Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol
by Elizabeth Hand

"This day we shut out Nothing!"

"Pause," says a low voice. "Nothing?
Think!"

"On Christmas Day, we will shut out
from our fireside, Nothing."

"Not the shadow of a vast City where the
withered leaves are lying deep?" the
voice replies. "Not the shadow that
darkens the whole globe? Not the
shadow of the City of the Dead?"

Not even that …

—Charles Dickens, "What Christmas Is as
We Grow Older"


Tony was the one who called him.

"Brendan, man. I got some bad news."

Brendan felt a slight hitch in his stomach. He leaned
back in his chair, nudging his office door closed so
his secretary wouldn't hear. "Oh yes?"

"Chip Crockett died."

"Chip Crockett?" Brendan frowned, staring at his
computer screen as though he was afraid Tony
might materialize there. "You mean, like, The Chip
Crockett Show?"

"Yeah, man." Tony sighed deeply. "My brother Jake,
he just faxed me the obituary from the Daily News.
He died over the weekend but they just announced
it today."

There was a clunk through the phone receiver, a
background clatter of shouting voices and footsteps.
Tony was working as a substitute teacher at Saint
Ignatius High School. Brendan was amazed he'd
been able to hang onto the job at all, but he
gathered that being a substitute at Saint Ignatius
was way below being sanitation engineer in terms of
salary, benefits, and respect. He heard a crackle of
static as Tony ran into the corridor, shouting.

"Whoa! Nelson Crane, man! Slow down, okay? Okay.
Yeah, I guess it was lung cancer. Did you know he
smoked?"

"You're talking about Chip Crockett the kiddie show
host. Right?" Brendan rubbed his forehead, feeling
the beginning of a headache. "No, Tony, I didn't
know he smoked, because I don't actually know Chip
Crockett. Do you?"

"No. Remember Ogden Orff? That time he got the
milk jug stuck on his nose? 'That's my boy, Ogden
Orff!' " Tony intoned, then giggled. "And that
puppet? Ooga Booga? The one with the nose?"

"Ogden Orff." Brendan leaned back in his chair.
Despite himself, he smiled. "God, yeah, I remember.
And the other one—that puppet who sang? He did
'Mister Bassman' and that witch doctor song. I loved
him.…"

"That wasn't a puppet. That was Captain
Dingbat—you know, the D.J. character."

"Are you sure? I thought it was a puppet."

"No way, man. I mean, yes! I am ab-so-lute-ly
sure—"

An earsplitting whistle echoed over the line. Brendan
winced and held the phone at arm's-length, drew it
back in time to hear Tony's voice fading.

"Hey man, that's the bell, I gotta go. I'll fax this to
you before I leave, okay? Oh, and hey, we're still on
for Thursday, right?"

Brendan nodded. "Right," he said, but Tony was
already gone.

Late that afternoon the fax arrived. Brendan's
secretary gave it to him, the curling cover sheet
covered with Tony's nearly illegible scrawl.

OGDEN ORFF LIVES! SEE YA THURS. AT
CHILDE ROLAND.

TONY
Brendan tossed this and turned to the Daily News
obituary, two long columns complete with photo.
The faxed image was fragmented but still
recognizable—a boyishly handsome man in suit and
skinny tie, grinning at a puppet with a huge nose.
Above him was the headline:

AU REVOIR, OOGA BOOGA

Brendan shook his head. "Poor Ooga Booga," he
murmured, then smoothed the paper on his desk.

Iconic kiddie show host Chip Crockett
died yesterday at his home in Manhasset,
after a long and valiant battle with lung
cancer. While never achieving the
recognition accorded peers like Soupy
Sales or Captain Kangaroo's Bob
Keeshan, Chip Crockett's legend may be
greater, because it lives solely in the
memories of viewers. Like other shows
from the late 1950s and early 1960s, The
Chip Crockett Show was either
performed live or videotaped; if the
latter, the tapes were immediately erased
so they could be reused. And, as though
Fate conspired to leave no trace of
Crockett's comic genius, a 1966
warehouse fire destroyed the few
remaining traces of his work.

For years, rumors of "lost" episodes
raced among baby boomer fans, but alas,
none have ever been found. The show's
final episode, the last of the popular Chip
Crockett Christmas specials, aired on
December 23rd, 1965.

The gentle Crockett was noted for a
surreal sense of humor that rivaled Ernie
Kovacs'. His cast consisted of a dozen
puppets—all created by Crockett—and a
rogue's gallery of over-the-top human
characters, also given life by the versatile
performer. Every weekday morning and
again in the afternoon, Chip Crockett's
jouncy theme would sound and the fun
began, as potato-nosed Ooga Booga, sly
Ratty Mouse, and the lovable
knucklehead Ogden Orff appeared on
WNEW-TV, reaching a broadcast
audience of millions of children—and,
occasionally, their unsuspecting parents.

Chip Crockett was born in 1923 in
Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. His broadcast
career began in 1949 with a radio show …

Brendan sighed and looked up. Outside a sky the
color of scorched nickel hung above Pennsylvania
Avenue. In the very corner of his window, you could
just make out the scaffolding that covered the
Capitol building, a steel trellis overgrown with
plywood and poured-concrete forms. When he and
Robert Flaherty, his law partner, had first taken this
office, Brendan had proudly pointed out the view to
everyone, including the Capitol police officers who
dropped in with paperwork and Congressional gossip
during their breaks. Now Rob was dead, killed four
years ago this Christmas Eve by a drunk driver,
though Brendan still hadn't taken his name from the
brass plate by the front door. The Capitol looked like
an image from war-torn Sarajevo, and the officers
Brendan had once known were unrecognizable
behind bulletproof jackets and wraparound
sunglasses.

"Mr. Keegan?" His secretary poked her head around
the door. "Okay if I leave a little early today? It's
Parent Conference week at Jessie's school—"

"Sure, sure, Ashley. You get that Labor Department
stuff over to Phil Lancaster?"

"I did." Ashley already had her coat on, rummaging
in a pocket for her farecard. "How's Peter these
days?"

Peter was Brendan's son. "Oh, he's great, just
great," he said, nodding. "Doing very well. Very, very
well."

This wasn't true and, in fact, never really had been.
Shortly after his second birthday, Peter Keegan had
been diagnosed as having Pervasive Developmental
Disorder, which as far as Brendan could figure was
just a more socially acceptable term for his son's
being (in the medical parlance) "somewhere within
the autism continuum." Batteries of tests had
followed—CAT scans, MRIs and PETs—and the
upshot of it all was yet another string of letters:
PDDNOS, or Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not
Otherwise Specified. In other words, Peter Xavier
Keegan, now four, had never spoken a word to
anyone. If you touched him he moved away,
deliberately but casually, with no more emotion than
if he'd brushed up against a thorny hedge. If you
tried to look him in the eye, he looked away; if
anyone tried to hold him, however gently, he would
scream, and hit, and bite, and eventually fall
screaming to the floor.

He had not always been like that. Brendan had to
remind himself every day, lest the fragmentary
images of eighteen-month-old Peter smiling in his lap
disappear forever. Once upon a time, Peter had been
okay. Brendan had to believe that, despite the
doctors who told him otherwise. That his son had
been born with this condition; that Peter's neural
wiring was defective; that the chances for reclaiming
that other child—the one who clung to his father and
babbled wordlessly but cheerfully, the one who
gazed at Brendan with clear blue eyes and held his
finger as he fell asleep—were slim or nil. Just last
week Brendan's ex-wife, Teri, had begun a new
regime of vitamin therapy for their son, the latest in
an endless series of efforts to reclaim the toddler
they had lost.

They were still waiting to see the results. And
Brendan's secretary Ashley would have known all
this because Teri had told her, during one of her
daily phone calls to Brendan to discuss the million
details of shared custody arrangements—pickup
times, doctors' appointments, changes in Peter's
medication, nightmares, biting incidents, bills for the
expensive Birchwood School, missing shoes, and
loose teeth. To his recollection, Brendan had never
volunteered a single word about his son or his
divorce to Ashley, but he had no doubt but that, if
called upon, his secretary could testify in District
Court about everything from his prior sexual
relationship with his ex-wife (satisfactory if
unremarkable) to his current attendance at AA
meetings (occasional).

"Peter's very well," he repeated one last time. He
made a tube of Tony's fax and eyed his secretary
through one end. "Good luck at school, Ashley."

He walked home that evening, his briefcase nudging
his leg as he made his way up Pennsylvania Avenue,
keeping his bare head down against the chill night
wind. Tony's fax stuck up out of his overcoat
pocket, still curled into a tube. He ducked into the
gourmet kitchen shop and bought some coffee
beans, then headed down Fourth Street towards his
apartment. He was thinking about the old Chip
Crockett Show, and how his secretary was born a
good ten years after it had gone off the air.

How did I get to be so old? he marveled, kicking at
the pile of sodden leaves banked against his
building's outer door. "Mr. Keegan." When the hell
did that happen? And he went inside, to silence and
The Washington Post still unread on the kitchen
counter, the unblinking red eye of the answering
machine signaling that no one had called.




Thursday night he met Tony Kemper at Childe
Roland. The club had been a big hangout for them
back when Brendan was in law school at Georgetown
in the early 1980s. Tony was still playing with the
Maronis in those days, and the Childe Roland was a
popular after-hours spot for musicians on tour.
Later, after Tony left the Maronis and moved back to
D.C., he'd headline with local bands, and he and
Brendan and Brendan's cousin, Kevin, had gotten
into the habit of meeting at the Childe Roland every
Thursday after closing time, to drink and listen to
whatever performers happened to drop by.

Now, years later, all three were veterans of
Alcoholics Anonymous, although Kevin was the only
one who still attended meetings regularly. But they
still met once a week at the Childe Roland, sitting at
a table in the shabby downstairs room with its brick
walls and fading posters for Root Boy Slim and
Tommy Keene and the Dale Williams Band. They'd
eat hamburgers and drink coffee or Evian water,
feed quarters to the vintage Wurlitzer jukeboxes,
and argue politics and football over "96 Tears" and
"Bastards of Young" and "Pretty Vacant."

Tonight Brendan was the first to arrive, as usual.
He'd been divorced for nearly a year but still couldn't
quite get the hang of being single. He didn't date, he
didn't cook. He worked late when he could, but
Flaherty, Keegan & Associates didn't generate
enough of a caseload to merit more than two or
three nights a week. He had Peter on alternate
weekends and Tuesdays, but that still left a lot of
downtime. He hated to admit it, but when Tony or
Kevin had to cancel Thursdays at Childe Roland,
Brendan was depressed—depressed enough that
he'd come to Childe Roland by himself and sit at
their usual place and feed the jukebox, playing the
songs Kevin or Tony would have played, even the
ones he hated.

But he wouldn't be alone tonight. He heard Tony
before he saw him. Or rather, he heard everyone
else seeing him—

"Tony, my man! What's shakin'?"

"Tony Maroni! 'Hooray, hello, whoa whoa whoa!' "

"Tony!"

"It's the Tonester!"

Brendan watched as his friend grinned and waved,
crossing the room in that bizarre way he had,
half-glide and half-slouch, resplendent in his ancient
black leather jacket and decrepit Converse hightops,
his long black hair streaked with grey but otherwise
pretty much unchanged from the lanky, goofy-faced
nineteen-year-old who once upon a time had been
the Great White Hope of Rock and Roll. On the
Bowery, anyway, for a few years in the mid-1970s,
which (according to Tony) was the last time rock had
mattered.

That was when Tony founded The Maronis, the
proto-punk band whose first, self-titled record had
recently been cited by The New York Times as one of
the ten most influential rock albums of the century.
(The follow-up, Maronis Get Detention, came in at
number 79.) The band's formula, equal parts
three-chord rock and Three Stooges, won them a
record contract with EMI, a national tour, and all the
attendant problems as Tony, Mony, Pony, and Tesla
(né Tony Kemper, Marty Berenstein, Paul Schippa,
and Dickie Stanton) played, fought, drank, dropped
acid, shot up, and eventually OD'd.

Not all at the same time, of course, but that was it
as far as EMI was concerned. The Maronis lost their
only contract with a major label. Worse, they lost
their catalog—they hadn't bothered with an attorney
when they signed—and the ensuing decades had
seen one failed lawsuit after another brought by
band members, whenever one was flush enough to
hire a lawyer.

Still, the band continued to tour and record, on the
small New Jersey-based Millstone label. When Mony
died of a heroin overdose, he was replaced, first by
Joni, the band's first female guitarist, and then by
Sony, a Japanese fan who attached himself to the
Maronis after their disastrous 1984 Tokyo
appearance. That was when Tony left the band.
Despite the rumors, he'd never gotten into heroin.
Even as a kid in Yonkers he'd been terrified of
needles; Kevin used to steal hypos from his doctor
father and hide them in Tony's Deputy Dawg
lunchbox, something Brendan would never have
forgiven his cousin for, but Tony was incapable of
anything resembling anger. Whatever demons he
encountered, he fought them down with
beer—preferably Budweiser, even when he (briefly)
could have afforded Heineken. He'd finally lost it in
Japan when, jet-lagged and suffering from food
poisoning, he'd gotten the DTs and started
screaming about Gojiro in the lobby of the Tokyo
Hilton. Millstone had no money for an emergency
medical evacuation, and so Brendan and Kevin
arranged to have their childhood friend flown back to
the States. Kevin had gone over to escort
Tony—Kevin was raking it in at Merrill Lynch—and on
their return he and Brendan checked their friend into
detox.

He'd been sober ever since. Although, because he
was Tony Maroni, this wasn't always readily
apparent.

"Hey, Brenda Starr! How's it goin'?"

Brendan looked up, making a face at the boyhood
nickname. "Tony. Good to see you—"

He reached across the table to shake his hand. Tony
leaned forward and grabbed him in a hug. "Yeah,
man, great to see you, too!" As though it had been
a year instead of a week; as though they hadn't just
talked on the phone, oh, about two hours ago.
"Where's Kevo?"

Brendan shrugged. "He should be here soon."
"Right, right. The Family Man. Family matters. Family
matters," Tony repeated, cocking his head and
scrunching his face up. "Hey, get it? Like, it
matters—"

"I get it, Tony."

"I never did. Not until just now."

Brendan sighed, glanced up to see a young woman
in torn fishnets and polyester skirt, Mandelbrot
tattoos and enough surgical steel piercings to arm
an emerging nation. "Oh good. Here's the Bionic
Waitress."

Tony whirled to grin at her. "Bethie! Hi! Hey, you
look nice in that outfit—"

"It's my uniform, Tony," the waitress said, but
smiled, displaying more gleaming metal and a tongue
stud. "Where's your other partner in crime?"

"Kevo? He'll be here. He's got kids, you know—"
Tony suddenly looked across the table, stricken. "Oh
hey, man, I didn't mean—I mean, he's got kids too,"
he said, pointing at Brendan. "It's just—"

"Tony. It's okay," said Brendan.

"—just, uh, Kevin's got a lot of 'em. Well, two,
anyway."

"Really?" The waitress looked down at Brendan
curiously. "I never knew you were married."

"He's not," said Tony. "He's—"

"I'm divorced," Brendan broke in. He gave Tony an
icy look. "I have a little boy."

"Yeah? You ought to bring him in some night. Okay,
you want something now or you want to wait for
your friend?'

They ordered, coffee for Brendan, club soda with
lemon for Tony. When she brought the drinks back,
Tony took the straw and blew its paper wrapper
across the table at Brendan. "No offense, man," he
said. "About—"

"None taken, Tony." Brendan lifted his coffee mug
and smiled.

"Cheers."

"Cheers." Tony took a sip of his drink, then slid from
his chair. "Gotta feed the jukebox, man. Right back."

Brendan watched as his friend sidled over to one of
the club's vintage jukeboxes, spangled man-sized
bijoux that glittered and bubbled and glowed along
the brick walls. There was a Seeburg, a Rockola, and
the Childe Roland's crown jewel: a 1946 Wurlitzer
Model 1015, special edition "Rites of Spring" in mint
condition, down to the 45s stacked on their
glittering turntable spindle. Tony hunched over this
now, drumming his fingers on the glass surface. The
green-and-gold Bakelite pilasters and ruby lights
made him look like one of his own adolescent
daydreams, long hair touched with crimson, his Silly
Putty face given a momentary semblance of gravity,
as though he were gazing into some piece of
sophisticated medical machinery instead of an old
jukebox.

"Hey." Tony frowned. "What happened to 'Moulty?'
And who the fuck put the Eagles on this thing?"

Brendan shook his head, marveling as he always did
at how long it took Tony to make his selections.
"You know," he said as Tony slouched back to the
table, the opening drumbeats of "Be My Baby"
echoing around them, "it took Phil Spector less time
to record that than it did for you to punch it in."

Tony slid back into his seat. "Hey, you know what
that is? That's the Big Bang, man! Bum, bum-bum!
Bum, bum-bum! That's the noise God made when
He made the universe! When I die, make sure they
play that, okay?" He clapped a hand to his forehead.
"Geez, I almost forgot! Check this out—"

He fumbled in a pocket of his leather jacket,
withdrew a wad of folded-up paper. "There's, like, a
Chip Crockett Web page. Listen—"

Tony smoothed out the paper, then cleared his
throat. " 'Like a lot of other people, I grew up in the
early 1960s watching The Chip Crockett Show,' " he
read. " 'I was still pretty young when I watched it,
though, and I don't really remember much, except
that the puppets were sort of scary. But since
starting this Web page I have had many other
people write to me about their memories of the
show, and I have come to realize that Chip Crockett
has actually influenced me in ways that I am only
beginning to understand.' "

Brendan shook his head. "Wow. That's some
testimony."

"Yeah, man, but he's right. I mean, Chip Crockett
had an amazing impact on me—"

"Yeah, but you're Tony Maroni. Chip Crockett could
have invented you. Here, give me that --"

Brendan took the page and glanced down it. No
pictures, just a web address, a brief introduction
and listing of contents.

BROADCAST HISTORY

ARTICLES & OBITUARIES (NEW)

THEME SONG

THE GREAT FIRE OF 1966

CHIP CROCKETT'S CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

"I didn't have time to print out the whole thing,"
Tony said apologetically. "I had duty in the computer
lab but then there was a fire drill …"

"I remember the Christmas Special." Brendan looked
thoughtful. "It was A Christmas Carol, but with all
the puppets playing the parts. Ooga Booga was
Scrooge—"

"Scrooga Booga," Tony corrected him. "And Ogden
Orff was Bob Cratchit—"

"Brendan." A gigantic hand suddenly descended to
grip Brendan's shoulder. "Tony. Sorry I'm late."
Kevin Donnelly's shadow fell across the table—a big
shadow. "Eileen had to work late and I had to get
the girls from dance and then dinner—"

Tony clasped Kevin's hand, moving his chair over to
make room. Kevin sat and waved at their waitress.

"An O'Douls, please," he said, then turned to his
cousin. "Brendan. How you doing?"

"Good, very good." Brendan smiled. "What's new
with you?"

"Not much. What you got there?"

"The Chip Crockett Web page. Listen—" Brendan
held the page up and gestured dramatically. " 'I have
come to realize that Chip Crockett has actually
influenced me in ways that I am only beginning to
understand.' You know, I think Tony could start a
religion based on this."

"Mmm. Eileen wouldn't like that. Let me see—"

In Kevin's hand the page looked insubstantial as
tissue. He was a big man who in the course of two
decades of steadfast bodybuilding had become
absolutely huge, red-haired and ruddy-faced, his
arms and shoulders so powerful they always looked
as though they were about to burst through his
hand-tailored suit jackets, like some demented
Capitol Hill version of The Incredible Hulk. As a boy
he'd terrorized not just Brendan and Tony but
everyone within a five-block radius of Tuckahoe
Road, and started dipping into the altar wine before
his twelfth birthday. At Notre Dame on a football
scholarship, he'd brought the team to the Nationals,
then gone on to get an MBA from the Wharton
School. He'd made his first million before he was
thirty, gotten sober, bailed out of Merrill Lynch
exactly one month before Black Monday, and taken a
job as a lobbyist for Standard Oil.

"You read this, Brendan?" Kevin scowled. "Did you
read this?"

"Yup. What do you think?"

Kevin continued to scan the printout, while Brendan
flagged their waitress for more coffee. Whenever he
saw his cousin, Brendan felt as though he were
glimpsing himself in some alternate universe. Kevin
looked like Brendan on steroids, Brendan's sandy
hair turned to flame, Brendan's body pumped full of
Vitamin B-12 and Proteinex. His cousin's career and
domestic life were shiny perverse reflections of
Brendan's own—immense financial success,
gorgeous ex-model spouse, perfect children, perfect
Potomac home, perfect perfect perfect. Whereas
Brendan felt as though he were channeling his
ex-wife through his secretary, and his only child
seemed to live in that other universe as well, gazing
into Brendan's world as though it were an empty
expanse of sky.

"I think it's a capital offense if my taxes are paying
Tony to print out this kind of stuff on school time."
Kevin shook his head and handed the page back to
Tony. "Tell me, Tony, how the hell do you keep that
job? I mean, what do you tell those kids, as a
teacher?"

"You know. Follow your bliss. Stay out of jail. I tell
them to be really, really careful, otherwise they'll end
up like me."

Brendan and Kevin laughed, but Tony only
shrugged. "Well, it's true," he said. "The way I
figure, I'm saving the school system thousands of
dollars a year in anti-drug programs and stuff like
that."

"But you never did drugs, Tony," said Kevin.

"Yeah, but they don't know that. I tell 'em: Stay in
school, go to the college of your choice, learn a
viable trade. Otherwise you'll spend the rest of your
life giving practice SATs to dimbulbs like Nelson
Crane."

The Bionic Waitress reappeared and refilled
Brendan's coffee cup. As he moved the papers aside
she glanced down at them curiously.

"Who died?"

"Chip Crockett," said Tony.

She wrinkled her nose. "Who's Chip Crockett?"

Tony rubbed his chin. "Well, he was this kiddie show
host a long time ago. Kind of like Chuck McCann."

"Or Paul Winchell," said Kevin.

"Who're they?"

"Do you remember Uncle Floyd Vivino?" asked
Brendan.
"Uh, no."

Tony frowned, thinking. Finally he brightened. "What
about PeeWee Herman?"

The waitress scrunched her face up. "Mmm, maybe a
little."

"Mister Rogers?"

"Sure!" She looked more closely at the obituary.

"Well, Chip Crockett was sort of like a cross between
Mister Rogers and PeeWee Herman," explained
Brendan.

"Or Adam Sandler," said Kevin. "Actually, he was
more like a cross between Mister Rogers and Tony
here."

The waitress laughed. "Wow. Sorry I missed out on
that one."

She turned and headed back to the kitchen. Tony
stared after her admiringly, then shoved his chair
back. " 'Scuse me, gotta hit the head."

His friends watched him go. "So," said Kevin, easing
himself into the chair next to Brendan. "Tony's
taking the news about Chip Crockett pretty hard.
How 'bout you?"

"Aw, don't give him a hard time, Kev," said Brendan.
He sometimes felt as though he'd spent his entire
life defending Tony against Big Tough Guys like
Kevin. "He gets on these kicks, he'll get over it."

Kevin looked hurt. "I wasn't giving him a hard time. I
actually feel kind of bad about it myself."

"About Chip Crockett?"

"Sure. I liked Chip Crockett. Especially Ogden Orff …"
Kevin rapped his knuckles again his forehead and
cried, " 'No, Ogden, noooo!' " Then, in fonder tones,
" 'That's my boy—Ogden Orff!' "

Brendan smiled. "Good old Ogden Orff. But gee,
Kev. I never figured you'd be all broken up about
Chip Crockett."
"I dunno. I was thinking about how that fire just,
like, wiped any evidence of him off the planet. Like if
you're not on TV somewhere, or on the net, you
just don't exist anymore. Freaks me out, all that
stuff. You know, getting old. People dying. That kind
of thing."

Brendan eyed his cousin suspiciously. "Is something
wrong?" he asked, fighting the faintest, cruelest
spasm of glee at the thought.

"No. That's the problem. Everything's perfect. Too
perfect. I mean, the girls are gonna need braces in a
year or two, and Eileen's a screaming banshee
because of this remodeling job she's doing out in
Warrenton, but—well, don't you ever feel like that?
Like everything's just going too well?"

Brendan stared at his cousin. Kevin stared back, his
bright blue eyes completely guileless. "No," Brendan
said at last. He turned to grab his coffee from the
waitress. "You know, I got to get going—I've got a
case coming up, I need to go over some stuff before
the weekend."

He took a gulp of coffee, pulled out a ten-dollar bill
and slid it under the mug. Behind him Tony
reappeared, grinning and singing along with the
jukebox in that immediately recognizable, nasal
just-north-of-the-Bronx voice. Brendan pulled on
his overcoat, watching him. It was always
disconcerting to him, the difference between Tony
Kemper and Tony Maroni. The latter's now-famous
stage persona, a gangly stoop-shouldered goofus
doing his trademarked knock-kneed
dance—practically immobile from the waist up and
looking as though he were swallowing the mike, his
face hidden behind a curtain of lank black hair as he
blurted out his customary greeting—"Hooray hello,
whoa whoa whoa!"—followed by three-chord
anthems like "ECT" and "Gonna Have a Bad Trip" and
"Tibbets Park," the FM radio hit he'd dedicated to
Brendan and Kevin—

Come with me tonight

Playin' in the dark

We can have a great time

Down at Tibbets Park …
Tony Maroni was a goofball, a knucklehead, a
refugee from all those kiddie shows they'd lived on
back in Yonkers—Soupy Sales doing The Mouse,
Chuck McCann sticking pennies on his eyes and
pretending to be Little Orphan Annie, ventriloquist
Paul Tripp arguing with his dummy sidekick Jerry
Mahoney. Whereas the real Tony Kemper moved
with an unconscious but intensely sexy, almost
feminine grace: he was like someone feigning
drunkenness, catching you off guard by catching
himself just when you thought he was going to walk
into the wall. And he was a great dancer. Back at
Sacred Heart High School, Tony was the guy all the
girls wanted to slow-dance with, while teenage
guitarists struggled through the solos in "Southern
Man" and "Nights in White Satin."

Now Tony blinked, staring at Brendan in dismay.
"Brenda! You're not leaving already?"

"Sorry, Tony. I've got this case, we'd like to try and
get a settlement before Christmas—"

"Wait." Kevin whistled and held a hand up, as
though officiating a fight. "Before I forget: Eileen
wants you both to come for Thanksgiving." He
pointed at Brendan. "Do you have Peter that
weekend? 'Cause the girls would love it if—"

"I think I do. I'm pretty sure Teri has him for
Christmas."

"Great. What about you, Tony?"

Tony rubbed his chin. "Yeah, I think I can swing it.
There's this girl I've been sort of seeing, but—"

"Well, bring her. Or dump her. Whatever. Just let
Eileen know, okay?"

Tony nodded. He swung around to throw an arm
over Brendan's shoulder. "See you here next week,
then?"

"Righto." Brendan headed for the stairs, pausing to
give his friends a salute. "Very, very good to see you
guys."

"Call Eileen, okay? Let her know if you can come,"
Kevin called after him. "And hey, I really hope Peter
can make it."

"I'll let you know," Brendan said with a wave. "
'Night—"

Kevin watched thoughtfully as his cousin
disappeared up the steps. Beside him Tony sipped
his club soda, tapping the table in counterpoint to
the jukebox.

"You know," Tony said after a minute, "Peter's sort
of like Tommy, isn't he?"

"Tommy?" Kevin started, shook his head. "Tommy
who?"

"You know, Tommy—'that deaf, dumb and blind kid
sure plays a mean pinball.' "

Kevin swiveled to stare at him. His eyes narrowed as
he drew his breath in. "You know what? You're an
idiot, Tony," he said softly. "A total fucking idiot."

Tony put down his club soda. "I just meant—"

"And you ever say something like that to Brendan,
I'll put your fucking lights out." He tossed a handful
of bills on the table. "I'll see you at Thanksgiving."

"Yeah, sure." Tony waved meekly as Kevin left.
"Thanksgiving. My favorite holiday. Damn, that's not
what I meant, you know that's not what I meant."
He ran a hand through his hair, fumbled around for
a fistful of change and added it to the money on the
table. Then he stood, rocking anxiously back and
forth on his heels until he saw the waitress
approaching. "Thanks Bethie," he said, grabbing the
printout from Chip Crockett's Web page. "See you
soon."

"Goodbye hello, Tony."

"Whoa whoa whoa," he said ruefully, and left.


