me last January 19, to celebrate author Patricia Highsmith’s birthday. Inside the box was a red and gold ornament with a sketch in black picturing Matt Damon as the Talented Mr Ripley. Who else but Dash would delight in a Christmas decoration displaying the face of a celebrated literary serial killer and give it to his girlfriend as a present? The present only made me adore Dash more. (The literary hero part, not the serial killer part.)

In February, I had placed the gift box in the Christmas decorations storage box with a sigh of great hope – that Dash and I would still be together when it was time to put the ornament on the tree. And we were. But our relationship was ephemeral (finally an SAT word that applied to my life). It didn’t feel real anymore. It felt more like an obligation that somehow had survived till now so we should at least see it through the holidays, because that’s where it started. Then we could stop pretending that what had initially felt so right and true now felt . . . still true, but definitely not right.

“Be good to Oscar,” said Boomer. He gave the tree a military salute.

“Who’s Oscar?” I asked.

“The tree!” Boomer said, like it was obvious and I had maybe offended Oscar by not knowing his name. “Come on, Dash, we don’t want to miss previews.”

“Where are you fellas going? How far’s the walk?” Grandpa asked them with a touch of desperation in his voice. Grandpa’s been mostly housebound since the heart attack and the fall. He doesn’t have much stamina for walking more than a block or two anymore, so he practically interrogates visitors about their outside activities. Grandpa’s not a guy used to having his wings clipped.

Really what Grandpa should have been asking Boomer and Dash was, How can you be so rude as to deliver this beautiful tree and then just leave before the tree – I mean, Oscar – is properly decorated? What kind of uncouth urchins are you kids nowadays?

“We’re seeing a movie that starts in twenty minutes,” said Dash. His face didn’t look remotely guilty, despite the fact that he hadn’t invited me.

“What movie?” I asked. If Dash was going to see the one movie I was dying to see without me, then that would be the last sign I needed that he and I really were not connecting anymore and maybe we needed an official break. I’d been counting the days till holiday vacation so I could see Corgi & Bess, and I’d probably see it at least five times in the theater if I could find the time. Helen Mirren as a centenarian Queen Elizabeth with a supposedly fantastic animatronic corgi at the side of her walker at all times until an unfortunate fireworks display causes the corgi to run off, and frail old Bess and her walker have to find the corgi somewhere on the grounds of the enchanted Balmoral Castle, with countless adventures along the way for both queen and pup? Yes, please! Count me in, repeated viewings, IMAX and 3D! I’d seen the trailer enough times to already know it was my favorite movie of the year, but I’d been holding out hope that Dash would give me a date night first-time viewing of it as my Christmas present. Not just the movie – but the time with him.

“We’re seeing The Naughty and the Mice !” Boomer told Grandpa in the way Boomer had of delivering even the most basic information with an exclamation mark.

To me, Dash said, “I didn’t think you’d want to come, so I didn’t ask if you wanted a ticket.” Dash was right. I didn’t want to see the movie because I’d already seen it. I thought The Naughty and the Mice was derivative, but Edgar Thibaud loved the Pixar movie about speed demon attic mice who drag-race Matchbox cars when the house’s family is asleep.

I didn’t tell Dash I’d already seen The Naughty and the Mice, because I had gone to the movie with Edgar Thibaud. It wasn’t like me hanging out with Edgar was a big secret – Dash knew that Edgar also volunteered (court-ordered) at Grandpa’s rehabilitation center – but I’d neglected to mention that occasionally he and I hung out after hours. Usually just for a coffee, but this was the first time he and I had gone anywhere beyond a café. I didn’t know why I went. I didn’t even like Edgar Thibaud that much. Well, I liked him fine enough for a scoundrel who was responsible for the death of my pet gerbil in kindergarten. I just didn’t trust him. Maybe Edgar was my stealth side-rehabilitation project, Grandpa being my primary and only truly important one. I wanted to help mold Edgar into a good guy, despite the odds, and if seeing a movie with a girl with the full knowledge that she had nothing beyond a platonic interest in him might evolve Edgar, I could make the effort. I told myself that I’d been so busy the last several months, I needed the relief of a dark time-out in a movie theater, even if it was a movie I didn’t care about with a person I barely cared about. If I’d seen the movie with Dash, I would have been preoccupied the whole time, wondering, Is he going to kiss me now? If not, why not? With Edgar, all I wondered was, Is he going to ask me to pay for his popcorn?

