Suzanne Blacet stepped back from the Blacet Christmas tree and let out a quiet trill. The tree was enormous, something like fifty feet tall. It nearly reached the ceiling of the den, with its plush appointments.
“Traditions,” Suzanne said. She paused for a moment and cocked her head, as if listening for a pleasing echo. “That’s what we believe in here: traditions. Family traditions. Don’t we, honey?”
“Yes, maman,” said Adrianna, called Dria—my girlfriend. We were in college, a couple of sweaty econ majors. We’d been together for eight months and four days. This was my first visit to the Blacet mansion, to meet the family, which, by some calculus I didn’t quite understand, meant that Dria was now, suddenly, against all dependable odds, willing to fuck me. She was tucked beside me in an angora sweater that made me want to rub her chest with my cock until both of us caught fire.
Also in the room were Dria’s father, Bud, and her little brother, Sandro. They were wearing identical Polo sweaters the color of Tang. Paco, the handyman, stood watch over the roaring fire. Madelina, the housekeeper, was manning the eggnog. She looked ready to murder everyone in the room.
Suzanne beckoned me to step forward, toward a large cedar box. Inside was a selection of bright silver tchotchkes.
“Ornaments.” Suzanne placed her hand on my forearm. “Relics of our past. We put them on the tree every year. As a way of remembering.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“Choose one,” Suzanne said. “This is the Blacet way.” She pronounced her surname with a Parisian lilt (blah-say) and laughed at her little rhyme.
“Really?” I said. “I mean, I don’t want to take anyone’s favorite.”
Suzanne looked at her husband.
“Nonsense!” Bud said. “Nonsense! Choose one! Go ahead!”
“Volume,” Sandro said.
Bud fiddled with his hearing aid.
The ornaments looked priceless, all of them, little bells and angels and stars. I choose the shabbiest-looking one, some kind of pewter peg, and hung it on a low limb.
“Oh,” Suzanne said. “Perfect. So big and perfect and shiny. Isn’t that nice, Jacob?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very pretty.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Not really,” I said.
“It belonged to my grandpère Marsen,” she said. “His shoehorn.”
“You were going to guess vibrator, weren’t you?” Dria whispered. “Weren’t you, you dirty little Jew horn?”
Jew horn. Was this a term I should have viewed as acceptable? No. But it was what Dria called me in her moods of amour, those brief, intense periods during which she wanted nothing more than to wriggle her soft little hand down the front of my good corduroys.
It was a horrible term, a slur, a clear indicator of Dria’s various cultural pathologies. But I wanted to have sex with her really badly. It was a bodily compulsion. I had certain ideas about what it would be like to be up inside her, like the ocean, like flying, like licking marmalade off the good silver. I was—if I may point this out to the assembled jury—not quite twenty years old.
Besides, dirty talk was a part of our routine. It was something Dria, so wealthy, so continental, so devoutly soaped, required. She would get herself nice and loaded at a sorority party and call me Jew horn and matzo fucker and cum dreidl. And I, once I figured out the rules, called her pilgrim whore and Mayflower slut and snail pussy.
We’d called each other these things and press our bodies together, our naughty parts yearning for consummation and all the damp, chafing fabrics in between. So much drunken hope! Isn’t that a version of love also, some central, infant aspect of the thing: the dumb pulse, the warm seep? How else do we survive the rest of the bullshit?
Anyway, I’m not going to tell you here about how we met or how we broke up and the secret scars we acquired. That’s part of some other, duller story. I’m going to stick to this one Christmas Eve, all the sweet sickness that came rushing at me at once, along with the nutmeg and smoke and old leather.
Dria had promised me. “You want to get that horn up there, don’t you? All deep inside. It’s going to be ready for you. But you have to wait until Christmas Eve. You have to be a patient little Hebrew.”
Dinner was a massive rack of lamb, pale red slabs of muscle, spiced with Mrs. Dash and dressed with a neon mint jelly. The Blacets ate with grace and precision. I could never quite catch them chewing.
“Tell us about your winter holiday,” Suzanne said. “You celebrate Chanukah, I assume?”
“It’s Hanukkah,” Sandro said. He spoke with the towering boredom of a fifteen-year-old; it pained him to correct the world’s relentless ignorance.
“There are eight nights, and you light a candle for each. Why is that, Jacob?”