As it turned out, Brendan saw Tony a lot sooner
than Thanksgiving—the next day, in fact. Every
other Friday Brendan had his son for the weekend,
picking him up early from the Birchwood School,
where fourteen caregivers exposed his son and
seventeen other very young children to a rigorously
ordered curriculum. The days were exquisitely
maintained: children sat at table for meals, games
were devised so that students learned cooperative
behavior, objects were labeled and their names
repeated consistently. Teachers taught parents to
use the same specific words and phrases over and
over again, to maintain consistency at home.

Brendan's ex-wife, Teri, had great faith in the
Birchwood School and its intensive program of early
intervention. Although the administration and
teachers disliked labeling, most of their students had
been diagnosed as having some form of Pervasive
Developmental Disorder and, like Peter, their
behavior placed them somewhere along the autism
continuum. Whenever he visited the school Brendan
found himself contemplating an adult correlation to
this, something he called the Parental Anguish
Continuum. Peter was verbally non-communicative
and, like many of the other children, hypersensitive
to touch and sensory stimulation. But his tantrums
had grown less frequent in the last year, and he had
done wonderfully well in the ordered environment at
Birchwood. What would it be like to have a son like
Sasha Petrowicz, whose sensitivity to the world was
such that he spent much of the day screaming in
pain? Or a daughter like Ivy Montrose, who had been
adopted from an orphanage in Rumania and had a
band of scar tissue across her forehead, from
headbanging in an iron-sided crib? What would it be
like to be Kurt and Donna Raymond, whose only
child had died of pneumonia after surgery? Setting
himself within that arc, Brendan with customary Irish
Catholic stoicism (Teri called this denial) found
himself counting his blessings. On one hand and
with gritted teeth, to be sure; but Brendan knew
better than to feel sorry for himself or his son, at
least for more than an hour or two, and never when
visiting the Birchwood School.

"Brendan! Hi!"

Peggy Storrs, Peter's teacher, waved to him from a
corner. Brendan smiled and walked over. "Hi, Peggy.
How's everyone doing?"

"He's having a pretty good day." Peggy sat
cross-legged on the floor, a number of blocks
scattered around her. She was in her late twenties,
Brendan guessed, and completing her Masters in
Education at G.W., a strong-featured young woman
with thick chestnut hair hidden beneath a brightly
checked wool hat, batiked cotton trousers and a
fuzzy handknit sweater. Brendan figured her for a
lesbian, because of the hat; she reminded him of
certain nuns he'd had as teachers back at Sacred
Heart, steely-eyed women who in another life might
have become neurosurgeons, astrophysicists,
attorneys specializing in medical malpractice. "Joni's
got the flu, so I'm with Allen, too, which is making it
a little difficult. We had a little outburst at snack
time, but other than that Peter's doing great."

Peggy smiled at Brendan, then turned her attention
back to work. Beside her, but a few feet apart from
each other, knelt two little boys. They were stacking
blocks, Allen in a distracted manner, placing two or
three atop each other before knocking them down,
Peter with intense concentration—stacking first a
blue block, then a yellow one, then another blue,
then yellow.

"Put in a green one, Peter," Peggy urged, and held
out another block. "Here. Put in the green block."

Peter ignored her. He continued stacking, head
tilted, his resolute gaze fixed not so much on the
blocks as on some point just beyond. Watching his
son made Brendan think of hummingbirds; how their
metabolisms were supposedly so quick-working,
their bodies and brains wired at a rate so much
faster than humans that they did not even perceive
us. To a hummingbird, Brendan was only a massive
grey-and-black blur, solid and unmoving as a
boulder.

What was he to his son?

"Peter," he said gently. "Peter, hi. Hi, honey, hi
Peter."

A smile flickered across Peter's face, so fast it was
like one of those phantom looks that cross a
dreamer's face in deep REM sleep. But Brendan
recognized it. He smiled back, feeling a surge of joy
so acute it was like grief. "Good, Peter! Take the
green block from Peggy."

Peggy's hand hovered a few inches from the blue
and yellow stack.

"Take the green block, Peter," she said.
Another flicker, annoyance this time; then only that
unwavering concentration as Peter put another blue
block on top of the pile. Brendan's stomach
clenched. He knew his son wasn't being stubborn,
but sometimes he found it impossible to keep from
reading his behavior that way. If you saw these kids
in an ordinary setting—and the Birchwood School
was, in most ways, an ordinary setting—you might
not know there was anything unusual about them.
They were small, they wore rompers and Gap jeans
and L.L. Bean sweaters,Teletubbies sweatshirts and
Elmo sneakers, they toddled and ran around and
cried like other kids. It was only after been you'd
been here for a while that you noticed the dreamily
intent rocking in front of a window; the methodical
ordering and reordering of blocks and cups and
plastic forms; the boy whirling in a corner until
reminded that it was time to go outside; the
constant and insistently repeated statements from
the teachers—

"Take the green block, Peter. I'm going to put it on
top. I'm going to put the green block there, Peter—"

Peter's head was half-turned to pick up another
yellow block from the floor. Peggy placed the green
one on top of his tower, breaking its careful
symmetry. Blue yellow blue yellow blue yellow blue—

Without a word Peter turned, smacking the pile.
Blocks flew everywhere, one of them striking Allen
on the leg. He began to cry, and Peggy moved
quickly to comfort him.

"It's all right, Allen. That was an accident—"

"Right." Brendan let his breath out and clapped his
hands on his knees. "We're going to the zoo now,
Peter. This is the day when we go to the zoo."

The same flicker across the boy's face, water rushing
over pale sand. Without looking at his father he
shook his head. "Great," said Brendan. He pointed
to the row of cubbies against one wall. "Let's go get
your jacket and your knapsack. Have a good
weekend, Peggy."

"You too, Brendan. Bye, Peter!"

Peter turned and walked to his cubby. Brendan
followed him and started to gather his son's
butterfly-colored paraphernalia, green and blue
knapsack, yellow rubber boots in case in rained,
yellow rubber duck. He went into the kitchen and
retrieved Peter's medication, then caught up with
Peter waiting by the door.

"Okay, Peter. You ready?"

They went to the zoo. Ever since his law school days
Brendan had loved it, the illusion of order and safety
and immense distance granted by carefully designed
landscapes and cast-resin boulders.

He had learned, however, that all of this was too
much for Peter; everything except the Reptile House.
Peter was fascinated by the displays here, especially
the iguanas as they slid with sinister intent from
rock to sand, finally ending up in a great heap atop
each other.

"Look at that lizard, Peter. How many lizards in that
pile? One, two, three lizards.…"

Peter moved closer to the glass. Brendan stepped
towards him, and bumped into someone.

"Excuse me, I'm sorry—"

"Hey, Brendan."

"Tony?" Brendan looked up into his friend's lopsided
grin. Tony was wearing his work clothes, grey
herringbone tweed jacket, skinny black tie. "Jeez,
Tony, hi. What are you doing here?"

Tony shrugged. "Oh, I dunno. I like snakes, I
guess."

"I know, but aren't you …" Brendan stopped. "Oh
no. Tony—"

Tony gave him a sheepish look. "Yeah. I, uh,
actually, well—I got canned. That girl I was seeing—"

"Oh, Christ, Tony! Don't tell me, please don't tell
me—"

"No! I mean, she's eighteen, anyway, but nothing
happened, I just sort of hung out with her after
school a couple of times, but someone said
something, and—"

"Tony—"

"—and anyway, we didn't have all that much in
common. As it turned out."

" 'As it turned out.' 'As it turned out.' Tony, this is
not a good thing. I mean, do you have an
attorney—"

"No, man! Nothing happened. I'm not getting sued,
or anything like that. I mean, I was only a substitute
anyway. They just, uh, said it wasn't working out.
Plus I already have another job, Russ Acton said he
has a gig for me, working nights at Gigantor
Records."

"Gigantor Records." Brendan shifted so he could
keep an eye on Peter, still standing mesmerized by
the iguanas. "Whoo boy. Tony …"

"Hey, it's a good deal. Only three nights a week, plus
I get the employee discount. But, uh, that's actually
not why I was looking for you."

Brendan closed his eyes. Overhead a ceiling fan
turned desultorily. He took a deep breath, and
opened his eyes again. "Yes?"

"I, uh—well, you know, I only had this
month-by-month lease after Kimberly split, and it
turns out the lease wasn't even in her name but that
guy she used to go out with, what's his name, you
know, Roy, the bartender down at—"

"Tony."

"And I, uh, well—do you think I could crash at your
place for a while? Just until I can get on my feet?
Like a month or two, till the new year—"

Brendan shook his head. "I don't know if that would
work, Tony. Like now—I have Peter every other
weekend, and sometimes during the week, and—"

"It would be temporary. Very temporary. Say a
week."

"You just said a month."
"Okay, fine, a month. And I promise, I promise it
won't be any longer—"

Brendan rubbed his eyes, defeated. "Oh, Christ. All
right. Yes. But only for—"

"—'cause like, there's this place I'm guaranteed, I
know I can get it, up by Nebraska Ave., but the guy
isn't moving till right after New Year's. Plus that way
I can, like, save up enough for the security deposit
and stuff. And Christmas presents."

"It's okay, Tony. I mean, I guess it'll work out, if it's
only for a while. Just—when Teri's over, maybe you
better keep a low profile."

"Sure, man. I mean, I really appreciate it, I know it's
a hassle and stuff—"

"It's no hassle."

"—but I really appreciate it." Tony tugged at the
neck of his tweed jacket, then held out his hand.
"Thanks, Brendan."

"No prob." Brendan gave his friend's hand a cursory
shake, turned and walked over to the wall of glass
cages. "Hey, Peter, look who's here. Uncle Tony."

"It's Crazy Uncle Tony!" Tony announced. He
crossed to stand directly behind Peter. "Hey, look at
all those lizards making a big pile. 'Dogpile on the
rabbit! Dogpile on the rabbit!' "

Brendan frowned as Tony went on. "You
remember—Bugs Bunny! Boy, check him out, that
guy's huge." A flicker, and Peter tilted his head,
looking where Tony pointed. "You know, I think I
used to date his sister."

Brendan laughed. "How old was she?"

"Aw, man. I mean, you should've seen this girl,
there's no way she looked under—"

"Uh-uh-uh. That's the first thing they teach you at
law school: Never date anyone in high school.
God,Tony. Do me a favor, do not mention this to
Teri. Or anyone else."

"Absolutely, man." Tony's gaze didn't move from the
cage. "I definitely dated that guy's sister."

"Come on, let's look at the crocodiles. Peter?"
Brendan moved to take his son's hand. For a
fraction of a second Peter's rested against his
father's palm, warm and sticky, his fingernails rough
where he'd bitten them. Then they slid away.
Brendan felt that same small stab at his chest,
familiar and painful as a pulled tendon; but he only
looked at his son and smiled. "Remember the
crocodiles? You liked them last time we were here.…"

They wandered through the rest of the reptile
house, Tony expressing remorse over the remains
of several white mice and a dead sparrow. After a
quarter hour, Peter grew restive. He started
grabbing at the railings in front of the glass cages
and rocking back and forth, his cheeks flushed.

Brendan turned to Tony. "He's hungry," he said.
"Okay Peter, time to go. It's time to leave the zoo
now."

Peter said nothing; only rocked faster, back and
forth on the rail.

"Time to go," repeated Brendan. "Come on, Peter.
We have to leave now."

Peter closed his eyes and swung sideways.

"Peter," Brendan said again. He looked at Tony and
took a deep breath. "All right, Peter—I'll have to pick
you up, then—"

He stepped towards Peter, wrapped his arms firmly
around him and started disentangling him from the
rail. Peter kicked, grunting loudly; then began to
scream. At the other end of the room a mother with
two small girls stared at Brendan, frowning.

"Peter," Brendan said in a strained voice, prising his
son's fingers from the railing. "Come on, Peter—"

Peter started crying. Brendan held him as tight as he
could and carried him to the exit. When he saw the
door, Peter's cries abruptly stopped, but he
continued to push at his father, trying to get away.
Tony bounced after them.

"I'm hungry too, Peter," Tony announced loudly.
Peter narrowed his eyes and looked the other way.
"Gentlemen? It's dinner time—"

Tony held the door for them as they stepped
outside. "My treat," he said with a bow.

"Tony, you don't—"

"My treat. Come on, Peter, we're going to
McDonald's."

Brendan shook his head. "That may not be a good
idea, Tony." He bent and let Peter slide from his
arms to the ground. "When he goes off like this …"

But Peter was already brightening. He took a few
steps, stopped, and looked at the sky, shutting his
eyes and letting that same half-smile flash across his
face. Brendan watched him, then turned to Tony.

"Okay. We can try McDonald's," he said. "Just don't
tell Teri, she'll hold you personally responsible for
the extinction of the poison arrow frog."

Peter stared up at Tony, but looked away when the
tall man gazed down at him.

"We can walk there," Tony said. "Right, Peter?" Peter
turned, continuing to watch Tony from the corners
of his eyes. Tony began to walk backwards down the
sidewalk. "Plus, Brenda, this way you don't have to
do the dishes afterwards.…

"—plus, I have one more favor to ask you," he
added, sidling up alongside of Brendan as they
approached Connecticut Avenue.

Brendan stopped, grabbing Peter as he ran towards
the gate. "What?" he asked tersely. His son struck
at his hands as he zipped up Peter's jacket and
pulled a knit cap down over the boy's sleek hair.

"No biggie. Just, could you help me move my stuff?
There's not a lot," Tony added, "it's just too much
for one cab ride, you know, plus your car has so
much more room."

Brendan sighed. "All right, Tony."

"And could you maybe do it tonight? 'Cause the
landlady said she's, like changing the locks tomor—"
"Yes Tony."

Brendan's blue eyes glittered dangerously. Tony said
nothing more; just nodded and walked with them up
Connecticut Avenue, past the first crowds of
commuters heading home in the early dusk.

They ate. Peter was quiet, repeatedly squeezing his
chicken nuggets between his fingers and refusing to
eat more than a few mouthfuls. But Brendan was
relieved that it was nothing more than that, no
screaming fits, no throwing food or trays or cups,
nothing to make all the other parents and children
turn from their Big Macs and Happy Meals to stare at
an uncontrollable four-year-old and his ineffectual
father. Afterwards they found Brendan's Volvo
wagon and drove to Adams Morgan to retrieve
Tony's stuff. This consisted of a stereo system, five
large boxes of CDs and tapes, another six cartons
containing records by Firesign Theater and dozens
of one-hit wonders from the late '60s and early
'70s; a small carton of paperbacks, heavy on the
Illuminati and the Beats; a spatula; Tony's Mosrite
electric guitar; and a single black trash bag holding
Tony's wardrobe, which consisted entirely of black
T-shirts and black jeans.

"That's it," Tony announced. He tossed the trash
bag into the back of the car. In the middle seat,
Peter sat quietly and stared out the side window.
Brendan had remained behind the wheel—they were
illegally parked, and he was also doing lookout duty
for Roy, putative owner of both Tony's ex-girlfriend
and her lease, a bartender known for his humorless
attachment to World Wrestling Federation events.

"Good." Brendan leaned out the car window. "Now
can we go?"

"Yeah, yeah, just hold on. One more thing—" Tony
raced back upstairs, long hair flying. A moment later
he returned and sprinted down the steps, his
battered black leather jacket in his arms. "God, it
feels so great getting out of that hellhole! I thought
I'd never escape."

"You were only there for three months," said
Brendan. The Volvo pulled away from the curb. Tony
turned to look back.
"Yeah, well, it seemed like a lifetime," he said. "Hey,
there's Roy!"

He rolled down the window, flapping his hands at a
big bearded man in a Redskins windbreaker. "Yo,
Roy! Your mother sews socks that smell!"

"Tony!" Brendan started to laugh. "You really are an
idiot, you know that? That guy better not have your
new address—"

"No way, man." He turned to grin at the boy in the
back seat. "Pretty good, huh, Peter? Stick around
with your old Uncle Tony, tomorrow I'll teach you
how to meet girls." Peter smiled, so quickly that
Brendan caught only the faintest shimmer of it in the
rearview mirror. Tony beamed, pounding on the
dashboard and nodding. "This is going to be great,
Brenda, you know? Having the chance to hang out
with you, spend some QT …"

"When do you start work?"

"Good question. You know, I think maybe I'm
supposed to go in tonight, just to get acclimated.
You got an extra key?"

"Tonight? What, like now? You want me to drop
you—"

"No, man. I told you, I'm the graveyard shift,
midnight to seven."

Brendan groaned. "You didn't tell me. And you
better not wake me up or you'll be living in Stanton
Square Park."

"No prob, man, no prob. Just give me an extra key,
I'll kiss you guys good night and then bye-bye—"

Tony let his arm drape out the open window. As
they rounded a corner he waved at a group of
spike-haired kids hanging out in front of a 7-11.
"Bye-bye," he repeated.

"Fuck you," one of the kids shouted. "Motherfucker,
you fuck—"

A bottle exploded on the street just behind the car,
broken glass spattering up against the rear window.
"Damn it!" Brendan swerved, then glanced at Tony.
He was gazing at the dashboard, his expression
unreadable. "Boy, talk about a lack of respect! If
only they knew Tony Maroni was in this car."

"Good thing they don't." Tony's voice was flat. "Jello
Biafra got the shit beat out of him in Berkeley by a
bunch of kids like that. He was going to watch a gig
at Gilman Street, they thought he'd sold out."

"Yeah, well, that won't happen to you," said Brendan
dryly.

Tony turned back to staring out the window. In the
seat behind them Peter began to snore softly, as the
car turned down Mass. Ave. and they headed for
Brendan's apartment.

It was nearly dark when they got there, the
sulfur-yellow streetlights casting a Halloween glow
over sidewalks and lawns and boxtree hedges.
Brendan's place was a brick rowhouse, the second
one from the corner on a street just a few blocks
from the old riot corridor; a neighborhood that had
spent the last fifteen years being gentrified without
ever quite achieving its goal. He double-parked in
front and gave Tony the keys, waiting in the car as
Tony ran in and out with the stereo and guitar and
boxes of records.

"Okay, that's everything except the clothes," Tony
said breathlessly, hopping back into the front. "I
stuck it all in the front closet, that okay?"

"Yeah." Brendan cocked a thumb at the backseat
where Peter lay slumped, his hand in his mouth. "But
tonight you sleep on the couch—Peter'll be in his
room."

"No prob."

He swung the car around the corner and parked in
front of Big Mo's Liquor and Tobacco Plus. A few
underdressed men stood in front, their breath
staining the air as they cadged change from
commuters hurrying home with shoulders hunched
against the cold. Brendan glared at them as he
stepped from the car.

"Damn winos, get a fucking job. All right, Peter," he
said, and reaching into the back seat he hefted the
boy in his arms. "Tony, can you get that stuff on
your own?"

"Sure, man."

"The car alarm's set, don't mess with it once you
close the door."

Brendan gave the street men a final scowl, then
headed towards the corner. Tony hopped onto the
sidewalk. He yanked out the black trash bag and his
leather jacket, dropped them behind the car and
slammed the door shut.

"Hey—you—" one of the men yelled hoarsely.
"You—Whoa Whoa!" He lifted a malt liquor bottle in
an unsteady toast.

Tony turned and smiled. "Dave. How you doin'?"

"Mmm fahn. Jus' fahn." Dave teetered on one foot, a
wizened man in a filthy trench coat, wispy white hair
sticking out from beneath a Microsoft gimme cap. At
his feet a whippety mongrel wagged its tail
frantically. "Uh-huh, uh-huh." Dave peered up at
Tony with clouded eyes and stuck out one hand.
"Whoa whoa whoa."

"Yeah, yeah. Here." Tony fished out a five-dollar bill
and gave it to him, bent to scratch the dog's head.
"Good doggie! Hold on—"

He peeled off his tweed jacket and held it up. "See if
this fits, Dave."

"Thangs, thangs …" Dave smiled, showing a few
ravaged teeth, and took the coat. Behind him the
other men nodded approvingly. "Go' bless you.…"

"No prob, man." Tony reached down for his leather
jacket, grabbed the trash bag and started down the
street. "See ya—"

Brendan met him at the door. "I'm getting Peter to
bed. I pulled out the sofa for you, there's sheets
and stuff in the bathroom." As Tony bounded past
him into the living room he frowned.

"Where's your jacket?"

"I gave it to Dave the Grave."
"You gave it to Dave the Grave? I gave you that
jacket!"

"Yeah, well now you can see it whenever you want,"
said Tony brightly. "I gotta fly, I've gotta be at work
early tonight. Thanks again, man. Don't wait up for
me."

"Right." Brendan said through clenched teeth. He
watched as Tony raced back out the front door and
down the steps to the sidewalk. "You have your
keys?" he shouted after him.

"Keys to the city, man!" Tony yelled, punching the
air with his fist as he started towards the Metro.
"Later—!"

From the room behind him, Brendan heard his son
banging impatiently on the door. "I'm coming,
Peter." He gave Tony one last look, a gangly
stoop-shouldered figure slouching its way
downstream, past the overcoated men and women
armed with briefcases and leather backpacks, the
kids in their Timberland street gear, and a single
slight whitehaired man weaving his way across
Maryland Avenue in a white gimme cap and grey
herringbone tweed jacket.

"Dave the fucking Grave," muttered Brendan, and he
shut the door.




He and Peter were already up when Tony got home
from work the next morning.

"You want breakfast?" Brendan pointed at the frying
pan still on the stove. "There's some bacon left, I
can make you eggs or something."

Tony shook his head. "No thanks. Got an Egg
McMuffin on the way home. Check this out—"

He pulled a CD from his leather jacket. "Promo of the
new Advent Moth. Wanna hear it?"

"No."

"Aw, c'mon—"
"No." Brendan slid back into his chair at the table
beside Peter.

"Peter, here's Uncle Tony. Peter has to finish eating
before he can leave the table," he said. "Okay, Peter.
Pick up your fork, and eat this before it gets cold."

Tony stood watching them. "Hey, Peter," he said.
"That looks like a good breakfast. Yum yum yum."

Peter sat at the table in a booster seat, a plastic
bowl in front of him holding a small yellow heap of
scrambled eggs. Around him the floor was smeared
with more scrambled eggs and several pieces of
toast. "Pick up the fork," repeated Brendan.

Peter reached for the cup. "That's the cup," said
Brendan firmly. "Pick up the fork."

Peter put down the cup but did nothing. "This is the
fork," said Brendan, pointing. "You eat your food
with the fork." Peter picked it up stiffly, and began to
eat.

"Listen," said Brendan. He looked up at Tony and
patted the empty chair next to him. "We have to
talk."

Tony sank obediently into the chair. "This isn't going
to work, right?"

"Well, no, probably not. Or well, maybe for just a
few days—" Brendan sighed and took a sip of coffee.
"I was talking to Teri—"

"Oh, yeah, right. I thought we weren't supposed to
tell Teri."

"I have to tell Teri, because of Peter." Brendan
glanced at his son and smiled. "You're doing a good
job with that fork, Peter." He turned back to his
friend. "Look, Tony—you know what it's like. We're
doing this intensive treatment, Peter's doing really
well with it, and—well, we have to be consistent.
Anything disruptive is just going to confuse him,
and …"

"Right," said Tony. He spread his hands out on the
tabletop and began drumming them. Peter looked
over, drew his own hand to his mouth, and bit it.
"Pick up your fork, Peter. Put down your hand and
pick up your fork." Brendan reached over, took
Peter's hand and brought it back to the table. Peter
began to scream, but then abruptly stopped.

"See what I mean?" Brendan shot an exasperated
look at Tony. "We're working on that kind of stim,
him biting his hand—"

Tony nodded. "He's not doing it as much as he used
to."

"He's not doing it at all. Hardly. That's one of the
things you do—you don't let them indulge in any
self-stimulation, not until after they've eaten their
breakfast, or done computer time, or whatever.
Then, instead of letting him bite his hand we give
him something else—"

Brendan turned so the boy couldn't see him and
went on sotto voce, "—we give him this rubber duck,
he can soothe himself with that for a few minutes."

Tony rubbed his chin. "Uh-huh. Well, I can do that. I
mean, I can remember to—"

"No, you can't. No offense, but just your being here
is disruptive—not you personally, but anyone else
beside me, or Teri. We have this all worked out and
it's—well, it's pretty rigid, Tony, it's like this total
one-on-one stuff and let me tell you, it's
exhausting."

"But then maybe you can use me—I mean, I can help
with something, right?" Tony asked, a little
desperately.

"Well, maybe." Brendan gave his friend a doubtful
look. "I guess we can try it and see."

"Why didn't you just tell all me this last night?"

"Jesus, Tony, you didn't really give me a chance, did
you? I mean, you ambushed me at the zoo, saying
how you're getting kicked out of your place and
you've got twenty-four hours to live, and—use your
fork, Peter."

"I didn't mean to put you out." Tony ran a hand
through his long hair, his leather jacket squeaking.
"Okay. Well, I guess I could, I can always find
somewhere else to crash, just let me get on the
horn and see who I can get in touch with, okay?"

"Wait. Let me finish—but hold on a minute." Brendan
stood, got behind Peter's chair and put his hands
firmly on the boy's shoulders. Peter wriggled, but
paused as his father went on, "Peter—you did a
good job eating your breakfast. You did a good job
using your fork. Let's go in now, you can watch
Sesame Street."

He pulled the chair out. Peter scrambled down and
walked beside him into the living room. "See? Check
this out—"

Brendan leaned down to pick up a videotape from a
stack alongside the VCR. "We watch the same
Sesame Street tape every day. It's close-captioned,
and we read it out loud."

"He can read?"

Brendan slid the tape into the machine. Peter settled
in the middle of the floor, staring straight ahead as
his father walked past him and Big Bird filled the
screen.

"Yes. No. I mean, I actually don't know what he can
do," Brendan said, joining Tony back in the kitchen.
"You know? They keep running all these tests,
and—well, he tests above average for language
comprehension, and he does well with all these
learning games they play. And he's bonded really
well with Peggy, his teacher, which is wonderful—at
first he wouldn't even let her near him. But he's still
not talking, obviously. And he's still doing the stims
when he feels stressed out, though that's pretty
normal."

Brendan drew a hand across his forehead, blinking
as though the light were too bright. "But what's
normal, right? God, I'm tired."

He looked at Tony and smiled wearily. Brendan had
gained a few pounds when he quit drinking, and his
light brown hair was thinner and flecked with grey,
but otherwise he looked pretty much the same as he
did back in law school. Same pale blue eyes behind
tortoiseshell glasses, same faded freckles in a round
boyish face, same faded rugby shirt and chinos and
worn L.L. Bean topsiders. The kind of attorney a
GS-3 receptionist might trust in a dispute over a
rush-hour fender-bender, or a checkout clerk at Rite
Aid who lost his job when his drinking became a
problem; a guy who looked reliable and intelligent,
but not dangerously so. Not like his ex-wife, a
lawyer who represented a pharmaceutical
corporation in federal lawsuits over the unanticipated
side effects of designer drugs with names Tony
couldn't even pronounce; a woman who wore Donna
Karan clothes and contact lenses that tinted her
hazel eyes an astonishing jade-green; a woman who
before her divorce had taken a year off from her job,
to stay home and work every single day with her
autistic son.

"Well, you know, Brendan, maybe I could help out. I
mean, if you told me how …"

Brendan tilted back in his chair. "Thanks, Tony. But
you know, it's like, complex. All this patterning stuff.
The theory is, you just keep doing the same thing
over and over and over again, and eventually you
end up burning new neural pathways in the brain."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "Sounds weird. Actually, it
sounds boring."

"Well, yeah, it is boring. Sort of. But it works. These
kids—their brains are wired differently than ours.
Someone like Peter, he goes into sensory overload
at the slightest stimulation, the sort of thing maybe
you or me wouldn't notice but he's incredibly
sensitive to. The rest of us, our sensory levels are
set at five or six; but his are cranked all the way up
to nine, or ten."

"No—eleven!" Tony said, bopping up and down in
excitement. "I get it! You know, like in Spinal
Tap—the dials go all the way to eleven."

Brendan closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
"You know, Tony—the best thing would probably be
if—well, maybe you could kind of stay out of the
way. It's fine your being here, I mean, I'd kind of
even like it for a little while."

Tony looked hurt. "Oh. Thanks."

"Come on, Tony, you know what I mean. It's just
incredibly stressful, that's all. Actually, it would be
nice to have you around," Brendan went on a little
wistfully. "Since Teri has commandeered Peter for
most of the holidays. Not that he gets any of it," he
ended, glancing into the living room.

How would you know what he gets? Tony thought.
He leaned forward, leather-clad elbows nudging aside
an empty glass of orange juice as he watched the
little boy in the next room. On the floor in front of
Peter, a huge plastic container of Legos had been
spilled. Methodically, his brow furrowed, Peter was
picking through the multicolored blocks, taking only
the yellow and blue ones and being very careful not
to even touch the others. On the TV behind him, a
fuzzy red figure floated in a star-flecked ultramarine
sky, silhouetted against a calm moon while a cat
danced beneath. Tony blinked; letters scrolled
across the bottom of the screen. On the floor, Peter
tilted his head to one side, and his mouth moved
silently.

