Christmas morning, 1983.
The world smelled bright, and my fireplace ski sweater was a happy necessity. The temperature was in the 40s. This was an anomaly in hot, hazy Hialeah. But I was not surprised by the luck. It only cemented my faith, my reason. Driving down the crowded, colorful streets, I felt grateful, generous and anxious. A tender joy swirled like an eddy against my better judgment. We were told to come, but I was still agitated in joy. The conflict was exhilarating, my body inclined slightly forward in John’s passenger seat, the hopeful position of natural momentum. It was all so right for the season, so warm in the coolness, so bold in uncertainty.
I kept looking at John, smiling, seeking encouragement without needing it, a certain path welcoming the unknown. He reassured me. He was older and wiser. He was my “second”, should my quest end in a duel. He was my older brother to My World’s older sister, reluctant chaperones, completely unattracted to each other, but always willing to live through the filter of Us. Maybe it gave them hope. And it was the only way they allowed Her out of the house.
I was delivering Christmas presents on a day like no other, a day years in the making. There was a voluntary invitation some weeks before, as if somehow, during my first few months in high school, there was acknowledgement and confirmation that I was worth the trouble, a viable suitor, a possible contender. She wanted to see me on Christmas Day. Nothing else comes close. Weeks of selfless shopping and saving had been devoted to this enterprise. All my busboy tips from Windows, a seafood restaurant on Main Street in Miami Lakes (later to become Shulas’s Steak II), every penny from my paychecks at $2.13 an hour, every minute of every day since early December—all of it exhaustively applied and arduously expended on this lovingly painstaking task.
Both packages, meticulously wrapped, sat on my lap.
New Romantic offerings for a pair of reluctant virgins. The Duran Duran collection, skillfully selected and designed for Big Sister, shined with clear cellophane, purple satin ribbon and fresh publication glossiness—a sleek pictorial biography of the band at its core. For My World, The Police basket arrangement, a task that drew blood, gleamed with shiny buttons, a fresh copy of Synchronicity, and tiny, autographed guitar picks. The basket handle jangled with the delicate pings of a ponderous silver keychain, a metal Cerberean trinket sporting three pewter-blond, attitude-laden charms. They filled me with ghastly satisfaction: I would soon fuel the sisters’ rapacious obsessions and my crippling jealousy. My World’s Sting fetish was way too steamy for my taste, but it was a small price to pay for domestic and emotional admission.
We arrived at their home and walked to the door. Everything looked clean and orderly. We were expected, and care had been taken for the dwelling’s exterior to look presentable. It was a relief, and I rang the door buzzer. Big Sister opened the door and beckoned us to enter. The house smelled of roasted meats and dying flowers. We were served soda and waited patiently for Her entrance.
She entered on a glide, perfumed the air and brightened the room. Her nervous smile came closer, and she planted a lipglossy peck on my inflamed cheek. My base muscles weakened but my chin took it like champ. We looked at each other, shy but famished. We saw no one, nothing else. Our lustrous, stubborn gaze was unbreakable, the tunnel connecting us: an ethereal particle accelerator. I presented them with their gifts. There were cries and tears and countless hugs and cheek kisses. They took their time opening the ornate basket arrangements, their contents, the personally chosen colors, accents and decorative flairs—the thought behind every item and its placement. After some time, we announced that we’d go for a spin around the neighborhood. Loud sounds came for her parents. We ignored her mother and the litany of rules and superstitions. We walked out of the house, every step deliberate but otherworldly. We commandeered the back seat, and there was zero resistance from the others. It would have been futile and maybe dangerous. We drove away expectant, trembling in the cold and fear.
“Merry Christmas Darling” came on the radio.
Karen Carpenter’s delivery on that recording, so beautiful and sad, poignantly marked my present yearning and the unlikely nostalgia of a fifteen-year-old. I first heard this song in the third grade, when Martha, a sixth-grade choral goddess, transfixed me with her honeyed rendition during our 1976 holiday show. Hearing the song always reminded me of my first tender feelings for an unattainable girl, that vestal seraphim impaled with grandeur atop my Christmas tree, eternally out of reach.
My smile underlined a stuffy nose and full eyes, for as the melody worked its taffy, it slowly dawned: I had a shot. Slim and heartbreakingly fragile, but tangible, possible and ready to be pursued. I looked at her. There was a single tear-track down her left cheek. She was looking out of the half-lowered window, smiling so real and true—an angelic trance—smiling at a world that was never big enough to contain us. A band of cold air blew in, thrilling us, blowing its festive chill inside the warmth of incubation. My eyes stayed on her face, sending it all, praying for this thing to live, begging all that mattered to let it. “The lights on my tree, I wish you could see. I wish it every day,” Karen sang. How many nights had I heard this song with her portrait burning in my vulnerable psyche? My hand, palm down, rested by her thigh, only my left pinky making wispy contact. Denim had no effect—a deficient barrier. I felt all of her, everything she was and meant, and all of me, too, in the mystical, static electricity of near-touch.
We drove around for hours, we laughed and talked, and she cried some more. We sang, too. She asked about my favorite Christmas. I told her it was this one—this day, this moment. She didn’t believe me, but I looked into her eyes and restated my truth. Then she believed more than anything. I did mention another Christmas many years ago. It was, without question, the most important and memorable before this day.
I was eight. My big present that year was my first drum kit.
Red sparkle. AYAR, a rare brand. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. And my parents were not fighting. In fact, I’d stayed up the night before, deep into Christmas Eve, wide-awake on the top bunk, listening to the hushed voices, the harmony of purpose, the lost echo of affection, the clinking of ice in my father’s Bacardi, the rustling of paper and muffled shriek of pulling tape, the remnants of love. That made her sad, and I took her hand.
Again, I told her that this day was the one, a Christmas I never thought possible. We gave in then. The front seat disappeared. We lost inhibition and merged, our bodies one in the blazing afternoon sun, bracing against the unlikely cold made only sharper against the white, vinyl backseat of John’s 1979 Pontiac Grand Prix. We held on for dear life, knowing it all already. The beginning, the middle and the end. We held like the strong nuclear force, love physics binding us together—subatomic particles helpless against the laws of nature—keeping the universe from falling apart, even if just for a spell.