“Well,” I said, “it commemorates the Maccabeans, who were a tribe of rebel fighters in antiquity. They were trying to liberate the Jews from the Romans, and, at the same time, they were trying to keep the candles in the Temple, the Old Temple, lit, which I believe was a commandment, one of God’s, but they had only enough oil for one day, but the oil lasted for eight days. It was a miracle.”
The Blacets looked at me, nakedly disappointed: this was what the Jews were putting up against the birth of the savior?
“I think it’s a terrific story, Joseph,” Bud hollered. He’d been the top man in a steel forge, back before he married into the Blacet money.
“Jacob,” Sandro said. “The guy’s name is Jacob.”
“Yes, dear,” Suzanne said.
“Which one was Jacob?” Bud said. “The one with the rainbow coat?”
“That’s Joseph,” Sandro said.
“Did he wind up in the hole?”
“You’re thinking of Jeremiah, dear,” Suzanne said. “The prophet Jeremiah.”
“I thought Jeremiah was a bullfrog,” Bud said.
Dria squealed out her pity laugh, then reached beneath the table and placed her hand on my belt buckle.
Dessert was served by Madelina, a fruit aspic.
“Good meat, Mother,” Bud said.
“Madelina made it,” Sandro sneered.
Suzanne shot her son a look that made me think: coat hanger.
“Are we using the same butcher?” Bud said. “The old kraut?”
“Don’t say that, Father,” Dria said. “It’s a slur. Kraut is a slur.”
Suzanne looked at her husband. “Honestly, dear, Jacob doesn’t want to hear about Germans.”
Bud waved his hands in mock surrender.
“What does Hanukkah have to do with the twelve tribes?” Sandro wanted to know. He’d eaten fourteen slices of lamb and left half his potato.
“I’m not sure, exactly,” I said.
“Can you name them?” The little butterball leered at me. “Benjamin, Judah, Levi, Dan—that’s the one that got lost—”
“Quit showing off,” Dria said. “It’s tacky. Everyone in this family is so tacky.” She released my belt buckle and let her little hand drop down onto my crotch.
Dria had sent me out to the back porch with Bud. I assumed this might be the occasion he would demand to know if I planned to deflower his daughter. (In fact, Dria had lost her virginity a year earlier, to a Sigma Chi who had plied her with grain alcohol and Walt Whitman, though this was not something I planned to share with her father.)
Suzanne was in the kitchen with Madelina. I had seen them huddled over the sink, enjoying the rich communion of disapproval.
Bud pulled a flask out, took a long slug, handed the flask to me.
I took a sip. “Wow.”
“They get the real stuff,” he screamed mysteriously. “From the viscount.”
“It certainly tastes real.”
“Goddamn Vichy money,” Bud said, with an unexpected bitterness. He was a short, thick man with the face of a grizzled cherub.
I took another swallow and stared into the dense stand of trees that bordered the property. Their trunks shone like pale fingers in the light from the house.
“Cedar,” Bud said sadly. He tapped his belly. “All right, let’s get this show on the road. You ready, Jack?”
“Sir?”
Bud tucked the flask into the back pocket of his wool trousers. He trundled off the porch and toward a small shed, from which he removed two giant axes. He handed one to me. The idea was that, having drunk our bourbon, we would now chop wood. These struck me as activities best conducted separately, but I was in no position to object. This was the Blacet tradition, and I wanted more than anything to be obedient to this tradition, so that later, on the very eve of Christmas, I would be granted unlimited access to Dria’s lovely, well-pruned lower half.
Bud began to hack at a nearby log. “You take that other end,” he said.
My swings bounced off the log in a manner that, I was fairly certain, would soon result in the loss of my foot. Meanwhile, Bud’s blade bit into the wood with gaudy cracks. He was paying me no mind.
And then suddenly Paco was standing off to my left, like a grim apparition. He looked at me with something that didn’t quite qualify as contempt and took the axe from my blistered palm.
They went at the wood with a frantic devotion. These were full-bodied whacks, of the sort I associated with Paul Bunyan, extended backswings, clean strokes. Their cheeks marbled with the exertion, the rapture of hard labor. They moved from the ends of the log toward the center, till they were nearly touching at the flanks, their puffs and grunts fallen into a steady rhythm.
Dria and I were in the pantry, grinding pelvic bones and discussing sleeping arrangements. They had stashed me in the basement, while Dria was on the third floor, next to the master bedroom.
“It’ll be a secret mission,” she said. “You’ll have to be cunning, like Odysseus.”