"What's he saying?" said Tony. "Brendan? Is he,
uh—"

Brendan turned, springing from his chair with such
force that it skidded across the room. "Peter?
Peter—"

Peter sat calmly and regarded the wall of yellow and
blue that separated him from the remaining Legos.
Above him Brendan stood, hands opened helplessly
as he stared down at his son. "You okay, Peter? You
okay?"

Peter said nothing, his mouth a straight line as he
stretched out a hand and began to touch the
blocks: yellow blue yellow blue yellow blue. After a
moment Brendan turned and looked at Tony in the
kitchen. "What happened?"

Tony opened his mouth, thought better of it. "Uh.
Nothing. I mean—"He shook his head and shrugged.
"Nothing, man. Sorry. I guess I'm just kinda beat,
you know? I think I'll crash for awhile—"

He stood, chair scraping loudly. In the living room
something flashed across Peter's face, unobserved
by the grownups. A wince or perhaps a smile, the
bright spark of a moth's wing in the dark. Brendan
continued to stare at his friend.
"Beat," he said at last. He nodded, pushed up the
sleeve of his old rugby shirt to scratch his arm.
"Right. Use my room—just sleep on top of the bed,
there's a blanket in the closet. Teri's coming by at
noon to pick up Peter. You can have his room
then—okay, Peter? That okay if Uncle Tony uses
your room?"

This time Peter did smile. Tony saw it. Brendan
didn't; he had already turned to adjust the volume
on the TV. For just an instant the two others locked
eyes and for once Tony could really see him: Peter's
gaze questioning, the blue eyes pale as his father's
but green-flecked, the firmly-set mouth neither
stubborn nor remote but merely intent, slightly
distracted but also puzzled by all the to-do. Tony
gazed back, and in that instant it was as though a
thread were stretched taut between them, silvery
and shimmering, ephemeral as Peter's smile,
something else that only Tony could almost see—

"Hey," he murmured. "Hey … !"

His heart surged as though on an explosive
adrenaline rush, he had a flash of delight so intense
and primal it was like one of those things you know
you should never be able to remember but in a
miraculous amphetamine moment you do: the first
time you saw the moon, the first time you
understood the color red; the first silver-grey flicker
of a man's face on a small square screen, gentle and
smiling, and other smaller faces dancing around him:
a mouse, a beatnik, a gross-beaked clown. It was
like that, seeing Peter smile, the echo of some
emotional Big Bang—bum, bum-bum!—

And then it was gone. Without moving his head,
Peter's attention back to the blue and yellow wall of
Legos. Tony was staring down at him
open-mouthed, feeling at once bereft and exultant.

Fuckin' A, he thought. His hand closed on the back
of his chair as he stood, dazed, love and
sleeplessness and the rush of blood to his head all
one solid revelation. He blinked, eyes aching as
Brendan walked past him to gather dishes from the
table.

"Tony. You go on," he said with a glance over his
shoulder. "Peter and I'll be out for awhile, down at
the park or something. If the phone rings just let
the machine catch it, okay?"

Tony stared at him, then nodded. "Sure," he said.
"Thanks, man."

He turned, stopped to look back. Peter was framed
within the doorway, kneeling in front of his Legos.
The TV hummed at his back, a fuzzy red figure
twirled around the moon, words formed and
changed on the screen.

"Bye Peter." Tony waited to see if the boy would look
up, if that mad rush of feeling would overcome him
again.

It didn't. Peter remained where he was, making his
patterns: yellow blue yellow blue. Yellow.

"Bye bye," murmured Tony. He swiped a long strand
of unwashed hair from his face; then turned and
walked down the corridor to Brendan's room.




In the weeks that followed they fell into a
surprisingly easy routine. Surprising because in all
their years of knowing each other, Brendan and
Tony had never actually lived together. Oh, there
had been numerous occasions when one or the
other had been bounced out by a girlfriend, or a
group house had gotten just too crazy even for
Tony's patience. And certainly there had been plenty
of drunken evenings when Brendan had passed out
on Tony's sofa or floor, or vice versa. And so
Brendan had always assumed—extremely very
wrongly, as Tony quickly pointed out with a hurt
look—that Tony was a slob.

In fact Tony was exceedingly, even excessively, neat.
He cleaned dishes immediately after washing them;
he picked up damp towels and hung them over the
shower rod to dry, and later folded them carefully, in
three parts, and replaced them on the towel rack. If
Brendan put his half-full coffee mug down
somewhere and forgot about it, the next time he'd
see it would be in the dishwasher, or back in the
cupboard. Each section of The Washington Post was
in the recycling bin as soon as it was read, and
sometimes even sooner.
"You know, Tony, I was saving that Redskins
article," Brendan said the Sunday before
Thanksgiving, aggrieved to find the sports section
gone a few hours before game time. "Christ, you're
worse than my mother! Were you always like this?"
Brendan gave his friend a suspicious look as Tony
sorted through the CDs in the living room. "I
thought you were a slob. Like me," he added,
yanking the offending sports section from the
recycling bin.

"No way, man."

"Yes, way—what about all those places you lived?
What about your place with Kimberly? That was
disgusting."

"Wasn't me, man." Tony shook his head. "That was
her. That was all of them. I just like messy women,"
he said, shrugging. He held up a CD and struck a
thoughtful pose: Marcus Welby, Punk Rocker. "I
think they're better in bed. Haven't you ever
noticed? Big Fat Slob Equals Great Head."

Brendan laughed. "Oh. That's what I've been doing
wrong."

"Sure, man. Problem is, eventually, you just can't
find 'em."

"You mean like, all the good ones are taken?"

"No, man—I mean, like, Kimberly's place was such a
fucking pigsty, it took me a week to figure out she'd
gone off with Roy." Tony turned back to the stack of
CDs. "And you know, these days I'm so wired when
I get home from work in the morning—it's like when
I used to play. Takes me a while to wind down. It
calms me, straightening stuff. And I mean, what's
your fucking problem?" He glared over his shoulder
at Brendan. "Cleaning up is a lot more productive
than shooting smack."

Brendan hooted. "Is that what you told your
students? 'This is Tony Maroni for a Drug-Free
America. Clean your'—ouch!"

He ducked as a CD went skimming past his head.
"Go watch your Foreskins game!" yelled Tony. "Let
me clean in peace!"
They went out to dinner that night after the game,
Tony's domestic abilities not extending as far as
cooking food. Peter was at his mother's until
Wednesday, when Brendan would pick him up for
the long Thanksgiving weekend.

"How come you got the night off?" he asked Tony,
dousing his salad with balsamic vinegar. "I thought
Gigantor was open for all major holidays."

"They are. But I said I'd cover for Jason so he could
go see his girlfriend in Charlottesville." Tony picked
up a french fry, dabbed it in ketchup and drew a little
heart; erased it and ate the fry. "Wish I had a
girlfriend," he said. "We still on for Cousin Kevin's?"

"Far as I know. Kevin says Eileen's bought a
five-hundred-pound turkey and upset the Chicago
trading floor by sucking up cranberry futures. So I
guess we're expected."

Tony laughed: he loved Eileen. "You think she'll do
that thing again with the little teeny pumpkins and
jalapeño cheese? And the girls doing their Irish
dancing?"

"Jesus, I hope not. Kevin said come any time after
ten, so we can catch some of the parade. And we're
supposed to bring cider."

"Cider?"

"Yeah—" Brendan pulled an ATM receipt from his
pocket and squinted, trying to read something
scrawled there. "Magyar Farms Organic
Flash-Pasteurized Cider. Four gallons."

"Wow. Flash Pasteurized." Tony leaned back in his
chair and grinned. "Thanksgiving. I can't hardly wait.
Remember when we were kids, watching the parade
and stuff? And that story your Uncle Tom always
told, about the turkey who ate the Pepperidge Farm
Man?"

Brendan laughed. "I forgot about that."

"And Chip Crockett … Remember how Captain
Kangaroo always used to have Thanksgiving dinner,
like a real formal dinner—you know, Mister Green
Jeans and Dancing Bear saying Grace with all the
silverware and good china. And so Chip Crockett
started doing that thing with Ooga Booga and
Ogden Orff trying to stuff a kielbasa?"

Brendan speared a cherry tomato and shook his
head. "Jeez, Tony. How the hell do you remember
that stuff?"

"Chip Crockett Web page, man! It's like a memory
enhancer. Or a time machine, or something." He
hesitated, recalling that weird charged moment with
Peter; thought of mentioning it to Brendan, but
instead said, "Like when you smell something, or
hear something—a song, or the way a balloon
smells—and all of a sudden you flash back to when
you were really, really little? Like Peter's age? But
you can't remember exactly what it is that you're
remembering, because you were so young then it
was before you started remembering things. It's like
that."

Brendan stared at him blankly. "Balloons?"

"Sure!" Tony leaned back a little too enthusiastically
in his chair, nearly tipped before he came crashing
back down. "Oops. Yeah, balloons."

"Tony? What the hell are you talking about?"

"I told you: Chip Crockett's Web page! It's all there.
All that stuff you thought you forgot when you grew
up—"

"Like where I put my Casey Stengel baseball cards?"

"Absolutely. And all those Bosco commercials? And
Cocoa Marsh?" Tony pushed aside Brendan's salad
and leaned across the table. "It's all in there.
Bonomo Turkish Taffy. Enemee Electric Organs.
Diver Dan and Baron Barracuda. 'They're Coming to
Take Me Away, Ha Ha.' Ooga Booga. Ogden Orff.
Everything."

"Right." Brendan closed his eyes, opened them, and
slid his salad plate back where it belonged. "You
know, Tony," he said between mouthfuls of mesclun
and seared porcini mushrooms, "doesn't it ever
strike you that some of this stuff is—well, sort of
useless?"

Tony looked confused. "What do you mean?"
"All this baby boomer detritus. Beatlemania. Mickey
Mouse Club hats. Three Stooges T-shirts. It's all
bullshit. They're just trying to sell you shit. It's all
one big fucking infomercial."

"But that's not what I'm talking about." Tony shook
his head, hair whipping round his face. "I'm talking
about the stuff that was lost—all those people you
never heard of again. Like Chip Crockett. All those
puppets he made, " he said plaintively. "And his
characters. Ogden Orff. I mean, there's nothing left
but these little tiny ten-second videoclips, but he's
there, man! He's still alive!"

Brendan dropped his fork onto his plate and buried
his face in his hands. "Tony." He cracked his fingers
so that he could peer at his friend. In front of him,
Tony's cheeseburger platter was almost untouched,
the ghostly red outline of a heart just visible
alongside the pickle. "Listen. I hate to be the one to
give you the bad news about Santa Claus, but—"

"But this is real. Ogden Orff was real—or, well, Chip
Crockett was. They were real," Tony repeated,
pounding the table. "Real."

"Yeah, but Tony! They don't matter. They never
mattered! I mean, it's cute and nice that you can
find this stuff and look at the funny pictures and all,
but Jesus Christ! You're forty-three years old! I got
my access bill and you spent thirty-nine hours online
in the last two weeks. That's a lot of Ogden fucking
Orff, Tony. And to tell you the truth, I'm kind of—"

"I'll pay you back. I'll pay you right now, here—"

Brendan made a tired gesture as Tony fumbled in his
pocket. Dollar bills fluttered around him, coins
chinked across the table and onto the floor in a
steady rain. "I don't want your money, Tony. I
definitely don't want it in nickels and dimes—stop,
for chrissake! Listen to me—

"I know you just started working again, but—well,
you've got to, like, get a life, Tony. A real life. You
can't spend all your time online, looking at pictures
of Ogden Orff."

"Why not?" The look Tony gave Brendan was
definitely hostile. "Why the fuck not? What do you
think I should do? Huh? Mister Big-Time lawyer.
What, are you pulling in thirty grand these days,
after you make child support? Forty?"

"That has nothing to—"

"Yes it does! Or, well—no it doesn't, does it?" The
hostility drained from Tony's face. Suddenly all he
looked was tired, and sad, and every one of his
forty-three years old. "Hey man. I'm sorry. I was out
of line there, with that money stuff—"

"It's okay, Tony."

"Way out of line. 'Cause like, I know you could earn
more if you wanted to. Right?" Tony raised his
eyebrows, then looked away. "But, like, I understand
that you don't want to. I identify with your integrity,
man. I respect it. I really do."

"My what?" Without warning, Brendan began to
laugh. "My integrity? My integrity? Oh Tony. You big
dope!" Hard; harder than he'd laughed in a long
time, maybe since before Peter was born. Maybe
since before he was married, when slowly everything
had stopped being funny — because what was funny
about being married, especially when you didn't stay
married? Or having a kid, even a perfectly normal
boring healthy kid; or a job, a perfectly normal
healthy job that you hated? There was nothing
funny about any of that; there was nothing fun
about it at all.

And there was Tony Maroni, with his soulful dopey
eyes, his long greying hair and stretched Silly Putty
face, his black leather jacket with its Jimmy Carter
campaign button rusted to the lapel and the faxed
copy of Chip Crockett's obituary still wadded in one
pocket. Tony who remembered the words to every
back-of-the-schoolbus song they'd sung thirty-five
years ago; Tony who had dedicated a song to his
childhood friends, and treasured Officer Joe Bolton's
autograph as though it were the Pope's; Tony who'd
nearly wept when PeeWee Herman got booted off
the air; who did weep, as a kid, when he'd gotten
the bad news about the North Pole.

Tony Maroni was fun. Tony Maroni was funny. Most
of all, Tony Maroni had integrity. Sort of.

"What?" Tony tilted his head, puzzled. "What?"
"Nothing." Brendan shook his head, wiping his eyes.
"Nothing—just, you know—"He flapped his hand and
coughed, trying to calm down. "Me. You. All this
stuff."

Now Tony sounded suspicious. "All what stuff?"

"Life. You thinking I have integrity, when—"

The laughter started up again: spurts of it, hot
somehow and painful, like blood. Laughing blood,
Brendan thought, but couldn't stop. "—when I'm
just—a—a—terrible—lawyer!"

"Awwww." Tony rubbed his forehead and frowned.
Then he started laughing, too. " 'No, Ogden, no!' "
he said, imitating Chip Crockett. " 'Don't file that
tort!' "

Brendan lifted his head. His pale blue eyes were
brilliant, almost feverishly so; but there was a kind of
calm in them, too. Like a beach that's been
storm-scoured, all the sand castles and traces of an
endless hot afternoon smoothed away, so that only
a few still sky-reflecting pools remain.

Calm. That was how he felt. Their waiter passed and
Brendan smiled at him, signaling for the check; then
turned back to Tony. "Okay. So maybe you can
show me that Web site."

Tony's face cracked into a grin like Humpty
Dumpty's. "Sure, man! Absolutely!"

"And maybe you can write me a check—not now,
jeez, Tony. When you get settled. More settled.
Whenever."

The waiter brought the check. Brendan paid it. Tony
left the tip, in little neatly-stacked piles of quarters
and dimes and nickels. On the way out Tony held the
door as Brendan shrugged into his heavy camel's
hair coat, still smiling. As he stepped past him onto
the sidewalk Brendan tripped, catching himself as he
lurched between an immaculately dressed Capitol Hill
couple who scowled as Brendan drew himself up,
laughing, alongside his friend.

"That's my attorney," said Tony fondly. "Ogden
Orff."
Thanksgiving Day dawned clear and warm, the air
glittering with that magical blue-gold tinge Brendan
recalled from his undergrad days—late-autumn light
that seemed to seep into the pores of even the
most disenchanted bureaucrats in their
holiday-weekend drag of paint-spattered chinos and
faded Springsteen T-shirts, rearranging leaves on
vest-pocket lawns with their Smith & Hawken rakes.
That was what Teri was doing when he went to pick
up Peter at The House Formerly Known as
Brendan's, way up Connecticut Avenue just past the
Bethesda line.

"Hi, Teri," he said, stepping from the car and
hopping over a brown heap at the edge of the
driveway. "How you doing? Where's the boy?"

Teri paused, balancing the rake on her shoulder like
a musket, and cocked a thumb at the house behind
her. "Taking a nap. You can go wake him if you
want."

Brendan nodded. His ex-wife as always looked
harried, her short hair stuck with twigs and her dark
eyes narrowed with a furious concentration that
seemed expended needlessly upon innocent dead
leaves. "Great," he said. "What're you doing today?
Kevin said—"

"Leon's coming over. We're going out to Harper's
Ferry."

Leon was Teri's paralegal, a wispy young man ten
years her junior who'd been her companionate
default since before the divorce was final. Brendan
had never been able to figure out if Leon was
sleeping with his ex-wife, if he were even
heterosexual, or a careerist, or what? "That's nice,"
he said. "Well, Kevin and Eileen send their love."

"And Tony?" Eileen swung the rake down from her
shoulder, plonked it in the ground in front of her
and leaned on the handle. To Brendan it still looked
like a musket.

"Tony?"
"Does Tony send his love? I understand he's living
at your place these days."

"Tony! Oh, sure, Tony sends his love." Brendan
kicked at the leaves, noticed Teri's wince of
disapproval and quickly began nudging them back
into place with his foot. "Loads of hugs and kisses
from Tony Maroni."

"Hm." Teri eyed him measuringly. Then, "You should
have told me."

"You know, Teri, I don't need to ask for—"

"I didn't say ask," she said calmly. "I said told. You
should have told me, that's all. I don't care if Tony's
living with you. I know it's—I'm sure it must make
things easier for you. I just need to know, so I can
arrange Peter's schedule accordingly."

Brendan frowned. "Accordingly to what?"

Behind Teri the front door of the little mock-Tudor
house swung open. Peter stood there, yellow rubber
duck in one hand. He smiled, staring at a point just
above Brendan's head, then walked across the lawn
towards him.

"We can talk about this later," said Teri. She wiped a
smudge of dirt form her cheek and called to the boy.
"Hi sweetie. Ready to go with Daddy?"

Brendan grinned as Peter came up alongside him.
"Hey, Peter!" He caressed the top of his son's head,
ever so gently, as though it were dandelion fluff he
was afraid to disperse. "We're going to go see Kevin
and the twins. Remember the twins? Give Mommy a
kiss goodbye."

Peter remained beside his father. "I'll go get his
stuff," Teri called as she started for the house.

"I'll bring him back Sunday afternoon. Is that still
okay?"

Teri nodded. A few minutes later she returned with
his knapsack and extra bag of clothes. "Okay. This
should be everything. Here's the number where we'll
be till Saturday."
She crouched in front of Peter and took his hands in
hers. He writhed and tried to pull away, but Teri only
stared at him, her eyes glazed with tears. "I'll miss
you," she said. Her voice was loud and steady. "You
have a great time with Daddy and Uncle Kevin and
the twins, okay? I love you, Peter—"

Peter said nothing. When Teri kissed him and stood,
he drew the rubber duck to his mouth, rubbing it
against his cheek.

"All right then." Brendan started for the car, turning
and beckoning for Peter to follow. "Wave goodbye,
Peter."

The boy followed him. "Wave bye-bye," Brendan
repeated, standing aside to let Peter climb into the
back seat. Brendan strapped him in, then got in
front. "Bye-bye," he said to Peter, the boy kicking at
the seat in front of him. And, "Bye-bye," Brendan
called to Teri, rolling down the window as he backed
from the drive, "Bye-bye," as behind them she grew
smaller and smaller, the rake just a rake again, his
ex-wife just a mother, waving to her son as he
disappeared down the street.




Kevin lived in an expensive contemporary house in
Potomac, its cedar siding tinted a rich russet-brown
and lushly overgrown with Virginia creeper and
English ivy, its front yard a miniature forest of
rhododendron and birch trees and azaleas. There
were no stray leaves on the ground, save beneath a
solitary Japanese maple whose bounty was scattered
across the grass like crimson handprints.

"Uncle Brendan! Uncle Brendan's here!"

Two small girls, Cara and Caitlin, danced excitedly on
the front porch. Twins, with long silken hair so deep
a red it looked violet in certain lights, paper-white
skin and green eyes. They were wearing smocked
flowered dresses and their hair was ribboned with
pink satin bows so immense it looked as though
they were wearing throw pillows on their heads.

"Peter! Where's Peter! Hi Peter!"
The girls ran over to the car and began pounding on
the window. Peter regarded them with the same
reserved interest he'd shown the iguanas at the
zoo, but when Cara yanked the door open and flung
herself at him he kicked fiercely at the back of
Brendan's seat.

"Cara! Hey, honey, come give Uncle Brendan a
kiss—it's okay, Peter—come here, sweetie,
remember he gets a little excited if—"

"Actually, you're our cousin." Caitlin stood watching
him solemnly. "Not our uncle. Our first cousin once
removed."

"Oh yeah? Well here, come give Uncle Cousin
Brendan Once Removed a kiss—"

"Brendan!"

Another figure appeared on the porch, radiant in
crimson velvet and ecru lace, her hair a gold corona
framing a face even paler than the girls'.

"Eileen, hi—gee, you look great! Hi, Caitlin, Cara, hi
hi hi hi—"

Brendan unfolded himself from the car and the
twins' embrace, freed Peter from his carseat. Eileen
clattered down to hug him, Peter sliding behind his
father's legs as she did so; and Brendan felt that
irresistible tug of lust and awe he always felt when
he saw his cousin's wife.

"Wow!" He drew back to admire her dress, protected
by a spattered apron with the legend JESUS IS
COMING: LOOK BUSY. "You really dressed for
dinner."

"Tell me about it." Eileen dabbed Brendan's chin with
a finger, erasing a smudge of lipstick. "Girls, go get
your father."

She swatted at the twins and sent them racing into
the house. "And close the door! I've been doing this
job out in Warrenton, redecorating Senator
Weston's place," she continued, turning back to
Brendan. "Almost broke my wrist on that goddam
chainsaw , the chain came off and—"

Brendan laughed. Eileen had been a lingerie
model—"the Rosey Underwear girl," she called it—for
the Rosellen's Boudoir Catalog, before quitting to
have babies and then become an interior decorator
for the horsy set out in Middleburg. Now she wielded
a chainsaw and glue-gun like Martha Stewart on
steroids.

"—oh, but you know what it's like," she ended.

"Breaking my wrist on a chainsaw in a senator's
house? Actually, no."

"And how is Peter?" Eileen's tone softened as she
took in Peter, sheltered behind his father and
chewing his rubber duck. "Hi, darlin'—"

She glanced at Brendan. "Will he let me hug him?"

"No. But Peggy—his teacher at Birchwood—he'll let
her hold him, now. Sometimes."

Eileen gazed down at Peter. "That's okay," she said
softly. "That's just fine, okay Peter?" She turned
back to his father, holding the front door open. "I'm
glad he's doing so well, Brendan. Kevin told me, that
new school is great and he's just making such great
progress …"

Brendan followed her inside, wondering what on
earth Kevin could have said. The two cousins seldom
confided anything more personal than Redskins'
scores. "Oh, and listen," Eileen went on, taking his
arm. "Tony said not to worry, he got the cider."

"The cider!" Brendan slapped his forehead. "I totally
forgot."

"That's what I'm telling you, Tony's bringing it.

"Tony? I thought he had to work."

"Change of plans. Here, Peter, you can put your
things in here. Brendan, you too"

"Brendan! Peter! Glad you could make it—" Kevin
loomed in the doorway, beaming.

"Yeah, great to be here, Kevin, thanks."

"Girls!" Kevin ordered. "You all go play nicely
together, you and Peter." He turned and made his
way down the hall.

"Sure Dad." Caitlin smiled respectfully at the younger
boy. "Hi, Peter. Would you like to come watch TV
with us? In the other room?"

"It's down here," said Cara, and started off. Peter
shook his head, looking at the ceiling and patting his
rubber duck against one cheek.

"You know what?" Brendan started to explain.
"Sometimes he doesn't like to go off on his own. But
maybe in a few minutes, if I go—"

Without a word Peter began walking. Still gazing at
the ceiling, but following Cara into the cozy room
where a TV was already turned to the Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade.

"Hey, Brendan." Kevin stuck his head out from the
kitchen. "What're you drinking?"

"Uh, club soda. Fizzy water, anything." Brendan's
brow furrowed, and he crossed to where the children
sat.

"He's watching with us," said Caitlin. On screen the
camera panned a crowd of waving children, then
swept up to take in a shapeless scarlet mass floating
against a backdrop of skyscrapers and cobalt-blue
sky. "Look Peter, it's Elmo!"

"Sesame Street. The universal language."

Brendan looked up to see Tony standing in the hall.
He wore a black T-shirt, faded black jeans, and his
leather jacket, augmented by four gallons of cider
balanced very precariously in his arms.

"Tony. Hey, why didn't you tell me you were coming,
I would've given you a lift." Brendan scooped up two
of the gallons and took a step towards the kitchen.
"I thought you had to work."

Tony shrugged. "Well, you know how it is." His gaze
remained fixed on the television. "Gee, look at Elmo!
He sure looks bigger in real life, huh? Hi goils," he
called to the twins. "Look: it's Crazy Uncle Tony."

The girls glanced up, gave high-pitched squeals of
glee, and raced over to hug him.
"Uncle Tony! Crazy Uncle Tony!"

"Hey," said Brendan. "How come he's Uncle Tony and
I'm only Cousin Brendan?"

"Come on, guys," called Eileen from the kitchen.
"Come hang out with the big kids. Girls, dinner'll be
ready in an hour."

It was warm enough to sit outside on the deck,
looking out onto a small stand of maples still clinging
to their shaggy red leaves. Now and then one of the
children would wander out, the girls looking for
snacks (refused) or attention (given), Peter simply
standing for a moment beside his father before
turning and walking back inside.

"Tony said he's starting to read?" Eileen asked. She
alone was drinking wine, a good Sémillon that gave
off topaz sparks as sun struck her glass.

Brendan's mouth twitched in an automatic smile.
"Actually, no, I don't think he's reading. Well, we're
not sure he's reading. We have close-captioned TV,
and he watches it, and Teri thinks maybe he makes
out some of it. But I don't know," he ended,
pressing his glass of club soda to his cheek. "I just
don't know."

"Well, but everything has to be taken slowly, doesn't
it?" Eileen leaned over and touched his knee. "Every
little thing is sort of a major triumph with kids. Any
kids."

"Sure." Brendan thought of Peter going in by himself
to watch TV with the twins. "Every little bit counts."

"It's all important," agreed Eileen.

"Sure," said Kevin, standing. "But what's really
important is football."

Tony looked stricken. "What about The March of the
Wooden Soldiers?"

"Don't worry, Tony, we got it all set up." Kevin
started for the kitchen. "And you know what else,
Tony? This year you even get to sit at the
grownups' table."
When dinner was ready they all moved into the
formal dining room. At his father's side, Peter sat
quietly as Brendan cut up turkey and green beans.
For a little while the room was happily silent, except
for grunts of "Great job, Eileen" and muffled
requests for more stuffing. Seconds were dispersed,
plates emptied, and soon everyone save Peter began
talking at once—the twins eager to tell Brendan
about some complicated arrangement they had for
sharing hamsters, Kevin ribbing his cousin about the
last football game, Eileen sharing her recipe for
jalapeño-pumpkin dip with Tony.

And, gradually, and despite Eileen's best efforts, the
conversation began to turn to childhood. Brendan
and Kevin and Tony's childhood, in particular; Chip
Crockett, in even more particular.

"Kevin, man, you got to check out his Web site. I
was gonna show it to Brendan the other night but it
got too late. It'll blow your mind. Right, Brenda?"

Kevin sniffed. "Sounds more like something the
girls'd go for, Tony. I personally don't watch a lot of
Chip Crockett these days."

"Well, no one does," said Tony. He turned to Eileen.
"You remember Chip Crockett. They had him over in
New Jersey, right?"

"Oh sure. He was great—you girls would've loved
him. I had a total crush on Chip Crockett," she
added dreamily. "He was—"

"What was he like?" Cara broke in.

"He was just like your Uncle Tony," said Kevin. "Plus
or minus a few brain cells."

"I was going to say," Eileen continued, "that he was
like my father. Or what I wanted my father to be like.
He was funny—"

"He was silly," said Kevin.

"He was wonderful. I still remember, after Kennedy
was assassinated—that Monday morning Chip
Crockett came back on the air and tried to explain it
to us. He looked awful, but he was so gentle and
sad—I never forgot that."
The twins looked bored. "Can we be excused?
Please?"

Eileen nodded. "Yes. Of course, just clear your
plates …"

They were already out the door. A moment later
Cara poked her head back in. "Peter? Wanna come?
We have that movie—"

"The movie!" Tony shot to his feet. "Wait, girls—"

"Go ahead, Peter," said Brendan, smiling
encouragingly. "Go with Tony." Peter slid from his
chair and left.

