Bah! Humbug! Read online

  SCROOGE: Small?

  GHOST: Old Mr. Fezziwig has spent but a few pounds: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves all the praise being afforded him?

  SCROOGE: It isn’t that. It isn’t that, Spirit. Mr. Fezziwig has the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our work light or heavy, a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks, in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune. I . . . er.

  GHOST: What is the matter?

  SCROOGE: Nothing particular.

  GHOST: Something, I think?

  SCROOGE: No. No. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now! That’s all.

  “There’s something that Lisa and I never tell the kids, you know,” said Ray, “though sometimes I wonder if they’ve got some inkling of it . . .”

  “Ray,” said François, “just go back. Tell me another time. I can do this here.”

  Ray couldn’t be stopped. Sometimes the compulsion to tell is greater than the compulsion to do.

  “When little Eva says, ‘What was it like with you two —’”

  “Little Eva!” François interrupted. “I just got it. She’s named for the singer, yes?”

  “Yes, yes, she’s our little Eva. Lisa and I used to dance to ‘The Loco-Motion’ . . . Look, not that, not that. What I’m talking about is the time Lisa left me. We don’t tell the kids that. After she was gone and I used to sit in the apartment with the leaks — what did you call them, the water escaping? — yes, like her. She escaped. And I used to imagine her in a beautiful house, with a beautiful husband, surrounded by beautiful children, and it drove me crazy. It drove me completely crazy.”

  “Talking Heads.”

  “What?”

  “The band. David Byrne.”

  “I know. I know. I know,” Ray said. “‘Once in a Lifetime.’ I know it. It’s about me. All that ‘beautiful house’ stuff. Just like me. Thinking I had it all.”

  François started singing and humming the song under his breath. A minute later he said, “But she didn’t go off and find all that beautiful stuff. You told me.”

  “No, but it was as if she did. Get it? I told myself she did, and that felt as real to me as if she really had!”

  “But she does now! She’s got you. You’re not getting it. Go back, for goodness’ sake, Ray. Go back to the show.”

  But Ray didn’t move. “The power’ll come back on in a minute.”

  François sang on and on.

  GHOST: My time grows short. Quick!

  DICKENS: Again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now — a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years, but it had begun to wear the signs of greed. There was an eager, restless movement in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root. He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light.

  GIRL: It matters little. To you, very little. I matter little, for another idol has displaced me.

  YOUNGER SCROOGE: What idol has displaced you?

  GIRL: A golden one.

  YOUNGER SCROOGE: This is the way of the world! There is nothing so hard as poverty, and yet there is nothing the world condemns so much as the pursuit of wealth!

  GIRL: I have seen your kinder aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion, Gain, has taken over. Have I not seen that?

  YOUNGER SCROOGE: What then? Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed toward you, Belle. Am I?

  GIRL: You are changed. When we fell in with each other, you were another man.

  YOUNGER SCROOGE: I was a boy.

  GIRL: Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are. I am. How often I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it. I would gladly think otherwise if I could. Heaven knows! May you be happy in the life you have chosen!

  DICKENS: She left him.

  SCROOGE: Spirit! Show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?

  GHOST: One shadow more!

  Eva shuddered. Lisa thought Eva was cold, so she silently held up a shawl she had brought and raised questioning eyebrows at Eva.

  Eva smiled, shook her head, and pointed at the stage as if to say, The shivering, shuddering stuff is coming from there, what with it all being so . . . so . . . grim!

  “Do you know why Lisa left me?” Ray said in a quiet monotone.

  “You’re not listening to me, Ray. Go back to the play!” François’s voice was urgent.

  “She said I had a ‘one-track mind,’ but — but — then she said, ‘Where am I in this great scheme of things, Ray?’”

  François didn’t want to go through it again and shouted at Ray: “But she came back! Not many guys in your situation are as lucky. Don’t you get it? But you might not get another chance. Do you remember how you painted a picture of her somewhere else, in another setup, having a beautiful life? It could happen.”

  SCROOGE: No more! No more. I don’t wish to see it. Show me no more!

  DICKENS: But the relentless Ghost pinioned Scrooge in both his arms and forced him to observe what happened next. They were in another scene and place: a room, not very large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this room was tumultuous, for there were more children there than Scrooge could count; they were not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty. But no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much.

  Harry watched Shona as she said this and remembered Miss Cavani encouraging Shona with, “This is you, folks! This is what you’re all like. Show us, Shona dear, what ‘tumultuous’ feels like.”

  In the audience, Lisa winked at Eva.

  Yeah, all right Mom, Eva thought. Every time some author says “mother and daughter” doesn’t mean you have to say it’s us. Duh!