“But your parents—”
“Wait until after midnight. They sleep like the dead.” She looked up at me with her chin flashing. “I’ll be ready for you, Jay.” She lifted her skirt and showed me the long white thighs. Her tongue was hot with eggnog.
Then we heard footsteps and jumped away from each other just as Madelina opened the pantry door. She was in a silent ecstasy, pretending to be surprised, pretending not to understand the scene before her.
“We were checking something,” Dria said.
“Is that so?”
“Yes, it is.”
“What were you checking, Dria?” Madelina said, in her merciless accent. “Were you checking if we had beef bouillon? Or maybe you were checking if we had saltines. And you needed someone to help, a tall boy to see on those high shelves? But, of course, that is none of my business.”
“That’s right,” Dria said sharply. “There are some things that are nobody’s business. You of all people should know that.”
The two of them exchanged a look of accumulated recrimination.
“Your mother is in the sitting room,” Madelina said slowly.
We made our way back and listened to Suzanne Blacet as she detailed the legacy of her forebears, who had served in the court of Louis Quatorze, Napoleon’s army, the Académie Scientifique. Dria had mentioned none of this. It was unnecessary. Her very manner, the grace, the formal gestures announced her lineage.
I felt as if I were in the midst of many confusing secrets. It hadn’t occurred to me that this was the central purpose of family: the production of secrets, the elaborate concealment of unbearable truths. I still thought of my family in childish terms, as a lovable inconvenience.
Suzanne talked on and on. The fire snapped. Dria sat listening to her maman and licking her lips.
I’d drunk too much eggnog—that much was clear. There was also the wine at dinner and the bourbon. I was not much of a drinker, even under the best of circumstances. But my nerves, my wanting to do things right, had got the best of me.
I couldn’t lie on the bed; it was spinning. Instead, I sat on the toilet and put my head between my legs and waited for midnight.
It wasn’t entirely clear to me how I was supposed to get to Dria’s room, but these were blurry details. I stumbled up the stairs to the first floor. All the lights were off, though I could see the chandelier in the dining room twinkling in the moonlight, and the beauty of this held me for a few moments.
Then a strange smell hit me, a musk of some kind, which seemed to be emanating from the rear bathroom, where I had gone to collect myself after Madelina caught us in the pantry. I thought perhaps it was Madelina herself, taking a perfumed bath. There is no reason, aside from dumb animal curiosity, that I should have tiptoed toward that door. Then again, at that particular moment, at most of the important human moments, dumb animal curiosity is pretty much the ball game.
The door was ajar (of course it was), and an aromatic steam was puffing out. I recognized the scent: eucalyptus. I should mention that this bathroom was—like all the Blacet bathrooms—tremendous and ornately mirrored, a style inspired, no doubt, by the palatial shitters of the Sun King.
I edged the door open and peeked inside. I could see only the mirror, which was mostly fogged over, but, because of the angle, allowed me a view of what I had thought was the bathtub. It was, in fact, a sort of shower/steam room with a small tile bench, on which sat Bud and Paco. They were both quite naked—Bud red with the heat, Paco a luminous brown.
This was strange enough to disorient me a little. Then Paco began scrubbing Bud’s shoulders with what I guess must have been a pumice stone, and Bud’s eyes took on a drowsy, distant, grateful look, like a dog having his ears scratched. He lowered his forehead onto Paco’s sturdy shoulder.
I wasn’t sure what to think. There was some part of me that figured this was simply how the wealthy did things—their longtime servants performed such duties. And then there was another part of me that could see, simply by the relaxed posture of their bodies, that this was something more than a professional arrangement, a prelude to further ministrations.
I shut the door with elaborate caution; my heart was chopping.
This was the point at which I should have gone back downstairs. But I had my own needs. Dria was waiting, with her eager, presumably downy loins. She was ready, and my body knew what ready meant. I made for the stairs.
The second floor was pitch-black. I crept across the thick carpets, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I felt someone watching me and spun around to find a noblewoman, painted in somber colors, staring down at me from a gilded frame. In one hand, she held a black squirrel, in the other, a small brown nut.
I hurried away from her and toward a door that I hoped would lead to the stairs. But this was, instead, a second kitchen, with a vast counter, upon which the remains of our dinner lay about, congealing.
Then I heard a voice and ducked down, behind a wall of pans.
“Who’s there?” Madelina said. “Is there someone there? Señora?”
A second voice, faint, petulant, nakedly frightened, said, “Is someone there, tía?”
