Christmas for Joshua - A Novel (18 page)

“
It’s intrusive to a grotesque degree! Don’t you see it?”

“
Why are you taking it so personally? Under the rules of Halacha, a couple like us is technically—”

“
Living in sin?” It suddenly occurred to me that last night had been her way of giving me a parting gift, something to look forward to while I went through the conversion process. Still, it was hard for me to believe that Levinson and Schlumacher had so quickly managed to inject a wedge between us, fracture our marital base of unity and trust. “You’ll agree to be apart from me for six months? Or even longer?”

“
It’s not like we won’t be able to see each other, to talk and do all the things we enjoy doing together.” She shrugged. “It will be like dating, except that we won’t be allowed to have sex, that’s all.”

“
That’s all?” Not waiting for her response, I walked out of the study.

“
Rusty!” Rebecca’s voice chased me. “
Please!
”

Snatching my car keys from the kitchen, I ran out of the house, got in the Volvo, and drove off. Only then, gripping the wheel with my chest pressed in a vise of agonizing heartache, I exploded with a long string of expletives.

Every fall, at the corner of Cactus Road and Fifty-sixth Street, a pumpkin patch would spring up. Until she left for college, Debra and I used to come here every October to prepare for Halloween. It was an annual family ritual, decorating the front yard with pumpkins in various sizes, some of them carved to accommodate candles. We added spider webs and clanking skeletons among the oleander bushes and mesquite trees. After nightfall, we donned scary costumes and leaped at every trick-or-treater with fists full of candy.

In December, however, the pumpkin patch always turned into a dense forest of firs, guarded by a giant Santa floater.

I wasn’t planning to drive there. It just happened at the end of an hour of fuming behind the wheel. Perhaps it was my subconscious GPS. But after sitting in the car for a few minutes, I made a conscious decision to turn off the engine, get out of the car, and walk by Santa’s grinding air pump toward the rows of rootless trees.

Standing aside to let a couple drag a tree out the gate, I watched their happy faces—much younger than mine—and envied what seemed like a happy-go-lucky relationship, free of unnecessary conflict. But then the wife dropped her end of the tree, the husband gave her a look that could have passed for the word
stupid
, and I felt better.

“
Merry Christmas.” A thin man with black hair and tanned complexion approached me from the shadows. He was holding a small book, which he closed and slipped into his pocket. “May I help you?”

“
I’m thinking of buying a tree,” I said.

“
Natural or artificial?”

This question caught me off guard. “I didn’t know there’s a choice.”

He smiled, his teeth yellowed from smoking. “How long since you last shopped for a Christmas tree?”

“
Never.” Seeing the doubt on his face, I added, “We’re Jewish. It’s a long story.”

“
No problem. I have a blue-and-white tree if you want.”

“
Green would be fine. Something modest.”

My mother had always managed to bring home a tree on Christmas Eve—small, misshapen, more a bush than a tree, often an undesired new growth that didn’t fit some mansion owner’s overall landscape vision. But it fit our tiny apartment, and every year we decorated our tree together with old trinkets and my art projects from school. And each of us placed a gift for the other under the tree. The rest of her rare vacation day would be spent cooking, attending church, and taking me to visit relatives.

“
Let me show you around.” He took me down a path that was barely wide enough for one person. “On the right, these are all traditional trees—good American evergreens, grown on farms and harvested specifically for Christmas. We have Douglas fir, Noble fir, Norway spruce, a few hybrid pines. Prices are one to five hundred dollars, depending on size.”

I grunted, depriving him of an indication of my price range, which I didn’t know either. My presence here must be a rare phenomenon in consumer statistics. Who else would go impulse-shopping for a Christmas tree?

He pointed at another section. “This area is for the designer trees.”

“
Excuse me?”

“
Genetically engineered for perfection,” he said with obvious pride. “Look at the shape, perfectly symmetrical as it tapers to the pointy top.”

“
They’re nice,” I admitted.

“
You can see the color, deep green, lush with vitality.” He pulled on a branch, showing me. “These needles will stay green for two weeks, healthy and aromatic like the day it was harvested. You won’t have to worry about watering it.”

“
Impressive. How much are these?”

“
Around a thousand, but I’ll give you a discount because Christmas is almost here and you’re a first-time buyer.”

“
And Jewish,” I said. “We are bound by tradition to pay wholesale prices, never retail.”

He smiled and beckoned me to follow. “The artificial trees are ready for use, with built-in lights and decorations.”

“
Plug-and-play Christmas trees?”

“
This one is the original and still very popular.” He reached into a box and pulled out a cylindrical plastic tube. With rapid, practiced movements he extended it to twice my height, released the branches in a system resembling multiple umbrellas attached to a single pole, each bough covered with thousands of green needles. A four-legged base opened up, and he placed it on the floor. An electrical wire emerged from the tube that served as the tree trunk, and once it was plugged into an outlet, the faux tree lit up in multiple colors that blinked like faraway rainbow stars.

Stepping back, I clapped. “This is incredible. Who invented this?”

“
The Adis Toilet Brush Company.” He unplugged and packed up the tree. “Back in the thirties, they basically made a big foldable toilet brush and called it Silver Pine. It was made of scrap metal at first, then aluminum, and later plastic. Now it’s made of recycled water bottles. In China, of course.”

“
How much?”

“
It depends.” He pointed at a row of boxes. “You can get a basic one for under a hundred dollars. But most people like something that doesn’t look like a poor imitation of an evergreen.”

“
Let me guess,” I said. “They want both tradition and revolution, something that evokes old memories while striking a fashion statement.”

“
That’s good,” he said, tapping his head, “I must remember this line.”

“
Feel free to use it.”

