I Shudder Read online

  “I’m Linda Lou Smacker,” said the woman, “and these are my mom and my pop and my husband and my kids and the grandkids and my sisters and my brothers and their kids and what can I say? It’s Kansas and we ran out of condoms!”

  “I’m Uncle Stan,” said someone else, thrusting a mug of steaming cider into my hand, complete with a dollop of whipped cream jabbed with a cinnamon stick.

  “Second-Cousin-Once-Removed-But-Not-Far-Enough-Carolynn-With-Two-N’s!” said someone else, offering me a plate where a decal of Jesus’ pale, thoughtful face peeked out from beneath a mountain of sugar cookies shaped like chiming bells, with gumdrop clappers.

  “And I’m Big Paw Paw, Linda Lou’s way-better half!” guffawed a Paul Bunyan–like figure in a bulging plaid flannel shirt, suspenders, duck boots, and a trucker’s cap, with the peaked brim safety-pinned with mistletoe. Thankfully, or perhaps sadly, I wasn’t expected to kiss Big Paw Paw, although he did shove something shaped like a snowball and encrusted with meringue into my mouth. “And I’m only askin’ so we can put your name on some presents,” said Big Paw Paw, “but who in the name of the sweet baby Jesus and my wife’s big ol’ butt are you?”

  “Big Paw Paw!” protested Linda Lou, as he grabbed that big ol’ butt with gusto; Linda Lou’s blushing grin assured me that the couple’s sex life, even after thirty years of marriage, was more than mutually satisfying, and may even have included a drunken videotape which featured not only the couple’s robust lovemaking but a partial view of Linda Lou’s collection of Victorian dolls.

  “I’m Mr. Christmas,” I announced to the room, and everyone nodded, as if I was sent each year by the Junior Chamber of Commerce. “And I’m here to determine just who’s been naughty and just who’s been nice.”

  There was a pause, as everyone mulled this over and glanced at other family members. Then, as one, all of the men shot their hands vigorously into the air.

  “NAUGHTY!” the men all shouted.

  “THEY WISH!” the women all shouted right back, with their hands instantly reaching even higher.

  “My Lord,” I said, “you seem like the most genuinely happy and sweet-souled people I’ve ever met, and without your being a huge, sanctimonious pain. You make me believe that there just might be something called a real Christmas spirit.”

  “Aw, heck,” said Big Paw Paw, “I don’t know if any of that’s true, but it sure is nice to hear you say it.”

  “We just like to drink eggnog and eat anything that isn’t nailed down and see who can put on the most pounds by New Year’s,” said Linda Lou, but, looking around, I saw that, while no one in the room could be called sylphlike, they were all more strong and sturdy than overfed.

  “But what’s your holiday secret?” I asked, mystified. I felt like a pith-helmeted explorer who’d stumbled upon a blessedly untouched, utopian tribe in some well-hidden rain forest. These people might be simple but never simpleminded; their clothing was comfy and entertaining, rather than painfully chic, and they seemed to have an untroubled, straightforward grasp of life’s pleasures.

  “Should we tell him?” asked an outlying brother-in-law.

  “Tell me what?” I said.

  “Why the heck not, he’s practically family,” said Big Paw Paw, chugging back what looked like a tureen of hot chocolate; Big Paw Paw prided himself on his ability to eat and drink without needing to chew or swallow.

  “Well,” said Linda Lou, as everyone smiled and closed in a bit, as if they were gathering around a campfire, with weenies and s’mores, “you see, for us, for the whole extended Smacker-Cannastock-Kellerhitt family Christmas isn’t just your average let’s-get-together-and-watch-Big-Paw-Paw-pass-out-in-his-recliner-in-front-of-the-game holiday.”

  “You got that right!” agreed Big Paw Paw, giving Linda Lou’s cheek a little preliminary smooch.

  “Paw Paw!” said Linda Lou, pinching him, and then, “Here at our house, we have a very special tradition, which has been passed down to us over all the generations, from the folks who settled Twineheart in covered wagons and log cabins. And I suppose they invented this tradition because they didn’t have cable TV or Foosball or snowmobiles or any of our other ridiculous so-called advantages. But to honor those wonderful hardworking, hard-living people, each Christmas, at midnight, we pass around the family Christmas stocking.”

