Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss(47)

Back in those days, before the advent of video, my father would draw the curtains, on Christmas Eve Day, to project 35 mm films of all the Christmas classics—A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, White Christmas. The living room would be packed with spectators: my parents’ friends, their kids, and, of course, the four of us. The adults drank Bloody Marys all afternoon, forming a chatty line at the tabletop bar while my father switched reels midmovie.

The next morning, Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” would be playing on the stereo when we came down to investigate our stockings. Charlie and Bobby would get toothpaste, toothbrushes, deodorant, pens, and a jar of macadamia nuts, contents that left me baffled by Santa’s odd sense of practicality. Whitney and I got dime store toys with the price tags still attached, tubes of toothpaste, and packets of pencils. Most years my father slipped into my stocking a Cuban cigar, which I’d smoke with him in the late afternoon, after the guests had gone home.

My father came in with the eggnog and placed the glass next to me on one of the coasters. “Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas!” He gave me a goofy smile. “How’d you like the tree?”

“Very nice,” said Bobby. “When did you put it up?”

“Last week, before all the snow. I haven’t had a real tree in years.”

For about a decade, after the divorce, my father had pretty much given up on everything, even Christmas, making due with a small tabletop tree. He even gave away his entire 35 mm film collection—hundreds of rare prints. But in spite of everything, he’d managed to stay away from the bottle. Now, though, along with the tree, he had brought the drinking back into his life.

I spotted a small aquamarine Tiffany box under the tree. “Who’s that little blue box for?” I asked pointedly, remembering Christmases past when the Tiffany box had been for me.

“That’s for my sweetie,” my father beamed.

It took me a moment to register that he meant Elisa. I glanced around the room and noticed that the family photos were now mixed in with shots of her. I looked over at Bobby, who was trying to suppress a laugh.

Whitney came into the room downing a Pepsi. “I like that painting of the pheasants in the kitchen,” he said to my father. “Where’d you get it?” He sat down on the sofa, nervously crunching the half-empty Pepsi can.

“Out in Jackson,” said my father, putting another log on the fire. “At a wildlife art gallery.”

Whitney put the Pepsi can down on a coaster. “Outstanding. Maybe we can go there next week, see what else they’ve got . . .”

Rising from the fireplace, my father gave Whitney a disingenuous smile. “Trouble with you, Whit, is you’ve got champagne taste, on a beer budget.” This was his favorite line.

Whitney looked as if he’d just been slapped.

Coming on the heels of our visit to Bill Penner, my father’s gloating seemed almost sinister. The three of us could put on a good face for only so long.

Just then the wreathed front door opened with a rattle, registering somewhere between festive and frantic.

“Hello?” Elisa’s voice called from the front hall as a gust of freezing wind brought the temperature in the house down several degrees all at once.

“Close the damn door, Elisa!” shouted my father. “Then come on in to the living room. We’re in here.”

The door slammed shut, and a moment later Elisa came in, ruddy-faced and wild-eyed, her glance shifting self-consciously from face to face.

“Look, everyone’s here!” she burst out, giving me a big-breasted hug before turning to shake hands with Bobby and Whitney, who stood up to receive her. She wore lumberjack boots and an oversize down jacket that she absently tossed onto the rug. “How’re things on the other side of the pond?” she said, turning back to me.

“Not bad.” I smiled, pretending, as she was, to be “comradely.” It was going to be a long week out in Jackson, I realized.

“Hey, have the police found out who burgled you?” Before I could even answer, Elisa roared with laughter at her own quip while my father gazed at her admiringly.

The burglary had happened while she and my father were in London, making it an easy conversation topic over several dinners. She’d asked me this same question, and laughed in the same way, a couple of times before.

“Not yet.” I sipped my eggnog. “But, you know, they’re searching high and low.”


We turned the corner onto Lakeland Road, the snowplow just ahead of us spewing salt and snow in all directions. Every door on the street was wreathed. Some had Christmas lights strung across the shrubs, or fixed around doorway arches, that were coming on in the fading light. When we were younger, back on Provencal Road, my mother would drive us to other parts of Grosse Pointe to see the showier displays of Christmas lights and lawn decorations, usually at the “new money” houses along Lakeshore Drive.

“I hate this house,” said Whitney bitterly as we pulled into my mother’s driveway.

His palpable anger needed somewhere to land. I made no effort to correct or appease him.

“You could always stay at Dad’s house,” Bobby answered, deadpan, as he parked the car. “With your lovely stepmother.”

For a few moments we just sat there in the rental car, a bright red Ford Probe, the windshield wipers scraping loudly over the ice that had frozen to the glass. The house looked gloomy, all the rooms dark except for the library, where I knew my mother sat reading. She had no Christmas lights outside, and the lights on the tree in the living room hadn’t yet been turned on. She’d never gone in for frills. When we were kids, on an excursion to buy Whitney a fishing rod, my mother had told him adamantly, “Nothing fancy, just a stick and a string.”