Not That You Asked (9780307822215) Read online

  The couch in the living room and the old couch that was retired to the catch-all room in the basement are pressed into service. That’s ten. I’ve never gotten into the details of where the others go. We close our bedroom door and hope for the best. We have two television reporters in the family but we’ve never seen overcrowding in the shelters they do stories about at Thanksgiving that can compare with the squalid conditions in our house at Christmas. It’s enough to bring tears to a grown man’s eyes.

  There are clothes, open suitcases everywhere. The three bathrooms are strewn with stray toothbrushes, hair dryers and an assortment of beauty products … although I can’t tell from looking at any of the six women in the house which one uses them. The refrigerator, the washing machine and the dryer get heavy use. The iron is never cool. Someone is always washing himself, herself, hair, clothes or the car. Because of nighttime sleeping conditions, there is random couch-nap-ping during the day and some of the beds are working more than eight-hour shifts.

  One year we rented two hotel rooms and another year we used the house of friends who graciously offered it while they were away for Christmas. Neither of these alternatives is popular with the family members who have to leave the chaotic, friendly warmth in our house Christmas Eve to go to sleep in a strange place.

  All things come to an end and I dread the end of Christmas at our house. I’m not sure how or when it will come. Someone will probably decide it’s too hard. The friends who loaned us their homes have made the Big Switch. They now go to the home of one of their children for Christmas. It could happen to us, I suppose. One more husband, one more wife or another grandchild might do it … but then where does everyone go? Do we break up the family and have separate Christmases in different parts of the country? Would this really be as merry? Am I suffering post-Christmas depression? I’ve thought a lot about it and I’ve decided what I want for Christmas next year.

  I’d like Santa to bring me an addition to our house with two more bedrooms and another bathroom, even though they’d be empty 363 days a year.

  Unreal Estate

  Angela Nicolaysen

  Weichert Realtors

  Mendham, N.J.

  Dear Angela,

  Thank you for your letter, sent to my home in Connecticut, offering me a home in Mendham, New Jersey, for either $2.45 million or one for $2.55 million. If I take both of them, do I get anything off? From the drawings you sent along with your letter, I can’t tell the difference between the two houses. Why is one so cheap?

  I’d want to see the actual houses, too, because those dreamers’ sketches of buildings never bear much resemblance to the way a place actually looks when it’s finished.

  You refer to the houses as “homes.” “A house,” as someone famous once said, “is not a home.” When the builder finishes it and it’s sitting there empty, as the places in your sketches are, it’s not a home. It’s a house. It isn’t a home until someone moves in and leaves their belongings all over. I know “home” is a more attractive sales word.

  I’ve been trying to figure out why you choose me to send your sales letter to. The only thing I can think of is you drove by my home and decided I could do better.

  That’s a pretty insulting thing for you to do, Angela. Yes, the place needs a little work but I’ll be getting at that, probably, as soon as my vacation is over. I know, for instance, there are places that need paint.

  Your letter reminded me that it wouldn’t do any harm if I had a couple of loads of topsoil brought in so I could reseed the lawn and get some real grass growing.

  The day you drove past, there may have been a beer can down front. Kids do that driving by once in a while, but listen, Angela, I can buy a lot of paint and topsoil for $2.45 million. The beer can I’ll pick up myself. You say Mendham and the surrounding communities have “enticed a number of celebrities, among them Whitney Houston, Jacqueline Onassis, Mike Tyson and Malcolm Forbes.”

  I want to be honest with you, Angela. I’ve made good money the last ten years, but I don’t have the kind of money Jackie, Mike and Malcolm have and, while I’ve never heard of Whitney Houston, I probably don’t have the kind of money he or she has, either. If I showed up at their doors looking to borrow a cup of sugar from one of them, I doubt if I’d be dressed in the manner they’ve become accustomed to having their neighbors dressed. Mike Tyson is another matter altogether. If he was my neighbor I certainly wouldn’t knock on the door and ask him for a cup of sugar.

  Your letter is a persuasive sales pitch, but I do have some advice. You say that “This sophisticated, yet quaint rural environment is enhanced by its proximity to New York City … only fifty minutes away and easily accessible by car, train or bus.” Take out “bus.”

  The idea of taking a bus into New York destroys the tony image you’ve tried so hard to create. If I moved out there, would I see Jacqueline Onassis, Mike Tyson or Malcolm Forbes on the bus coming into New York? I think your letter should read “easily accessible by limousine.”

  I know Malcolm Forbes rides a Harley-Davidson. I don’t know whether he rides his motorcycle to work every morning or not but if, by any chance, he lived next door to me, maybe he’d pick me up mornings. I could ride in sitting behind him on his bike.

  You’re knocking on the wrong door here, Angela. The biggest problem for me with a house in Mendham, New Jersey, is it would be two hours away from home.

  HOLIDAYS AND

  VACATIONS

  Free, Free at Last

  Every one of us has imagined having something wonderful happen. We dream we suddenly discover a great athletic ability we have and win the big game or an Olympic gold medal; we think about having some distant relative die, leaving us an unexpected fortune; men dream of being in the company of Linda Evans, women in the company of Tom Selleck.

