Aunt Dutch was the oldest, a cold, near-psychotic spinster with an oversized bank account ama.s.sed by her dead (luckily for him) husband, who spent her free time hatching att.i.tudes with her submissive shrew of a little sister, Aunt Melody, an alcoholic fool whose singular life achievement had been to bear two children with her oblivious bartender husband, Dad's Uncle Albert. Julia was the oldest. She was an over-educated, fast-talking s.l.u.t, who bounced from companion to companion {always accruing something tangible from the split, like condos, cars, that sort of thing} and career to career {stock broker, photographer, tennis pro, teacher, consultant, and who the h.e.l.l knows what else}, while little Matt was an untalented ex-college jock and failed National Hockey League forward, who trailed along behind his sister, landing jobs and insider scams in her peripatetic wake.) Which brings us to the baby hydra, dear Aunt Hilly, a brittle, ruthless personality with a good intellect and a better mean streak, two qualities she used to dominate the emotionally-trodden lives of her husband, George, an inept tradesman, and her once-handsome son, Lawrence, the big fish mayor of the little upscale suburban pond we all fled to from our old neighborhood in the city.

Ah, Christmas Eve. Wake me when it's over.

Our entire day had been strung like piano wire. Dad stayed in his room and continued to pack his clothes and belongings, Mom stayed downstairs and decorated our huge artificial tree, and I entertained the household with a particularly bombastic collection of orchestral greats, carefully selected from my Thanksgiving buying spree. We all ignored the fact that the sun would eventually go down, our vampire relatives would rise from their graves, and we would be off to Aunt Hilly's lair, an oversized, faux-antebellum home for our family's Christmas Eve masque.

I was glad Aunt Hilly drew the short stick that year, though. She was the only good cook I was related to, and had a stern, unyielding air about her that I kind of liked. Oh, she was a vile b.i.t.c.h, through and through, but Aunt Hilly always let me get away with murder when I was a younger brat (something she never did for the rest of her nieces and nephews), while I enjoyed watching the rest of the family scatter like pigeons when she came into a room.

(I think it was my tenth birthday, when I eavesdropped and heard Aunt Hilly tell Uncle George she thought Dad was a bully and a shyster, Mom was a horses.h.i.t cook and housekeeper, Uncle Alex was a pretentious, flaky wannabe artist, and I was the only good thing left out of her dead sister's family. Well, Dad still was, Mom always had been, but Uncle Alex wasn't a wannabe anything. That was his problem. I think the real reason Aunt Hilly liked me because I wasn't afraid of her.) I hadn't seen my Uncle since last year. I wondered if he had hooked up with another wife?

The volume on my stereo was so loud, I could hear it through my bedroom wall, the shower curtain, and the running water. It was kind of like taking a bath offstage at the Concertgebouw, with their Orchestra in full swing. Every time I heard Prelude to Act Three of Lohengrin, I pictured Stukas sweeping out of the sky and panzers bursting across the plain. Wow. I pondered those real-life images in terms of my family's blood and couldn't keep from smirking.

Oh, I forgot, Mom, you don't like Wagner.

I dried off in my locked bedroom. Why I locked the door was anyone's guess. I don't remember the last time either of them tried to come in once my music started playing. The record moved on to the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde. Its pa.s.sion and devastation filled the dark and my thoughts. The damp towel fell to the carpet as I stood in front of the icy window, reaching a hand out to press my fingertips against the frozen gla.s.s.

I put on a fresh t-shirt and a black corduroy shirt, thermal socks, long underwear, a new pair of jeans, and my hiking shoes, just in case Uncle Alex wanted to get away from the party and have one of his famous long conversations outside in the cold. We took Mom's Mercury station wagon over to Aunt Hilly's. It was as old as I was. I think she kept it just to aggravate her husband, successfully. Dad did the driving, without turning on the radio or the heat, but that was OK, because Mom's matter-of-fact Season's Greetings was quite enough comforting entertainment for me, thank you. You see, my parents, in the grip of a heightened state of seasonal dementia, decided to announce their divorce to what was left of the family tonight.