“Have fun,” I said, and I managed to sound chipper, trying to be a good sport. I could never stay cold to Dash for long. But Dash’s leaving stung, like he’d given me the most fabulous gift only to prematurely snatch it away.

“Oh, we will!” Boomer promised, so anxious to leave he was hurriedly walking backward toward the door, which caused him to bump into a side table with enough force that the lamp on the table crashed to the floor. It was a minor crash – only the lightbulb broke – but the noise was enough to wake the beast that had been napping in my room. Boris, my dog, came racing into the living room and immediately pinned Boomer to the floor.

“Heel!” I commanded Boris. As a breed, bullmastiffs are surprisingly good apartment dwellers for their size because they’re not very active. But they are essentially guard dogs, if compassionate ones – they pin intruders down instead of trying to hurt them. Boomer probably didn’t know that. I’d look as terrified as Boomer, too, if I had a 130-pound dog pinning me to the ground. “Heel!” I repeated.

Boris got off Boomer and came and sat at my feet, satisfied that I was safe. But the commotion had also coaxed the smallest fur member of the family out of his own sleep and, typically lazy, he arrived late into the living room to assess the situation and secure the area. Grandpa lives with us now that he can’t live on his own anymore, and his cat, Grunt, came along with him. True to his name, the cat grunted at Boris, who standing upright is the size of an adult woman but is abjectly terrified of Grandpa’s twelve-pound cat. Poor Boris went from a heeling posture to standing up and draping his front paws over my shoulders, whimpering, his dear, wrinkled face looking into mine like, Protect me, Mama! I gave Boris’s wet nose a kiss and said, “Down, boy. You’re fine.”

Our apartment is really too small for all these people and animals. It’s a bloody zoo at my home. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I mean, maybe I’d like for Grandpa, who used to be so robust and such a man-about-town, not to be so confined to our third-floor apartment because he can’t do the stairs more than once per day, and some days not at all. But if having a stream of family members and healthcare workers come in and out to help him and visit with him averts Grandpa’s worst fear – being moved to a nursing home – I’m all for the zoo situation. The alternative scenario is bleak. Grandpa often proclaims that the only way he’ll allow himself to be moved out of his home is lying flat, in a box.

Langston came into the living room from the kitchen and asked, “What happened in here?” and that was Dash’s cue to finally leave.

Dash told Langston, “Thanks for the tea and cookies you didn’t offer.”

Langston said, “You’re welcome. Leaving so soon? Wonderful!” Langston stepped to the front door in the foyer to open it. Bewildered Boomer stood up to step out while Dash hesitated for a moment. He looked like he was about to kiss me goodbye, then thought better of it, and instead he patted Boris’s head. Boris the traitor licked Dash’s hand.

I was sore, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t melt when this impossibly handsome guy in the pea coat was sweet to my dog. “We’ll have a tree lighting tomorrow night,” I said to Dash. “Will you come?” Tomorrow was the fourteenth of December! Tree-lighting day! How had I managed to completely ignore this most important date until Dash literally plopped a tree into my living room? Was it that maybe this year the ceremony felt more like a chore than a reason for cheer?

“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Dash. Grunt couldn’t have cared less about Dash’s acceptance of my invitation. Grunt took chase of Boris again, causing Boris to run – directly into a tall pile of books propped up against the living room wall.

This caused Grandpa to yell, “Grunt, come back here!” and Boris to start barking, and Langston to admonish Dash, “Go, already!”