  SCROOGE: What would I not have given to be one of these children!

  DICKENS: But now a knocking at the door was heard, and in came the father, laden with Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and the onslaught that was made on the defenseless porter! The shouts of wonder and delight with which every package was received! By degrees, the children and their emotions got out of the parlor, by one stair at a time, up to the top of the house, where they went to bed. The master of the house sat down with his daughter and her mother at the fireside.

  SCROOGE (looking at the daughter): That a creature like that, just as graceful and as full of promise, might have called me father . . .

  HUSBAND: Belle, I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.

  BELLE: Who was it?

  HUSBAND: Guess!

  BELLE: How can I? Tut, don’t I know . . . Mr. Scrooge?

  HUSBAND: Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window and as it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear, and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world, I do believe.

  SCROOGE: Spirit! Remove me from this place.

  GHOST: I told you these were shadows of the things that have been. That they are what they are, do not blame me!

  SCROOGE: Remove me! I cannot bear it! Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!

  This was one of Harry’s favorite lines. He loved shouting, “Haunt me no longer!” and waiting for a second before the lights went out and the auditorium went dark.

  He paused for a moment, looking out into the dark of the auditorium, full of a weary sadness that Dad wasn’t there to hear that line float out into the crowd; he wasn’t there to hear the great wave of applause that came a beat later.

 
; Harry crept off the stage while the clapping continued. As he crept and crouched, it almost felt like he was an old man, and he wondered if, when Dad was old and he, Harry, was a man, Dad would tell him how sad he was he missed Harry being Scrooge?

  Then as Harry made his way into the Green Room, and he burst into the backstage buzz and bustle, the thought vanished.

  Sunil thumped him on the back. “It’s going great, Grubby.”

  Harry really didn’t mind Sunil calling him that. Even more pleasing was the glance that Shona sneaked toward him around the edge of Désol’é’s arm.

  “Miss!” Rasheda burst out to Miss Cavani. “My mom’s brought all her cousin’s family. There’s about ten of them!”

  “That’s what it’s all for, darling,” Miss Cavani said, smiling.

  Keep focused, Harry said to himself, lifting the mask off his face, giving himself a wipe, and putting it back on . . .

  “Time! Time!” Miss Cavani whispered loudly. “Throw those nerves away,” she added in her sprightly way, hurling imaginary nerves away from herself in all directions.

  Everyone imitated her, before subsiding into silent, concentrated expectation for the start of Stave Three.

  Do it, Harry, Harry said to himself.

  DICKENS: The bell struck one, and when no shape appeared, Scrooge was taken with a violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came.

  SCROOGE (walking toward the doorway): But what is the source of that blaze of ruddy light, I wonder?

  GHOST: Ebenezer Scrooge! Come in, come in.

  DICKENS: It was Scrooge’s own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green that it looked a perfect grove, from every part of which bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, and a blaze went roaring up the chimney. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, poultry, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies, plum puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, and seething bowls of punch. Upon this couch, there sat a jolly giant, glorious to see.

  GHOST: Come in! Come in and know me better, man! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Look upon me! You have never seen the like of me before!

  SCROOGE: Never.

  GHOST: Have you never walked forth with my elder brothers born in these later years?

  SCROOGE: I don’t think I have. I am afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?

  GHOST: More than eighteen hundred.

  SCROOGE: A tremendous family to provide for!

  GHOST: Come!

  SCROOGE: Spirit, conduct me where you will. I went forth last night, and I learned a lesson which is working now. Tonight, if you have anything to teach me, let me profit by it.

  GHOST: Touch my robe!

  DICKENS: Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast. All vanished instantly.

  The lights had come back on in the industrial park; the computers were humming.

  François realized that Ray was intent on ignoring his plea to go back. He had been touched by the emotion in Ray’s voice as he had talked about what it had been like to meet Lisa and to have feared losing her in that time before Harry was born. Out of the corner of his eye, François could see that Ray’s eyes were fixed on one of the screens as if there was some deep power behind the flickering light, pulling him in.

  “The file with the other data on it . . .” Ray muttered half to himself, half to François.

  François was leaning back, looking at the ceiling. He was wondering what it would take to change Ray’s mind.

  “It’s not here.”

  François responded without taking his eyes off the ceiling. “You didn’t upload it. It’s on your laptop.”

  The moment Ray heard “laptop,” he leapt up like a startled dog and smacked the side of his own head. “I’ll go home and get it!”

  François smiled to himself. Why could his friend not see the irony of it? A whole world of feelings about life couldn’t budge him one little inch; the single word laptop made him jump like a firecracker. Then again, perhaps the mysterious Ray could see the irony and chose to ignore it.