I remembered me and Felix sitting very close to each other in the dark back seat of his dad's Lincoln while his parents drove me home the previous day, and how happy I felt just being in the same vehicle with the Cromwells. Well. I guess I must have fallen out of the car and been run over by a train or something and died and went to h.e.l.l and just didn't realize it yet.

Was she still talking? Were we moving then? I always thought h.e.l.l would be a lot warmer than the wagon was at that point. I should jump out of the car when we pa.s.s over a bridge, I thought. But there weren't any bridges on the way to Aunt Hilly's. If there were, I'm sure Mom or Dad would have set fire to them by now.

f.u.c.k, when did my flight leave?

Everyone got their kisses and phony compliments before fanning out into the nest of vipers. Uncle Albert and Uncle George exchanged opinionated misinformation on the college football scene while watching some lesser Bowl game on TV, Aunt Dutch clawed her way through Matthew's outer defenses in her undisguised effort to make him look bad in front of his pale and dumpy fiancee (his third, I was pretty sure), Aunt Melody was drooling her way through a self-justifying homily with Julia's opaque acquiescence, there were some cousins with bad accents who I didn't even know running around being friends with everyone, Uncle Alex hadn't arrived yet (probably sitting in his rent-a-car a block away, smoking a bag) and Aunt Hilly, while conducting the preparation of her ten-course feast like it was the landing at Inch'on, decided to open up two more fronts, attacking Mom ("No time to be a real wife or mother, in between your vacuous, overpriced social circuit and your save-the-world, you hard-headed queeny...") and Dad ("And you call yourself a husband, a father, a man, letting your family dissolve like an Alka Seltzer you wolf down to get through another day of high cla.s.s duplicity?!).

Aunt Hilly didn't believe in divorce, apparently.

"What about your son? Did either of you selfish blockheads ever stop and think what this might do to him? Or what it already may have done?"

A playwright could not have timed it better. I walked into the warm, over-lit kitchen, playing with one of Aunt Hilly's old black cats, just as she began to pose these questions to my ashen-faced and disoriented parents. My unexpected presence gave a palpable justification to Aunt Hilly's sneering a.s.sault.

"Their son doesn't give a d.a.m.n, anymore."

"No, and I don't blame you." She dismissed them with the singular act of putting out her cigarette. "Here," she handed me a large bowl of red cabbage and a basket of homemade bread, "help me bring the food in."

Uncle Alex barged into the house in the middle of the meal, accompanied by a Veronica, some young woman with short hair, sleepy eyes, no make-up, and perfectly formed lips. She looked more like my older sister than his latest wife. She greeted Mom and Dad as if she knew them (the only moment Dad took a break from glaring furiously at me), and gave me a hug before sitting down on Uncle Alex's lap. She smelt like a pine tree after a rainfall, and was dressed like Morticia Addams.

Of course, everyone acted as if they weren't appalled by the latest addition to our gathering, and the desultory conversation hardly missed a beat, until it wound its way to me.

"So, are you still going to that expensive university school your father always complains about, nephew?" Uncle Alex's fur-lined trench coat looked to be worth stealing.

"Uh huh." I took a mouthful of sweet potatoes and stuffing.

"Learn anything interesting for all that litigation money?"

Well, I thought, let's see. I could tell you all about the Manchu Dynasty, or discuss Nietzsche, or fake my way through some geometry, or have a few opinions on Buddhism, or respond non capisco cos'e che non va when you asked about my parents, or make you swim in lines from Much Ado About Nothing, or even what records to buy if you went on a mad shopping binge, Unc. And a little about Judaism. Oh, yes, and a little about modern photography. I have this alb.u.m at home. Would you like to see it?