“Silence,” Madelina said. Her footsteps carried her past the counter. She latched the swinging door shut. I could see the hem of her dark gown and the plump calves beneath. She lifted something from the counter, with a grunt. “Now,” she said. “Turn around. All the way. Do it, little lamb. Do it, or you won’t get any. Hold still. Hold still, little lamb.”
The only sound during all this was a moist stroking I couldn’t quite place. Skin was touching skin, but it sounded medicinal, not sexual. Madelina finished whatever she was doing and I heard her approach the counter. The next sound was unmistakable: a brisk, metallic hiss. She was sharpening a knife.
I didn’t know what to do. Was Madelina going to kill her victim? Who was her victim? Was I hearing and seeing things? Or perhaps I was dreaming—this was all an odd, pickled dream.
The sharpening stopped, and Madelina rasped, “Who’s there? Who is that I hear?”
I froze. What would I do if she came any closer? Could I successfully flee her? I was faster than her, sure, but my socks would slip on the wood floor. She would set upon me with her very sharp knife and carve snow angels into my thorax. I was an intruder, after all, a Jew who had groped the family daughter in the pantry. The family would close ranks. I had drunk too much liquor and gone berserk, after Adrianna refused to perform oral sex on my Jew horn. The tabloids would get a hold of the story. A JEW BERSERK ON CHRISTMAS EVE! Full-color photos of my carcass and the heroic Madelina in her spattered nightgown. My friends would tell investigators, not implausibly, “He always was kind of high-strung.”
Madelina was speaking again. “Who’s there? Is that a little lamb? A little piggy lamb?” I could tell, though, that she had turned away from the counter. She was moving toward the far end of the kitchen.
Then I heard another weird noise, a kind of snuffled whimper.
I inched my head above the counter. Madelina was dressed in long, dark robe, a sort of nun’s habit. She was kneeling before a small alcove, into which was wedged some kind of large, glistening doll. Then the doll whimpered again, and I could see that this was Sandro, that he had folded himself into this small space, which was, in fact, the dumbwaiter. He was dressed in boxer shorts, and his skin appeared to have been slathered in some kind of lotion. Then I noticed a bowl to Madelina’s left, half full of what my mother would have called drippings—the liquid fat gathered from the broiler beneath the lamb.
With her left hand, Madelina stabbed at the platter beside her and slowly raised a slice of lamb toward Sandro’s mouth. She was speaking softly now, almost tenderly. “Mi gordito,” she said. “Tienes hambre, eh?”
It was entirely unclear to me how Sandro had fit himself inside the dumbwaiter. He was, as I’ve mentioned, a fat child, folded upon himself; his limbs were pinned against his flanks. His mouth struggled for the meat, abject and fishlike. Madelina flicked his forehead to still him. She held the slice beneath his nose, drew it away, dragged it across his forehead, across the bridge of his nose.
Sandro’s eyes began to tear up.
“Don’t cry, gordito. The Lord provides. Do you believe that, little lamb?”
Sandro nodded.
She continued to drag the meat across his face, like a sick rag. “But you have to suffer for your sins on this night, don’t you?”
This went on for some time. At last, she let him bite down on one end. The other end she placed in her own mouth. They chewed until their lips were touching. This wasn’t kissing. It was more in the spirit of two wolverines.
I wish I could report that, having slipped out of the kitchen, I proceeded directly out of that house, to the nearest police station. But no. I was still drunk, and now quite frightened. I couldn’t imagine heading back down to the basement. I had to see Dria, not to make love to her, necessarily, nothing that complicated. I simply needed to cower under her covers until daylight. I was certain she was innocent of all this.
There was a long hallway on the third floor, with many doors on either side and wheezing radiators. Dria had told me she was in the room at the end of the hall. But I couldn’t tell if she meant for me to turn left or right at the top of the stairs. The prospect of making the wrong decision paralyzed me. What would I find behind the mystery door: Mrs. Blacet fucking a donkey?
So I guessed one direction (the left) and staggered that way. I was overwhelmed, really. I thought about my family, gathered down in Baltimore—the neurotic, self-critical, petty lot of them—cheating at Scrabble and complaining about acid reflux. I saw my uncle Morris smuggling a Daily Worker into the bathroom, a look of assumed failure etched on his brow. My cousin Roy would be spitting at the girl cousins on the stoop. Never had these common miseries seemed so alluring.