  Recently I’ve been having a more practical dream. In this fantasy of mine, I’m arrested for some small offense. The judge sentences me to a year in prison. I am taken to a cell ten feet long and eight feet wide. In the cell, there is a bed, a chair, a desk, a lamp with a 100-watt bulb, a typewriter, a stack of paper three feet tall and, on a shelf above the desk, ten books.

  Three times a day I am brought a simple, low-calorie meal that doesn’t appeal to me. Each morning at seven, I am forced to take one hour of strenuous exercise and then returned to my cell. There is no telephone available to me, no television, no newspapers. I am trapped with only myself for company. There’s no way to waste time, so I turn to the only things available to me, the typewriter and the books.

  Then, in this prison fantasy of mine, I lay out my schedule. From 8:00 to 11:30 A.M., I work on a novel I’ve been meaning to write but never had time for. Then the guard comes with a glass of water and a tuna-fish sandwich on unbuttered bread for lunch. I hardly touch it.

  After lunch, I take a little nap and then start writing a play. All afternoon I work on my play until the guard comes with a terrible supper at 5:30. Again, I eat very little.

  Every once in a while, I stop writing my play or my novel and, for relief, I write half a dozen letters to people I never got around to answering when I was on the outside.

  From 5:30 to 7:00 P.M., I just sit and think, and then I start reading. With two exceptions, the books are ones I never really read before. They are:

  Webster’s Third International Unabridged Dictionary. I’ve always wanted to read it from start to finish but never had time. I get caught reading a little of it when I’m looking up a word but I always feel I’m wasting time so I stop.

  Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. I don’t really want to read this book but I’m tired of feeling guilty for not having read it every time it’s mentioned by my intellectual friends.

  War and Peace by Tolstoy. See reason above.

  The Bible. I get into a lot of arguments, and having read the Bible thoroughly would help me win more often. I’ve heard there are a lot of good parts in it too. I’ve talked to people who claim to have read the Bible but I’ve never
talked to anyone who convinced me they’d really read and understood it all.

  On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. It seems as though everyone should have read a book as important as this one.

  Don Juan by Lord Byron. I read this in college and was surprised to find out how good it was. I loved it. It was so interesting and complex that I’d like to read it again.

  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I’ll pick this up toward the end of the evening when I’m winding down and want to relax and have a little fun.

  The Sun Also Rises. I’m also ashamed of never having read Hemingway’s classic.

  Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of this when I tried it twenty years ago and I’d like to try again.

  Word for Word. This is the name of the book I wrote in 1986. I’d like to have a copy of it in my cell just to give me a little class with the guards.

  By the end of my imaginary year in prison, I will have lost thirty-seven pounds because the food was so bad; I’ll have read nine important books and I’ll have written the novel and the play I’ve been meaning to get at.

  Now, if I can only think of some nice, harmless crime to commit that will get me a year in the prison of my dreams.

  Christmas Resolutions

  While we’re thinking about it, this might be a good time to make some Christmas resolutions for the coming years. Here are some proposals:

  —Ban all recorded Christmas music in stores. Christmas music is too good to be used commercially. I sometimes have to flee a store and resume shopping at a later time because I can no longer take the repetitious sounds. It seems as though the people who work in those stores where the same recorded Christmas music is recycled time after time after time all day long could be driven crazy.

  If a store had a band of school kids singing or live musicians playing, this would be perfectly acceptable. Some exceptions might be made for a store that didn’t replay the same song more than twice a day.

  —Appoint an inspector general of Santa Clauses. He would have the authority to ban all seedy Santa Clauses. Every Santa Claus would have to look right and sound right.

  Department-store Santa Clauses have been pretty good over the years. The inspector would see to it that all Santas met this standard.

  —Prohibit all Christmas advertising before Thanksgiving. Someone is always jumping the gun and filling a store window with Christmas presents in early November. They should be enjoined.

  Most good stores voluntarily hold off until after Thanksgiving. It isn’t fair to them when the schlock merchants start pushing too early.

  —Stop fly-by-night Christmas-tree entrepreneurs who often steal the trees, bring them to town in a rented truck and set themselves up in an empty lot. They undercut the responsible places that sell Christmas trees from the same location year after year.

  Every year tens of thousands of trees are cut and brought to town. When they don’t sell, they’re dragged to the local dump or burned on the spot. Any place that sells Christmas trees should have to pay a $5 fee for each tree they have left over by Christmas morning. There’s no sadder sight than a lot full of unsold Christmas trees the day after Christmas … trees whose lives were shortened unnecessarily.

  —Make it against the law to use Christmas music in any television commercial or newspaper advertisement. Santa Claus was never meant to be a salesman; it lessens his believability when he’s used as a symbol for kids.

  —Encourage recipients of gifts to give those gifts a chance before rushing the day after Christmas to return them to the store from which they were bought. Not liking a gift is not sufficient reason to return it. That’s between the giver and the receiver. If it doesn’t fit or you already have one, those are legitimate grounds for returning a gift.