I washed my food down with a sip of tart New York white wine. "I'm learning a lot about cla.s.sical music." I smiled at Aunt Hilly. I bet she liked Wagner.

"That's it?" Uncle Alex grabbed a drumstick from my plate.

"I'm learning how to make friends, too." My face was blank as I stared back at Dad.

"Good. That's more important than the rest of the c.r.a.p these schools push, lately." Uncle Alex kissed Veronica. "What are your plans for the next couple of days?"

I shifted uneasily in my seat, glancing between Mom and Dad, and took another sip of the dour wine. "I'm going to Florida."

Veronica touched Mom's unmoving hand. "That sounds fun."

"I'm going alone." Dad sat back in his chair, his bitter gaze locked on me. Mom nibbled on her lower lip, and tried to avoid everyone's inquiring look. "My best friend invited me." I said that as if it explained everything.

A few seconds elapsed, but they might as well have been minutes, or hours. Or days, if the pit of my stomach was any gauge. The silence soon grew deafening.

Veronica tried to put a good face on it. "I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time." Honey, when you're at ground zero, there's only one direction you can go.

"Maybe we should talk about this at home, baby." For some reason, Mom looked genuinely hurt. I couldn't imagine why.

"What, and interrupt your divorce?"

That wasn't meant to be thought out loud.

Uncle Alex looked to his beloved Rika and Simon for something in the way of an elucidation. Mom began to cry as she got up and hurried out of the crowded dining room. Dad's eyes continued to burn into me as he hurled his chair backwards and stormed away. A few of the displaced-person cousins, undoubtedly starved from their long voyage on the canned ham boat, tucked back into their meals. n.o.body seemed ready to chime in and play referee, and, one by one, they fell back into the mora.s.s of their own private skirmishes.

My uncle looked at me in complete dismay and confusion. I looked back in outrage. Sure, my family had a near Olympian skill for papering over and lying about their troubles, but I still could not believe Dad hadn't mentioned a single word to Uncle Alex about their split. Talk about ground zero.

Mom practically screamed out my name from the front door. I finished my wine as Uncle Alex took me by the arm, pulling me down to his lips. "I don't know what the h.e.l.l is going on, but we'll come over tomorrow morning, to try and sort this out. Stay cool until then, huh?"

"Yeah, right. The funeral parlor opens at nine."

Aunt Hilly let a long sigh out through her nose as I walked away to Santa's Detroit sleigh.

Dad swung me into the back seat by my collar. The wheels of the station wagon squealed as we spun out of the icy driveway onto the empty suburban avenue. I heard Mom sniffling and gasping, trying to keep the flood gates at bay, staring into some unknown s.p.a.ce outside of her window. The further we got from Aunt Hilly's house, the faster Dad accelerated. His hands were wrapped like coil around the steering wheel. I closed my eyes, trying to picture a silver and blue Eastern jet rumbling down the runway and screaming off into the December morning sky. It was almost nine p.m. Only thirty six hours to go.

Suddenly, I jolted forward as the wagon skidded to a noisy, barely controlled halt. Before I could get my bearings, Dad's hard palms began to rain on me, bouncing my face from his hands to the car window. Mom cried out and lunged sideways at him, but he knocked her out cold with a swing of his arm across her chin.

I flung my door open and scrambled on my hands and knees onto the wet road and up a small, weed-covered incline that led to the train tracks. I heard him coming and panicked, stumbling in some mud as I tried to get up and run. Dad pulled me to my feet with his shaking hands, clawing at my ears and mouth to hold me still only to slap me back down into the muddy snow when he did, before finally dragging me by my hair back to the car.

"Get in, you little b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" He slapped me to the pavement again. I landed near the belching exhaust pipe. I could taste blood inside of my mouth. I forced myself to stand up and face him directly, even as my legs seemed weak under my weight as I shivered from the cold and the adrenaline shooting through me.