Here was the door, big and funereal, like all the Blacet doors. I could not stare at it all night. Madelina was down below me, auditioning for the Inquisition. I opened the thing, and the familiar scent of Dria was upon me: lavender and new stockings.
“You made it,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said. “Listen…”
But I couldn’t complete my thought. She was sitting up in bed, naked to the waist, her small breasts just there, glowing in the dim. I was overcome by gratitude, by relief.
“Get over here,” she said. “I’ve been waiting. I’m ready. Were you cunning? You were, weren’t you? Long johns! You’re so cute. Get over here.”
She pulled me into an embrace. “You’re trembling. Are you cold?”
“Not really,” I said. “I’m a little, I guess, freaked out.”
Dria looked at me with her distinguished nose, her lioness eyes. “That is so sweet,” she said. “Don’t be freaked out, Jacob. This is going to be great. You were so good. You waited so patiently. Look what I have for you!” She gestured toward her chest. “These are for you!” She placed my hand on them. “Come onto the bed, Jacob.”
Then I was on the bed and Dria was yanking at my waistband.
“Wait,” I said. “I’d like to…could we talk?”
“You’re nervous, aren’t you?”
Dria lifted the covers. I could feel the warmth of her lower body as a wave, and the scent of her down below. It made me want to crawl down there and curl up with my cheek on her mons pubis. That was about my speed. But Dria had her own agenda. She, too, had been waiting. She, too, was twenty years old. Her body was a configuration of inept desires loosely knit into action. She took my hand and showed me her readiness. She tossed my long johns away.
“I feel a little weird,” I said. “I saw some weird stuff. Downstairs.”
“You’re still drunk, aren’t you? You’re so cute when you’re drunk!” She reached for me. “He’s not drunk, though. He’s standing straight up. He’s ready, isn’t he?”
I admitted that he was ready.
Dria said, “That means we’re both ready.”
She was in one of her states, the rush of the thing, the anxiety, making her grabby. I was supposed to get on top of her. Those were her orders. I was supposed to open her legs and place my young readiness against hers and get the party started. And I might actually have done so; my body was ready to enact its predictable, ecstatic will—except that I heard a noise come from the closet.
“What the hell was that?” I said.
“Nothing.”
Then it came again, a muffled sneeze.
“Nothing,” Dria said again.
The closet swung open, and there was Suzanne Blacet, in a fancy sleeping gown, her hair gathered in a girlish ponytail.
I tried to roll off Dria, but she held me fast. “Maman!” she snarled. Her tone was not one of shock, or fear, but rage.
They began to speak very quickly.
“I’m sorry,” Suzanne said.
“I knew you’d find some way to announce yourself!”
“Surely you don’t think—”
“I do.”
“There were dust mites, my dear.”
“You could have used the peephole.”
“This is my home.”
“You’ve scared him,” Dria said. “You’ve scared Jacob. Now he’s going to be all freaked out. Are you freaked out, Jacob?”
“Yes,” I said. I had freed a hand and managed, at least, to cover my nakedness with the duvet.
“You see,” Dria said. Her voice was zooming toward a weepy timbre.
Suzanne took a step toward the bed. “Do you honestly think I’d want your friend to see me in this state?” Her face, scrubbed of makeup, showed a rumpled beauty.
“This is a misunderstanding,” I said. “I came to tuck your daughter in. I meant no disrespect. I can head downstairs, to my room.”
“Nonsense,” Dria said. “You’re not going anywhere. I was ready. I’m ready.” She was crying now.
“Calm down,” Suzanne said. “You are such a little actress. Jacob is not an unintelligent boy. Don’t underestimate him.”
“You’re ruining this!”
“I’m not ruining anything, Adrianna. Don’t be silly. Don’t make this a scene.” She smoothed her robe and seated herself delicately on the ottoman beside the bed. “Listen, Jacob,” she said, in a measured tone. “I spoke to you earlier about traditions. We are a family with certain traditions. In the old days—I am talking about several generations ago, in France—most of the marriages were arranged. Girls of a certain standing with noblemen, who were usually much older. The occasion of the wedding night was a rather perilous situation. Do you understand? There was a dowry at issue. These girls were quite innocent. And some of these gentleman—their behavior was somewhat less than honorable. The result was that certain families insisted that the mother of the bride, or a suitable proxy, be allowed to witness the inaugural coupling. There was nothing prurient in this. It was merely an effort to safeguard the experience, which can be so formative.”
I glanced down at Dria, sprawled beneath me, aghast. “Oh God,” she said. “You’re making us sound medieval, maman!”