"Tony! Clear your place!" Kevin shouted as Tony
hurried down the hall. "God, he drives me nuts.
Doesn't he drive you crazy, Brendan? Living with
him?"

"Not really. Well, a little. He's very neat."

"Neat? Well, his life's a fucking mess. You know he
got canned from Gigantor Music?"

Brendan blinked. "No."

"Yes. He showed up for work last night, they told
him to go home."

"Kevin." Eileen's lacquered red nails poised
menacingly above his wrist. "Shut up."

Brendan began to unwind a crescent roll. "What
happened?"

"Who knows? Who cares? Look at him—forty-three
years old, he's still wearing a leather jacket and
hightop sneakers and waiting to collect his first
royalty check. He's a fucking loser."

Eileen's eyes narrowed. "Yeah? Well, I've never seen
anyone wearing a T-shirt with your face on it."

"He hasn't even played a pickup gig in three years."
Kevin picked up his glass of non-alcoholic beer and
stared at it. "He depresses me."

"He makes me laugh." In a swirl of red velvet and
Chakra perfume, Eileen stood. "He's the only one
who's still the way we were when we all met. I think
he's a sweetheart."

"Oh yeah?" sputtered Kevin. "Well, then, why—"

"And you can do the dishes."

She stalked off, carrying the bottle of sémillon. Kevin
stared after her. "Christ. My wife's leaving me for
Tony Maroni."

Brendan took a bite of his roll. "You know, it's a
concept."

"What?"

"T-shirts with your picture on them. They could give
'em out at Greenpeace rallies. You'd be bigger than
Saddam Hussein."

Kevin gazed broodingly at the deconstructed turkey.
After a minute, Brendan asked, "Why does he
bother you so much?"

"Tony? Because he's superfluous. He has absolutely
no place in the food chain."

"Then why do you stay in touch with him at all?"

Kevin sighed. "Because he's the only one of us
who's still the same as when we met."

"Dad?" Caitlin stood in the doorway. "The tape's not
working."

"I'll go." Brendan stood, put a hand on his cousin's
shoulder. "You help Eileen with the dishes."

He followed the girl into the hall. "How's Peter doing,
Caitlin?"

She shrugged. "Okay, I guess. He doesn't talk."

"That's right."

"Did he ever?"

"No, he didn't."

Caitlin stopped outside the door to the TV room.
Peter and Cara were sitting on the floor with Tony
sprawled between them, counting out Gummy
Worms.

"Hey, guys," said Brendan. He stepped over them to
the television and picked up the remote. "What's the
problem?"

The screen blipped to blue, then black. In a flurry of
electronic snow the tape started. Brendan sank onto
the couch, balancing the remote on his knees.
"There—"

Mother Goose appeared on the screen, warbling
tremulously about Toyland. Heroes and villains were
identified: Little Bo Peep, Tom Thumb ("That sap,"
said Tony), wicked Barnaby, and, last of all, Stan
and Ollie lying side by side in bed sound asleep.

"Do they talk?" Cara frowned. "I don't like it when
they don't talk."

"It's been colorized," said Brendan. "I hate that."

"I don't." Caitlin scrunched closer to the screen. "I
hate black-and-white. No way …"

"Way," said Tony. "Black-and-white is cool, man.
You just have to get used to it. Here—"

He grabbed the remote from Brendan and started
fiddling with it, pushing buttons and pointing it
around the room. "Beam me up, Captain—oops, not
that one …" Caitlin and Cara giggled. Even Peter
turned to watch. "Hmm. There's gotta be a way to
do this …"

Brendan shook his head. "It doesn't work like that,
Tony. Older TVs, you can adjust the color to make it
black-and-white again. But not anymore. Not with a
remote, at least. Believe me, I've tried."

On screen, Stan Laurel froze, rose-pink mouth open
in a wail.

"Uh-oh. Looks bad for Old Mother Hubbard." Kevin's
massive frame filled the doorway. He looked down at
the kids and smiled. "We used to watch this every
year on Thanksgiving. But it wasn't in color then."

"Uncle Tony's fixing it."
Kevin glanced suspiciously at Tony. "Uncle Tony
better not be breaking it."

"—see what this'll do—"

"Look!" Cara jumped up excitedly. "He did it! Uncle
Tony did it!"

Stan's wail filled the room. He reached up to tousle
his thatch of hair—black-and-white hair,
black-and-white hand; black-and-white Ollie rolling
black-and-white eyes in disgust.

"Now, Stannie, what'd you go and do that for?"

"That's impossible." Brendan shook his head. "You
can't do that with a remote. I've tried. I've even
called the video store—"

"You sure can't do it with that remote." Kevin strode
over and snatched it from Tony's hand. "If you
screwed this up—"

"Daddy, be quiet!"

"Shhh!" said Tony. "I like this part."

"Well, don't mess it up now, Kev, for Chrissakes."
Brendan whacked at his cousin's knee. "At least
wait'll it's over."

"Yeah, Daddy—come sit with us—"

Kevin sat. Tony flopped back, arms outspread and
long hair tangled as he watched, a huge grin on his
face. Brendan slid past him onto the floor and edged
towards his son. Without taking his eyes from the
screen, Peter moved away. Brendan stopped, feeling
as though someone were squeezing his ribs. Then
he turned back to the movie. After a few minutes,
Eileen appeared and sat down next to Tony. She
cupped her wineglass between her knees and put
the half-empty bottle on the floor beside the couch.

"I love this movie," she murmured. "But I don't like
the way they colorized—but hey! Who fixed it?"

"Tony!" everybody shouted.

Eileen raised her glass at him. "Way to go, Tony
Maroni."
"Shhhh … !"

Everybody shhhed. The story unfolded, like one of
those card tricks you know in advance won't be
much of a trick at all—Guess which one's the king,
Daddy!—because they're all kings.

But no one cared. Cara and Caitlin and Peter
watched, huge-eyed. Brendan sat as close to Peter
as he could, feeling his heart constrict again when
the boy winced at the Bogey Men.

"It's okay, Peter—they're just pretend. See—you can
see the zipper on that one. Are you scared, honey?
Do you want to sit with Daddy?"

Peter shook his head.

"This is the best part," whispered Tony. "Watch …"

There was Santa's Workshop. There were Laurel and
Hardy. There were one hundred wooden soldiers six
feet high.

And there was the music. A solitary horn, high and
sweet and strong, a sound Brendan still heard in
dreams; an answering blare of trumpets and
drums—

And the toy soldiers became real, black helmets
lifting above impassive white faces, stiff black legs
slicing the air as they began to march. As a child,
this moment had always filled Brendan with such
inexpressible joy that he had simply jumped to his
feet and leapt up and down. Then Tony would do it,
too, and Kevin, and all their brothers and sisters,
until the rec room would be filled with giddy leaping
children, and on the screen behind them rank upon
rank of implacable, unstoppable soldiers making war
upon the Bogey Men.

Now, for just an instant, he felt that way again: that
tide of joy and longing, that same impulse to leap
into the air, because he could not leap into the
screen. Without thinking, he moved to put his arm
around Peter. His son shrank away.

"Peter …"

The name came out before Brendan could stop it, a
sound nobody heard. The trumpets swelled, the
soldiers broke rank and began routing the Bogey
Men. Brendan looked down and wiped his eyes. He
glanced aside and saw Kevin doing the same, and
Eileen, eyes fixed on the screen and their arms
around their children.

"Mommy, will they win?"

"Of course, watch …"

On the floor beside Brendan, Tony sat unnaturally
still, his hands clasping his knees, his bare arms
goosefleshed as the soldiers triumphed and the
Bogey Men were driven back into the darkness and
the lovers reunited before Old King Cole.

"That was a good movie," said Cara.

"Whaddya mean?" said Kevin. "That's the best
movie—"

"I liked it when the soldiers saved everybody."

"I liked it when the soldier stepped on that guy's
head."

"I liked it when the alligators ate Barnaby."

Brendan turned to his son. "What did you like,
Peter?" he asked, struggling to keep his voice
steady. "Did you like the soldiers? Were they cool?"

Kevin flashed the remote at the television. The tape
began to rewind, soldiers marching backwards,
crooked Barnaby wriggling back into his crooked
house.

"Hey, look." Cara walked up to the screen. "It's in
color again."

"Damn good thing, too," said Kevin. "This remote
cost a hundred bucks."

"Come on, girls." Eileen yawned, looked dismayed
into her empty wineglass. She set it in on the floor
and stood. "Who wants dessert?"

A rush for the kitchen, the girls elbowing Tony as he
pretended to hold them back. Kevin drooped an arm
around Eileen and snuck in a kiss as the others
raced down the hall, Peter trailing after them. Only
Brendan remained sitting on the floor, staring at the
empty TV screen. After a minute, he turned and
reached for Eileen's empty wineglass; then angled
around the couch until he found the half-empty
bottle of sémillon. He poured some into his glass
and drank it, slowly but steadily. Then he refilled the
glass and drank again, and then a third time, until
the bottle was empty.

"Mm."

For a minute he sat, feeling the muffled rush that
came when he drank too quickly: like pressing a
pillow over his face and jumping from the top bunk
when he was a kid. Doing that always made his head
ache, eventually, just like drinking did.

But not yet. Brendan got to his feet, feeling
purposeful, perfectly focused, and walked down the
hall. Away from the kitchen, to the huge back room
where his cousin had set up a pool table and
wide-screen TV, sofas and club chairs and the small
liquor cabinet Eileen insisted on keeping for guests
and clients.

Tony had wandered off as well, looking for the
bathroom. He finally found it, a room bigger than
any living room he'd ever had. More furniture, too,
including a bookcase that contained reprints of
vintage comic books. He got so caught up in Namor
the Sub-Mariner that it wasn't until his Pokemon
watch beeped six o'clock that he realized he'd been
in there for half an hour.

"Damn."

He shoved the Sub-Mariner under his arm and
hurried back to join the others in the kitchen.

The children had gone out onto the deck to eat. A
floodlight cast a weird movie-set glow over them:
the twins' hair pumpkin-orange, Peter's rubber duck
a blob of yellow paint beside his elbow. Cara and
Caitlin sat side by side at the picnic table, sharing a
fluffy pink blanket against the November chill. Peter
was on the other bench, alone, picking at apple pie
and rocking slowly back and forth. Inside, Eileen had
dimmed the kitchen lights and brought candles in
from the dining room. It took a minute for Tony's
eyes to adjust to the odd patchwork of light and
shadow, the surreally bright window framing the
children so that they looked like a film running
behind their silent, candle-lit parents.

Only it wasn't really silent at all. As he entered the
room, Eileen turned, her cheeks red and golden hair
seemingly aflame.

"Here's Tony!" she said, too brightly. She lifted a
bottle of mineral water and beckoned at a stool
pulled up beside the counter. Kevin was leaning
beside her, arms folded against his big chest,
scowling with even more than his customary ferocity.
"Here! I was just making some coffee to go with
dessert!"

"Uh, thanks." Tony looked around uneasily. What
the hell was going on? "Is there any more cider?"

"Cider? Sure, sure …" Eileen hurried over to the
fridge, and that was when Tony saw Brendan. He
was sitting at the big round kitchen table, holding a
wineglass and looking up at Tony and Eileen and
Kevin with a dangerously fixed smile. Tony
remembered that smile. He hadn't seen it in about
ten years. The last time he had seen it, it had been
followed by an empty bottle of Jameson's that nearly
cracked Tony in the skull.

"Why, it's Tony Maroni," said Brendan. His eyes
glittered, but his voice sounded as though he were
talking through a cardboard tube. "Hey hey. Whoa
whoa whoa."

This time the bottle wasn't Jameson's but white
wine. It wasn't empty yet, either. The cork lay at
Brendan's elbow beside Eileen's Williams-Sonoma
corkscrew, and beside that was a steaming coffee
mug, untouched.

"Hi, Brendan."

"Hi, Tony. Pleased to meet me?"

"Oh sure, sure." Tony nodded. Eileen walked over
and handed him a glass of cider.

"There you go!" She turned to Brendan. "What
about you, Brendan? Some cider?"

"Not on your fucking life."
Tony cleared his throat and lifted his glass. "Mmm."
His mouth was so dry that when he took a sip, it
tasted like raw sugar on his tongue. "Hey, great
seeing that movie with the kids, huh?"

Eileen and Kevin both swiveled to stare at him. Tony
flushed and looked over at Brendan. His friend's blue
eyes had gone cold and distant: he looked like a
distinctly less benign version of his son.

"Hey, no," said Brendan. "It actually really sucked. It
actually made me feel really bad."

"Brendan." Eileen pressed a hand against her cheek.
"I—maybe you could—"

"Never mind." Brendan took a drink of his wine. "It
doesn't matter."

"I just thought, I can make some—"

"Why don't you put it down, Brendan."

Eileen sucked her breath in audibly as Kevin pushed
past her. "Kevin, why don't you—"

"Why don't you let me handle this," he said harshly.
"I told you, no wine—"

Eileen stood her ground. "You know what? I am not
the one who—"

"Uh-oh." Brendan laughed. "The annual Thanksgiving
dinner meltdown! Hey Tony, what would Chip
Crockett say about that?"

"I know what Curly would say." Everyone turned,
and Tony said, "Nyuk nyuk, nyuk …"

"Put it down, Brendan. You don't need that. Come
on." Kevin looked down at his cousin. His arms were
uncrossed now, half-raised before his chest. One
hand was already unconsciously starting to curl into
a fist. "You've got to drive."

"You can stay here," broke in Eileen. At Kevin's glare
she said, "I just meant he wouldn't have to—"

"Give it to me." Kevin reached for the wineglass.
Brendan continued to smile, continued to stare at
some place in the air above a flickering candle. "You
don't want it, Brendan."

"What do you know about what I want?" Brendan's
smile grew broader, and he took another gulp of
wine. "You have no fucking clue. You've never had a
fucking clue. You—"

Kevin's hand clamped down on his shoulder.
Brendan rocked back in the chair, teeth grinding as
his smile became a terrible fixed grin. A drop of
blood welled from his lower lip where he'd bitten it.
In his hand the wineglass began to tremble, as
Kevin's arm fell.

And froze in mid-air. Kevin turned, writhing, as Tony
held him by the wrist.

"Leave him alone, Kevo," he said softly.

"The fuck you say! I'm not letting my goddam cousin
kill himself and—"

"Leave him." Tony gazed calmly into Kevin's eyes,
but under his black T-shirt his chest rose and fell,
rose and fell, as though he'd been running. "Just
leave him, Kev."

"You—!" Kevin tried to yank his hand free. But Tony
moved with him, looking more like he was
slamdancing than fighting one of his oldest friends.
"Let go—"

With a muffled shout Kevin stumbled back against
the table, sending it sliding across the floor. Brendan
remained in his chair as the wine bottle toppled and
then fell onto his cousin.

"Goddamit!" Kevin yelled, still struggling to pull
himself from Tony. "You goddamn—"

"Oops," said Brendan, gazing at the spilled wine as
Eileen darted over with a dish towel. Tony looked at
Kevin, measuringly but without rancor, then let him
go.

"I'll drive Brendan and Peter," said Tony. He turned
to Brendan and nodded. "If that's okay? I'll drive
you back. Just let me know when you're ready."

"I'm ready now."
Brendan sat in his chair. He stared at his cousin, his
eyes cold; then turned and let his gaze flick from
Tony to Eileen to the children, still oblivious on the
porch. The acid light had poisoned everything, time
had poisoned everything. He remembered that now,
with the taste of wine souring on his tongue and the
return of the dreadful drunken clarity that had fed
him for so many years. Why had he ever forsaken
it? For an instant he felt like Superman, his eyes
burning into those of his family, scorching right
through Kevin, leaving Eileen a little charred around
the edges, skipping the children completely: they
were all doomed anyway. He grinned, his lips pulled
tight across his teeth, and got to his feet. "Sure,
Tony. I'm ready."

The room seemed watery and amber-tinged, though
maybe that was his eyes? He blinked, and suddenly
everything came back into focus. Or rather, it lost
the bright malign shimmer the alcohol had given it.
The wine had burned right off; someone had snuck
Kryptonite into the kitchen. He blinked again, this
time because he could feel tears starting, and took
an unsteady step towards the door. He reached
blindly for the back of his chair, fumbling so that he
knocked it over. Tony caught it, stepping forward to
put a hand on his friend's shoulder.

"It's okay, man. You're just a little tired. I'll drive.
Maybe you could get Peter and I'll, like, meet you by
the car."

"That's a great idea, Tony." Eileen paused on her
way out to the deck. "It's time for the girls to get
ready for bed, too."

They prepared to leave. Peter began to scream when
Brendan tried to put his coat on, and the twins
watched with great interest until Kevin shouted at
them to go upstairs. Brendan finally gave up with
the boy's coat and simply picked him up and carried
him, shrieking, to the car. The effort exhausted him.
He flung the back door open and strapped Peter in,
then staggered out again and threw himself into the
front passenger seat, his head throbbing. He was
dimly aware of Eileen and Tony hugging farewell on
the front steps, Kevin's brooding figure looming
behind them. The wind rose, cold and smelling of
wood smoke, and sent leaves whirling up into the
darkness. Then Tony was beside him, adjusting the
seat for his longer legs and playing with the radio.

"Check it out." Tony beamed as the Volvo filled with
the strains of "Mister Grinch." "Christmas music!"

Brendan closed his eyes. "Are you going to drive?"
he asked after a minute had passed.

"Not until you give me the keys."

"Oh. Right. Here"

Tony drove. Brendan sat beside him with his eyes
shut; but after a moment he rubbed them, blinking,
and turned to stare at his friend.

How had the car radio been on, if Brendan hadn't
given Tony the keys? Was that possible, even in a
late-model Volvo? Brendan shook his head, framing
the question; then thought better of it. He was the
drunk, after all. He sank back down in the seat,
gazing numbly out the window as they made their
way back through the silent suburbs, trees dark and
bare as lampposts, lampposts already woven with
sparkling Christmas lights and plastic greenery.
Houses prim as Peter's Lego towers, butter-yellow
windows and an occasional flash of the grand meal in
progress, heads thrown back in laughter, dishes
being passed, televisions blinking in the background.
Brendan shut his eyes again, praying that he might
fall asleep.

He did not. Tony kept fiddling with the radio,
scanning between oldies stations and the left of the
dial, finally settling on a station whose playlist
seemed to consist almost entirely of guitar feedback.
Brendan winced and sighed loudly; shifted, trying to
shut out the sound. At last he gave up, sliding down
in the seat and shielding his eyes with one hand,
wondering if there was a single human being playing
on this song, or even working at the radio station.

"Doesn't it ever bother you?"

Beside him, Tony nodded in time to a beat Brendan
couldn't hear; but after a moment he glanced aside.
"What?"

"You know. This—" Brendan gestured feebly at the
radio. "I mean, you were in Newsweek and Rolling
Stone, and that movie. Everything just seemed like it
was going to be so great. Doesn't it ever bum you
out?"

Tony stared straight ahead. His long hair had slipped
from its ponytail, catching inside the collar of his
battered leather jacket. He turned the car onto
Connecticut Avenue, drove for several minutes in
silence. Finally he said, "Well, sure. Especially after
Dickie went, you know? I kept thinking, fuck, what'm
I waiting for? Put a bullet in my fucking head."

Brendan turned to lean against the door and stared,
surprised, at his friend. "No shit?"

"Well, yeah. What'd you think?"

Brendan shrugged, embarrassed. "I don't know. I
guess—I don't know."

Tony smiled but said nothing. They slid in and out of
traffic, until finally Brendan asked, "Why didn't you?"

"What? Kill myself?" Tony shook his head. He poked
at the radio, blips of noise, chatter, static, treacly
ballads, relentless country twang, guitar. He
stopped, finger poised above the scanner. A
twelve-string jangled, and he hit the volume.

"Like that," he said, and grinned that loopy Tony
Maroni grin. "Now and then, you hear something.
You know? And then you think, well, what the hell."

Brendan shook his head bitterly. "Yeah, but it only
lasts for three minutes."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Well, sure! What do you
expect?"

Brendan stared at him, and suddenly they both
started to laugh. The song played on, Tony sang
along until it ended. In the backseat, Peter grunted
and kicked, but when his father looked back at him
the boy was yawning, staring out at the streetlights.
Brendan turned back, rubbing his forehead and
smiling ruefully. "What did I expect," he said, and
they drove on home.



Tony slept on the couch that night, as he always did
when Peter was there. He didn't even bother pulling
it out; just lay facedown, still in his leather jacket,
and pulled a blanket over his head. Within minutes
he was asleep.

He woke, so suddenly that for a moment he
wondered if he'd even been asleep at all. He lifted his
head, hair falling in his eyes, then gingerly raised the
edge of the blanket to peer out. Beyond the edge of
the couch wan grey light was filtering through the
rice-paper shades. The street was unusually quiet:
no rush-hour traffic or trash pickup on the day after
Thanksgiving. No street people, either; they'd all still
be down by the Fourteenth Street shelter, finishing
off their turkey leftovers and getting in line for
breakfast.

Then what had awakened him? With a frown Tony
sat up, the blanket sliding to the floor. It was so still
he could hear the faint tick of his wristwatch on the
VCR, and the rustling of leaves along the sidewalk;
nothing more.

Still, he'd heard something, or dreamed it—a bird, or
maybe a cat. Though whatever it was, it was gone
now. He stood, stretching, then padded down the
hall to the bathroom.

And stopped. The sound came again, a pinched
high-pitched cry, like a trapped animal struggling to
breathe.

But Tony knew it wasn't an animal. He turned, and
saw the open door of Peter's room.

"Peter?" He walked over hesitantly, squinting. "Hey,
man, you having a bad dream?"

Peter's bed was pushed against the wall. A white
Ikea bed with high rails, it gleamed in the soft glow
of a night-light shaped like the moon. On the floor
beside it, a large pillow had fallen. At first Tony
thought it was Peter, but it was too big. And now he
could see Peter, lying on his side with one hand
cupped against his cheek. He looked tiny, dark hair
and eyes smudged against pale skin, his rubber duck
clutched to his chest. And he was having a
nightmare—the noise was louder here, a harsh
wheezing that stuttered and then started up again.
Tony shook his head, stood on tiptoe and took a
step inside.
"It's okay," he whispered. "Don't be scared …"

On the floor beside the bed, the pillow moved. Tony
froze. A pale rope looped up from the shapeless
heap that was not a pillow, wobbled in the air above
the boy's head, and finally materialized into an arm
grabbing at the bedrail. There was a gasp, a terrible
sound that made Tony dart back into the doorway
again. The rest of the heap fragmented into blots of
shadow: a thatch of unruly hair, a maroon t-shirt,
another arm: a man, his shoulders heaved forward
and shaking.

"Brendan?"

Tony wasn't even sure if he'd said the name aloud.
It didn't matter. His friend clasped both hands
around the bedrails, so tightly that the entire bed
shook.

"Peter …"

Tony flinched, turning his head so he wouldn't have
to see Brendan there in his sweatpants and
Redskins T-shirt, rocking back and forth until the
bed began to racket against the wall. But he could
do nothing to shut out the sound, Brendan crying
out wordlessly, unrelentingly, his fingers weaving
through the rails and tugging helplessly at the
blankets.

"… come back—please come back—"

Tony turned and stumbled down the hall. His own
breath came in such short sharp bursts that when
he reached the kitchen he slid to the floor and sat
there, heart pounding, waiting for Brendan to
suddenly burst in and turn that awful spotlit glare of
grief upon him.

But Brendan did not come. Tony waited for a long
time, watching the dawn brighten from grey to pearl
to white. Gradually the echo of his friend's weeping
died away, into the faint rattle of the first buses on
Maryland Avenue. And with that small reassuring
sound, Tony felt better. He got to his feet, a little
unsteadily, opened the fridge and grabbed a carton
of orange juice. He downed it, shoved the empty
carton into the trash and then stuck his head back
out into the hall, listening.
Silence. He waited, then very softly crept back down
to Peter's room.

On the floor beside the bed sprawled Brendan,
seemingly fast asleep, one hand against his cheek.
Above him, Peter's body was curled into the same
posture. The rubber duck had fallen from his grasp,
and his hand had escaped between two of the rails
to rest upon his father's shoulder. For a minute
Tony stood and watched them. Then he turned
away.

He went back to the living room and did a
peremptory check of the television, half-hoping to
find some remnant of Thanksgiving Past buried in
the strata of infomercials and commercial sludge he
sifted through. Except for the fade-out of It's a
Wonderful Life, there was nothing. He clicked it off,
singing "Auld Lang Syne" under his breath as he
wandered down the hall. By the time he'd settled in
behind Brendan's computer, he was humming
"Rudolph" and beating time with a pair of
unsharpened pencils.

He checked his e-mail, the usual notes from friends
and several of the effusive, occasionally lunatic,
letters from Maroni fans that made up the bulk of his
correspondence. There was also a brief message
from Marty Berenstein, a.k.a. Mony Maroni.

Dear Tony,

Just wanted to let you know that our
latest effort to extricate the catalog from
EMI went down in flames, again. Sorry.

Otherwise things here are fine. Jocelyn's
doing her junior year abroad in Madrid,
so Helen and I are having a second
honeymoon, of sorts. Actually, make that
a *first* honeymoon. All the best to you
and yours for the holiday season—

Marty

"Ho ho ho," said Tony. "Another day, another
lawsuit. Now—"

He started clicking around, looking at the New York
Times headlines, checking Amazon for the standing
of the first three Maronis albums. Even twenty-odd
years later, these sold well enough to generate
modest but reliable royalties—if, of course, any of
the surviving band members could have collected
them. He was just starting to compare the sales
figures for various musical rivals, when a shadow
drifted across the keyboard.

"You know, I always figured there'd be a Tony
Maroni Web page."

Tony looked up to see Brendan, holding a glass of
water. He still wore his sweatpants and rumpled
T-shirt, his face stubbled and eyes bleary as though
he'd been on a three-day toot, rather than the
losing end of a minor skirmish with three quarters of
a bottle of expensive sémillon. "You guys were so
big in Japan," Brendan went on, pulling up a chair. "I
would've thought you'd at least have a Web site."

"Well, yeah, sure. I mean, actually, there's a lot of
them. A lot for me, I mean. I don't know about the
others."

Brendan raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, a
lot? Like how many?"

Tony bounced out of the Amazon page, nibbling
thoughtfully at a long strand of hair. "I dunno. Like
fifty, maybe? I forget."

"Fifty? Fifty Tony Maroni Web pages?"

Tony looked embarrassed. "Well, yeah. But, I mean,
none of 'em's authorized."

Brendan laughed. "How come none of 'em's ever
helped you get the rights back to your stuff?"

"I dunno. Sometimes they offer to, you know? Like
some big LA lawyer writes me about it. But—I guess
I just don't care so much anymore, with all the other
guys being gone." Tony sighed. "We wrote all that
stuff together. It just wouldn't feel right."

Brendan nodded. "Yeah. Well, I guess I can see
that."

He leaned forward, and Tony caught the faint reek of
wine and sweat and unwashed clothes, that sad
tired smell he associated with church meeting rooms
and the long tearful exegeses of weekend
binges—conventions where sales reps got locked out
of their hotel room after closing time, college
students missing the crucial exam after a beer bash,
mothers forgetting to feed their kids. Brendan
sipped his water and Tony waited, hoping there
wasn't going to be an apology.

There wasn't. Instead, Brendan ran a finger across
the computer screen, raising a little trail of electrified
dust. "Okay." He cocked his finger at Tony and
smiled. "So, like, where's Chip Crockett's Web
page?"

Tony's head bobbed up and down. "Aw right," he
said, relieved. "Check this out, man, you're gonna
love this—"

Tony hunched over the keyboard, fingers tapping
eagerly. Brendan sank back into his chair and
watched him. He rubbed his forehead, hoping he
looked better than he felt—although what he felt
wasn't even hung-over so much as some pure
distillation of humiliation, depression, and
exhaustion, with a healthy dollop of anxiety about
just how Teri was going to react when she heard
about him falling off the wagon. It hadn't happened
once in the years since he'd joined AA, and
somehow he suspected it wouldn't happen again.
Brendan didn't drink because he was depressed, or
lonely, or even just out of habit. He used to drink
when he was happy, in that long joyous sunny rush
of years between high school and the failure of his
marriage. Back then he'd drink with his friends, in
bars and at the beach, at ballgames and concerts.
He drank because he liked it, and everyone else he
knew liked it. He drank because it was fun.