I didn't see my father anymore. He was just some strange abstraction, some idle memory as outdated as the White Sox's red pin-stripe uniforms. My facial expression and tone of voice were dull and remote. I would sooner die than let go of my feelings in front of this suit impersonating a father. "Go to h.e.l.l," I whispered.

He drew back his hand to strike me again, and I flinched, bracing myself for the blow. He stood there for a few seconds, savoring his little victory, before he stormed back to the car. "You can come back in the house when I'm gone in the morning." I heard Mom start to scream at Dad before he closed his door and drove off, just like that.

A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight, walking...walking... where?

I sank to my knees with my arms wrapped around myself, trying badly to keep my breathing level. I wasn't going back to Aunt Hilly's. I spat out some blood and wiped my lips across my sleeve. I didn't know where Uncle Alex was staying. Felix was already in Florida. An Amtrak pa.s.senger train roared past on the tracks above me. Hanging my head, I noticed a bent red envelope a few inches away from me in the tall, brittle weeds.

I had completely forgotten about Nicolasha's Christmas card.

It was a terrific color lithograph of Prussian nutcrackers, with an inscription in Cyrillic. There were also two tickets inside - box seats, for Friday, January 10th, at seven o'clock. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra was playing Symphony Number Fifteen by our old comrade Shostakovich.

I looked up into the clear night sky, and, through my swollen cheek and bleeding lip, smiled. The stars glistened down at me as I took a deep breath of frosty air and headed up to the tracks, hoping I didn't freeze to death before I got to Hyde Park.

X.

Receive what cheer you may.

The night is long that never finds the day.

Macbeth It was almost midnight by the time I reached Roseland, pa.s.sing the dark and empty 111th Street platform and climbing down the corner of the train line's cement overpa.s.s. I fell down the last few feet, landing on the sidewalk behind the tiny twenty four-hour diner built into the side of the overpa.s.s. I used to love their hot dogs when we lived a few blocks away, and I'd been tempted to stop for one coming back from school, but it looked so shabby and dangerous, what with the neighborhood's change and intervening years having had unpleasant visual effects on the place.

(Yes, the neighborhood changed. We were too sophisticated to say blacks had moved in, or we had moved out. We weren't sociological enough to speak convincingly about natural urban migratory patterns, or clever enough to see the fast-spreading rot strangling all the nearby heavy industry. The neighborhood just...changed. Attendance at all the Catholic churches dropped off. No one wanted to go back. The surrounding frame houses and bungalows suddenly seemed more run-down and ill-kept. The local Catholic boys' high school quietly grew a fence. Palmer Park started looking like an unmade bed, because Roseland changed, everyone would hiss. Not because the city stopped maintaining it, of course, like the very white Streets and Sanitation stopped bothering with the alleys and side streets, which began sporting potholes we could have used for our toy boats on rainy days. Not even the cops would go into the Chicken Unlimited on 111th Street. My favorite toy store on "the Avenue" (Michigan) went out of business. My favorite candy store on 115th Street, where I used to gorge myself on grape-flavored Twizzlers, turned into a Baptist meeting hall, and the State Theater, where Scott and Roberta took me to see "Dr. Who and the Daleks" on a bizarre midnight showing with "Night of the Living Dead", became a Baptist church. The Normal Theater, on 119th Street, where me and anyone else I could drag in sat through the grandest double-feature of my childhood - "Thunderball" and "You Only Live Twice" - four out of the seven days it played, went on its merry neighborhood theater way, still dispensing ice cream bars from a cooler tucked in a corner away from the concession stand, still selling pineapple-orange and cherry soda (with the choice of carbonated or non-carbonated a matter of pressing a b.u.t.ton), its wide and open lobby still lined with 8x10 glossies of upcoming features, but no longer thronged with chattering neighborhood kids on weekends, since the Sat.u.r.day and Sunday matinees were the first thing to go. I guess the only films black kids wanted to see were "The Klansmen", "Super Fly T.N.T.", and "Mandingo", right? I wanted to go back and see "Sounder" one week, but no one would take me. I'll bet they didn't stock Black Crows licorice chews by the time one of the new neighborhood patrons left a smoldering cigar in the bathroom and set fire to the place one night last year. Dad had taken me for a quick recon through the old neighborhood on the way back to Holy Rosary, for a nearly-deserted Easter Ma.s.s given in Polish. I asked if we could go past the Normal before heading off to our little Rhodesia in the suburbs, and it broke my heart. The burnt-out wreckage was still there, and the marquee's final feature hung there in some bitter, festal defiance against the increasingly desolate poverty of West Pullman: "Fort Apache - The Bronx". But what did I expect, Dad had asked? The neighborhood had changed, for Christ's sake.) I was tired and cold and sore. If the diner was in the middle of darkest Mozambique, I couldn't have cared less.

