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“The Other Side of Christmas ”

Christmas 1971

By Charles Moon

      Upstate New York looked like it was going to be a fresh start for our family. Dad had left the ministry for a more lucrative position as the administrator of a Presbyterian nursing home. We were told that the move was for our benefit, my brothers and me. We were going to have a newer house and a new car near better schools in a neighborhood with plenty of other children our ages. We would also be getting away from the dangers inherent in living in a big city like Philadelphia. In retrospect, I think we were simply trying to run away from the discrete looks and whispered accusations my father’s behavior had sentenced us to as long as we remained in any area that knew him.

      The newfound harmony lasted less than six months. Mom and dad, who were isolated from the support of friends and family -- now hundreds of miles away -- were forced to rely on each other. Dad, in his inability to deal with conflict and pressure, retreated into a bottle of whiskey. The harder mom tried to deal with the growing problems in our household, while upholding the appearance of the American dream to our neighbors, the further dad withdrew. Spring passed into summer, and while Terry and I were becoming situated in the new neighborhood with school and friends, dad was absent in the evenings with increasing frequency. We deluded ourselves into believing he was working hard at the office, but that notion was quickly dashed when, in June we discovered he was let go from his job for his inability to perform. No doubt, from spending his evenings at the bar.

      The fights moved from the privacy of discrete and muffled conversations behind the closed door of the bedroom to loud shouts moving indiscriminately from room to room throughout the entire house. Alternate yelling and crying was commonplace in the Branch household in the summer of 1971. Luckily, Terry, Andy and I were able to spend a great deal of time outside in the affluent comfort of suburbia, away from the truth of the imminent meltdown our family was facing.

      One late summer afternoon, it all collapsed. Dad sat at the kitchen table in his underwear hunched over a cup of coffee. Terry and I were running in and out of the back door, making every effort to secure as much play time as possible with the commencement of school looming in our immediate future. Dad ignored us through the fog of his alcohol-induced stupor like all the other insects that clung to the screen in the humid August air. And, we accepted his stoic presence as if he were nothing more than an old piece of furniture that had outlived it’s usefulness but had too much sentimental value to dispose of. Mom was pacing back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room. There was something on her mind.

      Then it happened. In a burst of rage, the likes of which we had never witnessed before, Mom grabbed a glass jar from the table and through the tears and yelling about how she couldn’t take it anymore, she hurled it towards my father. Dad did not move. The jar hit the table near a bowl of lemons and splintered into twinkling shards of glass. Two of the lemons rolled to the floor as the last remnant of the jar came to rest in front of my father’s cup. Dad did not move.

      We never did learn what the last straw had been that broke mom’s seemingly indestructible spirit, but it had broken as violently as the glass on the hard Formica® tabletop. Mom stood behind dad for a moment or two, then she muttered a few inaudible words and pulled the gold band from the third finger of her left hand. She tossed her wedding ring onto the table and left the room crying. Dad did not move. He sat staring at the gold symbol of his marriage mingling with shattered glass and bruised lemons. How appropriate that his marriage should end this way. And dad still did not move. How typical.

      Eventually dad moved. He moved out. That day in August of 1971 was the last time I saw my parents together for years. The new school year started with mom looking for a job and a house that fit more within the budget of a single parent family. She expected no support from dad because she knew he had none to give. The circumstances that led to him being released from the administrator’s job also prevented him from finding similar positions. The money was already gone and the expenses of living in the new house in suburbia far outstretched the income of a woman who had been out of the workforce for 15 years.

      By the end of October we had moved into a more modest house in a neighborhood that was not considered upwardly mobile. Mom had taken a job in a local factory and Terry and I changed schools one more time. Andy was enrolled in first grade.

      The Thanksgiving holiday found us revealed to the world as poseurs from the other side of the tracks who had been unceremoniously thrown back to the caste from which we came. We were just another broken home trying desperately to find something to be thankful for between the turkey and the football games.

      Mom made all the arrangements for our new beginning. She transferred everything from the deed to the house to the telephone bill into her name only. We adapted. We were good at it. And, nobody ever brought up that fateful day in August again. We were good at that, too.

      The last detail to complete our transition was having the newspaper delivered. Mom called the main office of the Post-Standard and had the delivery boy come by to give us our payment card.

      Joe Trebo was a skinny kid a year older than I was and just about as tall. He had a mop of curly blonde locks that bounced on top of his narrow face. He carried a canvas sack over his shoulder, with the imprinted name of the Post-Standard fading from constant use.

      Joe was a loner. He spent most of his time out of school taking care of his two paper routes. He not only delivered the evening edition that we subscribed to, but he rose at 5:00 a.m. to deliver the morning paper as well. Joe seemed to always be out somewhere with his sack of newspapers.

