“Do trees count as co-workers? I mean, they are with me all day long…and we have the most interesting conversations….”
“Oscar is one of the trees?”
“He’s the perfect tree.”
“Do all the trees have names?”
“Only the ones that share them with me. I mean, you can’t just ask. That would be invasive.”
He shoved aside at least a dozen trees to get to Oscar. And when he pulled Oscar out, he—it—looked like any other tree to me.
“This is it?” I asked.
“Wait for it, wait for it….”
Boomer lugged the tree away from its cohorts, toward the curb. The tree was easily a few feet taller than he was, but he carried it like it was no heavier than a magic wand. With a strange delicacy, he set it into a tree stand, and as soon as it was settled in, something happened—Oscar opened his arms and beckoned me under the streetlamp light.
Boomer was right. This was the tree.
“I’ll take it,” I said.
“Cool,” Boomer replied. “Do you want me to wrap it? Since it’s a gift?”
I assured him that a ribbon would suffice.
—
Catching a cab when you’re a teenage boy is hard enough. Catching a cab with a Christmas tree in tow is nigh impossible. So I ran some errands until Boomer’s shift was done, and together we wheeled Oscar over to Lily’s apartment in the East Village.
I hadn’t been there all that often in the past year. Lily said it was so her grandfather wouldn’t be bothered, but I thought it was more because I’d be adding one more element to the chaos. Her parents had been around more than they’d been in years—which should have helped her out immeasurably but instead seemed to have given her two more people to take care of.
It was Langston who opened the door, and the minute he saw me and Boomer with the tree, he said, “Whoa! Whoa! WHOA!” so loudly that I thought Lily had to be home and within hearing distance. But then he told me she and Grandpa were out at a checkup. His parents were out because it was a Saturday, and why would such social people be home on a Saturday? So it was just the three of us…and Oscar.
As we set him up on his perch in the living room, I tried not to notice how under the weather the apartment appeared, as if it had spent the last month or so coughing up dust and discolor. I knew the way this family worked, and I knew this meant Grandpa had been out of commission and Lily had been distracted. They’d always been the true guardians of the place.
Once Oscar was standing proudly, I reached into my backpack for the pièce de résistance that would, I hoped, not be resisted.
“What are you doing?” Langston asked as I looped things around Oscar’s branches.
“Are those tiny turkeys?” Boomer chimed in. “Is this going to be like the tree they had at Plymouth Rock?”
“They’re partridges,” I explained, holding up a piece of wood carved in the shape of the bird, with a big hole in the center. “Partridge napkin rings, specifically. There weren’t any partridge ornaments at that store whose name I can’t make myself utter.” (The store was called Christmas Memories, which was enough to make me want to drink Pop Rocks with Coke. I had to think of it as Christmas Mammaries in order to go inside.) “If we’re doing twelve days of Christmas, we’ve gotta do twelve days of Christmas. Lily can decorate the rest of the tree. But this is going to be a partridge tree. And on top, we’re going to have…a pear!”
I pulled said fruit out of my bag, expecting admiration. But the reaction went more pear-shaped.
“You can’t put a pear at the top of a tree,” Langston said. “It will look dumb. And it will rot after a day or two.”
“But it’s a pear! In a partridge tree!” I argued.
“I get it,” Langston said. Meanwhile, Boomer guffawed. He hadn’t gotten it.
“Do you have a better idea?” I challenged.
Langston thought for a moment, and then said, “Yes.” He walked over to a small photograph hanging on the wall and took it down. “This.”
He showed me the picture. Even though it had to be over half a century old, I instantly recognized Grandpa.
“Is that your grandmother with him?”
“Yup. Love of his life. They were quite a pair.”
A pair on a partridge tree. Perfect.
It took us a few tries to get it placed—me and Langston trying out various branches, Boomer telling Oscar to stay still. But we got the pair perched near the crown of the tree as birds peeked out below.
Five minutes later, the front door opened and Lily and Grandpa returned. Even though I’d only known him a few months before he had his fall, it was still surprising to me to see how small Lily’s grandfather had become—like instead of going off to hospitals and rehabilitation centers, he’d really been put in the wash for way too long, coming back even more shrunk each time.
Still, there was the handshake. The minute he saw me, he extended his hand and asked, “How’s the life, Dash?” And when he shook, he shook hard.
Lily didn’t ask me what I was doing there, but the question was certainly in her tired eyes.