Even now Brendan wasn't sure what had gone
wrong. He suspected there was some sort of malign
convergence between his body chemistry and the
way the world had suddenly changed, round about
the time he saw Lou Reed shilling for Honda
motorbikes. After that, when he drank he saw the
world differently. It was as though all his worst fears
were confirmed, and after a while, he was drinking
just so they would be confirmed. Marriages were
doomed. Mothers drowned their children. Your
father developed Alzheimer's disease and died
without remembering your name. That guy you used
to play softball with wasted away with AIDS, and you
never even knew. Your favorite TV show was
canceled, your dog had to be put to sleep. The
music you loved seeped away from the radio, and all
of a sudden when you walked down a street where
you'd lived for twenty years, there were strangers
everywhere. One day you had a toddler who'd
always been a little colicky, but who smiled when he
saw you and crawled into your lap at night. The next
day you had a changeling, a child carved of wood
who screamed if you touched him and whose eyes
were always fixed on some bright horizon his
parents could never see. The terrible secret Brendan
kept was that he hadn't quit drinking to save his
marriage, or himself, or even his child. He'd quit
because he now knew, irrefutably, that the world
had become the wasteland. And he no longer
needed any confirmation of that.

"Okay, Brenda Starr." Tony pecked at one last key,
grinning. "Technical difficulties, please stand by. I
control the horizontal, I control the vertigo …"

"Vertical," said Brendan.

"Whatever. I control it." With a flourish Tony
straightened. "Do not adjust your screen! We have
liftoff!"

Brendan blinked. On the monitor in front of him,
that morning's New York Times headlines glowed,
flickered and disappeared. For an instant the screen
was black. Then, very slowly, a scrim of sky blue and
white scrolled down. The white became clouds, the
sky shimmered and melted like summer afternoon.
In the center of the screen a small rectangle
appeared, holding the black-and-white image of a
man leaning on a stage-set Dutch door. He had
neatly combed blond hair, side-parted, and a boyish,
smiling face. He wore the kind of suit Brendan
associated with the second Beatles album, a
light-colored Glen plaid, and beneath that a white
shirt and skinny dark tie. Above his head, small
letters floated in a streaming red banner:

WELCOME TO CHIP CROCKETT'S WEBPAGE!

"Well," said Tony. He sucked at his lower lip and
looked sideways at Brendan. "There he is."

Brendan didn't say anything. He stared at the
screen, then reached out and traced the outline of
Chip Crockett's picture. The monitor crackled a little
at his touch, and he shook his head, still silent.

Because there he was. He hadn't seen him
for—what? thirty years, at least—but now it was like
looking at a picture of his father when he was
young. The same haircut; the same skinny tie. The
same magically complicit smile, which he'd only seen
on his father at the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving
or Christmas, but which Brendan had seen twice a
day, every day, on The Chip Crockett Show.

"Wow," whispered Brendan. "Chip Crockett."

It was like dreams he had, that his dog was alive
again. He pulled his chair up closer, inadvertently
nudging Tony aside. "Sorry—but hey, this is great."
His voice was husky; he coughed, took another swig
of water and cleared his throat. "This is really, really
great."

Tony laughed. "That's just a picture. Actually, it's
the same picture from the obituary in the News. But
here—"

He moved the mouse, and more phantom letters
filled the screen. Brendan recognized the printout
Tony had brought to the Childe Roland a few weeks
ago.

BROADCAST HISTORY

PHOTOGRAPHS

ARTICLES & OBITUARIES (NEW)

THEME SONG

THE GREAT FIRE OF 1966

CHIP CROCKETT'S CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

Without thinking, he reached over and took the
mouse from Tony's grasp. "Oops—sorry—but you,
would you mind if I—"

Tony smiled. "Go for it."

Brendan clicked on THEME SONG. The screen
shifted, blue sky fading to a grainy black-and-white
backdrop, much enlarged, showing a cheap
soundstage. Long white drapes covered the back
wall. There was a painted plywood table, and strewn
on top of it were a number of puppets. By today's
standards, they were slightly intimidating, more
crackbrained Punch and Judy than benign Muppet.
One looked like a pirate, with a patch on his eye and
a gold hoop earring and a cigarette; another was a
little guy with white fuzzy hair and a scholar's
mortar. There were more—a spaceman, a beatnik, a
dog—but the only puppet that was upright was a
figure with small beady eyes and an enormous nose,
his mouth cracked in a huge, slightly demonic grin,
his tiny cloth hands clapped together as though he
were about to witness—or perform—something
wonderful.

"Ooga Booga," whispered Brendan. "Holy cow. I
totally forgot what he looked like -- I'd even
forgotten his name, till you showed me that
obituary."

He drew a long breath and leaned forward, clicked on
an icon. A moment when all was still. Then the song
began: a jouncy chorus of horns and strings, those
unshakably chipper background voices you heard on
records in the early '60s. Elevator music, but this
was an elevator that only went up.

"Bum bum bum bum," sang Tony happily. "Bum
bum bum bum!"

Brendan started to cry. Knowing it was stupid,
knowing it was the sort of thing you did on a jag,
when you'd lost it completely, when you were so far
gone you'd sit around all day long surfing the Net
for the names of girls you'd had a crush on in the
second grade, or listening to Muzak and commercial
jingles.

Didn't matter, didn't matter, didn't matter. He
squeezed his eyes shut, eyelids burning as he willed
himself to stop: another Irish Catholic trick that Teri
hated. Back when they'd first started trying to
understand what was wrong with Peter, back when
they barely even knew there was something
wrong—back then, it was one of the first things Teri
had accused him of—

"This fucking Irish Catholic thing, you guys can never
cry, you can never show anything, any emotion at
all—and now, now—look at him—"
Pointing at the silent toddler crawling across the
floor, but crawling in that awful horror-show way he
had, dragging himself on his elbows and knees, head
canted sideways so he could stare at the ceiling but
not at what was in front of him; and never, ever, at
his parents.

"—look at him, look at him—"

Her voice rising to a shriek, her fists pounding
against her thighs as she stood there screaming.
And Peter never looked, never even noticed at all,
and Brendan—

Brendan walked away. Only into the next room,
saying nothing, feeling rage and grief and sorrow
swelling in his head until he thought blood would
seep from his eyes; blood, maybe, but never tears.
His entire body shook, but he wouldn't cry; just
stood there like a human Roman candle waiting to
ignite; waiting for the house to grow silent once
more.

"Wanna hear something else?"

Brendan blinked. The theme song was over. Before
he could say anything, Tony clicked on another icon,
and the faint oozy strains of Chip Crockett's closing
theme began to play.

"… danke schoen …"

"Jeez …" Brendan shuddered. "I forgot about that."

"Yeah. Maybe we better not. Here, listen to this
one."

Tony clicked on OGDEN ORFF. A faint voice echoed
from the speaker, declaiming proudly.

"That's my boy—Ogden Orff!"

"Let me!" Brendan poked Tony's arm. "C'mon,
c'mon, c'mon, To-neee—"

Tony laughed. "Be my guest."

Brendan looked at the pictures, black-and-white
publicity stills of Chip Crockett as his most notorious
character: the weirdly Edwardian Ogden Orff, a man
dressed as a boy in black jacket and trousers, with a
long floppy tie and his hair slicked down. Ogden
never spoke; only listened as Chip Crockett's
sonorous off-screen voice offered him advice and
the inevitable admonition—

"No, Ogden, noooo!"

—but always ending with the same triumphant
announcement—

"That's my boy—Ogden Orff!"

There were other characters, too. Ratnik, the
beady-eyed beatnik puppet who carried around a
copy of No Exit and ended each of his scenes by
failing to find his way off the set. There was Captain
Dingbat, navigating the Sloop John B through New
York Harbor and calling the Statue of Liberty a
Hotsy-Totsy. There was the Old Professor, quoting
Groucho Marx instead of Karl; and Mister
Knickerbocker lip-synching "Mr. Bassman." And last
of all there was Chip Crockett himself again, sitting
with a copy of Millions of Cats on his knees and
reading to a studio audience of a dozen entranced
children.

Only of course these were only pictures. No
voiceovers, no soundtrack, no living color, except in
Brendan's head. Just pictures. And there were only
nine of them.

"That's it?" Brendan tried to keep his voice from
breaking. "What about, you said something about
some video clips?"

"Yeah. Well, sort of. There's nothing from the actual
show, just a couple of outtakes. But they're not
very long. Everything was lost." Tony sighed.
"Just—lost. I mean, can you believe it? They just
taped over all of it. That's like taping over the moon
landing, or Nixon's resignation or something."

"Not really," said Brendan, and he grabbed back the
mouse.

The videoclips were about the size of Brendan's
thumbprint, framed within a little grey TV screen.
COCOA MARSH COMMERCIAL. FUNORAMA BLOOPER.
CHIP'S THEME.

"Wow," said Brendan. A timer underneath the little
screen indicated how long each clip was. Sixteen
seconds. Twenty-seven seconds. Thirty-two
seconds. "There's not a lot of him left, is there?"

"Nope. But you know, I was thinking—like, maybe
there could be like a hologram or something, you
know? Like cloning someone. You have a tiny piece
of their DNA and you can make a whole person. So,
like, you'd only need a tiny piece of Chip Crockett,
and you could bring back a whole episode."

"Tony." Brendan stopped himself before giving his
automatic answer of thirty-odd years: Tony, you're
an idiot. "Tony, you're the Steve Wozniak of
Massachusetts Avenue. Do I just click on this?"

Tony nodded. Brendan clicked. A swirl of
black-and-white-and-grey dots filled the tiny screen,
danced around jerkily while a hollow voice intoned
something Brendan could barely understand, though
the words "Cocoa Marsh" seemed prominent. It took
nearly sixteen seconds for Brendan's eyes to force
the pixels into an image that resembled a man's face
and a puppet. By then the clip was over.

"That's it?"

"That's it."

Brendan played it again. This time he could make out
the image more easily, a closeup of Chip Crockett
and Ooga Booga, the puppet holding a glass and
trying to drink from it while Chip encouraged him.

"That's right, Ooga Booga! Drink your Cocoa
Marsh—"

Bam: the image froze, the screen went blank.
Brendan ran it six more times, trying to fix it in his
mind's eye, see if it stirred any memory at all of the
original commercial. It didn't; but just that tiny clip
was enough to bring rushing back the wonderful
sound of Chip's voice, the deep and deeply
humorous tones that were the echo of some great
benign Everydad. You could imagine him telling
knock-knock jokes over the barbecue grill of your
dreams, holding Ooga Booga as he tucked you into
bed at night, taking sips from a can of Rheingold
between verses of "They're Coming to Take Me
Away, Ha Ha!" You could imagine all of this, you
could live all of this, and sometimes it seemed that
you had.

"Check these out, man!"

He started, as Tony ran the other clips. They
resembled the first: fuzzy black-and-white pointillist
figures, tinny voices beamed from a million light
years away; cheap sets. The last few notes of Chip's
theme song faded and the screen cut to Ooga
Booga nestled against Chip's face, his little hands
clapping spasmodically and Chip's lips moving,
seemingly by remote control.

"… now Ooga Booga, tell all the boys and girls what
you just told me—"

The image froze. It was over. No matter how many
times you played it back, you'd never hear Ooga
Booga's secret.

"Man, this really bites," said Brendan. He replayed
the blooper clip, Chip bumping into a boom mike and
pretending to wrestle it. "There's really nothing
else?"

"Nope." Tony pulled his hair back, making a ponytail
with his fingers. "But if you read through all the
letters people have sent, there's, like, all these
rumors of other stuff. Like a couple of people say
they've heard about some bootleg tapes that were
shown on Italian TV in the '70s, tapes of actual
shows that somehow got shipped over there or
something. So there's this entire Chip Crockett Mafia
trying to track them down, a bunch of fans and this
retired video cameraman from New York. If they find
them, they can broadcast them over the Net. They
could probably broadcast them on TV, one of those
stations that plays old stuff all the time."

"I doubt they could do that, Tony. Even if they
found the tapes. Which they won't."

Tony swept the curtain of hair from his face and
gave Brendan a hurt look. "Hey, don't believe me.
Here, look—"

Another click, and there were the e-mails from
devoted fans: kids grown to doctors, lawyers,
teachers, garbage men, rock stars, TV weathermen,
editors.
I'm 45 years old and boy, was I amazed
to find an entire Web site devoted to
Chip Crockett.…

They were all pretty much like that, though
surprisingly well-written and grammatically correct
for e-mail. Brendan imagined an entire invisible
electronic universe seething with this obsessive
stuff, billions of people crowding the ether with
their own variations on Chip Crockett -- obscure
baseball players, writers, musicians, cars, books,
dogs. He scanned the Chip Crockett messages, all
variations on the themes of Boy, was I amazed and
Gee, I remember when and Oh if only, a long
lamentation for videos perdus.

If only they'd saved them!

If only WNEW knew what they were
losing when they erased those tapes!

If only the technicians had done
something!

If only I'd been there!

Brendan sighed and ran a hand across his face. "You
know, this stuff is sort of depressing me. I think
I'm gonna get the coffee going."

Tony nodded without looking away from the screen.
Reflexively, Brendan glanced back, saw a brief
message that seemed to be the very last one.

Happy T'giving, everyone! Has anyone
else heard about a bootleg of "Chip
Crockett's Christmas Carol" that's
supposed to air on Christmas Eve? I'd
like time/station info so I can tape it.

"You know about that, Tony?"

"Uh-uh." Tony frowned, leaning forward until his
nose almost touched the screen. "That's kind of
weird. Where would you hear about something like
that? I mean, apart from this site?"

"Probably there's a thousand other sites like this.
You know, weird TV, collectors' stuff. Christ, Tony,
move back, you're gonna go blind."
He put his hands on Tony's shoulders and gently
pulled him away from the screen. "Come on. Time
for breakfast. Time for Cocoa Marsh."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm coming." Tony stood, reluctantly,
and yawned. "Christmas. Wow. How could I forget
it was Christmas?"

"It's not Christmas. It's the day after Thanksgiving,"
said Brendan, seeing the first faint flickers of that
other movie starting to burn around the edges of
his head. Very deliberately he blinked, snowflakes
melting into slush, a forest of evergreens flaming
into ash and smoke, a black boot disappearing up a
chimney that crumbled into rubble. "You have a
whole month to remember Christmas." But
Christmas was what Brendan was already trying to
forget.




The truth was, over the last few years Brendan had
become an expert at forgetting about Christmas. A
few days after the start of the Official Holiday
Shopping Season, the ubiquitous background
soundtrack of "Silver Bells" and "Silent Night" and
"Christmas at K-Mart" had diminished to nothing
more than a very faint whining echo in his ears, choir
boys and rampaging reindeer and Bing Crosby
relegated to that same mental dungeon where he
banned homeless people on the Metro, magazine
ads for starving children, stray cats, and junkies
nodding out at Dupont Circle. It didn't snow, so a
whole gauntlet of joyfully shrieking kids on sleds or
snowboards or big pieces of cardboard could be
avoided. But it was cold, that frigid dank D.C. cold
that seeped into your pores and filled the newcasts
with reports of homeless people freezing in alleys
and cars stalling on the Beltway on their daily
exodus to the sprawl.

It sure didn't feel like Christmas to Brendan Keegan.
But then, he'd been successfully inoculated against
the holiday two years ago, right about the time
they'd been busy playing that popular parlor game,
What's Wrong With Our Baby? Peter had been a
toddler that December, and it was Christmas that
had finally triggered Brendan's realization that
something was wrong.
"Hey, what do you think of this tree, huh, Peter?
What do you think, is this the greatest tree ever or
what?"

It was a beautiful tree, a blue spruce that had set
Brendan back almost a hundred bucks; but hey,
what was Christmas for? There were presents
hidden away that he'd bought back when Teri first
told him she was pregnant, a baseball mitt and
football helmet, plush Redskins mascot and
oversized jersey, copies of Winnie-the-Pooh and The
Hobbit and a videotape of The March of the Wooden
Soldiers that his cousin Kevin had given him. Most of
the presents were still too old for Peter, he knew
that; but he also knew that this was the age when
kids started getting into tearing off the wrapping
paper and gazing at Christmas ornaments and stuff
like that. A sort of synaesthetic experience of
Christmas; and Brendan wanted to be right there,
video cam in hand, when Peter got his first look at a
real Christmas tree, his very own real Christmas
tree.

Well, Brendan was there, all right, and he got it all
down on tape. A few months later, playing it back
for doctors and psychiatrists and a few close family
members, it amazed Brendan that he hadn't
grabbed Peter and driven directly to GW Hospital.

Because what the tape showed was a fantastically
decorated tree, branches drooping beneath the
weight of popcorn strings and cranberry strands,
Shiny Brite balls salvaged from Brendan's own
childhood, hand-carved wooden Santas from a shop
in Georgetown, and, most wonderful of all, an entire
North Pole's worth of fabulous glass ornaments from
Poland—clowns and dragons, cathedrals and polar
bears, banana-nosed Puncinellos and one vaguely
ominous St. Nick. Eileen and Teri had spent hours
hanging baubles and carefully hiding each tiny bulb
so only its glow was seen, magically, from within the
secret forest of dusky blue-green needles.

"Close your eyes!" Teri had cried, covering his face
with her hand as she led him into the room. "Now—"

When Brendan saw the tree, he got gooseflesh: that
atavistic sense of looking down some endless tunnel,
past the window displays at Mazza Gallerie, past the
Cratchit children exclaiming over the plum pudding,
past the manger and the Romans and the circled
stones: all the way back to a forest clearing and
falling snow, cold flung against his limbs and the
unspeakable wonder of flames leaping beneath an
evergreen. He blinked back tears, touched Eileen and
Teri each on the arm and mumbled something about
incredible, amazing, beautiful; and bent to scoop up
his son.

"Look, Peter, look—"

But Peter wouldn't look. His gaze shifted, then his
head, and finally his whole body, so that no matter
how Brendan turned and twisted, trying to hold
Peter so he could have the perfect view of the
perfect tree—no matter what he did, his son would
not look. It was as though the tree did not exist.
Indeed, the more Brendan tried to direct his gaze,
the more his son struggled, until he was thrashing in
his father's arms, making those soft nnnhh nnnhh
sounds that, so far, were his only efforts at speech.

"Look, honey, see where Daddy is? Look! Look at
the pretty Christmas tree! See where Aunt Eileen is
pointing—look at the bird! You like birds—look,
look!"

Look. They had played the tape for Dr. Larriday,
after she observed Peter in her office. Waiting for
her comments, Brendan and Teri held hands so
tightly that Brendan's knuckles ached for two days.
For hours they perched at the edge of the precipice,
the doctor's diagnostic terms whizzing past them
like stones—

Lack of affect

Little receptive language

Little or no eye contact

Impaired motor skills

Ritual behavior

Failure to speak

Morbid fear of change in routine

Peter had struggled and screamed in his father's
arms while Dr. Larriday went down her list. Finally he
had fallen asleep. They had brought an evaluation
from their family physician, along with seven hours
of videotaped footage of Peter—Peter crying, Peter
sleeping, Peter crawling on his knuckles and toes,
Peter obsessively pulling himself up and down, up
and down, on the edge of his crib. Peter stacking
one block on top of a second—clumsily, the wooden
pieces flying from his unwieldy grip between pinkie
and thumb. Peter sitting in front of the glass door,
moving his head back and forth, back and forth,
watching the flicker of movement from the corner of
his eye. Hours and hours of tape; but Dr. Larriday
was most interested in the earliest one, the
Christmas tape.

"Let's see what we have—"

And there it was, glistening branches blocked by
Brendan's struggling figure as he crossed and
recrossed the living room, towheaded child
screaming in his arms. Even now, almost three years
later, Brendan couldn't bear to think of that tree;
any Christmas tree. Because watching the tape again
in Dr. Larriday's office that July afternoon, it was
apparent that Peter had not been ignoring the tree.

He was avoiding it. He was terrified of it.

Morbid fear of change in routine …

Teri had wept, sobbing until the words were lost.
"Oh, Christ, how could we—I mean, look at him, it
looks like he's being tortured …"

Dr. Larriday looked, and took notes. Brendan stared
straight ahead, his sleeping child in his lap, Peter's
damp face pressed against his arm and his own
tears falling, unheeded, onto his son's cheek.

That was the end of Christmas for Brendan. The end
of everything, really—his marriage, his dream of
himself as a father, his dream of a child. Oh, he still
did everything he was supposed to, buying presents
for Peter, encouraging him to open them under the
small artificial tree at Teri's house, its sparse
aluminum branches threaded with a few red plastic
balls. Opening the presents for Peter, when he
showed no interest in them himself; following the
behavioral therapists's directives as to modeling play
behavior with the new blocks and games and trucks.
But Christmas? Christmas was gone. Brendan didn't
even hate it, because how could you hate something
that was dead? Instead he focused on his work, and
tried his best to ignore whatever demands the
season put upon his senses, if not his time.

"Mr. Keegan?" His secretary's voice came through
the intercom. "It's Toys for Tots again."

"Thanks." He put the phone on monitor, his gaze
still fixed on the computer screen, a half dozen
heavily scrawled-upon yellow legal pads scattered on
the desk before him.

"Mr. Flaherty?" A cheerful voice boomed from the
speaker. Brendan winced, reaching to turn the
volume down. "This is Don Huchison from the
Capitol City Chapter of Toys for Tots. As I'm sure
you know, we—"

"This is Mr. Keegan, not Mr. Flaherty. And I don't
take solicitation calls at the office—"

"Well, Mr. Keegan, I'll be happy to note that and
request that someone call you at home, at your
convenience and when you have time. When might
that be?"

"Never."

Don Huchison laughed, a sympathetic, Ain't that the
truth! chuckle. "I hear you! This time of year, there's
never enough time to—"

"I mean, never call me. Again. Anywhere." Brendan
flipped through a legal pad with one hand, with the
other reached to turn off the monitor.

"Mr. Keegan, I'm sure you're aware of the difficulties
many families have at this time of year, meeting their
children's expectations for a happy—"

"I don't give a shit about anyone's expectations.
Remove me permanently from your list, and please
don't call here again."

Click.

That evening he walked home. The cold spell
remained unbroken. Pockets of slush filled potholes
and broken edges of sidewalk. The eastern sky had
a blackened cast to it, like a scorched pan; behind
him, the last glowering trails of sunset streaked the
horizon blood-red, so that the walls of the Library of
Congress seemed to burn as night fell. Clouds of
vapor surrounded the crowds hurrying home from
work, giving everyone a ghostly familiar. But they
were were cheerful ghosts haunting cheerful people:
even the rat-tailed mongrel who kept Dave the
Grave company on his bench in Stanton Square Park
raced excitedly back and forth, rising on its hind legs
and walking backwards when smiling passersby
tossed coins into Dave's battered Starbucks coffee
mug.

"God bless ya, god bless ya—"

Brendan gritted his teeth, staring stonily at a
down-clad woman who stooped to put a five-dollar
bill into Dave's hand. "You're wasting your money,"
he said loudly. The woman looked up, startled; Dave
swayed back and forth on his bench, his litany
uninterrupted. He still wore Tony's coat—Brendan's
coat—though it was black now with grime, the
sleeves and collar disintegrating. "He's a wino. You're
just feeding his addiction."

The woman stared at Brendan coolly. "It's
Christmas. And it's none of your damn business
what I do with my money."

"Ha ha!" Dave laughed; the dog did a back flip, to
applause from several of Dave's cronies drinking
malt liquor on the brittle grass. "God bless you,
darlin, that's right …"

Brendan started to yell after the woman's retreating
back, but then he noticed that people were stopping
to stare at him. Instead he glared contemptuously at
Dave, spun on his heel and stalked home.

"Merry Chrissmas!" Dave called after him, and the
other homeless men raised their voices raucously.
"Merr' Chrissmass!"

He had left work earlier than was his habit. Since his
divorce, he'd adjusted his schedule so that he
seldom left the office till after dark; an exception had
always been those days when he had Peter. No word
of his Thanksgiving fall from grace had reached
Teri—Brendan silently blessed Kevin and Eileen. But
since then, his visits with his son had been cut back,
at Brendan's own suggestion, to every other week.
Just until the new year, he assured Teri, pleading
pressure from work, a case long pending that now
looked as though it would be settled out of court
but there was still paperwork, and client interviews,
and of course it was the holidays—

And of course that was it, exactly. Teri had seen it in
her ex-husband's face when they had last met a
week earlier, staring out at her from the front of the
Volvo.

"Don't you want to come in for a minute? It's so
cold."

Brendan shook his head. "I'm not cold," he said, his
voice tight. He continued to stare resolutely at the
steering column. "Is he ready? I have to get going."

"He's ready." Teri looked at the house, where Peter
stood impassively on the steps, then turned back to
the car. "Will Tony be there?"

"You got a problem with Tony, take it up with your
lawyer." Brendan's knuckles whitened as he clasped
the wheel. "I don't give a—"

"I am not being hostile." Teri's voice shook. "I'm
glad Tony's there. At least Tony is capable of
something resembling an emotion. At least Tony
remembers what time of year it is. You know why
you don't feel the cold, Brendan? Do you know
why?"

Brendan turned the key in the ignition. "Get him in
the car. I'm leaving."

"Because—"

He tapped the accelerator. The engine roared. On
the porch Peter began to cry. Without a word Teri
walked back to the house and got her son.

"You have a good time, sweetheart," she murmured
as she buckled him into his car seat. He had stopped
crying almost immediately, and she tucked a scarf
around his shoulders. "You have a good time with
your Daddy …"

She drew away from the car and stared at Brendan
in the front seat. In the back Peter pushed off the
scarf, letting it drop to the floor. "You could do
something with him, you know." Her voice was
perfectly calm now. "He's doing so well at school
these days. You could take him to see the White
House tree, or Santa out at White Flint. Peggy said
that might be a good idea. She said—"

Fuck what she said, thought Brendan. He glanced
back to make sure Peter was buckled, then rolled up
the window. He had already started to pull away
when Teri ran up beside him and pounded at the
glass.

"What?" He stopped and rolled the window down a
crack. "Now what?"

"I wanted to make sure you hadn't forgotten and
made other plans for next week."

"What's next week?"

"Christmas." Teri's smiled tightened. "You said you
wanted to have him Christmas Eve—last summer,
remember? When we—"

"I remember."

"I thought—I hoped that we could all be together.
To give some, some continuity. For Peter. I asked
Kevin and Eileen—"

"Oh, Christ—"

"And I wanted you to ask Tony for me. If you don't
mind." Teri's voice had taken on the same brisk
oldest-daughter tone she used with her elderly
clients. "If you don't want to stay you don't have to.
They're going to come after church, mid-morning.
You can just drop him off if you want. Or you're
welcome to stay."

"We'll see. I'll let Tony know."

But tonight, walking up the sidewalk towards his
apartment, he remembered that he never had let
Tony know. Not that he suspected him of having any
big plans for the holiday. Occasionally Brendan could
hear music from behind the closed door of his room,
Tony playing guitar and singing softly to himself; but
that seemed to have stopped with the onset of the
holiday season. Unemployment didn't just suit Tony
better than any job he'd had since fronting the
Maronis. It was as though he had actually found
another job, one that involved getting up each
morning promptly at six A.M., showering, shaving,
dressing in black jeans and T-shirt and leather
jacket, then eating a modest bowl of Grape-Nuts
before getting down to work.

Which, in Tony's case, seemed to consist of
watching every single Christmas special that every
single television station on Earth chose to air
between the first and twenty-fifth of December. No
program was too obscure or too terrible for Tony's
viewing pleasure—not The House Without a
Christmas Tree or The Bishop's Wife; not Andy
Williams' Christmas Special, or Elvis's, the King
Family's, and Barbara Mandrell's; not A Very Brady
Christmas! or Mickey's Extra Special Christmas Eve
or The Little Drummer Boy Returns.

And certainly not Rudolph, the Grinch, Charlie
Brown, Frosty the Snowman or Mr. Magoo. Tony
had It's a Wonderful Life committed to memory;
what was harder to take was that Tony knew every
word of Santa Claus Versus the Martians, as well as
The Christmas That Almost Wasn't and Fuzzy the
Christmas Donkey.

"That one ought to be called The Christmas
Jackass," Brendan had snapped one morning when
he woke to find Tony already sitting transfixed on
the living room couch, steaming coffee mug beside
him.

"You should check this out." Tony shot a quick grin
at Brendan, then hunched closer to the edge of the
sofa. "Shh, this is the sad part—"

Now, as he hurried up the steps, Brendan saw the
familiar blue-grey wash of light through his
apartment window, the telltale flicker of shadow on
the wall behind the sofa where he knew he would
find Tony in the exact same place he had left him
that morning.

Only this time when Brendan walked inside it was
different. On the floor, staring at the television with
the same rapt expression, was Peter.