      We hit it off almost immediately. Joe made our house the last delivery of the day so we could hang out together. This worked out well since mom didn’t get home from work until 5:30 and never read the paper until after dinner. Every day around 4.p.m. Joe showed up with his canvas sack and his last paper and, instead of leaving it on our doorstep and going home, he rang the bell and hand delivered it. My new friend stayed every day as long as he could before heading out into the cold and dark December evenings to return to the home he never talked about.

      My new friendship and the continuing adjustments to a new school and house made the December days fly by.  The week before Christmas the weather patterns shifted and the temperatures shot up twenty degrees, melting what snow was on the ground into slushy pools of muck. Monday, December 20th Joe arrived at 4:00 p.m., right on time, wearing a red and green stocking cap and a sprig of holly poking out of the fold. He sported a grin so wide, it proudly displayed the gap between his front teeth. Somehow the Christmas spirit had found him and I was envious.

      “Ho, ho, ho,” he laughed as he removed his dripping boots on our front porch.

      “What’s got you in such a good mood?”

      “Oh, c’mon, Dave, it’s Christmas.”

      “Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

      Joe reached into his bag and pulled out a branch of holly, still holding on to the clusters of red berries at the base of the shiny pointed leaves, that he had broken off the huge bush in front of the public library. It was, in his words, “an act of spiritual vandalism.” He snapped off a sprig of the greens, identical to the one poking from his hat, and threw it at me.

      “There’s a reminder.”

      I took the plant and stuck it on my head. I wasn’t wearing a hat.

      “How’s that?”

      “It’s you,” Joe chuckled.

      Joe stuffed the partially denuded holly branch back in his bag and turned to leave.

      “Hey. Where are you going?” I asked.

      “Can’t stay today. I got to get some shopping done. Oh, yeah,” he added, slipping back into the wet boots on the front porch, “I’ll be around to collect tomorrow since Saturday is Christmas.”

      “Okay. I’ll tell my mom.”

      Joe collected for the paper each week on Saturday. We had only been in that house for two months, but mom already had decided that she would leave the newspaper money in an envelope clipped to the card Joe punched when we paid him. Mom always put the money there a week in advance so that it was ready whenever Joe came by. Whoever was home could pay him. Even though I knew the money was already there for Joe, I let him leave. This announcement was not so much a convenient reminder for his customers, but a not-so-subtle hint that it was the time of year for tipping loyal paperboys.

      Mom came home at 5:37 p.m. and glanced around the kitchen and living room expecting to see Joe making himself at home, as she had found him almost every day for the past couple of weeks.

      “Is Joe here?” she finally asked.

      “No, he had to go shopping. Christmas shopping, I guess. But, he left this.”

      I picked up the stem of holly leaves and placed it on my head, but mom didn’t understand the context. I held it out for her to see and then put it in the top buttonhole of my shirt.

      “He’s a good boy.” Mom smiled.

      “He’s coming to collect tomorrow instead of Saturday because Saturday is Christmas.”

      Mom acknowledged both the statement and it’s meaning. She pulled the last five-dollar bill from her wallet and slid it into the envelope already containing the money we owed for the paper. Five dollars was not much of a tip, but it was the best she could do.

      “Go wash up for dinner and tell Terry and Andy dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.”

      “Okay, mom.”

      I trotted upstairs to the bathroom with the points of a holly leaf poking into the soft flesh on the underside of my chin with each step. I relocated the sprig one last time. When the Christmas decorations were unpacked, I had taken the small stuffed reindeer from many Christmases ago and placed it lovingly on the nightstand next to my bed. Terry made fun of it, but I didn’t care. I liked my little reindeer. I placed the holly under the fraying elastic collar that held the tarnished jingle bell. It gave the toy a much more festive appearance and I was beginning to sense a little of that holiday spirit. That was Joe’s gift to me for a day in 1971.

      I knew something was wrong on Tuesday when I got home from school and the evening paper was already waiting for us on the porch. Terry had stayed home from school that day with a stomachache, which was his way of playing hooky.

      “Hey, Terry,” I called up the stairs, “was Joe here already?”

      “Nah. The Post sent a car today, Joe must be sick or something.”

      “Oh,” I sighed. I had wanted to see my friend and give him the envelope with his tip in it.

      Mom came home, but did not have much to say. She didn’t look for Joe as if she had known he wasn’t there. She looked at me with an expression she used to get when Dad had done something to our family and we were about to feel its effects. A cold shiver ran down my spine.

      “Is something wrong, mom?”

      She didn’t say anything. We were good at that. She just gave me one of those reassuring hugs that let me know everything was not going to be all right and went to prepare dinner. I immediately assumed it was dad again. It wasn’t.

      Gossip was flying around the factory floor of the Pine-dale knitting mills all day long. Mom was never one to participate in the idle chatter at the plant but a name she heard in passing caught her attention. It seemed that one of the forklift drivers in the warehouse had not shown up for work. When his foreman checked into it, it was revealed that the driver had been arrested for punching his wife during a family squabble. He was drunk and belligerent and, when the police arrived, one of their sons stepped in front of his mother to protect her. The boy got a fist right in the mouth. The driver was taken into custody. His name was Joseph Trebo, senior.

