It was on TV a few nights before Christmas, and although she didn’t come out and say it, I think Mom wanted this to be a “family event,” all of us watching it together, including Uncle Doug from the basement. She’d even made popcorn.
But Uncle Doug said he was going to stay down there and read. He was halfway through this huge book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He came up and took a bowl of popcorn, though.
So there was Mom and Dad and Nancy on the couch, Cheryl in one chair, Linda in the other, Mike and me on the floor. You could tell from the opening credits—the fancy handwriting trimmed with holly, the sleigh bells and jaunty violins—this was going to be long and corny and boring.
Cheryl lucked out, her boyfriend Bob coming to the back door just after the thing got started. She promised Mom and Dad she’d be back early.
“Tell him to come in and watch the movie,” Dad suggested.
Cheryl said quietly, “He seems upset.”
“Oh, for Christ sake,” Mom said.
Bob was a big handsome guy in collegiate-looking clothes but very sensitive and frequently upset.
So Cheryl got out of it. And then, while George in the movie was still a boy working at the town drugstore, the phone in the kitchen rang and Linda jumped up—“I got it!”—and ran out.
I heard her out there: “Hello?”
I waited.
“Oh my God,” she said, “you’re kidding. Hang on.” She closed the kitchen door. It was her friend Mary Jo Foster, undoubtedly. “The Mouth,” as Dad called her. Linda wouldn’t be back.
Jimmy Stewart pretty soon took over in the movie as George the adult. He was talking to a pretty girl, Mary— Donna Reed from The Donna Reed Show—at a crowded dance. Then Dad started snoring, loud.
Mom woke him up. “We can’t hear the movie.”
“Just resting my eyes,” he told her.
But by the time George and Mary were dancing the Charleston together he was snoring again.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Mom said, and got him to his feet.
He walked off, holding up a large gnarly hand: “Goodnight.”
“’Night, Dad,” Mike and Nan and I told him.
After the dance George walked Mary home, telling her if she wanted the moon just say the word and he would throw a lasso around it. “I’d pull ’er down for ya, Mary.”
Nancy said she was going to throw up and ran to the bathroom. I felt the same way, but she meant from eating too much buttered popcorn for a seven-year-old. Mom went to help her out—we were all bad at vomiting.
Which left me and Mike, lying on the floor, chins in our fists.
George and Mary went on talking together in the moonlight about their hopes and dreams and such.
Mike turned his head to the side, closed his eyes and went to sleep.
I could hear Mom in the bathroom coaching Nan, telling her to relax, just let it come up. Then Nan began making enormous sounds for a little kid. “That’s it,” Mom told her, “there you go, that’s it …”
I turned the volume louder.
Mike woke up and went to bed.
I continued watching because no matter how bad a movie is, after I’ve stayed beyond a certain point I’m stuck with it.
By the time Mom got Nancy into bed and returned to the living room, George and Mary were ducking rice outside the church. Mom stood there looking around the room, shaking her head, muttering something.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.” She went around collecting popcorn bowls.
“Aren’t you gonna watch?”
“I’ve seen it.” She told me to turn the volume down and went to bed.
I felt bad for her. She’d had this nice idea.
About half an hour later George suddenly flipped out, right in front of the wife and kids on Christmas Eve, shouting and breaking things, like he couldn’t stand being in this stupid sickening movie a minute longer, and ended up drunk on a bridge in the falling snow, about to jump.
This was more like it.
But then this little old sweet-faced angel named Clarence appears and shows George what a wonderful life he’s actually had, and still has, and George goes running back to it, screaming Merry Christmas to everyone on the street, and at home he hugs his wife and children— Oh, kids! Oh, Mary!—then all the townspeople come over with an actual basket full of cash to save the building-and-loan company, and someone proposes a toast—To George, the richest man in town—meaning of course rich with family and friends who love him very much, and they all start singing, Should auld acquaintance be forgot …
Linda, finally off the phone, came in and stood there. “How is it?”
“Stinks to high heaven.”
“Is that why you’re crying?”
“I’m not crying.”
She gave a little snort and walked out.
“I’m not.”