"Peter." Brendan shut the door and dropped his
briefcase. "Tony? What's going on?"
Tony looked up and smiled. "Oh, hey, man! You're
home early. That's good, I'm glad—"

"What's he doing here? What happened?" Brendan
quickly stepped over a small mountain of Peter's
things, knapsack and overnight bags, his pillow, his
lunchbox, his duck. "What—"

"There was a problem …"

"Problem?" He knelt beside his son, fighting the need
to hold him, to shout at Tony gazing at them calmly
from the couch. Peter edged away, making a small
humming sound, his gaze fixed on the TV. "What
problem? What happened? Is he—"

"No, no—Teri had the problem. She tried calling you
but she couldn't get through—"

Brendan sighed with relief, then nodded.
"Right—Ashley left this afternoon, she'll be gone till
next week. But—"

"I dunno, some client thing? Teri said she'd call from
the airport—"

Right on cue the phone rang. Brendan grabbed it.

"Brendan." Brendan could hear her swallow, fighting
tears. "Jesus, Brendan. I called and called—"

"I know. What happened?"

"Oh, Christ, some stupid thing. Well, not really—old
Mr. Wright died, everyone was expecting it but not
right before Christmas, I mean he was ninety-three.
But I have to go out there to deal with his wife and
ex-wife and his sister and his kids. I'm at Dulles
now, this case is a mess, you remember me telling
you—"

"But Peter's okay?"

"Peter's fine. He really likes Tony, doesn't he?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure. So what's the deal here?"

Silence. He heard airport noises in the background,
the squawk and boom of flight announcements. "The
deal is, Brendan, that I have to be out of town on
business right now. And—"

"How long?"

"Just till tomorrow. It was impossible to get a flight,
they're completely booked, but—"

"And Peter's schedule? All this talk you had about
how fucking important it is for everything to be—"

"Look, Brendan, stuff happens. You can't control
everything. Or maybe you can, but I can't. Peter is
with me every hour, every day, every week—"

"Except when he's with me—"

"—you have no idea how exhausting it is, being with
him all the time. It's killing me, Brendan, it's—"

Her voice broke, drowned in a spurt of static as
another flight announcement thundered somewhere
behind her. —I can't, Brendan, not anymore, he's—"

Brendan shut his eyes and took a long breath. "Teri?
Teri?" He turned so that Tony and Peter wouldn't
see him. "Can you hear me? Listen, I'm sorry, really.
Don't cry. We'll be fine. I know you're with him all
the time, I know how hard it is. He'll be fine—"

"Shit. That's my flight. I'm sorry, Brendan, this is so
crazy. But I really did try to call. He's got school, I
gave Tony the schedule. Except for Christmas Eve,
but you knew that. His medicine's in the blue bag
with the dinosaurs. Okay, shit, I have to run—kiss
him for me, I'll call you, bye—"

So.

"So." Brendan put down the phone, turned. In the
living room, Peter sprawled on the floor, fingers
pulling at a thread in the carpet. On the couch
behind him sat Tony, pointing excitedly at the
screen.

"—see, remember? Those are the real three Kings,
and that guy there, he's one of the real shepherds.
But that other guy with the black beard who's
sneaking up on the little donkey, he's a Sears
shepherd—"

"Tony. You were here when Teri dropped him off?"
Tony looked over at Brendan, surprised. "Oh. Hey, I
forgot you were home. Yeah, sure I was. I was right
here, Peter and I settled down to some serious
holiday cheer. Right, Petie?"

Peter continued to make the same soft nasal
humming sound he always did. His eyes were still
glued to the screen: when the bad shepherd
grabbed the little Puppetoon donkey and stuffed him
in a sack, Peter flinched. His father didn't notice; he
was already going through Peter's bags, looking for
the pages of instructions he knew would be there.

"Well, thanks. What the hell was she going to do if
you weren't here? Why didn't she go by my office?"

"She did. She couldn't even get in the building."

Brendan grimaced. "Damn, that's right. Christmas
party next door, they all went down to the Hawk &
Dove. And I wasn't picking up the phone."

"You didn't go to the Christmas party?"

"No, Tony, I didn't go to the Christmas party. I
mean, what's the point? They don't give you a
present."

Tony looked shocked. "They don't give you a
present?"

"No, you bonehead." Brendan bopped him on the
shoulder with Teri's instructions. "Of course they
don't give you a present. That was a joke. But I
really am glad you were here when she came.
C'mere, Peter—"

He reached for his son, steeling himself for the boy
to turn away or, worse, fail to acknowledge him at
all. Instead Peter remained where he was, watching
TV. When Brendan touched his arm, he could feel
the ripple of muscle beneath his son's bare skin. Or
maybe it wasn't muscle at all; maybe it was nerve,
maybe that was how exposed it all was to Peter,
bound sheaves of neurons and ganglions and
dendrites, veiled with nothing more than that soft
white tissue of baby skin, the tiny hairs like a
dusting of snow, the sweet powdery smell of him.
For an instant he was close enough to smell him, so
close it made him dizzy, made him forget for a
moment where or when it was—like when Teri was
still breastfeeding and they would lie in bed together
and he could smell all of them at once, his own
sweat, and Teri's, and Peter's scent, a scent he had
always thought came from baby powder—strange
and warm, like honeysuckle, or bread—but which he
knew now came from babies.

"Peter," he whispered.

For a split second, Peter did not move away.
Brendan held his breath until it hurt, until he could
feel his own nerves shimmering alongside his son's,
the two tines of a broken tuning fork suddenly and
miraculously vibrating together. Peter's skin was
warm, warmer than Brendan's own; there was a
sticky spot within the crook of his elbow, jelly or
paste or generic childhood crud. He was close
enough to see the small red crescent just below his
hairline, where another child had accidentally struck
him with a block. Still holding his breath, Brendan let
his fingers move ever so slightly down his son's arm,
towards his hand—

—but it was too much. The nasal humming became a
grunt, of annoyance or fear or pain; and the boy
shrugged him off.

"Peter." Brendan spoke his name, louder this time.
Peter nodded—a half-nod, really, jerking his chin
downward a fraction of an inch—and scooched closer
to the television. Brendan watched him, biting his lip;
then turned to Tony. "Well. One big happy family. I
guess I'll make dinner."

He waited for Tony's usual offer to help, or clean up,
or bring out the trash. But Tony only sprawled on
the couch and stared at the television, lips moving
as he recited along with King Melchior.

"… greatest gifts are always those that cannot be
bought with gold or silver …"

"Ugh." Brendan rolled his eyes. "I'm outta here."

He made dinner, pasta with butter sauce for Peter,
with pesto for himself and Tony. While it was
cooking he rummaged around for that morning's
Post. It was gone. When he looked outside the back
door, the entire stack of papers waiting to be
recycled was gone, too.
"Tony? You do something with today's paper?"

"Um, well, yeah. I did." His expression was distinctly
furtive.

"Um, well, yeah. Could you tell me where it is?"

Tony shifted uncomfortably, knocking a pillow onto
the floor. "Uh. Actually, no. I mean, it's gone."

Brendan frowned. "But the pickup isn't till
tomorrow." Although, now that he thought about it,
he hadn't seen any newspapers out there all last
week, either.

"I know. I just needed them for something."

"What?"

"Just something. A surprise."

"A surprise. Right." Brendan sighed. "Well, tomorrow
leave the damn paper for me to read, okay? I don't
need any more surprises."



Peter went to bed with surprisingly little trouble that
night. Usually any change in his routine was enough
to send him into a fit of heart-splintering screams,
but except for the usual tantrum over brushing his
teeth, the evening was calm. Brendan read to him in
bed, Goodnight, Moon and "The Owl and the
Pussycat"; and before he was finished his son was
asleep, hand knuckled up against one cheek, the
much-gnawed rubber duck nestled against his
breast.

"Don't you read him Christmas stories?"

Brendan gently tugged the blanket up around
Peter's shoulders, motioning Tony to be quiet. "No,"
he whispered, and joined him in the hall. "I don't
have any here."

"Teri packed some. I saw them. The Grinch, The
Night Before Christmas—"

"Tony." Brendan poked his friend in the stomach.
"You know what? I'm going to tell you a secret.
Christmas depresses me. It makes me sad. It totally
bums me out."

"But why?"

He sucked his breath in angrily; but when he looked
into Tony's eyes he saw only genuine puzzlement.
Brendan sighed, drew his hand back and ran it
through his thinning hair.

"It just does," he said. "Okay? I just don't get in
much of a Christmas spirit anymore."

"You're not kidding," said Tony.

Still, after he'd finished cleaning up and going
through his e-mail and sorting out Peter's clothes
for the next day, Brendan found himself in the living
room again, sprawled beside Tony on the couch.
Outside, icy rain spattered against the windows and
tossed red and green confetti onto the ground
beneath the traffic light. On the TV screen, snow
whipped around a man with shoulders hunched
against the cold as he hurried down a narrow lane,
rosy-cheeked urchins singing merrily in his wake.

Brendan nudged Tony with his foot. "Who's this
one?"

"George C. Scott. The Reagan-era Scrooge. See?
His clothes are expensive—nice cut, nice fabric? He
just can't be bothered helping anyone else. Classic
Republican Scrooge. As opposed to Alistair Sim, the
classic Dickensian Scrooge, who was a genuine
miser." Tony wiggled his fingers. "Holes in his gloves,
stuff like that. Then there's Mr. Magoo, the great
Broadway Musical Scrooge."

Brendan laughed. "What, are you a Scrooge
scientist?"

"Sure, man. Lionel Barrymore, Reginald
Owen—vintage Hollywood. And Scrooge
McDuck—what can I say? Quite simply one of the
greats."

"Yeah? What about me?"

"You?" Tony scrutinized his friend, rubbing his chin.
"You're the classic post-po-mo Scrooge. Involved
with the text, yet denying your own place within it.
Definitely post-post-modern."

Brendan snorted. "Right." He leaned forward, picked
up the TV Guide from the floor and began flipping
through it. "Where do you find all this stuff? I mean,
half of it isn't even listed in here."

"I dunno. But I can always find it. Sometimes it
takes a while, but …" Tony shrugged. "It's there."

"What about that Chip Crockett Christmas thing?
Ever hear any more about that?"

"No." Tony looked sad. "I keep checking, but nobody
seems to know anything except these sort of vague
rumors. I figure I'll just, like, stay up all night
Christmas Eve and see what happens."

"Great idea, Tony." Brendan took a deep breath.
"But you know what? I've kind of had enough of
Uncle Ebeneezer. I'm going to bed."

Tony nodded absently, engrossed once more in the
movie. "Sure. 'Night, Brenda."

It was a scramble to get Peter ready for school the
next morning. He refused to eat anything, screaming
and throwing first a bagel, then Cheerios, toast,
English muffin, cantaloupe, and instant oatmeal on
the floor, before his increasingly desperate father
gave up and began the struggle to get him dressed.
When Peter stayed on the weekend, Brendan always
let him wear his pajamas until lunchtime. Now it took
both Brendan and Tony a full fifteen minutes to get
the boy into his clothes, and even then Peter ended
up wearing the same T-shirt he'd gone to sleep in
the night before.

"Hey, Pete, man, calm down," said Tony when the
ordeal was finally over. "It's only clothes."

Brendan shook his head, red-faced and panting, and
started shoving plastic containers and juice boxes
into Peter's knapsack. "That's just it. It's not just
clothes. It's everything—everything is a battle." He
found himself blinking back tears, and turned to the
kitchen counter, waiting until he could speak without
his voice breaking. "I swear to god, I don't know
how Teri does it."

"No lie." Tony sighed and began to scoop congealed
oatmeal from the floor. In the living room Peter sat
rigidly on the couch, watching Cookie Monster eat an
aluminum plate. "Does she have to drive him in every
day?"

"Yeah. And she—shit." Brendan straightened,
smacking himself in the forehead with his palm.
"How'm I going to do this?"

"Do what?"

"Well, I can't take him on the Metro in rush hour.
And it'll be so late, I'll never find a parking spot by
the office after I drive him in. Let me think, let me
think—

"I know." Brendan snapped his fingers, pointed at
Tony. "You're not doing anything, right? You mind
coming with me? Then you can drop me off at the
office and drive back here, and I don't have to worry
about parking."

Tony frowned, glancing at the television. "Yeah, I
guess. Do I have time to—"

"No. If the Grinch is on you can damn well tape him.
Let's go—come on, Peter, sweetie, time for
school.…"

Out on Maryland Avenue, the city's ineffectual road
crews were doing their usual job of making the
morning commute even worse. The night's sleet had
been reduced to a puree of salted slush and dead
leaves clogging the roadside, and numerous tow
trucks were still doing a brisk business on the
narrow side streets.

Yet despite the mess, the commuters crowding the
sidewalks were cheerful, men and women in
trenchcoats and lightweight parkas waving to each
other as they hurried towards Union Station and the
Capitol grounds. Strands of white lights spun
through trees and hedges and outlined the fronts of
brick rowhouses and storefronts. In Stanton Square
Park, an evergreen glittered green and blue and red
where some street people had strung together
empty beer cans and bottles with strapping tape and
bits of aluminum foil.

"Hey, check it out!" said Tony as the Volvo crawled
past. "That looks nice, doesn't it?"
Brendan grunted. On a bench by the sidewalk, Dave
the Grave and his dog were already settled with a
paper bag between them. Dave's battered tweed
jacket had been augmented by a long red muffler
and some tinsel; his dog lolled beside him, the ends
of the comforter tucked between his paws. At sight
of Brendan's car, Dave lifted his bottle and shouted
a greeting.

" 'Aaay, whoa whoa! M'ry 'issmiss!"

Tony rolled down his window and leaned out. "Merry
Christmas, Dave!"

"Shut up, Tony." Brendan pressed a button and
sent Tony's window sliding back up. "He's a goddam
bum."

"Aw, give him a break, man! It's Christmas."

"Yeah, well, he can go to the shelter with everyone
else, then. Or freeze on a grate."

"Jeez, Brendan!" Tony shook his head in dismay.
"What about all those poor people in the missions
we used to collect for at Sacred Heart? You never
wanted them to freeze on a grate."

"If they'd been outside my house, I'd have wanted
them to freeze. And their little dogs, too."

"Boy, what a grouch. Hey, Peter, you ever know
your old man was such a grouch?" Peter said
nothing; only chewed thoughtfully on his yellow duck
and stared out at the bottle-decked tree behind
Dave the Grave.

Brendan continued to be a grouch the whole way to
the Birchwood School, immune to Tony's admiration
for the White House Christmas tree, the decorations
in the windows of the restaurants at Dupont Circle,
the group of kids from Gonzaga High School singing
by a subway entrance. In the front seat Tony rocked
and sang, too, turning to pick up Peter's duck when
it fell and yelling encouragement at some boys trying
to slide down a driveway on a cafeteria tray.

"Keep your weight in the front—the front—"

"They're going to kill themselves," Brendan said,
turning up the side road leading to the school. "And
then their parents will hire me to sue the company
that makes those trays."

"Don't you remember doing that? Only we had those
flying saucers?"

"Yeah. And we had snow. All right, here we are. Let's
make this snappy, I have a client coming in at ten."

Tony slid from the front seat and began gathering
Peter's things. "How come you're so busy right
before Christmas?"

"Because I want to be," Brendan said tersely. "Okay,
Petie, here we are at school."

Inside, everything looked pretty much as it always
did. There were green-and-red cutouts on the wall, a
few reindeer and trees, some yellow cardboard stars
and blue Menorahs; but no Christmas tree, no
lights, no scary Santas. There were fewer kids as
usual, too, and half as many teachers.

"Peter! Hi!" Peter looked up, a faint smile on his face
as Peggy knelt before him. "I missed you when your
Mom picked you up early yesterday—hi!"

She reached forward and gave him a hug, holding
him very tightly for just a moment and then
withdrawing. She stood, brushing the hair from her
eyes, and smiled. She was wearing a long green
sweater with stars on it, and a small
red-and-green-striped wool cap. "Brendan! I haven't
seen you for a while—"

"I know, my schedule changed, I—" Brendan was still
staring at his son. "He let you hug him?"

"Yeah, that's a new thing, just this week. But we've
been working up to it for while. He's really doing
great, you know, he's been making some incredible
progress just these last few weeks. Do you have a
minute? 'Cause I can—"

She looked over and for the first time saw Tony.
"Oh! Hi, I'm sorry, I work with Peter here, Peggy
Storrs."

She stuck out her hand. For a moment Tony just
stared at her, with an expression Brendan had last
seen when he'd received the new Advent Moth
promo. Then,

"Very pleased to meet you," he said, grabbing her
hand and pumping it. "Anthony Kemper. I'm an old
friend of Brendan's. We went to high school
together. In Yonkers. Actually, we're living together
now, if you ever --"

"That is very temporary." Brendan glared at him,
then turned back to Peggy. "Actually, Peggy, I'm
kind of in a rush this morning, but—"

But Peggy was still looking at Tony, her brow
furrowed. "You know, you look very familiar. I mean,
really familiar. Have you, like, been in here before?
Although I don't remember—"

Brendan sighed. "Peggy, meet Tony Maroni."

"Tony—Maroni?" Her blue eyes got huge. "You're
like, the real Tony Maroni? Oh my god. You are. I
don't believe it! God, I saw you guys when I was in
high school! In Seattle, I guess it was—jeez, it must
be fifteen years ago! God, you guys were great, that
was like the greatest show I have ever seen in my
life!"

Tony smiled dreamily. "Yeah, yeah … I remember
that. The Limehouse. That was right before we went
to Japan. That was, like, the last time we really
played together," he added wistfully. "I mean, all of
us, in the States."

"You left after that …" Peggy ran a hand over her
cap. "God, I was so bummed out. I was only fifteen,
and that was it, I felt like I'd missed everything.
Tony Maroni." She shook her head. "This is so
amazing. I guess I'd heard once that you lived here
in D.C., but—"

Brendan cleared his throat. "You know, I hate to
break up the Rock Trivia Show, but I have a client
coming in half an hour and I need Mr. Maroni here to
drive me back to my office."

"Oh sure, sure." Peggy glanced down at Peter, then
up at Brendan again. She was actually blushing. "But
I just can't believe that—"

"Oh, please, believe," said Brendan. He wondered
what Peggy would think if she knew that Tony
considered This Is Spinal Tap a model for behavioral
therapy. "Look, I'm in a real hurry today, that's all.
Maybe tomorrow when I drop him off, we could go
over some of this great stuff you're talking about."

"Oh, but there's no school tomorrow. Christmas
Eve. So many kids and teachers are going away or
have family stuff, Deirdre decided that we'd just
close until the 28th. We have early release today, at
noon. It was in the newsletter …"

Brendan swore under his breath. Peggy hunched her
shoulders. "I'm really sorry—you didn't know? That
was why Teri was so freaked out about having to go
away …"

"Right, right. It's okay, not a problem …" Brendan
turned and stooped beside his son. "Peter, Peter,
Peter. What am I going to do about you?" he
murmured.

"I'll be there." Tony's voice was so loud that several
of the other teachers turned. "I mean, hey, what
else do I have going on? It'll be great, we'll do
Christmas stuff."

"Christmas can be a little intimidating for some of
these kids." Peggy smiled. "But you probably know
that already if you're hanging out with this little guy
here at home. I still can't believe you and Brendan
went to high school together."

Brendan stared at the floor and shook his head
despairingly. Tony nodded, bopping back and forth
on his heels.

"You know what?" he said. "I can come pick him up
at noon, and you can tell me what I need to know
about being with him. I mean, whatever I don't know
already."

"Which would fill an encyclopedia," Brendan muttered
darkly. "Listen, Elvis, I really do have to get back to
the office. Peggy, Peter will be fine with Tony, you
just tell him anything you think he needs to know,
okay?"

Peggy nodded. "I don't think you're on the sheet as
an authorized pickup, are you, Tony? So maybe you
could just come to the office and fill out a form, and
Brendan can sign it, and we'll be all set," she said,
and started for the office.

"Sure, sure!" Tony loped after her.

"Do you believe this, Peter?" Brendan shook his
head. "I graduated fourth in my class at
Georgetown. Plus, I thought she was gay."

Peter said nothing. Though if his father had turned
his head, he might have seen something like
reflected light shining in his son's eyes, as Peter
gazed sideways at Tony jouncing up and down
outside the office.

"Listen, sweetie. Daddy has to go to work now.
Uncle Tony's going to pick you up at lunchtime. Can
you remember that? It won't be me and it won't be
Mommy—"

"Okay. I'm signed on, Captain Kirk," Tony
announced, sweeping up behind Brendan. "You
ready? Want me to drive?"

"No, I'll drive." Brendan sighed. "Yeah, I guess I'm
ready. Remember, Peter." He stood, pointed at
Tony. "Uncle Tony here will pick you up."

Tony nodded. "Noon, right?"

"Actually, if you can come a little earlier, it'll make it
easier in case he's having a rough day." Peggy
smiled. "Or if I am."

Brendan groaned. "Let's go—"

"Bye, then—see you around noon. Hooray hello,
Tony!"

"Whoa whoa whoa!" Tony called. "Ouch! Jeez, I'm
coming, Brenda, for chrissakes—"

Brendan drove back to Capitol Hill. Tony bopped and
drummed on the dashboard and sang "Christmas
(Baby Please Come Home)" until Brendan threatened
to throw him out and make him walk from Foggy
Bottom.

"Okay, okay, I've stopped, see? Man, I just can't
believe that girl Peggy, huh? She's great, she's like
so great …"
But Brendan was brooding over how Peggy had
been able to hug his son. Automatically he glanced
into the rearview mirror, looking for Peter in his car
seat. For a split second he had a flash of panic,
seeing it was empty—

But of course Peter wasn't there. Peter was at
school, bonding with strangers. Panic subsided into
a wash of despair, and Brendan gripped the wheel
until his hands hurt.

"How come you never told me about her?"

Brendan swallowed, let his breath out. "You never
asked."

"I can't believe she saw us at the Limehouse. That
was probably the best show we ever did, you know
that? I can't believe she saw it."

"At least she's old enough to vote." Brendan pulled
over near his office. For a moment he just sat there,
waiting to see if the despair would fade. It did not. A
young woman pushing a stroller around puddles on
the sidewalk stopped, pointing at the window of the
Trover Shop. Swags of fresh holly hung there, their
berries so deep and glistening a red they looked like
drops of blood. Brendan shut his eyes, then turned
and reached into the backseat for his briefcase.

"Listen, Tony. Get there early like Peggy said, okay?
But don't forget Peter. Make sure he eats something
when he gets home—actually, bring something in the
car, there's some juice boxes and peanut butter
crackers in the kitchen. Ask Peggy to check if he
needs any medicine before you leave, okay? I'll try to
get out early but probably I won't be back till five or
so."

"Sure man, sure, no prob." Tony clambered into the
driver's seat as Brendan climbed out. "Don't worry,
we'll be great, it'll be fun."

"Make sure he's in his car seat!" Brendan shouted as
Tony pulled away, an arc of slush rising behind him.
"Get there early. And be careful—!"

Tony was careful, and he got there early. In fact, he
got there about an hour after leaving Brendan on
Pennsylvania Avenue. It would have been even
sooner, but he stopped at the flower vendor's at
Eastern Market and bought a small crimson
poinsettia in a green plastic pot shaped like a
Christmas tree.

"Hi," he said breathlessly when he arrived back at the
Birchwood School. A half dozen children were settled
at separate tables around the room, each with a
grownup and a cookie and a little paper cup full of
juice. Peggy looked up from where she sat across
from Peter, holding the cookie for him.

"Tony! You are early."

"Here. This is for you. Merry Christmas." Tony
plonked himself on the floor beside Peggy and
handed her the poinsettia. "Unless you're not
allowed to accept gifts."

"Oh no, gifts are highly encouraged. Look, Peter!
See? This is a poinsettia. A flower—this is a flower—"

"So. Any instructions?" Tony turned and smiled at
Peter, stretched his hand out to within a few inches
of his face and waved gently. "Hey, Petie. You ready
to come home with me? Watch Mister Magoo?"

Peter moved his head so that he faced away from
Tony; but his gaze edged sideways, watching.

"Mister Magoo!" exclaimed Peggy. "God, I loved
that—it used to be my favorite Christmas show. But
they never run it anymore. Did you rent it?"

"Uh-uh." Tony wiggled his fingers at Peter.

"Is it on Nickelodeon or something?"

"No. I mean, I don't know. I guess."

"Huh. Well, I'll check it out when I get home, maybe I
can catch the end."

"Wanna come over with me and Pete here? Cause
then you could watch it with—"

Peggy shook her head. "I wish I could. But I have to
write up all the weekly reports and stuff like that.
Maybe another time." She smiled across the table at
Peter. "So, Peter, are you ready? Tony here's going
to drive you home today. Then your Daddy will be
back later. Okay? Let's finish our snack and get
everything ready to go …"

Tony went with her to gather Peter's things. "So. Is
he, like, really doing better? I haven't seen so much
of him the last two weeks, 'cause he's been with
Teri."

Peggy nodded. She turned from the wall of
brightly-painted cubbies and leaned against it,
cradling Peter's jacket to her chest. "You know, he
really is. We work so intensely with the kids here,
and it can take years, but sometimes all of a sudden
you just have a breakthrough. And I really think that
could happen with Peter. Although," she added,
lowering her voice, "probably I shouldn't say that.
People get very, very sensitive about the issue of
'curing' autism."

Tony stared at Peter, standing off by himself and
staring at a knothole in the wall. "Right," Tony said
softly. "Well, I know his Mom and Dad love him no
matter what."

Peggy bit her lip, then nodded. "Oh, sure," she said.
"Though I think Brendan has some unresolved
issues. He seems a little—distracted lately. Not as
focused. But like I said, I shouldn't be saying this …"

"It's okay. I'm, like, family," said Tony. "And let me
tell you, Brendan really loves that."

He laughed and bent to pick up Peter's knapsack.
"Okay, Petie. Let's go watch Mister Magoo's
Christmas Carol. One of the very best—"

Peggy walked them to the front door. A few other
parents were waiting by the office now with wrapped
packages, greeting teachers and waving at their
children.

"Yvonne! I'll be right with you—" Peggy touched the
shoulder of a woman in a faux-mink coat, then
turned back to Tony. "That's the mother of my
other student. I should go. But thanks so much for
coming by, Tony."

"So, are you, like around? After the holidays
maybe?"

Peggy straightened her little wool cap and smiled.
"Maybe. Thanks for the poinsettia. Tell Mister Magoo
I said hi. And Peter—"

She stooped and gave him another quick strong
hug. "You have a wonderful Christmas, Peter. I'll see
you very soon. Very, very soon …"

They walked outside, Peter stopping once to stare
ruminatively at a spiral of oil sending spectral
currents across a puddle. Tony waited with him.
"Hey, pretty cool, huh?" he said, and continued to
the car. "You know, you're a lucky guy, Pete."

Tony held open the Volvo's back door and watched
as Peter slowly climbed in. "Having a babe like that
for a teacher. Man oh man."

They returned to Brendan's apartment. The sky was
inked with clouds like slate-colored smoke, the air
had that metallic bite that precedes snow. Peter was
careful not to look into Tony's eyes when he glanced
back at him. He seemed not to hear Tony when he
asked a question or pointed out
something—Christmas lights, sidewalk Santa—and
after they parked the boy walked in front of him,
dragging his backpack and making rhythmic huff-huff
noises.

"Okay. Lunchtime," announced Tony when they got
inside. He cut up an apple and smeared the slices
with peanut butter. Peter refused to sit, so Tony fed
him standing. Tony ended up eating most of it, but
he did manage to get Peter to drink some milk, only
half of which ended up on the floor.

"All right. Now Uncle Tony has to check his e-mail.
Come on—"

Peter ignored him. He walked into the living room
and sat on the floor and began pulling at a thread in
the carpet. Tony frowned, then turned and walked
down the hall.

"I'll be right back. You come on down here if you
want, okay?"

He checked his mail and spent a few minutes reading
the headlines, then went to Chip Crockett's Web
site. Nothing new there. A few messages from a
week ago, Tony's own unanswered request for
information about Chip's Christmas special. He was
just going to log off when he heard a soft huff-huff
behind him.

"Hey, Peter. C'mere, want to check this out?"

Peter stepped forward, keeping a good distance
from where Tony sat. There was still peanut butter
on his face, and a clump in his hair where he'd
twiddled it into a knot.

"Look," said Tony. "See? That's Chip Crockett. Your
Daddy and I liked him when we were little. Like you
like Cookie Monster."

Peter avoided his eyes, but when Tony turned back
to the computer the boy stepped forward, staring at
the monitor. "And that's Ogden Orff. Listen—"

Tony punched a key. Static; then,

"That's my boy—Ogden Orff!"

Peter moved closer.

"Wanna hear it again?"