      Small town gossip spread faster than the flu. By lunchtime on Wednesday our whole school had heard about the Trebo’s scandal. The kids were squarely divided into two camps – those who said that weird kid who was always alone probably deserved it, and those who just didn’t care. Three days before Christmas, I was beginning to understand just how alone Joe Trebo must have felt.

      I ran home from school to make sure that I was home when Joe came by … if Joe came by. The sun was low in the sky and by 4:30 darkness was encroaching over Auburn. A single silhouette with a drooping canvas bag walked slowly down our street. Joe’s mop of straw-colored hair didn’t bounce. His head hung low with his chin resting firmly on his chest. He stood on the curb, reached into his bag and pulled out our paper. He tossed it on the front porch and turned to leave.

      “Joe!” I called out from the open front door.

      Joe turned his lowered head and looked at me from out of the corner of his eye.

      “You forgot your money.”

      I waved his envelope over my head so he could see. I was only using the envelope as an excuse to see my friend. Joe paused for a moment and then turned toward the house and approached me. He lifted his head enough for me to see the vertical red scab of a split lip surrounded by swollen tissue that had already begun to take on the deep purple cast of a serious bruise. I smiled at him through the shock of his appearance.

      “Want to come in?”

      “No.” he mumbled through the inflammation of his injury.

      “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

      “Okay.”

      He smiled enough to let me know that he got my message in that short interchange. I wasn’t freaked out to be around a member of the screwed up Trebo family. Hell, if Joe only knew, he might not want to be around a member of the screwed up Branch family. He also smiled enough to let me see that one of his front teeth was missing.

      Joe stuffed the envelope into his pocket and pulled his hat out of his bag. He put it on as he was leaving and I noticed the holly was gone. Whatever festive spirit he had two days ago was missing, too.

                  We were finished with school until after the holidays. The next day Joe was able to complete his evening paper route a little early so he arrived around 3:30. Nothing was ever said about his appearance even though the discoloration around his mouth had deepened, and his speech was distinctly affected from the puffy lip and the missing tooth.

      When mom came home at her usual time, Joe made an excuse and left abruptly.

      “David? Is Joe going to be okay? He left awfully quickly.”

      “I hope so, mom. I think he didn’t want you to see him … like that.”

      “I know Davie, sometimes it’s embarrassing when your family’s troubles are made public.”

      I don’t think mom realized just how funny her comment sounded. I know that she was trying to explain Joe’s reluctance to be around people right now, but her words echoed in my ears like a testament to her denial of all the problems our own family had been through. She wanted us to believe we were, in some ways a normal happy family, at least happier than the Trebo’s at the moment. I took no comfort in the misery of others.

      Christmas arrived two days later on a warm and subdued Saturday in upstate New York. There were presents and a tree and stockings without a fireplace over which to hang. There were three boys and a mother alone in an new neighborhood, hoping they wouldn’t miss their extended families too much today. Mom had found the resources to make sure that there were presents under the tree. Maybe she had worked some extra hours or withheld money budgeted for food or electricity, but most likely she swallowed her pride and asked my grandfather for a loan. He would have gladly given it, but not without the satisfaction of pointing out what a loser my father had turned out to be. Mom did not need to be reminded of that fact.

      The morning passed quickly and by noon, the wrappings had already been put in the trash and we had gone to play our own separate games. I was on the living room floor assembling the track of my new hotwheels racing set when the doorbell rang.

      “Who could that be on Christmas day?” mom called out from the kitchen, where she was busy attending to the free turkey she had received as her Christmas bonus from work.

      “I don’t know.”

      “Answer the door, David.”

      You could hear the frustration in her voice at a 12 year-old who was doing as little as possible. I opened the door, still in my pajamas, and was a little more than surprised to see Joe Trebo standing there with our Christmas edition of the paper.

      “Merry Christmas,” he called out a little more clearly that the previous days. His injuries had begun the slow healing process and with some of the swelling reduced, he was becoming more comfortable speaking.

      “Merry Christmas, Joe,” My mom called out from behind the turkey she was sliding back into the oven. “Come in.”

      Joe seemed happy to be invited in. In only a few short minutes, he had is coat and shoes off and was happily taking inventory of my gifts.

      “What did you get for Christmas, Joe?”

      “Just some toys and stuff.”

      His answer was short enough for me not to pursue the topic. There was something that he did not want to talk about, and, if there was one thing the Branch family could do well, it was to not discuss uncomfortable topics. It didn’t matter. I was glad he was here and was glad he wanted to be here.

      Christmas afternoon passed much too quickly, for a change. New toys had become secondary to the companionship. When the sun started its rapid decline late in the day, my mom suggested it might be time for Joe to go home and spend some time with his family. We were both visibly disappointed but Joe knew he had intruded long enough and it was time to go home.

      When Joe left, my Christmas was over.

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