  A trim-looking grandmother, wearing a pair of bobbing, spring-mounted plastic antlers on a headband, held up the treasured, threadbare, moss green velvet stocking, with patchy fur trim and some unraveling crewelwork spelling out half the word “XMAS.” She shook the stocking and it jingled gently.

  “And then everyone puts their name on a little slip of paper,” said Linda Lou, “and then we dump all of the slips into the stocking and we shake it up real good, so there’s no cheating and no tears. And then at the stroke of midnight, the youngest child reaches into the stocking and pulls out a name. Oh, I know it’s just an old family hoo-ha, but it’s really very exciting!”

  “It gets me every time!” piped up a pretty teenager, who was wearing a Santa cap over her meticulously shampooed and conditioned blond hair, which cascaded to the hem of her frayed denim miniskirt, which had been embroidered with sassy female elves with huge, come-hither eyes and candy-cane striped bras and panties.

  “But what happens to the person who gets picked?” I asked.

  “Well…” said Big Paw Paw, with a grin, as if he were cuing a rousing musical number.

  “We eat ’em!” said Linda Lou.

  “We chase ’em around,” said Big Paw Paw, “then they get pretty tired, and so we grab ’em and carve ’em right up, with cranberry sauce and those little-bitty jet-puffed marshmallows!”

  “I hope it’s not one of the toddlers again,” groused a sour-puss uncle, who was passing out sheets of Xeroxed lyrics to Christmas carols. “Whenever that happens, there’s never enough to go ’round. This year, I hope it’s one of you nice big-boned ladies!”

  “Uncle Jerry! Stop!” scolded Linda Lou, as all of the women shrieked with affectionate laughter.

  “You eat the person?” I asked, trying not to sound like some fussy, epicene restaurant critic, turning up his nose at cobbler or meatloaf.

  “Oh, it’s silly,” said Linda Lou, “but come on, it’s Christmas!”

  “So how’s about it?” Big Paw Paw asked me. “At least stick around for the stocking. But I gotta warn you, if you don’t put your name in, you’re gonna only get gristle!”

  “Oh, I’d love to stay,” I said, with bewitching sincerity, as I’m a master at always leaving a party on the early side, before anyone starts to sing, or get devoured. “But I’ve got a cab waiting.”

  “Awwww,” said the entire room, with heartfelt disappointment, as all of the women began to fill plastic containers with cookies and puddings and fruitcake slices, so I’d have something for the road.

  As I backed out of the house, spewing gratitude but building speed, I leapt into the cab and said, “Ludmila, step on it! Too much Christmas!” I tried to settle on some definitive opinion of the cozy homestead I’d just visited, and here’s what I came up with: as I’d long suspected, when it comes to festive depravity, New Yorkers are rank amateurs compared to anyone from the Midwest, or any region without all-night newsstands and leash laws.

  As our evening continued, Ludmila and I made many more stops. We visited a nomadic tribe, midway on their trek across the Kalahari. These people and their camels had no concept of Christmas, and their possessions were limited to a few tents and an iron cooking pot. To express my admiration for their anti-consumerist, uncorrupted lifestyle, I gave them a blender, with the special attachments for shredding ice and making carrot curls, a set of hot rollers, and a device I’d ordered from television which allows sweaters and out-of-season down comforters to be compacted and stored in see-through, vacuum-sealed polyethylene bags.

  I was less pleased with a mob chieftain in Moscow who was gifting his money-laundering and heroin-dealing associates wit
h prostitutes and strippers. Ludmila and I rescued all of these young ladies and enrolled them in junior colleges in New Jersey, where they could continue to dress like prostitutes and strippers while studying to earn a decent living as dental technicians. An Amish family in Pennsylvania refused to accept any Christmas gifts at all, insisting that their love of God was all they needed for a satisfying holiday. This struck me as both rude and high-handed, so without telling them, I listed each member of the family on one of those find-your-perfect-mate websites, and I had each person’s profile say that they were into “prayer, working with my hands, long buggy rides, and anal.”

