THE CHRISTMAS JACKET
Looking back, my parents really should have known better. I didn’t want to go to the Christmas party and had they taken previous incidents into consideration such as when they forced me to attend one of my co-student’s birthday party and I responded by crashing her new go-cart on purpose, I would have stayed home with my toys in my playroom. I would have avoided the suspect looks from my father on the ride home. But listening to an eight-year-old whining about such things was not in the cards, and I had no other choice other than to just surrender and go.
My parents have belonged to a country club for over thirty years near their home in Pittsburgh. Giving into my father’s wishes, my mother agreed to join and over the years developed a go-to answer on why they were still members: “It’s a nice place where they serve nice food on nice white tablecloths.” Nice food, that is, if you enjoy gray prime rib in a pool of dull, beefy water or side dishes of soupy pasta. When I visit my parents now, I have to admit that I do enjoy this WASPY food—there’s that definite kitsch factor to the club’s baked Alaska, but when I was a kid, I hated it. I hated the way the servers placed the food in front of me on the table with a loud thud, and I especially hated having to wear a starched oxford shirt with a clip-on tie and a sport coat.
For normal dinners at the club, my mother dressed me in a dark blue blazer with brass buttons, but for the children’s Christmas party, she brought out the antichrist of boy’s clothing: the red blazer. This one was my archenemy—it was fire engine red wool and the smell of moth balls wafted out from it when I moved my arms. She paired it with a cream colored turtleneck with an American Institute of Architects pin of my father’s on the neck—the silver AIA standing out like a beacon.
“Perfect,” she said, as she admired me in my bedroom.
I stood there perfectly still—I was nervous that if I made any sudden movements, the turtleneck would inch up and choke me further and I would build up more internal heat under the sweltering blazer. As I walked downstairs, I stiffened up my back and limbs, and I’m sure if a stranger saw me moving like this from afar, they would have mistaken me for a midget salesman with severe body burns. My mother picked up speed and passed me up, holding my London Fog raincoat, the cherry on this hellish sundae. She folded my arms into the coat and attempted to tie the look together with a scarf.
“I’m hot,” I whispered.
“It’s snowing outside, honey,” my mother tried to reason with me, “plus it’s only for the car ride over,” as if my father and I were about to make the trek over in a topless Model T with snow blowing in our faces.
As I neared the gigantic Lincoln—already with its engine running and my father peering with impatient eyes behind the steering wheel—I pivoted on my feet and made one final plea: “Don’t make me go,” I calmly and matter-of-factly said to my mother. I learned from an early age that crying just didn’t solve things, so I adopted a steady determined way of speaking to adults, which fascinated and disturbed them in equal parts.
“Oh honey, it’s going to be fine, you’ll going to have a nice time with the other kids there. Plus you’ll get a gift from Santa, who came all the way from the North Pole.”
Here’s another skill I developed when I was a kid—I learned how to differentiate between knockoffs and the real McCoy. You name it—handbags, clothing, accents, I can spot a fake a mile away. Santas were my earliest specialty and I didn’t want what these Santas were selling, free gift or not.
I awkwardly entered the passenger seat of the car and sank into the cushioned seat. While the outside of the car was a sea of white metallic angles, the inside was dark and cave-like. The seats, ceiling, and floor were navy blue, and the leather released a steady wave of heavy fumes. As we traveled in silence to the club, my mouth started to water and my palms got swampy. There was no turning back and decided to play the joker in my hand—the one thing that I thought could turn the car back to home. So I vomited all over my raincoat and the car seat.
My father looked at me with shocked eyes and because of his own weak stomach, began to dry heave, still silently driving down the road, never breaking stride, determined for us to make an appearance and thus ruining my escape plan.
The car lumbered up to the building and the parking attendant opened my door, staring at my sweaty face and vomit stains on my coat. I swung my legs out and slid down the seat onto the curbside when my father guided me to the men’s room. He wiped me down and muttered “You don’t look so bad. I mean, compared to the other children.”
Compared to the other Stepford children, I was the most lifelike, my own filth aside. The girls had mistletoe bows in their hair and stood in their patent leather Mary Janes, the boys clinging to their parents like barnacles. I knew my participation in the festivities would have to be catch and release—I needed to grab my gift from Santa and run.
As I walked toward the front of the ballroom where a Santa and a pride of elves stood guarding a pile of wrapped presents, I stopped to look at a plate of garlic toast and platter of crudités on a nest of crushed ice and wondered what one of the giant black olives that glistened under the lights tasted like. I grabbed one and bit into the flesh and was pleasantly surprised by their basic taste. I spit the pit out on a napkin and immediately ate another one. And then I had another one. I shoved a piece of the garlic toast in my mouth as I stared silently at Santa and then shoved another olive in my mouth and decided to seal the deal.
Santa looked at me as I chewed my olive and said in a deep voice, “I have a gift for you,” as he simultaneously put his arm out for an elf to put a long rectangular box in his hand. I was relieved it wasn’t a wrapped basketball or football, which were wrapped without any imagination, proudly showing their shapes in the gift pile. Since no one was behind me, I took the gift and unwrapped it, only to find a cheap knockoff version of Candyland called Sugar and Spice.
“I don’t want this. It’s not real,” I told Santa and tried to hand it back to him.
My father, sensing that I was up to my fussiness, came up as I said “He’s trying to give me a fake Candyland. I’d like to go home now.” My father laughed nervously to the Santa and suggested that I take the game and participate in the round of carols that were going on the next room. I stood, looking at my father who couldn’t take a hint, at the counterfeit Santa sitting in a gold throne in front of me, and because I couldn’t say what I wanted to say, because I was a little kid who was getting ushered around town in a red coat, I did the only thing I knew that would end this afternoon. I held the game in my hands, stared down at it, and promptly threw up on both it and my red coat. When I was finished, I placed the game down on the floor and my father sighed, gave up and took me home, promising me Candyland and the disposal of the red jacket and, in return, I promised that I wouldn’t eat garlic toast and black olives again.
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