A fireplug of a woman with her hair in a bun, the various layers of her in a tight-fitting blue dress, stained white ap.r.o.n, and a name tag reading Irma with an odd sort of dignity, looked at me like I was the Ghost of Christmas Past. The white teenaged Ghost of Christmas Past. Two over-the-hill truck drivers huddled over coffee at one end of the C-shaped counter eyed me peculiarly.

I felt like a cue ball.

I sat across from the truckers in the corner, leaning my head against the wall as Irma placed a coffee cup and saucer in front of me, holding a steaming coffee pot in her left hand. "You want some?" I nodded. She filled the cup and returned the pot to the large stainless steel warmer. "What about food?"

I smiled tiredly. "Is it too late for a hot dog?"

She laughed. "Not in here, it ain't." A small kitchen radio played below the counter. Irma turned it up and started singing Every Day Will Be Like a Holiday in charming unison with The Sweet Inspirations as she began cooking my breakfast.

I felt the numbness across my face and the cold stuck in the tips of my fingers and toes. My mind drifted off to Nicolasha's apartment. I wanted him to sing this song to me while we took a Comrade Bubblevitch bubble bath together.

It was pretty obvious my visit was a novelty for Irma and the truckers, but they were too polite to just come right out and ask what the h.e.l.l I was doing in a place like theirs on Christmas morning. And I was too exhausted to think about it myself. I was content to keep smelling the meal she was preparing. Irma grilled a large hot dog in a mound of onions and peppers, and sc.r.a.ped them into a wide poppy-seed bun, which was spread out in a red plastic basket, before showering the entree with freshly-cut fries. Heart attack heaven!

I finished the delicious meal and a fourth cup of heavily sugared and creamed coffee as a pair of slightly out-of-shape white Chicago Police officers came into the diner. Everyone waved at one another. Regulars, I thought. Irma threw a pair of hamburger patties on the grill and made two coffees to go as I tried to ignore the funny looks from the policemen. It seemed like they were talking about me.

Uneasily, I dropped my last five dollars on the counter and went to leave. The older cop sitting closest to the door smiled as he took my arm in a gentle but authoritative grip.

"It's a little late for a walk, isn't it, son?" I was afraid, and it showed. "I know it's too f.u.c.king cold for a walk!" The group laughed in agreement. "You want to tell me why you got dried blood on your face?" The cop guided me to the stool next to him, but I looked down at my feet and the slush-stained floors, resigned that my nighttime adventure was drawing to a close. The other cop paid Irma and took the food outside to their grimy squad car.

With an impatient sigh, the officer with the red face and silver hair picked up an aluminum napkin dispenser and held it in front of my face as if it were a mirror. I looked like I had been thrown from a moving train, head-first. Even though I was full from Irma's delicious cooking, my stomach began to knot up, and my cut and swollen bottom lip began to move on its own.

He lifted my face up with his gloved finger. "Well?"

My mind raced with lies to tell. "I live with my brother in Hyde Park, near the University." I let my eyes fill. "We got into a fight." I looked away from him and Irma. One of the truckers hid a smile. He knew I was lying like a cheap rug. "I was running away."