  By the time Ludmila pulled up in front of my apartment building it was almost dawn. “Git oudt,” she said, as I calculated her tip. Since it was Christmas Eve, I went all the way up to thirty percent, which, given the duration of our travels, allowed Ludmila to bring her entire family over from Kiev and buy them their wildest dream, which was a home in the Bronx with a television in at least one of the bathrooms. “Tank ju very mooch,” said Ludmila, pocketing the roll of bills, “andt merry Chreesmuss, andt pliss check de beck seat for jour belonkinks.”

  3.

  As I walked down the hallway toward my apartment, I heard the strains of pop Christmas standards leaking from behind another door; there were a few final bars of “Frosty the Snowman,” followed by my favorite song, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” I love this song because it sounds like the opening of a child’s testimony at a murder trial. I knocked gently at the door, and found it was open.

  “Hi there,” said a woman who was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a coffee table, without looking at me.

  “Yo,” said her husband, seated across from her, as they continued playing a marathon game of Monopoly. Their apartment was far larger than mine, with many rooms, and it was furnished in what I can only call a warm, contemporary yet classic style of timeless elegance, or at least that was what the catalogue from which the couple had purchased virtually all of their belongings must have called it. The look was an amalgam of rich, dark-wood furniture set against Aegean blue walls with a chair rail in white enamel, with many sets of matching vases in groups of three, each holding a single, dramatic, whitewashed branch, and there were lots of nubby, muted-plaid chenille throws, tossed uselessly but decoratively across round, saddle-stitched leather ottomans that opened to provide storage for more chenille throws. There was a decent-sized Christmas tree displaying only Aegean blue and glossy white ornaments, for a mood that most textbooks refer to as “matchy-matchy,” or “pure small-town decorator’s powder room, and yes, he calls it the powder room.”

  “There’s a carton of eggnog in the fridge,” said the wife, still not looking up from her game, “and there’s a big thing of Danish cookies on the kitchen island.” As she rolled the dice, she told her husband, “I’m going to make you cry like a little baby girl right out of Harvard Business School.”

  “It’s on, bitch,” said the husband, who then, also without looking up, told me, “We also have beer and some hard stuff, help yourself, it’s Christmas or whatever, if you’re a Muslim or something, I don’t know, in the cabinet next to the sink there’s some cracked-wheat crackers.”

  I realized that I knew this couple, or had at least chatted with them by the elevator. She was Sara, who ran a hedge fund, and who was renowned for returning to work while giving birth. “Oh, come on,” she’d told the obstetrician, “the head’s out, give me my BlackBerry.” Drake, the husband, was a top-tier litigator for a white-shoe law firm, where he’d represented a corporation that had imported Chinese-made toys coated with lead-based paint. In his tide-turning summation, Drake had held up something called Tommy the Towtruck, and he’d then momentously revealed the label on the underside, which read, in Chinese, “Do Not Lick.”

  As far as I could tell, Sara and Drake Morelle were the two most competitive people on earth. Even at the elevator, they’d either bet on how soon the car would reach our floor, or Drake, who participated in Ironman triathlons on five continents, would race down the stairs, to beat Sara to the lobby. Sara, for her part, was always either using her many wireless devices to do business, or to grill other mothers at her children’s schools and top them in fund-raising and cupcake production, and to demand that various teachers be fired “for slowing our kids down with that nap-time bull.” When I would say, “How are you?” to Sara, she’d jerk her head toward her husband and say, “Better than him,” and when I’d say “Good morning” to Drake, he’d say, “Great day!” Once they’d even asked me to shut my eyes and choose which one of them radiated, as Sara put it, “a more powerful vibe,” and when I picked their dog, Drake almost punched me, shouting, “That dog’s a loser!”

  As the Morelles continued to play cutthroat Christmas Eve Monopoly, I noticed that they’d replaced the game’s small, multicolored play money with actual cash. Drake had also tossed his great-grandfather’s gold pocket watch onto the board, and Sara had offered her wedding ring. As I sampled a Danish cookie, which I’d grabbed from one of those circular navy blue tins which can be found in the gourmet-treats aisle of any mid-range supermarket, and which are given as the most generic gifts at holiday open houses, I tiptoed through the apartment. Brant, the couple’s twelve-year-old son, was in his bedroom, and at first I assumed that he’d been in some catastrophic accident involving his skateboard and a sanitation truck, because the boy seemed to be on life support. He was lying flat out on his bed, with a molded plastic headpiece covering his face, and he was tethered to a writhing mass of jumper cables, keyboards, and beeping video monitors. Then, from his profane grunting, I realized that he was actually playing one, if not more, of the most advanced virtual-reality video games. His arms and legs jerked spasmodically as he began to build a virtual city on a barren, unclaimed asteroid, where he would then construct a tractor beam which would draw lingerie models to his home base and detonate their boyfriends.