“
Thank you.” He led me down the line. “Such customers go with a black tree or pink, blue, yellow, or red. Or a combination—you could alternate the modular branches. And this one has feathers instead of needles.”

“
Feathers?” I touched it, impressed with the sensation—like petting a dead bird.

“
Or you can get one that’s inverted, the wide base up and the summit tip down.”

“
That’s how my world feels right now. But really, do people buy an upside-down Christmas tree?”

“
We sell a few every year.”

“
I’m all for individualism, but there’s something genuine about a real, natural, green tree, don’t you think?”

“
It’s more traditional.” He nodded thoughtfully. “But then you’ll need to buy the lighting separately.”

“
What are the options?”

“
We used to have small bulbs on a string, but if one burnt out, the whole thing would go dark and you had to search along the wires for the bad bulb.” He proceeded to a set of shelves with boxes. “Fiber optic lights are affordable, and we carry all colors. But the best is the ‘Stay-Lit’ technology, which is affordable and effective, second only to LED, which doesn’t get hot like regular lighting. It can be controlled by a computer chip with different blinking patterns, which you can synchronize with holiday music from your iPod.”

I moved on to a line of trees that seemed cut in half lengthwise. “What’s this?”

“
Let’s say you want to set up a tree in a small room.” He patted the wall. “You set up this half-tree flat against the wall, plug it in, and you’re done. Some people like it in the hallway or the bathroom.”

“
A Christmas tree in the bathroom?”

“
Houses in Scottsdale sometimes have very big bathrooms, with a couch and even a television set.”

He was right. I had been to a few of those.

“
Artificial trees are very practical,” he continued. “No dry needles all over the place, no strings of lights in messy knots, no need to buy a new tree every year. Also, less global warming.”

I was overwhelmed. Coming in here on a whim, my general idea was to buy a tree and bring it home—a bit dramatic perhaps, but a good way to assert my identity. If Rebecca was pulling back toward her Orthodox roots, then I had the right to pull back toward my Christian roots. That would surely get her off the conversion idea. Also, a tree could demonstrate to Debra and Mordechai that I wasn’t ashamed of my upbringing. The tree’s presence in our living room would instigate an honest discussion and allow me to share memories from Christmases in Tarrytown. But which tree? Natural ones do make a mess, which Rebecca wouldn’t appreciate, but an artificial one just didn’t do it for me. A toilet brush turning into a Christmas tree? LED lighting synchronized with my iPod? No, all this was too far removed from my childhood memories. But the natural trees seemed too big and healthy, nothing like the ones we used to have.

“
Difficult choices?” The man smiled, smoothing his black hair over a thinning top.

“
What about you?” I looked around at the natural firs and plastic trees. “You can have anything you want, right? So what kind of a tree do you take home to your family?”

“
No tree.”

“
Excuse me?”

He pulled the small book from his pocket and showed me the cover. Under a title in Arabic letters, the English translation appeared:
The Holy Koran.

All I Want for Christmas is You

Jerusalem Arts & Books was Rebecca’s favorite gift store for any Bar Mitzvah, wedding, baby naming, or house warming. I parked a few storefronts down in order to avoid questions about the full-bodied Douglas fir growing from the back seat of my convertible while I shopped for Judaic trinkets.

My work was made easier by a discount table up front, loaded with leftovers from Hanukkah, which had ended almost a month earlier. I picked up a handful of glitzy Jewish star pendants, tiny menorahs, super-hero figures wearing beards and yarmulkes, and play soldiers in IDF uniform. On my way to the cashier, I noticed a shelf of items featuring the pattern of the Israeli flag—socks, wool hats, headbands, gloves, scarves, and even a funeral wreath with a combination of the Israeli and American flags. I took two pairs of socks, a wool hat, gloves, a scarf, and the wreath.

The cashier, an elderly woman sitting on a tall stool, ran everything through the scanner without a comment. But the wreath was too much for her. “Who died?”

“Joshua,” I said. “Haven’t you heard?”

“
Oh, really?” Her hand went to her mouth. “Joshua Leibowitz is dead?”

The name was familiar—a lawyer and one-time president of the Jewish Federation. “Not that Joshua,” I said. “The dead one is Joshua of Nazareth.”

“
Don’t know him. What happened?”

“
He was crucified.” I handed her my credit card. “It’s on the front page of the
Jewish News
.”

“
You are naughty.” She giggled like a girl comprehending a dirty joke. “Joshua of Nazareth.
Oy vey!
May God protect us from the evil eye!”

On the way home, I called Rebecca’s mobile. It went straight into her voicemail. I knew she was at the synagogue, preparing the Gathering Hall for our Sheva Brachot party tomorrow night, so I left a short message: “It’s me. Sorry for storming out this morning, but I was really upset. Anyway, I found a way to better clarify my feelings. You’ll see when you come home. Good luck with the caterer.”

Spreading a blue tarp on the driveway, I pulled the tree out of the car and used the tarp to drag it through the front door into the house and down the hallway to the living room. With the metal base set up between the fireplace and the piano, it was time for the most challenging part of doing this alone—raising the tree to an upright position. After a few futile attempts, I managed to prop the tree up by crouching as I lifted it off the tarp. With a loud groan I aligned the bottom of the trunk with the hollow base and slipped it in. This awkward maneuver caused a nasty cramp in my left arm and shoulder, and I dropped on the sofa, panting, waiting for the pain to pass.

The rest was easy. I spent an hour among the needling branches, threading the fiber optic lights and hanging little menorahs, Hasidic superheroes, IDF toy soldiers, and blue stars. The Israeli socks stood in for stockings along the fireplace mantle, and Debra’s old teddy bear donned the Israeli-style wool hat, scarf, and gloves. I had to use a stepladder to reach high enough to attach the wreath onto the mirror above the mantle.