Tony played the sound bite again; then drew up the
black-and-white image of Chip Crockett dressed as
Ogden Orff. "See? That's him? Ogden Orff. And
look—here's Captain Dingbat. And this one, this is
my favorite. Ooga Booga. Isn't he great? Check out
that schnozz, man—ever see a nose like that? Hey,
you're blocking me!"

Peter stepped in front of him, his face scant inches
from where the black-and-white image of a puppet
with bulbous nose and tiny hands filled the screen.

"Pretty cool, huh?" asked Tony. Peter shook his
head and continued to stare. "Ooga Booga. Good ol'
Ooga Booga."

Tony sighed, swiping the hair from his eyes. "But
you know, we oughta go check out Mister Magoo.
Come on, let me turn it off now."

He started to move the mouse, but as the screen
changed Peter shook his head again, and when the
screen went blank he made a sharp angry sound.

"Hey man, I know; but I promise, we can come back
later. Let's go watch TV now. Come on, it's Mister
Magoo—you'll like him, he's like Ooga Booga only he
moves."

Tony started for the living room. Peter remained
where he was, gazing at the empty monitor.

"Come on, Petie," Tony urged. "Let's go …"

At last Peter followed him. Tony put the television on
and slumped onto the couch, remote in hand. Peter
sat on the floor. Tony began flipping through the
stations until he found what he was looking for.

"Hey, great, it's just starting! Watch, Petie, you're
gonna love this show—"

That was how Brendan found them when he got
home hours later. They were onto the Grinch by
then, the floor around them scattered with popcorn
and broken crackers.

"Tony. Peter." Brendan shut the door, shaking
moisture from his overcoat. "Man, it's getting cold
out. Hi, guys."

"Hey, Brenda Starr! You're just in time. Look, he's
stealing the Christmas tree!"

"Yeah, great. " Brendan rolled his eyes. He looked
back down at the handful of letters he'd just picked
up from the floor beneath the mail slot. "Here, you
got something."

He handed Tony a letter and set his own mail on the
kitchen counter. Tony glanced at the envelope, then
shoved it into a pocket.

"Did he have anything to eat?" asked Brendan. He
ran a finger along the counter top, frowning:
someone had spilled something there, flour it looked
like, or maybe salt. "Beside what's on the floor?"

"Some peanut butter and apple and some milk. And
a lot of popcorn."

"All the major food groups. Well, we've got frozen
pizza for dinner." Brendan stepped back into the
living room and stood behind his son. "What do you
think, Peter? You like this Grinch guy?"
Peter shook his head slightly. On screen the Grinch
covered his ears against the sound of villagers
caroling. Brendan crouched down to pick up bits of
popcorn.

"I do," he said. "I can really relate to him. You know
why? Because there is too much noise. Turn it
down, Tony."

Still, after Peter was in bed the rest of the evening
was quiet—too quiet for Tony, who wanted to watch
David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing "The Little
Drummer Boy" but was forbidden to by Brendan.

"For the next forty-eight hours, this is a
Christmas-free zone," he announced, shooing Tony
from the couch and changing the channel to CNN.

"Forty-eight hours? Jesus, Christmas'll be over by
then!"

"You got it." Brendan stretched out on the couch
and yawned, then wrinkled his nose. "What's that
smell? Paint?"

Tony shrugged. "Mmmm, yeah." He stood in the hall,
looking lost and disconsolate. His T-shirt was
spattered with white powder, his hair pulled back in a
sloppy ponytail. "I told you, I'm working on
something. I just wanted to take a break and
hear—"

"Forget it, Tony."

"But—"

"Good night, Tony."

That night his father came to him. At first Brendan
thought it was Peter, but as the sound of footsteps
grew clearer he recognized it unmistakably as his
father's tread, that familiar pause as he went into
the bathroom and after a minute or two returned to
the hall, heading down towards Brendan's room.
Brendan was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling
where the soft mingled lights from the tree fluttered
like blue and green and red moths. He couldn't wait,
how could anyone wait? Surely it was morning now
…?

And yes, of course it was, because his father's
shadow filled the doorway, just as it always had.
Brendan started, then with a cry sat up. Joy scalded
him, and amazement: because there he was, wearing
the red L.L. Bean nightshirt he'd gotten for
Christmas one year, its sleeves worn and hem
frayed, his bare legs still muscular though the hair
on them was grey now. His face, however, was
young, the way it looked in old family pictures, the
way it looked in Brendan's mind—and that was the
other amazing thing, not just that his father should
be here, alive, but that he was young. Brendan
gasped with delight, realizing anew what he had
forgotten since the last time this had happened:
that people didn't really die, or even if they did, you
could still be with them again, it didn't matter that
they were dead after all! Relief poured over him like
water and he shook himself, feeling the sheets
sliding from his arms as he tried to get to his feet,
to cross the room and hug him. Because his father
saw him, too, it wasn't like it had been those last
two years in the nursing home, he saw Brendan and
recognized him and he was smiling, one hand
half-raised in the familiar greeting that mimed
tossing a baseball, the other stretched out to his
son.

"Dad! Dad—"

But the words didn't come out. All the air had been
sucked from him, and all the light too—the room was
black again, or no, his eyes were closed, he could
still see those phantom lights pulsing behind his
eyelids and somewhere behind them his father
stood, waiting, and all he had to do was open his
eyes and he could see him, he could leap from the
bed and in two steps he would be there, he would
see him again—

But his eyes would not open. When he tried to cry
out his throat closed and he could only grunt,
horribly, thrashing at the bed and struggling to rise
while his hands sank down and the darkness
pressed upon his face like a door falling on him. He
screamed then, and as the sound echoed around
him he opened his eyes and found himself sitting up
in bed. A narrow slab of light fell into the room
where the door was cracked, then disappeared as it
was flung open.

"Brendan?" Tony stood there in his boxer shorts,
hair a wild nimbus around his face. "You okay?"
Brendan shook his head, then nodded. When he
opened his mouth air rushed in to fill his throat, and
he gasped.

"Jesus … I had a nightmare. Or—no—"

He ran his hands across his face, feeling how cold his
skin was, and moist. "—just a—this dream. But I'm
fine. Go—go back to bed. I'm sorry I woke you."

"I wasn't asleep." Tony remained in the doorway, his
face creased with worry. "You sure you're okay? I
thought someone was, like, breaking in or
something."

"No, really, it was just a dream. I—I'll just check
Peter. Go on—"

He stood shakily, the sheets falling to the floor
around him. Tony moved to let him get by, and as
he passed him Brendan paused, then put a hand on
his shoulder. "Hey. Tony. Sorry I woke you."

"No prob, man." Tony smiled. In the half-light leaking
from the bathroom his raggedy features looked
gaunt, his hair more silver than grey; and for the
first time Brendan thought, he's old. The notion
shook him almost as much as the dream had. He
stood there for a moment, gazing at his oldest
friend as though trying to recall his name; and finally
smiled back.

"Yeah. Well, 'scuse me—"

"Hey, you know what today is?" Tony called after him
softly. "Christmas Eve!"

Brendan took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said,
pausing to lean against the bathroom door. For an
instant spectral lights flickered around the perimeter
of his vision, red and green and blue, the shadow of
a tree. He drew a hand across his face and winced.
"Thanks. I—I remembered."




The morning was cold and heavy with moisture, the
sky leaden and a few fine flakes already biting
Brendan's cheeks as he hurried to work, his fingers
numb where they curled around the handle of his
briefcase. He'd forgotten to wear gloves—refused to,
actually, indulging in some absurd belief that if he
didn't dress as though it were winter, it wouldn't be.

But the day promised more miserable weather, more
sleet and freezing rain, maybe even snow. Dave the
Grave and his cronies had gotten an early start on
the holiday, gathering on a corner opposite the
Library of Congress and bopping up and down
against the cold. Dave's wiry dog nosed at a pile of
refuse spilling from a trash can, and Dave himself
looked pale and rheumy-eyed, the filthy tweed jacket
hanging loosely from his stooped shoulders. One of
his friends held him up as he waved at passersby.
Brendan saw him and started across the street,
Dave's cracked voice trailing forlornly after him.

"Where's Whoa Whoa? Whoa … c'mere, goddamit …"

"Shut up, goddamit." Brendan hopped onto the
curb, glanced up and saw a well-dressed man
passing him with a suspicious look: he must have
spoken aloud. He glared back and the man hurried
on.

There was no one in his office when he arrived. He
let himself in, trying to summon up some sense of
well-being at having the place to himself. But
everything looked desolate and abandoned, the
computer monitors staring blankly from his partners'
desks, Ashley's tiny Norfolk pine dropping yellowing
needles onto the floor, its branches drooping
beneath the weight of three miniature glass balls.
Brendan spent a good minute staring at it glumly,
before picking the tree up and depositing it in the
wastebasket. Then he set to work.

He'd made a point of scheduling back-to-back client
appointments all morning, starting at nine. At just
past eight-thirty the phone began to ring with the
first of the day's cancellations.

"Brendan Keegan."

"Yes—hi, Mr. Keegan, this is Paulette Yates? I was
supposed to see you this morning? About a
personal injury suit?"
"Yes, Miss Yates." Brendan swiveled so that he could
gaze out the window, took in the Capitol's
scaffolding glazed black with snow and ice, and
immediately swiveled back to glance at his
appointment book. "Let's see—yes, that's at nine."

"Well, you see, I—I have to cancel? I forgot it was
Christmas Eve, and I have to get the train to see my
parents, and—"

"You're canceling the appointment."

Nervous silence. Then, "Yes. I'm really sorry, I
just—"

"Would you like to reschedule now? Or, no, it'd be
better if you called next week, my secretary's out."

Her voice brightened with relief. "Oh! Sure, sure—"

"Fine. And, um, Miss Yates: you know I have to
charge you for the missed appointment."

Another silence. "You do? Even though I called?"

"Well, you called at twenty-five to nine. I can't put
someone else in that slot now."

"But—how much?"

"The hourly rate, one twenty-five."

"One hundred—" He heard a brisk intake of breath,
and then a softer, muffled sound. "Oh, jesus.
That's, like—can't you—"

"I'm afraid I can't. Now, we can reschedule after—"

Click.

He read the morning Post, rescued before Tony
could find it and spirit it away for whatever
knucklehead purpose he had. He made phone calls,
setting up meetings and hearings for after the
holiday, responding politely to the Greetings of the
Season and Best Wishes For, all carefully worded
these days and especially in this place, make sure no
one feels excluded: Merry Christmas, Chanukah,
Kwaanza, Solstice. In the background, laughter and
music, recordings announcing We Will Be Closed
Until; receptionists answering phones with
breathless voices, already anticipating the
afternoon's office party, early release, Midnight
Mass.

And alone of everyone he spoke to, Brendan felt
grounded, sober, adult; already looking to next
year, a new year. Like someone on a long
international flight, everyone around him fidgeting
restlessly while he slept, his watch already set ahead
seven hours, his mind at peace, untrammeled by
excitement, and cold to the allure of gratis wine,
chocolates, movies, smiling fellow passengers.

Three of his other appointments canceled as well;
two, actually, with the other a no-show. Brendan
carefully noted all this in his book, copying the
information out for Ashley for billing purposes. He
researched a case that would be going to trial in
February—the thought comforted him, February a
nice no-nonsense month, nothing there to worry
about except for Valentine's Day, and God knows
that had never been much of a threat.

At lunchtime he ventured out for a sandwich. Big
wet flakes were falling now, whitening black
overcoats and Timberland parkas but turning to
slush as soon as the flakes made contact with the
pavement. The takeout shop was crowded;
everyplace was crowded, nothing, seemingly, being
out of the running for consideration as a last-minute
Christmas gift. Brendan waited impatiently while the
man behind the counter prepared cold-cut platters
and wrapped a roast beef sandwich in green butcher
paper with a gold bow.

"I'll have one of those." Brendan pointed at the
sandwich. "Only without the wrapping paper."

"That'll be about five minutes—I've got to get this
party platter over to Senator Easton's office—"

"Forget it." Brendan jabbed his finger at the glass
front of the counter. "Just give me a Kaiser roll."

The roll was tasteless. He ate it on his way back to
the office, dodging Senate staffers rushing for cabs
and giddy interns hugging each other goodbye on
their way to the airport. When he got back inside,
there was a message on the machine from Teri,
giving him her flight arrival time and reminding him
to come by with Peter the next morning at ten
o'clock for Christmas cheer.

"Cheer," Brendan repeated, erasing the message.
"Cheer cheer cheer."

The phone rang. He answered it, still shrugging out
of his wet overcoat and shaking crumbs onto the
floor alongside dead Norfolk pine needles. "Brendan
Keegan."

"Brendan. Kevin."

"Kevin." Brendan hung up his coat, slid into his
chair. "How are you."

"Well, I'm good. Been thinking about you. See the
game the other night?"

"Wasn't that something," Brendan said, his voice
sounding like a hollow echo of his cousin's bluff
tone. He hadn't spoken to Kevin since Thanksgiving.
"What's up?"

"Well, Eileen and I wanted to invite you and Peter
over this evening. If you're not doing anything. The
girls would love to see you. You could even stay
over if you want. We're going to Teri's tomorrow
and we could all go together, if you feel like it."

"Well, thank you." Brendan cleared his throat: why
did he and Kevin always sound as though they were
trying to arrange a subpoena? "I mean, that would
be nice, except that I don't know when you last
talked to Teri—she had to go out of town, and so
Peter's with me until tomorrow morning, and I think
probably we'll just stick to our original plans."

"Peter's there with you right now?"

"No, no—he's at home, with Tony." Brendan cleared
his throat again and adjusted the contrast on his
monitor. "As a matter of fact, I better get going—I
should get back early, make sure everything's okay."

"Oh." Kevin's voice rose slightly. He paused, then
added, "Well, you know, Tony would be very
welcome, too. Eileen's got a ton of food, there's
plenty of room—"

"Thanks, Kevin. But, you know, I have a client
waiting. We'll just see you tomorrow, okay?"
He waited a long moment until Kevin finally replied.
"Sure. Sure, Brendan. Give Peter a hug, okay? We'll
see you tomorrow. Merry Christmas—"

"Right. Thanks, Kevin—"

He hung up. Around him the room was dim, the
windows ash-colored: he'd forgotten to turn the
lights back on. He didn't do so now; just hunched
closer to the computer screen, scrolling down a list
of dates and names as he punched his home
number into the telephone. Tony answered just as
the answering machine kicked in, sounding out of
breath.

"Tony? It's me, Brendan. Everything okay?"

"Oh, hey, hi. Yeah, it's okay, I guess. I don't know
what it is—yesterday he was great, but today he
doesn't want to eat at all. He doesn't want to do
anything. I finally just parked him in front of the TV,
he seems to be all right there."

Brendan felt conflicting emotions, a bitterly gleeful I
told you so! and anxiety for his son. "Well, he can
be a handful. Are you sure you're all right?"

"No kidding he's a handful. But I think we're okay …"

There was no concomitant bitterness in Tony's
voice; only exhaustion. And suddenly Brendan
wondered what, exactly, he was doing here in his
office; what had he been thinking, leaving his child at
home alone with a stranger? What the hell was
wrong with Teri, taking off like that at the last
minute, not even talking to him first? His concern
spiked to rage, thinking of Peter hungry, Peter
suffering, Peter—

"Brendan? I gotta go check on him—I'll see you
later, okay—?"

And Tony was gone. Brendan started to call back, to
demand to know what was happening; but as quickly
as it had come his anger disappeared. He drew a
long shuddering breath, replaced the phone in its
cradle. He should have stayed home today; he
should be there now. Even thinking of Teri and
trying to transfer this granite load of guilt to her
didn't make Brendan feel any better.
"Ah, shit."

He switched his computer off, and for several
minutes sat alone in the dark. Snow and freezing
rain hissed against the window; now and then he
could feel the walls shake as wind buffeted the
building. He had to go home, he should never have
left this morning, how could he even have dreamed
of doing so?

But the thought of returning there, of facing the
hours of tedium and cleaning up and fruitless
insistent arguing with a child who never spoke—his
child, his son, a boy who would scream if Brendan
tried to look him in the eye, a boy who would only
bear his father's touch when he was asleep—the
thought of being with Peter in that desolate
apartment on Christmas Eve filled him with such
despair that he moaned aloud.

And, at last, stood and dressed to go home. What
else could he do? He could no more blame Peter for
his own grief than he could blame Teri. And of
course Peter did recognize him, he wept sometimes
when Brendan dropped him off at school, and when
he left the room after tucking him into bed at night;
he woke up some nights whimpering, and would only
go back to sleep after Brendan spoke to him,
murmuring nonsense, snatches of half-remember
nursery rhymes, the words to "Meet the Mets."

And of course Peter loved him, there was no doubt
about it, he was his father. Brendan tried not to
hear Teri saying that, or the therapist they'd seen;
tried to hear the words in his own voice inside his
head; tried to imagine them coming from his son.…

But at that his imagination balked, the thought of
Peter speaking made his father feel sick and dizzy
with hopelessness. It was too much like his dream;
too much like giving in for a few moments, even in
sleep, to love and belief and hope. You could not
steel yourself against disappointment and loss and
grief in this life, if nothing else Brendan knew that;
but you could arm yourself against the rest of it.
You could arm yourself against desire and hope, you
could be a fucking fortress and never fall, never let a
single arrow through. And so as the sleet gave way
to snow and every radio in the city began to sound,
gently or noisily, its welcome to the imminent feast,
Brendan Keegan picked up his briefcase, locked the
door to his office, and began to trudge home.

It was a miserable walk. Just as Brendan had spent
the last few years trying to ignore the sigils of the
season, so he had attempted to ignore its weather,
refusing to invest in anything more winter-worthy
than his Brooks Brothers overcoat. No down parkas,
no Thinsulate-lined gloves, no sturdy L.L. Bean
boots with leather uppers to shield his expensive
wool trousers from the surging tide of slush and
curbstone filth that inevitably caught up with him. In
this he was not alone: much of the city's workforce,
save those hardy Congressional underlings from
places like Maine or Minnesota, continued to indulge
the hopeful but ultimately unsupportable notion that
they lived in a Southern city, with weather befitting
retirement communities along the Gulf Coast. In
reality D.C.'s weather could be as extreme as it was
unpredictable, a fact now underscored for Brendan
by the sight of two laughing, red-cheeked young
women in Park Police mufti, making their way past
Eastern Market on cross-country skis. He shuddered
and tugged his collar up around his neck, averting
his eyes. It was harder to avoid the row of cut
evergreens leaning against the brick facade of the
Market itself, or the plastic buckets full of fresh-cut
holly and box, the ropes of princess pine and balsam
and the ghostly clouds of mistletoe dangling from
oak branches sawn from trees along Skyline Drive.
He skirted the line of greenery, stepping off the curb
into the street; but the fragrance of balsam and
boxwood dogged him, along with the sound of
pleading children, the faint thrum of a church organ
and an unsteady soprano struggling with "O Holy
Night."

"God damn it," whispered Brendan through
chattering teeth. He spoke aloud, as much to drown
the music of the world in his ears, as to protest the
cold. But it was so cold, and the expectant world
was so tightly wrapped around him that he kept it
up the whole way home, the mean rigorous chant
rising and falling as he scurried across streets and
past driveways packed with cars, kicking at
mysterious boxes that had already disgorged their
secrets to garages and attics, jostling passers-by
who unwisely wished him Merry or Happy, his head
down and eyes fixed on nothing but the grey
ice-scummed sidewalk before him. "God damn, god
damn …"
Finally he reached the corner of Seventh and
Maryland. For a long moment he stood there,
heedless of his neighbors hurrying past, and stared
at the defiantly barren windows of his rowhouse
apartment. There were no lights there; no spangled
promise of a tree within; no fake plastic candles; no
Menorahs or Kwaanza candles. No wreath on the
door; just a red paper flyer from the Capitol Hill
Food bank—

SORRY WE MISSED YOU! WE ARE STILL
ACCEPTING DONATIONS OF CANNED GOODS FOR
OUR HOLIDAY HUNGER DRIVE, PLEASE DROP OFF
AT—

He tore it down, crumpled it and tossed it onto the
steps behind him; then went inside.

The apartment was silent. All was calm, all was
bright. Actually, all was an incredible mess.

"What the—?"

Brendan frowned, putting down his briefcase and
surveying the living room. The TV was on:
scampering reindeer, an elf. He switched it off,
turned to survey the galaxy of spilled popcorn
sweeping from wall to wall, mingled with cracker
crumbs and an apple core, an empty juice box,
videotapes. There were shreds of newsprint
everywhere, a trail of apple juice leading to the
kitchen, and smudges of white powder on the
carpet.

And where the fuck was Tony? Brendan could feel
the rage knotted inside him starting to uncoil, a slow
serpent suddenly awakened. "Peter?" he called.
"Tony?"

"In here, dude—we're in the bathroom—"

Brendan shook his head, then lowered himself into a
crouch. He dabbed a finger in the white stuff on the
floor, brought it to his mouth and hesitantly touched
it to his lips.

"Blech." He grimaced, standing. Well, at least it
wasn't cocaine. Or heroin. "Tony—?"

He found him in the bathroom leaning against the
tub in a white-streaked RAW POWER T-shirt. Peter
sat on the toilet, pants around his ankles, nuzzling
his rubber duck and humming to himself.

"Hey, Brenda." Tony lifted his head and smiled
weakly. For an instant Brendan thought he'd
apologize for the mess, but no, he was just tired.
"Jeez Louise, I'm glad to see you. We—"

"What the fuck is going on?" Brendan stared at him,
his eyes too bright, his hands white and raw from
the sleet outside.

"Huh?"

" 'Huh' nothing. What's this mess? The whole place
is a goddam mess—" He moved his hand, too
quickly, to point to the living room, and bashed it
into the door. "Ow—god damn it—"

"Hey, man—" Tony glanced uneasily at Peter, then at
Brendan. "Take it easy, he's had kind of a rough
day, like—"

"Oh yeah? Well, I've had kind of a rough week. I've
had kind of a rough fucking life—"

"Hey, whoa! C'mon, man, you're too loud, you'll
scare him, Peggy said—"

"The fuck what Peggy says. What is this goddam
mess?"

He stepped forward and grabbed the shower rod.
His entire body shook. In his hand the plastic rod
bent, then snapped, and the curtain flopped down
around Tony's head.

"Whoa, man, who's making the mess now? Jeez,
Brendan! I was just—"

He smashed the curtain aside, grabbed for Tony's
shoulder; but before he could touch it Tony's hand
curled around his.

"Brendan," said Tony, softly but urgently. Tony's
grip was tight, his hand bigger than Brendan's and
his grasp, Brendan realized with a small shock, far
stronger than his own. "Calm down, man, I'll clean it
up! But he wouldn't eat anything, I tried all day until
finally he, like, ate a whole gallon of popcorn and I
think he got a stomach ache. That's what we're
dealing with now."

Behind him, Brendan could hear a low nhhhh nhhhh
nhhhhh. Tony nodded, tipping his head toward
Peter; then gazed back at Brendan. His brown eyes
were not puzzled so much as they were utterly
without comprehension. He stared down at
Brendan's hand, gripped in his own like some
remnant of a life-size toy, and abruptly let it fall. He
shook his head. "Hey, man—it's Christmas."

Brendan stared back at him; past him, at his own
shadow on the shiny white tiles of the shower stall.
By some trick of the overhead light Tony's shadow
dwarfed his, but when Tony turned away Brendan's
shadow sprang back up, filling the empty space and
the corners of the ceiling. He swallowed, the inside of
his mouth tasting sour and chalky, his lips aching
and chapped from the cold. "Get out," he said. It
hurt to talk, it hurt to say that but he turned,
bending to put his hand gently on Peter's shoulder
where he sat. "Get out."

"But." Tony watched as his friend gazed down at his
son. Without looking at his father, the boy twisted,
trying to slip from Brendan's touch. After a moment
Brendan let go of him, and Peter began to cry. Tony
bit his lip, then turned away.

"Okay," he said quietly.

"Thank you." Brendan remained standing above the
child. Like Tony's shadow moments before, his son
seemed to shrink. Brendan shivered, a wave of
dizziness flooding him; then steadied himself by
grabbing the back of the toilet. The dizziness
passed; his anger hardened, grew small and cold
and compact, a stone he swallowed, just one of
thousands. He blinked, feeling granite in his chest, a
deadening behind his eyes. His child was crying, and
he reached for him automatically but knowing he
would not give him comfort, could not, not ever.
Tony was gone, there was the sound of a door
closing and once more Brendan was helping Peter,
cleaning him and dressing him and waiting for the
boy to follow him from the bathroom back into the
kitchen. It was a night like any other, cold, dark,
sleet slashing the windows and the curtains drawn
against what was outside, the apartment silent, the
sounds of song and voices muffled by the steady
dull pounding of his heart. He cleaned the living
room; Peter stood and watched him from the sides
of his eyes but his father did not see him, did not
seem to know he was there. When he was finished
he dumped the dustpan full of grit and flour and
popcorn into the trash, then started on the kitchen,
wiping up spilled juice and more kernels and fishing
an uneaten apple from beneath the table. He
straightened, his hair still damp and unkempt from
the walk home, and gazed across the room at the
child leaning against the wall: his fist curled against
his cheek, the yellow rubber duck with its gnawed
head resting against his chin.

"Peter," he said. A moment; the boy shook his head,
once, his gaze oblique, fixed on a tendril of dust
hanging from the side of the refrigerator. "Peter. I'm
sorry. I'm sorry, Peter.…"

No reply.

He put him to bed. There was no fight over changing
his clothes, because Brendan didn't change them;
just slid the purple socks from his son's feet and
pulled the blankets over him. Peter kicked them off.
Brendan pulled them up again, but when the boy
began to thrash he moved aside, letting the blankets
fall to the floor.

"You'll be cold," he said. His eyes stung. He reached
and turned off the small bedside lamp, Hickory
Dickory Dock, and closed his eyes, waiting for the
tears to pass. When he opened them he saw the
small rigid figure of his son, lying on his back with
his head slightly turned away. He was staring at the
ceiling, moving the rubber duck back and forth
across his lips. "Goodnight, Peter," Brendan
whispered. He leaned down and kissed his son's
forehead, let his hand light upon the child's cheek,
cool and smooth as a pillowcase. "Goodnight."

He started for bed, but in the hallway he paused,
listening. He could hear a faint ringing music, and at
first thought a radio had been left on somewhere.
Then he noticed the thread of light beneath Tony's
closed door. He had not left, after all. Brendan took
the few steps towards the door, stopped. The music
continued, still faint but loud enough that he could
make out the chiming chords, sweet and familiar as
church bells, and the low, almost whispered sound
of Tony singing, his nasal voice hoarser now but still
that voice you would never mistake for any another,
still that song—

I know that you remember

How we made our mark

Oh we had a great time

Down at Tibbets Park …

Brendan blinked. He remembered the first time he'd
heard it, not at the Maronis' legendary first show at
the Coventry in Queens but years earlier when they
were all still kids, him and Tony and Kevin, practicing
in Brendan's basement. He'd had a little snare drum
set, bright red with that weird metallic finish, and
Kevin had some cheap Sears guitar. Only Tony had a
real instrument, a Mosrite that he could barely hold,
let alone play. The guitar was a going-away present
from his older cousin; the going-away part had been
to Viet Nam, and the cousin had not come back.
Tony had saved up and bought a small amp, and
he'd stuck knitting needles into the front of it, so
that it would sound like a fuzztone. He'd made up
the song one winter afternoon when they'd all been
sitting around watching The Three Stooges and
Officer Joe Bolton, trying to learn the chords to
"Pleasant Valley Sunday" during the commercials.
Finally Tony leaned over and kicked at the little
Kenmore Lift N'Play Record Player, sending the
Monkees 45 flying, and started to sing.

Hey hey, whoa whoa whoa

Gonna tell you now

Where I wanna go

Running with my friends

Playing in the dark

Gonna have a good time

Down in Tibbets Park!

"That's retarded," Kevin shouted over the din of
Tony's Mosrite. "That's the stupidest song I ever—"

It had ended in a scuffle, as usual, Brendan breaking
things up even though he secretly agreed with
Kevin. But now …

Now it made him cry. Without a sound, one hand
pressed against the wall with such force that his
wrist grew numb but he just stood there, listening.
The song ran on and the darkness grew complete,
he could see nothing before him but a blurred tunnel
and, very far away, a gauzy gleam of red and green.
The joke had always been that Tony knew only three
chords but he had them down straight; yet now
when he finished the one song he began another.
Strumming the slow somber chords, his voice
cracking as he stumbled over the words even as
Brendan struggled to recall the song's name.

Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child,

By by, lully lullay.

How may we do

For to preserve this day

This poor youngling

For whom we do sing,

By by, lully lullay?