  Returning to the apartment’s living room, I opened a towering armoire made of burnished, coffee-colored wenge wood and inlaid with bands of ivory which had been compassionately harvested from elephants whose families had signed a release, by stomping on it. The armoire was packed, on every shelf, with board games, including the most vicious, irredeemable, inhuman evil ever devised: Scrabble.

  I should explain. My parents, while loving, were not unlike the Morelles, in that their lives were ruled, and ultimately destroyed, by a relentless lust for competition. My earliest memory is from the second day of my life, when, as I lay cooing in my mother’s arms, I heard my father say, “He looks like me,” to which my mother instantly retorted, “Only younger.” They were constantly at war, over the ideal amount of vermouth in a martini, over who was the most unqualified secretary of defense in American history, and over which parent would die first, and in more harrowing anguish. And that was just breakfast.

  As I grew up, my parents’ one-upsmanship only blossomed: for whatever nonsensical reasons, they were desperate to determine who was better at croquet, at badminton, and at ranking all of the state capitals, by population density. They needed to see who was better at dressing up for Halloween as a superhero’s girlfriend—Dad won, for coordinating his two-tone Lois Lane purse with his two-tone spectator pumps—who was better at trimming our boxwood hedges into the profiles of their own parents—Mom won, for duplicating Nana’s lazy eye—and who could hold their breath longer, and who could hold their breath longer underwater, and who could hold their breath longer underwater while the other one poked them with a harpoon.

  While my parents’ impossible and ever-rising standards may very well be reflected in my own astringent nature, I have always despised games. My parents played them all, upon waking, over the phone with each other while at work, long into the night, and during every vacation moment. They played children’s games where the playing pieces were small plastic lollipops, they played chess until their fine marble chess pieces were worn to indistinguishable nubs, they played checkers an
d Parcheesi and Risk and Life and games based on unpopular, long-canceled TV shows that neither parent had ever watched. But Scrabble was their favorite, their clawing addiction, their ultimate madness, and they owned sets of every vintage and size, including not just the small, plastic, snap-shut version which could be played on airplanes, but an even tinier variation which fit into both my mother’s compact and my father’s wallet, and which could be played surreptitiously, under the table, at dinner parties. My mother had earrings made from the familiar, wooden, lettered tiles, and my father owned similar cuff links, and, when playing, they would both use these accessories to try and cheat.

  It all came to a head when I was thirteen years old, on my parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary. Of course they had competed to see who could outdo the other in presenting lavish, carefully chosen, impossible-to-find gifts, and of course they both wrote poems in which they tried to outdo the other in the depth, beauty, and pain of their love for the other. Finally, after the numbingly competitive toasts and cakes and kisses—don’t ask—a commemorative, cut-crystal and sterling-silver Scrabble board appeared, with tiles hewn from thousands of those miniature Japanese bonsai trees, with the letters and tiny numerals hand-painted in gothic script by imprisoned Soviet dissidents. This board was my mother’s gift to my father, so she pulled ahead. The first game went on for over two days, and my parents didn’t eat, sleep, or drink, and their eyes grew red-socketed and feverish, but they didn’t care. I begged them to stop, to call it an anniversary draw, but they didn’t respond, and I doubt that they even heard my screams, as I insisted that using the word “emu” more than once was just too easy.

  At five a.m. on the third morning, my mother smiled knowingly at my father and used her last remaining tiles to spell “loser,” and thereby ended seven points ahead. My father then smiled even more diabolically and used his last tiles, with the help of the “e” in “loser,” to spell “emerald,” thereby winning the game by a single point. My mother stared at the board for the next two hours. She looked up. She said, “Congratulations. And by the way, what’s a three-letter word, consisting of only vowels, which means ‘corpse’?”