  With a quick shake of his car key and a quick squeeze of François’s shoulder, Ray was out the door. He strode across the parking lot, watched by the gray UFOs of the office units.

  MRS. CRATCHIT: What has ever kept your precious father, then? And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha warn’t as late last Christmas Day by half an hour!

  MARTHA: Here’s Martha, Mother!

  YOUNG CRATCHITS: Here’s Martha, Mother! Hurrah! There’s such a goose, Martha!

  MRS. CRATCHIT: Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!

  MARTHA: We’d a deal of work to finish up last night, and had to clear away this morning, Mother!

  MRS. CRATCHIT: Well! Never mind so long as you are come. Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!

  YOUNG CRATCHITS: No, no! There’s Father coming. Hide, Martha, hide!

  DICKENS: So Martha hid herself, and in came Bob the father, and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder.

  BOB: Why, where’s our Martha?

  MRS. CRATCHIT: Not coming.

  BOB: Not coming? Not coming upon Christmas Day? Ah! There she is!

  (Martha comes out from behind the closet door and runs into Bob’s arms, while the two young Cratchits hustle Tiny Tim and bear him off into the wash house.)

  MRS. CRATCHIT: And how did little Tim behave?

  BOB: As good as gold, and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, He who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.

  The woman next to Lisa leaned across to Eva and nodded at her.

  Oh, for goodness’ sake, Eva thought. Just because someone says the word lame, it doesn’t mean you have to nod away at me.

  Lisa felt Eva tense up beside her like a cat watching an intruder cat through a window.

  Lisa smiled back at the woman . . . and immediately regretted doing it, as she knew that Eva would tell her later why it was annoying.

  DICKENS: Such a bustle followed that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon; and in truth it was something very like it in that house. (The children return to help set dinner.) At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was followed by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried:

  TINY TIM: Hurrah!

  BOB: I don’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked.

  Once again, Ray was speeding down the road in the car. This time his mind was focused on the laptop. Where had he put it? In spite of his fear that vital data could be lost or corrupted, he did let Eva — no one else, only Eva — use it on occasion. The feeling of sheer eye-watering joy he got from seeing Eva poring over it overcame any feelings of caution. The day she found the YouTube video of a cat seeming to sing to the TV was one of the happiest moments of his life. How could such a thing make her scream with laughter so much, for so long? In that moment, it was as if she banished all pain, all sadness, all dreariness. If only you could package that magic, he thought, open it up, eat it, and, hey — happy. Wow, if you could do that, you really would mint it.

  As he thought eat, Ray felt a pang. Come to think of it, he was hungry. Tomorrow, Christmas dinner. A few years ago, he would have known every single detail of what to expec
t because he had been the family’s Christmas shopper, but now Lisa did it with Harry.

  Ray remembered how one time he stood in the supermarket in front of a wall of Christmas goodies and was hit at that very moment by what felt like an electric shock: how different this was from his own childhood, where every treat, every present, every little luxury came with a warning — his mother reminding them of how lucky they were that they weren’t standing in a line at a soup kitchen, how fortunate they were they weren’t begging in the street. Ha! — that time Stinker was over and Ray’s mother went to the cabinet and took out a bar of chocolate. Not two bars: one bar. She broke it in half and handed a half to each of them.

  But Ray knew there was another bar in there. He had seen his mother put the two bars in the cabinet. So he said, “Mom, can we have the other bar too?”

  She was furious. “Do you have any idea, any idea at all, how lucky you are? Instead of being content that you’ve got any chocolate at all, you’re feeling sorry for yourself that you haven’t got a bar each? Just eat what I’ve given you and Stinker and be thankful. That’s not so hard, is it?”

  Well, actually, it was hard. It was hard to be thankful when someone was telling you to be thankful. All through his childhood, Ray felt as if he had never been allowed to enjoy anything in some clear, pure way. The joy of having a new pair of shoes or having a nice piece of chicken came filtered through feelings of relief that they weren’t ill or starving or dying. Though he never confessed it to anyone around him, Ray knew exactly how it made him feel: angry. Angry that his mother hadn’t let him enjoy things, and he turned that anger against the very people who were less fortunate than they were. It wasn’t his mother who was spoiling his fun; it was all these poor and sick people she seemed to parade in front of him every time he had a cookie.

  Once he had seen a homeless guy at the entrance to the train station and imagined a garbage truck stopping next to him, a couple of the guys getting out in their orange vests, grabbing the guy and slinging him into the back of the truck, where he was slowly taken in through the jaws. He had imagined how, if there were enough trucks like that, all swooping and grabbing and removing these people, his mother couldn’t keep telling him how lucky he wasn’t like that, because there wouldn’t be any of them.