  —Make it mandatory that every Christmas card mailed out has both the first and last name of the sender. It never seems to occur to people that any one of us might know two or more people named Edith, George or Linda. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting a Christmas card and not knowing who it’s from.

  —Ensure that every major religion in America finds a way to make Christmas its own. There is no other time of year during which so many people feel so good and so friendly toward so many other people. The spirit of Christmas exceeds the narrow beliefs of any one religion.

  Merry Christmas Cards

  A few Christmas cards are still drifting in from friends who didn’t get at sending them out until it was too late. There’s just so much you can expect from the post office. I understand these cards because that’s when we send ours out.

  I like sending and receiving Christmas cards but there are certain things about the tradition that make me uncomfortable. For example, I wish I had the names and addresses of all the good old friends I ever had so I could send them cards. Someone ought to devise a system that would make it easier for all of us to keep track of old friends when our paths diverge.

  There are eight or ten categories of Christmas cards.

  1. There are simple cards with almost nothing on them but the words MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR written in red and green. Maybe there’s a small wreath or border of holly. They’re the best. A Christmas card always should be basically red and green.

  2. Lots of cards feature Christmas trees. Sometimes they look like real trees. Other times they’re stylized trees from an artist’s imagination, usually attractive.

  3. Many people send religious cards with pictures of the Virgin Mary with Jesus Christ as a baby. These are often blue with silver, but I don’t know why.

  The religious people who send these cards don’t like to hear it, but Christmas has become something more than Christ’s birthday. Many people who are not interested in religion celebrate Christmas as a day to love their fellowman.

  Another serious card is the one that says simply PEACE OR PEACE ON EARTH. They’re nice, although the cards don’t seem to have any effect on world affairs.

  4. We get two or three cards every year with family pictures on them. If you don’t see the friends regularly, it’s fun to identify family members you knew as children ten or twenty years ago.

  5. One dear friend always sends us a Christmas card with a picture of a cat on it. It’ll be a picture of a cat under a Christmas tree, out in the snow or with Santa Claus.

  A cat, in my mind, has nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas.

  6. Santa Claus cards are popular. Some of them are imaginative and clever, but a Christmas card can be too cute. Funny is not exactly the right mood for Christmas. I’m not enthusiastic about comic-strip characters on Christmas cards.

  7. There were cards for sale this year that said MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MY WIFE OR MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MY HUSBAND. Anyone who has to send a Christmas card to a spouse is in big trouble.

  8. Everyone gets at least one card that says FROM JIM AND HELEN and has no idea who “Jim and Helen” are. In our house, Margie thinks they must be my friends and I’m sure they’re hers.

  9. Card manufacturers don’t seem satisfied with the traditional Christmas cards. This year there were more cards in stores that did something. There were little windows in the front flap with Santa Claus looking out and when you opened the card you saw Santa sitting on his sled with all his reindeer. On others, Christmas trees popped out. They were made more like valentines than Christmas cards. Wrong.

  10. Mimeographed Christmas letters have become a tradition with many families. They can be interesting but I’m not usually much impressed with the writing style or the reportorial skill of those who send them out. These Christmas letters are usually substantially rosier than real life.

  Christmas cards are a wonderfully friendly tradition. I hope greeting-card manufacturers don’t ruin the idea. Anytime there’s money involved, someone usually carries the idea too far.

  Some Don’t Like It Hot

  It’s still only May but there are harbingers of heat in the air. (Harbinger isn’t my kind of word. It sounds l
ike it’s a bird. A harbinger is a pretty vague thing and I wish I’d never used it but you know what I mean.)

  Harbingers or no, I am one of the world’s great haters of hot days. Some people hate cigarette smoke, some can’t stand yogurt and others spend their time protesting against companies that do business with South Africa. I hate heat. When it’s hot, all I want to do is lie down.

  I am not alone. There is no question that the whole human race gets less done where the temperature is regularly above 80 degrees. Look at the world and see where most good things have been accomplished. In Pago Pago? In Tahiti? In Calcutta or the Philippines? They may be nice places to visit but for the men and women who have advanced our civilization, look toward countries with temperate climates. Heat saps ambition.

  In the winter a lot of people go to Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California for the weather. I understand that. It can be very pleasant. What I don’t understand is why those places don’t empty out about now. I’m surprised some parts of the South don’t have to hire guards to patrol their streets in the summer because all the residents have left to escape the heat. Why don’t people head for Labrador, Iceland and Greenland in the summer the way they go to Florida in the winter?

  There are so many reasons I hate the heat, I can hardly count the ways.

  First, I don’t like feeling sorry for people, but when it’s hot I can’t help it. I feel sorry for the policemen out there all day. I don’t like seeing street-repair and utility crews digging in the broiling sun. I feel sorry for everyone who can’t live in air-conditioned comfort on a hot day.

  I’m even more uncomfortable watching how miserable dogs and horses are in the heat. Panting may be a dog’s way of perspiring but it doesn’t seem to work very well at cooling them down. It makes any caring human uneasy to be in the presence of a panting dog.