“I am explaining the situation,” Suzanne said calmly. “This tradition is not limited to our family. It is a widespread and sensible practice. Dria communicates with me about her life, as she will wish her children to communicate with her. She has chosen you. I accept that. I have not asked her to take a vow of chastity until marriage. I have allowed her the freedom to do as she wishes. We are a modern family, Jacob. But she is my only daughter. You must understand.”
“We’re not married,” Dria said miserably. “This isn’t our wedding night.”
“Nor do I expect you to get married. You are young.”
“He’s going to think I’m all crazy.”
“Nonsense,” Suzanne said. “He will think that you are loyal to your family, which is not yet a sin. As a member of our family, I have asked that Dria uphold our traditions. I intend this as no aspersion. You strike me as a perfectly nice young man. I admire your religion. The Jews are an industrious peoples.”
“Just get out, maman! Go back to your room!”
Suzanne shook her head. “Do not raise your voice to me in my own home,” she said, then turned back to me. “We are an open family, Jacob. We have no secrets. But we do have a saying, from the French: What the moon may know, the sun need not. Isn’t that a lovely sentiment? It has brought us much happiness. I would advise you not to become too concerned with the customs or morals of others. You’ll have a very long, dull journey if you do. There is my daughter. She has waited a long time to make love to you, and you have waited, too. You may acquire this experience, or you may turn away. I will wait in the hall for two minutes. If you want to return to your room, Jacob, you may do so.”
Suzanne left the room, and Dria looked at me. It was clear her mother held this power over her. She was flushed with the shame.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“I wanted to do it,” she said. “I was so ready.”
“Me too,” I said.
She sighed. “Now you think I’m crazy.”
Dria was lying naked under the eiderdown, her tender chest so disappointed. I stroked her along the hip.
“You should go,” she said. “I know you want to go.”
She reached out and dragged her fingertips along my stomach. “I did want that filthy Jew horn inside me,” she said, nostalgically.
The mechanisms of desire are so strange in our species, residing half in imagination, half in our hearts. Who can say what means will light the magic wick? It must be easier for the rest of the animals, a matter of the glands.
Or maybe it was this easy for me, as I lay next to Adrianna Blacet on Christmas Eve. Her glands told her to start breathing more deeply. Her glands told her to start touching my belly. My glands, in turn, became suddenly attuned to her, stark naked at last. How long my glands had waited for this, eight months of swollen prelude.
There was so much perversity blooming in that house, Bud and Paco together in the shower, Sandro greased up and whimpering for lamb, Suzanne ready to witness our fumbling bodies. These were disturbing facts. I agreed. I agreed. But I couldn’t do anything about them, really. At best, I could run off into the world of the allegedly normal with a scandalous story to tell. But the world has enough of those.
Consider this one: a woman announces she’s been impregnated by God and gives birth to his bastard son in a donkey barn. Strange stuff.
Whereas Dria, she wasn’t strange at all. She wasn’t angry at her mother, either. Not really. She wanted, instead, a grand occasion for hope. Our skin yearned for contact. Her mouth reached for mine.
We did hear the door click behind us, just as I slipped inside Dria. She let out a moan of surprise, which I felt as a soft vibration. But we were alone, as true lovers always are, in the slippery warmth.
By morning, there was a fresh coat of snow on the ground. Madelina set out a breakfast to feed the Huns. The fire was already blazing. We were gathered in the den, drowsy and grateful, our doubles lives neatly tucked beneath the tree.
“Did anyone hear Santa last night?” Bud said.
Dria, seated primly beside me, rolled her eyes. “He asks this every year.”
Suzanne looked at Sandro. This was his cue.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” he said sulkily.
“That Santa,” Bud said. He turned and flashed me an almost imperceptible wink. “He’s one quiet son of a bitch.”
STEVE ALMOND
on “A Jew Berserk on Christmas Eve”
I’m not sure where this one came from, honestly. It may have come from many years spent lusting after shiksas and fantasizing about the perversities that might lie beneath their seamless family veneers. We’re all freaks. That’s the truth. I wanted to capture that idea in action, to keep upping the ante.
When I first wrote “A Jew…” I didn’t think much of it—it came too easily. I always mistrust the stories that come too easily, that don’t incur enough suffering. (That’s how you know I’m Jewish.) But looking back at it, I can see how tenderhearted it is, ultimately, how strenuously it argues for forgiveness over judgment.