"Ah, shit," Brendan whispered. The "Coventry Carol"
…

He drew his hands to his face. They had learned it in
third grade, for Midnight Mass at Sacred Heart. Now
Tony was still trying to sing the boy soprano's part,
his falsetto breaking into a wan croak at the chorus.

Herod the king,

In his raging

Charged he hath this day

His men of might

In his own sight

All young children to slay.

That woe is me,
Poor child for thee

And ever mourn and may

For thy parting

Neither say nor sing

By by, lully lullay …

He could not bear it. He fled down the hall, knocking
over a side table and stumbling into his bedroom.
The door slammed shut behind him. The lights were
already off. He yanked down the shades, shoving
them against the window so that no light would get
in and then turning to fling himself onto his bed. He
groaned, kicking his shoes off and throwing his suit
jacket onto the floor, burrowed under the covers
and pressed his hands against his ears the way he
did during airplane takeoff, trying to drown out the
roar of engines, the implicit threat in any flight. Still
the phantom lights pulsed behind his eyelids. A
child's hand moved monotonously back and forth,
back and forth, tracing the pattern of a solitary
dance upon his lips. And a boy's high clear voice
lifted, impossibly sweet and far away, welcoming the
first arrivals to Midnight Mass.

He woke, hours later it seemed. It was a minute
before he remembered where he was—the shock of
being in his own bed with his clothes on but sober,
no remnant of a hangover. It was dark; he recalled
that it was Christmas Eve. With a subdued sort of
dread he realized that it might even be Christmas
Day. For some minutes he lay there, gazing blankly
at the ceiling. Now and then he wondered if he
actually was staring at the ceiling—it was so dark,
the room devoid of anything that might delineate
between the abyss behind his eyes and that which
awaited him when he rose.

Which, at last, he did. His limbs felt heavy; his arms,
when he sat up and rested them at the edge of the
mattress, seemed swollen and cold to the point of
numbness. But he had to get up: the thought of
lying in bed suddenly filled him with an unease that
was close to horror. Because if he was at last able to
feel nothing, even on this night—especially on this
night—he might as well be dead, he knew that. He
might indeed be dead, and unaware. It was this
awful thought, unbidden by the customary sirens of
alcohol and rage, that spurred him to his feet, and
out into the hall.

Immediately he felt better. The apartment was
empty and mundane as ever: no leaking ceiling, no
damp footprints on the bare wood floor, no disorder
in the few photographs of himself and Peter and Teri
in happier days hanging on the wall. He walked
slowly, with each step feeling himself grow stronger
and more fully awake. He must have had a
nightmare, though he could not remember it, and
very purposefully he made no effort to. He stopped
and peeked into Peter's room. His son was on his
side, sound asleep, his mouth parted and hand
cupped before his face. His hand was empty. The
beloved yellow duck lay on the floor beneath.
Brendan walked in silently and picked it up, placed it
gently back into the child's grasp. Peter's fingers
curled around it and he sighed, deeply; then
breathed as before. Brendan stiffened, feeling
stones shift within his chest: he had bought no
presents for his son this year, not one. Cruel
reassurance sprang up immediately—Peter would not
notice, he never had—and before grief or sadness
could claw at him Brendan hurried back into the hall,
closing the door behind him.

The door to Tony's room was shut, too. There was
no light showing beneath it, and for a moment
Brendan thought of looking inside, to check on his
friend. Then he thought of what he might see. What
if Tony actually did sleep in his leather jacket? Or
worse, in a Maronis T-shirt?

Instead he felt his way through the dim hall to the
kitchen. He was fumbling for the light switch when
he noticed the blinking light on the answering
machine. He touched it and played back a single
message, from Teri. She had arrived safely though
her flight was four hours late, she was completely
exhausted, she was going right to bed, she'd see
them in the morning. I love you Peter. Merry
Christmas.

"I forgot to tell you, she called."

Brendan started, cracking his head on a cabinet.
"Ouch! Jesus Christ, you scared me!" He rubbed his
head, wincing. "Tony? Where the hell are you?"
"Sorry, man. Actually, you were here when she
called, but I guess you were asleep, or something …"

Tony's voice trailed off awkwardly. Blinking, Brendan
made his way warily through the kitchen, until he
could just make out Tony's lanky form on the edge
of the couch. The glowing numerals on the kitchen
clock showed 12:17. In the darkened living room the
TV was on, its screen empty of anything but hissing
grey static. Tony had his hands on his knees,
angular shoulders hunched as he gazed at the
television. He didn't look up when Brendan came in
to stand next to him.

"Tony? What are you doing?"

Tony continued to stare at the screen. Finally: "Just
checking to see what's on," he said.

Brendan glanced from the TV to his friend,
wondering if this were a joke. Tony's expression was
intent, almost fierce: apparently not. "Tony. You
know what? It doesn't look like anything is on."

Tony nodded. He turned to gaze up at Brendan. "I
know." He smiled sadly, then slid over on the couch,
patting the cushion beside him. "C'mon in and set a
spell, pardner."

Brendan did. There were bits of popcorn on the
sofa; he brushed them aside, leaning back and
sighing. Tony continued to stare at the screen. After
a moment he reached over, absently picked up a
handful of the popcorn and ate it. "What time is it?"

"Midnight. A little past."

"Huh." Tony sat quietly for a while longer. Finally,
"Well, Merry Christmas," he said.

Brendan hesitated. Then, "Merry Christmas, Tony."

Tony nodded but said nothing. Brendan squinted,
staring at the television and trying to determine if he
was missing something. "Do you want me to, like,
change the channel?"

"No. Well, not yet."

Brendan waited. He thought of calling Teri, weighing
up the peril of waking her against the notion of his
sincerely apologizing for—well, everything. I'm sorry
I'm such an asshole, sorry I was such a bad
husband, lousy father, shitty lawyer, mean
middle-aged baby boom critter who sneers at street
people and doesn't recycle. I'm not making any
promises. I'm just sorry. That's all.

"Tony?"

"Mmm?"

"I'm sorry."

"Huh?" Tony turned, startled. "What?"

"For being such an asshole. I'm sorry. For
everything."

"Well, jeez. It's okay." Tony shrugged. "Hey, you
weren't such an asshole. I mean, not always, at
least."

Brendan looked at him hopefully. "What do you
mean, not always?"

"Well, like, not for the entire last twenty years."
Tony turned away again, brow furrowed as he stared
at the hissing set. Suddenly he relaxed, all the lines
of his face smoothing as he let his breath out.

"There," he said softly. "Look."

Brendan looked. On the television there was a test
pattern, something he hadn't seen for twenty years,
at least. Black-and-white and grey, the familiar
bull's-eye pattern with large black numerals counting
down in the middle.

-10-

"Hey," he said, pointing.

-9-

-8-

"—that's really weird, it's a test—"

-3-

-2-
-1-

The screen cleared. Instead of the ancient Atomic
Era Mondrian of numbers and circles, there was now
a fireplace. A big fireplace, black-and-white and filled
with black-and-white flames, holding a heap of
crackling black-and-white logs with white glowing
embers beneath. Superimposed on it was a circle
with the letters WPIX-NYC written inside.

"Whoa," whispered Brendan in awe. "It's the Yule
Log."

Tony could only nod. His eyes were huge and round,
his open mouth another cartoon O. The crackling of
the logs faded in and out of the crackling of the TV.
Brendan's mouth hung open, too, but before he
could say anything a man's voice echoed from the
screen.

"Broadcasting from Gracie Mansion, home of the
Mayor of New York City, where we are bringing you
our viewers the Christmas Yule Log."

An instant of silence. Then music swelled to fill the
room. The 1,001 Strings, "The First Noel." Tony and
Brendan turned to each, gaping; and began to
laugh.

"It is the Yule Log!" Tony's hair whirled around his
face as he bounced up and down on the couch. "And
listen!"

"The First Noel" segued into "Jingle Bell Rock." The
fire crackled, the music swelled; a section of the yule
log broke and fell onto the hearth. The screen went
slightly jerky, and there was the same log—but
unbroken now, the tape loop had begun again—still
burning merrily in black-and-white.

"—that's the Jackie Gleason Orchestra!"

They listened, to the Carol of the Bells and the
Vienna Choir Boys, the Hollywood Strings and Guy
Lombardo. All that soupy stuff you never heard
anymore, except as a joke, maybe, or archived on
some ToonTown Web site. The tape loop of the yule
log played and replayed, interrupted now and then
by the same ponderous announcement.
"From Gracie Mansion …"

Brendan felt as though he were dreaming; knew at
least once that he was dreaming, because he woke,
not with a start but with eyes opening slowly,
sleepily, to monochrome flames and the back of
Tony's leather jacket, Tony's hair the same
silver-grey as the screen, his cracked marionette's
face silhouetted against the little bright rectangle in
the front of the room.

Then, abruptly, there was silence. The television
went black, scribbled with a few white lines. Brendan
sat up and frowned. "What's the matter? It's over?"

"Shhh," hissed Tony. A moment when they were
both balanced at the edge of the sofa, staring
intently at an empty screen.

And suddenly it went white; then grey; then white
again. The grainy photographed image of a man's
face appeared, his eyes wide and surprised, his
mouth a perfect circle. A Santa Claus hat was
superimposed on his head. As Brendan stared, black
letters danced across the screen and the first bars
of peppy music sounded.

C

C
H

H
I

R
P

I


S
C

T
R

M
O

A
C

S
K


E

C
T

A
T

R
'

O
S

L


!


"Holy shit," whispered Brendan. He didn't even feel
Tony's hand clutching at his. "It's on."

The words faded. The screen showed a small
black-and-white stage, made up to look like a
bedroom. A potato-nosed puppet in a long white
nightshirt and nightcap stood in front of an open
cardboard window, papier-mâché hands clasping a
rock.

"Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, ha ha ha!" the
puppet shouted, and flung the rock out. Silence;
then the crash of broken glass and a scream.
"Humbug!" shouted the puppet gleefully. It bopped
across the stage, picking up more rocks and
throwing them.

"It's Ooga Booga!" cried Brendan.

"Scrooga Booga," said Tony. "Shhh …"

Brendan started to shhh him back, but a sound
distracted him. He turned and saw Peter standing in
the doorway, staring at the TV.
"Oh, jeez—poor Peter. We woke you—" Brendan
stood, without thinking swept over and scooped up
the boy. "Shoot, I'm sorry. But it's okay, honey,
come on, come in and watch with us …"

For once Peter didn't fight; only gazed at the screen.
When his father sat back down on the couch the
boy slid from his grasp to the floor, scooching a few
inches away and then sitting bolt upright, watching.

"See?" exclaimed Brendan as the puppet tossed a
final rock onto an unseen passer-by. "See? There's
Ooga Booga, see? Ooga Booga. He's a real grouch.
Just like your dad." He glanced over at Tony. "Fuckin'
A," he said, and laughed.

"Shhh!" said Tony. "Watch."

They watched, Tony and Brendan leaning so far over
it was a wonder they didn't plummet, face-first, like
one of the puppets onto the floor. Peter sat at their
feet, silent, now and then shaking his head and
looking sideways, the yellow rubber duck pressed
against his chin. Onscreen the old old story played
out with a few additions—Ratnik in the role of
Christmas Past, and of course, Chip himself doing
Ogden Orff as Bob Crockett. Brendan whooped,
grabbing Tony's knee and punching his shoulder,
laughing so hard his eyes burned and his throat
hurt. Ogden Orff decorated a tree with cake frosting.
Officer Joe Bolton made a surprise cameo
appearance as Jacob Marley and Scrooga Booga hit
him in the head with a flashlight. There were
commercials for Bosco and Hostess Cream-Filled
Cupcakes. Captain Dingbat appeared as the Ghost
of Christmas Yet to Come, accompanied by a chorus
of dancing, chanting finger-puppets.

Don't be a meanie,

Show us your bikini!

And at the end, all of them were onstage together,
miraculously—Ratnik and Ooga Booga and the other
puppets, Ogden Orff breaking character to become
Chip Crockett laughing over some invisible
technician's backstage antics, a boom mike hovering
over Chip's head and fake snow falling, first in tiny
flakes, then in handfuls and finally in huge clumps,
until the entire soundstage was adrift with it.
"Merry Christmas!" shouted Chip Crockett, as the
closing music began to play. "Merry Christmas, and
God help us, everyone!"

Brendan and Tony roared. Peter bounced up and
down. When the screen went black he began to cry.

"Oh honey, don't cry, don't cry—it's okay, Peter,
look, there's the Yule Log—"

Brendan pointed, bending down to take Peter's
shoulders and gently pulling him round to see. "It's
okay. It's—it will be on again," he said, then
swallowed. He looked over at Tony, who was
watching him. Tony shrugged, gazed down at the
floor and then at the TV.

"Yeah. Well, maybe," he said. For a moment he
looked immeasurably sad. Then he hunched his
shoulders, his leather jacket slipping forward a little,
and smiled. "But hey. We got to see it. Right? I
mean, it was on."

Brendan nodded. "It was on," he said. He smiled,
bent forward until his face was inches above his
son's head. He shut his eyes, moved his mouth in a
silent kiss and felt the brush of Peter's hair against
his lips. "It was great."

"And it even lasted more than three minutes!" said
Tony.

Brendan felt his heart lurch. He shut his eyes, feeling
the fire burning there, black-and-white; opened
them and saw the room again, his son's yellow duck,
the soft auburn cloud of his curls, Tony's grey hair
and the ragged black cuff of his jacket. Onscreen a
yule log crackled. "That's right," he whispered
hoarsely, and reached to touch his friend's hand. "It
even lasted more than three minutes."



He had no idea when he fell asleep. When they all fell
asleep, Brendan and Tony on the couch, Peter curled
on the floor at his father's feet. But when he finally
woke the sun was shining, the windows slick and
brilliant with frost flowers and ice, the floor speckled
with bits of popcorn he'd missed the night before.
He moved slowly, groaning. Beside him Tony lay
slumped and snoring softly, his mouth ajar and a
strand of hair caught on his lower lip. In front of
them the TV was on, Regis and Kathie Lee wearing
red hats and laughing. Brendan reached over and
switched it off. On the floor Peter stirred, sat up and
looked around, surprised; then began to whine
wordlessly.

"All right, hang on a minute. What time is it? Oh,
jeez—"

Brendan turned and shook Tony. "Tony, hey
Tony—we got to get up. If you want to go to Teri's
with us, we have to go, it's past nine."

"Go?" Tony blinked and sat up, stretched, moaning.
"Aw, man, it's so early."

"Well, it's Christmas. And it's nine-fifteen, so it's
late. Teri's going to kill me, come on come on come
on …"

He unearthed Peter's knapsack, tore through it until
he found a red-and-green sweater and bright red
corduroy pants. Peter's whining turned to shrieks
when his father started dressing him, but Brendan
only shook his head and pulled off the boy's T-shirt
and pants, pulled on the clean clothes and then
started on the socks and shoes. Tony stumbled
past, rubbing his eyes, and disappeared into his
room. A few minutes later he reappeared, hair
dishevelled and a bulky plastic bag tucked under one
arm.

"Aren't you going to change?" asked Brendan,
yanking on one of Peter's sneakers.

Tony frowned. "I did change." He pulled open the
front of his leather jacket to display a black t-shirt
and faded black jeans. "See?"

"Right. Well, do me a favor, sit with him for a minute
so I can get changed."

"Sure, man. C'mere, Petie. Did you like watching Chip
Crockett? Yeah, he was pretty good, huh! Did you
see Ooga Booga? Huh? Good ol' Ooga Booga …"

Brendan dressed quickly. He shaved, forgoing a
shower, then raced back into the kitchen. For a
moment he stood gazing longingly at the coffee
machine, but finally turned, gathered up his keys
and overcoat, and headed for the door.

"Grab his coat, will you, Tony? You don't need to
put it on him, just bring it, and his knapsack and
that other stuff—"

Tony got Peter's things, and Brendan got Peter.
"Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas," Brendan said,
hurrying outside and holding the door for Tony.
"C'mon, put a spin on it, Tony!"

"Consider it spun, man," Tony yelled. He jumped
down the steps to the sidewalk. "Ooof &3133;"

They headed for the car, Peter digging his heels into
the sidewalk and starting to cry, Brendan pulling him
after him. "We're going to see Mommy," he said
desperately, as a family in their Yuletide best hurried
past him, on the way to church. "Come on, Peter,
we'll be late—"

At last they were all in the car. Peter was strapped
safely in his carseat, Tony was hanging out his open
window, waving.

"Merry Christmas!" he called as another family
walked past. The parents smiled and waved back,
the children shouted Merry Christmas. "That's a
beautiful coat, ma'am, Santa bring you that?"

The woman laughed and did a little pirouette on the
sidewalk, showing off a bright red duster. "You bet!"
she cried.

"Get your arm in, Tony, before it gets cut off," yelled
Brendan as the engine roared. He backed up and did
an illegal U-turn, and started for Teri's house.

"Hey, look at Dave the Grave!" Tony waved furiously.
"Dave, my man! Nice lid!"

On his park bench, Dave the Grave sat with a bottle
in his lap. As they drove by he doffed a
green-and-red-checked fedora. "Whoa Whoa!" he
cried. His dog yelped and jumped onto his lap, and
Dave pushed him down again. "Murr' Curssmuss,
mrr' crussmuss—!"

Brendan smiled in spite of himself. The sun was so
bright his eyes hurt, and he drove a little too fast,
running a red light. He no longer felt like apologizing
to Teri—that would just scare her, probably—but he
felt quiet, almost peaceful. Well, not peaceful, really,
but resigned, and somehow satisfied. It wouldn't
last, he knew that. Terrible things would happen and
just plain bad ones, and most of all the relentless
downward toboggan run of his own life as a
just-good-enough father and barely tolerable
ex-husband. But for now at least the sun was
shining and the road crews had somehow managed
not to totally screw up holiday traffic. His
developmentally challenged child was in the backseat,
chewing on a yellow rubber duck, and his oldest
friend, the village idiot, was leaning out the window
and startling churchgoers as they passed the
National Cathedral.

And, somehow, this was all okay. Somehow it was all
good, or at least good enough. Later he knew it
would be different; but for now it was enough.

They arrived at Teri's house a little after ten. Kevin
and Eileen's red Range Rover was parked in the
driveway, and a car Kevin didn't recognize, an
ancient Volvo sedan with a rusting undercarriage
held together by virtue of about thirty-five different
liberal Wiccan feminist No Nukes bumper stickers.

"Whose car is that?" asked Tony.

"I have no idea." Brendan pulled in behind it, crossly,
because now the end of his car was sticking out into
the cul-de-sac. "But maybe as a Christmas present
you can teach them how to park."

He got out, and there on the doorstep was Teri,
pale, her eyes shadowed, but smiling in a short black
dress with the crimson cloisonne necklace he'd given
her their first Christmas together.

"Peter!" she cried, and ran to greet them. "Brendan,
hi, hi. Tony. Merry Christmas!"

Brendan hugged her stiffly, drew back and smiled.
"Merry Christmas, Teri." He turned and helped her
open the back door of the car. "Here's your
present—"

He reached in for Peter. Teri waited until Brendan set
the boy on the driveway, then stooped to hug him.
"Peter! I missed you!" She looked up at Brendan and
smiled again. "It's just what I wanted."
Peter slipped from her grasp and ran up the drive to
the house. Brendan looked after him and saw Kevin
and Eileen in the doorway, beside the twins in their
Diane Arbus Christmas dresses. "Hi," he said, and
waved.

"Merry Christmas!" shouted Tony. He reached back
in the car for his plastic bag. "Hiya, goils!"

On the steps, the twins separated to let Peter pass.
Another face appeared above theirs, masses of
chestnut hair spilling from beneath a long green ski
hat. "Hi, guys!"

"Peggy?" Tony gaped, then whirled towards Teri.

"I called Peggy to check on things after you picked
Peter up Tuesday," she explained, smiling. "And she
said she wasn't doing anything. So I got all the
Christmas orphans." She glanced at Brendan. "That
okay with you?"

Brendan shrugged. "Sure. Well, it'll be a very Maroni
Christmas, I guess, huh Tony?"

But Tony was already loping towards the house.

"Brendan. Come on in," said Teri. She stared at the
snow-glazed lawn, then looked up at him. "Thanks
for dropping him off."

"Oh. Well, I thought I'd stay," Brendan said
awkwardly. "Just for a little while. If you don't mind."

Teri continued to stare at the grass, finally nodded.
"Sure. Sure, of course." She smiled. "That would be
really good for Peter. For everyone, I think."

They walked inside. Eileen greeted Brendan at the
door, enveloping him in yards of velvet and lace and
perfume and hugging him as though it were her
house. "Brendan! And you brought Tony!"

"Oh well, you know. Wouldn't be Christmas without
Tony Maroni."

He smiled; his face was starting to hurt from smiling.
Beside Eileen, Kevin stood in a tweed suit and tie
with a blinking Rudolph on it. He was clapping Tony
on the back.
"Get a damn tie, Tony, don't you own a tie?" he
bellowed, then flopped his own tie in Brendan's face.
"Merry Christmas, cuz! Check out the eggnog—"

"Eggbeaters," said Eileen, nodding. "Totally fat-tree
and no cholesterol, Eggbeaters, Olestra, sugar
substitute—"

Kevin made a retching sound. Brendan laughed. He
stepped into the room, shading his eyes as he
looked for Peter. He sighted him off by himself near
the TV. It was on but the sound had been turned
off. Peter stared at it, puzzled, then slapped the
screen gently with his palm.

"The place looks nice, Teri," Brendan said as Teri
passed him, heading for their son.

"Thanks." She stopped and pointed to the small
artificial tree by a window. Dark green, its branches
slightly furred to resemble, very fleetingly, real
evergreens. A handful of green plastic Christmas
balls hung from its branches, and there was an
enormous pile of presents beneath. "Peggy said
maybe we might try a tree again. A little one. And of
course I got him too much stuff."

She sighed, then bit her lip, watching Peter as he
once again pressed his hand against the mute TV
screen. "Do you think he'll be okay with it?"

"He doesn't seem to have noticed."

"So maybe that's good?"

"Maybe."

They joined the others in the living room. The twins
darted between grownups, sharing details of
presents already received and glancing around
hopefully for new ones. Brendan sampled Eileen's
ersatz eggnog.

"Is that good?" asked Peggy. She was wearing a
long shapeless wool dress, wooden clogs and a very
large button that was rusting around the edges. The
button had an old black-and-white picture of Tony's
face on it, and the words HOORAY HELLO WHOA
WHOA WHOA!
"No," said Brendan. He discreetly put his cup on a
table and turned back to her. "Wow. A real Tony
Maroni button," he said, tracing its edges with a
finger. "That's, like, a genuine antique."

Behind her Tony appeared, still holding his plastic
bag and balancing two crystal cups brimming with
eggnog.

"Here, try this, it's great," he said, handing one to
Peggy. "I don't know how Eileen does it."

"Jet fuel," whispered Kevin as he passed them on
the way to the kitchen.

"Well, Peggy." Brendan cleared his throat and looked
at Tony. He had an arm draped around Peggy's
shoulder, and his long grey hair was wisping into her
face. "I guess we'll have to have you over soon. So
you can check out Tony's pad."

Tony shook his head. "Hey, no." He smiled at Peggy,
then looked apologetically at Brendan. "I, like, totally
forgot to tell you—"

He shifted, careful to keep his arm around Peggy,
careful not to lose the plastic bag still in his hand;
and in a complicated manuever dug into his back
pocket. "I got this. That letter you gave me the
other day?"

He held a crumpled envelope up for Brendan and
Peggy to see. The return address was from a law
firm in Century City. "From, like, this attorney. A guy
Marty hired?" Tony paused, breathing slightly fast,
then went on. "They settled. We settled. Out of
court."

Brendan looked at him blankly. "You what?"

"The law suit. Our catalog, all those royalties. We're
getting a settlement."

"You're kidding!" Peggy turned to stare up at him.
"You—"

"Yeah, really." Tony looked at Brendan and
shrugged, then grinned. "Amazing, huh?"

Brendan just stared at him. Finally he said, "That's
incredible. I mean, that's fantastic. Tony!"
He grabbed him by the front of his leather jacket
and pulled him forward, until their heads cracked
together. "Ow!" yelped Tony.

"How much, what'd they give you—?"

"A ton. I mean, there's Dickie's ex, she's got his
kids, and the other guys who're left, but—"

Tony looked down at Peggy. "I can definitely get my
own place." He started to laugh. "I can get thirteen
places—"

"Tony! Omigod, that's incredible, that's just so
incredible—"

Peggy hugged him, and Brendan turned away. In the
kitchen, Eileen was helping Teri get things out of the
refrigerator. Kevin and the twins were lugging
shopping bags full of presents from the foyer into
the living room. Peter was still standing by the silent
television, frowning, his hands at his sides.

"Peter?"

Brendan started towards him, then thought better
of it. Peter was being quiet. This was Teri's house.
Instead, Brendan turned and walked slowly over to
the artificial Christmas tree. It smelled strongly of
pine car deodorizer. He reached out to touch one of
the plastic ornaments; then craned his neck and
squinted, peering into the heart of the tree. There
was no magic there, no hand-carved Santas or
meticulously hidden lights; only neat rows of
microfiber branches like dark-green spokes, rising to
a point.

"Some tree," he murmured. Suddenly he felt
exhausted. His head ached; he thought of
everything that had happened last night, and how
he hadn't gotten much sleep. No matter how you
factored it all in, he was tired.

And sad. Behind him he could hear the twins
giggling, the crumple of paper and Kevin scolding
one of them.

"Not yet! And anyhow, those aren't for you, those
are for Peter --"
"Peter!" Tony's voice cut through the chatter; as
from a great distance Brendan could hear him
stomping across the room. "Peter, I almost forgot, I
brought you something. Look, Uncle Tony brought
you a present …"

Brendan sighed and drew a hand over his eyes.
There was a rustling, the girls' voices squealing;
then sudden quiet.

"What is it?" said Cara.

Brendan took the end of one of the tree's branches
and pinched it. The whole thing started to pitch
towards him and he let go, so that it settled softly
back in place. He was dimly aware that the room
behind him was still silent. Then:

"Tony." Eileen's voice cracked. "What—where'd you
get it?"

"I made it."

"You made it?"

"Sure. I mean, yeah …"

At Brendan's feet something crunched. He looked
down and saw the corner of a present that he'd
stepped on. He closed his eyes, his throat tight. He
hadn't gotten Peter anything, anything at all …

"Deh."

One of the girls touched his elbow. He flinched, took
a deep breath and tried to compose himself. "Yeah,"
he whispered hoarsely. "Yes, I'll be right there—"

"Deh …" The touch came again, insistently. "Deh.
Sss."

Brendan looked down. A bulbous-faced puppet
stared back up at him, black button eyes and
enormous nose, little cloth arms capped by hands
like crudely sewn mittens. Its face was uneven,
bumps and ridges where the papier-mâché had
refused to smooth out, spots where the paint had
globbed together and dried unevenly.

"Deh," the voice came again. A low voice, hoarse, as
the puppet nudged his chest. "Deh—"
It was Peter.

"Deh," he said.

Brendan stared at him, the boy's pale blue eyes
gazing at his father from behind the puppet's head,
for just a fraction of a second. Then Peter looked
away again, back at the puppet in his hand.

"Ssss? Oog buh." The puppet thrust upward into
Brendan's face, so close that he could smell it, flour
and newsprint, tempera paint. "Deh," the boy said,
impatiently. "Oog buh!"

"Peter?" Brendan dropped to his knees, his hands
shaking, his head; all of him. He stared past the
puppet at the boy who held it. "Peter?"

In the room behind him Eileen gasped. The twins
squealed, Kevin made a low sound.

"Peter?" cried Teri. "Did he—?"

"Peter," said Brendan. "Oh, Peter."

The boy glanced away, smiling faintly, and bopped
him with the puppet.

"Oog buh," he said again. "Sss, Deh? Sss?"

"Yes," said Brendan. "Oh yes."

He smiled. Through his tears he saw them all above
him, framed by bits of green plastic greenery and
the flickering outline of the TV screen, Teri and Kevin
and Eileen and the twins in their halos of lace, Peggy
with her hands pressed against her head and beside
her Tony, grinning and nodding, the plastic bag and
torn wrapping paper dangling from his fist; and last
of all his son, still thrusting the puppet at him and
chattering, the sounds so thick they were scarcely
words at all but Brendan knew, he could understand,
suddenly he could see—

"Sss, Deh? Sss?"

"Oh yes, Peter, that's my boy, oh Peter," Brendan
gasped, hugging him and laughing even as he wept
and turned to the rest of his family. "I do see it. I
see you now. I can—I can see it all."
The End


For my children,
and
in memory of Sandy Becker