The cop wheezed to his feet and patted me on the back. "Well, I can't leave you out on the street. You want to come down to the station and file a report?" I hadn't thought of that. Now there was a gift idea! Have the old man's a.s.s thrown into stir on Christmas, some therapy to soothe his restless nature. Maybe it would make up for that last slap that never arrived. Why did that one hurt more than the others? But no, I reflected, he'll be gone soon enough. I shook my head. "Then we're gonna bring you home, son."

I played the reluctant pa.s.senger and nodded sadly, opening the door for the officer. Irma put her hand on her hip with righteous indignation. "h.e.l.l, I don't see no meter in that broken down squad of yours, Captain!"

"Come on, Irma. You see the decal - 'We Serve and Protect'. The punk gets a ride home, we threaten his brother, and we all get some rest before we open our presents in the morning. See how simple law enforcement can be?"

"Well, G.o.d d.a.m.n, I ain't ever got no taxi rides from your a.s.s." She picked up the money I had left on the counter. "No tips, either, you shanty Irish pig. 'Least the kid leaves a tip!" She winked at me. "Must not be Irish."

"Irma, you can ride my a.s.s anytime."

"Get the f.u.c.k out of my restaurant, both of you!" I gave her a little Felix wave as I left, and Irma waved me off with a little Felix smile. I decided to take Felix here for lunch when we got back from Florida.

The police Captain knocked on Nicolasha's door with controlled anger. The officers stood on each side of the doorway - did they think my fictional brother was going to fire a shotgun at us? I stood behind the Captain. Our ride into Hyde Park was uneventful and quick. Traffic wasn't very heavy at two a.m. on Christmas morning. They asked me to elaborate on the fight I supposedly had with my supposed brother, so I spun another yarn, one that made it seem like I, as the bratty little sibling, deserved a few of the slaps they could see I got.

There was no answer. The Captain glared at me. "Are you sure he didn't go out?"

"His car is still outside," thank G.o.d.

"Maybe he went looking for you." I could only dream of such an event. I shrugged. "Don't you have a key to your own apartment?"

"We were screaming and hitting each other." What do you mean I only got an A- ?! "I wasn't thinking about my keys."

The Captain shook his head and pounded on the door. "This is the police," he yelled, "open up!" He pounded again, so hard the middle wooden frame of the door gave a little with a sharp squeak. We heard movement inside the apartment. The Captain nodded and pulled me in back of him, in case my brother wouldn't come quietly.

I hoped Nicolasha was good at lying on the fly.

The door opened a crack. Nicolasha peered out. The other officer, a young, weak-kneed Pillsbury Dough Boy stuffed into an ill-fitting police uniform, stepped forward in case Nicolasha didn't have a good view of his badge, or his revolver. I peeked around the Captain, and our eyes met. The door opened at once.

Nicolasha looked pretty funny, wearing a bed sheet wrapped around his waist like a giant towel.

The Captain spoke up. "Are you Nick Brazier?" Nicolasha glanced at me. I tipped my head discreetly. My teacher nodded. "Is this your brother, Mike?" Nicolasha nodded again quickly. "Good. Now, I'm going to make this short and sweet. Number one, it's too late for him to be running around the city alone." The Captain almost stepped on Nicolasha's bare feet as he moved closer to him, jabbing my disoriented teacher in the shoulder with a thick forefinger. "You guys want to fight and yell? Go right ahead, but don't hit him in the face like that again, period. No punches, that's number two."

He pulled his baton from his equipment belt and shook the end of it under Nicolasha's sincerely terrified face. "You do, and you'll look pretty funny walking around with this night stick shoved up your a.s.s sideways." Not as funny as you'll look putting it there, Captain, I privately mocked. "Merry Christmas." He put the baton away and c.o.c.ked his thumb for his partner to follow. "Come on, let's go eat."

And, with that, the policemen went off, to serve and protect somebody else.