Boomer and Dash left.

I knew Dash was relieved to leave.

My house is always busy. Loud. Boisterous. Pet hairy. Lots of people around.

Dash likes quiet, and order, and would prefer to be alone with his books than hang out with his own family. He’s allergic to cats. Sometimes I wonder if he is to me, too.

Sunday, December 14th

A year ago my life was so different. My Grandpa was in such good shape that he went back and forth to Florida, where he had a girlfriend in his senior-citizen apartment complex. I had no pets and no boyfriend. I didn’t really understand sadness.

Grandpa’s girlfriend died from cancer this past spring, and soon after that, his heart gave out. I knew Grandpa’s fall was serious, but in the panic of the moment I didn’t take it all in, because I was too preoccupied with the interminable wait for the ambulance, then the ride to the hospital, then calling all the family to let them know what had happened. It wasn’t until the next day, when he was stabilized, that I understood how bad it really had been. I’d gone to the hospital cafeteria to pick up some lunch, and when I returned, I saw through the window to his room that Mrs Basil E., Grandpa’s sister and my favorite aunt, had arrived. She’s a tall lady and normally a larger-than-life presence, wearing impeccably tailored suits with expensive jewelry, and perfect makeup on her face. But in that moment before she saw me, she was sitting at sleeping Grandpa’s bedside, holding his hand, heavy tears causing mascara to streak down into her lipstick.

I’ve never, ever seen Mrs Basil E. cry. She looked so small. I felt a sharp gnawing in my stomach and a choking of my heart. I am a glass-half-full kind of gal – I try to always look on the bright side of things – but I couldn’t deny the sharp crest of sadness invading my body and soul at the sight of her grief and worry. Suddenly Grandpa’s mortality was too real, and how it would feel when he did eventually die felt too alive with possibility.

Mrs Basil E. placed Grandpa’s hand against her face and wept harder, and for a second, I feared Grandpa was dead. Then his hand came to life and gave her a gentle slap, and she laughed. I knew then everything would be okay, for now – but never the same.

That was my entry into sadness, stage one.

Stage two came the next day, and it was so much worse.

How can such a simple kindness change everything?

Dash came to visit me at the hospital. I had bought food at the cafeteria, but wasn’t really eating it – I was too distracted by the situation and didn’t have an appetite for stale cheese sandwiches or kale chips, what the hospital offered in lieu of potato chips in a mean attempt at being health conscious. Dash must have heard the fatigue – and hunger – in my voice over the phone, because he arrived carrying a pizza from my favorite place, John’s. (The John’s location in the Village, not the one in midtown. Come on !) A John’s pizza is my ultimate comfort food, and even if the pie had gone cold during its trek from the restaurant to the hospital, my heart could not have been warmer at the sight of it – and of Dash carrying it to me.

Impulsively, I blurted out, “I love you so much.” I wrapped my arms around his back and buried my head in his neck, covering it in kisses. He laughed, and said, “If I’d known a pizza would get this response, I’d have brought it a lot earlier.”

He didn’t say I love you back.

I hadn’t realized I felt it until I said it. I hadn’t been talking just about him bringing me the pizza.

When I told Dash I love you so much, I meant: I love you for your kindness and your snarliness. I love you for grossly over-tipping waitstaff when using your dad’s credit card to “pay it forward.” I love the way you look when reading a book – content and dreamy, off in another world. I love how you suggested I never read a Nicholas Sparks book, and when I did read one because I was curious, and then read some more, I love you for how confused and offended and downright angry you were. Not that I’d read them, but that I adored them. I love debating literary snobbery with you, and that you can at least recognize that even if you don’t like “pandering, insincere, faux romantic garbage,” that lots of other people – including your girlfriend – do. I love you for loving my great-aunt almost as much as I do. I love how much brighter and sweeter and more interesting my life has been since you’ve been a part of it. I love you for answering the call of a red notebook once upon a time.