I wanted to cry but was afraid the tears would freeze on my face. Dash was right. I was getting everything wrong. I couldn’t read him at all, and I couldn’t even break up with him convincingly, because I was a neurotic mess who loved him too much to insist he let me go, for both our sakes.
The train pulled into its next stop. At first I thought I had imagined it, so I took my glasses off and cleaned them with a tissue and put them back on. Indeed, the sign on the Metro-North platform said PLEASANTVILLE. That was really a place? And if so, why were an army of noisy, angry, drunken Santas getting on? I mean, every kind of Santa—male, female, young, old, fat, skinny, from fully dressed Santas with long white beards to practically naked, almost-a-stripper Santas. More disturbingly, the Santas were followed by a group of carousing carolers tossing hooch flasks to each other as they sang a ditty I know for a fact was not true to the era of the singers’ Victorian costumes.
The kids cry
The reindeers lie
Only the missus knows why
And Santa can’t feel his face
Enough with that song already. It’s worse than Alviiiiiin. So disrespectful. And catchy!
The train conductor entered behind the crowd surge and announced, “Next stop, Chappaqua!” When none of the embarking passengers budged, he said, louder, “Anyone who thinks they’re on the train to Manhattan should know that train is on the other platform.” Still, no one exited. The train conductor tried one more time. “This is not the Manhattan train. Unless you’re going upstate, you oughta get off now. Last call, Wassaic.” The Santas and carolers settled into seats. “Damn,” the train conductor said, and left the car.
A late-middle-aged male caroler dressed in a Victorian-era suit and top hat sat down next to me. He tipped his top hat to me. “Merry Christmas, darlin’. I’m Wassail from Wassaic.” His breath smelled like Jack Daniel’s from Tennessee (and not the fancy Sinatra Century Limited Edition variety).
I wasn’t sure if he was teasing about his name, and it’s hard to get a straight answer from straight-up drunks. So while the train conductor had made it pretty clear, I tried also. I wasn’t so lost that I wasn’t fully aware what today was. Trying to be helpful, I told Wassail from Wassaic, “If you’re going to SantaCon, you need to be on the train going to Manhattan. On the other platform.”
My seatmate scoffed. “We were on the train to Grand Central, a coupla hours ago. We got kicked off in Mount Kisco.”
“But this is Pleasantville.”
“Isn’t it? We barhopped our way down here, and then decided to try again going to the city. But a little fight erupted between the Santas and the carolers—lots of gang warfare this year, sorry to say. And the grand marshal in charge of the Wassaic brigade decided it was better to abandon our mission altogether.”
“Better to end up passed out on Metro-North than wake up in jail in the city?” I asked him.
“Ah, yer a pretty and smart sassy lassie,” he said, looking and sounding more like a lecherous Irish leprechaun than a chivalrous Victorian English gentleman.
A goth lady Santa with a pierced lip, tunneled ears, and black spiked hair popped her head up from the seat in front of us. She pointed at my seatmate. “Don’t be a wasshole, Wassail,” she said. “Don’t hit on a child!”
“I’m doing no such thing!” Wassail said, indignant.
“You are!” said a platoon of Santas in our perimeter.
“I’m not a child,” I mumbled.
I didn’t want the gang warfare to spiral out of control, so at long last, the childish Lily from the days of yore emerged from her holiday-resistance stupor. If there was one thing she knew how to do, it was carol her way out of trouble.
I sang, Here we come a-wassailing / Among the leaves so green!
Goth Santa shot devil eyes at me, but the Victorian carolers immediately picked up the song. Here we come a-wand’ring / So fair to be seen.
I mean, it was impossible not to feel the mood change, from drunk and cold and restless, to drunk and cold and verging on festive.
At least half the train car—including many Santas—joined in. Love and joy come to you And to you your wassail, too, And God bless you, and send you / A Happy New Year.
Wassail from Wassaic stood up and bowed at the end of the verse, like it had been written just for him.
No one continued singing after the second verse. Old Lily—aka Third-Verse Lily—might have continued on anyway but was silenced by a Victorian gown-wearing lady whose bonnet had just been yanked off her head, who delivered a sudden, epic slap to the red face of a portly Santa wearing angel wings on his back.
“Can Santa feel his face now?” Vicky shrieked at fat Santa angel.
“Fight! Fight!” the drunks chanted.
I’m all for drunk people, but the jolly kind, not the contentious kind.
I really wanted my mommy.
—
I emerged from the train at the end of the line in Wassaic. Wassail from Wassaic and his not-merry band of SantaCon artists and raucous carolers did not follow me off the train. They’d been kicked out at Katonah.
My mother was waiting in the parking lot, shivering inside her rental car. “Your train was an hour late.”